Friday, April 18, 2008
Expelled Exposed
The movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is out in theatres today. If you are planning to see this pseudo-documentary, or if someone you know is, please visit Expelled Exposed.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Freedom from Expression?
Fa fa fafa, fa fa fafa,
Raise your voice!
Fa fa fafa, fa fa fafa,
Raise your voice!
Fa fa fafa, fa fa fafa,
Raise your voice!
-Raise Your Voice by Bad Religion
http://www.iheu.org/node/3123
http://www.islam-watch.org/AlamgirHussain/Islam-UN-human-Rights-Council.htm
Raise your voice!
Fa fa fafa, fa fa fafa,
Raise your voice!
Fa fa fafa, fa fa fafa,
Raise your voice!
-Raise Your Voice by Bad Religion
http://www.iheu.org/node/3123
http://www.islam-watch.org/AlamgirHussain/Islam-UN-human-Rights-Council.htm
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Nomenclature of Disbelief
I'm materialist
Call me a humanist
(physical theorist)
and I guess I'm full of doubt,
but I'll gladly have it out with you
I'm materialist
I ain't no deist
It's there for all to see,
so don't talk of hidden mysteries with me
-Materialist by Bad Religion
I am frequently asked what different terms of disbelief mean. As I am the president of a club called “Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo”, I guess it should be expected. Not many people have heard the term freethinker before, and many people are not sure about what exactly an agnostic is.
The unfortunate fact is, we have a hell of a lot of terms for non-believers. Here is a short list of some of the different terms a non-believe might use to describe their religious views:
Some of these terms have multiple definitions, and many of these are synonyms. I am going to give very quick and dirty definitions of these terms (grouping together the synonyms, or those with close meanings):
Now that we have this list, let’s play pin-the-label-on-the-atheist. Here is the list of terms that I would use to refer to myself:
Explicit atheist, weak/agnostic general atheist, strong specific atheist, agnostic, non-theist, secularist, secular humanist, Pastafarian, skeptic, materialist, philosophical naturalist.
I am a weak general atheist because I don’t think that there is good enough evidence to support the existence of any god (where a god is defined as some sort of super-powerful, transcendental, conscious being), and I am a strong specific atheist towards gods which are self contradictory or which have traits that are mutually exclusive with other beliefs I have good evidence for. I prefer to refer to myself simply as an atheist because it really leaves no room for confusion – people get that I don’t believe in any gods, and given the social climate, I think that is an important point to get across.
Now here are the terms that I fall under the definition of, but would not use to refer to myself:
Bright, freethinker, rationalist.
Out of these three, I like freethinker the most. But it suffers from the same problem as bright – it is just bad public relations. The religious are already hypersensitive, there is no reason to use these terms which make us sound like we think we are superior to them. I understand that they logically shouldn’t – the pro-choice people aren’t anti-life, and the pro-life people aren’t anti-choice (well, that might be arguable) – but the problem is that people take offense to these terms, and as atheists already have bad enough public relations, I think it is best just to stick to terms that everyone knows the definition of and that don’t have superiority overtones.
I hate the term rationalist simply because the meaning of it in this context is so far from the original philosophical meaning – the original rationalists were people who, in direct contrast with empiricists, believed true knowledge could only be arrived at a priori. Now it is almost completely backwards – rationalists are atheists, who are generally empiricists of some flavour.
Call me a humanist
(physical theorist)
and I guess I'm full of doubt,
but I'll gladly have it out with you
I'm materialist
I ain't no deist
It's there for all to see,
so don't talk of hidden mysteries with me
-Materialist by Bad Religion
I am frequently asked what different terms of disbelief mean. As I am the president of a club called “Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo”, I guess it should be expected. Not many people have heard the term freethinker before, and many people are not sure about what exactly an agnostic is.
The unfortunate fact is, we have a hell of a lot of terms for non-believers. Here is a short list of some of the different terms a non-believe might use to describe their religious views:
- Agnostic
- Atheist (with possible quantifiers: strong, weak, specific, general, natural, implicit, explicit, agnostic)
- Bright
- Existentialist
- Freethinker
- Humanist
- Ignostic
- Materialist
- Naturalist
- Non-theist
- Objectivist
- Pastafarian
- Philosophical naturalist
- Post-modernist
- Rationalist
- Secular humanist
- Secularist
- Skeptic
Some of these terms have multiple definitions, and many of these are synonyms. I am going to give very quick and dirty definitions of these terms (grouping together the synonyms, or those with close meanings):
- Naturalist, philosophical naturalist, materialist: Someone who believes the universe is made out of one type of stuff (i.e. only matter, no spiritual matter) and that all causes are natural (i.e. not supernatural).
- Rationalist, skeptic: In this context, it means someone who thinks beliefs should be based on evidence and reason.
- Bright, freethinker: Someone who is both a naturalist and a skeptic. The terms emphasize different things, but they pretty much mean the same thing. The reason for the different terms has more to do with the movements they are associated with than with any real definitional differences.
- Pastafarian: A worshipper and follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
- Secularist: Someone who believes that certain institutions (particularly the government) should be separate from religious belief. More broadly, someone who is concerned with this world and not the spiritual realm.
- Humanist: One who believes in exploring morality and truth through natural means in order to support human interests.
- Secular humanist: A humanist who specifically rejects the supernatural (a naturalist and a humanist).
- Objectivist: A follower of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Objectivists reject the existence of any deity.
- Post-modernist: Hold that religions (and any gods) are social constructs – along with pretty much everything else.
- Existentialist: (Roughly) one who believes individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to deities or authorities creating it for them.
- Ignostic: One who believes that the other theological positions assume too much about the concept of God, and believes a proper definition of God is required before one can take a position.
- Non-theist: Simply one who is not a theist.
- Agnostic (Definition 1): One who believes that, due to the very nature of God, God would be inherently unknowable and therefore one cannot claim to have knowledge of it.
- Agnostic (Definition 2): A weak atheist who either does not know the different definitions of atheist, or prefers not to call themselves an atheist.
- Atheist:
- Weak/agnostic atheist: One who does not believe in a god, either because there is enough evidence to support belief in a god, or because they do not have a concept of that god (see implicit atheist).
- Strong atheist: One who not only does not believe in a god, but believes that that god does not exist.
- Implicit/natural atheist: One who does not believe in a god simply because they have not acquired the concept of that god (i.e. all babies are born implicit/natural atheists).
- Specific atheist: One who is an atheist (either strong or weak) towards a certain god.
- General atheist: One who is an atheist (either strong or weak) towards all gods. One can be both a weak general atheist and a strong specific atheist.
- Weak/agnostic atheist: One who does not believe in a god, either because there is enough evidence to support belief in a god, or because they do not have a concept of that god (see implicit atheist).
Now that we have this list, let’s play pin-the-label-on-the-atheist. Here is the list of terms that I would use to refer to myself:
Explicit atheist, weak/agnostic general atheist, strong specific atheist, agnostic, non-theist, secularist, secular humanist, Pastafarian, skeptic, materialist, philosophical naturalist.
I am a weak general atheist because I don’t think that there is good enough evidence to support the existence of any god (where a god is defined as some sort of super-powerful, transcendental, conscious being), and I am a strong specific atheist towards gods which are self contradictory or which have traits that are mutually exclusive with other beliefs I have good evidence for. I prefer to refer to myself simply as an atheist because it really leaves no room for confusion – people get that I don’t believe in any gods, and given the social climate, I think that is an important point to get across.
Now here are the terms that I fall under the definition of, but would not use to refer to myself:
Bright, freethinker, rationalist.
Out of these three, I like freethinker the most. But it suffers from the same problem as bright – it is just bad public relations. The religious are already hypersensitive, there is no reason to use these terms which make us sound like we think we are superior to them. I understand that they logically shouldn’t – the pro-choice people aren’t anti-life, and the pro-life people aren’t anti-choice (well, that might be arguable) – but the problem is that people take offense to these terms, and as atheists already have bad enough public relations, I think it is best just to stick to terms that everyone knows the definition of and that don’t have superiority overtones.
I hate the term rationalist simply because the meaning of it in this context is so far from the original philosophical meaning – the original rationalists were people who, in direct contrast with empiricists, believed true knowledge could only be arrived at a priori. Now it is almost completely backwards – rationalists are atheists, who are generally empiricists of some flavour.
The Man from Earth
No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.
-David Hume
I don’t watch many movies, and certainly have never reviewed any, but the other day I watched “The Man from Earth” and thought it was interesting. The premise of the film is that this man (John) has actually lived for the past 14,000 years, but still lives today as a normal human being – he adapts to the age he is in and moves on every once in a while to make sure people don’t get curious about why he doesn’t age (no, I didn’t just ruin the movie for you – you find this out fairly early in the movie). The movie takes place when John is about to move on from his current job (working as a university professor). He is saying goodbye to his friends, but decides to – for the first time – explain to them that he is actually 140 centuries old.
I realize the premise must sound amazingly lame, but it is surprisingly well done. There were two recurring themes in the movie which I found interesting. The first was the discussions on religion. It was very atheist positive and makes the biblical literalist look like a willingly ignorant bigot, which I was delighted to see in a mainstream movie. The other was the psychological responses to a close friend telling you that he is actually 140 centuries old.
It is interesting to watch the ways the characters respond to their situation. Some react with hostility, some seeming to just want to humour John by asking him more questions, and some think he has just gone nuts and needs help. The question inevitably arises in your mind while watching the film: How would you react? Would you believe him? Would you get angry at your friend for seemingly making up something so ridiculous and telling it so earnestly (as most of the characters did)?
Of course, I would not believe him, even if he was a close friend and not prone to telling falsehoods. The simple reason is that he is unable to provide any evidence for his claim (anything he claims, the only way you have to verify it is by checking a textbook – if it is in the textbook, he didn’t need to live through it to know it, and if it isn’t part of modern knowledge you have no way of verifying what he says). Not only does someone living that long go against what we know about the biology human body, but the person would have to be extremely lucky to live through 140 centuries and not get shot, starve, etc. It is extremely unlikely, making this an extraordinary claim. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” but we don’t have extraordinary evidence – we have the claim of one person, and many ways in which they could be wrong. They could be completely crazy (or less severe, have improper recall due to something traumatic), they could be playing a trick on you, or they might just be making up the story and having you go along with it for fun and don’t want to break the spell by mentioning that it is all imaginary. Simply put, there are simpler explanations for why John is telling you this than that he is actually 14,000 years old, so by Occam's Razor, we can do away with that explanation. I don’t know exactly how I would react if a close friend did this, but I certainly wouldn’t believe them – I hope I would courteously listen to them, and play along without freaking out like so many of the characters did.
By not believing John, I would be wrong in this case. But that’s the things about movies – it wouldn’t be worth making a movie about a story unless it was extraordinary, and so critical thinking is sort of turned on its head when trying to figure out a movie plot.
In movies, everything happens for a reason. In movies, the skeptics are always wrong and portrayed as unimaginative (think about how many kids movies are about kids who see something, tell an adult, but no adult believes them). In movies, you see when some event draws two people together as lovers, defying all odds and taking on mystical qualities.
The real reason I wanted to write this post was because I sometimes wonder if some people forget that real life isn’t a movie.
-David Hume
I don’t watch many movies, and certainly have never reviewed any, but the other day I watched “The Man from Earth” and thought it was interesting. The premise of the film is that this man (John) has actually lived for the past 14,000 years, but still lives today as a normal human being – he adapts to the age he is in and moves on every once in a while to make sure people don’t get curious about why he doesn’t age (no, I didn’t just ruin the movie for you – you find this out fairly early in the movie). The movie takes place when John is about to move on from his current job (working as a university professor). He is saying goodbye to his friends, but decides to – for the first time – explain to them that he is actually 140 centuries old.
I realize the premise must sound amazingly lame, but it is surprisingly well done. There were two recurring themes in the movie which I found interesting. The first was the discussions on religion. It was very atheist positive and makes the biblical literalist look like a willingly ignorant bigot, which I was delighted to see in a mainstream movie. The other was the psychological responses to a close friend telling you that he is actually 140 centuries old.
It is interesting to watch the ways the characters respond to their situation. Some react with hostility, some seeming to just want to humour John by asking him more questions, and some think he has just gone nuts and needs help. The question inevitably arises in your mind while watching the film: How would you react? Would you believe him? Would you get angry at your friend for seemingly making up something so ridiculous and telling it so earnestly (as most of the characters did)?
Of course, I would not believe him, even if he was a close friend and not prone to telling falsehoods. The simple reason is that he is unable to provide any evidence for his claim (anything he claims, the only way you have to verify it is by checking a textbook – if it is in the textbook, he didn’t need to live through it to know it, and if it isn’t part of modern knowledge you have no way of verifying what he says). Not only does someone living that long go against what we know about the biology human body, but the person would have to be extremely lucky to live through 140 centuries and not get shot, starve, etc. It is extremely unlikely, making this an extraordinary claim. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” but we don’t have extraordinary evidence – we have the claim of one person, and many ways in which they could be wrong. They could be completely crazy (or less severe, have improper recall due to something traumatic), they could be playing a trick on you, or they might just be making up the story and having you go along with it for fun and don’t want to break the spell by mentioning that it is all imaginary. Simply put, there are simpler explanations for why John is telling you this than that he is actually 14,000 years old, so by Occam's Razor, we can do away with that explanation. I don’t know exactly how I would react if a close friend did this, but I certainly wouldn’t believe them – I hope I would courteously listen to them, and play along without freaking out like so many of the characters did.
By not believing John, I would be wrong in this case. But that’s the things about movies – it wouldn’t be worth making a movie about a story unless it was extraordinary, and so critical thinking is sort of turned on its head when trying to figure out a movie plot.
In movies, everything happens for a reason. In movies, the skeptics are always wrong and portrayed as unimaginative (think about how many kids movies are about kids who see something, tell an adult, but no adult believes them). In movies, you see when some event draws two people together as lovers, defying all odds and taking on mystical qualities.
The real reason I wanted to write this post was because I sometimes wonder if some people forget that real life isn’t a movie.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Why I am a Vegan
I've done nothing wrong
So free me
I just wanna feel what life should be
I just want enough space to turn around
-Free Me by Goldfinger
I am a vegan. I've only recently become comfortable labeling myself with that term. What I mean by being vegan is that my diet does not include any meat, dairy, or eggs, and I try not to buy anything that contains animal products.
Now, I could go about this post a couple of ways. One is that I could post all of my arguments for being vegan, and that would be that. That is only one way of answering the question often posed to me: "So why are you vegan?" If you are looking for this sort of argument-style answer, you don't need to look hard to find someone willing to give you it (a very quick, brief answer to this would be: I am vegan for animal rights, my health, and the environment - for some more explicit reasons click here).
The way I am going to choose to do it is by a short story about how I, personally, got to be a vegan. It isn't exactly something that happened overnight, it happened very gradually, and I hope this story will help people understand how it is a "normal" person can become a vegan, and how easy it can be to become one. So here we go:
The Angsty Teenager
I was always a very apathetic, selfish teenager. Put it down to teenage angst, my depression, my social isolation, whatever - I was the type of person who didn't give a fuck about anything much except myself (and philosophy, for some reason). When my sister turned vegetarian, I was first confronted with the idea that animals were morally significant. While I understood the idea that hurting humans was bad, I didn't see how hurting animals was. They were dumb, so it was presumably okay. It wasn't long before my sister blew that thought out of the water. She pointed out (not in these words) that if it was just cognitive capacity that made humans morally significant, it didn't make sense that it was still wrong to kill humans with mental disabilities.
Thought I didn't admit it at the time, this argument had an impact on me. I rationalized it away, saying (and this is where the selfish teenager thing comes in) I was more concerned with eating things that would help me - I had this idea that if I cut meat out of my diet my muscles would atrophy (which is untrue) - and so that took priority over the morality of eating meat.
A couple of other things also got me thinking about the issue. I was reading some of the information my sister had about vegetarianism, and there was a quote by Albert Einstein (I can't remember what the quote was) saying he strongly agreed with vegetarians (although he apparently was only vegetarian for a short time during his life). I had thought that vegetarianism wasn't really taken seriously by the vast majority of people (a view I probably got based on my parents' reactions to my sister going vegetarian - they were under the impression that she would grow out of it). Now I knew of this greatly respected intellectual who not only took vegetarianism seriously, but agreed with it. Then there were the claims that eating meat and dairy weren't actually good for you. I wrote these claims off as propaganda, although the idea that they might be true always made me uncomfortable.
The Health Nut: Reduced Meat Consumption
At some point in my teenage years, I became something of a health nut. I had always wanted to keep myself in very good physical shape, and I decided I should start eating well in order to actually do this. As sad as it is to say, I think this mentality was largely influenced by video games. A certain webcomic comes to mind:
Along with exercising, I totally cut out eating chips and pop (to this day I don't drink pop, and I can't remember the last time I had a potato chip) and lots of other junk food. I also did a bit of research, and realized eating as much meat as I was wasn't good for me. So I decided I would start eating a diet of reduced meat - I just ate less meat, and would usually go for vegetarian options when they were available. Unknown to me at the time, this was my first step along the road to my eventual veganism, a very easy change I think everyone should take at least for the health reasons.
University; Living on my Own
I made no other significant steps towards becoming vegetarian until my second year of university when I was out of residence, living on my own off campus and finally shopping/cooking for myself. I made two important discoveries: Meat is fucking expensive and gross to cook. Because of this, along with wanting to reduce my meat consumption, I started learning how to cook a lot of vegetarian dishes, and I started researching nutrition to make sure I was getting everything I needed despite my small intake of meat. At this point I started eating meat maybe once or twice a week. I would often cook a stir fry with tofu, rice with vegetables or make some pasta with beans.
Another important thing happened that year - I developed a conscience. While I still ate meat, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret every time I did. The feeling started small, but slowly grew. I thought more about the act of arbitrarily deciding that humans are morally significant while animals are not, and could not come up with a way to remain morally consistent while continuing to eat meat.
That summer I was living back with my parents. The feeling of discomfort while eating meat grew more and more. I avoided meat more and more. I started thinking about becoming vegetarian. There were a couple of problems, though. First, I was living at home, and didn't want to force my parents to stop cooking meat for me - basically I was scared to tell them I wanted to be vegetarian. Second, none of my friends were vegetarian, so I would be alone on that and I didn't know how my friends would react to me being vegetarian. I realized if I had had vegetarian friends, I likely would have stopped eating meat long before.
I vividly remember the night I made up my mind for sure. My parents and I were sitting down to eat lobster for dinner. I looked at the creatures, and it was just so obvious that this was once a living creature. There was no way to compartmentalize the fact that I was eating a corpse. While eating a lobster might not seem that bad (they aren't cute and cuddly, and I had no idea if they had the capacity to suffer), I thought about how I would feel if a cow was presented in a similar way. Suddenly the idea of eating beef was just horrible. I ate very little that night, and felt a little sick afterwards. I decided at the dinner table, looking into the eyes of one of the dead crustacean, that I would become a vegetarian.
Vegetarian
I didn't immediately go vegetarian. I decided it would be easier to go vegetarian once I was back on my own for my third year of university. I took the time before that to prepare, figuring it would be a big deal. I told my friends and family that I was going to do it, and the day I moved out I stopped eating meat (and haven't, to my knowledge, eaten any since).
When we first moved in, the friend I was living with also was not supposed to eat dairy for a while for medical reasons, so for the first while I actually was living as a dietary vegan. I like soy milk, so replacing milk wasn't a big deal, and I just didn't bother buying cheese or eggs (I don't like eggs anyways). Of course, this forced me to look into vegan dietary issues and I had to make sure I was getting enough of certain nutrients that vegetarians don't have to worry about as much as vegans (i.e. vitamin B12). Although this only lasted a couple of months and I would still eat dairy when I wasn't eating my own cooking, I got some valuable experience living without dairy.
I was surprised that it was so damn easy. So much is made out of the term vegetarian that I had figured it would be difficult. I figured I would need special treatment frequently, I would need to be careful about what I ate, I would need to be ready to argue with anyone I told I was vegetarian. That wasn't how it went, though.
Since I had gone through the trouble of researching the vegetarian diet beforehand, I did make sure I was getting everything I needed, but especially once I internalized what I needed to make sure I was getting, I didn't even think about being vegetarian. I almost forgot that I was, I just didn't view meat as food (I would then, of course, always be shocked when I saw someone about to chomp down on some meat. I nearly said "Wait! That's meat!" to omnivores on several occasions before catching myself and reminding myself that some people saw meat as edible).
Reduced Dairy Consumption
As I became more comfortable with my vegetarianism, I started to found more and more people who were veg*n. As I met people, I learned and read more about the issues. I learned a lot about the environmental issues of animal agriculture and wondered why turning vegetarian was never mentioned as a way to significantly cut down the amount of carbon you are responsible for emitting. I learned about how factory farms (where most meat is produced) practically torture animals, and wondered how the hell I had gone so long without hearing about it. I also learned how many people are vegetarian.
On a trip I made to NYC for a conference (the Secular Society and its Enemies, hosted by Center for Inquiry), I met a lot of really neat vegetarians and realized a lot more people than I originally thought were vegetarian. I also got a once in a lifetime chance to meet Peter Singer, author of (among many other books) The Ethics of What We Eat. I ended up purchasing The Ethics of What We Eat, and after reading it, I started thinking a lot about the ethics of eating cheese and milk. The problem is that dairy cows are treated horribly (given very little room to move around for their entire lives so that they cannot even turn around and put in barren environments, not to mention what they are fed). Dairy cows are impregnated every couple of years, and when the calf is born it is immediately taken from the mother (causing a lot of stress to both the calf and the cow), and then the calves are usually used for veal. To produce veal, calves are strapped down so they can't move a muscle for the duration of their extremely short lives, and purposely made anemic (the sort of meat produced in these conditions fetches a higher price on the market). For this reason, it is really hard to separate the veal industry (the type of meat which is produced in the most ethically deplorable way) and the dairy industry.
Vegan
I started feeling bad about eating dairy. I cut it completely out of anything I made at home, and would only make special exceptions when eating elsewhere. Eventually I got involved with the Waterloo Vegetarians, became an active member, and made a lot of vegan friends. I decided if they could do it, then so could I, so I stopped making exceptions. I was surprised at how easy it was (although it took a while for me to get used to constantly checking the ingredients on things and asking whether something on the menu is vegan or not). People started calling me vegan far before I felt comfortable with the term myself, as I still felt I might make exceptions. Finally I decided I might as well take on the label. I am a vegan.
Common Questions
Where do you get your protein?
This question is the result of two misconceptions. The first is that meat is the only good source of protein. In fact, pretty much everything has protein in it, from grains to vegetables. Also, beans, soy products, and other legumes have protein in quantities comparable to meat. Secondly, most people in North America eat too much protein, which is bad for you. It is in no way difficult to get enough protein in your diet on a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Aren't you being a hypocrite, since you still probably are supporting some other kind of horrible atrocity?
I am amazed how many times I have been asked this question in some form. There very well might be a problem I am contributing to unknowingly - if so, I hope someone informs me of this, just as I try to inform others of animal right issues! Even if there were dozens of things just as bad as eating meat that I was doing, saying that I am a hypocrite for being a vegan is like telling a family in financial trouble that it is stupid to stop buying brand-name clothes because they will still have other expenses.
What do you use in cakes, cookies, etc. instead of eggs or milk?
There are a lot of different options. Soy milk is generally good for anything cow milk is good for. Eggs are a bit trickier, and it basically depends on what you are making. A good bet is to just do a google search for "vegan [insert what you want to make here] recipe", and you'll always get a few ideas for what you can do.
I will add to this section if I get any more questions
Resources
Vegetarian/Vegan Recipes
Wikipedia on precautions to be taken with the vegan diet
Vegan vitamins made especially for vegans (no, that wasn't redundant)
So free me
I just wanna feel what life should be
I just want enough space to turn around
-Free Me by Goldfinger
I am a vegan. I've only recently become comfortable labeling myself with that term. What I mean by being vegan is that my diet does not include any meat, dairy, or eggs, and I try not to buy anything that contains animal products.
Now, I could go about this post a couple of ways. One is that I could post all of my arguments for being vegan, and that would be that. That is only one way of answering the question often posed to me: "So why are you vegan?" If you are looking for this sort of argument-style answer, you don't need to look hard to find someone willing to give you it (a very quick, brief answer to this would be: I am vegan for animal rights, my health, and the environment - for some more explicit reasons click here).
The way I am going to choose to do it is by a short story about how I, personally, got to be a vegan. It isn't exactly something that happened overnight, it happened very gradually, and I hope this story will help people understand how it is a "normal" person can become a vegan, and how easy it can be to become one. So here we go:
The Angsty Teenager
I was always a very apathetic, selfish teenager. Put it down to teenage angst, my depression, my social isolation, whatever - I was the type of person who didn't give a fuck about anything much except myself (and philosophy, for some reason). When my sister turned vegetarian, I was first confronted with the idea that animals were morally significant. While I understood the idea that hurting humans was bad, I didn't see how hurting animals was. They were dumb, so it was presumably okay. It wasn't long before my sister blew that thought out of the water. She pointed out (not in these words) that if it was just cognitive capacity that made humans morally significant, it didn't make sense that it was still wrong to kill humans with mental disabilities.
Thought I didn't admit it at the time, this argument had an impact on me. I rationalized it away, saying (and this is where the selfish teenager thing comes in) I was more concerned with eating things that would help me - I had this idea that if I cut meat out of my diet my muscles would atrophy (which is untrue) - and so that took priority over the morality of eating meat.
A couple of other things also got me thinking about the issue. I was reading some of the information my sister had about vegetarianism, and there was a quote by Albert Einstein (I can't remember what the quote was) saying he strongly agreed with vegetarians (although he apparently was only vegetarian for a short time during his life). I had thought that vegetarianism wasn't really taken seriously by the vast majority of people (a view I probably got based on my parents' reactions to my sister going vegetarian - they were under the impression that she would grow out of it). Now I knew of this greatly respected intellectual who not only took vegetarianism seriously, but agreed with it. Then there were the claims that eating meat and dairy weren't actually good for you. I wrote these claims off as propaganda, although the idea that they might be true always made me uncomfortable.
The Health Nut: Reduced Meat Consumption
At some point in my teenage years, I became something of a health nut. I had always wanted to keep myself in very good physical shape, and I decided I should start eating well in order to actually do this. As sad as it is to say, I think this mentality was largely influenced by video games. A certain webcomic comes to mind:
Along with exercising, I totally cut out eating chips and pop (to this day I don't drink pop, and I can't remember the last time I had a potato chip) and lots of other junk food. I also did a bit of research, and realized eating as much meat as I was wasn't good for me. So I decided I would start eating a diet of reduced meat - I just ate less meat, and would usually go for vegetarian options when they were available. Unknown to me at the time, this was my first step along the road to my eventual veganism, a very easy change I think everyone should take at least for the health reasons.
University; Living on my Own
I made no other significant steps towards becoming vegetarian until my second year of university when I was out of residence, living on my own off campus and finally shopping/cooking for myself. I made two important discoveries: Meat is fucking expensive and gross to cook. Because of this, along with wanting to reduce my meat consumption, I started learning how to cook a lot of vegetarian dishes, and I started researching nutrition to make sure I was getting everything I needed despite my small intake of meat. At this point I started eating meat maybe once or twice a week. I would often cook a stir fry with tofu, rice with vegetables or make some pasta with beans.
Another important thing happened that year - I developed a conscience. While I still ate meat, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret every time I did. The feeling started small, but slowly grew. I thought more about the act of arbitrarily deciding that humans are morally significant while animals are not, and could not come up with a way to remain morally consistent while continuing to eat meat.
That summer I was living back with my parents. The feeling of discomfort while eating meat grew more and more. I avoided meat more and more. I started thinking about becoming vegetarian. There were a couple of problems, though. First, I was living at home, and didn't want to force my parents to stop cooking meat for me - basically I was scared to tell them I wanted to be vegetarian. Second, none of my friends were vegetarian, so I would be alone on that and I didn't know how my friends would react to me being vegetarian. I realized if I had had vegetarian friends, I likely would have stopped eating meat long before.
I vividly remember the night I made up my mind for sure. My parents and I were sitting down to eat lobster for dinner. I looked at the creatures, and it was just so obvious that this was once a living creature. There was no way to compartmentalize the fact that I was eating a corpse. While eating a lobster might not seem that bad (they aren't cute and cuddly, and I had no idea if they had the capacity to suffer), I thought about how I would feel if a cow was presented in a similar way. Suddenly the idea of eating beef was just horrible. I ate very little that night, and felt a little sick afterwards. I decided at the dinner table, looking into the eyes of one of the dead crustacean, that I would become a vegetarian.
Vegetarian
I didn't immediately go vegetarian. I decided it would be easier to go vegetarian once I was back on my own for my third year of university. I took the time before that to prepare, figuring it would be a big deal. I told my friends and family that I was going to do it, and the day I moved out I stopped eating meat (and haven't, to my knowledge, eaten any since).
When we first moved in, the friend I was living with also was not supposed to eat dairy for a while for medical reasons, so for the first while I actually was living as a dietary vegan. I like soy milk, so replacing milk wasn't a big deal, and I just didn't bother buying cheese or eggs (I don't like eggs anyways). Of course, this forced me to look into vegan dietary issues and I had to make sure I was getting enough of certain nutrients that vegetarians don't have to worry about as much as vegans (i.e. vitamin B12). Although this only lasted a couple of months and I would still eat dairy when I wasn't eating my own cooking, I got some valuable experience living without dairy.
I was surprised that it was so damn easy. So much is made out of the term vegetarian that I had figured it would be difficult. I figured I would need special treatment frequently, I would need to be careful about what I ate, I would need to be ready to argue with anyone I told I was vegetarian. That wasn't how it went, though.
Since I had gone through the trouble of researching the vegetarian diet beforehand, I did make sure I was getting everything I needed, but especially once I internalized what I needed to make sure I was getting, I didn't even think about being vegetarian. I almost forgot that I was, I just didn't view meat as food (I would then, of course, always be shocked when I saw someone about to chomp down on some meat. I nearly said "Wait! That's meat!" to omnivores on several occasions before catching myself and reminding myself that some people saw meat as edible).
Reduced Dairy Consumption
As I became more comfortable with my vegetarianism, I started to found more and more people who were veg*n. As I met people, I learned and read more about the issues. I learned a lot about the environmental issues of animal agriculture and wondered why turning vegetarian was never mentioned as a way to significantly cut down the amount of carbon you are responsible for emitting. I learned about how factory farms (where most meat is produced) practically torture animals, and wondered how the hell I had gone so long without hearing about it. I also learned how many people are vegetarian.
On a trip I made to NYC for a conference (the Secular Society and its Enemies, hosted by Center for Inquiry), I met a lot of really neat vegetarians and realized a lot more people than I originally thought were vegetarian. I also got a once in a lifetime chance to meet Peter Singer, author of (among many other books) The Ethics of What We Eat. I ended up purchasing The Ethics of What We Eat, and after reading it, I started thinking a lot about the ethics of eating cheese and milk. The problem is that dairy cows are treated horribly (given very little room to move around for their entire lives so that they cannot even turn around and put in barren environments, not to mention what they are fed). Dairy cows are impregnated every couple of years, and when the calf is born it is immediately taken from the mother (causing a lot of stress to both the calf and the cow), and then the calves are usually used for veal. To produce veal, calves are strapped down so they can't move a muscle for the duration of their extremely short lives, and purposely made anemic (the sort of meat produced in these conditions fetches a higher price on the market). For this reason, it is really hard to separate the veal industry (the type of meat which is produced in the most ethically deplorable way) and the dairy industry.
Vegan
I started feeling bad about eating dairy. I cut it completely out of anything I made at home, and would only make special exceptions when eating elsewhere. Eventually I got involved with the Waterloo Vegetarians, became an active member, and made a lot of vegan friends. I decided if they could do it, then so could I, so I stopped making exceptions. I was surprised at how easy it was (although it took a while for me to get used to constantly checking the ingredients on things and asking whether something on the menu is vegan or not). People started calling me vegan far before I felt comfortable with the term myself, as I still felt I might make exceptions. Finally I decided I might as well take on the label. I am a vegan.
Common Questions
Where do you get your protein?
This question is the result of two misconceptions. The first is that meat is the only good source of protein. In fact, pretty much everything has protein in it, from grains to vegetables. Also, beans, soy products, and other legumes have protein in quantities comparable to meat. Secondly, most people in North America eat too much protein, which is bad for you. It is in no way difficult to get enough protein in your diet on a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Aren't you being a hypocrite, since you still probably are supporting some other kind of horrible atrocity?
I am amazed how many times I have been asked this question in some form. There very well might be a problem I am contributing to unknowingly - if so, I hope someone informs me of this, just as I try to inform others of animal right issues! Even if there were dozens of things just as bad as eating meat that I was doing, saying that I am a hypocrite for being a vegan is like telling a family in financial trouble that it is stupid to stop buying brand-name clothes because they will still have other expenses.
What do you use in cakes, cookies, etc. instead of eggs or milk?
There are a lot of different options. Soy milk is generally good for anything cow milk is good for. Eggs are a bit trickier, and it basically depends on what you are making. A good bet is to just do a google search for "vegan [insert what you want to make here] recipe", and you'll always get a few ideas for what you can do.
I will add to this section if I get any more questions
Resources
Vegetarian/Vegan Recipes
Wikipedia on precautions to be taken with the vegan diet
Vegan vitamins made especially for vegans (no, that wasn't redundant)
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Religious Humour Contest
The Frame Problem is having a contest: The funniest piece of scripture. You can go here to add your entry.
My entry is my all time favourite bit of scripture. II Kings 2:23-24
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
Yay bears mauling youths!
My entry is my all time favourite bit of scripture. II Kings 2:23-24
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
Yay bears mauling youths!
Fifty Things Humans Can’t Do
I consider it a measure of my humanity to be written off
by the living graves of a billion murdered lives.
-"Nailing Descartes To The Wall(Liquid) Meat Is Still Murder" by Propaghandi
J. Neil Schulman writes in “The Illogic of Animal Rights” and in his follow-up article “Fifty Things Animals Can’t Do” why he thinks that animal rights activists “don't love animals. They hate men.”
First he points out that either humans are like other animals or we are not. If we are, then we have no moral obligations. If we are not, then we are superior and therefore the only ones morally relevant.
There is no virtue to this argument. We are like other animals in many ways, but different in many ways (just like any species). We are the only species that seems to make moral judgements on the magnitude that we do. This in no way means we are the only ones that are morally relevant – it just means we are the only ones who know better. This is a difference between us and other animals, but no reason has been given for why this difference is the only criterion upon which moral relevance depends.
His other argument is that animals are inferior to humans and therefore have no rights.
His argument for why animals are inferior to humans is that animals are unable to do many things humans can which exhibit our intelligence and self-consciousness.
Schulman gives, in his second article, a list of fifty things animals can’t do (including things like “the practice of law”). He then concludes “For those of you who can't understand the argument any other way, because these other species don't have the innate ability to engage in any of these activities, all other species of animals known to mankind are inferior to us and don't have rights.”
There are some very large and very obvious problems with this argument:
First, why draw the line at the level of species? Non-human species are unable to do x and therefore they are inferior. Why not say non-mammal? Arguably because the human species encapsulates all of the “superior” beings, so there is no need to cast a larger net. But we can narrow our net, as non-infant humans without any disabilities are really the only ones capable of doing the things on his list. Therefore, infants and people with disabilities don’t have any rights. Anything Schulman has said about animals goes for them, and therefore, following his argument to its conclusion, there is no such thing as human rights – only rights for the capable.
Secondly, why the list he offers? He offers a short list of things in his first article which he claims as proof of intelligence and self-consciousness. The list includes things like “Being observed as producing or having produced technological artifacts unique to that species” (let’s ignore chimps do this). Why does he set the bar where he does? Why not set it differently, as animals do show considerable intelligence in many different intelligence tests (pigs, for example, are as intelligent as small children, and chimps beat humans are certain aspects of intelligence tests)? Some animals have demonstrated self-consciousness when being set in front of a mirror, so why is this not a criterion? Why not set the bar lower, so that smaller tasks that show intelligence count? Why not set the bar higher, so that only extremely intelligent humans meet the standard? The criteria used are entirely arbitrary and extremely biased.
Third, how does it follow from listing a bunch of things that animals can’t do that we are superior? I can list many things different animals can do that we can’t, but I wouldn’t claim they are superior to us. Schulman takes an extremely anthropomorphic measure of “superiority”. Humans are, on average, much more intelligent than other animals. If this is the standard he is using, fine, but why not just come out and say “humans are smarter than animals, therefore animals don’t have rights”? At least then I could accept the premise.
Finally, even if we did have an objective measure of superiority, how would it follow that whatever species is inferior to humans is completely lacking any rights? This seems like the old “might makes right” adage. No reason has been given to think that the “inferior” are less morally important than the superior, let alone not morally significant at all. If intelligence or ability to do things is our measure of superiority, then I am certainly superior to many humans – since they are inferior to me, does it follow that they don’t have rights? There is no reason to attach moral importance to the species one belongs to, so I don’t know why – even if humans on average were “superior” – it would follow that all humans are protected by rights while all non-human animals are not. Even if it did follow that humans are more morally significant than other animals, it does not follow that animals are not morally significant at all.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of Schulman’s message is that he thinks animal rights activists “don't love animals. They hate men.” He quote mines up something by one animal rights activist saying that "Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic", exaggerates it and generalizes it to all animal rights activists. As an animal rights activist AND a human rights activist, I am appalled. It’s such a ludicrous point I feel silly just addressing it, but every animal rights activist I have ever met are counter-examples to this claim. Most are quite conscious of the fact that a vegan diet helps humans, as meat production is horrible for the environment (which in turn affects humans) and factory farms are notoriously bad for workers’ rights. I can counter with the (hopefully equally false) claim “Schulman doesn’t love humans. He hates animal rights activists”.
by the living graves of a billion murdered lives.
-"Nailing Descartes To The Wall(Liquid) Meat Is Still Murder" by Propaghandi
J. Neil Schulman writes in “The Illogic of Animal Rights” and in his follow-up article “Fifty Things Animals Can’t Do” why he thinks that animal rights activists “don't love animals. They hate men.”
First he points out that either humans are like other animals or we are not. If we are, then we have no moral obligations. If we are not, then we are superior and therefore the only ones morally relevant.
There is no virtue to this argument. We are like other animals in many ways, but different in many ways (just like any species). We are the only species that seems to make moral judgements on the magnitude that we do. This in no way means we are the only ones that are morally relevant – it just means we are the only ones who know better. This is a difference between us and other animals, but no reason has been given for why this difference is the only criterion upon which moral relevance depends.
His other argument is that animals are inferior to humans and therefore have no rights.
His argument for why animals are inferior to humans is that animals are unable to do many things humans can which exhibit our intelligence and self-consciousness.
Schulman gives, in his second article, a list of fifty things animals can’t do (including things like “the practice of law”). He then concludes “For those of you who can't understand the argument any other way, because these other species don't have the innate ability to engage in any of these activities, all other species of animals known to mankind are inferior to us and don't have rights.”
There are some very large and very obvious problems with this argument:
First, why draw the line at the level of species? Non-human species are unable to do x and therefore they are inferior. Why not say non-mammal? Arguably because the human species encapsulates all of the “superior” beings, so there is no need to cast a larger net. But we can narrow our net, as non-infant humans without any disabilities are really the only ones capable of doing the things on his list. Therefore, infants and people with disabilities don’t have any rights. Anything Schulman has said about animals goes for them, and therefore, following his argument to its conclusion, there is no such thing as human rights – only rights for the capable.
Secondly, why the list he offers? He offers a short list of things in his first article which he claims as proof of intelligence and self-consciousness. The list includes things like “Being observed as producing or having produced technological artifacts unique to that species” (let’s ignore chimps do this). Why does he set the bar where he does? Why not set it differently, as animals do show considerable intelligence in many different intelligence tests (pigs, for example, are as intelligent as small children, and chimps beat humans are certain aspects of intelligence tests)? Some animals have demonstrated self-consciousness when being set in front of a mirror, so why is this not a criterion? Why not set the bar lower, so that smaller tasks that show intelligence count? Why not set the bar higher, so that only extremely intelligent humans meet the standard? The criteria used are entirely arbitrary and extremely biased.
Third, how does it follow from listing a bunch of things that animals can’t do that we are superior? I can list many things different animals can do that we can’t, but I wouldn’t claim they are superior to us. Schulman takes an extremely anthropomorphic measure of “superiority”. Humans are, on average, much more intelligent than other animals. If this is the standard he is using, fine, but why not just come out and say “humans are smarter than animals, therefore animals don’t have rights”? At least then I could accept the premise.
Finally, even if we did have an objective measure of superiority, how would it follow that whatever species is inferior to humans is completely lacking any rights? This seems like the old “might makes right” adage. No reason has been given to think that the “inferior” are less morally important than the superior, let alone not morally significant at all. If intelligence or ability to do things is our measure of superiority, then I am certainly superior to many humans – since they are inferior to me, does it follow that they don’t have rights? There is no reason to attach moral importance to the species one belongs to, so I don’t know why – even if humans on average were “superior” – it would follow that all humans are protected by rights while all non-human animals are not. Even if it did follow that humans are more morally significant than other animals, it does not follow that animals are not morally significant at all.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of Schulman’s message is that he thinks animal rights activists “don't love animals. They hate men.” He quote mines up something by one animal rights activist saying that "Human suffering resulting from drought and famine in Ethiopia is tragic, yes, but the destruction there of other creatures and habitat is even more tragic", exaggerates it and generalizes it to all animal rights activists. As an animal rights activist AND a human rights activist, I am appalled. It’s such a ludicrous point I feel silly just addressing it, but every animal rights activist I have ever met are counter-examples to this claim. Most are quite conscious of the fact that a vegan diet helps humans, as meat production is horrible for the environment (which in turn affects humans) and factory farms are notoriously bad for workers’ rights. I can counter with the (hopefully equally false) claim “Schulman doesn’t love humans. He hates animal rights activists”.
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