Because I don't like eating feces:
records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.
Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows.
Philophically, the HBD and Steveosphere has to come to a basic realization about the implications of HBD for our modern notion of what constitutes individual rights.
So here are three statements. Pick 2. You CANNOT believe in all three and have a logically coherent belief system:
1) Condemn Vegetarianism
2) Acknowledge that due to HBD, all humans are not equal
3) Condemn slavery
Now, we can get all fuzzy, Watson, and Saletan and say that intelligence is not a sign of inherent worth. But face it. In an information economy there are only so many athletes and entertainers. By far, intelligent people have more to offer than dumb people. They create civilization and technology and elevate us above animals.
If intelligence is genetic, then we are not equal. Deal with it. This post is for atheists and agnostics (aka thinking people) who think for themselves rather than look to a book to worry about the scheme of humans in the universe.
So back to my original point. I suscribe to statements 2 and 3.
Most people in the Steveosphere have been vocal about believing in 1 and 2 but have been moot about number 3.
Most hippies suscribe only to statement 3. The mainstream media and republicans suscribe to 1, with half and half for 2 and 3 depending on if you lean KKK or lean center.
But you can't go all out on all three. You can't say:
Even though all humans are not equal, I still think it's wrong for us to enslave one another and still perfectly fine to brutally slaughter innocent animals.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
1 comment:
It's not hard at all to coherently believe all three of those things. All you have to accept is the following:
1. There are two thresholds of intelligence or sentience or whatever. Beings above the higher threshold ought not to be enslaved. Beings above the lower one ought not to be killed or eaten. Beings below both thresholds are fair game.
2. While individual humans vary in intelligence and are not equal, all or virtually all of them are above the higher threshold. Therefore humans ought not to be enslaved.
3. While animal species vary in intelligence and are not equal, some or all of the species humans like to eat fall below both thresholds. Therefore humans ought to be allowed to kill and eat those species.
(You've complicated this a bit by comparing meat-eating to slavery; hence the two thresholds. It would be clearer if you'd stick to comparing apples to apples. The animal equivalent of a slave is a beast of burden, not a hamburger. Do you think keeping beasts of burden -- animals who are kept in captivity and forced to work -- is morally acceptable?)
Post a Comment