No need to obsess so much with the semantics. Even if I said I was looking for what "people" would respond to me, I'm evidently looking for someone to argue with their own logic anyway. Can you actually not tell, :P?

With that out of the way, isn't it clear that people are having double standards if they think that I'm an inhumane psychopath for killing a dog, but are alright if I kill chickens for a living? I already presented my logic in the previous post. Do you disagree?

"Either a choice is wrong or right. Not sometimes it's wrong sometimes it's right. "

You probably believe that killing is always wrong. If I understand you correctly, killing is never right and is always wrong. Well...I and many people would disagree. For example, it's not immoral to kill someone if it means saving the lives of hundreds of people. You may disagree, but then we have no way of knowing who is right.

Some choices can be so complex that there is no obvious moral option. In the example that I provided above, if you asked that question to ten different people, you would probably get ten different answers.

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?

So you are saying that killing someone to save 100 different people is sometimes right sometimes wrong? If killing is always wrong then yeah, killing one to save 100 is wrong. If it isn't always wrong then that would imply that there are situations where sometimes its right and sometimes its wrong... but the thing about that is it would determine on the circumstance. Either its always okay to kill in self defense and not in cold blood. But it will never be sometimes its wrong to kill in self defense sometimes its right.

Let's stick to that one situation - killing one person to save 100 people. My point is some people would say that's morally wrong, and some people would say that's morally right. The situation is not clearly right or wrong; many people have opposing viewpoints on the situation. You cannot say it's objectively right or objectively wrong. This is an example of a situation where the moral option is subjective.

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.

But it isn't subjective at all. There is something within the action that either makes it right or wrong. There is just no way of determining which is which. One side is correct while the other isn't. The best chance we have get an answer is to investigate the situation. Which brings me to the orginal topic. In order to determine if eating meat is right or wrong then we need to investigate the action. You say you don't care about the things we were discussing. But I think they are rather important in answering your question.

And who knows... maybe after investigating we still end up with an incorrect assertion. However, the idea is to try to get as much information to reduce that risk.

I came into this thread because I'm very interested. And I am working on a minor in philosophy.

Humans can eat meat. If it were wrong for humans to eat meat, we wouldn't be able to absorb nutrients from meat. We can, though. We CAN compare ourselves to animals, because humans ARE animals. Eating meat is not a moral issue, people only made it into one. Humans eating other humans is different though. Humans aren't even designed to eat other humans anyway, as it can potentially cause lots of problems down the road.

Ultimately, it's subjective there's no objective line that everyone will agree on. People are going to have their own opinions on how intelligent/conscious a creature must be in order to be valuable. Some people say that only mammals are smart enough to be valuable. Some people say only humans are truly valuable. While others say every creature with any sense of consciousness (certain insects and rodents) is too valuable to be used as food. As for me, I'm not sure what to think. I think I'm learning toward holding certain intelligent mammals as being too valuable for mere food. 

Plants have no brain/CNS and thus have no consciousness whatsoever, so I really give them no value other than for food, oxygen, etc. 

Also, I wouldn't have a problem with killing meat if they were are only choice for a quality life. However, we have plants as a perfectly effective alternative. So even if animals have much lower consciousness than humans, we could still choose to only eat plants with no consciousness at all. 

So do you think killing a man to save 100 people is right or wrong?