| Home | Vegetarianism? Many pantheists are vegetarians. For many pantheists vegetarianism is an ethical choice. They believe it is wrong to eat animals. One vegetarian site I visited said it is wrong to kill living entities. The last time I thought about it, it seemed to me that plants are living entities. This would seem to really restrict your diet. Fortunately this sort of extremism is rare. Of course it would solve our number one health problem which is obesity. There is a rational reason for vegetarianism. It can be a more healthy diet. It is easier to cut down on the calories not eating animal products. Most of the Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarians and seem to be slimmer, healthier and live longer than the average. Getting back to the ethical reasons: Killing animals is wrong. This is somehow based on the premise that animal life is more sacred than plant life. Killing a plant is considered wrong in the forest but not in the vegetable garden. Animals do feel pain when you kill them. This gets us into discussing what pain is? Put your hand in the fire and you get the message that pain is giving you. Pain could be defined as a response to stress aimed at reducing that stress. Perhaps I should take my hand out of the fire? If you are a gardener you probably have noticed that plants do respond to stress. When you cut a leaf it wilts and as it wilts it releases a gas called ethylene. The plant takes measures to withstand stress. It triggers extra cell growth and even becomes more luxuriant as a result of pruning. This response is similar to the definition I gave of pain. When you catch the ethylene in a bell jar it actually emits a sound which some have called screams. This does seem like pain. All organisms seem to have a number of stress responses. It really is impossible to be a strict vegetarian because that salad is crawling with microscopic animal life. In fact the mitochondria and other organelles in the cells of the lettuce are animals. So our ethics become a bit muddled. |