The Machine is real -attention! sadly emotions!

[jfcwilson]

ns and vegans to rub it in the faces of everyone else

This is certainly true, but I'd say that omnivorious people do it just as much. Just the other day I had a friend tell me over and over how amazing his bacon pizza was, and that I should really, really have some. I can take a bit of teasing, but these are beliefs I hold very dearly(obviously) and I don't appreachiate them being poked at(just as you would not appreachiate yours being poked at by an in-your-face vegan).

orld where atrocities and horrible things happen every single day, you can't let all of it go to your head.

Nor do I want to be an apathetic cynic. I can't solve the whole problem--that would be insanity. But I can try to solve a tiny bit of it, we all can do that. And no, that doesn't have to mean being vegan. It can mean intervening in domestic violence, or working to resolve poverty, or ending police corruption, ANYTHING. I choose to focus on two main issues: Animals and economic injustice. You can choose your own.

you can't easily make people relinquish something that has been enjoyed by humans for literally millennia.

True. Does that alone make the practice acceptable? I don't think so.
Lots and lots of bad things are "engrained in our culture". That hasn't stopped us from, over time, pruning them out.
For thousands of years, woman have been regarded as inferior. For thousands of years, people have kept slaves and engaged in genocide. Should we do so too, just because our civilization has for so long? The obvious answer is, "No, but eating animals is not comparable to slavery. It's a whole seperate issue." And you'd be absolutly right. It isn't comparable as an issue, at least on the surface. The point is that slavery and eating animals are both things that humans have done for thousands of years, and one of them has just recently been declared morally bankrupt.

Also, many (maybe even most) people love the taste of meat (me included), and that fact alone I think is enough to hinder any major anti-meat campaign.

Well, yes, it is a hinder. If there weren't any difficult obstacles to this objective, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Some of the pretentious vegans you describe would now say, "well, yes, I LOVED meat, but that didn't stop me from making the right decision." It's completly understandable how that could alienate many people.

But, I will now leave behind the subject of eating meat, and enter the world of hunting. If a world of vegans is impossible(and only time will tell), then, please, hunt your own food. Have a personal, direct confrontation with your prey and kill it with mercy. Don't pay for it to be placed on a conveyer chain and killed brutally at the end of a life of suffering and confinement. Next to becoming a vegan I don't see this as being so hard. My view is this: If you can't face the animal you eat, look it in the eye, kill it quickly and painlessly, and eat it gratefully, respecting it as an individial creature, then you don't deserve to eat meat at all. I'll admit it, that's why I'm vegan, because I don't have the guts to kill.

[Gasjockey]

ns and vegans to rub it in the faces of everyone else

This is certainly true, but I'd say that omnivorious people do it just as much. Just the other day I had a friend tell me over and over how amazing his bacon pizza was, and that I should really, really have some. I can take a bit of teasing, but these are beliefs I hold very dearly(obviously) and I don't appreachiate them being poked at(just as you would not appreachiate yours being poked at by an in-your-face vegan).

you can't easily make people relinquish something that has been enjoyed by humans for literally millennia.

True. Does that alone make the practice acceptable? I don't think so.
Lots and lots of bad things are "engrained in our culture". That hasn't stopped us from, over time, pruning them out.
For thousands of years, woman have been regarded as inferior. For thousands of years, people have kept slaves and engaged in genocide. Should we do so too, just because our civilization has for so long? The obvious answer is, "No, but eating animals is not comparable to slavery. It's a whole seperate issue." And you'd be absolutly right. It isn't comparable as an issue, at least on the surface. The point is that slavery and eating animals are both things that humans have done for thousands of years, and one of them has just recently been declared morally bankrupt.

Also, many (maybe even most) people love the taste of meat (me included), and that fact alone I think is enough to hinder any major anti-meat campaign.

Well, yes, it is a hinder. If there weren't any difficult obstacles to this objective, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Some of the pretentious vegans you describe would now say, "well, yes, I LOVED meat, but that didn't stop me from making the right decision." It's completly understandable how that could alienate many people.

But, I will now leave behind the subject of eating meat, and enter the world of hunting. If a world of vegans is impossible(and only time will tell), then, please, hunt your own food. Have a personal, direct confrontation with your prey and kill it with mercy. Don't pay for it to be placed on a conveyer chain and killed brutally at the end of a life of suffering and confinement. Next to becoming a vegan I don't see this as being so hard. My view is this: If you can't face the animal you eat, look it in the eye, kill it quickly and painlessly, and eat it gratefully, respecting it as an individial creature, then you don't deserve to eat meat at all. I'll admit it, that's why I'm vegan, because I don't have the guts to kill.

These are all good points, and I mostly agree, although one thing I will add: just because I want to eat meat doesn't mean I agree with the way it is mass-produced. Of course, it has to be mass produced, seeing as how it's going to be mass consumed, but there are probably other ways to do it that are both cheaper and more humane. As for the hunting, I have indeed shot and killed an animal for consumation. It is one of the "boons" of living in the utter middle of fucking nowhere, Norway. Where I live, it seems everyone hunts, so I had to try it out. I didn't enjoy it. Not because of the killing, I'm fine with that, but because I don't like hanging out in cold, wet forests :V

[Wooderson]

Hmm, didn't think of the title as a metaphor but now you mention it... It makes plenty of sense!

Yeah, I find Vegetarians like Religious people... Let them believe what they want, just don't try to convert me >.<

After all, you look at the way some animals in the wild are killed... Beautiful animals shredded apart brutally by claws of a predator for it survive etc. I think if its fair for wild animals to eat meat then it should be fair for the human race to eat meat as long as the least amount of cruelty is used, which is what the industry has been trying to do.

Some if not most animals are stunned before slaughtered, but they stun them so they feel as little pain as they can offer. Chickens aren't exactly put into a ring for a Coq fight so people can profit from their death

[Serena]

Completely off topic I realize but....

God gave us incisors. Vegan argument is invalid.

[Gasjockey]

Completely off topic I realize but....

God gave us incisors. Vegan argument is invalid.

Not everyone believes in God. Religion argument is invalid.

[Your Computer]

All moral arguments are invalid without absolute authority.

[Serena]

I am an atheist lol... regardless of who or what an individual thinks created incisors, their purpose is obvious. Meat eating teeth = meat eater. Morality is an exclusively human invention.

I have feet, that probably means I'm meant to walk.

[TheGrandHero]

If the Good Lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates.

[Wooderson]

Although i'm carrying on with the off topic conversation... Animals developed teeth or incisors over many years of evolution many would say. Man probably ate animals before any sort of civilisation was even built. Did he feel guilt? Who knows, but he probably enjoyed the taste and spread the word

[Kman]

We are physically constructed to be meat eaters (eyes in front, incisors like you said) but humans adapted much much farther than any other animal to the point where we don't have to rely on those features and eating animals for survivalf. At this point it's really just a moral choice of wether or not you think it's right, but that doesn't change the fact that we were have adapted specifically to be meat eaters, which I think is enough to justify that it's ok to eat meat.