Abortion, Animal Rights, and Capital Punishment

[Flyndaran]

If that's true, it's a horrible idea. And I mean truly terrible. To get the amount of energy and nutrients required would require nearly constant eating. In fact, we'd probably never have formed civilizations just because there wouldn't have been sufficient numbers of people to start specializing, everyone would have been too busy getting their own food in the amounts required. So that idea would basically be the destruction of human civilization.

Wrong. For most of human existance at least 80% of our calories have come from vegetation. You seem to think herbivore means grazing on low nutrient foods like grass.
Humans have always supped on nutrient and calorie rich vegetation like grains and tubers. Pushing our biology just a little into pure herbivorousness shouldn't be that hard all things considered.
Maybe in some far flung future, we might genetically engineer ourselves into true civilized diets.

[Cat]

Actually, I do recall seeing something about lab created meat.....no killing an animal involved...just theories now, and I forget how they say it *might* happen.

Of course, meat eaters can just dine at Milliways

[Flyndaran]

Actually, I do recall seeing something about lab created meat.....no killing an animal involved...just theories now, and I forget how they say it *might* happen.

Of course, meat eaters can just dine at Milliways

There have been some promising experiments with fish last I heard. Disgusting to imagine, but it will be medical breakthroughs growing organs for transplant that will lead to proper sci fi meat based "vat facs" and an end to killing animals for our sustenence... mostly. Even if it tastes exactly the same, food snobs will state fervently that real cow is better.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Actually, the consumption of grain by humans is a civilization thing. It allowed us to store up large quantities of carbohydrates and calories for lean times. Humans are not ruminants, therefore we really can't break down grains for digestion unless we process the heck out of them first...bread, for instance. Takes more work than nomadic hunters have time for, really.

Stuff like fruit, nuts, and greens...yeah. I think that falls into the "gather" part of "hunter-gather."

[Cat]

I'm a fake vegetarian, I still eat seafood.....though every now and then I get tempted to go vegan for a weekend.

(meh, I guess I can be called a pesco-veg or flexitaraian, but those are silly words )

[Slytovhand]

I'm a fake vegetarian, I still eat seafood.....though every now and then I get tempted to go vegan for a weekend.

(meh, I guess I can be called a pesco-veg or flexitaraian, but those are silly words )

It just depends on the scale of your fish-eating....






Flyn, you present some very interesting arguments for anti-death penalty!!! Very interesting!!! I would agree, totally! (though, not to be anti-death penalty, but pro-fixing the system)

[Flyndaran]

Actually, the consumption of grain by humans is a civilization thing. It allowed us to store up large quantities of carbohydrates and calories for lean times. Humans are not ruminants, therefore we really can't break down grains for digestion unless we process the heck out of them first...bread, for instance. Takes more work than nomadic hunters have time for, really.

Stuff like fruit, nuts, and greens...yeah. I think that falls into the "gather" part of "hunter-gather."

We don't eat the indigestible celluose part of the grain. We eat the fatty vitamine rich seeds. Also, rumination is simply one method of breaking down low nutrient celluose rich foods. Primitive agriculture dramatically lowered life expectency through malnutrition by only eating one or two staple plants and little to no meat or amino acid complementary plants.
It's no so much that old food prep took boat loads of time. It's that today everything appears instant and we have little respect for full time food preparers.
Grain is amazing for packing in so many calories in such a small easy to store package. Don't diss it.
Hunter gatherers depended on the gathering part for the lion's share of thier calories and nutrition. Meat was a nice occasional food used to pack in the deficiencies left over from the plants.

[Boozy]

Grain is amazing for packing in so many calories in such a small easy to store package. Don't diss it.\

Besides, without grains, modern civilization would be impossible. And we can't feed the world's population without them.

[Flyndaran]

Besides, without grains, modern civilization would be impossible. And we can't feed the world's population without them.

I did a little research and every single ancient and modern food staple is a grass except the potato. That's the only, and interestingly enough most calories per acre, non-grain staple.

[BroomJockey]

Flyn, you're deluded. If you're talking "in the future" being herbivores, fine. But if humans started out as herbivores, we wouldn't have civilization. This is 100% fact. Why? Because humans wouldn't have been able to find the required food during times of hardship. The whole reason we did well was because we could eat damn near anything we came across. If you removed meat from the equation, we'd never have gotten to the point where we'd be able to farm, which was the catalyst for civilization. Humans probably would have just died out.

[tropicsgoddess]

Often, people who are pro-choice, yet opposed to the death penalty are accused of being hypocrites.

Likewise, people who are pro-choice, yet involved with any form of animal rights issue or endangered species preservation tend to face the same allegations.

To keep this post from getting too long, people are often accused of hypocrisy if they support one of these things yet oppose the other.

Do these accusations have any merit?

Not to me. I'm pro-choice, pro-death penalty and yet I'm about animal rights. Contradictory? Maybe. Hypocritical? No.

[Nyoibo]

Besides, without grains, modern civilization would be impossible. And we can't feed the world's population without them.

You're missing the most important fact, without grains, there would be no beer.

[guywithashovel]

Not to me. I'm pro-choice, pro-death penalty and yet I'm about animal rights. Contradictory? Maybe. Hypocritical? No.

As others have pointed out, I think people forget to look at people's reasonings for believing as they do before spouting off the accusations of hypocrisy. Also, the death penalty and abortion are two starkly different issues. I guess that to people who consider abortion to be murder regardless of when it's done they might be more closely related, but all in all, they're pretty different.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Besides, without grains, modern civilization would be impossible. And we can't feed the world's population without them.

True, we couldn't. But consider this: the world's population would not be nearly so large without them, either.

It's an artificial wealth. It's allowed us to populate the planet far past the point where nature intended. Our dependence on it may be our downfall. If something were to ever happen to our grain supply, it would be a huge cataclysm, because without it, we CAN'T feed the world's population.

[Nyoibo]

Our dependence on it may be our downfall. If something were to ever happen to our grain supply, it would be a huge cataclysm, because without it, we CAN'T feed the world's population.

That's not necesarily a bad thing.