[mviara]

Originally Posted by Stephen

I disagree with this entirely. Plants have have no central nervous system and look to have evolved in such away that being digested and excreted by animals is a sure way to fertilse and spread their seeds.

This argument fails for a large variety of plants that do not have to be "killed" to disperse their seeds. That, I believe, is the motivation behind the fruitarian diet who only consume the fruit without killing the plant that gives them the fruit.

I'm not saying we should all be fruitarian or even vegetarian. I just wanted to point out that one cannot justify eating plants by claiming they don't feel pain. Even if they did not feel pain, that too would not be a justification - imagine a cow being quickly and painlessly chopped before your eyes - if that was not justified, neither is the plant. One can keep going further along this argument to killing insects, microbes, etc.. This then becomes something that one cannot use in an objective argument to justify a diet, it belongs in the realm of religion/spirituality, which is inherently subjective.

It is true however that vegetarians are at least killing less living beings than the omnivores. The ultimate solution may be evolution (if not natural, then technological) - as Socrates says in the Way of the Peaceful Warrior:

"Our primary source of energy in this system," he said waving his arm to indicate the solar system, "is the sun. But, in general, the human being - that's you . . ."

(Dan) "Thanks for the concession."

". . . in his present state of evolution, has not developed the ability to make direct use of the sun's energy; you cannot 'eat sunlight' except in limited ways. When humanity does develop that ability, the digestive organs will become vestigial and the laxative companies will go out of business. For now, food is the form of stored sunlight which you need."

I strongly recommend reading Socrates' take on diet in the book(starting page 116). It may seem like he is advocating a "positively ascetic" diet, but his reasons for it are not quite what one would expect.