Vegetarianism, atheism and morality.

[Ronja]

Sorry Audley, I still do not get what you mean.

Apologies, Let me try and rephrase it then. If the moral position is that it is cruel and therefore wrong to torture and slaughter animals as an industrial process then it doesn't become less immoral by percentile points, it only stops becoming wrong when it stops. It would be inconsistent and in fact immoral to say that it can continue in any shape or form. If it's not consistent, what is the point of claiming it as a moral rather than an emotional or aesthetic position?

Ah, now I think I see. You are right, animal suffering doesn't become less immoral by percentile points. However, there are more and less humane ways of treating the animals we intend to eat. IMO vastly more and vastly less.

Which brings into the discussion the practical problem of trying to shut down or radically change any major part of the society/economy fast. I believe that trying to end factory farming abruptly would cause such practical, often economical, problems for many enough farmers that huge numbers of animals would end up suffering a great deal more than they would otherwise. And IMO that would be even more wrong than tolerating a slower dismantling of the (most) industrial aspects of animal husbandry. The information that has lead me to believe this is described below.

My SIL and her husband were/are veterinarians and have both worked in rural areas for years, also as county veterinarians, handling animal cruelty cases on farms. Their first-hand reports combined with a number of news reports on TV, radio and in newspapers during the last 15 years or so - when I have been paying more attention to these things - leads me to believe that if a farmer gets into serious enough economical trouble, his or her animals are likely to suffer a whole lot more as a consequence of such trouble than what those animals would suffer without the economic hardship, even in a typical factory-farming and industrial slaughtering scenario.

It is at those Finnish farms where the bill collector regularly beats at the door and the interests pile up that tens, sometimes hundreds of cows or pigs are found wading in their own muck, several having died of illness, hunger or thirst, or even having drowned in urine, some rotting carcasses still held up by the stall walls. And to add to the tragedy, animals that have been so neglected are not acceptable as human food - so it's a terrible waste all around.

I believe that a slowly/steadily growing pressure from the people, both as consumers and as voters, is the key to such change that won't harm more animals than it can help. If it becomes better business than factory-farming for a farmer to raise fewer animals who get to live a somewhat more humane life with more chances to species-specific behavior, then I would suppose that the better business opportunity would attract, even if a particular farmer was not too emphatic about her or his animals.

That is why I do not believe that ending factory farming as fast as possible would be the most ethical course of action - I believe it would cause more animal suffering than it would prevent.

[FBM]

This is good.

Fucking-a, man. I'm going to watch this a few more times. That was good...

[Animavore]

He has a new book out soon http://righteousmind.com/108/

And I highly recommend this one http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/

[FBM]

He has a new book out soon http://righteousmind.com/108/

And I highly recommend this one http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/

Sweet. I'm on it...

[Ronja]

Yeah, really great stuff - thanks, Ani!

[Thumpalumpacus]

<edited>

[Audley Strange]

Ah, now I think I see. You are right, animal suffering doesn't become less immoral by percentile points. However, there are more and less humane ways of treating the animals we intend to eat. IMO vastly more and vastly less.

Which brings into the discussion the practical problem of trying to shut down or radically change any major part of the society/economy fast. I believe that trying to end factory farming abruptly would cause such practical, often economical, problems for many enough farmers that huge numbers of animals would end up suffering a great deal more than they would otherwise. And IMO that would be even more wrong than tolerating a slower dismantling of the (most) industrial aspects of animal husbandry. The information that has lead me to believe this is described below.

My SIL and her husband were/are veterinarians and have both worked in rural areas for years, also as county veterinarians, handling animal cruelty cases on farms. Their first-hand reports combined with a number of news reports on TV, radio and in newspapers during the last 15 years or so - when I have been paying more attention to these things - leads me to believe that if a farmer gets into serious enough economical trouble, his or her animals are likely to suffer a whole lot more as a consequence of such trouble than what those animals would suffer without the economic hardship, even in a typical factory-farming and industrial slaughtering scenario.

It is at those Finnish farms where the bill collector regularly beats at the door and the interests pile up that tens, sometimes hundreds of cows or pigs are found wading in their own muck, several having died of illness, hunger or thirst, or even having drowned in urine, some rotting carcasses still held up by the stall walls. And to add to the tragedy, animals that have been so neglected are not acceptable as human food - so it's a terrible waste all around.

I believe that a slowly/steadily growing pressure from the people, both as consumers and as voters, is the key to such change that won't harm more animals than it can help. If it becomes better business than factory-farming for a farmer to raise fewer animals who get to live a somewhat more humane life with more chances to species-specific behavior, then I would suppose that the better business opportunity would attract, even if a particular farmer was not too emphatic about her or his animals.

That is why I do not believe that ending factory farming as fast as possible would be the most ethical course of action - I believe it would cause more animal suffering than it would prevent.

Of course, but it still ignores the central premise of the argument of becoming a vegatarian for moral reasons. Which is not that they want to eat ethically sourced meat, it is that eating meat is morally wrong. I think that's a position which would to precisely the kind of problems you've described and I suggested and thus as a moral position it is self defeating.

At best, it's a trading standards issue.

[JimC]

Vegetarian 'morality' is self serving bullshit as far as I'm concerned. As is all 'morality'. Advances in neurology show that we are rationalising, not rational creatures. We see something, we don't like it, then we justify it with a lot of wordy bollox. Take 'specieism' for instance, I've never heard such an emotionally manipulative word in all my life. We are and always will be 'specieist'. I don't remember the vegetarians whining when we wiped out all those poor widdle small pox

Our morals and laws are based around social cohesion. It's all about getting along with each other and not fucking each other over to our detriment. Whether Babe lives or dies does not affect that.

'Self serving bullshit'? And yet one of the things that higher apes seem to have developed is empathy, the ability to put ourselves in the circumstances of others and to feel pity. You seem to be dismissing this. I have empathy for a pig which is reared in a crate, can't turn around, is inseminated, has ten piglets which will suffer the same fate, eventually to be slaughtered along with hundreds of its fellows in an assembly line of death. It isn't bullshit to view this process as immoral.

Exactly. That's why I (and several others in this thread) advocate eating animals that have been raised in reasonable conditions, out in the open, treated well, then slaughtered as humanely as possible. Add to this an overall reduction in the total meat consumption, for health reasons if nothing else, and I find myself in a position I am comfortable to maintain.

[Warren Dew]

It isn't necessary to eat animals at all in many parts of the world, so eating meat is weighing our desire for tasty meat against the animals desire to not be eaten and our convenience of access lots of cheap meat balanced against the suffering the animals go through in the mass production factory process.

I agree that animals likely prefer not to suffer while still alive, but what makes you think they care about whether they're eaten after they die?

[Animavore]

If animals didn't want to be eaten they wouldn't've evolved to be tasty

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If animals didn't want to be eaten they wouldn't've evolved to be tasty

If they didn't hide steaks on their person they wouldn't be attacked. [/lion]

[Gallstones]

Saying you are eliminating mammals and birds, but continuing to eat fish is not a more high minded choice. The fisheries are being depleted at an alarming rate. Not only that, but lacto ovo vegetarians are complicit in far more suffering than beef eaters.

These steers look pretty calm and clueless to me.
Warning, video is bolt stunning of cattle.

[Robert_S]

I eat fish about three times a month. If everyone else consumed at my level would the fisheries still be depleting?

[Warren Dew]

I eat fish about three times a month. If everyone else consumed at my level would the fisheries still be depleting?

Depends on the kind of fish you eat. Cod, probably yes; anchovies and herring, no.

They're still killed in much more painful fashion than cattle, though.

[apophenia]

I go for the light topics on a Saturday night OK?!

I am considering going vegie again. We have a lot of cattle market traffic around here and I see wagons loaded with sheep and cattle on their way to the slaughter house on a pretty regular basis and when I do I feel like I am participating in mass slaughter ion a huge scale if I eat meat. I read the other day too that globally we eat about 50 billion chickens a year! That a huge fuckn' pile of chickens!

Now if I was a heartless atheist with no sense of morals and no notion in the back of my mind that someone or thing was keeping score of the moral content of my behaviour then I might say fuckit and enjoy the bacon and the chicken wings.

Unfortunately I am an atheist who has empathy for the suffering of other sentient entities and so I am struggling with this issue. I will never witness these poor creatures being killed on my behalf so sod it, right? No - not right for some reason. But why should I care?

On balance I am considering eating only free range meat. It is more expensive but as we only eat a little meat each week it is certainly affordable.

Thoughts?

I'm still not feeling well and am behind on this thread, so I'll just jump in and out, and hopefully no one has made my point already.

There is probably no moral significance attachable to the suffering of the animals you eat for food in and of itself. However, as a species, it is preferable to encourage, support, and breed with individuals who feel empathy towards the suffering of other sentient beings for the simple reason that a species which is insensate to the suffering and well-being of those like itself is not likely to prosper as a species. This is for the same reason that a lion that doesn't prefer to mate with its own kind is likely not going to be well represented in future generations. Empathy and concern for suffering is beneficial in an evolutionary sense because as a social species, those displaying the right balance of empathy will breed and survive better than those less optimally balanced, and that "type" will come to dominate the gene pool. Thus, caring about the suffering of a cow probably won't directly affect the odds of your genes being perpetuated successfully, but being an animal that is insensitive to the suffering of beings like itself will likely lead to your genetic type being evolved out of the gene pool. Same with things like cruelty to pets and animals; very diagnostic for psychopathy and such -- not something you want to breed with. (I call this effect "moral overspill" - traits that aren't useful if applied outside the species, but must exist for application within the species.)