What Religion Do You Follow?

[Kantor]

Dr.Grass said:

 

• It tastes delicious. Call me a savage, I don't care.

Yes, that's an answer I will accept.

• We have worked our way to the top of the food chain by evolution, and we have the biological right to do what we like with our position.

We have the ability to live without enforcing our 'biological' right. Are we meant to just take what we want? Surely a human society can be above such a degraded state of living?

• Animals have no real conscious thought or fear of death.

And pain? And other fears? I suggest you watch 'The Cove', and see the trainer of the famous flipper dolphin describe how she committed suicide due to depression. Ever lived closely with animals? I've lived with cows before. Trust me, they are much closer to humans than any dog could ever be. And we western people treasure our dear Lassy's and Beethoven's don't we? Here I can't disprove you, but there is no part of me that doesn't believe that you are wrong.

I've left in the points about which I feel strongest.

If something is enjoyable, that's one of the strongest arguments in the world for doing it. The exception is, of course, when doing something enjoyable harms someone else to an extent that is greater than your enjoyment. In my view, however, the full diet and nutrition of human beings is more important than the life of farm animals. Again, perhaps this makes me a savage. If one of the prerequisites of civilisation is that you have a deep respect for all life, then I am not civilised, and will not pretend to be. And I certainly hope that all of my fellow omnivores feel the same way, because if they don't, that is a sure sign that they have never even thought about it.

I have no proof for this, but I highly doubt that a lioness is feeling remorse when she kills a deer to feed herself and her children. She recognises that she is biologically superior to that deer, and that it is her right to kill the deer. By what I'm getting from your ideology, then, she isn't civilised. Indeed, no animal is civilised, because the only reason an animal avoids meat is that it cannot manage to find, subdue and consume an organism that will give it nutrition. This applies to dolphins, too. Do they care about the lives of the fish they eat? Again, I highly doubt it. If you say that we as humans are superior to those organisms because of our ability to pity other species, then you are admitting that we are not like other animals, and so animals are not deserving of the same quality of treatment as we are. If pigs managed to form a political party, and one of them dressed up in a suit and gave a speech on porcine-human equality, perhaps then I would consider swearing off pork. I would, however, continue to eat beef, mutton, chicken and so on.

You're getting perilously close here to using that awful cliché line: "Would you want a superior organism to eat you?". Well, of course I bloody well wouldn't. I have no desire to be shot and eaten. But from an objective point of view, they have that right. Why don't we have the right to eat other people, then, you ask? Because we are equal. We are not, however, equal to cows, and nor are we on the same standing as these superhumans who are apparently going to eat us in the future.

As for the conscious thought, as I've mentioned above, they've shown no real signs of it. I have never seen a chicken protest about living conditions or genocide, but perhaps it's one of those government coverups and WikiLeaks will have something on it soon.