Why do vegetarians and vegans not care about killing plants? (serious)

We never kill the plants. We just gently remove the fruits of their labor for our enjoyment.

troof wrote:

Plants take in CO2 and give us O2 (good).

Animals take in O2 and breathe out CO2 (bad).

So why do these hippies think it is ok to kill plants, but bad to kill animals? Aren't they harming the earth and causing global warming by killing all these plants?

Just some food for thought (no pun intended). Feel free to discus, but I'm calling checkmate.

The extraordinary amount of water, land and other resources that go into livestock production outweighs any environmental negatives of eating plants.

There wouldn't be nearly as many animals to breathe out CO2 if we didn't raise them to be eaten in huge quantities.

The main issue that ethical vegans have with the act of eating animals is the fact that animals simply don't want to die, and needlessly depriving another living creature of life is, in their eyes, unethical.

Question for yourself the ethical decision to impregnate an animal, take its child, kill it, and package its flesh to feed to America's children in deep-fried nugget form for Friday's hot lunch. I don't know, man.

That's the thought process behind eating plants instead; I respect it. When one can live just fine off of plants alone (and B12 supplements, hardly a checkmate), why not?

Five Attributes of Persons

1) Consciousness

2) The ability to reason

3) Self-motivated activity

4) Capacity for communication

5) Self-awareness

Person ≠ Human: Note that not all humans are persons (e.g., the severely mentally disabled), and not all persons are humans (e.g., intelligent aliens).

No single criterion above is necessary or sufficient to be a person. Combinations of 3 or 4 of these 5 traits might be sufficient in order to count as a person. The more of these 5 features something has, the stronger that thing's right to life is.

Plants are not persons.

People do not think that a child is morally repugnant for plucking blades of grass from the ground, or that a teenager is morally repugnant for mowing the lawn during the summer to earn money.

People possess this intuition because plants are not persons. Killing plants is not morally analogous to killing pigs or dogs.

smile wrote:

Five Attributes of Persons

1) Consciousness

2) The ability to reason

3) Self-motivated activity

4) Capacity for communication

5) Self-awareness

Person ≠ Human: Note that not all humans are persons (e.g., the severely mentally disabled), and not all persons are humans (e.g., intelligent aliens).

No single criterion above is necessary or sufficient to be a person. Combinations of 3 or 4 of these 5 traits might be sufficient in order to count as a person. The more of these 5 features something has, the stronger that thing's right to life is.

Plants are not persons.

People do not think that a child is morally repugnant for plucking blades of grass from the ground, or that a teenager is morally repugnant for mowing the lawn during the summer to earn money.

People possess this intuition because plants are not persons. Killing plants is not morally analogous to killing pigs or dogs.

No one said anything about eating a person. Checkmate doofus.

What are you talking about?

You asked "Why do vegetarians and vegans not care about killing plants?"

I explained why.

I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan. From what I understand, eating plants is more resource efficient. That's one of the advantages. Plants are not sentient beings. That's the morality part.

Also, if you don't want to become a vegetarian or a vegan, eating poultry is a lot more resource efficient than eating red meat. Chickens put on more meat per calorie (or something like that) than beef. If I remember correctly, it's something like 5x more meat.

troof wrote:

Plants take in CO2 and give us O2 (good).

Animals take in O2 and breathe out CO2 (bad).

So why do these hippies think it is ok to kill plants, but bad to kill animals? Aren't they harming the earth and causing global warming by killing all these plants?

Just some food for thought (no pun intended). Feel free to discus, but I'm calling checkmate.

GOOD POINT BRO. We have to murder to eat no matter what, so why not murder animals which taste better AND are better for you (animal protein necessary to survive)

Before I debunk UTBOG I will mention that some - but not all - plants want to be eaten, hence they grow their seeds inside tasty nutrient rich things that taste good so animals will eat the seeds and go poop them somewhere else. They choose to suffer this horror because they themselves can't move around much, and evolutionary fortune disfavors the immobile.But many plants don't want to be eaten, and some are so emphatic about it that they develop poisons to kill or sicken anyone who dares munch them. Among these are soybeans, which are rapidly becoming the protein staple of the processed food world. Vegans seem to have no problem with the wholesale slaughter of these innocent beans which are soaked in carcinogenic hexane to remove their defensive chemicals.

the used to be omnivore guy wrote:

The extraordinary amount of water, land and other resources that go into livestock production outweighs any environmental negatives of eating plants

On the contrary, the population will grow to the maximum sustainable by any given food supply. The more efficient the production methods, the more food is produced, and the more the population grows. The environmental effects of that go well beyond any resulting from food production alone.

If people hadn't started eating grass, cities would never have been built, as that's simply impossible to do without storing massive amounts of grain. Or at least potatoes in the case of the ingenious Incas.

More calorie-rich vegetables = more people = worse environment

Liberalism and its tent of many diverse "special interests" (of which PETA is one) is full of holes and self contradiction. They argue by emotion, not logic.

Farming kills a tremendous amount of bugs, lizards , frogs, even organic homestead type farming. Unless you want to starve that is. Most of these holier than though vegetarians never tried to subsistence farm and don't know squat about it. Forget about trying to feed the world ….just live in some kind of my food is special I'm special fantasy. Nothing wrong with trying to eat well but give the dumb shit a break already.

smile wrote:

, or that a teenager is morally repugnant for mowing the lawn during the summer to earn money.

.

If you are killing your grass by mowing it, you are doing something wrong.

the used to be omnivore guy wrote:

The extraordinary amount of water, land and other resources that go into livestock production outweighs any environmental negatives of eating plants.

That's liberal bs.

troof wrote:

Plants take in CO2 and give us O2 (good).

Animals take in O2 and breathe out CO2 (bad).

So why do these hippies think it is ok to kill plants, but bad to kill animals? Aren't they harming the earth and causing global warming by killing all these plants?

Just some food for thought (no pun intended). Feel free to discus, but I'm calling checkmate.

Just because you put "serious" at the end of your subject line doesn't change the fact that you're trolling. Checkmate.

1.38/10

Jainism is the religion for you. Vegetarianism and veganism takes priority, but eventually we also have to make amends and respect even for our use of living plants, that sacred foundry.

That, or you're just trolling insincerely, in which case, you'll have a reward for sowing confusion amongst the righteous, as it is written in the Holy Gathas, transcribed by the great wise benevolent Zoraster , 3500 years ago.

smile wrote:

Five Attributes of Persons

1) Consciousness

2) The ability to reason

3) Self-motivated activity

4) Capacity for communication

5) Self-awareness

Person ≠ Human: Note that not all humans are persons (e.g., the severely mentally disabled), and not all persons are humans (e.g., intelligent aliens).

No single criterion above is necessary or sufficient to be a person. Combinations of 3 or 4 of these 5 traits might be sufficient in order to count as a person. The more of these 5 features something has, the stronger that thing's right to life is.

Plants are not persons.

People do not think that a child is morally repugnant for plucking blades of grass from the ground, or that a teenager is morally repugnant for mowing the lawn during the summer to earn money.

People possess this intuition because plants are not persons. Killing plants is not morally analogous to killing pigs or dogs.

Ummm, Peter Singer argues that even infants as old as a year or so are not self-aware and therefore that they may be killed. And some disabled people. And... Here's an excerpt from the entry for Peter Singer at Wikipedia:

_________________________

Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"[20]—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."[21]

Singer classifies euthanasia as voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary. Voluntary euthanasia is that to which the subject consents. He argues in favour of voluntary euthanasia and some forms of non-voluntary euthanasia, including infanticide in certain instances, but opposes involuntary euthanasia.

Religious critics have argued that Singer's ethic ignores and undermines the traditional notion of the sanctity of life. Singer agrees and believes the notion of the sanctity of life ought to be discarded as outdated, unscientific, and irrelevant to understanding problems in contemporary bioethics. Bioethicists associated with the Disability Rights and Disability Studies communities have argued that his epistemology is based on ableist conceptions of disability.[22]

Singer has experienced the complexities of some of these questions in his own life. His mother had Alzheimer's disease. He said, "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult".[23] In an interview with Ronald Bailey, published in December 2000, he explained that his sister shares the responsibility of making decisions about his mother. He did say that, if he were solely responsible, his mother might not continue to live.[24]

___________________________

I myself think that Singer is more disabled than those he says we should be allowed to kill: they are not much of a threat to me, but Singer is.

By which I meant Singer is much less ABLE to live with others than the norm.

stop the idiocy wrote:

the used to be omnivore guy wrote:

The extraordinary amount of water, land and other resources that go into livestock production outweighs any environmental negatives of eating plants.

That's liberal bs.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vegetarian-diet-bad-for-environment-meat-study-lettuce-three-times-worse-emissions-bacon-a6773671.html

Funny thing 1: the study that you're referencing was produced by Carnegie Mellon University, which is known to be more liberal leaning.

Funny thing 2: the study is misleading. If you read the actual study (link below), it's comparing bacon and lettuce based on calories. If you calculate the calories, it's comparing about 3 strips of bacon to 93 cups of lettuce. No one eats 93 cups of lettuce in a day except for maybe Michael Phelps. It's basically saying 31 cups of lettuce has the same environmental impact that 3 strips of bacon does. This is a classic "media grabs something out of context and makes it go viral" things.

Funny thing 3: the study only focuses on a few types of vegetables, so even if lettuce was worse than bacon based on serving sizes, it would be an outlier study where most studies say the opposite.

Hey there moron, have you ever tried to train a plant to do tricks? Huh? Have you?!?!?

Put that is your pipe and smoke and see where that takes you.

troof wrote:

Plants take in CO2 and give us O2 (good).

Animals take in O2 and breathe out CO2 (bad).

So why do these hippies think it is ok to kill plants, but bad to kill animals? Aren't they harming the earth and causing global warming by killing all these plants?

Just some food for thought (no pun intended). Feel free to discus, but I'm calling checkmate.

It continues to astonish me the things people post. Literally all I do when I post a rational thought is spend 5-10 minutes doing some basic research on the Google. The information is out there, and it's not that hard to find it. Which makes it pretty obvious that the OP is a troll because he/she posted this question on Letsrun of all places.

Here is the result of some basic research.

Vegans / Vegetarians often choose this lifestyle to limit the suffering of animals. Scientific studies show (basic Google search) that, based on what we know, animals can feel pain and suffer while plants cannot (there are probably some small exceptions to this rule). Thus, "killing" a plant doesn't cause any pain and suffering while killing an animal does.

And here's the real kicker of your argument. It's also known that meat production is inefficient. You actually have to grow and "kill" more plants in order to sustain livestock. Feeding these plants to livestock actually wastes calories and water. Research shows that it takes multiple pounds of plant calories to produce one pound of meat calories. Meat eaters are indirectly killing more plants than vegans / vegetarians.

Also, here's another flaw. Your argument is basically saying that vegans / vegetarians should be okay eating animals if they're okay eating plants. Perhaps they believe it's not okay to eat either. By eating only plants, they are still minimizing suffering. You're basically saying it should be one or the other, do all good things or no good things. It's better to some good things than no good things.

Let me just emphasize again that I spent 5-10 minutes on the Google and was able to find credible information on this.