Elessar wrote:I think many of the hostile attitudes towards vegetarians or animal rights people is caused by those from that orientation that are self-righteous and judgemental of other people's beliefs. I'm not saying that an inordinate proportion of animal rights or vegetarian people ARE self-righteous and judgemental, I'm simply stating that they exist, as they do among members of any group who share a conviction.
I think we can all agree that regardless of your persuasion, what counts is not where you fall on the line, but whether you're living that life for yourself or trying to make other people live it. I don't like proselytizing in any venue. I find IT to be the distasteful practice, not the belief or the conviction that's being proselytized. I think it's important to at least try and distinguish the difference between those two - and to not let the messenger poison the message.
I'd like to make one comment about the chicken eggs/human eggs connection. I don't think you can equate them and say then that eating eggs is no less morally reprehensible than having your period because having your period is non-optional, where as we go out and get the eggs intentionally. I'm not saying eating eggs is wrong, I'm just saying that it's not morally equitable to the eggs or embryos lost in menstration.
I personally have kind of some naturalist views about animals just in the sense that I don't like how the huge modern economy of foods has systematized and economized the business of butchering animals so much so that their lives are so "terrible, short, and brutish". I don't have a problem with hunters at all, or of people raising chickens (we had chickens when I was younger). But it just feels a little wrong when you hear about how companies like Tyson are raising chickens that are genetically engineered to grow with such large muscles for good meat that they can't move, with no beaks because they get in the way of caging, and live out a short life in a cage no bigger than their bodies. I realize that the reason all this is done is not to intentionally be cruel, but to maximize output so that we can feed as many people as possible. But I think that if we're going to eat them, that it is not too much to ask to at least recognize that biologically, these creatures experience the same sensory perceptions as we do -- discomfort, pain, fear, etc -- and to at least recognize on some level that they deserve a basic amount of natural dignity in their existence, even if we're going to consume them. That's kind of where I think the Vulcans' philosophy comes from, only they take it an additional step and say that it's also wrong to kill them. I personally don't think it's so wrong to kill them. I rank suffering as a worse infraction than death. Death is inevitable, suffering is optional.
I agree.
The humanity Was subduing the environment because of its great adaptability. We are not much specialized (and being omnivorous is part of that) and precisely by this reason, even if it certainly isn't the single one, we are at the top of alimentary pyramid. But exactly here it is problem.
Now we no longer have competitors. Killing and nourishing is a matter connected with our social structure complexity and with the large number of people to nourish. Then, you don't must forget it exists a table culture, very important, that you cannot rightfully neglect.
And therefore? Perhaps it is arrived the time to think the choices should be dictated not only by what we are, but also, and above all, by what we would want and, perhaps, would be able to be?
It would like to reply that moment arrived, but I con't think this is true.
However, these thoughts again lead me at the initial matter.
Why are Vulcans vegetarians?
What annoys me it is this seems giving a hint of moral choice, because of the obvious fact than Vulcans are more "evolved" than we are, because we are a young race! And this is wrong.
That's why I enjoy Distracted solution:
Distracted wrote:
They're ALIENS. We can hypothesize anything we want to. Personally, I prefer to think of the vegetarianism as a practical response to the virtual extinction of all animal life on their planet after centuries of war, and an ethical response to the need to STOP KILLING everything. If Vulcans don't need B complex vitamins then maybe they don't need any animal derived products at all. in this manner, science and conscience are each other holding hands.
(And boy, isn't he juicy on a bun. 
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