Why choose vegetarianism?

I have skimmed through some of it.

I don't feel like having a battle of wits right now.
I'm not trying to sound angry.
I simply believe that we as humans have a bigger purpose on earth than to eat, sleep, reproduce, and defecate. We can believe in a god and pray to our god. We have deeper feelings than all animals that we know of. We care for our loved ones. We can invent and create. It just seems illogical to put a garden snail's life at the same priority as a human's life. But that's just me.

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The following is from wikipedia:

Humans have a long period of development after birth. Partly, this is because they have a great deal to learn. Their life depends less on instinct than other animals, and more on learning. Humans are also born with their brains not so well developed as other mammals. There is a good reason for this. If their brains were better developed they would be larger, and this would make birth more difficult. In birth, the baby's head has to get through the 'birth canal', which is a passageway through the mother's pelvis.

Many animals use signs and sounds to communicate with each other. But humans have a special system called language. It allows them to express ideas by using words. Humans are capable of making abstract ideas and communicating them to others. Human language can express things that are not present, or talk about events that are not happening at that time. The things might be elsewhere, and the events may also have occurred at another place or time.[5] No known animals have a system of communication that is as elaborate as human language. By using words to communicate with each other, humans make complex communities with laws, traditions and customs. Humans like to understand the world around them. They try to explain things through myth, science and philosophy. Wanting to understand things has helped many humans make important discoveries.

Humans are the only species living today known to build fires, to cook their food and wear clothes. Humans use more technology than any other animal on Earth ever has. Humans like things that are beautiful and like to make art, literature and music. Humans use education and teaching to pass on skills, ideas and customs to the next generations.

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I agree with this, I was just sayin'...

 

I'm mainly vegetarian (95%) because it's cheaper and healthier than eating animals. Plus, I don't like the killing of animals. That doesn't mean I care about animals the same as humans. I was watching tv lately and found it interesting that saving dogs and cats through aspca costs 60 cents a day, but saving a human in Africa costs 50 cents. So saving a human is cheaper than saving a pet.

 

You may be right about that. People are usually vegetarians for those reasons.

I don't think it's wrong to care about animals, and for their well-being. That's not what I'm saying.

 

Now that I think about it.... most people are probably 95% vegetarian... Who in the world gets more than 10% of their calories from meat anyway??

 

My brother hardly eats any vegetables. I'm not kidding you : most of what he eats are chips, soda, meat, and maybe 10% of what he eats is vegetables. He does not eat healthy at all.

 

I think ants for example seem better than humans were it comes to cooperating.

 

The way I see it, it has nothing to do with "greater purpose" since from my point of view... Life just really doesn't have purpose. Its just inevitable that we are going to consume other living things that do not have the intellegence or reasoning abilities that we have. Sure, we can empathise with these creatures because of the fact that they have a nervous system so similar to ours. But it is tough to really relate to these creatures like we do with other humans. People keep pets, because dogs, cats, and pigs do have to ability to be our companions. They can meet our basic emotional needs. We can hold them and pet them and all.. But they can't meet the intellectual needs that another human being can. They cannot engage in conversation with us, they cannot participate in most of the intellectual activities that we as humans need to perform. Sometimes they make good "beasts of burden". But unfortunately for them because they cant meet our intellectual needs and because they are more valuable as food to us, we continue to eat them. Perhaps you feel that it is cruel. I will say that perhaps you have a good case, I am cruel and morally flawed. But, I choose to continue down this cruel and morally flawed path, I am making a conscious decision to continue to eat chickens, fish, and beef occasionally.
What is my reasons for doing this? Well... the vegan diet was nice, I always had plenty of good meals. But I constantly got messages from my digestive system that what I was doing was incorrect. And it punished me by scaring away all my peers with the most horrible gas you could ever imagine.(seriously it was fucking horrible, i kid you not. I myself wanted to escape the room, trouble is I cant escape my own digestive system!) Giving everyone around me that unpleasent experience was motivation enough for me to go back to eating other animals. I also am not fond of how much it costs to buy a vegan source of Omega-3 DHA... Fish oil is so much cheaper.
Now that ive chosen the less compassionate path toward animals, my quality of life has improved. I can save more money buying fish oil instead of the vegan omega-3 DHA. And I dont have all the horrible gas issues. I tried everything, different vegan foods, and I also tried letting my digestive system "adjust" to the diet but... it would not "adjust". Tossing aside all the legumes and shit and having a few slabs of meat a day greatly improved my gas issues. I still get plenty of fibre from plant sources... Hell most of what I eat is still plant matter, which is how it is supposed to be anyway I believe. Oh, and I still enjoy the occasional veggie burger, or vegan hot dog. These soy products are just so damned good! Especially soymilk, ill take soymilk anyday over real milk. Soymilk makes me more gassy than dairy but because I dont eat all them legumes and oats I can keep it in my diet. Real milk does kinda suck, makes my mouth feel all gross, and mucousy. But string cheese and yogurt don't do this to me as much.
Back to the garden snail issue... I think that theres really no need to compare the priorities between us humans, and the garden snail or any other animal. If theres snails all over the place, and they taste good, and my family needs them as food. Ill not hesitate to hunt them down, collect them, and put them in my stew for the wife and kids. Its got nothing to do with my survival being more important... Its all about me knowing that I care more about my family and myself than some random garden snail. From my point of view, the garden snail is disposable, and is in conflict with me, because it carries nutrients and energy that I need to survive. It's also not intellegent, not protected by any laws, and can be killed quickly and easily without really even knowing what hit it, I might as well go right ahead and eat it.

 

Thats ridiculous, it's not cooperation if there's no freewill.
Ants do what they are programed by nature to do, they don't have any choice in the matter

 

I see, so animals are ruled out of that competition anyway due to their instincts?

 

What are human instincts? Do we have any besides fighting and fucking?

 

What is free will? How are you sure animals have none?

 

Go ahead and anthropomorphize all you want p), ants don't have free will.

 

LOL I was wondering the same thing....LOLOLOLOLOL......

OK, I can think of some...inventing, creating, spreading good will, helping less fortuneate....helping other creatures....should I go on?

 

But they do cooperate better than humans :sultan:

 

This question has never made sense to me and I've had to defend my vegetarianism for as long as I can remember. A better question would be, "Why in the world would someone choose Not to be vegetarian??" I honestly can't believe the whole world isn't vegetarian. Why would someone choose a cruel lifestyle (eating meat) over one that promotes compassion (vegetarianism)? Why would someone choose a lifestyle that contributes to deforestation that effects Earth negatively? Why is that even allowed? Why am I even answering this question when it's a no brainer? I could go on and on with this, but you know what, you just can't get through to some selfish/greedy people.

 

Its pretty unfortunate that my survival as well as my quality of life is a result of my selfishness... =( I can go back to being vegan at anytime.. But I want coal to heat my home, gasoline for my car, wood to build my home, and insulation. The means to acquire these things are always morally questionable. And also, these resources are in fact all vegan. And as ive said before, some people might be a little on the fence as to wether or not coal is vegan.
Deforestation certainly does lead to the destruction of homes for certain living things... well... while that may be true, the products im acquiring are indeed vegan. You see... when I ate a vegan diet none of that changed. The fact that I was using the earth's resources to survive and improve my quality of life remained, only thing that changed was I was blowing everyone away with my rancid farts.
The earth is indeed a beautiful place, full of all the natural resources that we need for survival. Ideally if we could keep this going on forever that would be nice. But we get nowhere by not reaping the benefits of earth's natural resources. There does need to be a healthy balance, living in a city full of smog, and polluting the environment with chemicals does indeed hurt society as a whole. And the dust bowl of the 1930's was definitely hell, and im certain global warming/greenhouse gasses and all that shit will lead to a pretty nasty fate as well(if it even exists, I am not a scientist that specializes in this subject so I wont pretend that I have any expertise in this field, but I do know there are varying points of view on this subject).
Either way... there is a whole lot of, "I dont know" and speculating out there. But what I do know is that there is so much in the world that is beyond our comprehension. Change is definite. And what many scientists all agree with is that our earth, sun, and solar system are not immortal. It will not matter how good we are to our environment. The fate is the same. The earth will drop into the sun in a supernova(according to the experts). And in the meantime if we do not use earth's natural resources to our advantage, all we will have done is abstained from using earth's natural resources to our advantage. True, perhaps our use of the earth's natural resources ages the planet faster... but you have to ask yourself what do you want? Longer planet life, or a better quality of life through living in an advanced civilization? It seems that as humans, our collective decision leans more toward civilization.

 

They have wars with other colony's, they even take them as slaves. I've seen red ants take over black ant colonys. I even fomented a little coup once by putting a black ant in an adjacent red ant colony. Within a few day the black ants that weren't dead were slaves

 

Ever notice how ants look exactly like the alien greys that tons of people keep saying they see? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
They are the mini's...our ants....

We are the giants here.....but then the ant aliens will be bigger than us, eventually....It is all an experiment, I tell ya! LOL

 

Ok stop it Moon, you're scaring the kids