Considering the fact that the lives of factory farmed animals are short and very unpleasant I think it's better for them simply to not be bred into existence to begin with. Most of them are bred so that it is completely impractical for them to exist except as enormous meat tumours. I don't think animals should be forced to live such lives. The animals that are alive right now will be slaughtered, that is without question. But should we keep bringing more and more animals into existence, only to make them suffer, then kill them? The plight of factory farmed animals is different to that of domestic and wild animals. They have no quality of life to speak of, so really it is the death, not the life that counts.Driekan said:As for the number's game... There is the matter of temporization - that is, the fact that such deaths will occur over a long span of time, instead of all at once. If your only concern is the total amount of Death (i.e.: The state when a formerly living entity ceases to be alive) that happens on Earth over an arbitrarily long period of time, the best possible thing for you to hope for is a nuclear holocaust. Or the extinguishing of the sun. Or anything else with a potential to sterilize all or most of the Earth.
To paraphrase:
"You don't want billions to die? So you better get those nukes flying, because obviously quadrillions dying is preferable to billions"
See? Makes no sense. What matters is not the amount of Death, it's the amount of Life.
It was qualified. Don't feel bad. Different people are good at different things.Unqualified personal attack? But already?manic_depressive13 said:Too much logic? Yeah, because you're so great at logic.
What? How does that settle anything? I ate meat when I was a child because I was raised like that. I stopped eating it because I didn't agree with farming practices. So yes, I have been a meat-eater within my lifetime. Your point?So that pretty much settles the argument. Unless you are very old, chances are good that within your lifetime, you'll be a meat-eater. Assuming the "Moral Vegetarian" fad doesn't die off, of course, but it is unlikely that it will completely.manic_depressive13 said:I don't see why you would breed braindead animals when we are already capable of producing in vitro meat (albeit not on an industrial scale). But no, I have no qualms with eating flesh. I have issues with causing pain and distress, and cutting a sentient creature's life short for no valid reason.
The moral vegetarian "fad" has been around since the ancient Greeks.