Went vegetarian 4 years ago...vegan almost 2 years now. Yeah, animals dream, feel, fear, have lives of their own.

Okay... I won't eat your dog! Everything else is fair game!

I know they dream. I would not eat your dog. I think humans can move past carnivorous diets in the interest of being humane. Sustinence hunters are probably an exception in my opinion. I will continue to harvest fish I catch. But factory farms are a long ways from where we started and are not healthy for anyone or any animal.

Give me a knife fork and oven and I'll show you

IMO we are not our bodies—our higher selves are something else. In the organic world of bodies, bodies eat bodies to survive. It’s not a question of morality or ethics—things are as they are for reasons that are neither good nor bad.

Would you eat a human body rather than starve? It’s just a question—I’m undecided.

This is just the way mother nature set the system up. Our human brains evolved out of the ability to consume meat. We are who we are. Though I wish I could sustain using photosynthesis but the great one gave that only to plants.

I don't see dreaming as evidence of human-level self-awareness nor do I see not dreaming as evidence that they don't experience pain or fear.

I treat animals with empathy. Since (at least most) animals do not have hopes, dreams and aspirations or awareness of their mortality, I have no issue with humane killing of animals for food. I think that some domesticated animals like dogs, and a few highly intelligent ones like apes, dolphins and orcas, have enough kinship and/or symbiosis with us humans that it would be a failure of empathy to use them for food. On the other hand, e.g., chickens, not so much. My problem with how chickens are treated is less that they end up on our dinner tables as that they are by default confined to tiny cages and poor conditions in the service of that.

Humans have been eating animals for a long, long, time.
Pets are not generally eaten.

I am not a vegan, or vegan lite, but I am not proud of the fact that I enjoy meat. I am not proud because of the terrible lives these animals are forced to live to sustain a meat orientated culture.

You asked if it is right to eat animals. No, I don't think there is a good moral argument for eating meat, unless one is starving.

So yes, I am guilty, and every juicy bite I take of that medium rare 1 1/2 inch porterhouse steak diminishes my moral character a bit.

So it goes.

Animals do sleep. There is no rational argument to justify killing animals for consumption except for medical reasons. Just because we evolved to do something or because it's "natural" doesn't make it morally right.
Well I don't really have a big problem with the killing but more with the way it is done. Factory farming is cruel and brutal and we shouldn't do it.
Human beings are not rational in this regard. They wouldn't eat their dogs or cats and they wouldn't use the same lame arguments to justify eating them like they do concerning pigs and cows. There is just no emotional attachment to those animals in our society. It's hypocritical but it's not easy to change such an ingrained habit like eating meat. I hope lab meat gets better so we don't have to exploit those animals in such a cruel way anymore. We'll see. Some people will surely still want the "real thing".

nope. i know for a fact my dog dreams, as it happens (i don't eat dog, as it also happens) and so do other animals, but humans have teeth and organs designed for meat consumption. our brains evolved as they did at least partly because we as a species began to eat meat. with the orange ass in the white house, we can clearly see our brains still have a long way to go, so i do not intend to stop eating meat (especially since i am diabetic and would starve to death without some animal protein).

g

Animals do dream.

And no.

Living beings eat other living beings. It's just the way nature works, and humans are a part of that cycle just like everything else is.