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[Vector]

Anyone who eats meat is a murdering bastard with no respect for the sanctity of life.  They should all be jailed or something.

I suspect strongly that you are trolling.

[lordcooper]

Anyone who eats meat is a murdering bastard with no respect for the sanctity of life.  They should all be jailed or something.

I suspect strongly that you are trolling.

About 50/50

[Shade-o]

What about meat products extracted without killing them?

[Max White]

Anyone who eats meat is a murdering bastard with no respect for the sanctity of life.  They should all be jailed or something.

So, because I eat red meat, of some rather smart animals (Pigs are smater then dogs, after all) I am a 'murdering bastard with no respect for the sanctity of life'? Well then atleast I can't drop much more, might as well grab a sickle and get slashing! Gonna be one hell of a night.

[Shade-o]

As if you could kill someone with a sickle.

[Max White]

If you sharpen it, I'm sure you could, and it would look cool. The plan is to place the curve of the blade around their neck, then go for the throat slit. 


Oh come on, because I was responding to a real post with one of equal validty. I'm realy going to take to the streets...

[G-Flex]

Love it. It's like one of those Shakespearean plays where everybody kills each other due to a series of misunderstandings. You know which one I mean, right?

I think I've seen an episode of Three's Company like that.

[GamerKnight]

Sickles are shit. I would go for a full scythe and sweep straight for the throat.

[DJ]

meat eating heped us evolve our brains to the current point just like war helped us develop technologically, does that mean we should respect war and practice it regularly?

Well you know who didn't eat meat? Hitler!

I apologize, forums, but there's simply no other way to reply to a post as ridiculous as this.

[GamerKnight]

Which made him go even more apeshit.

EDIT: Oh yeah, someone finally mentioned Hitler. This thread is all grown up.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Do you? What does the behavior of humans, already intelligent by that point, have to do with whether or not an herbivorous diet selects for intelligence? With only the rarest of exceptions, animals held up as examples of non-human intelligence are either carnivores or omnivores. Purely herbivorous animals are, with only the rarest of exceptions, dim-witted grazing animals. Therefore it follows that an animal whose diet includes no meat, will in almost every single case be dim-witted (except for, say, strains of originally omnivorous species who've specialized away from eating meat).

No, that doesn't even make any sense because humans aren't dim-witted grazing animals even when they eat a vegetarian diet.

Humans evolved as pack hunting omnivores. Why the fuck would one suggest that if they then convert to a vegetarian diet they would magically lose the intelligence they already had? My point is that a purely herbivorous diet doesn't select for intelligence in the first place (as in, in animals that are not already intelligent), unlike anything involving hunting, not that it magically causes regression in already-intelligent animals.

Let's look at the animals generally held up as examples of extremely-stupid-human level intelligence (which is actually quite high compared to most animals, I don't mean to suggest otherwise): pigs, omnivores; dogs, omnivores/carnivores; dolphins, carnivores; squid, carnivores; chimpanzees, omnivores. If we drop down another level we get things like cats, which are carnivores, other scavengers, which are omnivores/carnivores, various monkeys, which are either omnivores or descended from omnivores, and maybe one or two exceptional herbivores, like elephants. Below that, we find grazing herbivores, fish (carnivorous or otherwise), smaller birds (raptors belong in the above category), and assorted other small animals. While we find carnivores/omnivores throughout the entire spectrum, they're all that's found at the very top, and form a disproportionate amount of the levels right below it too. This is also obviously not a comprehensive list, but a rough overview.

Yes, it does. Third and forth sentences.

Right. So what you're saying is that securing animals' right to not suffer at the hands of men is wrong, because we don't even secure that right for ourselves, which is why murder, torture, and assault are legal.

Again, difference between "granting/theorizing" and "securing." Law "grants" rights, it does not secure them, especially not when you're talking about UN resolutions or international law, which have exactly as much impact on the world's behavior as a pile of bull shit on a mid-western factory farm does.

Both are valid, though. The first is hyperbole wrapped around a grain of truth

In other words, a lie. If something relies on hideous exaggeration, it isn't exactly true anymore. After all, if animals really were only as smart as vacuums, you'd have a point. Unfortunately, most of them aren't, so it doesn't hold water.

Hyperbole is a rhetorical style meant to emphasize a point. Where are you getting that the argument hinges on it being literal truth, when its whole point is to be an exaggeration of truth?

Edit: I know that you're going to have some snarky, completely-ignoring-the-context reply to that, so I'll just head you off

No, I won't, because if you're talking about capitalism of the early industrial era, then yes, it was pretty terrible. It just wasn't that clear from your post.

Fair enough.

[G-Flex]

I still don't agree about herbivorous diet not selecting for intelligence. There are still benefits to being intelligence even if you don't eat meat, some of which I already mentioned, but which also include complex social behavior and survival skills. You are completely right that carnivorous diets can encourage this perhaps more often, because if you're hunting larger animals then you usually need some skill and maybe a little organization/cleverness, depending. However, there are still plenty of reasons that aren't hunting-related to evolve greater intelligence.

Chimpanzees do engage in some hunting activity, but is that why they're intelligent? I honestly don't think so, as their social intelligence and cleverness, as with that of other primates, simply doesn't seem geared towards that very much at all. If you observe how primates act and what they actually use their intelligence for, it is largely for things that have nothing to do with hunting other animals. This alone should make it pretty obvious that intelligence can be selected for for plenty of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with eating meat. Monkeys use tools, communicate, can actually engage in planning behavior, can learn very well, can learn from each other, and so forth. This doesn't just help you hunt things. It helps you eat a wider or healthier variety of vegetation (because you figure out what you can/can't eat, what's helpful to eat, complex tool usage for cracking harder nuts, etc.), helps you avoid and fight off predators and rival groups, encourages more complex organization of the group in general (which is beneficial for a variety of things), etc. I simply do not believe that the only reason primates evolved higher intelligence was because they had to hunt, for two reasons: One, I don't see much evidence that their immediate ancestors did that much hunting, and two, pretty much all the higher order primates exhibit a similar sort of intelligence that is beneficial and could easily be selected for whether they eat meat or not. If an herbivorous animal benefits from intelligence, then how can you think intelligence can't be selected for in creatures who are herbivorous to begin with?

[DJ]

Chimp brain is good enough for social purposes, given a small group. We haven't lived in much larger groups until like neolithic. Increasing brain size just because simply wouldn't happen, because our brains are freakishly expensive - over a quarter of our total calorie expenditure goes to the brain.

But anyway, this is all besides the point. The point is that we *are* adapted to eating meat, because eating meat has been one of the primary driving forces behind our evolution. So the resident vegans who are trying to portray eating meat as unnatural should put a sock in it.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

meat eating heped us evolve our brains to the current point just like war helped us develop technologically, does that mean we should respect war and practice it regularly?

Well you know who didn't eat meat? Hitler!

I apologize, forums, but there's simply no other way to reply to a post as ridiculous as this.

what the fuck? my post was ridiculous?

[G-Flex]

Chimp brain is good enough for social purposes, given a small group. We haven't lived in much larger groups until like neolithic. Increasing brain size just because simply wouldn't happen, because our brains are freakishly expensive - over a quarter of our total calorie expenditure goes to the brain.

Funny thing is, our brains aren't very adapted to large groups. Really, large groups like we have today (and when I say "large" I'm referring to over, say, a couple hundred) are recent enough in evolutionary terms that we haven't gotten the chance. We accomplish it because our language and tool use (and abstract thought?) is good enough that we can formulate structures for organizing decision-making and that sort of thing (governments, etc.) but we still have trouble actually comprehending groups outside our immediate social circle. So in a sense, you're right, but large societies are still, in their own way, very difficult for humans to deal with.

But anyway, this is all besides the point. The point is that we *are* adapted to eating meat, because eating meat has been one of the primary driving forces behind our evolution. So the resident vegans who are trying to portray eating meat as unnatural should put a sock in it.

Yeah, no argument there. I personally think the whole question of "What's our natural diet?" is pretty ridiculous. The "natural human diet" is to go wherever we feel like and find out what we can eat that won't kill us. Hell, that's why our livers are so strong. We're adaptable. In a sense, that makes it harder, because there simply isn't any one diet we can point to as being the obviously natural and perfect human diet, but on the other hand, it gives us more choice, which is why we can entertain questions like this to begin with, and why there are healthy vegans as well as healthy Inuits.