Is meat-eating morally wrong?

[Immortal]

Jay520 said:

Sure, it's a huge double standard. That's one of the reasons why I made this thread. Killing a dog is bad, but killing a cow is fine. I wanted people to acknowledge their inconsistencies, even if they weren't going to change. For the people that would acknowledge their double standards, I was expecting someone to say "Killing any animal is bad." However, you surprised me and said "Killing any animal is not bad." I guess that is more consistent, but still shocking nonetheless.

Also, something tells me you don't really feel that way about animals. You just wanted to tackle people's double standards. Am I right?

You're half right. As I said, my moral reality is that I like dogs (and some other animals). Can't do anything about it. My moral ideal, though, is probably that killing animals is alright on the whole.

They're definitely equally consistent, I'll concede you. Holding the belief that animal lives are valuable is very problematic for me, though. Firstly, I'm not sure where to draw the line. Is killing an insect morally wrong, too? Should we be disallowed to kill spiders and ants and all these disturbing pests that could seriously reduce our standard of living if they weren't controlled as much as they are?

Another point is that can't we extend this argument of not killing animals to plants, then? We can't actually survive without killing plants, but they are also living. What right have we to take away and abuse their lives as we need to in order to survive? More precisely, what makes them more "killable" than animals? If you resort to their lack of intelligence or level of consciousness, we're sort of rounding back to the original argument.

I also have some other issues, but I'd be very interested in hearing how you respond to these two points.