Can a vegan or vegatarian please explain to me why it is OK..?!
Can a vegan or vegatarian please explain to me why it is OK..?
to eat plants, but not animals? Aren't they all living organisms? Why is it morally OK to eat a tomato but not a chicken. They were both once alive. Where does the line get drawn, is it because the animals have a brain and walk around? Help me out here.
Answers:
Because vegetarians and vegans are hypocrites most of the time. Both animals and plants can be a crop and you are right, both are living organisms.
If God didnt want us to eat animals, he wouldnt have made them out of meat.
Source(s):
My fantastic brain
they don't have meat though
For me it's because it's meat and I don't digest it very well. Plants help me digest and help speed up my metabolism. There are different reasons for different people though.
I think its the brain. I want to know about vegetarians who wear leather, etc...
Animals have a heart.
They do what people do. They eat, drink, scratch, take a wiz, cry, etc...
animals can suffer, and are horribly mistreated while be slaughtered... but for alot of vegetarians its just the thought of eating a dead animal, and the fact that its incredibly unhealthy to have decomposing meat rotting in your colon.. it actually gets stuck there when you die the average person has like 6 lbs of rotting beef in their colon.. its pretty gross.. vegetables are natural and asexual.. they dont have mother to morn them.. and the majority of animals are like humans inthe way that they communicate and care for eachother.. just because we cant communicate with them we believe them to be below us.. and as far as vegetarians wearing leather, well maybe they just arent educated, or maybe they didnt realize, but either way, as long as their doing something towards living a natural life its better than being a meat eating leather wearer.. in my book atleast.
Here is the one and only reason, and Ive been a vegetarian for 10 years.
The one thing in ANY living thing that makes it feel is the central nervous system.
If it doesnt have that, it has no feeling, be is physical or mental or emotional.
Plants dont have one. Animals do. Humans do. If it has this central nervous system that feeds information to its brain, the organism has the ability to fear, love, and basically 'feel'.
Tomatoes dont have that, so they feel nothing. they dont think. Cows do.
Easily put:
Plants aren't concious of themselves. There's no evidence of this. If you pick a flower, it doesn't scream. As far as we're aware, plants cannot feel pain. Animals (including us) can, though.
...Though in all honesty, I feel bad for eating plants anyway. I like little plants. I think they're wonderful. ...but it's the kinder of the two greater evils to snip off a stalk of celery than it is to behead a living chicken.
well there is a difference between vegan's and vegatarians. Vegans eat absolutly nothing from an animal not their meat not their eggs none of that and vegatarians may or may not eat stuff like fish or chicken but not beef or pork but will still drink milk and eat eggs. vegans are the one's that would think of it as it has all vital organs that a human has so it's not right. and that if it comes from the earth it's natural therefore ok to eat.
Been asked that before.
Well, I guess the best way to explain would be to say that we allmust do as much as we can to lessen the suffering on this planet. For some people, that means just not flipping out when someone hits your car with their car door in a parking lot.
For others, it means not eating veal or pate or other flesh foods that involve even more excessive suffering.
For some, it means not eating any flesh foods or seafoods, nothing with a face so to speak but will drink milk and eat cheese and eggs.
For some, they will not touch ANYthing made from animals including honey.
I think it more has to do with not harming anything with a face or taking anything away from them.
Plants probably do feel pain, but we all do what we can and hopefully we'll all evolve a little more with each generation.
Mr. God. Are you saying that it's okay to be a cannibalist?
Everyone has a line somewhere that they draw. Vegetarians don't eat animals. You can ask the same question of everyone. Why is it OK to eat a Cow but not a dog or a horse or another person?
For me its basically the following.
1. Eating Vegetarian is healthier for me.
2. I don't need to eat meat so I don't see a reason to subject the animals to that pain and abuse.
Personally I think each person much make there own determination of where that line is drawn. I don't eat meat but I do each cheese. My wife and kids eat eggs, milk and cheese but no meat. If some asks me why I don't eat meat I will give my reasons but I don't force my views on others.
Great question! I am a practicing Buddhist and the mandate is to not kill sentient beings, that is anything that is aware and can feel.
Plants and trees respond to air, water, and light but aren't considered to be "feeling" because their response is an involuntary reaction to stimuli. You're right, It's a fine line but it's easy worth walking.
I'm a veggie, and I don't eat anything with a complex CNS (central nervous system). This includes all the higher animals (I hate that terminology) such as fish, dogs, cows, sheep, chickens...but does not include mussels or prawns, and certainly not plants. Plants do not have nervous systems at all - everything is controlled using communication substances such as auxins. I don't eat them because I hate them - they're an important part of life and essential to life on this planet. They're also beautiful and fascinating.
But we need to eat plants to survive. You can't get by without eating something living, because we're not producers (like plants). However, we don't need to eat meat to survive: there are enough alternatives. Until there are alternatives to eating plants that do not have adverse effects on the body or the environment, I'm afraid we still have to keep eating them. They harness the energy of the sun: all the stored energy that we use originally came from the sun, via plants. We can't do this: we can't drink some water, breathe in carbon dioxide and lie in the sun to live.
Besides...never heard of a battery farmed tomato. :)
plants have no brains this means:
they cannot experience pain
THey have no emotions (don't tell me that animals don't. I had a dog starve herself to death out of sadness after her sister died.. exactly like "When the Red Fern Grows").
That's a big part of it, anyway. Also you have to realize that there are other reasons for being vegetarian besides having an aversion to the idea of animals dying.
Health- Animals today are full of disease, cancers, mad cow disease, etc.. It's all becaues of how people raise them, the hormones they're pumped full of, etc.. vegetarian animals (cows) being fed ground up sheep, etc... Science is finally showing that a plant-based diet is better for our health. Most Americans eat WAY more protein than the human body needs.. etc.. etc..
Ethics- Some vegetarians acknowledge the fact that we are "above" the animals, and the idea of animals dieing for our sustinance isn't WRONG in itself.. however they have a problem with the extreme inhumanity of HOW it is all done nowday. Gone are the days of happy cows roaming the pastures enjoying the sunshine and sweet grass, and then being slaughtered quickly and "relatively" humanely. Now they are kept in miserable conditions (which increase disease) Lead perfectly miserable lives and even their manner of death is prolonged and inhumane. They feel it is wrong to support these kinds of practices.
Some people just don't like the taste of meat, or their system doesn't tolerate it very well..
Plants don't have a soul.
They don't think or feel anything.
Though animals do. They cry and feel scared, ect., ect..
How about if you have a big dinner party. Invite all your friends and family and as everyone is sitting down to a nice meal - you take out an huge butcher knife. Slice off the head of the chicken and then slice the tomato in half. Which one causes the greater instictive horrified reaction in your guests? Which one seems more violent and causes more pain and fear that we can recognize?
I go with what is the option that causes the least harm. There are all kinds of violence and harm in this world and I just want to minimize my participation in those things.
Plus tomatoes are full of vitamins and anti-oxidiants and taste wonderful - the chicken is just dead and cooked flesh eaten off the bone of an animal that wanted to live and died in pain and fear. Seems like an obvious choice to me!
umm because plants don't have feelings & animals do.
Plants cannot feel, touch, love, or cry. Animals do. They scream when they feel pain. Plants do not have a nervous system as animals do.
People are animals too, so do you think it is morally okay to eat a friend or a sister?
If we didn't have plants, what would there be to eat besides animals?
I'm really tired of answering this question over and over so here,read this:
One of the questions most frequently asked of any vegan is: “what about plants?” Indeed, I do not know any vegan who has not gotten that question at least once and most of us have heard it many times.
Of course, no one who asks this question really thinks that we cannot distinguish between, say, a chicken and a head of lettuce. That is, if, at your next dinner party, you chop a head of lettuce in front of your guests, you will get a different reaction than if you were to carve a live chicken. If, while walking in your garden, I step on a flower intentionally, you may quite correctly be annoyed with me, but if I intentionally kicked your dog, you would be upset with me in a different way. No one really thinks of these as equivalent acts. Everyone recognizes that there is an important difference between the plant and the dog that make kicking the dog a morally more serious act than stepping on a flower.
The difference between the animal and the plant involves sentience. That is, nonhumans―or at least the ones we routinely exploit―are clearly conscious of sense perceptions. Sentient beings have minds; they have preferences, desires, or wants. This is not to say that animal minds are like human minds. For example, the minds of humans, who use symbolic language to navigate their world, may be very different from the minds of bats, who use echolocation to navigate theirs. It is difficult to know. But it is irrelevant; the human and the bat are both sentient. They are both the sorts of beings who have interests; they both have preferences, desires, or wants. The human and the bat may think differently about those interests, but there can be no serious doubt that both have interests, including an interest in avoiding pain and suffering and an interest in continued existence.
Plants are qualitatively different from humans and sentient nonhumans in that plants are certainly alive but they are not sentient. Plants do not have interests. There is nothing that a plant desires, or wants, or prefers because there is no mind there to engage in these cognitive activities. When we say that a plant “needs” or “wants” water, we are no more making a statement about the mental status of the plant than we are when we say that a car engine “needs” or “wants” oil. It may be in my interest to put oil in my car. But it is not in my car’s interest; my car has no interests.
A plant may respond to sunlight and other stimuli but that does not mean the plant is sentient. If I run an electrical current through a wire attached to a bell, the bell rings. But that does not mean that the bell is sentient. Plants do not have nervous systems, benzodiazepine receptors, or any of the characteristics that we identify with sentience. And this all makes scientific sense. Why would plants evolve the ability to be sentient when they cannot do anything in response to an act that damages them? If you touch a flame to a plant, the plant cannot run away; it stays right where it is and burns. If you touch a flame to a dog, the dog does exactly what you would do―cries in pain and tries to get away from the flame. Sentience is a characteristic that has evolved in certain beings to enable them to survive by escaping from a noxious stimulus. Sentience would serve no purpose for a plant; plants cannot “escape.”
I am not suggesting that we cannot have moral obligations that concern plants, but I am saying that we cannot have moral obligations that we owe to plants. That is, we may have a moral obligation not to cut down a tree, but that is not an obligation that we owe to the tree. The tree is not the sort of entity to which we can have moral obligations. We can have an obligation that we owe to all of the sentient creatures who live in the tree or who depend on it for their survival. We can have moral obligations to other humans and nonhuman animals who inhabit the planet not to destroy trees wantonly. But we cannot have any moral obligations to the tree; we can only have moral obligations to sentient beings and the tree is not sentient and has no interests. There is nothing that the tree prefers, wants, or desires. The tree is not the sort of entity that cares about what we do to it. The tree is an “it.” The squirrel and the birds who live in the tree certainly have an interest in our not chopping down the tree, but the tree does not. It may be wrong morally to chop down a tree wantonly but that is a qualitatively different act from shooting a deer.
Talking about the “rights” of trees, as some do, is to invite equating trees and nonhuman animals and that can only work to the detriment of the animals. Indeed, it is common to hear environmentalists talk about our responsibly managing our natural resources and including nonhuman animals as a “resource” to be managed. That is a problem for those of us who do not see nonhumans as “resources” for our use. Trees and other plants are resources that we can use. We have an obligation to use those resources wisely, but that is an obligation that we owe only to other persons, be they human or nonhuman.
Finally, a variant of the plant question is the question: “what about insects―are they sentient?” No one really knows for certain as far as I am aware. I certainly give insects the benefit of doubt. I do not kill insects in my house and I try never to step on them when I walk. In the case of insects, the line may be difficult to draw but that does not mean that a line cannot be drawn―and drawn clearly―in the majority of cases. We kill and eat at least ten billion land animals every year in the U.S. alone. This does not include all the sea animals who we kill and eat. Maybe there is a question about whether clams or mussels are sentient, but there is no doubt that all the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, etc. are sentient. The nonhumans from whom we get milk and eggs are undoubtedly sentient.
The fact that we may not know whether insects are sentient does not mean that we have any doubt whatsoever about these other nonhuman animals; we do not. And to say that we do not know whether insects are sentient so we cannot assess the morality of eating the flesh or using the products from nonhumans we know without doubt are sentient, or of bringing those domesticated nonhumans into existence for the purpose of using them as our “resources,” is, of course, absurd.
Source(s):
Gary L. Francione
? 2006 Gary L. Francione
http://animal-law.org/
Plants are not sentient beings. Animals can feel pain and that's why many people find it objectionable to put them through incredibly painful, disgusting conditions in order to bring them to our table when we can survive perfectly well without eating meat.
We need to eat plants to survive. We do not need to eat animals to survive. Plants it is unknown if they can feel pain, but based on lack of central nervous system believed they can't. Animals can feel pain.