By by VJ
Why are so few Christians vegetarian?
I meet vegetarians from all walks of life except this one. In my three teenage years in the Church of Christ, I never saw anyone eating vegetarian. (Except by the happenstance that homemade ice cream and desserts usually contain no meat.) Christians claim to care about life (leaving out the wholesale slaughter of people and animals in the bible). From this, one might assume they care about how much we have to take other life.
Eating vegetarian can be a preference for varying personal reasons. Disliking “unreasonable faith” of any sort, I have also been repulsed by obnoxious, dogmatic vegetarians, even when I share their food preferences. But I have never met a Christian who shares that preference.
I attempted to find either the percentage breakdown of vegetarians by religion, or what percentages of each faith are vegetarian. Articles and summaries address the issue, but I found no specific numbers. Vegetarian Worldwide says “Hinduism and Jainism teach vegetarianism as moral conduct while Christianity and Islam generally do not.” Wikipedia at least explores how the various religions view vegetarianism. Christian vegetarian groups (and those of other religions) exist, but that does not reflect anyone I knew.
One Christian vegetarian group supports its view by quoting Genesis 1:29: “Behold, I have given you every tree with seed in its fruit; this you shall have for food.”
I find this ironic. Christianity is unable to free itself from its own tangle of self-contradictions: I have always been convinced that God hated Cain’s sacrifice of “the fruit of the ground” simply because Cain was the gardener and vegetarian. (As a vegetarian oldest sibling, I also take a different view of Cain slaying Abel because God favored Abel kissing up with animal sacrifices. Kevin Leman’s book Growing Up Firstborn: The Pressure and Privilege of Being Number One sums it up in a chapter title: “Sibling Rivalry: Abel had it Coming.” But that’s another story.)
The Christians I’ve known, and their attitude toward all of nature, remind me of “The Simpsons” episode in which Lisa becomes a vegetarian. A food chart shows a silhouette of Homer Simpson, human being, lord and pinnacle of creation (a satiric comedy in itself), with every imaginable creature walking, flying, swimming, crawling, hopping, slithering, floating, running, and jumping into the place for which everything was created — Homer’s mouth
VJ is a cat lover and fly fisher who ignores the “green” columnists in Bellingham, Washington because they ignore overpopulation.
Gwenny: Absolutely not! The world has plenty of people having kids. A child consumes HUGE amounts of resources, which from both a... 
Siberia: Or maybe they know they have neither patience nor inclination to deal with the fruit of their loins and thus, rather than be... 
DDM: Repubs and Dems. He’s saying they only take first impressions and... 
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Jasowah: “They don’t go beyond those emotions, and that’s the... 
DarkMatter: And funny that most of them are huge in size in the vid. 
249 Comments
If you want christian vegetarians look no further than your local Seventh Day Adventist churches, you will find hundreds of them.
Haha, you beat me to it.
Oh geez, but they’re nuts!
(Addendum) …in my experiences with them. Not all of them are that way, but the more prominent ones in my life are… very much so.
So technically we could EAT them, as vegetarians. Nuts have plenty of protein. Would that be a reasonable way to rid the world of them?
Of course, from my experience of Adventism (grew up in it, didn’t leave until after graduating from an SDA college), their emphasis on vegetarianism has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of moral concern or any environmental concern.
It’s *purely* because Ellen G. White said it was healthier and that it reduced “the animal passions”, back in the days when she and John Harvey Kellogg (among others) were convinced that eating meat (or spices) got the blood up, so to speak, and caused people to be irritable, lusty, and all kinds of other unchristian moods.
And one of my bigger complaints about the church’s so-called “health message” is that (at least at the time I graduated from college – circa 1995), they make a big issue about not eating meat, but never really talk about how to be a healthy vegetarian. They never addressed what vegetables to eat to get protein or nutrients – they never talked about how to cook healthy. They just push fake meat – which is generally fried (or deep-friend) and slathered with condiments. Never could understand how that was so much healthier than a hamburger!
They just push fake meat – which is generally fried (or deep-friend) and slathered with condiments. Never could understand how that was so much healthier than a hamburger!
Mmmm, mmmm, Loma Linda Peanut Loaf. Does that stuff exist anywhere anymore?
Gotta admit I don’t think I ever had that. Then again, we usually ate the Worthington Foods stuff…. Lots of choplets and scallops (both of which I actually still like) at home. But we were bad – we weren’t actually vegetarians. The stuff you’d get when you visited other people’s homes, though? I think “Special K loaf” ranks up there as the worst, but you could never trust the fake meat stuff.
Fake meat is gross. Except Morning Star faux-sausage patties. Those are delicious.
There is a product from LightLife called “Fakin’ Bacon” that I enjoy, not because it approximates bacon well (it doesn’t) but because it is made of tempeh (which I like) flavored with maple and fake smoke.
I will check it out!
My family has been involved in the Seventh Day Adventist Church for the last six years, and vegetarianism is a pretty important tenet of theirs. That said, however, they’re the only ones I’ve ever met.
I do come across the very occasional Christian who happens to be vegetarian, but it seems to be rarer in that community than in the general community. Apart from the Seventh Day Adventists, of course. I suspect that a lot of Christians view vegetarians as being suspiciously concerned about something “unimportant”, when they should be concentrating on important issues like saving people’s souls and waiting for the end of the world, or whatever. There are both Old and New Testament okays for eating meat, so I think a lot of Christians don’t consider that it is possible that something may need to be reviewed in light of today’s vastly different knowledge and circumstances. Like a lot of issues, really.
I was a vegetarian and a Christian for four years, until I gave up being a Christian (I’m still a vegetarian).
My father pretty heavily lectured me on the non-Biblical nature of vegetarianism – sure, there’s the verse you quote, but then there’s (… gosh, *digs into depths of memory*) – Peter’s vision in Acts 10 is the main argument he cited:
And also Genesis 9, Noah and his sons are told
IIRC these were new convenants that replaced the old “trees with seeds” thing with Adam. So I believe it’s entirely possible that those Christian denominations who aim to take the Bible literally cannot be vegetarian because of these two passages.
Disclaimer: I’m an atheist now, and the discussion with my father was 25 years ago, so I may have some or all of it wrong ;-)
I agree, but it is probably negated by one of the ten commandments – ‘thou shalt not kill’. It doesn’t say ‘thou shall not kill other human being’, there is a big full stop after the word ‘kill’.
Worth using to wind christians up ;-)
Ahh, but isn’t there some argument over that word anyway? Is it “kill”, or is it “murder”?
(again, may be wrong, my Hebrew language skillz ain’t what they used to be)
Yeees…but they don’t have a nervous system so don’t feel pain, and they are not sentient beings.
I know I shouldn’t have bothered writing that, I was just rising to your bait, but hey ho.
“Of course, it suits them to make that distinction, to say that there is a difference. Just like all their other rules, they adjust/ignore/follow as it suits them.” — Angie
Sorry, misposted, that was in response to TLP’s question about plants being alive!
So plants are not alive?
It appears to be a christian thing to try and make a distinction between them (she says, after a few minutes googling ‘difference between kill and murder).
Of course, it suits them to make that distinction, to say that there is a difference. Just like all their other rules, they adjust/ignore/follow as it suits them.
The command is against murder, not “killing”. They are different words with different meanings, and everyone on earth can think of circumstances when killing isn’t murder. It’s pretty silly to say Christians are hypocritical for eating meat based on this commandment.
I know Christian vegetarians but nowhere does the Bible command that lifestyle.
It is the Roman Catholic Church which uses the less-specific “kill” as opposed to the more specific “murder.” Had “The Annoying Angie” had bothered to look that up — it isn’t hard to find, one must only glance at the Wikipedia article — she would have known that and would not have made such a flimsy argument.
Furthermore, if we take into account context, we would realize that “thou shalt not murder” is the proper translation of the commandment because it is a code of laws for how people should behave in that particular, primitive society. It has nothing to do with “making a distinction” as Angie puts it, but rather, with her illiterate and out-of-context interpretations.
Damn dude, Why so cold. Not all people are eggheads.
That “cold” bug need to be squashed.
I apologize, I bow to your obvious superiority.How can I ever thank you enough for pointing out my stupidity?
As I was bought up as a RC, I have only known ‘thou shalt not kill’. But then, as you know that difference holy books use different words, I would have thought with your superior knowledge you would have worked that out.
;-)
It still would have been clear in the RC translation that it was talking about killing humans, not animals.
God tells people to kill animals all through the Bible, so I doubt that would be convincing.
Yeah, God pretty much cut a wide swath of killing people, animals, fig trees that didn’t bear fruit… pretty much everything… except deadly Gram-negative bacteria and nasty viruses… which must have been “too small to fail”.
Don’t forget, Christians who eat only vegetables are viewed by Paul as spiritually weaker than those who eat meat. Who wants to be considered weak by their colleagues?
As spiritually weak as this video?:
http://www.chooseveg.com/meet-your-meat.asp
Seems like the opposite is true, Paul’s just sore because he can’t hack it.
(I am not a vegan, and consider that spiritually weak as an atheist can be about something. Or materially disorganized about nutrition alternatives, you choose.)
Meat is peer pressure.
Meh- I say buy local. You support your own town’s economy, and the smaller farms that aren’t cruel like that can survive against the mega-farms. (I personally dislike mega-anything when it comes to consumerism, but that’s just me).
Mogg, that’s not quite accurate. The meat in question is meat that has been sacrificed to an idol, which is viewed as a false deity, not all meat in general.
Paul argues that eating such meat is fine, because the idol is a farse; there’s no power or reality behind the idol. The concern isn’t about eating the meat but rather being contaminated by the power of a false deity to whom the meat was sacrificed. If there is no power, there is no need to be worried about being contaminated by it.
Those who are ‘weaker’ are those who haven’t realized that there’s no power behind the idol to be concerned about.
Paul starts by talking about meat from sacrifices in the context of not setting a bad example of mixed spirituality, but he does seem to generalise it – he gave instructions that the Corinthians could eat anything sold at the meat market, which seems to account for all meat. It’s possible I’m missing a cultural context there, I suppose. I guess the modern-day equivalent, at least for some groups of Christians, is alcohol.
Peter’s vision when set in the context of the early church’s conflict over whether or not to include Gentiles isn’t a command for all Jews/Christians to eat meat but rather indicates that those who do eat meat should not be excluded from the Christian community.
These two passages do not preclude Christians from being vegetarians, in other words.
VJ = VorJack?
No, VorJack left vegetarianism at the same time he left Christianity.
Odd how that worked out.
Then you are a ‘born again’ carnivore! :-P
The article wasn’t your writing style anyway. But since you published many articles (though even better in quality [soz VJ :)]) it could’ve been you.
Wait… but do you like cats? :P
With the right marinade.
Sure, joke about it all you want. But don’t do this:
Teen burned kitten to death in oven
Because it’s hard for people to hold more than one fundamentalist belief, if one isn’t explicitly included in the other.
Ha. +1 to this.
I’ve heard some Christians argue that, since the Lord gave people dominion over the Earth and everything therein, then killing animals (not necessarily for eating, in their view, mind) is OK because they’re there for us to use, anyway.
Which only reinforces my atheism. Can’t stand the sheer, callous arrogance of such a statement.
I don’t know many vegetarians that fly fish.
I don’t either! When I go to their meetings and events, I’m going to have to bring my own food.
I am not a rigid vegetarian, and tried catching, killing and eating a few fish.
I thought it was obvious: the beauty of fly-fishing is catch and release.
the beauty of fly-fishing is catch and release.
Pointless torture is beautiful?
This I don’t understand. If you’re a vegetarian because you feel about cruelty to animals, then you pretty much shouldn’t write an article about Christians not being vegetarians. If you’re going to go half-assed about the cruelty, using fur for special boots (did I read correctly?) for your use of animals for your own amusement, you have no business covering the subject AT ALL. This is to the author, VJ, not to persons writing up-thread who are not the author.
If you are a vegetarian for some other reason, you still aren’t in a position to point out the “hypocrisy” of a specific religion.
I was a fly-fisher from the age of 12 to about 35 and was around when catch and release started. I was immediately enthusiastic but over time became disenchanted for a number of reasons. I caught a number of fish that because of the handling had lost the skin slime that is necessary to protect against skin predators. Further I came to believe that catch and release, while beneficial for the thrill of catching, wasn’t so beneficial to the fish who are being caught, man-handled and released to go through it all again. Ultimately I lost the desire to fish.
Looking back, what I liked most about fishing was the zen like state of mind that could be obtained whereby one passes hours fully engrossed in the rhythm of nature.
Thanks for that clarification.
Personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling myself a vegetarian. I won’t knock you for it as it’s just my personal opinion. Sometimes I get caught in the “vegetarian snob” attitude and I’d like to stay away from it as much as I possibly can.
I just live my life the best I can. I’m a somewhat strict vegan, and somewhat lax as well (if that makes any sense). I suppose I should elaborate: I eat at Taco Bell (lax) but I’ve researched all their ingredients down to what shells don’t contain whey…etc. Did you know the small soft shells and the large have different ingredients? The small shells contain whey but the large do not; odd. I’ve also researched and found that certain beers (yes, I absolutely love my beer) are not vegan (strict), as during the brewing process the beer is filtered through fish bladders…gross.
Anyway, I’m not a “vegan snob” either. I hardly even blog about being vegan/vegetarian on mine. And again thanks for clarifying your position.
VJ you can add me to your list of veggie atheists.
I can also go ahead and speculate on some (perhaps reaching) similarities between choosing a lifestyle of not eating meat, and choosing a lifestyle of unreasonable faith.
I believe most people prefer a life of consuming everything on the foodchain with little thought otherwise while being blissfully unaware of how their food was grown/produced, manufactured/harvested, transported, packaged, marketed, and sold. With each of the previous steps, if a LOT of people even knew a little about the details with regards to meats, would most certainly think twice about it… Yet, perhaps even while knowing that they would think twice if they knew more of the dirty details, prefer to remain in the dark. A large number of said people also (very strangely in my experience) actually take offense to any suggestion otherwise!
This to me is not much different than the mindset of most people that prefer a life of blissfully ignorant faith, based on shotty information (…marketing?), which will also take offense to any suggestion otherwise.
Turning vegetarian for me made me realize how much people love their meat. And I mean LOVE it. It’s really quite fascinating. People actually act offended when you tell them you don’t eat meat (sound like religion?). It’s as if they feel like I think I’m better because I think I know something that they don’t. And almost always, a persons love of meat is accompanied with extreme lack of knowledge about the most important substance in their lives: food, which to me is not much different than extreme lack of reasonable thinking with regard to the most important question in some peoples lives: is there a god?
Anyone?
oops, make that “similarities between choosing a lifestyle of eating meat, and choosing a lifestyle of unreasonable faith.”
Mm.
I won’t say I know all the intricate details and going-ons, but what I’ve seen of meat production in my country doesn’t bother me in the least. In some of the larger farms I’ve seen (and by large I mean large enough to provide to the big industry), cattle and poultry have better lives than probably the people that take care of it: spacious and clean shelter, free range grazing grounds where it applies, even background classical music in one particular case. I’ve heard more than one farmer say that the wellbeing of the cattle affects the quality of the meat produced.
Then again, I don’t “love” meat. I hate vegetables. There’s a difference ;) While I hate vegetables on principle I wouldn’t find it that hard to live without meat. I’d be unhealthier, granted, but it’s no big deal. I’ve never met anyone who loves meat so much they’d be weirded by a vegetarian . I know some vegetarians (all due to New Agey woo reasons, ironically enough, not that it matters), and a smaller subset of those would go into a rant against meat-eaters that would make fundamentalists proud. Most are honest enough to accept otherwise, though.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you aren’t from the U.S.? Here most cattle and chickens and swine are packed so tightly in cages they can hardly develop the muscles in their legs to stand, not to mention they live among their own rotting dead and shit all mixed in with the lowest quality food product they can be fed that is just thrown at them, meanwhile they are pumped with drugs and antibiotics to keep them barely alive long enough to turn a profit. Look at me I’m preaching! :) haha
It just amazes me that, seriously, you’d be suprised at how many people either don’t want to hear that, or get upset when you tell them. (Of course I do live in Texas, so that might explain a lot) I just can’t imagine (now that I understand it) being willfully ignorant of it. Why would someone not want to know what they are putting into their bodies on a daily basis? I mean I know the short answer to that… and that reason is where I find the similarities between that life choice and living with faith. They both happen because the person prefers it over the alternative, despite a large body of available information or ways of thinking that under reasonable circumstances would normally cause that person to think differently.
I agree that the rants about meat-eaters from some vegetarians (and mostly vegans) would make fundamentalists proud. It may not seem like it to some from what I’ve said, but I don’t agree with those people. I think they do so more for the reason that they have a huge problem with animal cruelty. That doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that the cruel conditions lead to an unhealthy food product for humans.
Why would someone not want to know what they are putting into their bodies on a daily basis?
You get the same reaction when you talk about what they are putting ON their bodies. Talk about clothing sweat shops and (de facto) slave labor, and you get angry reactions. The same is true of labor abuses of all sorts. Where did our computers come from? Who made our cell phones? Who smuggled the diamonds we’re wearing? Ultimately, what are the costs of our high standard of living for others and for the world?
I’m afraid that this is just part of the modern world.
You make a good point in that they are all chosen ignorance, but aren’t all of your other examples instances of morality issues with our fellow humans? I speak merely of what one chooses to subject ones own body to, with regard to food that has undergone unhealthy processing. Buying sweat shop products are an issue of guilt for supporting an immoral industry. They don’t directly affect ones own health.
On the home site of the The Humane Society of the United States, I saw a video in December 2008, taken in China, of cats and dogs being killed in order for the Chinese to sell their fur. There was an announcement that Great Britain was outlawing fur bought from China beginning January 1, 2009. (I sometimes find Britain more progressive than the US.)
It was devastating to me. I exhausted myself trying to find work boots and fishing equipment that were not made in China. It was painful to ask online in a fishing forum what equipment to find, and tell them why, and to see them merely go on discussing cost and quality of equipment as if this treatment of animals hadn’t even been mentioned.
Sometimes I am successful at finding what I want, and sometimes I am exhausted and unsuccessful.
Under what conditions were those dogs and cats killed? Where they killed just for the fur (as in, hunted and killed), raised for it or just extracting the fur of animals that would be put down anyway?
I’ve a problem with the former two (which is hypocritical of me, considering), but not the latter.
The Humane Society still has links to this issue. Get the information directly.
A search on their homepage for “China fur” brought up articles I had not seen.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you aren’t from the U.S.? Here most cattle and chickens and swine are packed so tightly in cages they can hardly develop the muscles in their legs to stand, not to mention they live among their own rotting dead and shit all mixed in with the lowest quality food product they can be fed that is just thrown at them, meanwhile they are pumped with drugs and antibiotics to keep them barely alive long enough to turn a profit. Look at me I’m preaching! :) haha
Wow. That is despicable. I understand your sentiment entirely. You’re right, I’m not from the U.S.. I’d heard about the conditions of the meat industry over there and, frankly, it makes me wary of eating anything at all up there, haha. It looks almost… unfoodlike, some things I’ve seen Americans eat *shudder* I really hope reality isn’t like what we see on TV. Bleargh. The sheer amount of fat is frightening.
Here in my country… well, if it’s like this over here I have never seen or heard anything that would lead me to think so. In fact, I’ve seen farms that are more sanitized than hospitals – spotless white walls and floors, climatized barns, a few pigs per stall (not enough to become overcrowded, but enough so that the pigs have company – mothers with piglets have their own separate stalls), classical music to keep the animals soothed. Whether that’s just a façade, I’ve no idea, but I’ve never saw evidence to the contrary, either.
Injecting antibiotics, steroids and other drugs nilly-willy is illegal over here – of course, I’m sure it happens, but since the risks of being caught is being out of business, I don’t think it’s a widespread practice. As I mentioned, meat cattle is often kept in pastures – confinement is more common in the milk industry. Apparently there’s a belief that letting the cattle run free makes for better meat (happy cow = tasty cow).
The poultry industry is trickier and closer to what you’ve mentioned, especially in what relates to confinement, but I’ve never seen any sanitary problems with most farms I’ve seen and never anywhere near to the level you describe. Abattoirs sometimes are busted for sanitary reasons, not quite rare, but those are often small industries trying to grow with no regard for cleanliness (and then they end shut down). I’ve never heard of any problems with the bigger brands.
I’m not naïve enough to believe it’s all fine and dandy always, but I don’t think the… dark side, as to speak, is the norm either.
I’m not talking small producers here – ironically, methinks the larger the farm, the better the conditions the cattle live in – all the money spent in technology and land, I guess. As I mentioned, I think the difference might exist for cultural (the relevance of meat in the diet) and environmental reasons (we’ve a lot of grazing ground that just happens to be excellent for cattle).
Yay, blockquote fail.
And for those who include meat in their diet, your point is?
Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re asking.
I want to know your offence that leads to your labelling of those who include meat in their diet.
I don’t take offense… I was saying that some meat eaters take offense to vegetarians. And, what labeling are you thinking that I made? Can you quote something I said so that I can more clearly understand and respond to what you’re asking?
That is not what the article is saying about “some meat eaters take offense to vegetarians”. I take your word that you are not offended of us who include meat in our diet.
Do you not get that some meat-eaters are offensive to vegetarians, not by eating meat but by how they often react to people who don’t eat meat?
I would prefer the arguments remain within the article.
I thought the article was a little weak.
I definitely don’t take offense. It’s not like I was always vegetarian. Just like it would be somewhat silly for atheists that used to be religious to be offended by people just because they believe in God. (Except, of course, for all of the reasons that religion influences political opinions in a way that could potentially have a negative impact.)
Argue about the article, itself.
In general, people do not want to know how the meat got on their plate. It’s yummy and it’s what they want to do. You can watch “Meet your Meat” and still eat meat, but at least you’re informed. I think McBloggenstein was trying to say meat-eating people seem to prefer to avoid the truth more than merely ignore it. Even if you’re not inclined to “proselytize” veganism, meat-eating world will decide you are, eat more meat just to spite you, and yet resist information about their food. Like, don’t you want to know about your food? It’s like religion to some people, and it’s like religion in general.
Don’t tell me what I don’t want to know – it’s better that way. You’re trying to inform me, you’re trying to ruin the pleasure of eating meat for me!
That’s how it seems to go, usually, there’s a lot of willful ignorance, and it sometimes includes spite and insult.
“…meat-eating world will decide you are, eat more meat just to spite you, and yet resist information about their food.”
My mother-in-law to the hilt!
As with religion, I find vegetarianism to be a lifestyle choice, not a characteristic of morality.
Agreed. I have no oppinion on the morality of meat eaters.
Vegetarians are just missing out on awesome things like ribs and bacon and pork and steak and shrimp and… okay, now I’m hungry… I’ll have to discuss later.
Damn you! >:o
Vegetarians are also missing out on increased risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, food poisoning, gallstones, kidney stones, diseases of the colon, high blood pressure….
You are very welcome to it! Eat now, pay later ;-)
Omnivore people are also a bit safer from anemia and ostheoporosis and, if done right, all of the above as well ;p
Signed,
Someone free from all of the above problems, thankyouverymuch.
You’re definately correct. If done right, one can probably be healthy and live long on a wide range of diets. The problem I’ve found is that when people allow anything and everthing in their diets, it makes it harder for them to limit themselves with some foods, and a subconscious justification occurs that causes them to often eat more than they probably should of certain things. Basically it’s a problem of self control. This of course can apply to any way of eating… not just including meat.
Yeah, I see what you mean. A balanced diet is the way to go – and that is not only what you eat, but how what you eat is made. I don’t think eating vegetables sprayed with every chems under the sun is any healthier than eating meat raised in poor conditions…
Haha, from the way I speak I sound like such a meat-eater – which, well, I’m not. I don’t like red meat all that much – if I eat it once every two weeks, it’s a lot. Swine meat is even rarer. It’s usually chicken for me.
Reference? As someone suffering of both “chronic” anemia and ostheoporosis (side effects from arthritis), I’m quite interested in that.
Ah, meat eaters, dontcha just love ‘em….wind ‘em up and let ‘em go….
Threads like this always bring out the ‘real men eat meat’ brigade ;-)
…Really?
Yep.
Maybe next you can do an article on the percentage of “fly fishers” who are vegetarian.
As a Texan, I’m afraid that I’m too indoctrinated to give up our nice, juicy, medium-rare, aged, 9 oz mmmmmmm…. ok- off to the steakhouse now!!! Bye!
Well God likes men a whole hell of a lot better than animals. I mean, humans are the center of the universe, afterall. He built everything to satisfy our needs. He apparently killed animals to make us skins, at one point. Hell, he didn’t even bother to make them out of dust! Shows how much he cares for them…
Crap I just realized something… how am I supposed to eat babies if I’m a vegetarian? Help!
I’m afraid you’re outta luck on that one… as Fat Bastard says, “Baby… the other other white meat!”
haha! Do you read my blog?
Hmm.. maybe someone makes a Tofurbaby. :P
Ha! I checked it out, and I feel that this vid is apropros…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S42pu26WlBQ
Ohhh! Sorry I was confused. There’s a person that calls him/herself “Fat Bastard” that comments on my blog, and has his/her own blog that promotes being fat and gluttonous. I didn’t even make the connection that they were taking on that character’s persona.
No worries! LOL! Austin Powers FTW!
That’s why baby carrots were invented.
But, Meat tastes good.
And vegetables scream when you kill them, but we just can’t hear it.
That just makes them MORE delicious to me.
I don’t suppose many Catholics are vegetarian, after all they consume human flesh and blood on a regular basis.
Not HUMAN blood — GOD blood!
God must be human, since he can interbreed.
LMAO!
Humans and other animals are all part of the same food chain, and I eat my cow just the same way a lion eats its zebra, and would eat me.That’s science, not morals!
So vegeterians have better morals than meaterians/Christians? Some Christians think that way they are better than other people on account of their faith alone, too.
I know atheists and environmentalists who love their animals cooked as much as anyone.
My grandmother’s tribe lives on blood, milk and meat and majority of them are yet to be Christianized. Horrible by your standars, I guess (the killing of animals), but it has nothing to do with faith and/or morality. Just food.
Vegetarianism is a personal/cultural preference and should not be confused with ethics-even those are debatable because what’s ethical is one society is ridiculous in another (think polygamy in ours and serial monogamy in yours).
Meat is not just a cultural preference in the United States. From what I understand, we eat more meat per person than a lot of other countries. Some people are not satisfied with a meal unless it contains meat, and people can occasionally (maybe frequently) be upset by the mere presence of vegetarians or having to eat with them or hear of their dietary preferences. It is as much like being an atheist as anything – people can talk about god like he’s real, people can eat meat and behave with total entitlement about it, without courtesy to vegetarians and actually be snide about it. I don’t know why people can’t just eat what they want and let each other be. I think it’s a fallacy about vegetarians that they are indignant and overbearing. Some are, but really most just want to eat what they choose to eat, in a meat-eating world, go to parties and not have to defend their choice just for asking if there’s meat in something, actually have something they can eat without bringing their own food. Vegetarian food is food, everyone can eat it, but there are places you can go where people assume you eat meat food like a “normal” person. The conventional “attitude” as vegetarians are often accused of can be just what would happen if the meat-eater makes a big production out of how weird you are, put the spotlight on you and all, you just want something you can nosh.
I do know this from first-hand attempts at giving up meat. It’s not generally supported or cheerfully welcomed and accepted, similar to reactions to my atheism. You can say you don’t like fish, you can say you don’t eat red meat, but if you give up on the meat god altogether, people try to make you feel like an ahole. I have never told anyone they shouldn’t eat meat, I’m just hungry. Why does everything that’s served have to have meat in it (some places)?
Well put! This is why I made the comparison I did above.
It wasn’t until I acknowledged that I was atheist that I realized all of the fascinating differences in viewpoints on the same subjects between believers and non-believers. It also wasn’t until I learned enough about food and its origins in order to make the lifestyle change of not eating meat that I noticed the two sides of that argument. I find a lot of similarities.
“It is as much like being an atheist as anything – people can talk about god like he’s real, people can eat meat and behave with total entitlement about it, without courtesy to vegetarians and actually be snide about it.”
I totally sympathize and have had this happen on more than a few occasions.
Uh. How is that *not* a cultural preference?
I meant maybe stronger than a preference, more like a custom, not quite a law. I thought that I had gone on several pages here and explained what I meant, but I’ve also said I’m not very good at writing or editing.
Nobody said that.
I find this ironic. Christianity is unable to free itself from its own tangle of self-contradictions: I have always been convinced that God hated Cain’s sacrifice of “the fruit of the ground” simply because Cain was the gardener and vegetarian. (As a vegetarian oldest sibling, I also take a different view of Cain slaying Abel because God favored Abel kissing up with animal sacrifices. Kevin Leman’s book Growing Up Firstborn: The Pressure and Privilege of Being Number One sums it up in a chapter title: “Sibling Rivalry: Abel had it Coming.” But that’s another story.)
I’ve read through this post a few times, but I don’t see which self-contradiction is being highlighted.
Best I can come up with is the quotation from Gen. 1, which some use to support their vegetarianism, contradicts other Christians who eat meat.
Is that the contradiction you’re getting at, VJ?
I eat meat. It’s delicious. I also eat veggies. They’re delicious. I’d probably eat people if they were delicious, too. But they’re not. Unless you catch them young, but not too young. I used to get my babies fresh from this guy down the street, and I mean -fresh-. Still covered in placenta–which, incidentally, is full of vitamins and makes a delicious, and nutritious, side dish. But anyways, the best babies are aged a few months, and are fed via natural methods. Don’t trust baby feed! They grind up anything to make baby feed. The parts of the baby that most people wont eat, feces, rats, bibs and rattles… it just does awful things to the flavor of the baby when they use feed like that. The natural method is far prefered. By waiting a few months, you get a bigger, plumper, and juicier baby, with a stronger taste. And you just cannot beat the flavor of the increased cruelty!
That’s funny!
I grew up eating meat so I imagine I’ll eat meat forever.
There is no contradiction. Genesis 1:29 gives permission to eat plants, it doesn’t forbid eating meat. Nowhere does the bible forbid eating meat.
You know, there are legitimate criticisms of religion and the way it causes people to behave. There are plenty of reasons why the bible is clearly a product of its times and not the everlasting word of an omniscient god. It’s packed full of myths and arguments that are just obviously wrong to a modern person.
But then there’s being stupid, and inventing contradictions in the bible that don’t exist for the purpose of ramming your own contrary beliefs down peoples’ throats. If it’s painful when Christians twist parts of the bible to suit their needs, then it’s more painful when atheists do the same. If you want to legitimately criticize blind faith and ignorant fundamentalism you actually have to behave better than they do. The militant vegetarians in this thread may want to consider that, because some of you are coming across exactly like the most obnoxious religious evangelists.
I won’t speak for the bible quote considering the diet question….
I suppose as for the “militant vegetarians”, since I have been the most vocal, are you referring to me? I am curious of any specific points that I or others have made that lead you to have this opinion, so that we can discuss it.
I was thinking more of the original poster and Angie. Saying God killed Cain because Cain was a vegetarian, or that the “thou shall not kill” refers to animals, etc. It’s stupid. Give us carnivores a bit of credit, we’re smarter than that.
I meant “hated”, not “killed”. No edit function :(
It is our humanity to overlook such error. I overlook japanese diet though I prefer cooked food.
Ah I see what you’re saying. I didn’t pay that much attention to that point in the post because I’m not very familiar with the story or the meaning. From what I do know of it, though, I do agree that it is a weak point.
Thank you. I fully agree with this.
Militant? Hope you are not referring to me, young man!!!
And you are starting to sound a wee bit like one of those poor persecuted christian, now, with your ‘militant’ jibe.
Seriously, from a quick appraisal, most vegetarians who have posted on this thread have not pointed fingers, took the moral highground or been in any way ‘militant’ : they have just pointed out that they are vegetarians, and for a variety of reasons. No one has said that they are better than meat eaters – it’s just a personal choice. Moral or otherwise. But my morals are not your morals. They don’t have to be. They are MINE.
I merely pointed out – and please re read my posts, I’ve said this three times now it’s getting boring – that I have used the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’ to wind up christians occasionally.
I also pointed out that generally, vegetarians have better health than meat eaters. If that’s what you call militant then you haven’t lived, my friend.
I merely pointed out – and please re read my posts, I’ve said this three times now it’s getting boring – that I have used the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’ to wind up christians occasionally.
I find it very hard to believe many Christians get “wound up” about that. They likely just point out how stupid that argument is.
I sort of think the meat-eating thing is more evangelical, you may want to think about that. I’m sorry some vegetarians are “militant” to you, but put the shoe on the other foot sometime.
As for the bible/Christians/carnivorousness – I’d just assume it was because of dominion and all that, a different philosophy about the animals’ role among mankind. I don’t have any scripture to go along with it, but I thought that was culturally obvious. Why aren’t more atheists vegetarians? I don’t even care. Again, philosophy about what animals are for. Cultural traditions set in stone, the lack of inquiry to the source of the food, the description of vegetarians as “militant” (see the article for the author’s feelings about “obnoxious, dogmatic” vegetarians – they exist and apparently spoiled your meal once or twice, so you hold it against the whole group?)…. that’s a little more curious.
I haven’t read thru all the responses so, If someone has already said this, please forgive me, but how can Christians, strictly speaking, be vegetarians. Don’t they have to occasionally eat flesh and drink blood?
Fallacy – people do tend to think vegetarians can’t do things like breast-feed or take communion. It’s not the eating they think is wrong, it’s the cruel conditions animals are kept for food, materials, entertainment, and killing them just because you can (I generalize).
… I think s/he/it was being sarcastic.
I didn’t get that impression. If someone believes they are eating flesh and drinking blood, one might wonder how they could reconcile that with vegetarianism. It’s on the FAQ I posted VV.
The answer to your question is here:
http://www.jesusveg.com/qow1299.html
Here are some more frequently asked questions relevant to this article:
http://www.jesusveg.com/popular.html
I’m wondering what everyone thinks about the possibility of growing meat (like the experiments to grow body parts) instead of raising it. It would do away with animal meat factories as we know them and reduce sentient animal suffering.
Like, we are been pushed to be like gods, or gods in this modern world.
It would solve a huge chunk of the ethical issues – but possibly not the enviornmental ones. But some people just don’t LIKE meat.
I would totally eat deathless meat.
It makes sense to me that so few Christians are vegetarians because being both and atheist and a vegetarian requires one to actually think about the choices they make in life, use common sense and use REAL morality. Why is it OK to take a life just to fill your stomach when there are so many wonderful things to eat that don’t involve suffering?
Eating disorder?
Really?
I was trying to point out the hypocrisy of it all. But yes, that’s fine. You can go ahead and criticize and demean my life choices just like every other right-wing, bible-thumping redneck I’ve ever encountered in my life. I’m used to it. I don’t let jerks like you change where I stand.
yeah, I don’t get that
And hence the reason meat eaters get irritated with non-meat eaters… somehow we’ve become unthinking people who cheer the suffering of animals.
Let’s look at this from a different perspective…
Are you vegetarians also against animal research??? Are you willing to trade your health or the health of your child to prevent the suffering of animals?
Oh, whatever. Vegetarians have to deal with pressure and criticism constantly. And you’re going sit here and whine about this? Please. How many times are you criticized for your choice? I have to deal with some sort of struggle on almost a daily basis because of this choice that I have made.
And for your information, I don’t judge people who eat meat. Its a personal choice, one that is not right for everyone, and I understand that. But I also think that a lot of people don’t really think about it. They don’t think about what an animal goes through from the time they are born until they reach the dinner plate. I don’t believe ignorance is an excuse. When you can tell me that you can go out, get a chicken, chop its head off, pluck its feathers out, gut it, and still want to eat it without ANY remorse for what you have done, then great. That’s fine.
And I don’t believe in animal testing. You know why? Because if they we’re doing it to people, everyone would be in an uproar. Animals feel pain and emotion, so its OK to torture them instead? That and the vast majority of tests don’t need animals. They could find another way if they had to.
Is it really fine apart from your belief?
Yeah it is. If you can do all that and still eat your meat with a clear conscience.
Do what you want, but don’t tell me that you can’t bring yourself to kill an animal when you go to the grocery store and buy steaks.
That is what I want to know. I will kill that animal lawfully if am am over charged. I realise a new “enemy”(sort of) in my conscience, now, because of my diet.
Well, I am a researcher and I have killed hundreds of animals without remorse. I did it because it was done humanely and also to advance scientific understanding of the brain and it’s disorders.
Strongly in favor. I’m open-minded about human research, too.
I would also like to add that I grew up on a farm and we ate the animals we raised. We were never cruel to them, just the opposite. I had a favorite cow that was slaughtered and I refused to eat the meat from it, but I was about 8 at the time. I had no problem with it in other instances, though. My husband’s grandfather was a cattle farmer, and they also ate the meat they raised. The animals grazed on about 30 acres, and there was no cruelty involved– they weren’t even branded.
Said like a true Texan! You go girl! Yeehaw…LRA! :):):)
Thanks JC, ha!
So the take away message from me is: if it is at all possible, I encourage meat-eaters to buy local. Small farms are more humane and you are supporting your local economy that way!
You are equating product testing and scientific research on the cause and treatment of disease. This is true of shampoo, not so much of conditions that can only exist in an animal host.
Huh? Disease transmitting organisms are animals as well, and we kill them because we want to live more than we want them to. Maybe I shoud stop being selfish whenever I use an insecticide treated mosquito net (and kill bugs) and start thinking real hard about the process a mosquito goes through from the time of its birth, to when it meets its death on my hads, why it really needs my blood, and so on and so forth.
Why 3 question marks? It comes off as typical hysteria – nobody is threatening the meat on your plate, if that’s what you want to eat. Meat-eaters seem to get really defensive and make a big issue if someone is a vegetarian, but you can stop it. You can educate yourself, I thought that’s what we were talking about, or starting to. You irritate yourself really.
Exactly. I tell people I’m a vegetarian and they get defensive. If I told people I wasn’t eating carbs I wouldn’t get that reaction.
I’d just tell you that carbs are your friend.
And do you tell people you’re a vegetarian out of the blue? If it’s an unsolicited point of information, it might come off as being “superior” and such.
Speaking of, this discussion is making me hungry…mmm, pizza.
I usually try not to bring it up. Most of the time, I will be at a restaurant with people, lets say, Applebee’s for example, and I will order the Chicken fettuccine minus the chicken (b/c places like that have zero veggie options) and I will get weird looks or questions from people, and then it comes out. I don’t parade around with a megaphone or anything. But at the same time, it is a big part of who I am, so it eventually comes up.
Go to a friendlier place. I for one will not eat at a place with unwelcome attitude.
I also get comments from people about my research. So, yes I have faced people who are pro-animal rights, but don’t have a real understanding of what actually takes place in the lab. I have crossed picket lines to go to work. I’m sorry that you face people who judge you. I do not. I also don’t want to be told I’m morally inferior because believe me I think all the time about the work I have done and it’s implications for the animals involved and for the advances we are making.
I’m not. As I said though, animal cruelty doesn’t bother me. Perhaps I’m cold-hearted, but I do promote eating vegetarian because I think think my fellow man would be healthier, as would the Earth, but that’s another discussion…
I can become a vegeterian by listening to the argument that eating meat is bad for my health and the environment, but not that it’s cruel to animals. Every living thing wants to, well, just live, and survive.We would need to stop eating altogether because vegeterians could arguably be as cruel to plants as meaterians are to animals.
You make a good point – there is a natural food chain, and many animals survive by eating other animals. And we are part of the animal kingdom. And I don’t want to be cruel to plants either! However. There are a few problems with that argument. First of all, the reality of human consumption of meat is not “natural”. We eat far too much, for one thing. And the way animals are treated on these “farms” is no less than disgusting. Most of these animals are sick because they are fed corn products instead of grass, and this makes them sick. (Corn is cheaper, and makes the animals larger and fatter, faster.). These sick animals are then given huge doses of antibiotics and other medication. So when we consume most meat today, we are eating the flesh of sick animals full of growth hormones, fat, and medication. It is absolutely unconscionable what these animals go through.
My personal moral code includes a “hierachy of consciousness/ability to suffer”. I believe in minimizing suffering. So the more consciousness something has, the greater its ability to suffer, and the greater our duty to prevent or alleviate that suffering. Plants do not have consciousness like animals do, and mammals have more consciousness than some other species (like fish). Your thoughts?
I know I’m replying to me! I just wanted to add that I’m aware that the concept of suffering has already been touched on here…
I wasn’t referring to suffering as you put it. Rather, I argued that every living thing wants to just live, and I feel that am no less inhumane when I kill an animal than when you kill a plant because as someone argued, you have also taken a life.
You’d have convince me that early humans never ate meat before you can argue that eating meat is not natural to humans at all. Someone has argued that before humans invented farming, they were living on a diet of meat, and I find that more credible.
Your argument that we eat meat from animals that are fed with corn products, hormones and antibiotics does not apply to me – the ones that I eat are never fattened, are grass-fed and roam free, and therefore the health issues associated with meat-eating are not the same.over here, I just need to cook the meat long enough to kill the worms.
The main problem here is food security and I would not even start to think about the level of conscoisuness mammals have vis a vis other species until there are enough animals and plants to eat. You have enough food, therefore the luxury of a moral code when it comes to food.
I believe you last sentence is why there are vegetarians. If food was in short supply and they were hungry I doubt many would worry about what they were eating. I have been hungry, not starving, and know I wasn’t as concerned with what I was eating as I would if I just felt like eating.
Why is it OK to take a life…
Are you saying that plants are not alive? What would you eat that is not alive?
…that don’t involve suffering?
Plants don’t suffer when you kill and eat them? Do you really think you could make an intellectually rigorous argument for that?
This is one of the reasons omnivores get irritated with proselytizing non-meat eaters: a lot of the reasons put forward are simply not very good.
That is a lame and you know it. I have heard that one a million times. Come up with a real argument.
Apparently you think abuse and ridicule count as a cogent counter-argument. This may be another reason omnivores get irritated by proselytizing non-meat eaters.
Actually, *you* do.
Your thoughtless playground rejoinders: not cogent.
Well, I do think I heard my shrub scream while I was pruning it.
Are you saying you’re willfully ignorant about it? Have you looked any of this stuff up or are you just going by what vegetarians you have met had to say, and your knee-jerk reaction to that?
I’ve seen a lot of nasty adjectives used alongside of vegetarian in this thread, like there’s something really evil about it, like Christians feel about atheists. Uninformed and over-reactive. Get a grip, nobody is taking your meat away from you, they’re just asking you a question, they’re asking you TO question.
hehe… this discussion sounding familiar yet?
Who are they?
The proselytizing non-meat-eaters mentioned in the post I was responding to. I didn’t see any proselytizing – I do think that’s a straw man.
Deal with the straw man in the article.
I have already done that in this thread. The article is weak, it addresses hypocrisy where I don’t think any exists, makes another reason that doesn’t exist to bag on Christians. Is that what you want to hear? I also posted http://www.jesusveg.com/popular.html, a FAQ that’s a lot more relevant to the article. It’s a lot more relevant to the question than this article was. I thought the article made a pseudo-deep observation of something someone might actually wonder. I had no idea Christians weren’t vegetarians. I don’t know anyone who is a vegetarian, in fact, I think most people in most ideologies are resistant to the idea of veganism, mostly for the taste and cultural traditions, whether that be the bible or some other social directive. Christians are not a special case.
Are you satisfied yet? Put on your leather pants and have the rest of my meatloaf, save room for ice cream.
Yes. Plants have no central nervous system, and therefore cannot suffer.
For some limited definiton of “suffer.” Some plants do sense and respond to damage. And they certainly do suffer under another definition: “to sustain injury, disadvantage or loss.”
And why is the experience of pain such an important factor? I think that’s just a bit of egotism. We place a high value on avoidance of animal pain because we experience and can understand it.
Suppose I were to value self-sufficiency higher than the experience of pain? Then I would value plant life more highly than animal.
You think plants are self-sufficient?
That is not a limited definition. Feeling pain is pretty much exactly the definition of suffering. No nerves means no physical pain, no brain means no emotional or psychological pain. Perhaps plants have some strange, alien sense of suffering; in which case, who cares? It’s completely alien.
I do not value self-sufficiency higher than pleasure or pain, I am not a plant. I am a classist bigot: the mammalian perspective is superior to other perspectives. There, I said it.
Machines can sense and respond to damage, btw. But they don’t have an opinion about it.
A brick wall can “suffer” damage from bombardment, but that’s not the meaning you meant. “Suffer”, in this context, means to feel pain.
I think both sides are being a little to defensive. Neither side is looking at where most people get their information from. Most of the time people hear about vegetarians it is the more extreme of them that they hear from and about. A lot of groups tend to insure that they get information that is directed to show the worst of whomever they stand against. I agree everyone should question everything they are told even if they agree with it.
I agree. Its kind of a vicious cycle. Vegetarians are tired of being attacked, meat-eater are tired of extreme soap-box vegetarians preaching to them. Put them all in a room together and things are sure to get ugly.
I try to be accepting of other people’s choices. I have never forced my views on anyone. I simply ask that people think about it, and not just do it because that is how they were raises, or what society tells them (which is one of the reasons I like this blog)
On the other hand, I would like to be able to tell people that I am a vegetarian without having to defend myself to them for the rest of the night. I truly am sick of being treated like I am doing something wrong or that I am a freak of nature. I sometimes resort to telling people that it is dietary and I’m trying to lose weight or some other lie because I see that look in their eye and I just don’t have the energy to fight with them. Its funny, I don’t need to lose weight, and yet people accept that without question.
Can you say you just don’t want to eat meat, like they (presumably) don’t want to eat humans, cats, or dogs? It seems to me that if it’s just a preference, there’s not much to argue with. But there are a lot of vegans and vegetarians around here, perhaps my perspective is skewed.
It’s a weird feeling to have to prepare responses to defend yourself. I find myself doing this of course for vegetarianism (like everytime I go out to eat with people), and on a less frequent basis, but very similarly, for atheism. In both cases, surely some inquire purely because of curiosity, but others are just plain rude about it, revealing a lifetime of being taught that “steak, it’s whats for dinner” by the marketing wizzes of the cattle industry are words to live by, and anyone that says otherwise is a hippie or un-american.
There is always a way to phrase our words with sacrificing our dignity.
There is always a way to phrase our words without sacrificing our dignity.
Surely, but I don’t even worry about that as much as I do about offending others. It’s not so easy to do that when you are speaking aloud about something when the people listening have been taught the opposite their whole lives.
When we realised the degree of an action or words uttered to others, maybe we can learn to see the beauty of humanity, not denying the “evil” thereof.
I used veganism/meat-eating as an example a couple weeks ago in a discussion about indoctrination. Nobody really got it or addressed it, but I even then felt I had to assert that I’m not a vegetarian, because of the weird “obnoxious about it” mystique on this issue. I’ve researched a lot about it, and tried several times. I don’t think I’m supposed to eat meat, I don’t think all vegetarians are compulsive proselytizers, I just haven’t made it a priority to manage it.
It seems to take excessive management both in the way that I was raised to like and think I need meat, and that this is a meat-eater’s world. Foods are labeled if they include peanuts, gluten, trans fat, phenylalanine, if they’re kosher, what kind of kosher, etc. Household products use chemical names for animal products that you have to learn and recognize, and very few proudly display a lack of animal products or testing. There are things that should be obviously safe from animal products, you should just be able to buy them off the shelf, but the companies will not confirm or for some reason haven’t bothered to stop using animals to process, like vegetable juice, because 8 vegetables and a lot of salt just isn’t enough. If something is food and happens to be vegan, why wouldn’t it say so on the label? If it accidentally contains animals because the company thinks they need to add flavors or colors derived from animals, why wouldn’t it say so on the label?
Anyway, I think meat-eating is indoctrinated, people don’t consider it, don’t mind it, like it a lot, don’t learn too much about it. They are fed meat and accept meat as a child because that’s how their parents were raised. And then to go on about how vegetarians are persecuting you by having different dietary choices, and reasons for those choices. Reasons you don’t agree with, or reasons you haven’t addressed or researched well, because you’d rather go on like you are.
I don’t like that I still eat meat, and eat a lot less of it now, and I consider this a weakness I intend to correct over time. I don’t like how meat-eatingness becomes the traditional value, the cultural standard, and then you get every variety of ethnic food, yummy, different, exotic, interesting, hip, chic, inviting diversity onto your plate, but vegetarian food is still just food and there’s some sort of threat there because I don’t want to eat animals, as if it would be so awful sometimes to skip one portion of meat to eat somewhere with me. Do any meat-eaters know what it’s like to be tricked into eating something you don’t want to eat? If you tell someone you’re a vegetarian, they think it’s impossible to offer meat-free choices in their home, tell you what a chore you are to feed, and in some cases, will lie and then laugh when you have eaten meat. Way to be a gracious host! Have you ever heard of salad? How about something with beans in it? Not everything is made of tofu.
When your diet became a religious problem or vice versa, I see kind of see your dilemma.
Please explain.
Why I see your dilemma?
Describing my diet as a religious problem or vice versa.
Probably what you think in trying to understand you in good will.
I’m still not understanding you. I think you’re cryptic. I’m not a vegetarian. I don’t want to eat animals but I do – in the larger scheme of my life, I haven’t been organized enough to move that up the list of things to change. I still don’t get what’s religious about it, except that I’ve said it’s a meat-eater’s world just like it’s a theist’s world. At least my world. Meat-eating is the cultural status quo. Other dietary restrictions are acceptable, even people who won’t shut up about their low-carb diet, or call ahead to make sure some of the party food is kosher, people don’t seem to get all weird about it, and making sure everyone has a good time and plenty to eat is offered. Manufacturers actively label and market many varieties of dietary-restrictive foods.
But then if you don’t eat meat, some people react like you have been proselytizing, they will be insulted, defensive, engaged to argue with you about what you put in your own mouth. I don’t know why that is. It is like saying you’re an atheist. At least where I live, people are more mellow about diverse religious beliefs – as long as you have one. Saying you have some dietary restriction like keeping kosher, well that still says you accept meat. Even saying you are a vegetarian because you are a Buddhist will get you off the hook, I’m pretty sure. If your religious beliefs dictate your dietary restrictions, it is a different message, and gets more respect from meat-eaters than if you say you’ve researched animal product industries and found it to be pretty disgusting and for that reason choose to avoid animal-derived foods and materials. I am considering meat-eater as host, or co-worker or anyone who might feed you or sit down with you to eat in a cafeteria or restaurant. If you have religious reasons, people will make the small effort to support you, to offer foods you can eat or meet you halfway about where to go eat together. If you are “just a vegetarian,” then suddenly, you’re a pain in the ass, the reason we can’t order a pizza because half of it will suck.
I think the larger point is that if you call the process of deriving meat and materials disgusting, use words like that, as has been described earlier and around this thread, the meat-eaters tend not to want to know. It’s not disgusting, it’s delicious. Sounds kind of ignorant, don’t you think? They’re saying they don’t choose to learn, and furthermore, how dare you sound the least bit like you expect better from them. Let them keep their meat and not know. Just like god and the bible is right. At least within this thread, nobody seems to be proselytizing but instead are wondering why the apparent disconnect with atheistic inquiry. This goes in your mouth, feeds your cells, comes from somewhere, are some of you actually threatened by knowledge and truth?
But I didn’t write the article, I don’t even think it made any valid points or interesting observations. I’m an atheist and I feel the same things about reactions to my atheism that I do whenever I have attempted vegetarianism. People are inclusive (at least where I live and have lived) up to a point. Meat being god in this analogy, myths and generalizations about vegetarians overtaking the carnivore’s response rather than the individual vegetarian in question, truth or at least examination being labeled as obnoxious or dogmatic or a chore, or a threat to one’s beliefs, that meat is for eating and is delicious and la la la I can’t hear you.
I really hope I answered your question.
I wouldn’t worry about whether you answered the question… (I’m not even sure there was one?) I like what you said. Very well put.
I feel as though you have not fully given up meat because of the peer pressure. Is that true? That sounds pretty frustrating, I’m sorry. I totally understand that it feels like a losing battle, even though the last thing you want it to feel like is a battle. I feel anxiety even when I have no urge to talk about being a vegetarian because without fail it will come up, and it becomes a damned if you do – damned if you don’t situation, because if you say you’d rather not talk about it, you’re an asshole… if you talk about it, you’re proselytizing, and an asshole. The reason is because it’s never an easy answer (for why I don’t eat meat).
Much like an answer to why one doesn’t believe in God is never easy. The simplest is because there is no evidence, but if that were enough, people wouldn’t debate as much as they do on the subject (as evidence on this blog!).
I eat meat because it’s convenient for the most part. Like I’ve said, or vaguely described, my life is disorganized at the moment. I reprieve myself of one less thing to actively manage in the meantime. I eat a lot less meat, cheese, etc. than I used to which is the best I can currently do. What I find most difficult is the shopping and preparing food myself. I can cook, but I haven’t taken time out to find any decent recipes, so when I throw things together, it’s kind of bland and repetitive. It’s a good thing I already love vegetables though. I haven’t found a decent alternative to milk. It all tastes gross in my coffee. I think it might be easier to just get used to black coffee. I should be back on track by the end of this month. Except for milk.
You are so right that it’s a meat-eater’s world. You go to ANY restaurant, and if you order a meat meal, the steak will take up 2/3 of the plate, and you might get 2 or 3 small carrots on the side.
Wow where are these restaurants that have meat servings like this? The last few places I have ate at, the baked potato was way bigger then the steak I ate. I don’t mind that since the potato is my favorite veggie.
Note to self. Move to less redneck area where potato portions are larger than meat portions.
The last few places I have ate at, the baked potato was way bigger then the steak I ate. I don’t mind that since the potato is my favorite veggie.
Except that it isn’t a vegetable, it’s a starch. Pretty much by definition, anything I like “doesn’t count” as a vegetable, according to the diet I should be following. I love corn on the cob, so of course it isn’t a vegetable, it’s a sugary starchy junk food. I love red beans, white beats, black beans, pinto beans, pork-and-beans, so of course none of those are vegetables–only green beans, yellow beans and lima beans are. Etc.
That’s just wrong. But you know the old adage. Everything that’s fun is either illegal, or fattening, or NOT a vegetable.
I avoid eating mammals.
I have a question. Was early man vegetarians?
Possibly. Our closest primate relatives are mostly herbivorous. I also don’t think that’s super-relevant, however: there are lots of animal behaviors I try to “rise above”. Early man was surely murderous, too.
I think it does matter to someone on here. He/she said eating meat is learned from childhood. I think it is one of the reasons man was able to survive to this point. If man hadn’t have eaten meat would they have made it as a species? Yes some of our eating habits are taught to us as kids but for someone to say we only eat meat because that is how we are raised is reaching. Meat is actually much easier to deal with then veggies and can be gotten all year round in most areas of the world. People today have an easier time being a vegetarian then it would have been for someone 200 years ago. How many people here have ever been truly hungry? I’m not talking about not eating for a day but actually starving.
I would say that eating meat the way Americans do is learned. Seriously, I see kids all the time being weaned from a diet of pureed fruits and veggies as babies to a diet of chicken fingers and meatloaf sending them on a path of childhood obesity.
I do agree that eating meat was probably crucial at various points for human survival in the past. The difference certainly worth noting today is that most farmland is being used to feed and herd cattle, and the amount of pesticides often used on farmland purposed for cattle feed can be up to 40 times that allowed on farms used for human food. That is a hugely different world than the one our ancient ancestors survived in, especially when we don’t need meat to survive anymore, and our modern civilization can bring avocados and brocolli from thousands of miles away to my local grocer and offer it to me for $1/pound.
I agree that Americans eat waaaaaayyyy too much meat. It’s just not healthy. I eat vegetarian meals on a regular basis to keep up with my veggie intake. But I eat meat, too, just in smaller portions. I also eat lots of fish. I love sushi!
So do vegetarians miss out on sushi?
Man, I don’t think I could give up sushi.
It depends. For the purposes of not being cruel to animals, one is also supposed to consider dairy and eggs, as well as wool, and other things that don’t technically kill an animal. Again, those things depend on humane conditions. If humane conditions are available, I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying those things. Fish are animals, there’s a video along with Meet your Meat that gives a lot of reasons not to eat fish. Some of those reasons being the stuff in the water (like mercury), as well as all the random creatures that come up with the nets, not least of all is killing fish to eat them. If you’re a woman of child-bearing age or younger, and you do plan on having children, you should limit your fish intake anyway because of the mercury.
Also, advice given on vegan sites is not to go all at once. It’s a difficult change, not just to your preferred diet, but to your shopping habits as well. The idea is that you want to be less cruel to animals, there is no real possibility of being absolutely perfect at it. Some people are vegetarians at home, but do allow themselves to eat meat when they go out – as you can see, it just makes socializing easier. Some people also think fish don’t matter, some think it’s ok to eat dairy and eggs because the animals aren’t killed. All different ways people decide they can live with. Eating less meat and making careful purchases about household products, educating yourself to the conditions animals are kept or caught, these are things anyone can do. If you’re ok with lab animals, then you’re ok with it. I’m ok with smacking a bug or wiping out a whole nest of ants.
Another myth/generalization of vegans is that they’re extreme and self-righteous – some vegans are extreme and self-righteous, those are the ones you hear about. It’s just impossible to be perfect, so do the best you can (if that’s something you decide is important). It’s ok to finish your bottle of shampoo, it’s ok to buy another one while you sample cruelty-free shampoos to find one that doesn’t suck. Just an example. If you find you want to give up eating meat, but want to allow sushi once in a while, go ahead. It’s the meat-eaters who mostly hold vegans to high standards and love to point out hypocrites when they “slip”. Less cruelty is less cruelty, you can think of it like that. I learned a lot of this stuff from vegan sites including Peta. For all the bad press they get (some of it may be deserved? I don’t know), they are a good resource for finding out lists of what to buy if you’re thinking about going vegan, and how to go about it. Because foods aren’t often labeled, you can be getting animals in your processed foods and household chemicals, so they’ve written to companies and gotten things verified and compiled lists. Alcohol and beer even.
They seem to support the transitional stage, eating less and less meat, and learning as much as you can about the inhumane conditions of farms, what free-range does and doesn’t mean in reality, and where they stand on certain issues like pets (people think vegans can’t have pets) and what to feed them, just particular issues are covered and why they don’t think you should do that. It’s informative, you don’t have to buy the whole philosophy just because you agree with some of it. You’re a grown-up and you do what you can, what fits in with what you think is important.
TL;DR
I guess the short answer to your question is yes, some do, and no, not all of them.
Sushi is my ADDICTION. Life isn’t worth living without it. I try not to think about the fact that these fish are KILLED.
Fish have no emotions; they are lesser life forms. Delicious, lesser life forms.
Do we know for certain that fish have no emotions? They wriggle on the hook. LRA, you know about this stuff, right? I dunno – I have gone fishing, and I have to admit, the results were scrumptious. But it feels cruel to me. I prefer to live in my little bubble of denial, and get the fish from someone else. I don’t see how I could EVER give it up though.
The most primitive emotion there is is fear. Fear is necessary for survival. Fear is processed in the lowest, most basic parts of our brains, and I would argue that fish have a primitive fear system in place to flee predators. However, that being said, fish are not traumatized by fear the way animals with higher cortices are.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19039707?ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
The fact is that emotions exist on a gradient in the animal kingdom, and so the argument from sentience is messy because of it. It seems more clear cut that higher mammals have fear responses more like ours, but ours seems to be the most developed.
I think merely having emotions is not enough to qualify for “suffering”. Reptiles, for instance, definitely have the brain parts for emotion, but not for abstract thought. A lizard might feel anger, or joy, or fear, but it has no opinion about whether these things are “good” or “bad”, they are just different physiological states. Same for birds, insects, and fish. No neocortex.
Also, I’d answer that question with a straight-up “yes”. Fish have a small, mostly undeveloped midbrain that does control a fear-like alarm response, but they just don’t have the parts that make emotions as we know them… calling it “fear” or “emotion” is not technically wrong, but it’s stretching the definition of those words beyond the mammalian conception of emotions, which I think is the pertinent definition.
LRA – thanx for the link. Guess I could have researched it myself too :)
Here’s what Michael Pollan says about it in The Omnivore’s Dilemma:
Ah, I just bought that book a few weeks ago after I heard the author’s interview on NPR. I need to start on it.
This quote begins with the killing issue, which doesn’t effect me. However, I don’t quite understand the authors point. The only reason there are so many animals on farms in the first place is for the purpose of feeding people… so, in this hypothetical scenario that the author is speaking of, ideally if America were to adopt a strictly vegetarian diet, they would do so after the practice of breeding cattle and chickens etc were halted, causing no further generations after the last that became everyones last meat meal. This would obviously cause less animal killing because the numbers would drastically decline.
Less land used for cattle = more land used for all kinds of crops, namely crops other than corn, soybeans, or other grains, all of which, especially corn, are largely used to feed animals and are highly subsidized by the U.S. government so that animal feed is kept cheap so that meat will in turn be cheap. A lot of people that work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture have ties with the beef industry. Here’s a fun fact from one of the beef industry’s websites:
Sure, ideally only land not suitable for crops for human consumption would be used for animals, but I highly doubt that is always the case. Considering one of the main purposes for the worlds deforestation is to raise cattle, I find this argument quite weak.
I do agree most Americans do eat to much meat. I am like LRA when it comes to eating, I usually eat only veggies one or two days a week. Want to talk about learned eating I only cook my veggies in real butter when I fry it. Does that mean it isn’t really a vegetarian meal? The sushi thing I can’t say anything about that never had it not a big fish eater. My addiction is pork.
I think you might be referring to me? Yes, definitely. Meat is as much for a cultural element as a nutritional one. Most cultures don’t eat as much meat as Americans do, and may be at least more informed about the source of the food. That’s not to say a good portion of Americans know exactly where their food came from. They hunt and gut their own food or have knowledge of the inner workings of factory farms, and probably still eat plenty of meat.
My former boss loved meat. It wasn’t breakfast, lunch, or dinner if it didn’t have meat in it. We had a group breakfast brought in by one or more of the staff twice a month on a rotating schedule, and if it didn’t have meat in it, my god, a grown man whining. Do you or anyone else want to tell me again what obnoxious, evangelical vegetarians are like? He’d also said he didn’t care about cats or dogs really. They were nice to have around, but some sort of southernism, pets just don’t matter that much, he’d said. Also was a Christian who bowed his head before every meal, even if he was eating alone in his office.
I would hazard to guess he knew more about the conditions of animals than I did, and simply was not raised to care about them like I think I do. He’d probably gone hungry quite a bit in his youth, and thinks being able to eat meat 3 times a day constitutes success. If you saw him, you wouldn’t think he’d need to eat meat as much as he does.
Now, my father, a less successful man than my former boss, also thinks he needs meat. He’ll eat a bowl of cereal with a spoonful of peanut butter instead of milk, but you can’t deprive him for long. And he doesn’t need meat as much of it as he eats, either. Don’t ask him over for lunch and give him a salad. He won’t complain to your face, he might look confused, but the ride home won’t be pleasant for anyone in the car. Of course, certain holidays and Sundays and pizzas require meat. There’s no way around the cultural binding Americans have to meat, even when they don’t need it.
I would also say it is a matter of cost also. I know I keep my meat purchases down because it can really add up at the cash register. I know I can buy several cans of vegetables for the cost of just one pound of most any type of meat.
I am wondering what feeling vegetarians have about hunting. It is a very important part of peoples upbringing here and I find it as a waste of time. The only thing I ever really enjoyed about it when I was younger was being out in the woods. It could be so peaceful until idiots started shooting at anything moving.
I’m not a hunter, and I don’t have any desire to go hunting, but I have men in my family that do. Their justification is that hunting is a licensed activity designed to help control populations of quick breeding animals like deer and javalinas (a type of wild boar here in Texas) who starve to death over the winter if the population isn’t thinned a bit.
That argument could be total bunk, I don’t know, but what I do know is that my cousins have the deer cleaned and butchered and they eat the meat. So they aren’t just killing the animal for no reason, they are eating it, which means that they are buying much less meat from mega-stores that buy from mega-farms.
I have heard the same reasons here for hunting. The problem is most that I know only hunt because they want to kill a big buck. Of the 20 or so that I know that hunt, most can’t really stand the deer meat. They either give it away or feed it to animals. They just want the rack.
Hmmmm… maybe they could ship it to me? I love venison!!!
That argument could be total bunk, I don’t know
It isn’t bunk. People who work with wildlife and public lands sometimes call deer “rats with antlers”. We have taken away all of their natural predators, and what they can do to land when allowed to breed unchecked is truly horrific. Then comes a massive “winter kill” and piles of corpses come spring. Not a pretty sight.
I know of no one who does not eat the meat; of course, those who are into hunting in a big way go after other animals whose meat they like better. Sometimes, if they’re really nice, they will let me taste some elk.
The idea that all vegetarians are against “hunting Bambi” is also bunk, a stereotype. I am in favor of hunting some of the over-plentiful deer; it doesn’t require that I like eating it. (Which I would do if I wanted to – to blow another stereotype – though the deer stew I once tried tasted nasty.)
My object was to point out a religion, that ostensibly cares about taking life, seeming most bereft of thoughtfulness about taking life in order to eat. It had nothing to do with prescribing or forcing a life choice. It had everything to do with noticing the disparity between a religion’s precepts vs. its people’s actions, a disparity greater than I saw in other religions. Of all religions, christianity seems to me to have the most anthropocentric and virulent notion about humans being separate from nature, with nature existing merely to be ruled, used, and consumed by humans.
VJ – well said.
I have a question. Was early man vegetarians?
Not until they invented farming.
Even our primate relatives eat meat more often than people suppose.
Yes farming did enable veggies to become a part of our meals more regularly. Farming alone doesn’t really allow for the vegetarian lifestyle. Until canning became a viable means of preserving food the vegetarian lifestyle would have been tough.
Yeah but most people don’t want to know what other primates eat.
For me personally, my journey away from christianity has led me to avoid red meat altogether. I still eat fowl and fish, but I’m considering eliminating chicken and turkey also. I think this is because more and more I see the connection among humans and everything else. I even think twice before killing a bug (but I still do it!) Christianity draws a firm line between humans and animals. Animals are created FOR THE BENEFIT OF people, and not so that we can all co-exist together as different species. We are to have “dominion over the earth”, and that means that we can do whatever we want to plants and animals (and look where that’s gotten us). I also believe it’s because christians believe humans have “souls” and animals don’t. Their lives are not worth much to god. The bible does not seem to respect the sanctity of life, animal or human. But it seems to often target animals. As we find out that our DNA is so close to that of mammals, it now feels kind of like cannibalism to eat red meat. Here’s an interesting article on this subject (Debunking Christianity): http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/03/bible-and-treatment-of-animals.html
Cannibalism to eat red meat? That seems a stretch there Janet. I have also cut way back on red meats, mostly cuz I’m in healthcare and we have a saying…first we kill and eat the cows then the cows kills us. lol
John C – I said “kind of”. But when you think that our DNA is almost identical to pigs, it kinda makes ya think…..
Actually– it’s not our dna that is almost identical (that honor goes to chimps) it’s our immune system. For this reason, pigs make good candidates for xenotransplantation surgeries (read: heart of pig goes into person), if we can just figure out how to control for viruses and other immune system commonalities that plague pigs and people.
Apparently I was misinformed. Thanks for the clarification.
Yes- but I think your point may still stand. :)
That’s very generous considering my facts were wrong!!
Well, your point about cannibalism, that is… one of the (many) reasons we don’t eat other people is because they can infect us. Since pigs have an extremely similar immune system, this is a problem too (of course we cook pigs and one should never eat raw pork!).
…and here’s an interesting article on how eating meat (the way we do it today) negatively impacts the environment. I heard that if everyone on earth ate meat the way Americans do, we would need the resources of 2.5 earths to support that.
http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp
Thankfully, the world is not America :p
In her dietary :)
With all the side issues, that better expresses my central point: As chemoheterotrophs, we must kill life and eat other life forms to survive. I think some religions attempt to deal with that incontrovertible fact by suggesting ways of living rightly or living lightly. In contrast, I find christianity not only ignores it, but encourages mindsets that are destructive to other life with its premise that the entire universe was created for humans’ use and viewing pleasure. To me this anthropocentric, egocentric belief makes christianity the epic fail.
A-fuckin’-men, even though I am not a vegetarian.
I would be, if I didn’t hate vegetables so much.
Re hunting, personally I could never kill an animal. But I think there’s a huge difference between the way the Aboriginals did it, and the way it’s done today. They would thank the animal for feeding them, and they would use all of the animal. The meat, fur, bones, everything. Because they recognized the sacrifice the animal made for them. They did it with respect.
I favour the it’s ok to eat meat but do it with respect for the animal – think of it as ethical meat eating. In practice this means ensuring that the animal was breed in a humane environment so ‘free range’ is in but it does require you to use a real butchers and not a supermarket. A butchers will generally no where they source there meat from and how it was raised; eat all the animal, including offal, and not just the normal bits – brawn is really nice and incredibly cheap as no one else want to buy a pigs head!, a whole free range chicken is more expensive than a standard supermarket one but is enough for three meals for the two of us, say roast chicken, chicken risotto and chicken Thai broth. The carcass can then be used to make chicken stock. The last one is only eating fish from sustainable stocks. For a bonus point all this requires that you cook from scratch which should give you a healthier diet.
All of this just requires a bit of effort and forward planning and can make being a vegetarian seem like the easy option! The worst part, being English, is the awkward feeling you get at first when you actually have to talk to the butchers or fish monger but once you do you find that they’re more than happy to help.
… actually, in my country, people eat almost all parts of a pig – including the ears, snout, tail and feet. It’s not unusual for people to eat bovine brains. Tongue and testicles as well (tongue is weird; it has a strange texture. Testicles are really soft meat, though). Kidneys and liver as well. In some areas goat viscera prepared with vegetables is a traditional dish. Intestines are used to make sausage. Hell, some people even use the freakin’ blood.
A lot of people eat those bits because they’re a LOT cheaper than the tastier (“brawn”) parts. The more succulent parts are more in demand, so… capitalism ensues.
We’ve fish-breeding farms as well (or whatever you call them). Hell, even oyster, shrimp and lobster farms. There are also farms for breeding alligators, ostriches, frogs, hare and other animals.
I think you misunderstand what brawn is … basically a pigs face and trotters (feet) all boiled up and then set in to a jelly. Very cheap in the UK.
I’m sort of assuming that you’re from Eastern Europe and if so then only things I didn’t like were tripe soup and pigs skin.
… in the end of the day the animal’s still dead, though.
I’m in favor of killing the animal humanely – that is, without unnecessary pain – and using as much of it as possible, but thanking? Pfft.
It is funny revisiting this and seeing the indignant outcries that I have no business making these statements. Anyone who eats anything —ANYONE — can make these observations.