Natalie Portman: "Dairy and eggs come from female cows and female chickens. We're exploiting female bodies"

Think it through wrote:

We are bags of chemicals grunting our way to eventual heat death.

?

+1 yes, the false assumption that atheists have no morals because they believe in science. And to think you were trying to think through this "logically" is quite ironic. btw vegans are generally more educated, wealthier and better looking people on average

think it though more wrote:

Think it through wrote:

Something I find fascinating: these "extremely progressive" statements and views are most likely to come from atheists.

Thought through logically, their viewpoint says we live in a meaningless flux and that life on earth is no more than a competition for scarce resources.

There is no such thing as morals, abstractions, etc. We are bags of chemicals grunting our way to eventual heat death.

So who cares about the chickens?!

Ah, the old tired argument that secular people don’t believe in or have morals. ?

think it though more wrote:

Think it through wrote:

Something I find fascinating: these "extremely progressive" statements and views are most likely to come from atheists.

Thought through logically, their viewpoint says we live in a meaningless flux and that life on earth is no more than a competition for scarce resources.

There is no such thing as morals, abstractions, etc. We are bags of chemicals grunting our way to eventual heat death.

So who cares about the chickens?!

Ah, the old tired argument that secular people don’t believe in or have morals. ?

That's not what I said. I didn't say committed atheists can't delude themselves into thinking they are acting morally. I mean that if one truly believes in a purely physical universe, that position precludes the very possibility of true morals, or other

abstractions like love, honor, etc. There are ONLY particles bouncing off one another. If some random collection of those particles (I.e. a human) happens to, bizarrely, become self aware, it still means nothing.

Can you see that believing in abstractions like morals, or chicken rights, or "rights" of any sort requires belief in something metaphysical? If not, the whole concept is absurd.

Think it through wrote:

Can you see that believing in abstractions like morals, or chicken rights, or "rights" of any sort requires belief in something metaphysical? If not, the whole concept is absurd.

No, believing in morals does not require belief in a god. To think so is absurd.

Think it through wrote:

think it though more wrote:

Ah, the old tired argument that secular people don’t believe in or have morals. ?

That's not what I said. I didn't say committed atheists can't delude themselves into thinking they are acting morally. I mean that if one truly believes in a purely physical universe, that position precludes the very possibility of true morals, or other

abstractions like love, honor, etc. There are ONLY particles bouncing off one another. If some random collection of those particles (I.e. a human) happens to, bizarrely, become self aware, it still means nothing.

Can you see that believing in abstractions like morals, or chicken rights, or "rights" of any sort requires belief in something metaphysical? If not, the whole concept is absurd.

INCORRECT!

Can you see that disbelieving "in abstractions like morals, or chicken rights, or 'rights' of any sort requires belief in" MAGIC - since ALL of those metaphysical concepts that you reference are 100% formulated by "particles bouncing off one another"? Thus, your entire argument is absurd.

The people who believe in a scary jewish god who will burn you if you don't obey, are living their lives guided by fear. I don't think they're any sort of examples of morals--they live on the philosophical level of 5 year olds -- do what scary daddy says, or else.

reducing consumption of animal products is the truth

Dennis' wrote:

This world is done. Just enjoy the ride.

She explains how her veganism relates to women's issues...

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/natalie-portman-explains-how-being-vegan-relates-to-womens-issues-001253790.html

and babies come from females, which explains how men exploit women....

all of which accounts for her vegetable brain.

lokokj wrote:

reducing consumption of animal products is the truth

Look up the work by Weston A. Price and his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

I HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF LIFETIMES IN HELL, WITH ONE YEAR EQUAL TO EVERY HAIR ON THE COWS BACKS THAT YOU HAVE EATEN!!

BURN FUC*TARDS BURN =>}

THEN COME BACK AS COWS AND BE SLAUGHTERED THE SAME WAY AS THOU MURDER THOU INNOCENT; WITHOUT MORAL.

I SPIT ON YOU.

I LAUGH AT YOU.

I PITY YOU.

FOOLISH IGNORANT DEMONS.

GO TO HELL DEMONS! wrote:

I HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF LIFETIMES IN HELL, WITH ONE YEAR EQUAL TO EVERY HAIR ON THE COWS BACKS THAT YOU HAVE EATEN!!

BURN FUC*TARDS BURN =>}

THEN COME BACK AS COWS AND BE SLAUGHTERED THE SAME WAY AS THOU MURDER THOU INNOCENT; WITHOUT MORAL.

I SPIT ON YOU.

I LAUGH AT YOU.

I PITY YOU.

FOOLISH IGNORANT DEMONS.

Not sure if trolling or a mentally ill vegan. If it is the latter, you need some animal saturated fat, cholesterol and animal based omega 3 fatty acids ASAP.

Fuc* you’re dumb!

She has a point, we generally eat cows but not bulls and we eat chickens not roosters. Maybe she doesn't eat chickens maybe she only eats cocks.

think it through more wrote:

Think it through wrote:

Can you see that believing in abstractions like morals, or chicken rights, or "rights" of any sort requires belief in something metaphysical? If not, the whole concept is absurd.

No, believing in morals does not require belief in a god. To think so is absurd.

Good lord (pun intended), you guys are dense. You get so hung up on thinking, "you're religious and saying atheists aren't moral"-- or the other guy who got off on a tangent about the jewish conception of God--that you miss the entire point.

Did I say anything about religion? Did I say I am religious? I get that you may have had annoying religious freaks bother you and that you put up your anti-religion defenses too quickly without comprehending what I am writing.

I am not writing from a position of religious judgement.

I am saying that if you believe in a purely physical universe, our condition is no different than a bunch of rocks banging around in a bucket. There are no "true" morals, only relative ones.

No such thing as right and wrong, only things that happen.

I truly believe most atheists don't understand the implication of their "position."

You Debauchery

Read Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens and Homo Deus

The man is clearly an atheist and also became an ethical vegan after doing research for his books. I honestly think you would enjoy the books. They are very well written and search for truth and do not simply try to confirm pre conceived beliefs.

If we are all just a bag of rocks as you say, does that mean that your or my or any other people's suffering does not matter?

You don't have to be a vegan, but you do have to recognize that animals suffer in a way very similar to us. That is just a basic scientific fact. You are welcome to make your own value judgement after that.

Yes, vegans can be annoying/moralizing. But so have just about any other reform leaders in history. When you believe there is injustice in the world, you speak up. Vegans see that injustice and speak up. It is very respectable thing to do.

Also, I don't think that Natalie is trying to say that male animals don't suffer. Her statements are probably intended for those who already recognize the suffering caused by eating animal flesh and are on the fence about Veganism vs. simple vegetarianism.

You sound like somebody whose read an introduction to philosophy book and hasn't really understood it. Or maybe - 'Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind'.

If you want to be consistent in your logic, and there are only particles, there is no me or you, and no beliefs. Why are you apparently getting so worked up about a cluster of particles that you are invoking magic on to create a person with 'beliefs' different to yours?

The belief that animals may be deserving of our moral concern is strengthened by secular beliefs. Or at least, for example, by not believing in the Christian idea that human beings are special and distinct from other animals and that God gave us the right or duty to rule over them.

Science says that animals are very much like us in important moral ways, for example the ability to feel pain and pleasure, and that many mammals at least, have advanced social brains. Even the very classification of ourselves as distinct species is arbitrary, given that we are simply arrangements of molecules constantly in flux. Why should we give rights to a human child born blind, deaf, and dumb, and severely mentally handicapped, but not to a chimpanzee?

Secular morality might never be able to put ultimate values on concrete grounds (neither can religion - what difference does it make if 'God says such and such is wrong'? Where did he get his belief?). What moral reasoning can do is determine if beliefs are consistent with each other and ultimate values.

You make the mistake of thinking that because 'rights' and 'morality' are human ideas, that every moral belief, and every moral system, is as absurd as any other, and that the belief in 'animal rights' is as absurd as the 'belief in God'. There is no scientific evidence that God exists, so basing beliefs around what he supposedly said or thinks is clearly absurd. No secular thinker believes that animal rights is an intrinsic part of the universe, it's just that the construct of 'animal rights' fits in with our basic values of compassion and our scientific knowledge of animals and their similarities to us.

Whenever I read an argument like yours, I'd bett that the person making it must be a psychopath. If there is any ultimate moral ground we can begin from, it's the ability to feel compassion and sympathy for other minds and beings, giving one the ability to judge actions not from a purely psychopathic and selfish point of view.

"Because Christian morality leaves animals out of account, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!"

~ On the Basis of Morality (Schopenhauer)

And, btw, although I'm a vegetarian, I think Natalie Portman is a loon, like many vegan absolutists. I also think Christianity is in many ways a useful myth and superior to many contemporary secular delusions, but on the subject of animals it fails, in my opinion, at least in a 21st century when meat eating and all the barbaric industrialized processes that it entails, is no longer necessary.

Cool story bro, changed my life.

Sigh. Another pseudo intellectual who is all for argument and discussion except when it comes to questioning his/her own beliefs.