Would you like to be eaten?
in [Vegetarian]
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From: ant and dec on 26 Dec 2005 18:27 Leif Erikson wrote: > ant and dec wrote: snip >> >> >> It was implicit that you made observations, yet you can't give any >> examples. > > Most of the explicit examples of it I've seen are by former "vegans" who > have renounced at least that aspect of their vegetarianism. Here's one > such: http://www.thevegetariansite.com/ed_nolonger.htm An interesting link. - Best to learn from others mistakes! > > Most of the rest is exhibited implicitly in the comments of participants > in these newsgroups, among others. This has been an interesting excursion into this group. There appears to be the odd village idiot, and some accusing me of things that they have absolutely no basis for doing so; but I'm recognising them and will dismiss their posts where appropriate. > > snip
From: Martin Willett on 26 Dec 2005 19:38 dh@. wrote: > On Fri, 23 Dec 2005 10:09:59 +0000, Martin Willett <mwillett.org(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: > > [...] > >>We detect the sin of hypocrisy, >>which for our species seems to be the ultimate sin. > > > ? Since the animals we raise for food would not be alive > if we didn't raise them for that purpose, it's a distortion of > reality not to take that fact into consideration whenever > we think about the fact that the animals are going to be > killed. The animals are not being cheated out of any part > of their life by being raised for food, but instead they are > experiencing whatever life they get as a result of it. ? > > >>Eating animals and >>yet asking not to be eaten ourselves on the grounds that we are sentient >>animals strikes us as in some way a form of hypocrisy. It probably is. >>So what? Is hypocrisy the ultimate sin recognized by all sentient >>lifeforms everywhere? If if it then surely acting like hypocrites would >>make us less attractive dinner table fare, wouldn't it? We would be less >>likely to eat a ?sinful? species that ate dung and its own young than >>one that just ate grass, hung around in fields and went moo. Acting like >>hypocrites would make us appear less tasty and nutritious. > > > Maybe they'd kill us as vermin. > > >>Acting like >>hypocrites is probably a good survival strategy. Do we eat ?wicked? >>weasels, hyaenas, snakes and tapeworms in preference to ?noble? animals >>like deer and salmon? >>Which species do we refuse to eat on moral grounds? > > > Human. > Unless we really need to. > >>Do we avoid eating all peaceful herbivores? Hardly! In fact if we can >>see any patterns at all here it is that the more animals an animal eats >>the less likely it is we will want to eat it ourselves. The only >>carnivorous species that we eat on a regular basis are fish, animals >>that some people who call themselves vegetarians even try to redefine as >>some sort of vegetable. I've news for you veggies, haddock are animals >>that eat other animals, being cold bloodied, small-eyed and ugly doesn't >>change anything, fish are not vegetables. If you eat fish you cannot be >>a vegetarian. >> >>We prefer to eat peaceful herbivores, we actively give preference to >>those animals that eat a 100% pure vegetarian diet of grass. Why do we >>assume that aliens will prefer to eat old, evil, bitter, twisted and >>hypocritical animals like us rather than the nice innocent tender baa >>lambs that we like to eat? It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. >> >>Why don't we eat carnivorous animals? >> >>There is no reason why we don't eat carnivorous animals apart from the >>fact that they are too expensive to farm economically. When dogs are >>raised to be eaten they are not fed on meat, they are given the cheapest >>food that will do the job, usually grain, vegetables and kitchen scraps, >>just like pigs. > > > Pigs are omnivores. I'm not even sure if they can digest celulose, > but I doubt it. Chickens are omnivores. And it's the omnivores like > chicken, turkey and pork that can really screw you up if you eat it > undercooked. I'm guessing because of similarity in digestive systems > or something like that, but never have heard anyone say anything > about it. Cows can't digest cellulose either. That seems to be rather good proof that if there is a god he's probably not the smartest god he could possibly be. -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org
From: Leif Erikson on 26 Dec 2005 19:44 Martin Willett wrote: > dh@. wrote: > >> On Fri, 23 Dec 2005 10:09:59 +0000, Martin Willett >> <mwillett.org(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >> >> [...] >> >>> We detect the sin of hypocrisy, which for our species seems to be the >>> ultimate sin. >> >> >> >> ? Since the animals we raise for food would not be alive >> if we didn't raise them for that purpose, it's a distortion of >> reality not to take that fact into consideration whenever >> we think about the fact that the animals are going to be >> killed. The animals are not being cheated out of any part of their >> life by being raised for food, but instead they are experiencing >> whatever life they get as a result of it. ? This is Fuckwit's own unique and turgid restatement of the (Il)Logic of the Larder, a nonsense to which he subscribes. >> >> >>> Eating animals and yet asking not to be eaten ourselves on the >>> grounds that we are sentient animals strikes us as in some way a form >>> of hypocrisy. It probably is. So what? Is hypocrisy the ultimate sin >>> recognized by all sentient lifeforms everywhere? If if it then surely >>> acting like hypocrites would make us less attractive dinner table >>> fare, wouldn't it? We would be less likely to eat a ?sinful? species >>> that ate dung and its own young than one that just ate grass, hung >>> around in fields and went moo. Acting like hypocrites would make us >>> appear less tasty and nutritious. >> >> >> >> Maybe they'd kill us as vermin. >> >> >>> Acting like hypocrites is probably a good survival strategy. Do we >>> eat ?wicked? weasels, hyaenas, snakes and tapeworms in preference to >>> ?noble? animals like deer and salmon? >>> Which species do we refuse to eat on moral grounds? >> >> >> >> Human. >> > > Unless we really need to. In western civilization, there is a strong repulsion to eating human corpses, even when necessary to survive. However, no western society condones *killing* humans for food even for survival. > >> >>> Do we avoid eating all peaceful herbivores? Hardly! In fact if we can >>> see any patterns at all here it is that the more animals an animal >>> eats the less likely it is we will want to eat it ourselves. The only >>> carnivorous species that we eat on a regular basis are fish, animals >>> that some people who call themselves vegetarians even try to redefine >>> as some sort of vegetable. I've news for you veggies, haddock are >>> animals that eat other animals, being cold bloodied, small-eyed and >>> ugly doesn't change anything, fish are not vegetables. If you eat >>> fish you cannot be a vegetarian. >>> >>> We prefer to eat peaceful herbivores, we actively give preference to >>> those animals that eat a 100% pure vegetarian diet of grass. Why do >>> we assume that aliens will prefer to eat old, evil, bitter, twisted >>> and hypocritical animals like us rather than the nice innocent tender >>> baa lambs that we like to eat? It doesn't make the slightest bit of >>> sense. >>> >>> Why don't we eat carnivorous animals? >>> >>> There is no reason why we don't eat carnivorous animals apart from >>> the fact that they are too expensive to farm economically. When dogs >>> are raised to be eaten they are not fed on meat, they are given the >>> cheapest food that will do the job, usually grain, vegetables and >>> kitchen scraps, just like pigs. >> >> >> >> Pigs are omnivores. I'm not even sure if they can digest celulose, >> but I doubt it. Chickens are omnivores. And it's the omnivores like >> chicken, turkey and pork that can really screw you up if you eat it >> undercooked. I'm guessing because of similarity in digestive systems >> or something like that, but never have heard anyone say anything >> about it. > > > Cows can't digest cellulose either. That seems to be rather good proof > that if there is a god he's probably not the smartest god he could > possibly be. >
From: ant and dec on 27 Dec 2005 05:34 ant and dec wrote: > Martin Willett wrote: snip >> >> I like the cut of your jib. >> >> (In case you're not familiar with that phrase I'm sure the origin is >> nautical and has nothing to do with butchery.) >> >> I think I have just worked out a new moral principle that is better >> than the not eating anything smarter than a pig principle but also has >> the same virtue of not making me change my ways and not painting me as >> a hypocrite in the front of ravenous aliens: I'll not kill or >> contribute to the death of any animal for food purposes /if that >> animal is clearly capable of making a moral choice/, unless they have >> given me explicit permission. >> > > What prompted this rethink? > > Your lack of response in other threads in interesting. - Perhaps you're > more suited to 'debating' with a sycophant. You do have a right to remain silent, but that does leave people to draw their own conclusions. > > What difference does the ability to make a moral choice have on your > want to kill and eat a species? > > Do you *know* that a pig can not differentiate between right and wrong? >
From: pearl on 27 Dec 2005 08:23
"Leif Erikson" <pipes(a)thedismalscience.net> wrote in message news:kA_rf.719$M%4.303(a)newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net... > ant and dec wrote: > > > S. Maizlich wrote: > > > >> ant and dec wrote: > >> > >>> pearl wrote: <..> > >>>> Proc Biol Sci. 1998 Oct 22;265(1409):1933-7. > >>>> Visual specialization and brain evolution in primates. > >>>> Barton RA. > >>>> Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, UK. > >>>> > >>>> Several theories have been proposed to explain the evolution of > >>>> species differences in brain size, but no consensus has emerged. > >>>> One unresolved question is whether brain size differences are a > >>>> result of neural specializations or of biological constraints > >>>> affecting the whole brain. Here I show that, among primates, > >>>> brain size variation is associated with visual specialization. > >>>> Primates with large brains for their body size have relatively > >>>> expanded visual brain areas, including the primary visual cortex > >>>> and lateral geniculate nucleus. Within the visual system, it is, in > >>>> particular, one functionally specialized pathway upon which > >>>> selection has acted: evolutionary changes in the number of > >>>> neurons in parvocellular, but not magnocellular, layers of the > >>>> lateral geniculate nucleus are correlated with changes in both > >>>> brain size and ecological variables (diet and social group size). > >>>> Given the known functions of the parvocellular pathway, these > >>>> results suggest that the relatively large brains of frugivorous > >>>> species are products of selection on the ability to perceive > >>>> and select fruits using specific visual cues such as colour. > >>>> The separate correlation between group size and visual brain > >>>> evolution, on the other hand, may indicate the visual basis of > >>>> social information processing in the primate brain. > >>>> > >>>> PMID: 9821360 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] > >>>> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9821360&dopt=Abstract > >>> > >>> Thanks again. My pleasure. Thanks for bringing it up. The "Christmas Lecture" on Ch5 is frankly driving me up the wall. grrr. > >>> I have moved my position on whether meat had a major part to play in > >>> human evolution. I will read more, but on balance there seems little > >>> evidence to support that it did. Apart from helping humans survive times of scarcity, ..no. 'The historical role of meat in human diets has probably varied significantly, as Jared Diamond, who is an authority on human evolution, points out: ..... while early humans ate some meat, we do not know how much meat they ate, nor whether they got the meat by hunting or scavenging. It is not until much later, around 100,000 years ago, that we have good evidence about human hunting skills, and it is clear that humans then were still very ineffective big-game hunters. Human hunters of 500,000 years ago and earlier must have been more ineffective. ..... Western male writers and anthropologists are not the only men with an exaggerated view of hunting. In New Guinea I have lived with real hunters, men who recently emerged from the stone age. ..... To listen to my New Guinea friends, you would think that they eat fresh kangaroo for dinner every night and do little each day except hunt. In fact, when pressed for details, most New Guinea hunters admit that they have bagged only a few kangaroos in their whole life. The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpazee, Jared Diamond, 1991, pp.33-34 In The Origin of Humankind, Richard Leakey mentions Lewis Binford, who suggested that systematic hunting of any kind began to appear only when modern humans evolved, giving dates of 45,000 to 38,000 years ago. (We now know that modern humans were roaming Africa at least around 195,000 years ago. / 'pearl') What is obvious is that a mother and her infant cannot engage in hunting, or any other arduous food gathering activity. Of all the primate foods, fruits are the most easily gathered. They may be obtained without the use of digging or cracking tools, climbing, and digested with no need for hind-gut fermentation, such as is the case with foliage. Most significantly, it is the feeding limitations of the nursing mother which determine what foods she, and her offspring will have continually available. ... Given a plentiful supply of fruits the mother does not have to risk expending much of her effort obtaining difficult to get foods like raw animal flesh, insects, nuts and roots. Furthermore, fruits contain abundant supplies of sugars which the brain solely uses for energy. The mother who's genes better dispose her for an easy life on fruits would have an advantage of those who do not, and similarly, the fruit species which is the best food for mother and child nutrition, would tend to be selected for. There is now little doubt amongst distinguished biologists that fruit has been the most significant dietary constituent in the evolution of humans. ....' http://tinyurl.com/dahps > >> It is UNDISPUTED by evolutionary biologists that meat played an > >> indispensable role in human evolution. Meat's role was both direct and > >> indirect. The direct role was in providing the massive amount of > >> protein needed for brain development. The indirect role is as an > >> organizing principle of human activity. 'What are the essential biochemical properties of human metabolism which distinguish us from our non-human primate relatives? One, at least, is our uniquely low protein requirement as described by Olav T. Oftedal who says: "Human milk has the lowest protein concentration (about 7% of energy) of any primate milk that has been studied. In general, it appears that primates produce small daily amounts of a relatively dilute milk (Oftedal 1984). Thus the protein and energy demands of lactation are probably low for primates by comparison to the demands experienced by many other mammals." The nutritional consequences of foraging in primates: the relationship of nutrient intakes to nutrient requirements, p.161 Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences vol 334, 159-295, No. 1270 One might imagine that given our comparatively 'low protein' milk, we would not be able to grow very fast. In fact, as the image on the right shows, human infants show very rapid growth, especially of the brain, during the first year of life. Human infants are born a full year earlier than they would be projected to, based on comparisons with other animals. This is because of the large size their brains reach. A human infant grows at the rate of 9 kg/year at birth, falling to 3.5 kg/year a year later. Thereafter its growth rate is about half that of a chimpanzees at 2 kg/year vs. about 4.5 kg/year. Humans are relatively half as bulky as the other great apes, thus allowing nutrients to be directed at brain development and the diet to be less demanding. The advantages of such an undemanding metabolism are clear. Humans delay their growth because they 'catch up' later, during puberty as seen on the graph. Even so, the growth rate never reaches that of a newborn infant who grows best by only eating breast milk. .... According to Exequiel M. Pati?o and Juan T. Borda 'Primate milks contain on the average 13% solids, of which 6.5% is lactose, 3.8% lipids, 2.4% proteins, and 0.2% ash. Lactose is the largest component of the solids, and protein is a lesser one'. They also say that 'milks of humans and Old World monkeys have the highest percentages of sugar (an average of 6.9%)' and when comparing human and non human primate milks, they have similar proportions of solids, but human milks has more sugar and fat whereas the non human primate milks have much more protein. They continue 'In fact, human milk has the lowest concentration of proteins (1.0%) of all the species of primates.' Pati?o and Borda present their research in order to allow other primatologists to construct artificial milks as a substitute for the real thing for captive primates. It is to be expected that these will have similar disasterous consequences as the feeding of artificial bovine, and other false milks, has had on human infants. Pati?o and Borda also present a table which compares primate milks. This table is shown below and identifies the distinctive lower protein requirements of humans. [see link] Undoubtedly these gross metabolic differences between humans and other mammals must have system wide implications for our metabolism. They allow us to feed heavily on fruits, and may restrict other species from choosing them. Never the less, many nutritional authorities suggest that adult humans need nearly double (12% of calorific value) their breast milk levels of protein, although it is accepted that infant protein requirements for growth are triple those of adults. The use of calorific values might also confuse the issue since human milk is highly dilute (1% protein), and clearly eating foods that might be 25 times this concentration, such as meat, are massive excesses if constantly ingested. Certainly the body might manage to deal with this excess without suffering immediate problems, but this is not proof of any beneficial adaptation. It also needs to be pointed out that berries, such as raspberries, may yield up to 21% of their calorific value from protein, but are not regarded as 'good sources' of protein by nutritional authorites. There are millions of fruits available to wild animals, and blanked generalisations about the qualities of certain food groups, need to be examined carefully, due to some misconceptions arising from the limited commercial fruits which we experience in the domestic state. The weaning of a fruigivorous primate would clearly demand the supply of a food with nutritional characteristics similar to those of the mothers milk. We must realise that supportive breast feeding may continue for up to 9 or 10 years in some 'primitive' peoples, and this is more likely to be representative of our evolutionary history than the 6 month limit often found in modern cultures. This premature weaning should strike any aware naturalist as being a disasterous activity, inflicting untold damage. However, what we do know of the consequences is that it reduces the IQ and disease resistance of the child, and that the substitute of unnatural substances, like wheat and dairy products, is pathogenic. Finally we need to compare some food group compositions with human milk in order to establish if any statistical similarity exists. This would demonstrate that modern humans have inherited their ancient fruigivourous metabolism. This data is examined below in the final sections of the article. .....' http://tinyurl.com/dahps > > I need to investigate more. The reference above seems to give a strong > > case for a "visual specialization" evolution and it states that "no > > consensus has emerged", but I'm happy learn and admit my ignorance on > > brain evolution theories. 'There is a popular notion that anthropology can offer useful insights for forming the basis of a dietary philosophy. Anthropology is a science which is only just starting to mature, previously having been little more that a systematic, but lose, body of "say-so" information which attempted to explain our species history and origins. With advances in dating methods, including DNA analysis and more fossil finds, the science is now embarking on its integration with biology. Previously, anthropology was a pseudo-scientific marriage of traditional views attempting to link the findings of robust sciences, such as geology, palaeontology and archaeology. However, even though anthropologists like Richard Leakey are aware that their 'science' is often "based on unspoken assumptions" (The Making of Mankind, p. 82, R. Leakey), they show that they will persist in making them. Anthropologies 'Man The Hunter' concept is still used as a reason for justifying the consumption of animal flesh as food. This has even extended as far as suggesting that animal foods have enabled or caused human brain enlargement. Allegedly this is because of the greater availability of certain kinds of fats and the sharing behaviour associated with eating raw animal food. The reality is that through natural selection, the environmental factors our species have been exposed to selected for greater brain development, long before raw animal flesh became a significant part of our ancient ancestors diet. The elephant has also developed a larger brain than the human brain, on a diet primarily consisting of fermented foliage and fruits. It is my hypothesis that it is eating fruits and perhaps blossoms, that has, if anything, contributed the most in allowing humans to develop relatively larger brains than other species. The ability of humans to develop normal brains with a dietary absence of animal products is also noted. ....' http://tinyurl.com/dahps > What is not in dispute is that the earliest hominids > and their pre-hominid ancestors *all* naturally ate > meat. To say then that meat played no role in their > evolution is just factually wrong. You cannot support your *claims* with evidence, ball. |