I say the cartoon "suggests" the answer because Dilbert and his boss are not directly discussing the morality of killing Ted or other human beings; rather, they are focussed on the difficult question of whether or not Dilbert has actually killed a human person (Adams, 2015). Dilbert makes a good case that he has not. (You might also like to have a look at the cartoons before and after this one for context.)
Similarly, I think that if you buy meat from supermarkets, order it in McDonalds or other restaurants and the like, then you are killing animals, so if a religion teaches not to kill animals, you are not following the teachings of that religion. But as always, feel welcome to disagree. But I would agree that if an animal died naturally, then you did not kill it before turning it into a roast. However, we don't normally wait around for animals to die of sickness in old age, when their meat is tough and not so delicious, before we turn them into tasty meals: meat eating humans usually kill animals when they are young and tender.
Another useful supporting example for my idea that when we order and pay for meat we are killing animals is mafia god fathers: if the mafia boss orders and pays for one of his employees to kill a business competitor, has the mafia boss killed that man?
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| Click for the full sized view. Dilbert is on my list of suggested reading! |
Reference
Feem Natthapong. (2015, August 24). Re: Is Law right? Is it morally wrong to eat meat? [Blog comment]. Retrieved from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2015/08/is-law-right-is-it-morally-wrong-to-eat.html?showComment=1440435447015#c5594021554072610942
And as I've already commented, in her latest post, Ling gives a most interesting example (the bird delivering drugs in paragraph 3) that seems to me another relevant example here.
ReplyDeleteI really like the comic that you used as the example because it challenge me to think carefully about our behavior. Some people believe that ordering meat as their meals is not morally wrong because they did not kill animals by themselve, and if they do not order it, others still do; as a result, the number of animal killed will be remained. While some meat venders may claim that they don't want to kill animals for food, but it is their career and if they stop, they won't earn any income. It seems like people have many reasons to prevent themselve from their guilt.
ReplyDeleteHi Peter,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your reply through two examples, I agree with you that we can eat animals dying naturally; however, we do not wait for them until they die. Similarly, buying them for eating seems to hire someone to kill them. Yet, I am still not sure that in the case of Buddhist monks acquiring food made of meat through donation. Is eating meat by them morally acceptable ?.
Apart from that, suppose now one sailor faced with the failed ship still floating in the middle of ocean for several days until his food was eaten out and nobody sailed around that area to see and help him. Moreover, suppose fish was one kind of edible animals found and there are no edible plants nearby, and thus he needed to catch and kill them for eating to survive. I was wondering if eating meat like this case is morally wrong or not.