Would it be moral to kill you if I'd let you live in a decent, stress-free environment before your death?
Would it be moral to raise human children, give them a nice childhood and then kill them before they reach adulthood because they're super tasty then?
I'm not saying I agree (or don't) with GP, just noting that you missed his point.
That's a tautology. It doesn't tell us anything.
The real question is, what makes EVERY killing wrong?
Are you wrong for taking antibiotics? If not, why not? After all "killing is killing".
Are you a murderer for killing a mosquito? Why not? Since, you know, "killing is killing".
Should a lion be punished for eating an antelope? Why not? After all, "killing is killing".
Should a man that caught 10 fish be put to prison for life, just the same as a man that killed 10 people? If not, why, since "killing is killing"?
Perhaps you were wrong, and now you see that not all killing is equal?
Indeed, you're a murderer for killing a mosquito without a reason.
About the lion/fishing analogies, bringing law here doesn't make sense. Law is an artificial system. Punishment is essentially arbitrary. Both the lion and the fisher are essentially murderers anyway, regardless of their punishment.
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After some downvotes I think I have to say this again: I don't hold these views and acknowledge it's a muddy topic, but you can't ignore these facts! These are legitimate points. I'm just playing devil's advocate here.
My personal opinion is: the lion would eat you. The mosquito would eat you (if it could). That's just how nature works.
But then again, killing another person is just how nature works too, right? I eat meat and will eat meat forever, though I can't help but feel like such an hypocrite for doing so while condemning murdering people.
Not killing people is just an implicit agreement. I won't kill you if you don't kill me. It's not "morally good" or "morally bad", not killing other people is just convenient! The punishment for murder is just the punishment for breaking this agreement.
I fail to see the hypocrisy. You condemn murdering people because a) they are your OWN kind, and b) they have brains capable of writing HN posts.
How about just constraining our moral obligation to just: don't eat/murder your own kind?
Let's get to that first, abolishing capital penalty, war, murder and such, and then we can worry about eating steaks and/or prawns...
That second example is more akin to taking antibiotics. If we accept that killing microbes is wrong, and accept your argument that using antibiotics is moral because it's legitimate self-defense, we have a problem. Antibiotics kill a lot more than just the invading bacteria. So does radiation and chemotherapy. In fact, they kill a lot of microbes who live in a symbiotic relationship with me and live in my body because they help me break down food or fight infections.
The point is, things are a lot more complicated than simply saying that all forms of killing are immoral. At some point we have to accept that there is an ordering of life forms, and killing some of them to save ourselves is acceptable. If we don't, using antibiotics, chemotherapy, radiation, or other similar forms of care crucial to modern medicine is immoral. Once we accept that not all killing is wrong, it becomes an issue of line-drawing.
I do not find them equal - I find animals worth carrying about, I would like them to have decent lives, but ultimately - they are food and if they are killed quickly and painlessly then I don't have a problem with it.
We're essentially food too, so it'd be okay to kill and eat you.
But human society as a whole has moved on from the practice of cannibalism.
Only we have laws that prevent you for doing so, and a culture that says it's bad. Otherwise, have a go at it.
Canibals, which lack such laws and culture are totally fine with eating other people.
(At least in Papua New Guinea - other regions YMMV)
Fact is: people eat meat. People will continue to eat meat, that's not something that's going to change (in the short term, anyway). Given that, how can we improve the treatment of these animals?
I feel that equating eating meat with murder is just sacrificing the good for the perfect.
Lets find a way to give consumers better choice. We should be aware of the treatment of the meat we consume (and articles like these are helpful in that sense), and we should be able to make purchasing choices on that basis. We should be able to buy ethically raised / humanely slaughtered meats at the grocery store.
Slavery was a "world reality" too. Would you have suggested a compromise instead of just banning slavery?
Edit: In the US, a lot of how cruelty is valued is based on how alike the animal is to us. Mammals get more attention than birds, which get more attention than fish. There is a hierarchy and I think it's based on how closely the animal resembles us, a part of which is the capacity for pain and suffering.
Who thinks that? Is it true or you'd just like to think it that way?
It isn't even relevant. We're talking about meat here. Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain and self-awareness. Animals want to live and try avoid death. Even mosquitoes.
> Animals made of meat have the same capacity for experiencing pain.
This is what I don't see as a clear and obvious truth. You shouldn't get on my case for throwing something out there without any kind of validation and then do the same thing yourself.
So their nervous system and brain pain centers (which look just like ours), the physical reaction to pain, the chemical reaction to pain (stress, releasing adrenaline...) and all the death avoidance... that's just a ploy?
I'm not sure about mosquitoes, but I'm pretty sure meaty animals do feel pain.