 Hey, this debate's about to start, but in case you didn't know, it's also available on our modern day debate podcast right now in case you want to listen to it on the go. So here is that debate right now. Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not veganism devalues human life and we are starting right now. With our Omnivore team, Martin and Justice, thanks so much for being with us. The floor is all yours. Hey there everyone, glad to be here. Thank you very much, James. Thank you to modern day debate and to the annoying vegans for doing this with us today. It's going to be great. Thank you also, Martin, my teammate for making the choice to do this thing with me. As we agreed, Martin, I'm going to jump in here. My name is Justice Walker. I am a missionary, farmer, father of three, home educator, husband, and generally the vegan's worst nightmare. I have a farm with 60 milk goats, 100 sheep, three horses, so I use all kinds of every form of animal exploitation known to man. I am vehemently and radically opposed to veganism as an ideology and I have a little statement here that I'll read and try to give those reasons for that. My reasons for affirming that veganism devalues human life and is in fact a noxious and proditious philosophy are myriad. However, for the sake of time and convenience, I have organized my main objections into four basic categories. They are moral, practical, philosophical, or logical, and personal. First, moral. The biblical worldview provides us with a framework in which to view questions of morality. When we abandon this framework, we end up not only supporting positions that are emotionally driven, inconsistent, and logically unsupportable, but are harmful to human well-being and even threaten our existence. I am not against veganism as a diet choice or even as a protest against the abuses of animals in factory farms, but I am strongly even radically against veganism as a moral position. Humans are unique, extending moral considerations which are unique to humans by including in the moral cohort non-human animals on the logical foundation that they share some specific traits with us, does nothing by way of ennobling them, but does great harm to the dignity of humans. Humans are unique because we're made in the image of God. Humans were set over nature to subdue, that is to harness it for our use, and to care for it, that is to improve upon it. By abusing animals or driving species into extinction, by eroding top soils or poisoning groundwater, we not only demonstrate a lack of care for the earth and her non-human inhabitants, but we also preach heresy through our actions, professing to be the image of God we destroy what God called good. However, on the other hand, by mislabeling the killing of animals for food, murder, we also devalue human life and dignity by making humans have equal value with animals. How many chickens is one human life worth? How many dogs? How many cats? My opponents will undoubtedly rebuke if they do not claim humans or animals to have equal value per se. I hope to demonstrate that they actually do equate humans with animals. Arguing for veganism from the basis of animal rights or promoting veganism as the new abolitionist movement is a case in point. They would have us believe that the fight, the free animals from their abuse as a prime human food source is equatable to the fight for freeing slaves. Some will point out that certain early abolitionists were also animals rights activists, again in air quotes. In fact, they misread history by reading into the record their own modern humanist biases. William LeBer Forrest, one of the great champions of the abolitionist cause, also fought for laws guaranteeing the humane treatment of animals, but not because these animals had rights, but because as I laid out earlier, mistreating the creation is a dishonor to the creator and thus belittles the dignity of the image of God. The early abolitionist support sought to free the slaves because they too were human. They sought to guarantee the humane treatment of animals as a reminder for humans to act in a human way. Extending imaginary rights to animals devalues the very concept of rights and is the dishonor to the memory of the great men and women who fought to extend those rights to all humans as well as devaluing and cheaping the suffering of the humans that humans underwent when those rights were denied. My second category is practical. Modern farming is an unsustainable largely because of the bifurcation of animal and plant husbandry. The modern drive for a fully chemically based farming practices is not only destroying groundwater and eroding topsoil but is driving us to a completely unsustainable form of food production. Last 10,000 years of human existence ever since the agrarian revolution, animals and animal and plant husbandry together have been the basis for all human thriving and for sustainable practices of agriculture. This will have to be something that we return to in the future and not something that we move away from. When vegans advocate for an entirely plant-based diet, they are also advocating for the destruction of nature. They also do this based on what is called a weird western educated industrialized rich and democratic perspective otherwise known as white Western European because they have a diet that is allowed to them due to mechanized industrialized farming practices which are not available to most of the rest of the world. Inconsistency, this is my third point. Vegans have yet to demonstrate that the burden of the moral burden applies to people who buy animal products. The example that I like to show here is if you were to back in the 1830s again with the example of slavery, if you were to say that someone who bought a cotton shirt was 100% at fault or was responsible for the propagation of slavery, you would have to show that the promotion of the buying of the cotton shirt was absolutely inherently connected to slavery. We would know that you can totally produce cotton slavery, therefore even though the majority of shirts were produced at that time with slavery, it still doesn't follow that cotton shirt procuration is necessarily evil. This is a point that we'll have to revisit. And then the final point, I actually had my first whole big section written out and the rest, I'm ad-libbing so sorry about it, this is coming off a little bit a little bit itchy, is personal. When I moved to my current farm five years ago from the far north of Siberia down to the south of Siberia, I was bitten in the very early spring of the first year by four different ticks and I somehow was so lucky as to attract three different diseases, tick-borne diseases, limes, meningitis, and encephalitis. The results of these tick bites were absolutely devastating to my health. I spent almost three years completely on my back, 16 hours a day, 18 hours a day, I had to sleep, I had the shakes, I was vomiting even from small stress or small work, small amounts of stress or work, until I finally found a diet that helped cure my disease. The diet was the carnivore diet, I didn't jump on it because it was a fad but because other survivors of Lyme's disease had promoted it to me or had advocated it to me and so I decided to check it out. After six months of eating nothing but hamburgers, actually mostly goat and sheep burgers because that's the kind of farmer I am, I completely got rid of all of the Lyme's and encephalitis symptoms which had been haunting me for three years. I've been able to regain my health and my life and I'm glad to say that this is due to my good friends, the animals that gave their lives to help me regain my health. So this is my fourth reason is personal. I also see that people like me who live in less privileged parts of the world like Siberia, Russia or all of Southeast Asia that's just below the border here do not have the privilege as Western people do to even have this idea of a full vegan diet. They live a more natural dietary life like our ancestors have for the last at least 2,000 years with both mixed animal and plant diets as we were intended to have. So those are my four things. Martin, if I want to kick it over to you and you can bring up the rest of the food and stuff. I'm just going to put this beautiful dog on you so that the vegans don't get angry at me because I'm probably going to offend them. So James just fixed that so that they can see me, the little doggy. Okay what I want to say is I think veganism can be dangerous if you take it to the extremes. If you take it to extreme then you would care so much about animals that you would kill yourself because that's the least amount of pain you can give animals because everything gives animals pain. Even vegan food causes massive amounts of suffering and pain to animals. So they say that if you rebuke a wise man they will love you so hopefully the vegans will love me after this debate, me and justice. So what I also want to say, how many minutes do I have still left? James, you're still there? It's about three minutes. It's about three minutes left. Okay I think if you show a person enough videos of animals suffering then they would I think join vegans the same way you can brainwash a guy, person into what if you watch enough people suffering you show the person how much people suffer and how many times they cry and how many people kill themselves. So then that person would also think it's like evil to bring a child into this world, that it's like a child abuse to bring a child into this world. So I think veganism is also like to that extreme. I think luckily most vegans are not super extreme obsessed with animal suffering. Now English is not my first language so Afrikaans is actually my first language so hopefully I don't say something wrong and so the other point I wanted to make that just existing already causes animal suffering and I don't agree that animals are worth one human being like one animal is worth one human being. I also don't agree that killing an animal is murder. I don't think that follows logically. I think humans are like much more valuable than animals many times more valuable like I would kill many lions to predict Anna and Brian many many so I don't think they are like worth one bug or one chicken and thus I don't agree that veganism increases human health or I think it decreases human value. So that's that's what I want to say and I give the rest of my time to the vegans. You got to thank you very much from our omnivore team and want to let you know folks if it's your first time here at modern day debate we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics and we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from vegan omnivore black white gay straight you name it folks we're glad you're here and we also want to let you know our guests are linked in the description we really do appreciate our guests so we want to encourage you to attack the argument not the person and so with that Anna and Brian thanks for being with us the floor is all yours. Thank you James thank you to Justice and Martin for challenging us to this debate and having us here today to kick off the debate again. I mean our response to the debate proposition is fairly simple this will be pretty short veganism is most currently defined as simply a way of life that seeks to exclude all animal exploitation and cruelty towards animals as far as what is possible and practicable an older definition of veganism is simply the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals and we were honestly surprised to be challenged to this debate with this particular debate proposition given that veganism does not concern itself with the valuing or devaluing of humans in any way if you just look at the word value Miriam Webster defines the word value in its verb form as to consider or rate highly or to rate or scale in usefulness importance or general worth so by devaluing we assume our interlocutors to mean that would be to consider or rate humans poorly or to consider humans unuseful unimportant or worthless but simply standing up for the rights of cows pigs and chickens for example is it's not inherent that one would have to devalue homo sapiens to do that just as when someone stands up for the rights of women for example it is not entailed that one would have to devalue men veganism by definition is a non-human animal rights movement its focus is on the exploitation of non-human living sentient beings for mere taste pleasure it is the belief that for all of the same reasons that we believe that our fellow human beings deserve not to be exploited our fellow non-human earthlings also deserve not to be exploited right and um for those unfamiliar veganism stands firmly against speciesism which is simply discrimination based on species and it it's really no different than racism sexism homophobia transphobia or any other type of discrimination based on morally irrelevant factors just as treating someone differently because they have different amounts of melanin in their skin it's equally wrong to treat someone differently because they have feathers instead of hair or hooves instead of feet in all of the ways that matter ethically like the ability to feel joy to feel pain the ability to suffer sentient animals and humans are very much alike veganism in no way devalues human life or the human experience on the contrary veganism empowers and encourages our fellow humans to live in alignment with our own values rather than blindly accept the indoctrinated societal hypocrisy of speciesism and that's that's it you gotta thank you very much to our vegan team and also folks want to let you know we are absolutely thrilled for this upcoming juicy debate at the bottom right of your screen folks you don't want to miss this one lance from the serfs and jf will be debating socialism versus capitalism this upcoming wednesday so be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on that epic debate it's going to be a blast so with that we're going to jump into the open conversation thanks to our guests who once again folks are linked in the description and with that the floor is all yours okay could I go first sure I want to ask Anna and Brian oh how how how many animals is James worth like I want to know um James's life how many animals is he worth I I don't know that that can really be answered that would be like saying how many other humans is James life worth one easy so you would kill one person to save James if that person killed tried to kill James yes but I'm talking about what if two people tried to kill James what if I'm talking about say two people say James is drowning and there's a lot of animals on the other side you can only save one side which would you save how many animals before you start saving the animals instead of James that's not the situation that we're faced with when we go to the grocery store and buy meat it's it's kind of moot it's like you're creating a false dichotomy the choice isn't do I save James or do I save this cow it's do I just go pay to kill but it's not a false dichotomy because but but it's not a false dichotomy because the veganist position in general on for instance uh experimentation with animals for medical research is that we shouldn't experiment with animals for medical research but that is a direct save the animals or save the person um issue it it's not a false dichotomy it's a thought experiment that has actually played out in everyday life there are many things we do to animals that are horrible and we hope to move away from those things just like we've moved away from horse-drawn carriages in some parts of the world to cars or we've uh you know we we've done away with pagers and and we have cell phones now you know like it's we hope to evolve past that point and we know that many medical research companies many schools including who used to force children to dissect fetal pigs and frogs for example are now moving to software or other modes of research so I mean there are there is still room for for evolution in that area um we are aware that many of our modern medicine medical achievements have been because of animal research because that's all we had that's all we knew but you know we we want to move away from that I mean that's where the words possible and practical come into effect in the definition of veganism you know as Martin was saying if you take veganism to its extreme you would just end up taking your own life so that you cause zero harm that's not veganism because that's not possible or I mean it's possible it's not practicable it's not a practicable message to be spreading obviously simply by existing you're going to cause some harm veganism is about reducing that harm as best as you can as far as what's possible and practicable and for the majority of people especially people living in western countries who buy their food at a grocery store or go to restaurants they're totally able to just move their right hand a little bit to the right and grab the oat milk instead of the cow milk they're capable of doing that it's possible it's practical they can do it so that's what animal murder is killing an animal murder in your opinion well by definition it's murder murder has made it should they go to jail for killing an animal a lot of people actually well animal abuse in the US is now felony yeah it is illegal to like abuse and kill a dog certain animals that's a thing you know okay so people should go to jail for killing animals I think that right now if you were to implement a law that says if you kill a pig and eat the pig you go to jail I don't think people would agree to that law I don't think it would make it into the legal system I don't think it's an effective way to try to force people to change their behavior through law what we're trying to do is get people to change their hearts and their minds about the behaviors that they're engaging in and as our hearts and minds and our opinions change our laws will reflect the opinions of the society but a the word murder does have many definitions one definition being to wantonly slay or to wantonly kill wantonly just means intentionally so to intentionally kill is a definition is one definition of murder so by definition yes killing an animal to eat the animal is murder okay if you are on an island and you have to stay alive you have to kill animals to stay alive would you do that we're not on an island Martin no but I'm asking I'm asking how much are you worth like I would say you're worth thousands of animals because you can stay alive on that island as long as you want you can kill as many animals as you want we're not in an on an island we're not rarely are people in a position of of being stuck on an island and having to that's actually a reality show you know we we create the situations but most people are dealing with the decision of what to pick out at the grocery store I mean you're baking the answer into the question itself I just the only reason I'm asking this is I want to realize interject Martin is a human Martin yeah just real just real quick to interject again to bring this back from a thought experiment down to something real I was stranded on an island called Lyme's disease um and it was a very real island and it I was on it for three three plus years and I couldn't get up out of my bed for 16 to 18 hours a day and anytime I tried to do any kind of physical work I was shaking and vomiting and and having all kinds of other symptoms I tried all kinds of different various kinds of medicines and the only answer for me was six months of animal protein and that is not a thought experiment of if you were on an island that is my life I was on that island um and I did get off via you know eating animals so this is not something that's again Martin's bringing up our point is that most people uh a sorry I was just saying our point is that most people don't uh have that situation so you're using a fringe situation to justify the norm the norm is everyday people go to mcdonald's or they go to the grocery store or they go wherever to a restaurant and they buy animal products that were factory farmed that's the norm now if you're telling me that you tried everything you consulted with plant-based physicians you consulted with non-plant-based physicians you tried various medications you tried this and that and the only possible way somehow was that eating nothing but red meat like a carnivore like a lion that was the only possible like in a universe where that's the only possible way to fix your health issue that I'm sure you then I'm sure you did everything that you could and that's again possible and practicable but we're not talking about people that were in your condition we're talking about average shoppers just like you know people bring up like what about the that's that's not what we're talking about so we're talking about people who can make that choice and again I'm and again I'm coming back to that this is not just a fringe case the according to the cdc in the united states alone over 30 000 people are infected with Lyme's disease every year and carnivore diet has been demonstrated again we don't have a you know control group studies to show this but anecdotally my own life experience and a lot of people who I know who I've reached out to who also have Lyme's disease shows that a three to six months carnivore diet will relieve you not only of symptoms but of the disease all together this is 30 000 cases a year so in the I don't know how long you guys have been vegan five six seven years there's anywhere between 150 to 210 000 people in the only the time that you guys you know have been promoting veganism who have a disease that has been demonstrated to be cured by the use of animal products and again you know the the question that I'm here is that in previous debates I've you know heard you guys advocate for a moral position on veganism is this just a harm reduction we can talk about that but as far as a moral position we don't eat people or kill people because it's you know practicable and that's why the the the loose use of the term murder is is devaluing to human life we kill animals we murder people and that's and and that's by definition killing an animal and demonstrating is murder it's just it's just the definition by definition because there were in in the English in the English language like just in English language well I'll give you another like 10 seconds to wrap up and then we've got to kick it over just to hear from on on Brian as well absolutely on and I did not mean to interrupt but I just wanted to finish this thing but about the murder but in the English language like in a lot of ancient languages unlike for instance in russian we have two different words for a reason murder means the killing of one human by another human that is its basic definition and that's what defines it from killing all right let's give a few minutes go ahead on on Brian well I wanted it we wanted to touch on your initial point about the 30,000 people who are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year that's in the u.s right in the u.s okay I mean there's only hundreds so 30,000 there's 320 or 350 million people in the united states 30,000 is like less than 1% like 0.0 per year so we're not right so that's not a common thing that's not a normal thing that that's a fringe example um not saying that it's not saying it's not valid it's any less important we're just saying that as as it would the norm the majority would be what we would consider a norm um but for those 30,000 people would you say that they were doing something wrong by by treating their disease through a predivore diet it's like we said I mean if you're if you've exhausted every single other plant-based method that you can think of and the only possible thing that works for you is this then that is what it is it's the same if you're basically doing the same thing as martin which is like you're baking the answer into the question which is if you had no other choice but to harm this animal to survive would you do it it's like well yes you've just baked it into the question I have no other choice I mean yeah but the difference is that if you were put into a lifeboat scenario where the only other choice I had was to sacrifice my own life or to murder another human being I would say I'll I'll willingly die for that other human and that's the difference between murder and killing and that's the difference between the leaving animals in their proper position on the value of scale and when you don't do that it devalues human life what's the proper position what what I mean do you okay so moving on to that because I think you're you did touch on the biblical aspect and the moral framework animals proper position is is what to be to be less than in your in your being less animals have less value than humans that's just that is a according to me in my worldview yes of course and even according to you because again like like what I said with a lifeboat scenario you're not going to give me I mean because you guys are are decent human beings you're not going to give me a situation in a lifeboat scenario where like oh it's okay to murder people it's just what it's just as practical at least I hope you wouldn't but in the scenario with animals you're willing to do that but you kind of talk both sides out of both sides of your mouth in that oh no humans are animals we wouldn't want to harm them we wouldn't want to cause them any harm or use them as food because that would be a murder and that's what I'm saying is that by by having that fuzziness of terms is is devaluing to human life it is it is not because we we simply advocate for the unnecessary killing of animals I mean animals against it we advocate against it yeah I didn't say against against we advocate against the unnecessary killing of animals murder what have you um you're using scenarios where it's needed to justify situations where it's need less right most people here in this neighborhood in the city and in many parts of the world the the the choices that they make three times a day as to like what to put on their plates or who to put on their plates is a choice that they can make a choice that they like they can they can choose plant-based or they can choose a victim I mean animals by nature any animal in the wild fights for their life that's just the biological necessity of survival is is to survive so extend that to all all species no animal wants to die we are forcing them to die for personal whatever taste pleasure or or imagined necessity so I mean that's that's all we're saying but the vast vast the vast majority of the population of the planet earth you know more than 50 percent don't eat animal protein for simple taste pleasure it's part a necessity necessary part of their diet so what you're saying is is that your position is no longer a moral position but simply a very tentative harm reduction position for the inhabitants of the golden billion it's it's the same I mean we can just move it over into the human context we have no need to kill human beings on a daily basis right but if a human being were trying to kill you I would imagine if you had no other choice you might kill that person before they get a chance to kill you that doesn't mean you can just go killing human beings day to day because in these fringe examples it's a matter of life and death you're bringing up life and death and fringe examples to justify non life and death and non fringe day to day life 50 percent of the planet isn't a fringe example 50 percent of the planet consumes meat because they how do you define where's that number from you from because because 50 percent of the planet still live in rural contexts in non industrialized countries and mixed animal and plant husbandry is the foundation for all their basic dietary needs this is a just a simple reality when you try to I mean I don't like to know where the farmer yeah because as a well you can look at the urbanization rates on the planet we're just barely tipping 50 percent I come from a country where most of the country is rural and it's always been until the westernized you know fast food stuff started to appear it was mostly plant-based and that's what that's what's affordable to grow I mean I still have cousins who say that going to buy meat in the city is very expensive they never do it because they're growing they're going wrong and when I talk about animal protein I'm not talking about hamburgers or steak that of course is a a visage of you know big you know high range Texas Australia that's not the way normal people eat but having a chicken who lays you eggs having a goat who gives you milk having a sheep who gives you a couple lambs a year that you use very very sparingly in soups to feed your children make sure they get the right amount of protein that they need is is not the same thing as a hamburger in McDonald's and that is the experience of a large percentage of the population of the earth that's outside of the golden billion outside of those who live in Europe and the United States and a few other non European centric you know industrialized highly industrialized countries and and so for instance you know the villages that surround me here in Russia almost everyone in the village has a mixed animal and plant-based you know subsistence farm that is necessary for their survival almost all of them have chickens all of them have goats or sheep cows this is a normal part of the human condition and it's normal because raising a 100 plant-based diet by the sweat of your brow is almost impossible and it's it's not only impossible it's impracticable for soil erosion for the depletion of groundwater for you know the chemical poisoning of the earth and this is something that western people are going to have to fess up to if if you don't want to run out of you know topsoil in the next 20 years right just on that because I know you brought up environment like animal agriculture is responsible for about 80 to 90 percent of water consumption in the US I mean growing and then growing the feed for that livestock it's over it's almost 60 percent of water that is used for growing feed for livestock that could be used for humans speaking of devaluing humans you know we could be using that land to feed humans not to feed animals to then feed humans because that's I mean the the environmental impact that that is having I mean they tell us here in California oh to when every single year when we have a drought take shorter showers don't water your gardens all while along the i5 you have miles and miles and miles of factory farms where these cows they're consuming gallons hundreds of thousands of gallons every single year of water yeah I I am in no in no way uh in any case or in any shape here to defend the practices of factory farming as practiced in the west like that is absolutely you're not you're not finding a friend of them in me the problem is that's what we need that's what people the the demand for for animal products is such that there is no other way to fulfill that demand if not through factory farming the demand is what it's it's actually it's actually it's actually not true the switch from the mixed animal and plant-based production of the human diet in the united states in particular specifically united states that happened in the 1960s due to the mcgovern lobby and the change from small farms to the the get get bigger get out syndrome that happened in the 1960s the the big switch happened largely due to the government subsidies it had nothing to do with the demand there was no great demand for the local milkman to go out of business but when we started subsidizing massive corn production it drove down the price of corn which made containment and factory farming the the the big uh what are they called the the feed lots possible and it wasn't the demand for hamburgers it was the the subsidization of corn specifically that makes that possible so this is not this is again you're putting the onus on the consumer when the onus is not on the con should not be on the consumer you're you're confusing cause of the fact here when it goes from that and again like i'm again i'm not i'm here to defend factory farming the bifurcation or the the the splitting of of animal husbandry and plant husbandry in the modern western food production system is is an abomination like it is a huge problem i'm not i'm not but but i'm what i'm saying is that the the position that vegans say is oh look at the the the sins of factory farming and they're myriad lots of sins and so we should just get rid of animal food all together that doesn't follow because to to stop soil erosion to use less water we need to bring those systems back together because they are symbiotic and they always have been i mean you're so you're advocating for more farmers to farm smaller farms rather than the factory farms the problem with that is as you were saying earlier like some people don't want to be farmers for a living like people want to go to the grocery store and just buy their meat and cheese for cheap and when you were talking about subsidies i thought you were going to talk about the government the billions spent on meat and dairy subsidies which also artificially lowers the price of meat and dairy which then creates this idea that meat and dairy are are cheap and as anna said the demand is absolutely and that's the only way to fulfill that demand and as a once i'm just to be sure that i totally agree just to be sure that listen just the dairy subsidies stop for a second just to be sure that brian were you maybe there's a lag on your side that is so sorry my uh being so candid but were you guys were you done with your point brian just wanted to be sure just before we no thanks james i mean we're pretty much done with the point the the point was just that demand for these products is what drives their production and so 99 of all animal foods in the united states are factory farmed and when you tell the average consumer when you go to the grocery store and you buy a gallon of milk guaranteed guaranteed there was a baby cow that died and a mother cow that died just so you could have this milk that was intended for the baby cow would you maybe consider changing your buying habits if people can't understand that their demand is what causes that to happen i mean that that's that's what i don't understand about your argument you're saying that the consumers have no responsibility for buying a product even when they know where the product comes from i think there is responsibility on the consumer side go ahead justice thanks for your patience the and yeah james and i was just i'd get a little bit heated here i was just interjecting with with uh you know any vegans that i i agree with them like kill the subsidies for milk sure absolutely kill the subsidies for beef like uh food should be more expensive across the board like that is an absolute thing we'd all be healthier and better served if food is more expensive without question like but as far as the consumers go and and everything it's again you artificially decrease the price of food and then you blame the consumer for consuming things that are artificially cheaper like that doesn't follow again the people bear responsibility who artificially lower the cost of food um also another thing is again going back to my the little example that i tried to put in about the cotton shirt like cotton shirts are not are not immoral just because they're cotton shirts yes you know if you were in 1830 the very the big chance that your cotton shirt was made using slave labor was pretty high but it doesn't mean that cotton shirts in any case in all the world are immoral like it just means that we should get rid of slavery not we should get rid of cotton shirts and the same thing here is we should get rid of far factory farming we should get rid of the the amazing abuses that happen in the factory farming context we should get back to more mixed animal plant husbandry style farms that are modern and no they would not require everyone to be a farmer that's not that's not the requirement there i think your example is a little bit but again sorry i wanted to jump in there and say i think that example is not a great comparison because a cotton shirt is an inanimate object made out of a non-sentient plant so the product is a plant-based product the way that it was produced in the 1800s was via slave labor we fast forward to today a hamburger is made from a victim a living sentient being who was killed in order to make this product and yes he this victim was also probably abused and tortured and mistreated throughout his very short life and then murdered at the age of one or two for a hamburger that someone doesn't need they just like the taste of it so you're comparing a non-sentient plant-based product to a sentient animal product it's not a great comparison the reason i bring up that comparison is because i'm trying to demonstrate the difference between a practical consideration of trying to advance kind of humane treatment of of slaves or humane treatment of animals and the position that i think you're taking which is a moral position and again like you've already demonstrated in this conversation you don't necessarily believe that eating animals is immoral we do when again so but as like i said we're still living on a planet where around 50 of the population of the planet not of the west not of your weird context western educated industrialized context and you know democratic you know that the rich and democratic not not that context the context of the majority of the world are you know still the the large majority of the world is not what you're saying that's an option a large portion of people who live in third world countries eat plant-based by necessity because animal products are so expensive but like plant-based diets are pretty abundant in many countries and they're almost they're almost they're almost they're they're outside of strict you know strict Buddhists they're almost non-existent in non-western countries um you'll you'll be hard pressed to find a native diet that is strictly plant-based hard press why couldn't you have a diet that's plant-based if you lived in a rural area why can't you eat vegetables and fruit and grains and legumes and all these other foods nuts and seeds like why do you have to use the animal product because outside of it because outside of a highly industrialized why does it need to be industrialized how hard i mean we're just because it doesn't need to be a process vegan product it's just how how how how hard is raising you know uh the necessary two two and a half thousand calories per day necessary for you know a human to live multiplied by 365 it's a lot of work like i've done it like we we grow we raise all of our food like 90 some percent of our food we raise on the farm 50 percent of that is animal but products 50 percent of that is um vegetable based and the time that i spend on the the overall time that we spend on producing food the vegetable products are overwhelmingly the amount of time that we spend like and if you but you yourself said that you don't need to farm and most people don't want to farm most people don't want to be their own farmers so most people will be buying foods from farmers they won't be farming it themselves it won't be like this huge undertaking for them they're just going to be buying potatoes and rice and bean and so if you had more farms like mine for instance or like polyphase farm farms by Joel saladin the united states or permaculture farms like geoff lotton the australian you know god of permaculture um then you're what you'll see is even in the context of you know even in a weird context in the western industrialized educated rich and democratic country you'll have the farms that can actually be sustainable both economically and from a natural standpoint are farms that will be both that will be mixed they'll be animal plant-based farms because that's how the cycle of nature works and and it allows for you to spend less time produce more calories but also to maintain a balance and this is another thing this is the impracticability of veganism if you want to go 100% vegan you have you have to go if you want to go 100% vegan you have to go for chemical-based farming which is destructive that's not okay but you're talking about impractical when here you are i mean proposing an idea like how do we even that that's what that documentary eating animals proposed too is that we return to the old ways of farming which is how how would we even get how would we even do that with the with the population that yeah well i mean very practical i mean keeping in mind that people don't want to be small-scale farmers yeah they just want to go buy cheese meat and cheese it's very it's very practical like for instance um me and the former families that live in my farm we produce enough food um for our our little collective to work and we also produce enough food for another 40 families so yeah you wouldn't have the uh you wouldn't have the percentage of farmers to non-farmers that we have today but it's not like every other person has to be a farmer what went out of 40 people would have to be a farmer and the way that you the way you get there is simply by reducing subsidies you reduce corn subsidies to begin with and then you reduce um say what how do we reduce subsidies how do we reduce subsidies we try to educate people not on a fanciful idea that veganism is going to change the world but an idea that we stop pumping money into the depletion of the aquifer in Kansas and the erosion of topsoil in Wyoming um and Nebraska and start paying for what we actually for what we actually eat the thing is you know just based on the activism that we tend to do it is very difficult to convince people to do something that is so out of their realm of concreteness like which is why veganism is so empowering because we are literally telling people you can make a difference simply by what you eat but if we tell people about the the water the erosion in this state in this state like there's no there's no direct can most people don't have that that uh interest that ability to connect with something that is so distant from their their immediate realm their immediate reality in life and the you know as i was saying the power is in the hands of the consumer so if you tell someone hey we got to get rid of these government subsidies i don't know what people think they can do about that but if you tell someone hey next time you go to buy some creamer for your coffee try the oat creamer instead it tastes the same that's something someone can do so eventually the government's not going to like subsidies are not going to make sense anymore why would they why would you over print farmers are going to start wasting you know product uh they're going to that's why we advocate for veganism because as the demand falls farmers are not going to find the need to raise as many animals or produce as much milk because it's just gonna all go to waste yeah and the the main destruction to nature that's happening for instance in the context again in the united states is due to corn and so you have evidence for that on a chemical basis you have evidence for that yeah i i don't have it right here majority of the district of the united states is being caused by the crops of corn you're saying corn is destroying the united states who are we feeding the corn when we talk about when we when we talk about the ecology when we talk about soil erosion and the depletion of the aquifers then yes we're talking about corn and why are we growing so much too many things why are we growing so much corn and soil and wheat why are we the reason why we're growing so much corn and soil and wheat is because back in the 1960s we started to subsidize corn because it was unprofitable to grow it due to the massive amount of the water that it needed to take and that lower price of corn due to subsidies so human beings are consuming a large amount of corn one sec just hear just hear the the rest of that sentence from uh justice yeah human beings are actually consuming a large amount of corn but the low price of corn is what pushed the few blocks to begin with it's not it's not the other way around and so you say i mean and i do understand that the the draw of veganism as an empowering thing like i understand that's that it the poll that it has on that but what i say is what's the what's the end the end is a sustainable agriculture that will not destroy the planet and that won't devalue human life and that has to be mixed animal and vegetable production just it's the way it is in our in or we go down the route of the chemical based agriculture where you have you know a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico half the size of texas like that's not what we want and so when you advocate for 100 animal based products that's what you're advocating for and what i'm saying is there are like let's let's educate people on on mixed agriculture and something that's actually sustainable that's number one number two like Joel Saladin always says shake the hand that feeds you right find local source food start from start supporting those people who are in your territory in your area who are producing food like that's something that we can do that's very concrete i'll give you a chance to respond on and brian but then i also after that martin if you were still there and uh will i'm waiting i'm waiting yeah i mean i went up okay very very anecdotally as someone who has tried to find corn free chicken feed um it's pretty difficult because a lot of chicken feed is filled with corn a lot of animal feed is filled with corn that was my point we're growing these fields and fields and fields of corn and soy and wheat two feed animals to kill the animals to eat the animals that's vegans are not vegans are not eating corn on the cob all the time they have these experts yeah we're having a competition of crowing going on but i mean if i could i would i would like to bring it back to the actual debate challenge the actual debate challenge that justice challenged us with which is the idea that animals should be treated with respect somehow devalues human beings i would like to bring it back around to the debate proposition if we could all right martin hit him okay um hit him so i think veganism still devalues human life so i want to know is it evil for a human to eat honey because i know you don't eat honey so is it evil evil for a human to eat honey yes i mean honey exploitation so when you don't need to is it evil let me see if i can grab somebody yeah sorry say that again is it evil um i mean i don't know if it's evil if you have the choice not to exploit honey bees and you choose to do it anyway i would say that's unethical no it's evil whoa sorry so it's evil in your opinion i didn't say it was evil i said it was okay so bad it's bad yes it's morally bad okay so when does it become evil oh why does it need to be i mean why does it need to be evil in order for it to be killing an animal evil is killing an animal evil yeah do you need to kill the animal for food i i want to eat some food i kill an animal is that evil no i don't need to well then why would you kill me no i'm asking is it evil i think needlessly killing a living sentient being is wrong yeah and that is food yes it's needless right you could buy something else but you're choosing to buy the animal product okay so god says everything that loves and moves about will be food for you just as i gave you the green plants i now give you everything so is god evil for allowing us to eat animals what so you're saying you eat animals because god told you to eat animals god gives us the right to eat animals and it's not evil so i'm asking is god evil for allowing humans to eat animals and what's your what's your evidence for god i mean but everyone there's lots of evidence for massive amounts of evidence can you provide us with hold on everyone get that quote wrong first of all and i grew up catholic so i know genesis 129 i give you every seed bearing plant that is upon all the earth and every tree that has seed bearing fruit they shall be yours for food yeah and if you just read on if you just read on if you just read on then it says man yeah go ahead and finish it i'll give you a chance to and then we'll come back to martin okay go yeah i mean i just think in order to claim that you're performing an act and it's it's morally correct because god allows you to do that then you would need to prove god's existence yeah that can be a debate as well but uh i just want to say let's assume god is there is well no i'm going to assume god exists and tells us we can eat animals that's you're providing an argument with no evidence so we can dismiss your argument without evidence okay jesus existed he ate animals is he evil for eating animals i don't know that jesus ever ate animals all i have is a book that was written by not jesus and not god to go off of yeah it's documented that he ate animals he ate animals i don't know what jesus did in his everyday life i i haven't talked to the man i didn't know and personally there was a book written about him by other people so we have their way to go off of so say jesus existed and he ate your animals is he you're providing arguments with no evidence and thus they will be dismissed without evidence okay let's turn it back how much is a human taste buds worth how much is it worth how much is a human taste bud taste buds uh a human taste bud say say vegan food tastes like poop but it doesn't it doesn't yeah let's say we i'm trying to um trying to figure out how much you uh put the value on humans like if you view uh humans taste buds as nothing compete then you would say yes eat the it's a moral obligation to eat poop and not kill an animal yes you're weighing taste pleasure over another human over another living beings existence so i would say another living being sentient existence is more important than your taste buds yeah okay so so our taste buds is not worth that i think our taste buds is worth much more i think we are worth much more than many animals um i think we are made in the image of god and i think vegans make makes the image of god into a chicken equal to a chicken or something what does that mean is god made god made animals and god create i mean like if you're talking about god again we don't have proof or evidence but say i can give you lots of evidence for god well you haven't yet but honest point is that god created humans and animals and you're saying that god created humans in his image what is the image of god what is the image of god we are able to create just like him we are able to program animals just like him we can take away the pain we're able to create just like him you know we we presumptuous to think that we can have power over animals like god like what i mean that oh he can take our life without being murder just like we can take an animal's life without it being murder um there's no murder in that for forcefully killing an animal is murder i mean i don't agree with that it doesn't matter you program them to with it martin because it's a definition of a word so you can disagree with definitions and we know that people colloquially use murder to mean human beings but by definition it does include animals whether you like that or whether you accept it or believe it or not it's just a fact and i mean you're saying that god created human beings you have no evidence for god you said jesus has lots of evidence for god i said i have lots of evidence for god okay so you have what's your evidence for god what we have to do is we have to turn it back into the veganism debate because uh martin to be fair you would mention that you have evidence but then it's like we haven't really talked about it and if we're not going to do yeah but then it's going to turn into uh then it's going to turn into a different debate yeah but you're bringing up an argument about the devaluing of human life using a being that we don't know exists or not that that's not great evidence for the debate proposition itself so how does veganism devalue human life in your opinion i think it uh makes a human worth a chicken it why is a human you don't believe that because we don't so so how much more valuable is a human than a chicken i don't but again we don't have to make that decision on an like which chicken and which human that's such a big that chicken next to you are we talking about adolf hitler versus our chicken antonio are you talking about like two random beings one is a chicken one is a human when in life are we ever going to have to make this choice either kill this human or kill this chicken that's not a choice we have to make in everyday life yeah but i'm i'm using uh food processes to figure out how much you value human life process and creating false dichotomies that don't exist in consumers everyday life let's let's hear we'll give you a few minutes martin we'll give you a few minutes to try to make your case like maybe give us something like a almost like a syllogism like a kind of a more the broad structure of the argument that you have it will give you just a couple minutes to spell that out justice can go first and then i'll go again i've talked too much no just again just to get interject just just to get interjecting to what martin says and again kind of just getting a little bit pushed back um to to what our interlocutors are saying is that again like making the choice between an animal and a human is not an isolated thought experiment we do it every single day with experimentation on animals for medical purposes this is not an isolated thing and so if we're take the veganism position to you know humans and animals are equally valuable or that we should extend the moral cohort to animals as we do to people then yeah you are devaluing human life but then i'll kick it back to martin and maybe you can like james asked formulate your your thought a little bit more if i may quickly respond to what justice just said we're once again you're using you're saying some human beings in an everyday setting work in research labs where they have to decide what animal experiments to perform on animals in order to legalize drugs or medication or do animal testing that sort of thing so once again you are using a fringe example and then somehow that moves over to so it's okay if everyone just goes to mcdonald's every day and buys hamburgers because these researchers in this one lab or in every lab across the world need to make decisions then needless decisions are somehow justified well that's why practice possible and practical are so important in the definition it's like we know that we cannot delete animal exploitation overnight right now but we are trying to move away from it by by showing people that there is a different way to live i mean i grew up eating meat just like everyone else and and i i actually mean i i learned that i mean i loved animals growing up and then i was like well that doesn't make sense if i love animals why are my why am i causing their suffering intentionally causing their suffering because i knew that chickens needed to die for me to have chicken i mean it's so the value i get out of having a relationship with a chicken by the way is so much more than five minutes of taste pleasure that i would have gotten from eating a corpse of a chicken and right again i'm gonna kick this back to martin because that's what james had asked for but just to again just put a final touch on the what you're saying there is that i will grant you i mean i will even grant you let's stop going to mcdonald's it's like i'll grant you let's stop buying you know factory farm meats if the if veganism is a as a protest against factory farming i'm on board you know i'll volunteer for that but at veganism as a moral position as an ethical position doesn't follow because there are of non fringe situations we have the situation with limes at the situation with animal testing for medication these are not fringe these are these are things that that touch all of our lives every day and um i get a huge amount of value out of my horses i get a huge amount of value out of my goats both from relationship and from traction power and from food and i'm sorry for my uh camera feed dying i accidentally bumped my bumped my camera and i can't get the feedback so but anyway martin okay what i just want to say is that i think a person can be too obsessed with animal suffering just like a person can be not not care about animal suffering and both is wrong in my opinion i'm just like if you eat too much then you'll die and just if you eat nothing you'll die there's a there's a middle point and i think a person can make a channel and call it the super annoying vegans and then tell vegans they don't care enough about animals because they have to eat less it's gonna cause less animal suffering they have to make their houses smaller because it's gonna cause less animal suffering and they have to research about each vegan food because each vegan food causes animal suffering so we have to go with the food that um causes the least least amount of animal suffering and you are forced to eat that if you really care about animals and you have to feel bad if you if you don't eat that it doesn't matter how bad it tastes you have to eat that do you agree that uh being too obsessed with animal suffering is bad no how can you be can you be too obsessed with human suffering can you be too obsessed with it if you if you are too obsessed with animal suffering then you will just uh do you think it's possible to be too obsessed with the suffering of humans yes you do yes i told you at the beginning you can you can brainwash a person into caring so much about human suffering that they think it's child abuse to bring a human into the world because they don't want the child to suffer or a person to suffer they almost guarantee to suffer so you'd be okay with someone knowingly buying products you know of like buying human products instead of animal products knowing that humans suffered to produce those products because we just can't care that much about human suffering no that's not what i said i said that's what people are doing in the animal context so you have to put it in the same context people are buying the products of animal suffering they're buying the corpses of animals murder victims that shopped up and served in grocery stores that's what people are buying if they were doing that in the human context you would be appalled you wouldn't be saying hey guys we can't be concerned with human suffering all the time like a little bit of a little bit of i'm just saying extremes are bad you can be so obsessed with suffering that extreme veganism is simply some extreme like just to hear the rest just to hear the rest from uh martin go ahead martin some vegans are super extreme they want to kill humans that kill other animals they want to call humans that murderers that kill other animals they they get angry and put hate on people for killing animals that's crazy talk in my opinion i think it's okay to feel angry it's okay to feel angry and frustrated and it feels hopeless sometimes because i see what i see today in the world that i live in is people putting themselves on this pedestal where we think we can just insert ourselves put our hands in everything that has to do with this planet and its beautiful nature and and we're destroying it like if we continue doing what we're doing right now this planet is it's the planet's not going to die we are going to die but you know i just see people not caring enough is the problem i i wish people cared more i wish people could live in harmony with the animals on this planet and like they're i mean i consider them my brothers and sisters why why do i not owe them respect it's easy to respect an animal while still respecting because people say that a lot oh you can't care about multiple if you care about animals you why don't you care about why don't you care about this or that why aren't you fighting for for children in Siberia or Siberia Syria Syria if there it is possible to care for multiple issues at once there's room in my heart for all i mean and well so is your argument that because some vegans care too much about animals that devalues human life like is that the reason why veganism devalues human life that's one of the reasons but not all vegans think that you should just end your life to cause zero suffering that's actually not the vegan position at all the vegan that's not what i said i said vegans i've seen lots of vegans hate people for killing animals and i've seen lots of meat eaters hate people too it's not a product of eating meat it's a product of the human being the individual having a personality the the the vegan veganism itself is simply the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals that's it we just we want to treat cows pigs chickens goats sheep the same as we treat cats and dogs that's what we want to do yeah i i agree that it's good to care about animals i just saying that you can go to extreme with caring too much about animals and then hating humans for it and devaluing humans and putting the god into a chicken and essential to veganism hating humans is not entailed in veganism no i agree okay but it can't cause all right just can't be conceded no no i agree it's like but it it causes that if you if you are super obsessed with animal suffering then it causes hate towards humans and you you classify them as murderers and you would want them to go to jail for killing an animal for food stuff like that that's and you also cause animal suffering said no to that yeah i mean you're talking to two vegans who don't hate humans so i mean it's anecdotal clearly but we're going by the definition of veganism veganism is not entail hating humans you can love animals and you can love humans simultaneously one does not devalue the other no i mean not that most vegans were meat eaters it's very rare that someone grew up vegan these days i mean we were there too and we just changed our minds and now we're trying to inform people hey listen there's this different way of living if you hadn't thought about it before if you love animals if you care about animals it is possible to live you know worse we're what six years in we're not ghosts we're alive i think at one point you said vegans are early i don't know what it was but i was like we're here we're doing well and it is possible there are there are i mean we don't touch on the medical stuff because that's not our field we refer to the health the health-based stuff yeah that's not our field we refer to the professionals for that and um but we have it is what is this study that a plant-based diet it is possible to live a healthy lifestyle on a plant-based diet yeah that's according to the academy of nutrition and dietetics but those are non-vegan health professionals and we're not health professionals yeah and what i what another point is veganism food still causes massive amounts of suffering so if you want to reduce suffering uh eat less okay and so you can go crazy like that eat less veganism is about not exploiting living beings so we know crop deaths occur we know the majority of crop deaths occur in animal products so the the way to get rid of the majority of crop deaths is to not eat animal products so we're doing what we can but it's not veganism is not a a mentality that seeks to reduce harm because like you said if it were everyone would just not exist because that would reduce the most amount of harm veganism is against animal exploitation that's what we're against justice yeah and and again like i was saying uh veganism devalues human life because it extends small rights that by the very nature are exclusive to humans and humans look like which right veganism veganism just one second is a even even if you were to extend those rights veganism as a goal is self-contradictory because you want to do the planet a good a good you like save the planet ecology and all that but by dividing animal husbandry from plant agriculture plant husbandry you actually make this whole food system unsustainable so even as an end goal it's it's uh devalues human life justice do you think it is do you disagree you're okay so i i would imagine that the animals you keep you treat them well right we try to make every day of their life the best day until the last day right so why is it that we draw the line at you know every people seem to consider animal welfare uh people take animal welfare seriously even people who consume meat it is animal welfare is important to them up until it comes up until the day of killing them against their will i mean don't you you talked about rights why do you think an animal do you think animals should be allowed their basic right to life or and a base the right to live a life free of suffering isn't that everyone's how we treat right again uh like with the the example that i was showing from willy william wilberforce and his drive to for the humane treatment of animals at the same time as he was working for the abolition of slavery the the old or appropriate contextualized understanding of the humane treatment of animals has human interests in the center so i treat my animals well because it reflects well on who i am as a person and it has little less to do with with them as it has to do with that the person um we want to treat your animal well for them we don't treat the animals well for them no we should because we eat them eventually you know so it's not it's not a consideration it's not a consideration for them it's a consideration for for me i don't want to torture animals because that damages my soul willy nilly and you wouldn't see a moral issue like beating the crap out of your animals on a daily basis the same thing the same reason why i wouldn't beat the crap out of my car or beat the crap out of my house because it reflects poorly on my soul there's damage to me as an individual um because are you right i agree my car is not alive but but anger and rage and those kinds of emotions that i express damage my soul just as much as they if i kick the dog and so you you work for the humane treatment of animals um because it reflects either properly or poorly on your soul just like it says in proverbs the righteous man takes care of his animals um that just seems so that's wild that's what then then forget all that right and it comes time to kill them like that's their will yeah that just seems wildly egotistical like i you don't harm others because you don't want to look bad i don't beat brian because it reflects poorly on me not because it hurts brian right the reason i don't punch other humans is because they wouldn't like it it's not not about me the relate the relationship between humans doesn't mean that the relationship between humans and humans is always human centric the relationship between humans and animals also to not devolve into a quagmire of irreconcilable irreconcilable logical fallacies also has to be human centric um and that's why why because why can't we care about animals for animals because of the the things that you guys already admitted that for instance someone who has Lyme disease who can't get it cured another way is not condemned for eating animals for six months or the people who use condemned someone for testing someone's self-defense i don't know i don't kill it for for killing someone okay then so that's the fringe example but but but i but i would i would condemn someone who for instance needed a kidney transplant and went and killed someone for a kidney transplant that would be i would condemn him for that so your it's a false equivalency when you try to bring that that into self-defense into the question the question would be if i was sick do i kill animals to help myself get better if i'm sick can i kill people to help me get better and the answer in the one is yes and the answer in the second is no and our question to you is why is it okay to kill the animals and not the humans because animals do not have the same value as humans according to who humans are more valuable according to my worldview according to the bible according to the judeo the bible is irrelevant the bible is just a book written back by someone the bible is irrelevant we're asking and that's part of what i wish to demonstrate today is that when we abandon the moral framework that we have in the bible then we get into these strange humanistic but actually non-human centered philosophies like veganism like communism like fascism can you be vegan can you be both uh you can be vegan and christian as a form of protest against animal protest forming or or as for dietary reasons but not for moral reasons no you can't just choose to respect god's creation as a christian you can't just choose to treat his creation with respect as a christian you can't be vegan if you look you being a being a vegan is a burden and if you were to okay sorry go go go for a martin okay i'll jump in okay what i want to say is being a vegan is a burden god has put no such moral obligation on people they have absolute freedom to eat whatever they want any animal that they want there are no such a burden is put on them by god but you can choose to be vegan and christian right you can choose to do that sure and the bible says that if a person is vegan then his his faith is weak i can god says that if now that bible says a person yes if one person where is that vegans have weak faith that's in the bible oh your faith is weak so obviously that's why you're vegan no martin we're asking for the like the biblical quote that says anything about veganism i was unaware that the bible said anything about veganism it says thou shall not kill but yeah okay here it says uh romans 14 or an asterisk so in in a sense we are following god's yeah so thou shall not kill rule is a pretty big one romans 14 verse two once person's faith allows them to eat anything but another whose faith is weak it's only vegetables vegans don't eat only vegetables yeah well i'm just giving an example yeah well you're giving a poor example you're that's a poor example the vegans eat many more foods than vegetables would it yeah i'm just i'm i'm confused perhaps i made a mistake there uh sorry but the word the word the word in romans that's used as vegetables is actually better translated as food that is grown so grown food but like like food that's plant-based not animal-based so that martin's actually bringing up a good verse um and um i so god has put no such commandment on people and i think if someone commands people to not enjoy the gifts that god gave them which is animals foods i think it can turn into a doctrine of demons in my opinion because it's not a command from god at all i just i still don't understand i haven't been presented with with great arguments or evidence as to why simply treating a non-human with respect means that you're devaluing a human i don't know why you can't do both you you can value both i i don't see the confusion if you place if you place the value on a non-human that is exclusively that it should be exclusively reserved for humans then you are by definition devaluing that human but we're placing human value on humans we're just treating them with it's like saying to it's like it's like saying to Henry Ford about his Model T that no i'm not gonna drive in this car because that would be exploitative to the car i'm just gonna you know pet it and wash it every day and wax it but the car is not sent to exploiting it the car cannot experience life subjectively the car does not have feelings yeah but car does not feel joy or pain that's why we care about what i'm saying for their pain is and what i'm saying pain is made for our lives um sorry justice do you want to go okay pain is made for our good to protect us there are children that can't feel pain and then they destroy themselves they scratch out their eyes um and the parents like cry and wish their child could feel pain so it not only protects us it's useful or good it also protects animals now we can program animals to not feel pain we can put the same error that says in children some children and put it in animals and then they will also just destroy themselves so if we want to play god and think animal suffering is such a bad thing we can program them not to feel suffering well then by that logic then a human child who doesn't feel any pain you can just beat them and hit them and do whatever you want because they don't feel anything so what's the problem i didn't say that no your logic said that a logic no no i i i think animals feeling pain is a good thing i do too it helps them just like it helps us being is a helpful secondary trait that we all share i agree that's why plants don't feel pain because they can't move out of the way so there was no reason for them to evolve the sensation of pain but yes animals do feel pain and it is wrong to cause them needless pain just like it is wrong to cause a human needless pain so that's this you go and again like in the in the next few minutes we may go into the q and a just want to let you guys know that and folks if you have a question feel free to fire it into the old live chat our guests are linked in the description to give you guys several more minutes just to draw together some of the threads from the discussion yep and again like what i was saying about is from the beginning that mechanism as a as a philosophy as a worldview as a moral position devalues human life because it because it extends to non-humans rights and considerations that should be exclusive to uh to humans just like with the analogy with Henry Ford in the Model T um so the animals should be treated but sentience sentience is not i mean so so what so it is sentient that's if we make a computer sentient then then do we have to you know evaluate as much as a horse or as much as a child or as much as me or as much as you know of course not um and because there we're talking about non-human animals that the the demarcation is human or non-human and yes that is species then absolutely i'm a you know that's an absolute species position because we need to work on at least getting our human brothers and sisters up to a level of dignity and for 50 of the planet that means eating you know animal products as a necessity of life okay i mean i guess if we're wrapping yeah we're wrapping up i mean the the debate proposition was does veganism devalue human life um veganism is simply the belief that non-human animals should not be exploited needlessly so the only arguments we've heard during this debate is that veganism extends rights that should be reserved for humans to non-human animals but i haven't heard an argument as to why those rights should only be reserved for animals other than vaguely god said so sort of or god made us in his image and we never defined what god's image was we never it is possible to extend rights to both humans and animals alike yeah without taking anything away from the humans just because you know i respect animals doesn't mean i don't respect uh the Black Lives Matter movement or i don't support of feeding hungry children in parts of the world where they don't have where they where there's food insecurity things like that it's possible to care about multiple issues at once and not one takes anything away from the other in fact if anything it informs the other it encourages compassion and empathy and understanding things that we really need right now you got it we are going to jump into the q and a folks we want to say thank you so much for your questions thanks for hanging out with us and if you haven't heard if you've been living in a cave on marge with your fingers in your ears today is our 12 hour debate stream no joke we have four debates within this 12 hour stream that we're doing today so if you just got here okay we're gonna be here all day in particular me it is going to be a blast and so let's jump into those questions well don't remind you our guests are linked in the description we really do appreciate them as they are the lifeblood of the channel folks and so as always want to encourage you to attack the arguments not the person in pancake of destiny thanks for your question says language filter is bad i don't remember what that would refer to in what came up language filter yeah i'm confused anybody else get it okay prince vijita thanks for your question said just showing some support for the show they're thank you probably they're probably saying that i speak bad english maybe i don't know but silver harlow thinks your question as well as james you are a crazy person but a good kind of crazy good luck with this crazy debate marathon thank you silver we are pumped for this debate marathon i've got the coffee made i'm excited and pancake of destiny says if we stop eating meat what you do what do you do with animals so namely like all the kind of cows that might be at factory farms things like that yeah so obviously if we stop eating meat what are we going to do with all the animals so as veganism the world is not going to go vegan overnight unfortunately but as the demand for animal products keeps going down and it will keep going down then fewer and fewer animals will be bred into existence fewer and fewer animal products will be produced we don't have like 70 billion land animals floating around because they just breed a lot we forcibly breed them into existence we forcibly breed animals and take their children from them and kill them so that we can eat them so as demand goes down the animal population will go down doesn't mean that they'll go extinct obviously we have cats dogs rabbits other animals that we don't exploit we don't eat and they still exist so yes if we fano snap our fingers and everyone goes vegan overnight we'd have a problem but unfortunately it's not going to happen that way gotcha and thanks for your question datto pappanda appreciate you asking as i didn't really mention this want to let you know the schedule the debate card for today's 12 hour stream and i want to quick mention these black lives matter is in fact the next topic coming up and so that's in 45 minutes that'll start and then at 5 p.m. eastern whether or not there's evidence for intelligent design should be juicy and then at 8 p.m. yes nathan thompson and tjump are squaring off on the shape of the earth this time we might finally get our answer so that will be a lot of fun yeah we'll get to the bottom of that one but reverend elation thinks your question says omnivores the bible says quote forbidding to eat certain foods unquote is demonic because god made them good and to be received with thanksgiving in first trend first timothy for one through four should christians follow doctrines of demons it says there that it says there that it's doctrine of demons to command people to not receive and eat food that god gave us to be received with thanksgiving god gave no command for us to not eat animal foods this is interesting and i would also say i would also say that that is another reason why christians cannot be vegans as a moral position they can be for dietary reasons or for protest but not for moral reasons otherwise they fall into doctrines of demons super interesting so i'll give you ananda brian if you want a chance to respond you can but because uh basically this almost seemed like a softball in favor of martin injustice they're agreeing with you guys i've never heard this idea namely the you know for example like in ax 10 when god says according to ax 10 it says that you can eat anything i usually have heard that in the context of relative to the old testament i've never heard it be used against vegans but anyway so ananda and ryan if you want to respond it will give you a chance to respond because like i said that that one was kind of a softball in favor of martin and uh justice uh i mean assuming that in all knowing all loving creator created us and these animals with the ability to feel pain and joy and suffering and if we are to believe that what he wants us to do is he wants us to forcibly breed them into existence literally act yes like god like gods and then like a god kill them as babies against their will to eat their corpses um if he's mad at me for not doing that i think that's okay gotcha now this one is pancake of destiny sorry they said language filter is bad the reason they said that wasn't to make fun of your english justice it was instead because they were trying to put in a question but there are certain words youtube won't allow in the super chats so bocage thank you for your question said so you guys think that if i eat tofu instead of a steak human value just magically decreases like that just uh just like that this is ridiculous now let's get some let's get some justice on that one um the the just and righteous the answer to that question is that no of course not eat tofu as much as you want the problem is is when you say that it is immoral to eat meat um and when you begin to raise the status of animals into the level of humans then you devalue you you make less valuable human value because chickens and babies are not equally valuable gotcha and this one coming in from silver harlow appreciate it said brian definitions are not facts written in stone a dictionary can only describe how people use words and can do so incompletely it is reasonable to argue that someone is using a word too broadly yeah i agree i mean i agree with the um the matt dilahunty belief that language is our bitch and so you know we can we can change and modify language as we see fit because we invented it so we can change it but as it exists right now there is a definition of the word murder that means to wantonly kill to intentionally kill i mean that it's there that that is a definition of murder now i know people that makes people feel uncomfortable just like forcefully impregnating an animal that's called rape but people don't like that word because it makes them feel bad so it doesn't really matter how it makes you feel the act is the same we're talking about the act the act meaning you're intentionally killing an animal against their will so we can phrase it like that you know is it moral to intentionally kill an animal against his or her will just so you can eat their corpse i mean that's just a much longer version gotcha and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from mark reads as vegans do you value humans over animals in any aspect would you choose an animal to die so a human could live for example production of insulin well i think we've already answered that i mean we are not we i mean that was one of the first things i answered in the debate but again to reiterate we are trying to move away from methods that are used currently that exploit animals that cause animals great suffering we're trying to move away from that and i think it is possible you know it's not overnight but people are getting smarter every day every decade and we are already moving away from some of those i mean huge humans uh well i i guess i won't bring that up just a touch on the second point real really quickly um uh we don't have to make those choices every day in terms of like what you know what people put at the end of their forks that's what we're trying to focus on mainly is is what people choose to consume when they go to the grocery store you don't know if you want to add something no i just mean i think i think forcing this choice that doesn't exist like what would you kill an animal or a human it's just it's a false it's a diet it's a false dichotomy i've said at the whole debate are there instances where we are forced to make those decisions yes i mean we live in a house where the dry wall dry wall is made from animals like that again the words possible and practicable are very important because there are with their animal exploited and that's what's disappointing animal exploitation is everywhere it's in things that we wouldn't even have expected no so we try our best within what we can do you know we it's not possible or practicable for us to live in a mud hut granted we have one in our backyard but it's not for a living it's a small one but it's not possible and practicable we do what we can yeah within the the the problem that we have is when people go hey this person over here needs a medication for this medical condition that was tested on animals and then they go therefore i can eat eggs it's it's just doesn't it's not equal it's not a great comparison gotcha and this question coming in from medus and ceo says for the vegans how can you keep using the word quote unquote murder when the definition means killing a human changing definitions let me look at it because i don't think people believe it doesn't there is a definition of murder that means to slay wantonly you can google it right now you see there are multiple definitions for the word murder yes some include the human context some include the legal context some some instances it's it's only murdering webster transitive verb one to kill a human being unlawfully and with premeditated malice two to slaughter wantonly three to put an end to tease or torment i mean that goes on but that's one of the definition that's right miriam webster we're not making it up and again we could replace if it makes you feel better about the choices you make every day we're happy to replace murder with kill by force or against their will you got it and it comes out of the word then it's more the meaning that we're trying to convey you got it and jeremy martin thanks for your ice cream cone super sticker along with the legend rives appreciate your question saying humans are important for our survival not an animal's morals we eat animals feed the humans and teach them how to breed more animals human rights we agree humans should have rights and non-humans should have rights that doesn't mean you give non-humans rights it doesn't mean oh humans don't have rights anymore it's not a hot potato gotcha and ryan phoenix arizona says it's the extending rights to non-humans dilutes the value of the rights the humans hold how dogs have rights again like killing and certain forms of animal abuse in the us are a felony they were they were written into the into the law if anyone is caught beating a dog on the street don't you think people would have something to say about it does that mean that the people that the person committing the act of abuse is oh no no no it's their right to abuse the dog because it's a dog you know when when women were granted the right to vote did that devalue men's rights to vote no because women are also humans i think that women are all that's convenient once upon a time we were not considered once upon a time they were considered equal uh people of color were not considered equal one this is the thing when you look at it from the point of view of the oppressor it is easy now with confirmation bias to be like oh well women were always human but there were people who didn't think we were deserving of those rights ones long ago just like we're hoping to move evolve past the oh well animals are not human so we don't owe them anything got you and thank you very much for this question this one coming in from male user says how can vegans make a moral argument as moral relatives they may not like a religious justification for morality but they cannot offer any non-subjective justification and hence lose by default well moral relativity and moral subjectivity are two different things but by all evidence that we can observe all morality is subjective because morality is simply a thing that exists in the minds of homo sapiens so if homo sapiens all went extinct morality would human morality would also go extinct so even religious morality even if you believe things are right or wrong because a god says so then that's basically just god's subjective opinion of what's right and wrong it's still subjective god is a subject so you're either doing what you believe to be right like you're doing good things because you believe them to be good or you're doing good things because you believe this other guy told you to do them because they're good because he subjectively thinks they're good it's always subjective it like saying that if god doesn't exist then objective morality can't exist that's not actually an argument for objective morality gotcha and this one coming in from ryan phoenix arizona says sentience is just an made measure a man made measure just as the bible is does brian have proof that plants aren't sentient many believe they are some plants eat flies and react to touch i just want to demonstrate you can speak on something yes sentience is the ability to experience life subjectively so basically what that means is that it feels like something to be someone so anyone who has a subjective experience has a point of view they have their own reality their own way of viewing the world plants on the other hand and and to the best of our knowledge according to the cambridge declaration on consciousness which was written in 2012 non-human animals also produce also have the same substrates in their brain to produce consciousness so we know for a fact that animals with a brain and a nervous system do experience sentience we to the best of our knowledge sentience comes from having a brain and central nervous system and this celery here has no brain has no nervous system however i can chop it in half and guess what new celery starts to grow i can do that as many times as i want and new leaves will always pop up you can do that with some animals as well so maybe a chris like what it were the starfish yeah a lizard's tail but not most i mean we have a lemon tree outside every single season it drops lemons on the ground that we eat the tree doesn't that's what a tree is meant to do it's meant to spread its seed so we we consume the leaves and the scream does the tree doesn't scream i mean i would argue that if someone thinks that it's possible for a plant to feel pain then i would also ask them is it possible for a plant to have a stomach ulcer and if the answer is well no because they don't have a stomach well then the answer is well no they can't feel pain because they don't have a brain like they're going to feel pain i mean i don't see people protesting on the street when the neighbor mows the lawn you know that's just not a very genuine concern that people have i mean if you're driving a car and there's a patch of flowers on the curb and you know would you avoid the dog and and drive into the patch of flowers or you know yeah this one and if the person asking this question is a plant's rights activist they should still eat a plant-based diet because eating plant-based kills far fewer plants as well gosh you don't thank you very much for this question coming in from you guessed it male user again says is it objectively true that it's always subjective namely that is it is it objectively true that morality is subjective to the best of our knowledge yes i mean we can't prove it to be objective yes got you and next up alex devin port asks do you think my wife is less of a vegan for marrying me who is a meat eater does your wife if your wife doesn't exploit animals needlessly then she's vegan i mean that's the definition gotcha she she made me she condones meat eating because she condones your behavior but she's vegan gotcha and this one coming on from bocage says we kill animals for nothing more taste buds is a little bit of taste really worth more than an entire animal's life i think that's for you justice and martin okay you can you can say the same with like vegans right away again go justice i'm sorry my internet lags so i yeah but the thing i like to say right away is that the the killing of animals eating of animals is not just about taste pleasure this is a myth propagated by by vegan activists it has to do with ecology it has to do with sustainable agricultural practices and it has to do with sustainable food uh diet for the vast majority of the people that dwell on this planet that doesn't happen to be you and your neighbors because you live in the golden billion but it happens to be the vast majority of all other people who live on the planet so no it's not for just taste pleasure it's for survival and for survival not only of humans but also of the planet if we want to have a stable agricultural system gotcha and yeah and i i just want to add to that um i think you can turn that around against the vegans because their foods also cause animal suffering so you can go and research which food causes the least amount of animal suffering it doesn't matter how bad it tastes you need to eat it that's the same kind of flow logic this one coming in from top dog shattuck says hey martin what if veganism is the balance that you want if let me say this if god commanded us to be vegans i would join them 100 i think in heaven everyone's gonna be a vegan but that's not now and pain there's gonna be no pain but that's not now pain is not evil here and eating animals is not evil here can i just say if you believe that heaven in heaven everyone will be vegan you don't want to bring heaven to earth you're choosing not to bring heaven to earth while you're here that's such a bizarre choice to make like no that's like that's like saying that's like saying no one's gonna have children on in heaven definitely no one's gonna have children so don't you want to bring that to earth and take away all people's ability to have children because a child bringing a child into the world it's gonna feel pain so if you're obsessed enough about child's pain you would say it's child abuse it's the same kind of craziness all right you would need to provide evidence that people aren't gonna have kids in heaven this one coming in they're not gonna marry or anything argue that because it's like kind of a mad thing i don't know what heaven is like i don't know what there is on the other side this one coming argue that this one coming in from buck buck oh harem thank you says most vegans i've met her very math malthusian i was vegan for three years what is that what does that mean by the way malthusian they said i was vegan for three years so like plentiful mouth is wanting wanting to kill people are you not able to hear me justice i am sorry okay so they said i was vegan for three years so met plenty could you ask these guys if they're lowering of human population is a worthy goal oh i think that malthusian might mean kind of a philosophy of reducing the world's population anti-natally yeah it says a person who supports the population proposed by yeah james i can hear you i was just trying to interject malthusian has to do with being anti-human and decreasing the population because of the cycles of of starvation and so forth and so on yeah i don't know why that this was the why that would ever be tied to veganism because again veganism is an animal rights movement so vegan is vegan are there vegans who are anti-natalist sure are there meat eaters who are anti-natalist yes it has nothing to do with veganism itself i'm just reading it says the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering triggering a population die off so i don't know if it's something that naturally happens in that theoretical view or something that should be forced to happen that would be a big distinction yeah um yeah but we're not malthus malthus advocated advocated population control but yeah well i don't know what that has to do with veganism by killing humans or by not having babies different branches of malthusianism have different things some of them would say they'd be anti-natalist and some of them would say like kill the lower classes but again what that has to do with veganisms i don't quite know yeah and this is 1798 what was the population in 1798 that he was so concerned i mean this might have had political i would have to read up on this because i've never heard of this term or this viewpoint but um it could have had political under uh what do you call it uh interests gotcha and this one coming in from brad burr says brian and anna why don't the venus fly traps make more morally responsible food choices i think they're asking like is it unethical from your view that they eat flies venus fly traps are not sent in they're intelligent if you put i don't know this i feel like this even this is cruel but there are people who i've i've seen videos of people putting cigarettes in in venus fly traps and they still close their mouths on cigarettes they'll close their they have sensors uh just like um the dormidones that we have in costar vica you touch them and they they close so they don't have the ability to make conscious moral choices gotcha plants are intelligent and this you got it and last one this one coming in from do appreciate your question augmented space asks oh gosh it says brian have you ever heard of a screen a tree scream and pain when a large limb is torn off of it i think it's supposed to be a joke from when you hear the wood splitting gotcha and want to say folks so you know like yeah when the wood splits it makes that squeaky sound but basically what they're they're being i think they're being they're joking but i hope but want to let you know folks i guess are linked to the description highly encourage you to check out their links we're extremely thankful for them and you guys if you didn't know it if you just came into the stream late we're going 12 hours today this is the first of four debates the other ones in about 22 minutes so i'm going to be back with a post-credits scene or you could say in this case an intermission scene we'll share about stuff with the channel as well as this juicy debate that you can see on the right side of your screen as we are pumped to have made the 78 percent mark for that crowd fund and if you for example want to see peter sanger on the channel someday like very famous vegan in the philosophy world if you'd like to see him for example debate on this channel no joke this crowdfund strategy that i'll talk about in the intermission is a very practical strategy so and one cool thing is if you didn't know i had heard because he our department hosted him a long time ago peter sanger at that time he would have an honorarium that he would receive and require to speak but he would give it all to charity and so there's something that's cool i was like hey maybe somebody maybe someday we'll get there but that depends on this crowdfund strategy working for us and so i'll share more about that in a moment but thanks so much for our guests ana brian and martin and justice it's been a true pleasure to have you guys here thank you as always thank you guys for the good conversation yeah and thank you justice and martin for hitting us up and actually making the debate happen because so frequently people will do the debate me bro thing and then never actually follow through or make it happen so we always appreciate the chance to have the debate and we really appreciate you james for providing this neutral platform it's an amazing channel we watch it all the time and you're one of the more handsome debate moderators on youtube i will also say thank you brian seriously i encourage that it's the first time i blushed on stream for a while so thank you and so folks we are thrilled we appreciate our guests and as always we want to let you know we hope you feel welcome here no matter what walk of life you're from i'll be right back with that post credit scene in just a moment