BlueTear

Seeing as he wasn't quite the religious sort, I sincerely doubt that mattered much to him.

So if it tastes good enough, you'd have no moral qualms about eating it? Hardly a typical reaction in most surviving cultures around the world.

I'll take that as declining to answer the question.

So then, you would really eat human flesh because of the taste?

You know, when I read that, I actually laughed. First of all... Actually, I'll keep that on til last when it makes more sense. The second reason is because your statement doesn't actually disagree with what I said. I was presenting an example of the fact that we do assign moral values to what we eat and claiming that you don't understand that just means you havn't thought the subject through properly. The list of examples could easily be expanded to include more cultural differences; Ape-brain, cow's in hindu culture, pig's in jewish culture, cat's and dog's and whatever other pet you'd never eat, and of course the most glaring example of all; human flesh. To clarify; I agree completely with what you said (except the stupid crack at america, that just made me laugh) but I don't believe you'd have said it if you'd paid some attention to the context 'cause it just. Isn't. Relevant. Oddly enough, I'm fairly sure Issy brought up cultural eating habits everal pages ago. Third reason, my location still has that silly crack about polar bears in it - which it has had since late 2001 IIRC - and last time I checked, the USA does not have a state called Sweden. In case you're a bit lacking on your geographical skills; I'm a european. And the first reason I laughed was because when I posted that I thought to myself "I wonder how long it'll take for someone to go "cannibalism!!1!" without actually reading the context in which it was brought up". The answer proved to be "a lot quicker than I expected". Moral relativism aside, you wouldn't do it. Ergo, you have a moral and ethical stance on what you eat. And so does, I'm betting, forsaken. Even though eating is natural, you assign a clear, distinctive 'right and wrong' to what you chose to eat. QED.

So it's morally right to eat human flesh, which is nutritious, if you like the way it tastes? (Once again, I'm not saying eating it for survival is wrong, just the taste bit) I'd say it's a trick question meant to illustrate why being natural does not neccesarily mean morally right.

Since eating is natural, do you believe it is _morally right_ to consume anything we can gain nutrition from as long we enjoy the way it tastes?

If he could actually stop you from doing it, then it'd be forcing. Otherwise it's just a disagreement. That being said, our societies require forcing the morals of the greater whole on the minorities, and do so on a regular basis.

Meh, grass is a poor example since we can't digest it. The aforementioned fish (though come to think of it, that's probably mostly poultry, so that'd be the body heat of chickens) or grain makes for better examples(something silly like 30% of all produced grain is feed to livestock, IIRC). Especially the fish. The cows (or chicken) use chemical energy stored in their food to produce body heat and grow. When we eat their meat, we eat - apart from the various special nutrients we do need from eat - only ten percent of the chemical energy we fed the animal. The other ninety percent has been used up as, for example, body heat.ÃÆââ¬Å¡Ãâô We have a worldwide annual population increase of, what, 75 million people? Where are we going to plant crops? The more we use the same land, the more of a beating that land takes. The more fertilizers we use, the more of a beating just about everything takes as ecosystems unbalance. The more forests we cut down, the less oxygen producing vegitation we get. In short, even if we manage having food production keep up within the next 50 years, how suistainable is that going to be in the long run? How long does it take before we run out of land? Vegetarism may not solve these problems, but it won't make them worse, and it'll buy more time til we can figure out what to do with it.

90% of all energy in the form of grass that goes into the cow will not be transfered to the whoever eats the cow. It will be translated into, mostly, body heat. How is the body heat of the cow not wasted energy, compared to the energy that could be supplied to keep people running? Let's face it, people starve, and at the rate the human population is increasing, there ain't going to be less of us to feed any time soon. And here we are, wasting energy on the body heat of cows - and once again, I've no qualms with meat eaten for survival as a part of a balanced diet (nor am I personally a vegetarian) but the simple fact is most of us do not eat a properly balanced diet, and meat is the where the biggest imbalance is; Most of us eat more than we need to in order to maintain a nutritious diet - because we like the way they taste. That is a waste of energy, no matter how you look at it. And in either case, they point I was making was that while a vegetarian might have all those rodents on his conscious, eating meat will not save the lives of those rodents; Because the meat still needs to eat something and fish aside, that something is usually grown. And oddly enough, since 1kg of salad is just that, 1kg of salad, where as 1kg of cow requires 10kg of a salad, vegetarian lifestyle actually ends up consuming less crops than someone who eats meat - also a point to consider when it comes to keeping as many people as possible fed. But if the whole world were to live on just as much meat as they need, as opposed to as much meat as they want, we'd end up being able to provide a whole lot more mouths with a proper diet.

Oh I'm sorry, for some reason I presumed the only reason to bring up the survival in the wilds in a thread like this would be to argue the point that we should eat meat in order to survive. Apparently, I completely missed the fact you weren't really making a point relevant to the discussion, but was more or less just aiming to make fun of the haha-dead-vegetarians-in-the-wilds. That's okay, my argument was directed at anyone who pulls that stupid "it's natural!" line out of their hat anyway. Lol? Salad? Lettuce? Why would anyone go for lettuce? Or a salad? That's like going straight for a burger. I see we're up to date on our organic edibles. Lettuce and tomatoe's. And mushrooms. Well, the first two are vegetables, so you're obviously at least partially familiar with that. You clearly grasp mushrooms as well. That leaves something called 'berries' and something called 'fruit'. Both of which are highly, hm, organic, very vegetitional (... I might have made that word up) and are most likely a lot easier to come by than lettuce. Wild apples and pears might not taste much better than crap, but they're decidedly edible, and quite frankly, an arbitarily chosen idiot is a lot likely to be able to identify them in the wilds. (By the way... Since eating an only meat diet is going to leave you malnutritioned as well the vegetarian would only have to eat the same non-meat things as the omnivorous, just more of it. So... Where's the hunter going to find a salad?)

Apart from the general feeling of invincibility mentioned above, sometimes people just seem like complete asshats because of misunderstandings. When talking over the internet you don't have a tone of voice, facial expression or body language to judge the reactions of whoever you're talking to. This makes it a lot harder to tell when people are serious and when they're just fooling around. Some people are just always off the mark when it comes to judging this - or in expressing themselves - and thus comes off as complete idiots. (... I base this on a large number of conversations with people in my WoW guild both by text and by voice via vent. Until you've heard them on vent, man, some of those suckers were really offensive juveniles. They were still offensive juveniles on vent, but then they were actually funny. Or muted. Or both.)

While I'll cheerfully agree that the vegetarian would be malnutritioned in short order - exactly how short depends on what kind of plantlife is in the region, as soy beans for example contains protein - but you are not your ancestor. (And where the heck do you think edible plants come from anyway? Science labs? Of course there's edible plants in the wilds). Unless you intend to lay claim to being the last of the neanderthal - which is fine by me - you are in no way able to classify yourself as primitve man. You're most likely not even able to classify yourself as someone who hunts for food because no, stalking meat counters in local foodstores does not count. In other words, you - no matter what your ancestor's did, what people living in comparatively poor conditions around the globe do today - do not have to. Even ignoring replacing a meat diet completely and just minimizing the consumption of meat to healthy levels, or minimal health levels, you are quite likely to be above what you need in order to survive. A fair portion of the meat you eat is not - again, regardless of what your ancestor's were doing - eaten because you need it in order to survive. I'm not saying it's morally wrong to eat meat in order to survive, I'm saying anyone who refers to nature, primitive man or survival as an argument defending his own meat consumption in a western nation is taking asinine hypocracy to a very special level. Unless they actually do eat only as much meat as they need in order to provide themselves with a healthy diet, which I sincerely doubt most of the people who argued that particular point do. Hmmm... You got me there... What could it possibly be, this elusive ability of ours. I think, I just think, it might have to do with the way our abstract thinking allows us to design ethical codes. Too subtle? I could make the text larger? No? Yes? No? Do we have to, or do we want to? Is your meat consumption at a minimal level to maintain a balanced diet, or do you eat more meat than you really need? Oh please... The first two are breed in mass quantities by us, and have been doing so long their wild relatives are found only in zoo's and the third keeps overpopulating because their natural enemies are big predators we killed off. No, eating meat is not an environmental service. At best, it ranks at a solution to a problem we created for ourselves. Where as the meat you eat is magically conjured, and doesn't involve feeding the cows with plant life. Well, actually, fish is fairly common. It's cheaper to feed cattle fish fished outside the coasts of Africa. The fact that people manage to die from starvation while we waste 90% of the fish (see, as a rule of thumb regarding the food chain, 1kg of meat requires 10kg of food for whatever it is. So 1kg of meat raised on fish requires 10kg of fish, which requires 100kg of whatever the fish lived on. Every step up the chain causes a loss of nine tenth's.) is just a sort of weird twist of fate. Or another reason, completely separate from morality, why eating meat might not be the best of ideas.

Ah yes, as someone who - in a completely industrialized society - choses to eat meat, you would be equipped with all the neccesary tools to survive, should you somehow end up in a situation similar to that of our long-distant pre-agricultural ancestors. Clearly, your modern whiny [wagon] who visits McDonalds and orders a burger is better equipped to survive than the guy who orders a salad. After all, there's meat in your burger! If your diet consists of more meat than you need to maintain a nutritious diet, unless it consists of more meat because of what's available where you live - and no, I don't mean Wal-Mart when I say available - talking about evolution and other animals and how it's the "natural thing to do" just makes you look stupid. The meat you eat was not magically conjured, nor did it live on the savannah, nor did you hunt it down and slay it yourself. It's the product of a highly industrialized, systematic, inhuman (pun intended) exploitation of various animals (In a western country where you're likely to be living to be able to participate in a online discussion).

I forget, which animal do I need to kill to get milk again? edit: I've known vegetarians who actually had no problem with eating game, but totally abstained from anything born and breed in captivity. And I think someone who refrains from anything remotely animalistic isn't actually classed as a vegetarian, but as a vegan?

Do you eat more meat than you need to in order to maintain a proper diet? Would it be possible, perhaps even nutritionally advisable, for you to eat less meat? In other words, do you kill animals by proxy in order to survive, or because it tastes good? Moral issues aside, there's energy issues that needs to be considered as the human population grows larger. A vegetarian diet, or just plain a diet where the amount of meat is kept at a level where no extra protein intake is required, is much more energy effecient than a meat based diet.

Somehow, I really, really doubt that a person who accidentally cuts him or herself while cutting vegetables or whatever is really qualified to make a statement regarding the ritualistic infliction of physical pain to relieve emotional stress.

Rare? What's rare, poor people? Ah yes, and what a home it is, and all the fun stuff he can do during his copious amounts of free time! He can go to the movies... No wait, he can't actually afford that. He can sit behind his computer! Well, actually, he can't afford a computer. He can enjoy is luxurious home! Err... Yeah, right, like he could afford to stay at a good place? Hmmm.... Enjoy delicious meals, then? Fast boiled, ultra cheap noodles. Ride around in his car, perhaps? ... what car, and what gas money? But hey, he's not working! Well, strictly speaking, in order to lift the social security check he needs to report to a public institution and apply for jobs a set number of hours every week, so technically speaking, he actually has a part time job for the government; Finding himself a job! ... you think this guy A) Is more common than the person who couldn't chose a career because he was born with poor parents B) Actually enjoys his life? I mean seriously, let's not glorify not-working. You have no pocket money, the list of things you'd like to do - and not big things like traveling around the world either, but small things like taking that cute chick at the supermarket to a movie - but can't because you just don't have the money is huge. As for fair... I don't really give rat's [wagon] whether a democratic society manages to be "fair". Fair is a word for kids who thinks some other kid got a bigger slice of the cake. What I want from a democratic society is freedom for it's citizens. And no matter how "unfair" you happen to think it is that everyone contributes to providing a freedom of choice for everyone when it comes to their lives, the fact is that an arbitarily chosen baby born in a system that employs capitalism alongside socialism is going to have more freedom of choice than an arbitarily chosen baby born in a fully capitalistic system.

You can't conjure money from thin air no matter how much you'd like to. The idea that everyone, no matter the economic conditions they were born to - or changes to their economic status due to accidents or illness - can do anything they want if they just "put some effort into it" is nothing but myth. First of all, a slave owns nothing, and is owned by someone else. Handing off a portion of the fruits of your labour - and since socialism tends to include money for the poor as well, you're not very likely to be starved by these taxes - to be used on providing the freedom of choice to fellow citizens is not slavery. Partly because when you grow up, after having gotten that nice Master's degree, or become a doctor, you pay the same taxes. You could see it as if you're actually paying for your own, past, education. I'm not saying it's perfect system, but a IMHO, a socialist democracy offers every citizen more freedom than a fully capitalistic system does - although a fully capitalistic system offers more freedom to the rich.

AFAIK, most communism regime's - at the start at the least - claim to be transitionary temporary affairs that are to be abolished once the transition to full communism is complete. So far, no state has ever managed to get past that stage, 'cause hey, no "transitionary government" has been willing to give up the power once it has it. On top of that; Communism does not abolish the idea of ownership per se, just the idea of indivudal ownership. Everyone owns everything. Everyone works in their field (which could very well be chosen) and they are all cared for by the state, equally. The function of a doctor within a society is as important as waste disposal, or say, plumbing. Key problems; First of all, the lack of regulation on who does what. Adam Smith noted centuries ago that the market can adjust who does what; If there is no need for shoemakers, a shoemaker needs to find something else to do. Same goes for production. In a system run by the market shoes are produced to meet the demand. In a planned economy as in a communist state, the state decides how many shoes are produced. How many doctors are trained (The Soviet Union did this with five year plans IIRC). If you miscalculate, which you're bound to do when you're trying to predict every single need of an entire society, you have a problem. In a market economy, that problem adjusts itself. All of your life you've dreamt about becoming a profession. You've good grades for it, you feel you know what your getting yourself into. But neither you nor your parents can pay for the education. Or you could, but then you fell seriously ill and when to pay for the medical expenses you had to spend all the money. Where's your freedom now?

I lol'ed IRL. So - oh great linguistical genius - just why is the same holiday not called 'Christmas' in the language of every culture where it's celebrated?

Fairly sure that's actually illegal, even in most states in the USA? ... I know it's illegal around here.

Faith is the belief that is not based on proof (... I looked it up and chose what seemed like the most appropriate meaning for this discussion). Is it really faith in authority, or is it the reasoning that there is no reason for the science textbook to be wrong (poor example really, since science textbooks in some subjects sometimes propagate common misunderstandings rather than the proper knowledge of the subject at hand). The history textbook for example... Do you really accept what the book says because you trust the makers of the book, or do you accept it because you could, in theory, check what the book says against a different source? I don't think it's faith in authority in a functioning democratic societity that makes it go around, it's the ability for the public to form their own opinions from a number of sources. Access to multiple sources of data, free flow of information. Accepting the abscence of credible evidence that suggests the textbook is lying (and lie believably, in unison with whatever other history-related book you could get your hands on) and concluding that thus, the textbook is mostly like not lying, is not really what I'd call a belief not based on proof. In my opinion part of the function of basic education in a democratic society is to make sure the students don't just accept things but actually think about it, do a bit of research on their own. To educate faith away, if you will.

Ah yes, the ever elusive Good Old Days. I swear, water was probably more wet as well. People come and people go, and have been doing so since early 2001. Heck, just look through the memberslist of this particular incarnation of the tip.it forums and you'll see tons of familiar faces that just aren't around anymore. It's always that way with internet - and real life to a certain extent, but at least then you have some form of geographic connection so you can run into old friends at the mall or somesuch - and it's going to be for quite a while yet. You can mourn old friends, or get to know new unique individuals. After all, an everyone-knows-everyone atmosphere hardly needs a specific set of individuals? edit: Hah, found this on Rae's avatar: Patient 2424, reporting for service and treatment.

I'd say no. I don't think it's possible to hate someone if you understand them fully, and what omnipotent being would lack that understanding. There's no random element to the actions of an individual creature and a being on the order of magnitude usually assigned to God would know each and every reason for each and every action.