Phi for All

This is another Red Herring argument. We don't feed cattle with vegetable matter that humans can eat. Livestock get the stuff that's left over after we take what humans find palatable. We only eat the kernels from the few ears of corn each plant produces, but cattle can easily digest the whole plant. Raising cattle does NOT take food away from humans.

Everyone's bodies responds differently to various toxins. That's why some people don't drink more than a beer or two before stopping and others drink huge amounts until they're staggering drunk and still others can't stand the effects of alcohol at all. People's bodies store fat in different ways as well. Some people carry excess weight in their bellies, close to their center of gravity, while others tend to gain weight more evenly distributed over their whole bodies, and still others store fat in their hips and thighs. You can't really make generalizations about the effects of excessive alcohol and calories on whole populations. As CaptainPanic suggested, if you can be more specific, then specific answers are easier to give.

Appeal to Authority does not prove Aman shah wrong.

http://ods.od.nih.go...ets/vitaminb12/ So I can eat highly processed cereal, or I can take expensive vitamins with a horrible absorption rate. And if I don't do these things, my vegetarian diet can lead me to multiple illnesses: I don't think anyone has even mentioned that you're trying to force a highly restrictive diet on the whole population. We've evolved to eat meat and some people have a hard time without it, or have a hard time with a vegetarian diet. I'm guessing you don't care about those people as much as you care for the cows. It depresses me that you guys want to impose your will on the whole population. But at least it's not a B12 deficiency kind of depression.

It's not the same logic at all, unless you think I want to raise human babies to eat them. Remember, I WANT TO EAT THE COWS. You're the only one here who is saying that raising babies and raising cows is logically the same. Your logic is flawed, mostly due to your equating cows and humans. WHAT?! You throw out more red herrings than Sam Quint! Why are you bringing human slavery into this discussion? It is NOT THE SAME LOGIC at all. Again, anthropomorphizing animals is completely untenable with regard to food production. It's already been established that we can't live on plants alone. We need animal protein so either we need lots of cattle (and other meat sources) or LOTS fewer humans. Actually, based on YOUR logic, we need a tyrant vegan dictator to take over and kill off the excess humans so the remaining few can live comfortably as vegetarians. Sure, the cows and chickens and pigs and goats and other food animals will mostly die off too, but at least you won't be killing them with your own hands (unless they wander into your gardens?). They'll just die from starvation or predation, but I guess that's just vegan compassion at work.

It IS about eating, for me at least. And you've got to stop conflating cows and people. That's a weak, strawman argument. You are anthropomorphizing creatures we raise for food in order to attach some false sense of identity. For me, it's not morally wrong to raise animals, treat them well, feed them and water them, and then kill them humanely when I need them for food. On the other hand, I would have strong objections to abandoning a species that we had bred for millennia to be docile and non-aggressive and really tasty. The deaths they would face in the wild would be horrible comparatively. Oh, now it's HUMAN BABIES I'm growing to control. Are you suggesting that breeding cows is a slippery slope leading to the control of humans? Or that beef is a gateway food for cannibalism? I can't create a cow. I can raise them, I can even breed them for whatever reason, but creating them is one instance where species does matter.

We left it in the alley near your house, remember?

I disagree about it being "natural" to avoid eating anything in your own kingdom, phylum and class. It happens in nature all the time. And I can still be concerned with the well-being of a cow up to the point where it fulfills the reason it was bred and cared for. Again, without me and my other top-shelf predator friends, those cows wouldn't exist. Unless they feed or clothe us or provide companionship, we wouldn't keep them close, and in the wild they'd either kill off other species or be wiped out themselves. If you truly believe a cow is more in your action-space and therefore more important to you than lettuce, then you shouldn't eat beef. Personally, I'd be much more likely to grow vegetables personally than to breed cows. Lettuce is in my action-space much more frequently than cows, but I love the cows moooch more.

I could stop eating lettuce very easily. There are many other vegetables I can choose instead. If I stop eating beef and eat more chicken and fish and pork, someone would come along and tell me I'm morally wrong for eating those. Why? Because they're closer to us in taxonomy than plants? The argument eventually becomes silly. I'm perfectly fine with drawing an arbitrary line that says cows aren't enough like us to make it morally wrong to eat them. Orangutans are much closer to humans, so we shouldn't raise them to eat. In between there you can have your moral gray area, and I can have my filet. Every living thing in our society has value and worth, but I don't believe everything has an automatic right to live. However, once we assign a worth or a value to a living thing, I believe it's up to us to give meaning to that life and treat it with as much compassion and consideration as possible. Even if the value in that life is its eventual death in order to feed us.

I'm a Taurus too, and my horoscope added, "... and remove every single one of the links to those videos."

You really can't "prove" anything in science. What you can offer is evidence that supports your idea. Scientific evidence needs to be testable, it needs to be repeatable, and it needs to be able to support further predictions you can make if your idea is sound. This is what you're being asked to provide. So far, nothing you've offered can overcome the evidence that astrology is unsound and relies on generalizations and gullibility.

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We can raise millions of cows who live for a while before being eaten, or we can stop raising them and let them all die off. How long do you think it will take without us to feed and care for them? Or do you really expect us to take care of that many cows for no reason other than we ought to? We take care of cats and dogs without expecting to eat them, but I don't think that would work with cows. Think about what you're asking here. Do I need to say it again? Either all these cows are bred to be eaten, or only a fraction of them can live and somehow be kept for no reason, or introduced to the wild to be eaten by something else. If you have a viable alternative, I'd like to hear it.

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Agreed. Such arguments seem compassionate and enlightened, but they are extremely untenable. If everything had a "right" to live, the police would be very busy.

I think anyone who loves to eat beef thinks cows are worth something. Further, I think anyone who argues for the humane treatment of cattle raised for food is acknowledging that their lives are worth something and are taking that into account by choosing beef that is raised so. Are you asking for more of an acknowledgement than that?

I forgot about this. I never really considered it having to do with luck, but I also try to stay away from saying things like, "Well, the worst of it is over", or, "What could possibly go wrong?", or, "I checked the batteries in the flashlight and they're fine". It's not so much a matter of "jinxing" myself, it's just seems that if you know the likelihood of an outcome with 100% accuracy, the likelihood of a mistake is also 100%.

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The problem is with your understanding of science. Proof is for mathematics; science has only evidence. Science isn't looking to prove anything, but it's very good at figuring out what isn't a fact. Scientists take an idea and test it, looking for evidence to both support and refute an idea. If there is much evidence to support the idea, it gets reviewed by even more scientists looking to both support and refute. If an idea has a great deal of evidence in support, and there are no refutations, it can go on to become a theory. Things like God or what happened at creation are not observable in a way that science considers supportive. Also, there is a difference between creation and creationism, so that may be hindering your attempts. It's easy to imagine that everything had a beginning, a creation point. Creationism, however, is a set of beliefs that contradict empirical observation at virtually every point.

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I hate it when people ascribe luck to outcomes where it was really their own hard work and focus that was responsible. Still, I know that lucky items can boost confidence, so it's hard to fault them for that. I really hate it when people blame bad luck instead of admitting they should have been better prepared. People like that make me reach for my lucky baseball bat.

Remember that the scientist has peers who review evidence and test conclusions even when the scientist can't. Those other scientists get an almost equal amount of recognition for finding flaws and refuting evidence and falsifying hypotheses. Within the scientific community, someone is always testing virtually every theory almost constantly, looking to reduce the uncertainty in what we see as the best supported explanations for various phenomena. Science is constantly honing and polishing and tossing out what no longer works. Can you really say that about religion? Isn't most religious doctrine considered sacred and practically etched in stone within a particular denomination? And when things do change in religion, they rarely make sense to me. It was a venial sin for Catholics to eat meat on Fridays, but Vatican II lifted the restriction that had been in place since the 9th century. It can only be assumed that those who died prior to Vatican II without confessing about their Friday night brisket would still be staked out in Purgatory while their post-Vatican II counterparts get to pick the beef out of their smile on their way to Heaven. And while the Catholic Church considers itself to be infallible, the Pope was only granted this prestige in the late 19th century, where he promptly gave retroactive infallibility to all the popes before him. Nice trick, no rhyme or reason, solved a bunch of problems without the need for a time machine.

Little by little, wages have been frozen, benefits cut and workers made too scared of layoffs to complain about it. As union are broken, the bar gets lowered more and more. This was going on long before our current recession. And while older workers are being laid off in favor of younger workers, the level of pay for new college graduates has been declining since 2001. And all this when US corporations are wealthier than ever. Appropriations bills get passed that favor one company over others, due to the efforts of that company's lobbyists. I don't know about you, but I don't want my taxes spent that way, especially when many of these companies are dodging taxes and employing fewer Americans in their American company. A level playing field means companies compete on their merit and market capabilities and not based on how many politicians they have in their deeper-than-ever pockets. Firstly, only 13% of US workers belong to unions. Second, I'm against the whole concept of already successful companies lobbying for special favors from our government representatives. It's nothing more than legal graft to me. And who controls the nation right now? Corporations. Why would they make policies that drive them anywhere but where they were already carefully planning to go? I'm stunned that you're blaming "the nation" for driving companies to sacrifice their integrity. But it still remains true. Congress can fix plenty when they're motivated. Why don't they fix the infernal labyrinth that is our tax system? Do you mean business at any cost? The founding fathers were so afraid of the powers of corporate charters that they regulated practically everything about them, from what they were allowed to sell, where they could sell it and even how long they could sell it. Over the years, corporations have always tried to get away with more and more, and we've always been able to rein them in again by strengthening the regs that get weakened. But now lobbying and PACs have become so good at what they do it's tipped the influence businesses have over our laws and appropriations. Is this really what YOU stand for fundamentally? They're advantages NOBODY should have. Are you really OK with people being able to pay for special favors from our elected officials?

"Smart" is not a very good qualifier to use in this instance. I would definitely say that the better educated you are, the less susceptible you are to religion. I think you'll have to share some statistics about the "lower divorce rates, higher marriage rates, sense of purpose" part. And your perception of happy Christians differs with mine. Most of the kids who bullied my daughter and her friends during elementary school were from heavily Christian families. Maybe bullying others makes them happy, I don't know.

Wages and benefits have been stifled over the years while profits have been increased. It's been a gradual process that has avoided open revolt. It's not just inflation that has caused most families to require two incomes. Are you saying you don't think it's suspicious that so many people are hurting at the middle while the top is doing better than ever? Our economy is like a tube of toothpaste; the bottom is sealed, the middle has been squeezed, and the stuff we need is just gushing out at the top. Again, when I say fair, I don't mean evenly distributed. I mean having a level playing field and applying the laws even-handedly. I mean NOT stacking the deck against small businesses by using no-bid contracts, or buying political favors with your campaign contributions to skew things in your favor. I mean NOT robbing the pension funds of your hard-working employees, or sending their jobs overseas so you can make more profit. It's a shame integrity has to be so alien. The IRS is a perfect example of something that the vast majority of We, the People see as needing fixing, yet it continues to get worse, so someone out there is making sure it stays broken for a reason. I once heard (a while back) that if we had a flat 12% tax with no exemptions or credits, we'd have all the money we need to run the country, and a completely level playing field with regard to taxes. I don't know if that still holds true, but it sure would be interesting to hear the arguments against it.