Some animals do actually display primative 'ethical' behaviour; protection of the group, exchange of favours et cetera
The glaring and most obvious difference being concentration camps contain humans and factory farms contain animals. Listen, mate, if I go into the South African wild and get mauled by a lion, I will accept my fate; I shouldn't have been trespassing in the lion's natural habitat. Same thing with shark-infested waters. They are predators in an expansive food chain. We are at the top of that food chain. Cows and chickens are not predators. We can domesticate them, slaughter them, use their milk and eat them. Factory farming is bad. You'll here no objections from me on that front. To compare it to the Holocaust however is utter bollocks and an insult to the millions who perished in concentration and death camps.
It's not an insult to compare certain elements - what I mean is the physical premises, the processes, the clinical thoroughness of killing, the privacy, the huge attempt to cover up what happens from the public and especially consumers. I wouldn't label factory farming as a genocide, its objectives are entirely different. I'm not the one insisting on a comparison by the way, I'm rationalizing the vegans' arguments
I could draw you up some similarities between breast implants and a sandcastle, it doesn't mean they're the same thing. The Holocaust wasn't just about the concentration camps, it was about the persecution and systematic elimination of an entire religion because of hatred and fear by a person who just didn't understand the concept of humanity. For the Holocaust to be just like factory farming, we'd have to be killing these animals because we hate them, when in fact the truth is closer to the opposite. It doesn't make factory farming right and I'm not trying to justify it, but we can't make comparisons between two very different things and hope that the superficial similarities will carry our argument through. It's doing a disservice to the millions who suffered, their descendents and pretty much all of humanity. We now carry that shame forever; even 40 millions years in the future when we're a Type IV civilisation spanning millions of lightyears, our descendents will still look upon that moment as one of horror and embarrassment and rightly so.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...n-killed-Minnesota-slaughterhouse-beaten.html from today's Mail - animal rights US style - but who cares eh, they're only animals
All extremists tell you you are living your life wrong and should do things their way so I'm not sure why you would single out vegan extremists in particular? People should be able to make their own lifestyle choices and not lumped together into a group like you seem to be doing here because of the actions of a few loudmouths or extremists. Personally I would never give up meat or animal products but I would respect peoples right to do so. Ignore the lunatics that you mention.
The danger of taking the pedastal in terms of claiming dominion over animals is we risk overlooking the fact that many, especially pigs, are very sensitive creatures which feel fear, pain and the forced loss of their young. As "superior" beings we should become more caring and understanding of them, not the opposite The Holocaust analogy isn't mine, what you say is correct. We're not on a diet of spiders and snakes afterall
The irony of Sterlings thread here is he is doing exactly what he accuses the vegans of doing by getting on a high horse. Calling the thread 'veganism' is wrong too as he is bracketing all the nutters together and targetting an entire group based on these few nut jobs.
What have I said that gives you the impression that I'm on my high horse? I'm just pointing out flaws in their argument, I'm not telling them they can't be vegan. Nor am I stopping them from doing so. Also, it's not like it's a minority, most of the vegans I've encountered are of a similar mindset. I'm sure they're not all like that, but I've yet to meet more than 2 that aren't like that.
Early man (pre-Homo Erectus) evolved very slowly because we needed powerful jaws to eat raw meat. Large jaws meant less room for the brain in the cranial cavity. When Homo Erectus discovered how to control fire it also lead to the discovery of heating meat to make it easier to consume. As we all know cooked meat is easier to chew. So, Homo Erectus started to evolve with smaller jaws which meant more room in the cranium for the larger brain which was developing due to the increased protein diet. Eventually, we evolved into Homo Sapien (Wise Man in Greek). I'm sure we would have eventually ended up as an intelligent species but the fact is the process was advanced by millions of years by the consumption of cooked meat. So those people that say it's unnatural (to consume meat) have meat eating Homo Erectus to thank for putting us on the path to intelligence.
