Looking for Anti-Vegan and Vegitarian links

[Akhlut]

An also a counter to all that are bodies aren't mean to eat meat stuff.

A lot of human fossil sites show large amounts of evidence that humans have been eating meat for longer than Homo sapiens has been around.

We don't have teeth like large carnivores or omnivores because we use tools and cooking to do what our mouths can't do.

Our intestinal length is of a moderate length, like that of other omnivores. Further, while we don't eat raw meat, that's not so much due to meat putrifying in our guts as our puny immune systems and most humans not spending most of their lives eating raw meat these days. Because, hey, cooking our food means we get a lot more out of it.

We make enzymes to break down meat. If we weren't supposed to eat meat, why'd we have those enzymes?

Etc.

[Darth Wong]

Any argument that is based upon what we were "meant" to do is an argument from the assumption of creationism and is therefore useless to anyone who is intelligent enough to reject creationist bullshit.

Once you discard that argument, however, the only real argument in favour of meat-eating is subjective (the taste) and nutritive (the nutrients that you can only get from meat, specifically B12, or which you can get more easily from meat than from other foods.) To argue that the vegetarian argument about environmental impact is false is to deny reality.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Any argument that is based upon what we were "meant" to do is an argument from the assumption of creationism and is therefore useless to anyone who is intelligent enough to reject creationist bullshit.

I don't know if it's creationist, but it does stink of a naturalistic fallacy.

Do vegetarians and vegans ever stop and think that if everyone stopped "exploiting" animals tomorrow and they were all turned loose, they'd likely be easy pickings for predators and would die anyways? Something tells me that most Holsteins aren't going to be outrunning any wolves or cougars, millenia of animal husbandry has left them ill equipped. The predator population would explode.

[Surlethe]

If one wishes to go the "meant to ..." route, one can say that certain animals are meant to be eaten. The human race has, in fact, selectively bred feed animals for the purpose of providing meat for food. While it is wrong to assume the human body is meant -- i.e., designed -- for eating meat, it is not wrong to state that varieties of feed animals have been purposefully designed to provide meat for humans to eat.

[Plekhanov]

I'm not defending that position (which isn't one I hold) just pointing out that it is internally consistent for mainstream vegans to oppose taking milk from animals whilst supporting breast feeding.

But their argument was that the human body did not evolve to need animal products.

From my experience of arguing with vegans (I once lived in a house containing 3 of them and they had plenty of vegan friends) they use the 'we aren't meant to eat animal products' argument because it sometimes works on the gullible and ill-informed (just like anti-choice campaigners with their 'abortion causes cancer' type arguments) but they don't really believe it. When you rebut such nonsense by pointing out the fact that we can't digest B12 from any non-animal sources so we evolved with a need to eat animal products without skipping a beat they simply say 'well it's wrong anyway'.

The core belief for vegans is that it's wrong to abuse animals by using them for food some of the less scrupulous evangleist/more soft headed vegans will bolster that core belief with other arguments like the erroneous one from nature you mention but they didn't really know or particularly care if it was true so long as it helped achieve the greater good of converting people to veganism.

For most vegans though there is no inconsistency for them to favour breast feeding.

[Plekhanov]

An also a counter to all that are bodies aren't mean to eat meat stuff.

A lot of human fossil sites show large amounts of evidence that humans have been eating meat for longer than Homo sapiens has been around.

We don't have teeth like large carnivores or omnivores because we use tools and cooking to do what our mouths can't do.

Our intestinal length is of a moderate length, like that of other omnivores. Further, while we don't eat raw meat, that's not so much due to meat putrifying in our guts as our puny immune systems and most humans not spending most of their lives eating raw meat these days. Because, hey, cooking our food means we get a lot more out of it.

We make enzymes to break down meat. If we weren't supposed to eat meat, why'd we have those enzymes?

Etc.

An even stronger argument is out inability to digest B12 from non-animal sources, it's not just that we have the capacity to eat animal products until we developed the ability to fortify foods we positively needed to eat them.

Of course that doesn't render doing so moral it simply rebuts any argument that we aren't 'meant' to eat animal products.

[Plekhanov]

Do vegetarians and vegans ever stop and think that if everyone stopped "exploiting" animals tomorrow and they were all turned loose, they'd likely be easy pickings for predators and would die anyways? Something tells me that most Holsteins aren't going to be outrunning any wolves or cougars, millenia of animal husbandry has left them ill equipped. The predator population would explode.

Personally such is the suffering forced upon the many millions of animals unfortunate to be born into the factory farming industry I'd happily abandon one generation of them to the not so tender mercies of nature if it meant we didn't artificially create any more generations to endure such desperate lives.

Of course in the unlikely event that 'everyone stopped "exploiting" animals tomorrow' I'd expect either a humane slaughter program or retirement plan where livestock are cared for for the rest of their natural lives to be introduced, instead of simply booting all the animals out of farms which such a radically reformed society most likely wouldn't accept anyway.

[Justforfun000]

I used to be a vegetarian (no red meat) for 7 years. I got suckered into the same old bullshit about what we were 'meant' to subsist on. The internet would have been extremely useful then. Before that, you'd have to go really out of you way to research information rebutting these claims.
Now it's much simpler. The internet is a great pseudoscience exposer.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I don't really understand why "we aren't meant to" arguments are so compelling. Why would that convince anyone to stop eating it rather than the more pressing reasons of pain and suffering?

What does something's natural status have to do with whether you ought to do ti?

[FSTargetDrone]

I don't really understand why "we aren't meant to" arguments are so compelling. Why would that convince anyone to stop eating it rather than the more pressing reasons of pain and suffering?

What does something's natural status have to do with whether you ought to do ti?

Dunno about any other vegans other than myself, my girlfriend and our veg*n friends, but it wasn't even a consideration in our case. She and I remain far more concerned with the ethical and environmental issues than any sort of argument that humans are physiologically suited (or not) with such a diet. It's not even a health issue for me, at least not to any great degree. And it extends to things other than food. Obviously clothing is an issue (no leather belts/shoes/wallets/purses) but we also buy detergents, soaps, shampoo, toothpaste and other products that are made without animal products (no soaps made from animal fat) and that are "cruelty free." Even sugar is something we are aware of (none refined with bone char).

We were at a wedding over the weekend and one of my cousins was asking me if I go around reading labels. I said I do, but not as much as one might think, at least not anymore. He was under the impression that it was some sort of daunting, complicated issue, but it's not really any different from making sure your food is free from peanuts/dairy or wheat for those people who are allergic to those things. We pretty much tend to buy the same brand names all the time, so I know that X is vegan. Incidentally, we ate very little at the wedding, other than the salad. And since I didn't know what was in the dressing, I skipped that too, as well as the bread, the cake and even the crackers. Needless to say, dinner was shitty.

Restaurants are generally problematic. Most places offer at least some with vegetarian choices. And even though most people are familiar with vegetarian diets (though abstaining from fish seems to be an issue with some people: "but fish isn't meat!"), not nearly as many people know what "vegan" even means (or how to pronounce it!). Milk seems to be in everything, so if my girlfriend and I are at a new restaurant, we have to be very sure that there's no butter in the pasta or milk in the biscuits. Saying we are allergic to dairy is a more effective way to get the point across. Of course it's only really an issue when we are out with other people who eat meat. Nearly every time we go out alone, it's to a vegetarian restaurant that has vegan choices on the menu. And we have a lot of good choices in this area.

[Surlethe]

I don't really understand why "we aren't meant to" arguments are so compelling. Why would that convince anyone to stop eating it rather than the more pressing reasons of pain and suffering?

What does something's natural status have to do with whether you ought to do ti?

Remember that most people in the US are creationists, or at least religious enough to believe God created everything through some method and has a purpose for it. When you look at it from that perspective, in conjunction with the fact that crossing God's will is the very definition of wrong, it becomes clear that abstaining from meat if we were meant to eat it is wrong.