'Meat paradox' and moral decision making

[Jonnusthegreat]

How is it not natural? Is there something supernatural taking pkace in it?

An animal's natural environment is not a 1x1 metal box.

[Shadowferal]

No paradox here.
If you're hungry enough you'll chow down on anything edible, including meats.

[Caerule]

But really tho, a lot of what we do is more natural than you think. Just because computers don't grow on trees and we don't live in a cave doesn't mean it's not natural. Everything we invented comes from stuff that was found in nature and it all runs on electricity which exists because of nature as well.
Also when you really think about it, at what point would things become "not natural"? The first "knives" where sharpened rocks, at what point in the evolution of knife does it become not natural anymore and who decides that? Does something stop being natural the instant it's manipulated by men? So things would come from the nature and then become not natural because it goes through a process? To me, that doesn't hold any form of logic.

Alright. So your argument about how nature should determine morality is that everything is natural. That's not really an argument against my claim that human morality can differ from what is natural. "Well, atom bombs are natural, because physics make it possible and the materials for it are all found in the Earth's crust by natural lifeforms" isn't useful for this discussion.

Murder is pretty damn natural. To form the complex society we have, we've required social constructs and moral norms that take us beyond our genetic basis. This has elevated our species beyond many of the constraints we had in nature. Human capacity for compassion of other lifeforms could extend to other animals like dogs, gaining us companions to add to our wellbeing. Now we live in a society where we can survive while extending such compassion onto lifeforms we once needed to kill and abuse for our survival. Freed from survival pressure, we can reevaluate those connections. I don't blame people making different choices because of that.

[Snorkles]

How is it not natural? Is there something supernatural taking pkace in it?

Have you ever heard the term unnatural?

[Akutare]

My favorite animals are mammalian predators, so why would I feel any conflict about eating meat? It's natural for humans to consume it at least to some degree. The animals in our farms now are species that wouldn't even exist without human intervention. Ultimately, genetically our farmed animals have still "won" even if their individual lives would lack value from our perception of it.

I mean, it will probably be better if we cut back on meat for the sake of sustainability, but I definitely think it would be more immoral to remove it entirely and betray those species we domesticated. We probably could go to treat them better, if we wanted to feel such sentimentality, but honestly, all life is reliant on death, and even vegans sustain themselves on a pile of dead pest animals like mice and insects, killed to protect the produce they eat. I honestly feel no guilt, and just sort of a "meh, I'd be fine with us agreeing to bring it closer to traditional farming."

In the end, I just don't particularly view humans as set apart from other animals, so even if we decide to destroy our environment and lead to an extinction event, it's fine. Life will continue in new ways as it always has.

[Snorkles]

Yes, have you?

Define it.

[Shadowferal]

Now I feel like eating a nice steak.

[Kumorii]

You can be against animal suffering and eat meat... seems like a weird paper on ego stroking.

[Snorkles]

Is this where you start arguing semantics?

Given you took issue with my use of the term natural, it was already an argument about semantics.

[Caerule]

I don't understand how it would make it not natural to take control over them. We are not supernatural beings. It's a result of nature if we do that, not unnatural.

Nature has no morality. It is not a sentient force. We are sapient beings that have created a moral construct because we have moved beyond circumstances found in nature. Mostly, we no longer adapt to our surroundings, but adapt them to suit us. Similarly, our social structure has adapt to service us in this new environment, where we are no longer bound to past constructs. We no longer need organic meat to survive, though not doing so remains a challenge. The ability to not do a thing previously required for our survival, is a good time to reevaluate if you should continue doing it.

We do this a lot, because we no longer let nature define our behavior when we are no longer limited by the boundaries we once had. Thus it has become vital to have new social, moral and societal structures in place to define our opinions by.

[Shadowferal]

How silly to think nature doesn't define our behaviour.

Yeah..kinda looking at the whole global warming thing right now...

Mother Nature is definitely the Queen B...Goddess of us all.
And we will bow down one way or another.

[Caerule]

How silly to think nature doesn't define our behaviour.

It forms an important basis to pitch our tent of social structures upon. But are you really making the claim that only nature defines all of our behavior completely?

[telygroar]

Not have the time to develop too much but : Killing an animal to eat it is normal, natural. Killing an animal for sport or to not eat it (fur, etc) is asshole as fuck. Eating only meat is stupid and unhealty, vegetable are needed to be healthy in a good/greater portion than meat in our everyday food. This is my PoV.

"yeah but you can eat withouth killing animals now", yeah, and you're not aware how if everyone were to eat vegetable "humanly eatable" vegetable, how much water and surface you would need for that. Hypocritically calling to not murder animal by massacring them and malkking them dying by destroying their habitat is not a good thing to do. Well, it's also because we are becoming more and more close to human surpopulation. Worldwide birth control will be required at a point. If not, it will be WW3 for water, food and energy.

[Charge me Doctor]

We no longer need organic meat to survive, though not doing so remains a challenge.

That's not true, we are way too far from reaching this point, we won't be able to support current society using only lab grown meat simply because of production costs. We don't have means to produce it in enough quantities (self-explanatory) and transport it (you'll need multiple factories in quite close proximity range to cities), and since production process is very expensive (it doesn't require much knowledge and technology to breed animals for food) it'll favor monopolies, which will further make lives of consumers even worse.
Since we're able to grow meat in labs doesn't mean that we're able to replace whole meat industry with it.

[Kumorii]

Not have the time to develop too much but : Killing an animal to eat it is normal, natural. Killing an animal for sport or to not eat it (fur, etc) is asshole as fuck.

Actually, both are normal and natural. It's kinda how we survived winters more easily.
Even though I agree in todays age that it's immoral to do so doesn't make it any less natural or normal to do.

Emotions and views doesn't change what's natural. Then again discussing "natural" stuff is kinda redundant since it's just another way to say "this is how I feel it should be" 90% of the time.

[Daws]

Humans are omnivores and this wasn't a choice this is the byproduct of our species evolution so if you there thinking there's a moral conflict to consuming a part of the diet you are literally designed to eat then the problem isn't morality it's you.

[Martymark]

Plants feel pain too. HOW CAN YOU VEGETARIAN MONSTERS LIVE WITH YOUR CRIMES?

[PC2]

Do you believe that eating meat is cognitive dissonance?

Not really since veggies can't yet match the taste and high protein of meat. But that is just a matter of time/effort before food science can make something that is basically the same, with no animal suffering.

[smityx]

When we say one thing but do another, or hold inconsistent beliefs, psychologists call it cognitive dissonance.

Do you believe that eating meat is cognitive dissonance?

I'd be the one who would go on one of those vegan tours of a meat processing from start to finish trips and probably be grossed out by how they explain it but then happily stop at a fast food joint on the way home. Or as Cartman would explain it:

[Vatrilian]

Our species is omnivore. We developed by eating both meat and plant material. That is natural and the antithesis of immoral.