[oilywater]

> Especially eating it, which is in the natural order of things.

Yeah, those claws that you use to hunt your food down are pretty natural.

Appeal to nature is an argument flaw and if you are rational you shouldn't use it.

Humans ate meat because they saved their energy. Do you know how they saved it? The non-human animals were walking around collecting nutrients so humans didn't have to waste that time. These non-human animals were nutrient packed and it allowed humans to save time, have more offsprings and survive.

Today, there's no energy savings. Today we bring the food to the animals, filtering millions of tons of nutrient filled grains through inefficient bodies that waste almost everything on keeping their temperature - their body warm. It is as far from nature as it gets.

You can't say there's something special about flesh that you need to survive, and there's nothing else that has it.

You like the luxury of eating meat, you like the taste, you like the texture. It is a luxurious activity that you allow yourself to have, ignoring the effects on the environment, ignoring the suffering (and yes there is no such thing as humane murder, rape or slaughter), doing it just for your pleasure. And it recently turned out to be almost an equivalent to cigarette smoking - so it's entirely irrational from a health perspective but that is the case for most of the luxuries.

That's fine with me but don't try to rationalize it, it is in its complete entirety - irrational.

It is also ironic that you pointed out a perfect example of speciesism (humans preferring one species over another) and you couldn't label yourself as a speciesist. It is also ironic how you pointed out the irrationality in other people, not seeing your own when it was right in front of you.

[douche]

I'll take the way I've seen pigs and cows slaughtered when it comes time for me. Getting fed out of a nice trough of grain and never seeing the sledgehammer coming down is far more humane than getting your veins pumped full of nitrogen mustard and getting zapped with radiation for months.

Chemotherapy for terminal cancers should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Meat is tasty. It's a pain in the ass to raise and deal with those damn animals, and we wouldn't bother with them if they weren't good to eat or produced milk or eggs that are useful. The evolutionary forebears of the horse and the cow are extinct or well on the way there in the wild.

Maybe more people should have the experience of slaughtering a pig or steer, dressing it out, hanging it, then cutting it up. It's a great biology lesson, you'll learn which cuts of meat come from where, and you'll become very suspicious of supermarket meat (hint - real hamburger is not bright red like that).

[oilywater]

To put "humane" slaughter in a good perspective.

"My life experience has given me a better understanding of what is happening, and what a mistake it is to believe there is anything called "humane" slaughter. Animals have families and feelings, and to think that kindness before killing them is an answer is totally wrong. ...

There is always fear in their eyes. They know exactly what is going to happen. So for anyone to claim there is such a thing as humane slaughter, well, that's the greatest oxymoron in the world." - Howard Lyman, former rancher

I also like this story:

I meet a woman in a club, buy her drinks, make her laugh, dance with her, she's having the time of her life, we go to my place, I make her favorite dish, she drinks the best wine, music is playing, she feels absolutely great, sitting on couch, watching her favorite movie, meanwhile, she's sipping that drink, that has date rape drug in it. She passes out, I rape her. Humanely. Next morning she feels a bit drowsy, she thinks it's the alcholol, she smiles, says she felt perfect although she can't remember the rest of the evening. I was gentle, she doesn't feel raped. John Doe, humane rapist

It is absolutely irrational to call slaughter humane. This rationalizing to make things morally right is the common mistake people make. It is a mistake in deduction and reasoning.

Some philosophers would probably say I'm a deontologist, and they would say that consequences of a deed make a deed wrong not that the deed itself is wrong - which is my opinion. Are there no consequences to massive animal slaughter and flesh consumption? Is waste of tax-payer's money a consequence big enough, maybe climate change, massive pollution?

Any rational process, any non-laughable branch of philosophy will say that slaughter is immoral and that there's nothing humane about it - and that humane is an adjective that cannot stand by it.

I have no problem with people eating meat, but people who rationalize it through appeal to nature, through skewing morals, that's what I have a problem with.

[douche]

Only fools deal in absolutes.

I can't parse a coherent position out of the rest of this, or find any real relation to what I said. I'll be charitable and assume you pasted in a response in the wrong place...

[oilywater]

It wasn't meant as a counter-argument, just filling in a stance and expanding on it.

I do it sometimes, I apologize if it confused, probably should have replied to myself.