Philosophical Vegan Forum

- I marked my changed like this.
- Salutation should be either Dear Matt (informal) or Dear Mr Dillahunty (formal), Dear Matt Dillahunty is not quite right. Which salutation do you guys think is more fitting?
- I made some adjustments to the opening paragraphs to soften the tone a bit. I want to avoid Matt seeing this as some sort of personal attack and therefore deciding to ignore it.
- Added citations of Dawkins I found on the speciecism wiki page, I am not sure whether these were what Brimstone was looking for, they express Dawkins' position quite well. Taken from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesis ... us_mind.22
- Added the date for our StrawMatt(tm).
- Added a joke about Sye, appropriate? Appropriately funny? I am not a particularly funny person.
- Added a paragraph inviting him to express his current position if it has evolved.
- Removed BB code quotes, these do not work in email.
- Merged some loose sentences into a paragraph for more pleasant formatting.
- Clarified which sciences we are talking about.
- Added nuance to the creationist bit.
- Removed caps lock, in my opinion it is not really necessary here. It brings emphasis to the wrong words.
- Clarified the bit about the AHA. Do we really have to cite all these health organizations? Can we not instead cite actual nutrition experts, studies and papers? The health organizations are extremely reluctant in their meat avoidance tips and often talk about vegetarian diets rather than vegan ones. I colored this bit because it is more important than the others.
- Made some style adjustments.
- Added Richard Dawkins citation from the Selfish Gene with a paragraph to make it more concrete in this context.
- If you are trying to respond to this within an hour of me posting it, I am doing edits here and there because my head does not rest.

I really like this, Brimstone. It's quite excellent.

By the way, I have never seen such a simple explanation of the relation between meat and cvd (it's a one minute clip from the documentary Voyage to Betterment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5f34RBVNUU. I don't think we should include this, but I enjoyed the simplicity.

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Dear Matt/Mr Dillahunty,

You have expressed in the past your relative indifference to the issue of the treatment of non-human animals, and we understand this apathy. For you humans come first, and that's very understandable. If you don't care about something, we can't make you care. We neither expect you to 'go vegan', nor intend this letter to have that effect.

This is not about animals, and it's not about veganism; this is about your bad arguments made in defense of your eating meat. Bad arguments that are hypocritical in light of your claims to respecting science and intellectual honesty -- which is something you should certainly care about. When being intellectually honest, you should recognize the flaws in your reasoning.

We would encourage you to, at least, take a leaf out of Dawkins' book on this subject in the future. Although he is not a vegan or even vegetarian, he recognizes that speciesism is wrong and he has no moral justification for eating meat. For example, he says the following about speciesism in his book The Blind Watchmaker:

"The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might "put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all." - Dawkins (1996), The Blind Watchmaker. Pp. 262-263.

"It's a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery." - Dawkins (2007), in the podcast Point of Inquiry: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/richard_d ... ew_atheism

This letter is primarily in response to your arguments on a not terribly recent episode of The Atheist Experience, #583 from December 2008. Here's a link for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mClv6S3BK60

We fully recognize that this may, by now, be a straw Matt, and your positions may have evolved, but due to your reluctance to comment on or discuss the issue it's hard to find an updated record of your view on this, so we're going by what we have. We apologize if this letter brings up bad memories of your debate with Sye.

If your position has indeed evolved, it would be great to hear what your views are now through a response, or perhaps you could mention it on The Atheist Experience. We realize veganism is not directly related to atheism, but it is, for us at least, a result of morality based on well-being. As this is the morality you advocate, and you are self-admittedly speciesist, further justification for not caring about the well-being of animals would in our opinion be appropriate.

Point 1: Overtly rejecting scientific consensus based on personal ignorance of science.

Caller: "It is unhealthy. I mean if you look on the American heart association's website they have numerous instances where they list that diets that contain meat are more unhealthy than plant based diets"
Matt: "I I simply don't believe it remotely and it's eh. I can answer with one word: evolution: we evolved as an omnivorous species."

Matt, it doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what the evidence shows; you should know this better that almost anybody. You are neither an expert on nutrition, nor even evolution, and you do much better when you admit, in humility, your lack of scientific background. It's not an appeal to authority to trust expert consensus on scientific matters. Expert opinions are important, because novices do not have the training, experience, or time to understand all of the data. If you choose to ignore the scientific consensus, then you're going to have to come up with some very strong evidence from peer-reviewed research and literature. Is this not what you ask creationists to do whenever they choose to reject the scientific consensus on the age of the earth, evolution or something the like?

Speaking of creationists, let's look at the case of evolution vs. creationism. There are droves of theists who think they understand evolution, and physics, well enough to offer the one word checkmate of "2LOT" (Second Law of Thermodynamics). As if nobody had ever thought about it before them.
As it turns out, that mistaken perception of a contradiction between the two is based on a profound ignorance of BOTH subjects.
Your claims here are no less ignorant, and we'll explain why at the end of this section, but the most pressing matter is that you attempted to make them at all considering your criticism of creationists for pulling the same kind of intellectually dishonest nonsense. This is a very unfortunate hypocrisy.

Both cases of attempting to debunk one science (nutrition) you personally dislike by appealing ignorantly to some other science (evolutionary biology) with only passing familiarity, pointing out a perceived contradiction (which doesn't actually exist -- and if it did, you would have to admit the other option is that evolution is false; are you really ready to make that assertion?), to discount the expert opinion of every major body of scientists on the subject in the world along with irrefutable evidence which you conveniently ignore in favor of your own preconceptions.

There is no difference here. Except, there is a good explanation for creationists showing this behavior; they're either too mesmerized by the dogma they grew up with or idiots. You actually know that science is complex and very often counter-intuitive to the layman. The statistical models that are used to demonstrate correlations and causation in study data and control for variables might melt your brain.
You should know better than to dismiss scientific consensus on a matter so trivially.

It's not just the American Heart Association that agrees the consumption of meat is a major factor in the development of heart disease.

For the others, here's a short list with citations and links:

World Health Organization
the American Dietetic Association
the Dietitians of Canada
the British Dietetic Association
the British Heart Foundation
the World Heart Federation
the British National Health Service
the United States Food and Drug Administration
and the European Food Safety Authority

[please provide links for each of these]

NIH wrote: It has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that lowering definitely elevated blood cholesterol levels (specifically, blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol) will reduce the risk of heart attacks caused by coronary heart disease.

This has been the consensus for 30 years, and continues to be today. It's non-controversial among experts.

The only people challenging this are conspiracy theorists, like "The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics", which is a group primarily composed of various lobbyists for the meat industry. They're essentially the dietary version of climate change "skeptics".
They offer no alternative to the lipid hypothesis, and their "contributions" are regularly debunked by actual experts.

They are, however, very popular among the meat eating public who want to be reassured that there's nothing wrong with their saturated fat rich diets (just as creationists welcome any reassurance that evolution goes against science, no matter how dishonest). This is an instance where you have to recognize your biases, and realize that when you're hearing something you really want to hear, however true it may ring for you, that doesn't make it so.
Follow the actual evidence, and you'll arrive at the correct conclusion (which is likely the scientific consensus- because that's what the scientists do).

We shouldn't even have to address your argument about "evolution", because the science should speak for itself. When there is an apparent conflict between two proven facts, that usually only indicates some degree of ignorance in the person observing that conflict, and not an actual contradiction -- this should have been your assumption, and rather than make these claims you should have tried to figure out why these two sciences seem to contradict each other. To anthropomorphize evolution in effort to explain, "Evolution" doesn't give a shit if you have a heart attack at 40, because by that time it's done with you. Here's how Dawkins explains it:

"Obviously lethal genes will tend to be removed from the gene pool. But equally obviously a late-acting lethal will be more stable in the gene pool than an early-acting lethal. A gene that is lethal in an older body may still be successful in the gene pool, provided its lethal effect does not show itself until after the body has had time to do at least some reproducing. For instance, a gene that made old bodies develop cancer could be passed on to numerous offspring because the individuals would reproduce before they got cancer. On the other hand, a gene that made young adult bodies develop cancer would not be passed on to very many offspring, and a gene that made young children develop fatal cancer would not be passed on to any offspring at all." - Dawkins (1989), The Selfish Gene. Pp. 46.

If meat caused cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's or erectile dysfunction before reproduction, surely we would either evolve to stop the development of these diseases so early or not to eat meat. As we have evolved to be able to eat meat, either meat never caused these diseases before the age of reproduction or we evolved to delay the effects, however this does not matter. The facts of the matter is that a) these diseases occur after the age of reproduction, therefore have no effect on evolution and b) these diseases are caused by meat consumption.

A diet of animal products will see you through reproduction, and that's all it had to promise to our ancestors; and that's clearly all it does for us. If you plan on living longer than that, you might want to actually look at the evidence in a modern context. Meat is also healthier than starving to death, and it's healthier than malnutrition and for people hundreds of years ago or in the third world the situation is different.

But you are not in the third world, and you do not live in the year four-hundred thousand B.C. You should realize that health and ethical matters are highly situational. If the environment requires it, humans even eat each other, and it's both healthy and ethically permissible compared to starving where self-preservation is at issue.

If you throw the realities of your actual environment out the window, and substitute it with an unlikely environment, then anything can be healthy or morally permissible given the situation.Smoking is also healthy, relatively speaking, if you happen to be in an environment where the air is saturated with tiny lung-eating insects that are killed by nicotine. You can make up some far-fetched situation you aren't in and will never be in where an ethical excuse would exist, or where any given action would be healthy or somehow useful for survival.

That is irrelevant to your situation here and now. It only means that nothing is bad or wrong in itself regardless of circumstance, however it is the circumstance that means everything in ethics. In this universe, on this planet, in a first world country, for your situation, meat is unhealthy compared to the superior alternative healthier food sources that YOU have access to. To use evolution as an ethical justification is simply an appeal to nature fallacy, whether something is natural or not is irrelevant to whether or not it promotes well-being.

Some of those very healthy foods are partially or wholly synthetic, or may be evolved artificially to be better consumable for humans (apples, bananas, broccoli). There is nothing wrong with that intrinsically, it is only wrong if it turns out that is detrimental to our health. For the examples mentioned, the exact opposite is true.

You would do well to go on a mostly vegan diet, for your own health, just as anybody could be advised to stop smoking or drinking in excess. We don't really want to see you follow Christopher Hitchens (peace and blessings of Darwin be upon him) in digging yourself and early grave. We can fight cancer admirably using a plant-based diet, and the same diet can reverse diabetes, an illness we are sad to hear you suffer from. If you are interested, Neal Barnard wrote an excellent book and held several talks on this subject.

That said, is it immoral to cause yourself harm? Maybe not, but there is an important ethical bottom line, and that is where the evaporation of your 'health' excuse is very relevant:

From a utilitarian perspective, it may be permissible to cause some harm to others if that harm results in a greater good. Such as, possibly, harming animals to benefit humans (medical testing is a great example). This seems ultimately to be the argument you're appealing to, with a health-benefit approach.

Even vegans generally accept legitimate health reasons for using animal products (medications, etc.) that are accepted by science as necessary and useful to promoting or preserving health (although views on medical testing vary, that's another issue). This is a reasonable argument, provided there is a real benefit. There are issues of which is greater- the harm or the benefit- but these are admittedly hard to weigh. That makes it more of a moral grey area when there is both harm and benefit involved.

But when, as happens to be the case with meat (in our privileged first world context where we do have other superior options) we're dealing with a lose-lose scenario, both harmful to animals and our own health, this is no longer a grey area, and it is no longer rational to advocate the practice. If you manage to find some victimless way to harm yourself, there's some argument to be made that you're not doing anything wrong by it. But meat production today, in your reality, is not victimless.

You aren't eating roadkill, you're not freegan (widely considered morally equivalent to veganism), you aren't eating lab grown meat, and we have not developed farming and slaughtering practices that are ethical. The fact of possible or hypothetical exceptions doesn't excuse the reality. Until one or more of those things changes, your action of eating meat is personally indefensible. Not for people in the third world or hundreds of years ago, but you, today. Not people in the 31st century eating meat grown in a glass jar, but you, today. Not the fictional characters in the Hitchhiker's guide eating that pig that was genetically engineered to want to be eaten, but you, today.

We're not saying don't eat meat, we can't tell you what to do. We're just saying it's wrong. Wrong for everybody, throughout the universe and all space and time? No. Wrong for you, today, in your privileged first world country, in an age of scientific enlightenment where we have the know-how to produce better, healthier food and the methodology to prove it. You're engaging in an irrational lose-lose behavior that is not even aremotely a moral grey area. But worse yet, you're being intellectually dishonest when you defend it.

Let's keep the quote tags. We'll post it on the forum first. We can link Matt here.


"and you do not live in the year four-hundred thousand B.C."

What?

A few hundred years is enough. What's the relevance of 400,000 B.C.E.?

If you want a more exact date:
B-12 was discovered in the early 1900's, and methods of manufacture developed in the 1950's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12#History

The 1950's were the first time the vegan diet became fully sustainable and reliable as a source of complete nutrition.

There were vegans before that, but B-12 has always been dicey since the development of modern hygiene (there may be other vegan food sources, but they are not yet known to be reliable).


"We can fight cancer admirably using a plant-based diet, and the same diet can reverse diabetes, an illness we are sad to hear you suffer from. If you are interested, Neal Barnard wrote an excellent book and held several talks on this subject."

Not fight, reduce the prevalence of many kinds of cancer.
Be careful not to sound like an altie here, since fight can imply veganism as a cure for cancer that already exists (probably doesn't hurt, but modern medicine provides the only reliable treatments).

You should be careful to be more measured on the claims about diabetes, and provide some more sources. You shouldn't imply a vegan diet is good for these things, because there are unhealthy vegan diets too.

You might say a diet low in saturated fat and high in fiber (which is represented ideally as a whole food plant-based diet, without tropical oils- not all vegan diets are healthy, but the healthiest diets are vegan diets).



"or may be evolved artificially to be better consumable for humans (apples, bananas, broccoli). There is nothing wrong with that intrinsically, it is only wrong if it turns out that is detrimental to our health. For the examples mentioned, the exact opposite is true."

I don't think there's any need to explain that. I also disagree that our modern cultivated fruits are healthier than their ancestors, because most of them we have cultivated to have a higher sugar content, which is not better.



""The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might "put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all." - Dawkins (1996), The Blind Watchmaker. Pp. 262-263."

That quote isn't very relevant... I meant the one he made in the conversation (there's a youtube video) with peter singer. He mentioned Thomas Jefferson specifically.

The quote that follows is more relevant, I think, but he went into more detail in the video.

"We apologize if this letter brings up bad memories of your debate with Sye."


Yeah, I don't get the joke.



"If your position has indeed evolved, it would be great to hear what your views are now through a response, or perhaps you could mention it on The Atheist Experience. We realize veganism is not directly related to atheism, but it is, for us at least, a result of morality based on well-being. As this is the morality you advocate, and you are self-admittedly speciesist, further justification for not caring about the well-being of animals would in our opinion be appropriate. "

Can this be shortened?

Do we really have to cite all these health organizations? Can we not instead cite actual nutrition experts, studies and papers? The health organizations are extremely reluctant in their meat avoidance tips and often talk about vegetarian diets rather than vegan ones. I colored this bit because it is more important than the others.

The statements of these organizations represent consensus.

Particular health experts do not.

They recommend reducing animal products, which is to say they make the recommendations they think people may be more likely to follow. Vegan diets are a kind of vegetarian diet, they're being general.

Any updates?

brimstoneSalad wrote:Any updates?

I don't have much time atm, got an important deadline friday. After that I'll update it.

Same here. You might have noticed that I'm not that active lately. I'm really busy at the moment with both school and work (I have a pretty strict deadline to meet).

I'll see if I can do it in smaller parts spread across multiple days.

Can't we use some shared version control system to keep track of our changes and to make sure you are editing the right version of the document? Or is a bit overkill to do so? I don't know how many revisions we are still going to get.

Version control would be great.

Maybe TVA could install a Wiki.

The relevant Dawkins quote (irrelevant parts left out, and might be even shortened):

Richard Dawkins in conversation with Peter Singer wrote:I think that you [Peter Singer] have a very, very strong point when you say that anybody who eats meat has a very, very strong obligation to think seriously about it—and I don't find any very good defense. I find myself in exactly the same position as 200 years ago […] talking about slavery, where somebody like Thomas Jefferson—a man of very sound ethical principles—kept slaves. It's just what one did; it was kind of the societal norm. […] The historical president of slavery I think is actually rather a good one, because there was a time where it was simply the norm. Everybody did it, and some did it with gusto and relish—other people like Jefferson did it reluctantly. I would have probably done it reluctantly. I would have just gone along with what society does, but I think it […] was hard to defend then, yet everybody did it—and that's the sort of position I find myself in now. And I think what I really like to see is people like you having a far greater effect upon what I would call consciousness-raising, and try to swing it around so that it becomes the societal norm not to eat meat.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU&t=29m31s

Thanks Volenta! That quote seems really good.

Any other feedback on the rest of the letter?

Let's keep the quote tags. We'll post it on the forum first. We can link Matt here.

I don't think that's wise. Putting it in the email or on some sort of blog seems more appropriate. For now I guess we can keep them though.

- Edited the thing about 400,000 BCE
- Edited the stuff about diabetes and cancer
- Added some health organisation urls
- I removed the dietitians of Canada, the only thing I could find is the following article with zero sources: http://www.dietitians.ca/Nutrition-Reso ... tives.aspx
- I removed the British Dietetic Association, they do not seem to be against meat or dairy at all.
- Removed the British Heart Foundation. although they do have an article about the bad effects on heart health of processed meat, they go on to recommend eating chicken or fish instead.
- Removed the FDA, as it advocates meat consumption.
- I could not find any statements from the European Food Safety Authority about meat and health.
- Corrected/removed some changes.
- Added the correct quote

----------------------------------------

Dear Matt,

You have expressed in the past your relative indifference to the issue of the treatment of non-human animals, and we understand this apathy. For you humans come first, and that's very understandable. If you don't care about something, we can't make you care. We neither expect you to 'go vegan', nor intend this letter to have that effect.

This is not about animals, and it's not about veganism; this is about your bad arguments made in defense of your eating meat. Bad arguments that are hypocritical in light of your claims to respecting science and intellectual honesty -- which is something you should certainly care about. When being intellectually honest, you should recognize the flaws in your reasoning.

We would encourage you to, at least, take a leaf out of Dawkins' book on this subject in the future.Although he is not a vegan or even vegetarian, he recognizes that speciesism is wrong and he has no moral justification for eating meat.

Richard Dawkins in conversation with Peter Singer wrote:I think that you [Peter Singer] have a very, very strong point when you say that anybody who eats meat has a very, very strong obligation to think seriously about it—and I don't find any very good defense. I find myself in exactly the same position as 200 years ago […] talking about slavery, where somebody like Thomas Jefferson—a man of very sound ethical principles—kept slaves. It's just what one did; it was kind of the societal norm. […] The historical president of slavery I think is actually rather a good one, because there was a time where it was simply the norm. Everybody did it, and some did it with gusto and relish—other people like Jefferson did it reluctantly. I would have probably done it reluctantly. I would have just gone along with what society does, but I think it […] was hard to defend then, yet everybody did it—and that's the sort of position I find myself in now. And I think what I really like to see is people like you having a far greater effect upon what I would call consciousness-raising, and try to swing it around so that it becomes the societal norm not to eat meat.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU&t=29m31s

This letter is primarily in response to your arguments on a not terribly recent episode of The Atheist Experience, #583 from December 2008. Here's a link for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mClv6S3BK60

We fully recognize that this may, by now, be a straw Matt, and your positions may have evolved, but due to your reluctance to comment on or discuss the issue it's hard to find an updated record of your view on this, so we're going by what we have.

If your position has indeed evolved, it would be great to hear what your views are. We realize veganism is not directly related to atheism, but it is a result of morality based on well-being. As this is the morality you advocate, further justification for not caring about the well-being of animals would in our opinion be appropriate.

Point 1: Overtly rejecting scientific consensus based on personal ignorance of science.

Caller: "It is unhealthy. I mean if you look on the American heart association's website they have numerous instances where they list that diets that contain meat are more unhealthy than plant based diets"
Matt: "I I simply don't believe it remotely and it's eh. I can answer with one word: evolution: we evolved as an omnivorous species."

Matt, it doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what the evidence shows; you should know this better that almost anybody. You are neither an expert on nutrition, nor even evolution, and you do much better when you admit, in humility, your lack of scientific background. It's not an appeal to authority to trust expert consensus on scientific matters. Expert opinions are important, because novices do not have the training, experience, or time to understand all of the data. If you choose to ignore the scientific consensus, then you're going to have to come up with some very strong evidence from peer-reviewed research and literature. Is this not what you ask creationists to do whenever they choose to reject the scientific consensus on the age of the earth, evolution or something the like?

Speaking of creationists, let's look at the case of evolution versus creationism.There are droves of theists who think they understand evolution, and physics, well enough to offer the one word checkmate of "2LOT" (Second Law of Thermodynamics). As if nobody had ever thought about it before them.
As it turns out, that mistaken perception of a contradiction between the two is based on a profound ignorance of BOTH subjects.
Your claims here are no less ignorant, and we'll explain why at the end of this section, but the most pressing matter is that you attempted to make them at all considering your criticism of creationists for pulling the same kind of intellectually dishonest nonsense. This is a very unfortunate hypocrisy.

Both cases of attempting to debunk one science (nutrition) you personally dislike by appealing ignorantly to some other science (evolutionary biology) with only passing familiarity, pointing out a perceived contradiction (which doesn't actually exist -- and if it did, you would have to admit the other option is that evolution is false; are you really ready to make that assertion?), to discount the expert opinion of every major body of scientists on the subject in the world along with irrefutable evidence which you conveniently ignore in favor of your own preconceptions.

There is no difference here. Except, there is a good explanation for creationists showing this behavior; they're either too mesmerized by the dogma they grew up with or idiots. You actually know that science is complex and very often counter-intuitive to the layman. The statistical models that are used to demonstrate correlations and causation in study data and control for variables might melt your brain.
You should know better than to dismiss scientific consensus on a matter so trivially.

It's not just the American Heart Association that agrees the consumption of meat is a major factor in the development of heart disease.

For the others, here's a short list with citations and links:

World Health Organization
the American Dietetic Association
the American Institute for Cancer Research
the World Heart Federation
the British National Health Service

NIH wrote:
It has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that lowering definitely elevated blood cholesterol levels (specifically, blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol) will reduce the risk of heart attacks caused by coronary heart disease.

This has been the consensus for 30 years, and continues to be today. It's non-controversial among experts.

The only people challenging this are conspiracy theorists, like "The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics", which is a group primarily composed of various lobbyists for the meat industry. They're essentially the dietary version of climate change "skeptics".
They offer no alternative to the lipid hypothesis, and their "contributions" are regularly debunked by actual experts.

They are, however, very popular among the meat eating public who want to be reassured that there's nothing wrong with their saturated fat rich diets (just as creationists welcome any reassurance that evolution goes against science, no matter how dishonest). This is an instance where you have to recognize your biases, and realize that when you're hearing something you really want to hear, however true it may ring for you, that doesn't make it so.
Follow the actual evidence, and you'll arrive at the correct conclusion (which is likely the scientific consensus- because that's what the scientists do).

We shouldn't even have to address your argument about "evolution", because the science should speak for itself. When there is an apparent conflict between two proven facts, that usually only indicates some degree of ignorance in the person observing that conflict, and not an actual contradiction -- this should have been your assumption, and rather than make these claims you should have tried to figure out why these two sciences seem to contradict each other. To anthropomorphize evolution in effort to explain, "Evolution" doesn't give a shit if you have a heart attack at 40, because by that time it's done with you. Here's how Dawkins explains it:

Richard Dawkins wrote:Obviously lethal genes will tend to be removed from the gene pool. But equally obviously a late-acting lethal will be more stable in the gene pool than an early-acting lethal. A gene that is lethal in an older body may still be successful in the gene pool, provided its lethal effect does not show itself until after the body has had time to do at least some reproducing. For instance, a gene that made old bodies develop cancer could be passed on to numerous offspring because the individuals would reproduce before they got cancer. On the other hand, a gene that made young adult bodies develop cancer would not be passed on to very many offspring, and a gene that made young children develop fatal cancer would not be passed on to any offspring at all.

- Dawkins (1989), The Selfish Gene. Pp. 46.

If meat causes cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's or erectile dysfunction before reproduction, surely we would either evolve to stop the development of these diseases so early or not to eat meat. As we have evolved to be able to eat meat, either meat never caused these diseases before the age of reproduction or we evolved to delay the effects, however this does not matter. The facts of the matter is that a) these diseases occur after the age of reproduction, therefore have no effect on evolution and b) these diseases are caused by meat consumption.

A diet of animal products will see you through reproduction, and that's all it had to promise to our ancestors; and that's clearly all it does for us. If you plan on living longer than that, you might want to actually look at the evidence in a modern context. Meat is also healthier than starving to death, and it's healthier than malnutrition and for people hundreds of years ago or in the third world the situation is different.

But you are not in the third world, and you live in a time in which one can be perfectly healthy on a vegan diet. You should realize that health and ethical matters are highly situational. If the environment requires it, humans even eat each other, and it's both healthy and ethically permissible compared to starving where self-preservation is at issue.

If you throw the realities of your actual environment out the window, and substitute it with an unlikely environment, then anything can be healthy or morally permissible given the situation.Smoking is also healthy, relatively speaking, if you happen to be in an environment where the air is saturated with tiny lung-eating insects that are killed by nicotine. You can make up some far-fetched situation you aren't in and will never be in where an ethical excuse would exist, or where any given action would be healthy or somehow useful for survival.

That is irrelevant to your situation here and now. It only means that nothing is bad or wrong in itself regardless of circumstance, however it is the circumstance that means everything in ethics. In this universe, on this planet, in a first world country, for your situation, meat is unhealthy compared to the superior alternative healthier food sources that you have access to. To use evolution as an ethical justification is simply an appeal to nature fallacy, whether something is natural or not is irrelevant to whether or not it promotes well-being.

Some of those very healthy foods are partially or wholly synthetic.There is nothing wrong with that intrinsically, it is only wrong if it turns out that is detrimental to our health. For the examples mentioned, the exact opposite is true.

You would do well to go on a mostly vegan diet, for your own health, just as anybody could be advised to stop smoking or drinking in excess. We don't really want to see you follow Christopher Hitchens (peace and blessings of Darwin be upon him) in digging yourself and early grave. A diet high in fiber and low in saturated fat (plant-based) can reduce the prevalence of cancer admirably, and the same diet can help with diabetes, an illness we are sad to hear you suffer from. For more information, you could check the numerous studies published by Harvard University orthis article.

That said, is it immoral to cause yourself harm? Maybe not, but there is an important ethical bottom line, and that is where the evaporation of your 'health' excuse is very relevant:

From a utilitarian perspective, it may be permissible to cause some harm to others if that harm results in a greater good. Such as, possibly, harming animals to benefit humans (medical testing is a great example). This seems ultimately to be the argument you're appealing to, with a health-benefit approach.

Even vegans generally accept legitimate health reasons for using animal products (medications, etc.) that are accepted by science as necessary and useful to promoting or preserving health (although views on medical testing vary, that's another issue). This is a reasonable argument, provided there is a real benefit. There are issues of which is greater- the harm or the benefit- but these are admittedly hard to weigh. That makes it more of a moral grey area when there is both harm and benefit involved.

But when, as happens to be the case with meat (in our privileged first world context where we do have other superior options) we're dealing with a lose-lose scenario, both harmful to animals and our own health, this is no longer a grey area, and it is no longer rational to advocate the practice. If you manage to find some victimless way to harm yourself, there's some argument to be made that you're not doing anything wrong by it. But meat production today, in your reality, is not victimless.

You aren't eating roadkill, you're not freegan (widely considered morally equivalent to veganism), you aren't eating lab grown meat, and we have not developed farming and slaughtering practices that are ethical. The fact of possible or hypothetical exceptions doesn't excuse the reality. Until one or more of those things changes, your action of eating meat is personally indefensible. Not for people in the third world or hundreds of years ago, but you, today. Not people in the 31st century eating meat grown in a glass jar, but you, today. Not the fictional characters in the Hitchhiker's guide eating that pig that was genetically engineered to want to be eaten, but you, today.

We're not saying don't eat meat, we can't tell you what to do. We're just saying it's wrong. Wrong for everybody, throughout the universe and all space and time? No. Wrong for you, today, in your privileged first world country, in an age of scientific enlightenment where we have the know-how to produce better, healthier food and the methodology to prove it. You're engaging in an irrational lose-lose behavior that is not even a remotely moral grey area. But worse yet, you're being intellectually dishonest when you defend it.

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I'll take a break and try to write a second draft on the shark thing later today.