The Personal Website of Steve McRoberts
Advocating ethics through empathy
& treading lightly upon the Earth
Correspondence

I am greatly upset by this election we just had and have been reading up on the religious right.  Your website came up in one of my searches.  I have read through a lot of the material on your site and I find myself agreeing with a lot of the information about the bible and religion that you have written about.  I was raised in the UCC church, but struggle with the bible.  I consider the UCC church to be one of the best in terms of a churches acceptance of all peoples and the willingness to allow questioning and education to occur.  I feel my open mindedness is due in part to the way I was raised, which is in part due to the UCC church.  However, I am no loger a regular church goer at this time and spend a lot of my time thinking about what it is that I believe in.  I found your writings on the bible similar to thoughts I have had and have expressed to others.

However, when it comes to the hunting and eating animals it's hard not to feel like I am reading through information written by one of the bible thumpers whom you dismiss as being one-sided in their arguments.  It may be wrong for me to assume, but I would assume you believe in evolution based on what I have read about your  thoughts on God and the bible.  If you believe in evolution and subscribe to trends of thought like "survival of the fittest" then you must believe in the what now is almost a cliche (thanks to the Lion King movie): the circle of life.  If you do believe in these things then why are these things not taken into account when it comes to hunting and eating meat - they should be given full attention as well as your great arguments you list for not eating meat.  If you believe in evolution then I think that would blow apart many of arguments for not eating meat. 

Before the human species was able to reason we hunted and gathered and there are anthropologists and biologists that now believe if it were not for us eating animal proteins that come from things like fish then our brains would not have been able to evolve into the types of organs they are today (you could say this is the reason why we are different from other primates).  We only recently see eating animals as immoral --now that we can reason and think about issues with our expanded brains versus just surviving in this world.  Here is a link to a paper discussing similar nutritional ideas - I just did a quick search to find something that contained ideas I have heard before about the brain and how it expanded - this is just an example of the school of thought:   http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-51039  There are still hunter/gatherer societies today that need to rely on hunting.  It seems that maybe we should be thanking our ancestors for eating meat and actually take up fault with our ancestors that started growing grains domestically.

As for the issue of hunting one could argue that a true hunter (not a trophy hunter, but one who hunts and eats what he kills), one who respects the animals he/she hunts (like many native American tribes are believed to have conducted themselves) is more humane than the way we slaughter animals today in mass quantities (one could also argue these animals that are slaughtered wouldn't exist at all if it were not for our needs).  However, we also probably would not have had the time to sit around reasoning and thinking about ideas like this if it were not for agriculture and domestication of animals for food.  This leading to more free time, leading to larger populations and a need for larger quantities of grain and animals to sustain these larger populations as we have today was a blessing and a curse.  And of course people need to make money raising animals and grain for the rest of us or else no one would do it- this frees up people who do not want to do this type of work to do something else like working in the field on computers or education - so it's not fair to expect this not to be like a business where people earn a living doing it.  So if you are catching my train of thought here it takes us around full circle as to how what we are as human beings and what we do in regards to raising the meat today came about (very simplified I know, but still along the lines of truth).  Some of your smaller arguments about cholesterol and cancer could be explained away not by the fact that we eat meat and this is bad, but by things like most everything should be done in moderation including eating meat (in regards to cholesterol and other health problems - one could say we should eat meat only a couple times a week - it also could be said that other factors cause these health problems - it's not just one cause and effect here) and yes chemicals in the meat we eat can cause health problems, but this argument is not essential to your moral arguement for not eating meat--it is only an arguement meant to convince people we shouldn't do it because it's not healthy (I think this clouds the issue of eating meat as being immoral).  Chemicals are necessary due to the need to raise large quantities of animals for the large populations of humans and is a necessary thing like blood transfusions until some better way is discovered to help grow large quantities of food in a quick, cheap and sustainable way.  Honestly, I think it is not necessarilly the eating of meat that bothers many people, but maybe the GREAT WASTE that goes on - this is so evident here in the USA because there seems to be a fast food burger joint on every corner which makes one feel like we are slaves to consumerism --contributing to our guilt of eating animals.  However, if you go to a third world country where there is a true hunger problem it would seem ridiulous to ask these people to ignore their great needs in order to survive so that they could be moral.  I think of the great programs like the heifer project international or other non-church projects that help fight hunger, your idea of eating meat as immoral could be seen as elitist and convenient.  I think you would be hard pressed to get these people to buy into this idea of not eating meat when they are faced with pure survival.  Their situation is more like what took place when we were all hunter and gatherers.

I agree that many situations are are cruel - like the people eating the monkey brains.  I have heard of that movie before, but have not watched it due to my nature of not being able to watch violence in general.  I am not sure what the answer is for the animal being eaten - how do we do it without some amount of pain.  Certainly the monkey example is beyond cruel and should not occur, but if you believe in evolution then our eating of meat is something our ancestors did do for survival and should be examined --not explained away today as immoral - that is too easy.  Does the lion think about it's prey and does the small one-celled organism think before eating another cell?  We do not know with exact certainty what is going on in these examples, but my guess would be no.  Your arguement of no God also comes into play - if no God then maybe evolution is exactly what is at work here in which case why shouldn't we do what is natural and just eat meat.  Should we ask the lion not to be a carnivore - this sounds silly, but it seems like the animals the lion eats are also in pain while being killed by the lion (even the spider is cruel if you consider the act of wrapping the fly and then sucking it's blood, there are many examples from the food chain on all levels)?  Are we not part of the food chain - if evolution is what is taking place here then have we as a species evolved and figured out how to sustain ourselves without preying on anything.  With our invention of the weapon have we taken out all our natural predators - the only one that seems to be at work is ourselves in regards to taking out the weak amongst us (I would also add the reckless and dumb are also being weeded out).  Is there something else besides humans that are taking us out - we just are not aware of it- in which case we are still part of the food chain and eating meat would seem to fit with the way the universe works.  What about plants - what if they evolve to have feelings - what then would we eat if that became a moral issue also?  I know this seems farfetched, but if we believe in evolution at one time we all started out in a similar fashion and evolved to our current state.  I do not believe it is only "cutural indoctrination" as you put it on the website, I believe it is all part of evolution.  It is not murdering for fun - if one eats and does not waste then the animal served a purpose and it could be argued that we do listen to our instincts-- like animals instinctively do what they do to survive now or act out as their predecessors would have done (like a fish eating a group of frogs eggs or a cat eating birds eggs from a nest - how do you get the housecat not to hunt birds when they can eat the food placed in the dish in the house).  I am not saying what is right and what is wrong, I just think that you need to look at all sides.  Not just the emotional sides, but the practical evolutionary reasons why.  There are also other things to consider --things that need to be addressed to bring back a balance in nature - like pollution.  This to me is a worth while thing to address and seems to be something outside the evolutionary course --something completely caused by humans nd far more desctructive than say hunting.  This takes it's toll on animals and humans and will eventually ruin the earth - it is in my mind a situation that is a state of emergency and before we are past the point of the earth not being able to re-new itself we should concentrate on it.

I know you are a smart person just from reading your thoughts on your website and I probably didn't need these things out to you - you are probably well read in these areas I mentioned as well (in case you are wondering I have a BS in biology and also have my MBA).  I guess what I want to point out is that your beliefs on eating meat/hunting seem to have taken on a role similar to the role religion may have once played in your life.  Be careful when you present your ideas that you do not use the same tactics that religious zealots do-- of only presenting one side while ignoring other obvious evidence that pokes holes in their religious doctrine.  Also be careful of the role emotion plays - sometimes it is worth it to look at the practical side of things too.  It reminds me of the situation we currently have which was brought to light by the election.  The religious right can have their morals, but what good are they if the rest of us live in cardboard boxes and do not have jobs to go to?  I do not write this to anger you and I hope you are not angered.  I suspect you will not be because of your openess to discuss the possibilities that exist on all sides of an argument.  I also once felt hunting was cruel and have also considered not eating meat because I was a typlical suburbanite who was never exposed to these issues first hand.  But I married a farmer and hunter who I discuss these things with and he has made me see that things are not so black and white for all of us and that there are always three sides to everything in life: my beliefs, your beliefs, and the truth as it really exists.  Before judging him to be a redneck hick because he is a farmer and a hunter (and also a realtor) - you need to understand he is as progressive as I am and has the same questions about the religious topics and is concerned about similar things that you are concerned about.  The farm his family has is just a small farm that once was a dairy farm that is now exclusively a farm that produces only hay - it is preserved and can never be developed something that goes along with conservation and preservation of this Earth.  I feel like I had to share my thoughts because I felt like your arguments on the religious topics were presented well and I found them convincing.  However, the issue of eating meat and hunting seemed to be presented in the same way the Catholic church presents it's case on abortion which turned me off.  These are just my thoughts and I do not profess to be an expert - I just wanted to give you some feedback because your website was impressive and I learned a lot from it.  I now know what to do when the Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door.  Thanks for taking the time to put up the site and adding some clarity around the issues - I feel like I learned something and it will help me in my journey in figuing out and making sense of this world.

Deb S.






Hi Deb,

Thanks for taking the time to write me your thoughts regarding my website.

I'm not sure what UCC stands for, but it sounds like it was less oppressive than the Jehovah's Witnesses organization, and that you were able to move on with a minimum of stress. Good for you!

I'm glad you found some food for thought in my writings on the Bible, etc.

Of course, two people will never agree on everything, so now we come to the animal rights issues. We probably both have strong opinions on the subject, and probably won't sway each other's beliefs about the topic, but having considered your thoughts, I felt you'd probably like to know my reactions (for what they're worth).

From what you wrote, I gather that you didn't look at my transcribed video "Pain on Your Plate" which answers many of your objections. Another video, which I will soon be in the process of transcribing, is "Arguments Against Animals" which examines the types of arguments you put forth. I may be mistaken, but I think most, if not all, of your points are actually addressed somewhere on my website today. (So, I must plead "innocent" to the charge of only presenting one side of the issue.)

But since you took the time to write down your thoughts, I feel I owe it to you to respond directly.

However, when it comes to the hunting and eating animals it's hard not to feel like I am reading through information written by one of the bible thumpers whom you dismiss as being one-sided in their arguments.

Ouch! You really know how to hit where it hurts the most! ;-)

In response I would say that my experience has been the very opposite. Before I became a "Bible thumper" ("BT") I was a vegetarian. It was the BT's who talked me out of that. After I left the BT's I began a deep examination of my beliefs, and began to formulate my own philosophy of life. That's when I gave up the eating of meat for good.

In my experience of BT's, they do not put forth reasons for anything. They just find a Scripture in the Bible to point to and do what they think it says.: "It says God gave us meat to eat, and God knows better than you what you should eat."

In contrast to that, I have attempted to give reasons based on science, biology, ecology, and ethics for my stance. You can argue with these reasons, but please don't characterize them as the equivalent of Bible thumping!

If you believe in evolution then I think that would blow apart many of arguments for not eating meat. 

On the contrary: evolution puts the human family in the genus of primates, who are by nature herbivores (i.e. vegetarians). We started out as vegetarians, and when you examine the structure of our bodies you find that we are not equipped to process meat. This is borne out by the fact that vegetarians live longer healthier lives (in every study done on the subject) and meat-eating is one of the principal causes of cancer and blockage of the arteries (the two leading causes of death today).

If it were "natural" for us to eat meat, then it wouldn't be a health hazard for us to do so.

Before the human species was able to reason we hunted and gathered and there are anthropologists and biologists that now believe if it were not for us eating animal proteins that come from things like fish then our brains would not have been able to evolve into the types of organs they are today (you could say this is the reason why we are different from other primates).  We only recently see eating animals as immoral --now that we can reason and think about issues with our expanded brains versus just surviving in this world.

But now that we are able to reason, it would seem foolish to blindly emulate the actions we took when we were not able to reason.

It may be true about the fish. Of course, if they had eaten flax seeds instead the results would've been the same (delivering Omega-3 to the brain). But before we learned an agrarian way of life we were hunter-gatherers. I hope I never implied that hunting was immoral for cavemen or nomadic tribes of today who rely on it for subsistence.

Morality only comes into play with choice.

Cavemen and hunter/gatherers in "primitive" cultures don't have a lot of food choices, and since they don't usually have Internet access either, my website is not addressed to them.

Unlike the BT's, I don't believe that morality was cast in stone one time for all times and circumstances. What is immoral for a modern urbanite with a convenient 24/7 super-market at his or her disposal is not necessarily what would be immoral for a caveman or present-day individual in a hunting-gathering tribe.

The same holds true for carnivores like the lion and the spider. Since their bodies (unlike ours) require meat to survive, their actions are not immoral.

There are still hunter/gatherer societies today that need to rely on hunting.  It seems that maybe we should be thanking our ancestors for eating meat and actually take up fault with our ancestors that started growing grains domestically.

Again: I never suggested that we should find fault with the Neanderthals who took up eating meat. They did what they needed to do in their time. But we're no longer cavemen. Given that, it would be immoral to go back to a lifestyle inappropriate for our time.

Again: it is arguable that meat-eating was necessary for the evolution of our brains, since there are no nutrients in meat that cannot be found in non-meat sources.

Also, it was only when agricultural societies formed that civilization emerged. Nomads, following the animal's migrations, have no time to develop culture. So, if we thank the hunters for our brains, we must also thank the farmers for civilization.

Maybe we should thank the hunters, but that doesn't mean we should emulate them.

As for the issue of hunting one could argue that a true hunter (not a trophy hunter, but one who hunts and eats what he kills), one who respects the animals he/she hunts (like many native American tribes are believed to have conducted themselves) is more humane than the way we slaughter animals today in mass quantities (one could also argue these animals that are slaughtered wouldn't exist at all if it were not for our needs). 

I don't think it matters to the animal who has been shot and who has limped away to hide and slowly bleed to death, that his killer "respects" him. If you were to shoot me, I wouldn't find any comfort or relevance in your "respect".

Keep in mind that one who "eats what he kills" is not necessarily a subsistence hunter. The subsistence hunter has no real choice but to kill to eat.

Yes, subsistence hunting is more moral than factory-farming. We are in agreement on this point, and I have made this statement on my site.

The fact that some individual animals would not exist if we had not purposely bred them for meat is, of course true. But what ethical conclusions can we draw from this fact? Does it somehow give us the right to do whatever we wish to the animal? No. For example: children wouldn't exist either if women didn't give birth to them, but that doesn't give them the right to do whatever they wish to their children. How a sentient being came into existence has no bearing on what constitutes ethical treatment of that being.

but this argument [concerning health problems] is not essential to your moral arguement for not eating meat--it is only an arguement meant to convince people we shouldn't do it because it's not healthy (I think this clouds the issue of eating meat as being immoral). 

But my point is that meat-eating is immoral because it is unhealthy. If you try to separate these points you lose the focus of my argument. If we were carnivores (or even omnivores) meat-eating wouldn't be harmful to us. The fact that it is harmful to us indicates that we are herbivores by nature (and biology backs this up by showing us that we are in the genus Primate, whose members are herbivores). If we are herbivores, then we are not participating in the "circle of life" when we kill animals for food: we are violently breaking out of the circle and acting contrary to our nature, and paying the consequences in health problems.

The health concerns, therefore, aren't clouding the issue: they are part and parcel of the issue, as I see it.

Chemicals are necessary due to the need to raise large quantities of animals for the large populations of humans and is a necessary thing like blood transfusions until some better way is discovered to help grow large quantities of food in a quick, cheap and sustainable way. 

You are assuming that it is "necessary" to eat meat. But it definitely is not. So it is not necessary to raise large quantities of animals, and so it is not necessary to use chemicals.

Honestly, I think it is not necessarilly the eating of meat that bothers many people, but maybe the GREAT WASTE that goes on - this is so evident here in the USA because there seems to be a fast food burger joint on every corner which makes one feel like we are slaves to consumerism --contributing to our guilt of eating animals.  However, if you go to a third world country where there is a true hunger problem it would seem ridiulous to ask these people to ignore their great needs in order to survive so that they could be moral.  I think of the great programs like the heifer project international or other non-church projects that help fight hunger, your idea of eating meat as immoral could be seen as elitist and convenient.  I think you would be hard pressed to get these people to buy into this idea of not eating meat when they are faced with pure survival.  Their situation is more like what took place when we were all hunter and gatherers.

If waste bothers you, and you are concerned with human starvation, then you should go vegetarian. The production of meat is the most wasteful food process of all. It takes 12 times more land to feed a meat-eater than a vegetarian! This is why the process has been called a "protein factory in reverse": we put so much more in than we get back out. If everyone in the world were to adopt the meat-centered diet of the typical American, we would need two more planets in order to have enough land to feed us. Conversely, if everyone were to go vegetarian today there would be more than enough to feed everyone. This is another reason why meat-eating is immoral: it adds to the problem of starvation by using land to feed cattle which could otherwise be used to feed 12 times more people. So it is not my idea of morality that is elitist: it is meat-eating: the diet that only a few can participate in, to the detriment of so many others.

And if you ever tried to get a decent vegan entrée at most restaurants you would take back your claim that it is "convenient"! ;-)

In addition, raising animals for meat is one of the leading causes of environmental destruction. Talk about waste! Most rain forest destruction occurs in order to clear land for cattle grazing (principally to provide cheap fast-food hamburgers for the American market). Most of the great deserts were once lush, but the over-grazing of cattle rendered them what we see today. If we continue to rape the rain forests to satisfy our taste for meat, they will end up the same way.

What about plants - what if they evolve to have feelings - what then would we eat if that became a moral issue also?

The answer, of course, would be to go vegetarian. You would kill 12 times fewer plants that way.

I guess what I want to point out is that your beliefs on eating meat/hunting seem to have taken on a role similar to the role religion may have once played in your life.  Be careful when you present your ideas that you do not use the same tactics that religious zealots do-- of only presenting one side while ignoring other obvious evidence that pokes holes in their religious doctrine.  Also be careful of the role emotion plays - sometimes it is worth it to look at the practical side of things too. 

It's ironic: most people accuse me of being too intellectual and not emotional enough. When you say the above, I almost wonder if you read someone else's work and not mine. Fact after fact is given in Pain On Your Plate, giving reasons why meat-eating is a bad idea: bad for your health, bad for the environment, bad for the starving people in the world. These facts are what make it immoral, along with the belief that taking life unnecessarily is immoral. If that makes you feel emotional, I think that's a healthy sign.

GreenPeace has a motto I like: "tread lightly upon the earth." Vegetarianism is one important way of doing that. It leaves a much smaller footprint. My own philosophy of life is that in living my life I want to cause as little suffering and death to others as possible. You may call this elitist, but I think it is the very least any human being can do. Of course what is "possible" will vary from one individual's circumstance to another's.

Where a person has a choice on this issue, the choice comes down to this:

  • engage in an unhealthy unnatural practice which causes death, harms the environment, and contributes to human starvation.

Or

  • engage in a healthy natural practice which results in no death, has minimal impact on the environment, and doesn't contribute to human starvation.

To me, it is an obvious choice.

Finally, you had much to say about evolution. Well, we never evolved to the point that we could handle meat without incurring eventual health problems. And with people cutting down on meat-eating (as you say to twice a week) it's doubtful we ever shall evolve out of being herbivores. What I believe is that our next evolutionary steps won't be physical, but will be steps in intelligence and morals. We will gradually set aside religions and come to regard them as quaint stories similar to Greek mythology. When religion is no longer seen as holding a monopoly on ethics, people will turn to ethics through empathy. This empathy will extend beyond our own species, and meat-eating will eventually be gone forever amongst our species.

Then again, Bush got re-elected, so now all bets are off. If ever there was a compelling argument for de-evolution, this is surely it!

--Steve


© 2024 Steve McRoberts Contact me










This site is concerned with: ethics, compassion, empathy, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower, poetry, philosophy, atheism, and animal rights.