: : Arent you killing plants when you eat them?: DDN: You are killing millions of skin cells everyday just by being alive. You are killing intestinal bacteria everytime you eat spicy food. Some living things MUST die in order for us to exist and animals are NOT one of them. Whether or not vegetables are among these things, quite frankly, I don't know. There are people who claim to be fruitarians meaning they eat nothing but fruit. There's whole science and process to switching to a fruitarian diet - take a look at the works of Arnold Arant [spelling?]. I have done fruit fasts and have had amazing results but did not feel I could sustain such a diet. In fact, "experts" say that the detoxification that occurs on such a diet can make go blind or even kill you.
: Whatever vegetables experience whenever they are killed I think is so different from what we experince that we are inherently incapable of comprehending it and to that extent we are not obliged to take their "feelings" into account where our sustenance is concerned.
I don't believe fish feel a whole hell of alot of pain when you kill them. An oyster or a clam doesn';t even have a brain, so I suspect it doesn't feel much either. If you're going to try and rule out any killing altogether, give me a break. There is a religion in India who does that, you know. They're called the Jains, and they number around 4 million. A very ancient religion, they believe that teh world is sinful and miserable, that truth is absolutely relative to your point fo view, and their religion is absed around not killing. So they don't eat after sunset to avoid accidnetally ahving insects fall into the soup; they don't eat root vegetables because it involves killing a plant; they wear veils over their faces so they won't inhale insects. Do you know what this ethical consistency ahs led them to? Farming was impossible for them due to tehri religion, so instead they are tradesmen. In other words, they've become bourgeois rather than risk killing insects or worms. real constructive, right there. They can only live their morality by letting other people od teh dirty work; evidently, it's impossible for all teh world to becoem Jains, because then no food could get produced.
By the way, I don't wnat to think about how few people could live in thsi world if we ate nothing but fruit. I also wonder how we'd get enough protein in our diets. We aren't monkeys, you know.
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