Ethics
Vegetarian – Con Think back to the days when you were a little kid just enjoying life. Remember how you would go out on the playground and slide down the slide and swing on the swings and play tag with your friends? Afterwards you would go home, clean up, and have some dinner. Usually, for most of us, dinner had some kind of meat along with some veggies and maybe a soda. Many people in the United States grew up eating some sort of meat, whether it was chicken, bacon, pork or ham. More the 80 percent of the United States population eats meat more then three times a week [QUOTE]. Many do not think of all the different ethical reasons why it is not only okay to eat meat, but why is it so common in the country. Some of the reasons go all the way from their religion that allows them to eat meat to the ethical reason that a person does what they believe to be in their self-interest and that it is a natural behavior to eat meat. The first of the many ethical reasons is the divine authoritarian ethic. In this theory, it says that a person ought to do what God or The Gods commands him to do. This means that anything God or the Gods one may believe in, no matter what the circumstances are one will always follow them. This also means that morality comes from God and that He is the source for it. An example of this is that if God tells you not to murder any human being then the majority of the people that follow this God would follow it because he is God and they want to do what he says.
We can relate this to the opposing side of vegetarianism. In Christianity, the followers refer to the Bible to tell them what to do. In the Bible it never says that killing an animal for food is a sin. The only thing that is does say though is God is “against abusing or mistreating animals” (Miller) . Since the Bible, none the less God never says that killing an animal is a sin then those people that eat meat are not being unethical. The only way they would be unethical is if they abuse or mistreat the animal before they kill it to make meat. Some may say that the slaughter houses abuse and mistreat the animals, but many people come back with the argument that they abstain from the meat of animals raised in certain ways, such as factory farms. There are people that also “avoid certain meats, such as veal or foie gras” (Wikipedia) . Some people also believe that if they do not follow or believe what God says then they will be punished or go to hell. Since many people do not sit there and think about the ethical reasons behind everything they just follow God because they believe Him to be right. Overall, we can see that according to the divine authoritarian ethics that it is okay to eat meat. The second reason why it is ethical okay to eat meat is based on ethical egoism. Ethical egoism is where a person ought to do that which maximizes his self-interest. For instance, this could mean doing anything that will benefit you. For those that are not vegetarian, they choose to eat meat because it is in their self-interest. Many people eat meat because they believe that it benefits them. Some of the way that it could benefit them is nutritionally and a cause for survival. The majority of the population that does eat meat they usually see eating meat as a source of protein. The other way that it benefits them is that many people have eaten meat since they were born they tend to think that they would not be able to survive without it. They also can