Lord Almighty! Vegans try to hijack atheism.

[DetlefK]

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/09/new_atheists_must_become_new_vegans_sam_harris_richard_dawkins_and_the_extra_burden_on_moral_leaders/

Seriously? I mean... seriously?

... it should seem quite obvious where our moral compass is currently pointed.

Please note the word "currently".

Also, eating meat should be a career-destroying crime.

Though he ... discussed the ethics of meat-eating at length with Singer (describing the argument for vegetarianism as “powerful”), he only suggested that he might become vegetarian. This kind of moral hypocrisy should be scrutinized and ridiculed accordingly – ridiculed to the point where it would be career suicide for any public intellectual to stubbornly persist with it.

...

The poster boys and girls of atheism, secularism, science and reason have done wonders for so many domains of public discourse. While they fittingly weigh in on many moral questions not restricted to religious indoctrination and its impact on human rights, animal rights has so far garnered little attention. However, the great thing about reason is that it is a tool. Reason does not presuppose its answers, but is rather a process by which conclusions germinate under the light of the best available evidence. The best available evidence currently shows that eating meat and animal products is bad for animals, our health and the environment. Many of the New Atheists and their associated colleagues have realized this; they just need to come forth into the light.

1. It is irrelevant in this context that eating meat is bad for animals. That is a moral issue, not a scientific one. And as there are no absolute morals, I am free to use whatever morals I like and/or work within the framework of my society.

2. It's a myth that eating animals is bad for your health. You will be hard-pressed to find food as high in quality as the flesh and intestines of a healthy animal. (If eating animals is bad, why did so many animals evolve to eat animals? Why do even herbivores like deer eat carrion?)

3. Yes, certain kinds of livestock breeding are bad for the environment. But it's ridiculous to extrapolate from that that we should do away with the consumption of any and all animal-products.






If you claim to base your argument on science and logic, then at least use science and logic instead of appealing to emotions.

[Freelancer]

1. How many horses did you see today?

A lot of horses had terrible lives, but did have lives. There were once as many horses as there were people in this country. Yes, the cruelty heaped upon horses has plummeted, since cars and trucks took over, but so have their numbers.

First point:

Don't get me wrong, I can see plenty of the points of vegetarians -- was one myself for a couple of years -- but the chickens, hogs, and cattle won't just go off to some bucolic retirement if we stop eating their flesh. Their numbers will plummet to near zero. To some, it's better that an animal never live than to have it live in factory conditions. I'd agree with that. But I don't mind the idea of eating animals that have seen the sun and had experiences nearly as much. Maybe that's the direction to concentrate efforts.

Second point:

Atheism isn't a thing. Neither is agnosticism. They aren't linked to a lifestyle, or to a diet. IMO, attempting to couple what can't be coupled leads to distinctions that are unreal.

[Jeff Murdoch]

5. Chicken genocide!

Cowpocalypse!
Porkageddon!

[Cartoonist]

2. We are omnivores

This is what nature made us. Any other diet is unnatural. I have no objection to someone choosing to be vegetarian, but I will not stomach any phony moral preaching.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. They can have my bacon...

when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

[Lordquinton]

4. "animal rights has so far garnered little attention"

Apparently they are unaware of the works of Ricky Gervase.

[trotsky]

19. Ha! So true.

[deucemagnet]

6. Although I'm both a vegetarian and an atheist,

but I'm not a vegetarian for the same reason that I'm an atheist.

BTW, most vegetarians and vegans you encounter both on the internet and IRL are not like this. Nobody will force their diet upon you, and you'll be applauded to doing as little as observing meatless Mondays.

[Warpy]

7. Puritans and ascetics suck

I don't care if they blame spooks or the lack of spooks.

[Freelancer]

8. Ooh... I like that way of looking at it. -- nt

[skepticscott]

9. Just another hack

who can't even grasp the elementary concept that atheism is not a lifestyle, a philosophy or an overarching worldview. Unlike religion, atheism does not contain moral commandments or instructions on how to live your life, and it is idiotic to judge the correctness of atheism because of that.

Salon and Huff Post are lousy with cranks like this. And unfortunately, their blather spills over into DU way too often.

[onager]

10. Atheism must really be trendy right now.

Since every crank in the world is coming out of the woodwork and trying to hitch onto its popularity.

What next? "Applying Atheism To Your Career In Used-Car Sales?"

I eat bacon and hamburgers. I don't believe in any gods. FOAD, Salon-Scribbler. Go find some other movement to hijack.

[skepticscott]

11. Bashing atheism is very trendy too

Especially the Internet rabble of "thank god I'm not like those other atheists" atheists who try to make themselves relevant by teeing off on guys like Dawkins for being too "strident" or some such bullshit.

[onager]

12. "I'm an atheist butt..."

And people who start off that way usually are. Butts, not atheists.

Speaking of us becoming trendy - I've been watching the new Reelz channel series "Demons In The City of Angels." About various murders etc. in Los Angeles.

This week's episode covered the horrible death of 91-yr-old screenwriter Robert Lees in 2004. It included some footage of Lees at an Atheists United meetup, where he was awarded a prize for his parody of the Bible. I was watching that and thinking: "Not too long ago, they would have probably deleted that footage. So as not to offend the Xians."

Lees was an interesting guy. He was blacklisted by HUAC in the 1950s and had to re-boot his career using a pseudonym. And no one deserves to die the way he did...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lees

[Promethean]

15. There is a lot of effort to attach extra ideology to atheism.

I think its an effort to get more converts. The worst part is they assert they have some universal good and it should be obvious that atheists should buy into their garbage. The identity politicians are the worst of the lot doing this.

[JRLeft]

13. I'm an atheist and a vegan, neither one had an impact on the other for me.

If veganism creates more atheists I say go veganism.

[Curmudgeoness]

14. Pass the cheezburgr, please.

I am at a loss for words. Wish the person who came up with this ridiculous idea was as well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Letter From The Rubble Of A Salon Article (author is very unhappy about the title Salon gave him)

I have had a strange week. Last Sunday my very first popular article was published: ‘New Atheists Must Become New Vegans: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the extra burden on moral leaders’. Until then my words had been constrained to my practically invisible blog, but Salon gave me the chance to suddenly amplify my whispers into bellows. For that I am very grateful. Unfortunately, what was meant to be a personally joyous moment was slightly soured by some insincere behaviour.

The thorn lay in the title of the article – arguably the most crucial fragment in an era of scrolling, swiping and sharing. Altered by Salon without my consent to contain the words “must” and “moral leaders”, it was obviously misleading given the content of the piece. Couple that with the addition of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins’ names and it’s quite obvious what the intentions were. On such delicate intellectual terrain where one must tread carefully, the title jumped up and down like a toddler on a sugar high.

Understandably, many people seemed to think the piece implied that being an atheist automatically compels one to be a vegan. Of course this is not true. Atheism is not a belief system and people arrive (or remain) at this worldview for a wide range of different reasons. The title ‘atheist’ is largely vacuous and applies little pressure on most topics outside of religion, including the ethics of meat eating. Rather, I simply argued that the moral reasoning and critical thinking championed by many famous public intellectuals – including the so-called ‘New Atheists’ (apologies to those who don’t like that name) – leads to veganism. In other words, they argue for ethics, morality, rationality, and scientific reasoning: all the necessary ingredients for a vegan mindset. The likes of Harris, Dawkins, Krauss and Shermer have publicly acknowledged this, yet most seem ethically lethargic on the topic. A collective shift in consciousness is required, and these individuals could provide the much needed torque to drive the idea over some widespread mental speed bumps.
...
Perhaps I am being oversensitive. Maybe incidents like this are not uncommon. This is ‘journalism’, after all. I feel a little stupid as I am well aware of how Salon has treated people including Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins in the past, and many readers have reminded me of this. I knew my views did not align with many other writers at their establishment, but given the chance to have a piece on such an important topic read by more than the usual ten friends on Facebook, I had to jump at the chance. I am now attempting to jump back to dry land – I just hope the boat hasn’t drifted too far.

http://thedailybanter.com/2016/01/letter-from-the-rubble-of-a-salon-article/

[AlbertCat]

18. and scientific reasoning: all the necessary ingredients for a vegan mindset.

There's no scientific reasoning to becoming a vegan. It's all emotional. Science tells you you are an omnivore.

[AlbertCat]

17. 2. It's a myth that eating animals is bad for your health.

You'd think that an atheist would understand that we evolved from herbivores (Lucy was a vegetarian. Maybe ate some meat like chimps do sometimes) and we have been omnivores for a long long time. So it is NOT healthy to just eat veggies without some supplements. (tofu doesn't grow on trees). Herbivores usually have large guts and not big brains.... or at least not brains like carnivores. We most likely could not have developed our big brains had we remained vegetarians.


All that being said.... our meat-produced brains can now come up with nutritional stuff that makes it OK to be a vegetarian if one so desires. It is also true that in the US.... we eat way too much meat.

[frogmarch]

20. In truth, we vegans

are a bloodthirsty lot - atheist or otherwise.

Beware.