[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

So I pretty much refuse to believe that you have to be a vegan to reach higher levels of conciousness.

No, you don't have to be vegan to reach higher levels of consciousness. However you do have to be completely aware of what you're eating, where it's coming from, and what effect it has on your body.

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

Meat also played a very important role in our evolution.

The ability to digest meat is a great evolutionary survival advantage. And despite being vegan, if I was stranded in some desert with no viable plant food, I'd certainly eat any animal I could get my hands on to survive. It's a great ability to have in extreme life or death situations. However with the ample plant food we have in modern society, we have more than enough to eat without resorting to eating animals.

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

So anyway you slice it, animals have died painful deaths for your existence.

I think vegans are very aware of this. But two wrongs don't make a right. We can't just say "oh well, there has been so much suffering caused already that me causing a little more won't make much of a difference".

There's an analogous thing that happened with the US space program. I don't know how many people are aware of this, but after World War II, captured German scientists were used for NASA's space program. Wernher von Braun was the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, and is regarded as the "father of the US space program."

He was also responsible for the development of the German V-2 rocket during World War II. These rockets were used to bombard England, killing over 7,000 people. Not to mention that they were built with slave labor. Almost 3,000 forced laborers died building these rockets. So yes, there's blood everywhere, even in the space program.. However that doesn't mean we should just shrug it all off and continue living oblivious lives.

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

I do my best to eat only non tortured animals and animal products. I am really opposed to commercial agriculture and do my best to support local family farmers. I feel that domesticating and eating animals is very natural. The way we do it now is what is unnatural, not the meat itself.

It's great that you are consciously thinking about this, but most people don't give much thought to where their animal products come from or how the animals are treated.

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

Everything dies. It ususally doesn't feel warm and fuzzy. Isn't it more human to shoot and eat a dear than to let it starve because of over population?

If we hadn't wiped their natural predators off the face of the earth then there would be no starving deer around. Wolves for instance, are an endangered species in the US.

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

What would happen to all of the cattle if everyone became a vegan tommorrow?

Cattle is bred for the sole purpose of being eaten. It's not like they go out and breed on their own to fill the quotas that McDonald's requests. It would take very little time for existing cattle to dwindle in population to tiny numbers if humans didn't breed them.

Originally Posted by Future's Origin

Not all meat is murder and torture. You can get good meat free of bad vibes. I just chowed down on some free range buffalo steaks today, and omg was it fricking fantastic. And I was thankful to the animal, and I felt bad because I overcooked him a little, not because he was dead. I supported a family farmer and the perpetuation of a species that was once threatened. How could that have lowered my vibration?

Don't take this the wrong way, but I find it pretty funny that you say that you're supporting the perpetuation of a species that was once threatened by eating it. In any case, domesticated buffalo is not the same species as the wild buffalo (Bison).