Geekshow

Since it's come up around here I thought I'd start up a thread for skeptics.

I may as well start with continuing a conversation from another thread

Hayden “Cheerleader” Jones

I kind of hope they have a vegan on and discuss logical fallacies in arguments and the effectiveness of vivisection.

Are you saying that you think it's illogical to not be vegan?

Hi Rusty,

You asked whether I thought that a person not follow a vegan lifestyle was behaving illogically.

This seems to me to be a bad question.  Veganism is a worldview and in order to judge someone else's worldview you would need to state what that is.

For example, vegans generally hold that it is wrong to own another sentient creature (and be able to arbitrarily do with it what you will).  They are therefore generally against vivisection.  Another worldview could be utilitarianism and a person making an argument that the net good achieved by doing an experiement out weighs the suffering caused by it.

I think both people are being consistent in their approaches and neither are being illogical.

Now I could go on from here but I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter and perhaps you could reformulate a different point of debate.

1) Dietary choices are not logical or illogical, they are primarily moral decisions.

1b) I may be willing to enter a discussion as to why I think most people are not behaving morally, if they consume animal products (note I am amongst that number)

2) To clarify, I felt there were two topics that a vegan personality could talk about on the SGU.

a) One area of common ground might be a discussion of logical fallacies.  So, for example someone might justify eating meat because humans have been doing that for a long time.  I would say that would be an “appeal to nature” and a bad argument.

b) I think many vegans make the claim that vivisection is not effective.  I think this view is wrong and might be a nice point to debate.

3) I tend to dislike appeals to patriotism because I think it obfuscates the real reasons why we should do things.  Patriotism is a loaded word and is too nebulous for my tastes.  Any time a person uses patriotism, your skeptic sensors should be on alert.

4) I tend to disagree with Libertarians but that's a big discussion.