Eating living things

Kate

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How do vegans justify eating living things? Plants are living things, there's research that they are intelligent and can feel. They are quite remarkable actually. Just because plants don't have a face or make noise doesn't mean they are lesser than the living things that do. Really curious to get some insight about this.
 
What do you expect us to eat? Rocks?

Anyway, veganism is not about avoiding eating living things, it's about avoiding harming animals.

And although I love plants, too. they are not intelligent or feel. I read the Secret Lives of Plants back when it came out and was very impressed. But in the last 40 years, NO ONE has been able to replicate the results of the experiments described by the authors. The general consensus is that the book was a hoax. Unfortunately, as Mark Twain was fond of saying, " A lie can go around the world in the time it takes the truth to put on his shoes".

Sure we can observe plants reacting to stimuli. We can even see how they communicate with each other. But IMHO that is still short of attributing intelligence or sentience.
 
There are ways to eat meat that are natural and responsible and do not cause the animal to suffer.
 
Why is the life of an animal more valuable to you? Is all life not equal?
 
What do you expect us to eat? Rocks?

Anyway, veganism is not about avoiding eating living things, it's about avoiding harming animals.

And although I love plants, too. they are not intelligent or feel. I read the Secret Lives of Plants back when it came out and was very impressed. But in the last 40 years, NO ONE has been able to replicate the results of the experiments described by the authors. The general consensus is that the book was a hoax. Unfortunately, as Mark Twain was fond of saying, " A lie can go around the world in the time it takes the truth to put on his shoes".

Sure we can observe plants reacting to stimuli. We can even see how they communicate with each other. But IMHO that is still short of attributing intelligence or sentience.


That's great. Do you know what the vegetable and fruit industry is like around the world? Lol slavery and animal abuse. Hope you're willing to eat nothing but squash from the fall harvest in the winter lol you should be ashamed to eat bananas really
 
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Are you saying that since I can't be perfectly good I should be more evil?
since I can't help everyone, I should not attempt to help anyone?
That killing animals when it is not necessary is somehow a virtue?

Darn, I hadn't realized how stupid and confused I am. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
There are ways to eat meat that are natural and responsible and do not cause the animal to suffer.

Wait what there are ways to kill and eat someone without them suffering? Euthanasia is too poisonous and expensive to be used as a method of slaughter so I'm curious about this imaginary method of murder for consumption that doesn't involve fear, sadness and pain.
 
Lol do you guys know ANYTHING about death or how to humanely kill something? Clearly not. But there are lots of ways. I'm sure your pet dog gets scared going to the vet but you still bring it anyways. Shame on you.

None of you answered my question as to why you feel entitled to choose who's life gets saved. Probably because none of you have an answer for that. You took one idea and ran with it without considering that you don't even have the right to make that decision. TO YOU the life of an animal is more important. But to the animals, the plants lives are more important. So I'll ask again...where to do get off thinking you have the right to decide which life is more important?
 
Wait what there are ways to kill and eat someone without them suffering? Euthanasia is too poisonous and expensive to be used as a method of slaughter so I'm curious about this imaginary method of murder for consumption that doesn't involve fear, sadness and pain.

It's not imaginary at all. And all your doing is showing you true colours of ignorance.
 
Are you saying that since I can't be perfectly good I should be more evil?
since I can't help everyone, I should not attempt to help anyone?
That killing animals when it is not necessary is somehow a virtue?

Darn, I hadn't realized how stupid and confused I am. Thanks for pointing that out.

You are so welcome! I'm glad I could finally get through to the idiots that still continue to support an industry of abuse and thinks they're better than everyone else because they do so. At least the meat industry doesn't enslave humans. So not only are you supporting animals abuse, but also the abuse of humans. Is it the lesser evil? No, it's actually not.
 
How do vegans justify eating living things? Plants are living things, there's research that they are intelligent and can feel. They are quite remarkable actually. Just because plants don't have a face or make noise doesn't mean they are lesser than the living things that do. Really curious to get some insight about this.
That's great. Do you know what the vegetable and fruit industry is like around the world? Lol slavery and animal abuse. Hope you're willing to eat nothing but squash from the fall harvest in the winter lol you should be ashamed to eat bananas really

There are ways to eat meat that are natural and responsible and do not cause the animal to suffer.

Lol do you guys know ANYTHING about death or how to humanely kill something? Clearly not. But there are lots of ways. I'm sure your pet dog gets scared going to the vet but you still bring it anyways. Shame on you.

None of you answered my question as to why you feel entitled to choose who's life gets saved. Probably because none of you have an answer for that. You took one idea and ran with it without considering that you don't even have the right to make that decision. TO YOU the life of an animal is more important. But to the animals, the plants lives are more important. So I'll ask again...where to do get off thinking you have the right to decide which life is more important?

Lol, see ya.

giphy.gif
 
I don't justify eating plants, I feel quite bad about it. I have thought that we should only eat fruit that falls from the plant, as would a fruitarian. So tomatoes are okay, cucumbers, beans, etc as we do not kill the plant for the food. I'm sure that with enough understanding, and some ingenuity, we could survive without killing. I'm also against deadheading flowers, forcing the plant to make more and more flowers as it has not been able to get any to seed. It's the next step after vegan.
 
How do vegans justify eating living things? Plants are living things, there's research that they are intelligent and can feel. They are quite remarkable actually. Just because plants don't have a face or make noise doesn't mean they are lesser than the living things that do. Really curious to get some insight about this.


I have a puppy in one hand, and a carrot in another, and I ask you to stab one. Which one would you choose?
 
I really don't understand meat eaters who argue that veganism is more cruel because plants are also living beings. This is clearly not a serious argument that anyone who has completed elementary school would make. Kate, do you really think the cow whose flesh you ate yesterday lived its entire life without eating anything? That cow probably ate more plants in her short life than you've eaten since you were born. By eating animals, you're killing many, many times more plants than you would by eating plants directly. And on top of all that, you're killing an innocent animal who wanted nothing more than to live.

I wish vegans would stop feeding these trolls. If they want to stuff their faces with the flesh and bodily secretions of animals, they should go right ahead. There is karma when it comes to this sort of thing. It's impossible to eat animals or animal products without clogging one's arteries and stressing one's kidneys. The cruelty of paying for the torture and slaughter of innocent animals eventually comes back in the form of something like heart disease, kidney disease, or Alzheimer's.
 
I really don't understand meat eaters who argue that veganism is more cruel because plants are also living beings. This is clearly not a serious argument that anyone who has completed elementary school would make. Kate, do you really think the cow whose flesh you ate yesterday lived its entire life without eating anything? That cow probably ate more plants in her short life than you've eaten since you were born. By eating animals, you're killing many, many times more plants than you would by eating plants directly. And on top of all that, you're killing an innocent animal who wanted nothing more than to live.

I wish vegans would stop feeding these trolls. If they want to stuff their faces with the flesh and bodily secretions of animals, they should go right ahead. There is karma when it comes to this sort of thing. It's impossible to eat animals or animal products without clogging one's arteries and stressing one's kidneys. The cruelty of paying for the torture and slaughter of innocent animals eventually comes back in the form of something like heart disease, kidney disease, or Alzheimer's.


First off, you make some really good points. And I agree with them all and have awarded you the highly coveted "Winner".

You make one mistake and that is addressing your comments to the OP, Kate. She is long gone. Banned. She can't hear you.
but no biggie, sooner or later someone like Kate will come along and read your comments.

As far as the "not a serious argument" and "feeding the trolls", I can actually sympathize with these idiots. Because in the early 70s, I was a lower level college student AND taking a heavy load of life sciences, when someone gave me a copy of The Secret Life of Plants. I can't remember the details but I bet they said something like, "You gotta read this man, it'll blow your mind. A total life changer. So groovy. Awesome!"

In case you are unfamiliar with the book it came out in the early 70s and the authors, a pair of scientists, did groundbreaking research with plants. Using all kind of scientific instruments that supposedly measured the plants' reactions to inputs. I don't remember all the details any longer, but I'm pretty sure a lie detector was involved somewhere. One of the author's main conclusions was that plants have feelings.

I think at the time I was reading Carlos Castaneda, too. And had room in my world view for alternate realities.

Anyway, I took the Secret Life of Plants in. hook, line, and sinker. Ok, I was gullible. but I was 20. And lots of other people got taken in as well.

A dozen or so years later I was semi-surprised to find that no other scientists had been able to actually replicate the results of the experiments, and most scientists considered the whole thing a hoax.

I was not surprised to find out that over the ten plus years since the book came out lots of people had accepted the book's findings as facts. Many of these people had not only not read the book but hadn't even heard of it. Another example of Mark Twain's "A lie goes around the world in the time it takes Truth to tie its shoes". or maybe, in this case, Lies are longlived, and before a lie dies of old age the truth gets tired and goes back to bed.

So although a lot of the people who tell you that you can't justify eating plants because plants have feelings, too ARE trolls. I think some of them are just misinformed and it is up to us to take a minute and explain. Your explanation (in your post) might work for some of them.
 
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First off, you make some really good points. And I agree with them all and have awarded you the highly coveted "Winner".

You make one mistake and that is addressing your comments to the OP, Kate. She is long gone. Banned. She can't hear you.
but no biggie, sooner or later someone like Kate will come along and read your comments.

As far as the "not a serious argument" and "feeding the trolls", I can actually sympathize with these idiots. Because in the early 70s, I was a lower level college student AND taking a heavy load of life sciences, when someone gave me a copy of The Secret Life of Plants. I can't remember the details but I bet they said something like, "You gotta read this man, it'll blow your mind. A total life changer. So groovy. Awesome!"

In case you are unfamiliar with the book it came out in the early 70s and according to the book, a pair of scientist did groundbreaking research with plants. Using all kind of scientific instruments that supposedly measured the plants' reactions to inputs. I don't remember all the details any longer, but I'm pretty sure a lie detector was involved somewhere. One of the author's main conclusions was that plants have feelings.

I think at the time I was reading Carlos Castaneda, too. And had room in my world view for alternate realities.

Anyway, i took the Secret Life of Plants in, hook, line, and sinker. Ok, i was gullible. but I was 20. And lots of other people got taken in as well.

A dozen or so years later I was semi-surprised to find that no other scientists had been able to actually replicate the results of the experiments, and most scientists were considered the whole thing as a hoax.

I was not surprised to find out that over the ten plus years since the book came out lots of people had accepted the book's findings as facts. Many of these people had not only not read the book but hadn't even heard of it. Another example of Mark Twain's "A lie goes around the world in the time it takes Truth to tie its shoes". or maybe, in this case, Lies are longlived, and before a lie dies of old age the truth gets tired and goes back to bed.

So although a lot of the people who tell you that you can't justify eating plants because plants have feelings, too ARE trolls. I think some of them are just misinformed and it is up to us to take a minute and explain. Your explanation (in your post) might work for some of them.

Thank you for this thoughtful post. I was not aware of this book, but I'm not all that surprised. It sounds a lot like the book about the blood-type diet, which seems to have convinced even those who haven't read it that their diet should somehow match their blood type.

As a former scientist, one of the things I'm familiar with that others may not be is how difficult it is to do a truly unbiased experiment. Even in a field like physics, where one is dealing with questions that seem to have no relevance whatsoever to the everyday world, it's extremely difficult to remove bias completely. Physics is an old field; over the centuries, physicists have developed procedures to remove the researcher from the equation (so to speak) and ensure that biases don't creep in. Despite that, biased results occasionally get published. The system, however, is designed for this: subsequent experiments eventually correct the record.

Because of my background, I'm always skeptical of "research" about questions people tend to have strong opinions about, such as whether men are more quantitative than women. On such a question, it is pretty much impossible to do a truly unbiased study. The result of the study will simply be a sophisticated-sounding regurgitation of the "researcher"'s biases. For a long time, I was also skeptical of nutrition science. I'm still a little bothered by the small sample sizes typical in most of this research, but I've come to realize that there are some very serious studies out there. Even where it's impossible to do a double-blind analysis, large numbers of studies looking at a question from different angles are able to to reach a conclusion that is quite convincing (for example, linking cholesterol to Alzheimer's disease).

I'm rambling, but my point is that people, especially non-scientists, should be extremely skeptical of what they read in popular books and in the "science" section of newspapers. The results of any single study, especially if it's based on a small sample size or purports to answer a highly controversial question, should always be taken with a humongous grain of salt.
 
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Again you have made some good points.

As far as bias goes, maybe it is because it should be easier for physicists to minimize bias, they seem to be the scientists most concerned with it.

I think nutrition science may fall into a special category. Because of the big bucks at stake, the only concern with bias nutrition studies seem to have is to how to disguise it.

Maybe I'm naive but I'm rarely skeptical of published scientific research and their conclusions. EXCEPT in the field of nutrition. I used to have a subscription to Nutrition Action. I thought their reporting was excellent and they often reported on research and warned the readers that the conclusions need to be replicated or needed larger sample size, etc.
 
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I saw this the other day and decided not to post it. It IS funny. But I felt that it leaves the viewer with the impression no one knows if eggs and steak and bread are good or bad. And many citizens will just take that as permission to eat as much steak, eggs, and bread as they want.

But now it seems relevant to our little discussion.

BTW, the 1979 clothes, kitchen, etc are just spot on. Kudos to the art department. Some of you guys may have grown up with Avocado Green major appliances.