This noble quest involves taking both of our thoughts, getting rid of the noise and coming up with clear concepts that we can identify as the reason for our disagreement. At the moment, I must admit that I have a very poor understanding of why vegetarians don't eat meat. Rather, I don't find any of the arguments convincing.
The first rule which I agree with is:
So, in discussions of animal rights on my blog and Trevor's we can take the statement, "Militant activists are not worth arguing with." as given and then move on from there.For further explanation, follow the link to Stuart's blog.
As usual, I will start with a list of gut feelings. We can see where it goes from there.
1. I am opposed to cruelty which leads to unnecessary suffering. For this reason, I did find Stuart's argument about not eating veal compeling, and so... I don't eat veal.
2. I don't understand how we go about attributing moral status to various animals. We do it though. Westerners give moral status to carnivores, dogs, cats, dolphins, whales and bears. Some eastern cultures give moral status to cows. We give little moral status to insects.
3. I believe in the `Circle of Life' (cue drum beats and spectacular choruses). We are not somehow seperate from the world we live in, we can be less cruel in that we can reduce suffering where possible, but animals eat other animals, and we are an animal.(If God didn't want us to eat cows, he wouldn't have made them out of steak)
4. Given the affordable choice between less cruel and more cruel, I think the majority of people would choose less cruel. But `morality' in this space is only one of many priorities.
Thats enough for now.
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