Originally posted by: kogase
Originally posted by: veggiefrog
As far as "pathetic copout", I don't know enough about the animals / harvesting to comment on it, so I didn't.
The pathetic copout I was referring to was using one's dislike for the messenger to disregard a specific argument. A pathetic tactic.
EDIT: Nothing about the rest of my post to comment on that is relevant to the OP?
Should I feel obligated to comment on the rest of your post? First of all, it was addressed to Wnh5001. Secondly, there is nothing in the rest of your post for me to contest. Most of it is your opinion. Would you like my approval, then, of your opinion? I certainly do approve of it. You have a great attitude, and I respect it very much.
My original post that was indeed relevant to the OP was a direct answer to his question. My theory is that a majority of vegetarians (specifically those who abstain from eating meat from a humanitarian standpoint) make their decisions on what is and what isn't proper to eat based on what they can anthropomorphize.
Deciding to be humane to animals is somewhat arbitrary. No one can truly say which animals experience pain, both physical and emotional, to a significant enough degree. Where do you draw the line between insect and monkey? Which animal is too stupid/unaware to treat "inhumanely"? Would one swat a fly, yet at the same time refuse to eat a slaughtered cow? Why? Because the fly can't "think" and "feel" like the cow can? How do you know?
At the same time one could ask "how do you know?" in reference to plants. How do you know plants don't experience pain? How do you know they have emotions. Well, nobody really thinks so. But what if I say I don't think a cow really feels emotions?
What it comes down to, in my opinion, is that people can anthropomorphize most animals because they have human features, unlike plants. People start to see things in animals that aren't actually there, because they (the animals) remind us of ourselves. And we don't eat each other, so why would we eat animals?
Well, the answer to that is I don't see people in animals. I see a cow, a pig, a crab. I see a thing. I see a thing I can eat and enjoy. There is no logical reason for me to see a person in an animal. The only thing that would allow me to see a person in an animal is arbitrary emotional response. I think that is what drives most vegetarians. But that is not something I believe in. I'll stick to logic before I depend on emotion.