Wed, Feb-18-04, 08:38
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Slothy Superhero
Posts: 12,159
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Plan: Vegetarian Atkins
Stats: 165/145/125
BF:29/25.2/24
Progress: 50%
Location: Tennessee/Iowa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ItsTheWooo
Paleoanth,
Moral beliefs that influence the way one lives life can be said to be characteristic of religion. While there is obviously far less organization in the vegetarian community than in real religions, I do think it is appropriate to call vegetarianism a kind of quasi-religion. It is a set of behavioral and moral precedents which is rooted in a subjective moral belief. This belief is, of course, that all sentiment organisms are inherently equal and should be treated as such. Behavioral precedents of the various branches of vegetarianism include respecting animals as spiritually equal sentiment beings which should be free and ideally never under human control, not eating meat, not eating eggs milk, or sometimes not using any animal derived products at all.
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OK, this is where we are going to have to agree to disagree. I don't think of it as a quasi, psuedo or any other kind of religion. I also have a separate philosophical reason for becoming a vegetarian that actually doesn't have anything to do with a moral belief that animal lives are equal. Perhaps I wasn't clear in that. I just think that if someone wants to eat meat-then they should be willing to eat all kinds and not just some. It doesn't make sense to me otherwise. That is my philosophical stance.
The moral thing is simply this: I do think all lives are inherently equal. What makes human superior anyway? I have never heard an argument that actually convinced me that a human life was somehow more important than any other kind of life. That does not mean that I think people are murderers for eating meat, any more than I think a cat or a dog is. I just get upset when two different sets of rules are applied to humans versus anything else. For example, some moron goes to the zoo, gets into the polar bear area, teases the bear, gets mauled by the bear and the bear gets destroyed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ItsTheWooo
As for whether or not vegans/vegetarians are capable of truly respecting the conscious choice omnivores make to view animals as a lower form of life (and therefore eat them), I definitely think vegetarians and vegans are capable of respecting another person's right to choose to believe a moral doctrine different from their own. This is a civil rights issue you are talking about, I never claimed there was something about normal vegetarians that prevented them from respecting others civil rights; rational people regardless of their beliefs respect the civil rights of others (and therefore, the right to adopt whatever beliefs they wish). As I said in my first response, tolerance of someones right to choose, and how you actually feel about the choices they make are two different things. I still stand by the belief that true moral vegetarians/vegans believe that in a perfect world, carnivores would be "awakened" and convert to a "cruelty free" lifestyle. A christian doesn't necessarily not respect the right of someone to choose to be jewish, or vice versa, but I think both would think it ideal if others decided to adopt their faiths and convert.
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Again, we are just going to have to disagree. I don't think animals eat each other because of some "lower" form of life thing. We eat them for the same reason every thing else eats meat from animals. However, our TREATMENT of animals is horrible. That is what makes me think we either devalue nonhuman animals or over value our own existences. It is a civil rights issue. The cival rights of animals.
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