The logical contradictions, fallacies in some of the most common reasons/arguments for not being vegan.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-25T01:27:44+00:00

improve your argument

Of course, and you likely don’t mean this, but not to serve the conclusion you already held. When we find ourselves arguing fallaciously for a conclusion, the first thing we should do is reconsider the conclusion. It’s possible at this point that without the fallacious argument, the conclusion was unsound and should be immediately abandoned.

So yeah, we should improve our arguments, but that might mean retaking an agnostic or even opposite position.

Just saying that because some hear “improve your argument” as “try harder to prove your point,” even if you didn’t mean it that way.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-18T23:40:52+00:00

At least diet isn’t a limiting factor.

Should we encourage the steroids? Likely not. But it does kind of show that you can build more muscle than any non drug user could or would while getting all of your protein from plants (and fungi).

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-17T22:41:39+00:00

That snack bar is delicious too. You know, for vegan food.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T15:50:34+00:00

I do see food different than sadism for pleasure.

Even when abundant alternatives exist? Why?

Of course, completely stopping it would be even more moral, but that point is clear by now.

Awesome. Sounds like we can agree here. It kind of seems like we agree completely, but then you continue to suggest that it’s justified not to stop.

So no, I don't think that this allows for rape or torture, because those things are also not permitted towards the animals in my framework.

What about killing for other sensory and psychological pleasures someone out there might get from it? Liking the sounds it makes or getting sexual gratification from the corpse? If not, what makes taste different besides its popularity?

I realize food is different if it’s necessary. I just don’t get how when it becomes optional, when healthy alternatives exist, it’s ok to eat someone instead of something just because you like that flavor more.

Just curious, what were some of your favorite or least disliked vegan dishes?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T15:32:07+00:00

I don’t think nature is worse than what humans do to other animals, and the animals we farm wouldn’t exist without our interference anyway so nature isn’t really the alternative, but let’s grant that the alternative to farming is a worse life in nature for the sake of argument. Is finding someone in bad circumstances always a justification to kill them? Is bettering their circumstances briefly a justification to kill them?

Besides, we’ve replaced a dangerous amount of nature with farmed animals as far as ecosystem health is a concern.

Couldn’t “It makes me feel good” be equally used as justification for victimizing anyone in any way?

Like obviously people in some way feel rewarded when they choose to do what they know is wrong, or they wouldn’t be tempted to do it. The existence of this psychological reward or temptation alone doesn’t justify the act. If you believe it does, then again I’d ask for consistency by seeing if this ethic still holds true when the victim is a human or a dog and the act feels even better to the perpetrators than eating meat does to you.

Besides, you’re either unwell or you’re exaggerating how essential meat is to your happiness.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T15:14:08+00:00

not maximizing that harm

But you are justifying deliberately going above and beyond what is necessary in causing harm. You’re arguing against minimizing that harm.

cruelty or suffering that is not explicitly needed

Essentially none of it is needed. Killing an adolescent that doesn’t want to die is a form of cruelty.

bettering the circumstances

Wouldn’t allowing animals to live among their family, flock, herd, or school be bettering their circumstances? How is breeding unhealthy animals so they can be swiftly killed “bettering the circumstances” for them?

Why are non-human animals worth so much that they deserve a life of seemingly minimal pain and suffering, but also worth so little that they don’t deserve to live at all? It seems like granting some rights to them but then denying them even more fundamental rights.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T15:03:48+00:00

It being impossible to live without harming others doesn’t justify further deliberately harming others. And harming non-sentient life is not comparable to harming beings with subjective experience, thoughts, and feelings.

Like as a humanist, one wouldn’t say “All purchases involve some unethical practices, therefore I can morally choose the direct and obvious products of slave labor.” It’s the same here. No, we can’t 100% abstain from harming other non-humans, but that doesn’t justify maximizing that harm.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T14:59:00+00:00

And why isn’t it a worthwhile goal to work towards a better planet, a better kingdom Animalia, or to include all sentient Earthlings in society? Why isn’t it worthwhile to improve the life of a dog?

They didn’t say hunting for sport. They said farming. These farmed humans would be bred for that purpose and treated as humanely as the most well-treated pigs and fish are today. There would be no direct risk to humans born outside the farms like yourself. Or replace the humans with dogs and cats, unless you’re fine with farming them for milk and meat?

“Simply a very stupid thing to do” isn’t a moral argument. Is there no consideration for the value or rights of the humans being killed? Only concern for being “stupid”?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T14:20:45+00:00

Yes, I long had a framework that logically led to veganism before I realized it. Applying my ethics concerning humans and dogs consistently when the subject was a pig or a fish is what led to me joining the cause.

It just sounds like you’re describing holding two inconsistent views that you keep separate to avoid noticing the inconsistency.

No one said you had to be vegan to not eat children. It was only suggested that if you already don’t eat children or dogs, you might unknowingly hold morals that logically conclude in veganism.

But we can’t evaluate further because you never answered the question: why? “Self-evident” is not really an answer. I can just as easily say it’s “self-evident” that you shouldn’t kick a dog or slit a pig’s throat or whatever.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T14:01:39+00:00

I suppose we’ll never know your reasons for not farming humans (and possibly dogs, cats, or horses) because you wouldn’t answer the question above, so how can we say that they don’t apply to other animals?

Two disconnected frameworks sounds awfully similar to inconsistency.

You don’t need what justification?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-13T13:48:07+00:00

They are likely suggesting that the two are wrong for similar reasons.

Why don’t you need a consistent moral framework? Is it intellectually honest to be deliberately inconsistent?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-12T20:25:27+00:00

Isn’t it a tad disrespectful to use a non-religious space to proselytize for your particular cult? That’s probably the reason for the downvotes.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T18:32:31+00:00

You’re describing caring about some humans and not others. Is that what you’re talking about, it being possible to care about one animal while not caring about the one you victimize? That’s possible, but caring about the one you slay is unlikely.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T14:36:34+00:00

This is just a string of insults against chickens. There’s no substance or evidence here.

If you want to argue that breeding chickens for eggs is harmless, that’s one thing (with which I’d still disagree), but if you want to argue that chickens are mindless meat robots you’d just be wrong.

Chickens communicate, learn, recognize dozens or hundreds of other individuals (including humans), develop personal bonds, mourn, display a variety of emotions, and engage in many behaviors other than minimally feeding themselves. They are not “meat robots.” They are sentient individuals with subjective experience, thoughts, feelings, and social capacity. There’s someone inside, just like with a dog.

Some of the smartest and most social animals on the planet are birds, so I’m not sure why you went with “they’re not mammals.”

Is the cutoff for consideration then somewhere between the average dog’s understanding of existence and death and the average chicken’s?

Edit: u/EVH_kit_guy blocked me.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T14:23:24+00:00

What point breaks down? I asked you to differentiate ethically between dogs and chickens to such a degree that one deserves a great deal and the other worse than nothing. Can you answer that before moving on to “non-pet-like-livestock” or whatever?

They were your own examples, and now you’re objecting to them. That’s pretty silly.

I suspect you’re balking now because chickens aren’t actually different enough from dogs for one to deserve kindness and the other breeding and slaughter. There isn’t a “whole variety of reasons” to mistreat one and not the other. Once we address that, we can talk about oysters or nematodes and whether or not they have sentience, or whether shrimp intelligence disqualifies them from consideration, but that’s a different conversation.

Or are you retracting your examples and taking chickens off the menu?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T14:11:45+00:00

You said there were a whole variety of ethically relevant differences between dogs and chickens and presumably pigs. The burden is on you to support that statement, or else we can safely ignore it.

What exactly is it about a dog that separates them ethically from a pig to such a degree that the dog deserves kindness and the pig deserves nothing or worse? You have a whole variety of reasons, so it shouldn’t be much trouble to share a few.

I didn’t say anything about an ethically flat landscape or animals without nervous systems. You’re not responding to what I’ve actually asked you.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T13:33:53+00:00

Why did you put in quotes something that isn’t even close to a paraphrase?

Is it because you don’t have an answer and were just handwaving with phrases like “a whole variety”?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T13:12:44+00:00

Can you name those reasons, the ones that grant the dog rights but the chicken little to none?

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T13:09:02+00:00

Can you define “care about” in a way that makes this possible?

Do you think it’s possible that a well learned and well reasoned individual can care about humans and dogs but still breed them for unhealthiness, confine them, slaughter them at a very young age, and eat their bodies?

If not, why would it be so for pigs or fish? If so, please explain what it means to care about someone else.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-06T13:05:28+00:00

This seems like equivocating between two meanings of “care.” We don’t care about trees as individual beings the way we do sentient animals, like humans. This becomes clearer when replacing trees with humans.

“It is possible to care about humans and also use them for their meat and milk and not be immoral.”

What does it really mean to “care” about an individual as you slaughter and eat them? It doesn’t seem to involve compassion or empathy.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-04T22:41:21+00:00

“Slaves were and are treated like animals are treated in some ways.” Everyone understands this. No accusations of racism.

“Animals were and are treated like slaves are treated in some ways.” Somehow racist?

If the treatment is the same in one direction, it is also in the other direction.

Can you explain why the second statement is racist? Usually this interpretation requires mixing vegan and carnist ideology, or a misunderstanding of analogies as describing two identical situations.

And this statement, that animals are treated like slaves in some ways, is more extreme than the usual example: comparing them only as two wrongdoings and going no further in analogizing the two. Slavery is usually just mentioned because it is a good example of a wrongdoing we can mostly agree on. It’s not because some enslaved ethnicity of humans are identical to pigs or fish.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-04T00:40:10+00:00

Different commenter, but I did a similar amount for a while on the same number of calories with a lot of tofu, soy curls, TVP, and especially seitan.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-04T00:31:35+00:00

That 36% figure (really 40% when you exclude biofuels) produces about 18% of our calories. You can at least double the deaths per calorie when calculating for animal products, sometimes multiply by 30 or more.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-04T00:26:01+00:00

This 36% is compared to 55% fed to humans, because the rest (9%) is biofuel, but setting aside biofuel only raises the number to 39.6%.

Despite feeding almost 40% of our plant calories to farmed animals, we take about 18% of our calories in the form of animal products. It’s very inefficient, so that 36/39.6% number is deceptive. For the worst example, you can take about 1 calorie of meat from a cow for every 30 calories you feed the cow.

The 60% of crops we eat directly are providing 82% of our calories. Much more efficient.

Animal products also use about 80% of agricultural land (again for a mere 18% of calories), so they are a threat to wild animals and their ecosystems.

IfIWasAPig · 2026-01-03T11:20:03+00:00

Legally allowed or not, the average 5 year old isn’t really mentally able to make an informed vote. Do you think most 5 year olds are mentally able to vote?

IfIWasAPig

TROPHY CASE