There are two basic arguments I hear for the carnivorous diet, the first of which is the mono-theistic one that I discussed last week. This is the basic line of thinking that God created animals for human consumption, which turns out to be false, according to the creation text for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Instead, God actually gave humans a vegetarian diet, and only later permitted us to eat meat.
The other argument does not rely on any kind of religious belief at all, but a scientific one. The best summary comes from a former doctor of mine: “Well, humans didn’t fight their way to the top of the food chain only to eat vegetables!” The idea, of course, is that humans are the (current) end of a long line of organisms which evolved and survived at least in part by eating the species below it. From this perspective, it seems bizarre to turn from our habitual meat-eating ways for moral reasons.
But to argue that something is morally justified because it is ground into us by evolution doesn’t have much weight behind it. It doesn’t take a genius to make a long list of things that are natural but that we consider immoral. Remember, one of Darwin’s basic ideas was that the strong exploit the weak in order to survive, whether we are talking about genes, monkeys, or people. So unless you are ready to argue that murder is morally justified because it is natural, you shouldn’t say the same about eating meat.
From my experience, it seems that these are really the only two arguments for the carnivorous diet. I don’t think that either of them are compelling arguments, and although that does not yet mean that we should be vegetarians, I hope that this will make the future discussion more interesting.
