<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nSH:<\/b> The motivation for not eating, wearing, or using animals or animal products is moral:
\n Except in case of vital (i.e., life or death) necessity, never hurt.<\/i>
\nI could never follow the laws of a religion that allowed otherwise. <\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnon:<\/b> I don’t think any of the main religions insist on using animals. There are a lot of vegetarians in Israel. There is some suggestion in Judaism that the rules for dealing with animals are a compromise between the desire for meat and the ideal, which would be vegetarian. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yes, there are<\/i> religions that prescribe<\/i> the use of animals (including Judaism \u2014 and the other two Mosaic creeds too). <\/p>\n
But I was referring to a weaker moral criterion, one whose absence is already immoral enough for me to abjure a religion: the failure to proscribe<\/i> the use of animals.<\/p>\n
“in Judaism… the rules for dealing with animals are a compromise between the desire for meat and the ideal, which would be vegetarian”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Then we may as well have <\/p>\n
“rules [that] are a compromise between the desire for [stealing, raping, killing, torturing, enslaving, annihilating]
\nand the ideal, which would be [to proscribe stealing, raping, killing, torturing, enslaving, annihilating]\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n(as both religious and secular laws do when the victims are members of the human species) rather than to \u201ccompromise\u201d (as both do in the case of the desire for meat, fur, blood sports, etc. when the victims are members of nonhuman species).<\/p>\n
Humanity\u2019s greatest and cruelest double standard, currently well-meaningly mis-labelled \u201cspeciesism\u201d [which is incoherent, because plants are species too \u2014 almost certainly insentient, as it happens, but even if they were sentient we would have no choice but to eat them or perish], is the double standard between (1) sentient species that we are forbidden to hurt or kill except in case of vital (life-or-death) necessity (our own species) and (2) sentient species that we are allowed to hurt or kill in the absence of vital (life-or-death) necessity (all other sentient species).<\/p>\n
Politicians and businessmen compromise. Deities decree. (And from an omnipotent <\/i>deity even a no-kill decree would be a cynical and psychopathic joke — if the very notion [so very humanoid] of an omnipotent Culprit behind it all were not already as absurd as it is morally repugnant.)<\/p>\n
(Yes, there are a lot of vegetarians in Israel. More important, Israel (reportedly) has the world\u2019s highest proportion of vegans in the world (5%). But 5% is still extremely tiny.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SH: The motivation for not eating, wearing, or using animals or animal products is moral: Except in case of vital (i.e., life or death) necessity, never hurt. I could never follow the laws of a religion that allowed otherwise. Anon: I don’t think any of the main religions insist on using animals. There are a … <\/p>\n