Philosophical Vegan Forum

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Atheist Experience 22.03 with Matt Dillahunty and Don Baker
https://youtu.be/NbKfBTNPvvY?t=1h22m

The Atheist Experience

The Atheist Experience 22.03 January 21, 2018 with Matt Dillahunty and Don Baker.

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Notes: 3 theists called, VG wasn’t at the front of the line when got round to atheists because he failed to call in early, last 15 mins of the show they debate. Don’t think much new ground was covered. But I'm liking Vegan Gains being able to keep calmer, like being able to stay on topic with Onision in order to convince him to go back to trying veganism again.

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Transcript:

- Start of the call with Vegan Gains -

Oh you know I was just gonna just looking at number one maybe the caller you're expecting I don't know Oh but with fifteen minutes to go Richard are you there hey Matt what's going on I just noticed I just notice it says you're in Toronto yeah I'll be up in Toronto mid April at the end of that tour doing in a okay an event with Jordan Peterson okay great maybe I can actually set something up through that organization he told me about and we can actually have a debate in person that's what I said to do they booked my stuff I so a lot of people are confused they're just like Oh Matt can just do what everyone syncope booked debates I I have somebody who's managing my schedule I have a couple people who are Grange debates I don't just sit around and oh let's you know do a hangout on YouTube or whatever because I've got a lot of stuff on my plate so I like to schedule them out so I gave you that option and I can you say you understand it the audience let me need some more comments you say you understand it but you immediately mocked it and suggested well the thing is it is in April I'd rather do things quickly when they're still relevant like my thing but I can understand your position is one thing so they just like to ask you sure yeah so I was actually going back and watching a few of the previous debates you've had it's my understanding that you believe that morality is objective at least to some extent and you share a lot of the same views on morality as sam Harris yes has a better fact that just a few minutes ago right right um so Sam here says moral values are truths about the well-being of sentient beings no and no well I won't say no the particular phrase that he used in moral landscape was thinking creatures not sentient Cynthia isn't particularly well defined because some people in in some categories use sentient as anything that can feel pain and others use sentient to talk about whether or not someone something has some level of cognitive reasoning abilities so sentient label doesn't do me much good now say Sam it other times may have used the word sentient or not but what Sam's says or thinks about morality isn't in any way something I'm beholden to so why don't we Sam and I actually when we were in New York last week we talked about whether or not we were going to talk about morality and animal rights issues and we decided that we didn't want to do it that night we may do it at one of the other events in part because I was supposed to do a video on what my views on the issue are because everybody gets it wrong and and makes just outlandish claims about my views unfortunately I've been bed with the flu so I haven't done that video so you can ask me about what I think but I don't care if Sam said something different right right right okay um so I remember in it was during like it's an old video from August but in that atheist experience live show you said that your views on animal morality are speciesist so with that did you mean that it is okay to kill animals and let's say in the context like needlessly when you don't need to so if you're at a grocery store if you have access to a grocery store and you can either choose the fully vegan diet or if you choose to eat on an omnivorous diet it's okay to needlessly kill an animal for food just because it's a different species on you is that what you meant by speciesist yeah so this is the thing what I mean about people arguing dishonestly because when you say is it ok to needlessly kill an animal you are injecting all sorts of context into this my position is really simple I am not convinced that eating meat is immoral ok well there needs to be a context I mean if you needed to eat me to survive like if you were an indigenous person and you lived in a tribe I'd say it is morally acceptable to eat meat because you need you to survive but ok you're obviously not in that position you have access to a grocery store you don't need to kill animals to live and be healthy so I put it in that context you know because I don't accept the idea that need is the criteria when I say I'm species is I don't see anything wrong with that ok what we're talking about is what rights we're going to extend and right to the product of thinking beings and they are there they don't exist independent it's not like rights are out there you know as some sort of naturalistic product we grant rights and we make decisions about who we're gonna grant rights to and who we're not ok well there is sorry go on so when I'm talking with people who are arguing for ethical veganism what they tend to get wrong is I have plenty of objections to the way media's arrived that in a number of different scenarios I have objections to certain types that factory farming scenarios and everything else but I don't think that eating meat is in and of itself immoral

Ok well I don't either, if you find a dead animal on the side of the road and eat it there's nothing immoral about that ok same with finding a dead human on the side of the road and eating it, but it might be really weird.

No there is something immoral about that there is something immoral about that

What? Like I can agree that it's disgusting and somebody who does that is probably as problems but I mean no the the thing is your you're not using harm to another person.

See this is the problem, this is the problem with you and a number of others, you have this view of morality that it is essentially about a simplistic notion of causing harm, and morality is...

Well no.

Matt Dillahunty:
Yes, that's what you just went to, you arguing that it's okay to eat a human on the side of the road because you're not causing harm, well fundamentally you are wrong in the sense that that is not it the only criteria to consider and you are wrong about whether or not it causes harm.

We are in a social context we we are any social construct in a contract with other human beings

Vegan Gains:
I do understand that

Matt Dillahunty:
It is wrong for you to eat, it is wrong for me to eat another human being not just not because of any direct effect on them after they're dead but because there are people who care about that human being and because it affects the quality of their life leading up to that, there's a reason we respect the wishes of people with regard to what we're gonna do with their bodies after they're dead it's not because...

Don what Don tells me he wants me to treat his body in a certain way after he's dead he doesn't want me to farm out his organs he doesn't want me to eat him he wants me to place him in a box and bury him in the ground and put a little a there I respect Don's wishes not because when he's dead it will affect him I respect his wishes because the entirety of his life he will live his life either with a good sound conviction that his wishes will be respected which makes the quality of his life better or he will live with an anxiety that his wishes won't be respected which diminishes the quality of time

okay well first of all there you have a bit of a contradiction, you're going back to well-being

that is that is what I say the foundation of morality is how is it that where's there contradiction

right okay and secondly you seem to be claiming that the basis for morality is social contract no I've said repeatedly just literally ten seconds ago that law foundation for what I view as morality is well-being okay so if I were to just shoot somebody in the back of the head they have no friends and family so it couldn't affect anyone else that would be moral because it doesn't really affect their well-being No no and this is a guy this is the same type of thing that Matt slick presents when he talks about hey if I could sneak in and rape somebody in a hospital bed and nobody ever found out about it that no harms been done right no I just gave you the exact answer to that it's not about whether or not you got away with it it's about what kind of society we promote and if we live in a society where we know that somebody can just come along in a review on a hospital bed or shoot you in the head as long as they're going to get away with it that diminishes your quality of life leading up to that okay okay well it is about ensuring our well being now by talking about what types of rights and protections we are going to guarantee to ours okay so you're basically me so you're basically claiming that it's okay to needlessly kill animals because they're not a part of our social contract and it doesn't affect us no see this is this is what I talk about when you guys are so repeatedly dishonest I did not say I'm not yes yes you are Richard and I'm gonna prove it to you and everybody else again right now because I already called you out for the same thing a few minutes ago I had no point said that it was okay to needlessly kill animals you cannot take shut up man shut up you cannot take my position Andrey spin it and paint it with your poisonous fallacious framing I have not said that so don't say that I said it okay well I think the problem here is we're not actually understanding the definition of what I mean by needless when I say needless I mean you don't have to go to the grocery store and pay for an animal to be killed to live a long happy healthy life the problem here is not that I don't understand what you mean by needless the problem here is that you are assuming that I am making a case for something being morally permissible when I am saying that I have not been convinced that something should be morally impermissible there are moral obligations and they're moral virtues and I'm happy to acknowledge that someone who never kills an animal and lives their life that way may be more morally virtuous than matter of fact I'll say it now I think they are that is not the same as a demonstration that there is a moral obligation to not kill animals for food okay well moral obligation that would require social context so now you're back to talking about social contract and if you're going to use social contract as an argument for why it's not a moral obligation to not needlessly kill animals so go to the grocery store buy me pay for an animal to be killed when you don't need to then I could just say well social contract makes it okay for me to give kill gay people in Saudi Arabia or it's like if we go back two or three hundred years then social contract allows me to own a slave it's not a moral obligation so do you think well god damn like Hitler didn't break any social contracts when he was in power like killing all those Jews that wasn't part of Jewish people he wasn't violating any more engagement story do they have well-being okay well our animals thinking and sentient and feel and have a will to live that depends it depends well it depends but cows chickens pigs so are they able to comprehend rights are they able to comprehend moral obligations and duties the fact that something wants the fact that something may not want to die is not relevant here just like when you talk to a second ago you immediately went to oh it's all about social contract when I've explained to you several times that when I talk about morality I'm talking about well-being and when I talk about where I draw lines and why it has to do with rights the ability to understand rights and the social contract we make and where we extend it to I'm not saying and you went to you know oh did Hitler do nothing wrong or slavery do you know that no those were wrong they were objectively morally wrong the fact that people didn't realize it or care about at the time is something is is a problem but that's something that was actually demonstrated and that's why we changed when you make of the demonstration for your case I will change but you don't get to just sloppily run around reframing things to make it look like I'm saying let's kill animals willy-nilly okay Matt Matt I'm not trying to swap sloppily reframe things I'm trying to actually get to the bottom of your argument it like I gave it to you I am unconvinced that eating meat is immoral and you agreed with me okay so Matt are you now saying that reciprocation of Rights is required to give an animal a right to life reciprocation of of Rights is a part of being included in the category of who's gonna be granted rights and why okay well animals do actually have rights like if you act do they actually the rights has been updated recently I I agree yeah they do that's why I agree why there's actually honest I agree you know actually torturing animal I agree the fact that you extend rights does not mean that you extend all rights does it do they have a right to drive car no it doesn't no it absolutely does right um so like this was the issue I have with your position it seems like you you're arbitrarily making a distinction no between species without taking it's not an arbitrary distinction it is a recognition of differences in cognitive ability to understand guarantee and protect rights it is about moral obligation because that only exists between well thinking creatures okay well right I don't have a moral obligation to to a rock do i well no it sounds like you're talking about reciprocation yes I just said that a minute ago literally we are it's o'clock get to the issue okay so if reciprocation is the issue then it would be like assuming our society was fine with like killing mentally retarded people it's not about individual reciprocation it is a categorical reciprocation Matt no wait wait a second here why should I wait for you to go down a rat hole that's not accurate listen listen you're you're you you're basing your moral outlook on to on two things on what social contract and reciprocation of rights no no I'm not I'm basing my moral outlook on well-being I'm basing my moral well position well-being period period well-being period okay well do you think I'm basing what rights I are given based on the the things that you just mentioned clearly reciprocation but not a individual ability for an individual to reciprocate but the categorical potential for reciprocation within a group okay well Matt you if your moral like if the basis for morality is well-being then you should be in favor of veganism because it's not within the best interest like it it's also animals do you kill and eat them so my basis for morality with well-being as a foundation is not about the well-being of any specific thing it is about the well-being of us of thinking creatures of those our ability to consider it so like if there's a chicken running around in the yard chickens cows and pigs aren't thinking creatures not in this sense no they have no cognitive ability to understand rights or object or anything they don't have a cognitive ability to understand rights but they do have cognitive ability like they do actually have problem-solving abilities for sure and well I don't understand like you're moving the goalposts right no I'm not I'm talking about where we're gonna draw the line you want to extend the line way out to anything that can think and feel and I don't think the line should be moved that far okay well just just to be clear I don't think all animals are equal and all animals are equal to human beings like obviously there has to be a distinction made why but I don't sorry well because they are thinking beings that can experience pain and suffering and they have the will to live that's why we grant the right to life to humans no it's not and a lot of these animals it's not it's not we don't grant the right to life to humans just cuz they want it well no they're like okay so okay so so now we've acknowledged you what you just said was wrong well well no no no no you'reyou're mischaracterizing what I said like if somebody who said we grant the right to humans in part because they want it and I said no they don't and then you agree with me where's the mischaracterization No like maybe I should reword things okay there is actually you got like 60 seconds because we're already over time okay well okay well Matt as far as I understand you keep going you keep the kind of tiptoeing or sorry you keep going back between two positions you argue from a social contract perspective then you got us about right well being a space for well you just claimed well-being as the basis for morality and then yes I did it's like you can't hear me Richard well-being is the basis for morality okay the other thing that we're talking about was rights in what we extend a rights that's independent from morality they are tied together in some aspects but well-being is about basis for morality I'm not going back and forth between two things there are there are two things there are what is moral and there are what rights do we extend into whom okay so it is moral to not kill and eat animals you'd agree on that aspect is it moral to not kill and eat animals sure okay so the issue here is rights whether or not we should extend no the issue here is whether or not there's a moral obligation to not kill and eat animals not whether or not it might be morally virtuous okay so why do you believe it's not a moral obligation because nobody from your side has made an argument that it should be a moral obligation the default the default is freedom until there's a good reason to limit to that freedom the default is maximal right freedoms you needlessly kill animals what sorry you want you think it's an infringing on your freedom to needlessly kill animals that can think and feel just like you buy two little free animals it happen if you actually listen to the last sentence not only did he decide to go back to the same snarky stuff but it got completely backwards he said that I I think it's a problem - neither did it doesn't even matter I'm gonna be put together a video that perhaps goes through in better detail what my view is because this is the trail we go down every time there are moral obligations these are things that you essentially must do or you are in a state of immorality with regard to that if it's then there are moral virtues and an example that I've used many times is if there's a kid standing out in the road and there's a bus coming at him if it if you are the person responsible for that kid and you do not take steps to save that kid you have violated a moral obligation now then the question becomes should you have to put your own life at risk to do so it may be morally virtuous for you to do that but it might not be a moral obligation for you to put your own life at risk for that even if you are the Stuart assessing those things comes down to morality in the sense of well-being the well-being of thinking creatures those it can understand the consequences of their actions not merely just I don't want to die in the example that I was going to point out was if you have a chicken out in the yard and you're going out trying to grab that chicken it's gonna run from you and the animal rights folks would say ah see it wants to live what if I'm a vet trying to help but it's still gonna run it does not have the cognitive abilities to determine to know that oh this is a path that leads to me dying it doesn't have language and communication so the other chickens have been able to tell it hey Fred was out here yesterday and that dude grab them and rang his neck this is not about whether or not we're gonna be cruel to animals I'm opposed to that I'm opposed to torture I'm opposed to various forms of factory farming but many of the vegans and this isn't a problem be a vegan if you want to I'm fine with that I'm fine with you even saying that you're probably morally superior in a sense of virtuousness but if you want to claim that people who aren't vegans are immoral you have an obligation to meet a burden of proof and you can't do that by dishonestly framing their position and you can't do it by saying please explain to me why eating meat is moral because the default is that everything is morally permissible until you make a case for why it's not and he you can do that you can convince somebody you can say hey look they're animals they think and feel don't you feel bad about that and people will become convinced by that I haven't I don't know what I in the 15 years almost that we've done the show two three times a years somebody will call in about veganism and we'll have a discussion and the thing that met the best plenty people didn't seem to grasp is they think they understand what my position is based on me arguing with that person and what's really happening is that person presents a flawed argument and I point out why I don't agree and so if you do a rebuttal to one of those things or something like this you haven't rebutted my position you have objected to a rebuttal of a bad position I could actually be an ethical vegan and make the same objections to the flaws in your reasoning and the fact that you are dishonest in argument and the fact that when this individual who call by the way the quick background decided to do that make a video he starts off by poisoning the well well actually he starts up beforehand by calling this essentially absolutely retarded what I was saying and then puts together a video in the first minute and 45 seconds he says I've gotta warn you this is this is really really bad and everything else which poisons the well in the same way that he poisons the well when he asked it's it's like hey why are you okay with beating your wife I didn't say it was okay well you haven't said that it's immoral to I would you like me to say it is immoral for me to beat my wife unless of course she asked me to and then I have to do it within certain frameworks and contexts and I you know do no harm it's there but put together a video and then four or five or six or ten of the Acolytes start coming on saying Matt's afraid to debate vegan gains well as he noted I gave him the contact information for my agent told him at a scheduled debate that's how things work I don't live in the YouTube world and I don't debate in the WWE circles and so running around telling me how much of a coward I am or calling in to talk about dishonest framing of my positions so that I want to just needlessly kill animals who feel stuff all you're doing is embarrassing yourself and it has absolutely nothing to do with the atheist experience with whether or not there's a God it is just weird to derailment when I hold no ill will towards anyone over what they eat and have never pretended otherwise all I have said repeatedly is I'm not convinced that it is immoral to eat meat and he agreed that's it for this week see you later bye-bye

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Recent Videos from and to Matt Dillahunty on Veganism

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Matt Dillahunty is Wrong, But So is Vegan Gains
https://youtu.be/QlORoDPSL5E

Thoughts on "Matt Dillahunty vs Vegan Gains".

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Source videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDjXYC64Ak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jRPgDAHuoI
Social contract theory
http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/
Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704
tu quoque
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

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Transcript:

hey guys so this is a response to a recent video by vegan gains he's talking about Matt Dillahunty who is on the Atheist experience it's like a call-in show so on this one episode I guess he would call it a vegan called in and wanted to talk about veganism on the show Matt has defended eating meat in the past and he defends it again here in this video in this discussion unfortunately vegan gains response to this is not great about you know a vegan diet and the morality of the vegan diet versus a meat diet okay I don't know what that has to do with atheism even though Matt is trying to keep a cool face I can tell he's very uncomfortable discussing this topic and his first argument is essentially what does this have to do with anything trying to undermine the importance of a very serious ethical issue well I mean it is called the atheist experience a viewer would expect for the topics being discussed to be relevant to atheism right I mean it would be really weird if Matt and the other hosts just randomly started talking about knitting or something would it would be pretty hard to retain an audience the person who called in wanting to talk about veganism fumbled a little bit in answering how this was relevant to atheism and honestly Richard vegan gains response is not much better they almost got it but the problem is that they really needed to get it right because this is the crux of the whole issue this is what makes or breaks the argument for Dillahunty so pocker seem to answer your question Matt what does veganism have to do with atheism well I don't think the two topics are directly related to atheism generally no it's not directly related because atheism is not a moral stance it's just you don't believe in God you can be in a moral nihilist atheist but - Matt Dillahunty brand of atheism - the Atheist Experience brand of atheism it is absolutely directly related Matt has made a career arguing for secular moral value for objective sec morality since you've animate this here's my question do Universal objectives exist I believe they do what I'm saying that if you think about it in any particular situation there are a number of possible actions and some of them are better than some that are worse which means out of the pool define a pool of actions for this particular situation in that situation that was objective criticizing non-theistic morality is a common argument from leading Christian apologists and it's their strongest argument by far the argument basically is that we cannot have morality without God that without some sort of objective lawgiver that any sort of human morality breaks down breaks down into mere subjective human opinion if this is true if the apologists are right of course it doesn't mean that God actually exists but it does mean that the new atheists are no better than theists who use faith as an excuse to base moral values on personal intuition if Matt's dismissal of veganism relies on his claim that he draws an arbitrary moral line at species and it does then his position on secular ethics is demolished it's reduced to a subjective appeal to arbitrary personal whim meaning that the Christian apologists are right about atheists or at least about Dillahunty style ideas point is I think that explanation and discussion of this should have made up the bulk of Richards response Matt does have the burden of proof here because he's trying to have his morality and his subjectivism - he's been a vocal advocate of secular ethics and as I showed before with those clips he's argued that it can be objective but unless you make the conversation about that specifically and challenge those arbitrary lines Matt is drawing and you do that on the grounds of other positions he's advocated there's really no foothold here Matt was very careful to avoid taking on the burden of proof by saying that mechanism is wrong he doesn't say that at all what he does say is that he's not convinced so the thing about morality thing about right now think okay it doesn't mean I'm wrong either congratulations we're at an impasse saying that doesn't mean I'm right I'm telling you what my views on morality are that's where Matt draws the line you draw the line in a different place and you have to make a compelling case for why I should change my mind and draw the line there even if you're correct and my speciesism is as wrong as the racism that allow for slavery you have to actually make a case for why that is this is not a resolved issue and I'm not claiming that I'm right I just have not been convinced these conversations get roadblocked because I have a particular view of morality and when I yeah what needs to happen is somebody needs to show me why that's wrong but I'm not saying that you're wrong I'm saying I remain unconvinced in much the same way that I don't say generally there's no such thing as God if the caller didn't come prepared to talk about how veganism is relevant to the Atheist experience - Matt Dillahunty new-style atheism and either come with his own proof or show how Matt had the burden of proof then he really didn't come prepared to argue for veganism in any sort of relevant context - the show calling out somebody because they meet just seemingly randomly and some random place and time it just comes across as preachy and obnoxious again it is absolutely appropriate to call into the Atheist experience and talk about veganism but really only if you are willing to talk about their so-called objective morality and show how it breaks down when they start drawing these arbitrary lines that exclude consideration for sentient non-human animals you have to focus on the claims that they've made and show how those are inconsistent with the speciesism that they've accepted unfortunately the caller did not do this and Richard doesn't do it either but they are both moral issues the whole reason you discuss atheism in the first place is because you think honesty and the truth are moral imperatives just because somebody holds one subjective moral imperative doesn't mean that they'll care about other moral imperatives that they don't hold the key here is Matt's claim of objective morality I'm not surprised that Richard misses this considering that he has identified as a moral subjectivist morality to me is subjective but I think it is a useful like a useful trait that we evolved to have vegan gains buys into the false dichotomy presented by apologists and then makes an appeal to nature fallacy equating morality with evolved social empathy and calling it useful and he does the same thing in response to that the idea that about compassion and not killing animals that want to live more or less you know that that why should I care now should I care if they want to live it's a terrible response completely devoid of compassion empathy it's unlikely to endear many people to Dillahunty or his style of atheism but unfortunately Richards response which amounts to nearly five minutes of assertions and appeal to nature it just isn't a compelling argument against it why should I care if you want to live Matt maybe it's because you're a sentient being that can experience pain and suffering and has a will to live there's this thing called empathy which is the basis for morality and it's present in all social animals recent rodent experiments have proven that rats have the ability to feel empathy and they will save fellow rats from drowning even when there is a reward incentive in place to not save their fellow rat we also evolved to love the taste of sugary fatty salty foods because they were very useful in our evolution and of course this resulted in us creating super hyper palatable foods that we can't stop eating even to the point of extreme obesity and sickness what was evolutionarily useful at one point can become harmful at another in other words just because we evolved something doesn't mean that it's inherently good why is empathy important if Richards argument is because it's useful then it's not really the empathy that's important it's the effect of the empathy let's say that the evolutionary purpose was to enable Society is it really useful for modern human society to empathize with animals and if it is why are we compelled to follow evolutions goals as if it's some moral giving deity or maybe Richards argument for empathy is because it's natural well what about someone who just naturally doesn't have empathy or someone who naturally doesn't have empathy for animals for non-human animals what is compelling them to behave as though they do trying to argue for veganism from a subjective standpoint from the standpoint that morality is subjective as Richard is doing just doesn't work and it only gets worse from here let's say there's a kid standing on the road and there's a bus coming and you would you would not you have the opportunity to rescue that kid without putting yourself at risk at all you can make a good argument that you have a moral obligation to rescue that kit because there's you know zero risk everything else if the bus is really close and you would be putting yourself at risk it would be morally virtuous of you to rescue that kid but you're not necessarily under an obligation anymore you're under a moral obligation to not run around killing people but you're not under a moral obligation to never tell a lie although that might in fact be virtuous matt doesn't really seem to understand what he's actually saying and his arguments become more and more incoherent as this video goes on so what Matt is describing here is social contract social contracts are implicit agreements among members of a society which dictate social conduct for the overall benefit of a society what Matt is saying here is that he is under no obligation under our current social contract to not kill and eat animals not once to Dillahunty mention social contract or anything that resembles social contract theory the only thing matt said that comes close is his statement later in the video saying that moral agents have moral value he's trying to find something special about humans to justify the species line from my view moral responsibility is tied to a capacity to understand the consequences of one's actions and we draw lines along species we draw lines along species for very good reason because let's say there's someone a young boy for example I had somebody my family who's basically born with no cognitive abilities at all okay he's still a human being and the reason that we include that individual even though they are not a thinking being at all you know human born with no cognitive abilities they can't possibly assess their actions they are under no moral evaluation they have no moral reasoning but we treat them within this category of humans because there are other people who care about that kid okay right and so it would be wrong of me to kill that kid even though he's brain dead because of its impact on those other people who are moral reason errs and moral actors right mm-hmm this is not an equitable arrangement when we start crossing the boundaries of species now are there some species that I would put on you know this the side of the line for moral evaluation such that they would be on the side of you know do not eat sure so what Matt's talking about here is questions of personal responsibility he's dividing morally relevant actions into virtues and obligations in order to excuse himself the responsibility of being a better person when he finds it inconvenient now there is something to be said for the amount of risk and effort that you put into something versus the payoff in terms of harm reduction and the good that comes out of it we want to be effective we want to get the most out of our altruistic efforts but when it comes to veganism any sensible evaluation of effort and risk versus payoff definitely does not help Matt's case veganism is very doable for most people living in the developed world and it's even easy if you take a gradual approach transitioning over number of months or even years and it has the largest payoff in ethical terms of any lifestyle change that you could make there may be certain people who can't do it for various reasons under various circumstances but that doesn't excuse the people who can't do it from the obligation and transitioning to a vegan diet obviously does not put you at risk in the way that stepping in front of a car does veganism does not need to be nutritionally superior it only needs to be equal or at least not so dangerous as to put our lives at risk this isn't an oncoming truck it's changing habits and it's a bit of a learning curve something that should be super trivial and super easy for someone as intelligent as Matt someone who wouldn't be persuaded by the shitty vegan diets like fully raw and throttle 4 and starch solution Matt has created a double standard here he uses empathy as the basis for his moral outlook he recognizes that social contract is not a basis for morality yet he deploys social contract as an excuse to needlessly kill animals because that's the best argument he can come up with on the spot to defend his poor lifestyle choices Matt clearly does not base his morality on empathy he bases it on what he believes is a rationally constructed objective morality the problem is not that matt is ignoring empathy the problem is that he's drawing arbitrary distinctions when it suits him and as a result undermining his position on objective morality it's really unfortunate that Richard is convinced that this all has to do with empathy because it results in him completely misunderstanding Dillahunty argument which then results in him not being able to counter it effectively so Matt's video goes on for another 14 minutes but there's no sense in responding to the rest he just repeats the same assertions and logical fallacies that's actually not true Matt goes on to clarify some of the things that he said earlier in the video and clarifies them in such a way that it makes it very hard to interpret them in the way that vegan gains has interpreted them Matt also brings up the issue of vegan buying things that they don't need that are presumably harmful something that has become a sort of Achilles heel for Richard Matt isn't making an appeal to futility fallacy he's making a to quote a fallacy in order to justify his own arbitrary lines by trying to show that vegans are drawing arbitrary lines to just that a different place he tried to do that with insects and depths in agriculture and failed because the caller agreed that it was wrong to kill insects and that we should improve agriculture then he tried again with technology would he brought up the caller cell phone and talked about how humans don't need cell phones so first of all if you're just gonna base it on need get rid of your phone you don't need it that you need it no you don't humans survive an ephah job humans prasat survived for millions of years without any sort of cell phone the caller didn't have a good response to that and neither has vegan gains when he's been challenged on that in debates his trademark mishmash of moral subjectivism and appeal to nature along with his personal arbitrary lines that just so happened to establish veganism as the moral baseline doesn't really work and ultimately makes him a really bad person to argue against someone like Dillahunty because they're both doing the same thing they're both ultimately arguing for morality based on personal whim look I don't agree with Dillahunty either we can't substantiate moral objectivism and then arbitrarily ignore or follow it at our leisure any behavior that causes harm is an issue and we should strive to do better and not all vegans draw arbitrary lines to consider veganism the moral baseline and then dismiss the notion that they might do more to reduce further harm but even if they did it still wouldn't excuse Dillahunty doing the same just with a different set of arbitrary lines point is to quote way is not an excuse for moral subjectivism so that's it thank you so much for watching guys I hope you enjoyed this video comments and questions down below if you want to subscribe that's awesome and if you want to support the channel you can do so at patreon calm such a natural vegan.

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Matt Dillahunty vs Vegan Gains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDjXYC64Ak

Matt Dillahunty believes veganism is not a moral obligation. Matt's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jRPgDAHuoI

Research referenced: Rats demonstrate emphatic behavior:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-015-0872-2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3884117/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa16P4nFgD8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpZoqD1_X0

Humans have traits of herbivorous animals:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312295/

Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegan/Vegetarian diets:
http://www.eatrightpro.org/~/media/eatrightpro%20files/practice/position%20and%20practice%20papers/position%20papers/vegetarian-diet.ashx

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Transcript:

for those of you who don't know Matt Dillahunty he's well-known in the online skeptic community for hosting the show the Atheist experience I used to watch the show all the time back when religion was a hotly debated topic on YouTube but after a few years the online skeptic community just completely destroyed religion and then I lost interest in the show because the content just wasn't meaningful to me anymore but I was just recently made aware that Matt Dillahunty discussed animal ethics and the ethical principles of veganism on the show and just to warn you this is an absolute train wreck so in standard fashion I'm just going to go through this video and rebut Matt's claims point by point calling about you know a vegan diet and the morality of either being diet versus a meat diet okay I don't know what that has to do with atheism even though Matt is trying to keep a cool face I can tell he's very uncomfortable discussing this topic and his first argument is essentially what does this have to do with anything trying to undermine the importance of a very serious ethical issue and to answer your question Matt what does veganism have to do with atheism well I don't think the two topics are directly related but they are both moral issues the whole reason you discuss atheism in the first place is because you think honesty and the truth are moral imperatives the entire basis for your work is based upon moral values so I don't know why you'd be hesitant to discuss other moral issues like veganism and especially when atheism isn't all that relevant to topic on YouTube anymore again viewers like myself myself stopped watching because you know the argument is over and done with it like atheism 1 so it couldn't hurt to branch out into other topics and talk about other moral issues like veganism so Matt is already trying to figure out ways to get out of the conversation before it even begins and then he just proceeds to try to quickly dismiss the ethical principles of veganism well I guess I have to do it the idea that about compassion and not killing animals that wanna live more let you know that but why should I care should I care if they want to live why should I care if you want to live Matt maybe it's because you're a sentient being that can experience pain and suffering and has a will to live there's this thing called empathy which is the basis for morality and it's present in all social animals recent rodent experiments have proven that rats have the ability to feel empathy and they will save fellow rats from drowning even when there is a reward incentive in place to not save their fellow rat a recent study tested rats empathic behavior in order to do so - rats were placed in a divided cage with only a door connecting them in the first experiment one rat in the cage was soaked while the other remained dry witnessing the wet rats distress caused the dry rat to open the door to free it 9 out of the 10 rats who remained dry during this procedure freed their wet rat mate the roles of the rats were switched around and it was then discovered that previously drenched rats responded quicker to the distressed rats than those who had remained dry the entire time a second experiment conducted with two dry rats revealed that with neither displaying anxiety there was no need for them to open the door the third and final experiment forced the rats to choose between a treat or helping out their wet friend most of the time the rats ignored the treat in order to rescue the other rat first according to the study findings suggest that rats can behave pro socially and that helper rats may be motivated by empathy like feelings towards their distressed cage mate as I said before empathy is present in all social animals and social interactions are required for empathy to be learned in another rodent study they demonstrated that rats that had not been socialized with other breeds of rats were reluctant to help a fellow rat rat sometimes have a bad reputation but it's one they probably don't deserve after all not only did I show empathy toward companions in distress scientists have now discovered that they will also help strangers what we did was we took one rat who is always the free rat and then we had a stable of strangers so on each day and we do 12 days of testing each day free rats saw a different trap rat and what we saw was that they opened for strangers just like they were cage mates however when these rats were tested with rats from another strain in this case a black cape variety they would not help the stranger in distress that led us to think that there might be some kind of social bias will rats will only help rats who are similar to them and to test this question we paired the two rats of different types and housed them together and we found that once they were housed together those rats were willing to do anything for each other so they were willing to help each other even though they weren't similar to each other so we sort of did a Jungle Book type experiment where we took the albino rats and we raised them from the day of birth in Long Evans litters so they grew up in a world where they had no exposure to their own kind we found that rats who were raised in a different world than their own we're not interested in helping rats of their own kind as adults and this was a powerful demonstration that social experience was the only variable that was determining who rats choose to help and who they choose not to help so empathy is created in a social context and empathy is the basis for our moral values and socializing with other humans has given you the ability to empathize with them and thus you can create social contracts with fellow humans and we can all recognize that it's wrong to harm each other and empathy can and does get extended to animals most people love their dogs and cats most people wouldn't want to kill a dog or a cat and eat them because in our society we've been well socialized with these animals and so we feel a great deal of empathy towards them now when there's a lack of socialization with other humans or other animals you as a human being are smart enough to understand that another creature is sentient and has thoughts and feelings and has a will to live similar to yourself if that understanding is what stops you from killing fellow humans or cats and dogs then that understanding should also allow you to recognize that it is wrong to needlessly kill other animals like cows chickens and pigs empathic understanding is why you should care if other animals want to live because you talk about not owning slaves and not killing people yeah that's people I look and we'll also I have feelings and or you know I have I would I wouldn't I wouldn't deny that but so are you do you know the difference between a moral virtue and a moral obligation Matt do you understand the difference between an argument and an assertion that collar is trying to argue with you that not needlessly killing animals is a moral obligation just as not needlessly killing humans is a moral obligation and instead of trying to come up with a valid counter-argument you just simply stated I can kill animals if I want to well I could just as easily claim not killing humans is not a moral obligation I can kill humans if I want to that's not an argument that's an assertion you have to provide a logical reasoning to back up your statements and I have animals are sentient beings that can experience pain and suffering and have a will to live and for the same reasons you'd grant a human the right to life animals should also be granted a right to life no I guess it don't ok so let's say there's a kid standing on the road and there's a bus coming and you would you would not you have the opportunity to rescue that kid without putting yourself at risk at all you can make a good argument that you have a moral obligation to rescue that kit because there's you know zero risk everything else if the bus is really close and you would be putting yourself at risk it would be morally virtuous of you to rescue that kid but you're not necessarily under an obligation anymore your honor a moral obligation to not run around killing people but you're not sure a moral obligation to never tell a lie although that might in fact be virtuous Matt doesn't really seem to understand what he's actually saying and his arguments become more in or incoherent as this video goes on so what Matt is describing here is social contract social contracts are implicit agreements among members of a society which dictate social conduct for the overall benefit of a society what Matt is saying here is that he is under no obligation under our current social contract to not kill and eat animals because there is no social contract in place forbidding him to kill and eat animals it is therefore morally justified well if you're going to claim social contract is a moral justification then you'd have to agree that slavery was never wrong as social contracts allowed for slavery and killing gay people is never wrong because in some parts of the world social contracts allow for killing of gay people obviously Matt doesn't hold these beliefs as his morals are based on empathy which is why he thinks it's wrong to enslave humans and it's wrong to kill gay people so Matt has created a double standard here he uses empathy as the basis for his moral outlook he recognizes that social contract is not a basis for morality yet he deploys social contract as an excuse to needlessly kill animals because that's the best argument he can come up with on the spot to defend his poor lifestyle choices my my view when it comes to morality is it's decidedly speciesist it's undeniable and I'm not at all bothered by that it may in fact be morally virtuous to not eat animals but I don't see it as a moral obligation that said there are certainly problems with meat industry that I object to where we may be doing harm to the planet in some cases but what I find most at a time when I talk to especially ethical vegans is if there's a gross oversimplification because they've been you know listening to Peter Singer or whoever just talked about a simplified view of morality that's about suffering so this is complete hypocrisy Matt was just trying to simplify morality down to social contract and species so according to Matt as long as most people around him are okay with him killing and eating then it's morally justified and so long as he's only killing non-human animals it's morally justified but here I am giving you a scientific explanation of how morality is created in a social context through empathic understandings like you're really good at debating religion Matt but these easy victories over religious morons have has made you overconfident to the point where you think you can just win any argument spewing absolute nonsense in topics you clearly know nothing about and you know what it would it then be wrong to eat insects who might suffer mmm I grew that's you though so you wouldn't want you don't say nothing sure okay cool I I don't know again Matt doesn't have an argument he's simply stating that he doesn't care although insects aren't nearly as intelligent and sentient as other animals like cows chickens and pigs that doesn't mean needlessly killing them is morally justified if recognition of sentience is enough to stop you from killing fellow humans or other animals like dogs and cats there's no logical reason for why you think it is morally justified to needlessly kill other animals including lower life-forms like insects Matt if you think I don't care is a valid argument then would I be justified in killing you I could just as easily say I don't care I don't need to care about you or any social contracts does the moral value of a creature entirely depend on whether or not you decide to arbitrarily care about them just another example of Matt's hypocrisy again Matt's moral views are clearly based upon empathy and well-being of others but he's trying to create a double standard and special pleadings whenever it comes to justifying his poor lifestyle choices how many animals how many animals died while were farming the vegetables that we I mean that's unfortunate yeah sure if we you know if we become more you know aware of the situation and more compassionate we figure out ways not kill so matt is now me and appeal to futility fallacy there's no way to stop all animal suffering and death therefore killing and eating animals is justified well there's no way to stop all murders therefore it's okay to kill people the idea is to reduce suffering and death as much as reasonably possible and the color has the right idea as technology improves we should work to minimize our impacts what's your argument against that what about people who have died sorry what about peak because humans aren't herbivores they're omnivores so what about people who have a specific diet problems that would require them or financial constraints that don't make a vegan diet particularly beneficial or cost-effective several stupid statements here first of all Matt doesn't seem to understand the strict definition of what an omnivore carnivore or herbivore is these diet designations aren't based on a species biology or their ideal diet it's based on their natural dietary habits and humans aren't even classified as omnivores were considered opportunistic eaters and that's because humans can live off of virtually anything and we eat whatever is available to us that doesn't mean animal products are at all beneficial to our health and according to a published peer-reviewed paper by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics vegan diets are suitable for all stages of life from pregnancy to adulthood and are even suitable for athletes vegan diets also reduce risk of chronic disease including heart disease diabetes and certain forms of cancer so the largest organization of nutrition professionals on the planet confirms that vegan diets are perfectly suitable for human health and there are many disease preventing benefits there isn't anything in the medical literature which suggests certain people can't be vegan I'll agree that there are certain health problems and dietary restrictions that would make it more difficult but I haven't seen any evidence of it being an impossibility and just for the sake of argument let's say there are some people with weird health problems and dietary issues where it would be impossible to be vegan how does that justify everyone else needlessly killing animals dude so again this is just another appeal to futility and lastly cost vegan diets are far less expensive staple foods like greens beans legumes are far cheaper and more nutritionally dense than meat some of the poorest people in the world eat plant-based diets the typical ethiopian diet is plant-based where the majority of their calories come from grains beans and legumes and root vegetables and of course you live in a wealthy Western country Matt there's no way you can't afford to eat vegan these foods would even be cheaper for you so you still can't come up with any valid excuses to kill any animals for food your arguments thus far have been I don't care you've made appeals to futility and special pleadings well you know I just thought my paper actually that said only herbivores gets a pro sclerosis and humans and humans aren't herbivores well it's not the paper so the paper is the queen it's saying that only herbivores get atherosclerosis and only humans get atherosclerosis dogs don't the papers full of crap once again Matt doesn't have an actual argument all he can say is well that's just bull crap and the article that collar was probably referencing was 20 questions on atherosclerosis which was written by dr. William C Roberts who is the editor in chief of the American Journal of Cardiology so this is one of the best heart disease experts in the world and in the paper dr. Roberts states that only herbivorous animals can develop atherosclerosis the only way to induce atherosclerosis in a carnivorous animal is by removing the thyroid gland so animals that have evolved to eat meat have made special metabolic adaptations that make them immune to atherosclerosis but humans on the other hand do develop atherosclerosis which is the most common form of heart disease so clearly we haven't made these adaptations and that's obvious evidence that humans have evolved eating a plant-based diet and consuming animal products gives us heart disease it's funny how Matt gets pissed off at religious people for denying science but here he is flat-out denying medical science and that's then just asserting again that humans are omnivores when he doesn't even understand what that term means we all know that humans eat meat Matt that doesn't mean it's good for us because all that is is that all that is is a redefinition humans are not obligate are befores at all you can choose to have an hour based diet you can choose to have a plant-based diet and there if you live in the monumentally privileged West you have access to all sorts of things that might make it easier for you to have an herb based diet okay so now Matt is changing his argument around at first when he was claiming that humans are omnivores he was suggesting that a diet which includes meat is ideal for human health but now when he claims humans are omnivores he's suggesting that eating meat might not be ideal for human health but it is a natural human behavior this is totally besides the point unless you have an argument for why including meat in the diet is ideal for human health this whole omnivore debate is pointless it's just a red herring and again you don't have to be privileged to be vegan it's incredibly inexpensive my staple foods are lentils and oats I buy them at Costco it only cost me about $40 to have several months worth of food and some of the poorest people in the world follow plant-based diets as meat is a luxury in most cultures and and you're welcome to have a view and I don't go out I don't eat whatever you want I'm not I'm not objecting along those lines the question is what the question the question is is it immoral to eat meat yes so if I come across a dead animal on the side of the road it's immoral for me to eat that Matt is now deliberately deploying a diversionary tactic to steer the conversation off the rails clearly that vegan caller was arguing that it is wrong to kill animals for food when you have vegan options available to you so why are you bringing up a completely irrelevant example where killing is not a part of the equation well Matt if you see a dead human at a morgue is it immoral to eat that person he's already dead you wouldn't be harming anyone so does that make it okay to kill and eat people for food in every context what was your goal in asking that stupid question no oh well then it's not immoral to eat meat so now we're talking immoral to kill any more to kill an animal eat right but now we're talking about something else so it's not the meat eating that is immoral no it is it is the killing and I disagree with you that I have no problem at all with killing to sustain life again Matt is not addressing the actual argument the vegan caller is arguing that it is wrong to kill animals unnecessarily when you have plant-based options available to you he was not suggesting that it is wrong to kill animals in any context even if you have to kill to survive Matt is using a straw man fallacy rather than attacking the actual argument he is creating an imaginary argument that was never made that is much easier to refute you do not need to kill animals to survive Matt therefore it is completely unjustifiable for you to kill any animals so far all you've done is made baseless assertions deny scientific evidence you're trying to derail the conversation with red herrings and you're throwing out logical fallacies it's a you can talk about it being unfortunate but I don't you need to make a gauge sure I'm fine with that I like animals I like some of more than others I like you know but the issue is you have to make a case that there's a moral obligation to not kill an animal in order to get me to change my mind he already made the case you're just ignoring his arguments and you're trying to derail the whole conversation for the same reason you'd give a human or a dog a right to life you should also give other animals like cows chickens and pigs our right to life these are sentient beings that can feel pain and suffering and they have a will to live you if you were in their position you wouldn't want to be killed for no justifiable reason so it's completely hypocritical for you to kill and eat these animals unnecessarily when you don't have to when that's not how you would want to be treated yourself you give empathy to other animals like humans dogs cats so it's contradictory for you to not give the same type of empathy to other animals well I went out I mean like the 9m probably 99% of the animals that we do these are a couplet who eat our farm you know like factory farms okay that's not an argument for why there's a moral obligation today the vast majority of animals we eat are being horrific ly mistreated but according to Matt that doesn't matter how does the well-being of sentient beings not matter Matt would you be okay with being tortured if you wouldn't want to be tortured then it is completely hypocritical for you to claim that it doesn't matter if other sentient beings are being tortured again empathy is the basis for morality empathy is what allows you to realize that it is wrong to torture a fellow human so why does empathy not matter when it comes to other species you're okay with the fact you're okay with like a screaming Pig as you'd kill it you're okay with that or like a chicken now what's there like eat food and walk around you accuse brigands neck and yes and then frying it up it while you can eat fruits or vegetables or yeah you know you know and you're okay with that yes I have hunted killed cleaned and cooked meat on my own so it sounds like Matt is a hunter which would explain his tremendous personal bias but again this isn't an argument it's really just him saying well I've killed animals so why should I care well I could just as easily say I've killed raped and eaten children why should I care if I caused their suffering and death just because you have committed these acts doesn't mean these acts are trivial or are morally justifiable right so that to me that sounds like it's okay like slavery argument no because they're not people I already said it was species just so the thing about morality they think about you're right you're not Valentin okay it doesn't mean I'm wrong either congratula were at an impasse saying that doesn't mean I'm like I'm telling you what my views on morality are that's where Matt draws the line you you draw the line and differ in a different place and you have to make a compelling case for why I should change my mind and draw the line there I thought it's the same case of what what people thought about African slaves in America how many know that was racist I mean so up until now Matt hasn't really stated his position clearly but now he's claiming that it is okay to kill any animals even when it is not necessary because they are not human they're of a different species and of course this isn't a logically valid argument for several reasons first of all as the caller stated this species argument is very similar to racism why is it okay to kill animals because there are different species they're not human why is it okay to enslave black people because they're not white they're not the same race as us now although there are clear differences between races and species claiming that black people are different than white people and people are different than cows that's what I would call an appeal to different kind these are just meaningless arbitrary distinctions that don't take into account trait differences or similarities first using racism as an example I could say black people don't deserve the same rights as white people because they're black they're a different race now we can clearly see there are obvious differences between black and white people but just because there are racial differences doesn't necessarily mean there are any meaningful trait differences between races if you would agree that white people should be granted a right to freedom because they possess sentience intelligence and self-determination then it is only logical to extend the same freedoms to black people because they also possess those exact same traits now comparing humans to animals and in this example I chose a cow as you can see there are vast differences between humans and cows there is an even greater difference between a human and a cow than between a white person and a black person and if you are a supposed on navour like Matt Dillahunty you might say humans deserve a right to life but cows are a different species and therefore do not deserve to live however do cows lack the traits that would grant a human being a right to life the reason we think humans deserve a right to life is because they are sentient and have a will to live well cows are also sentient and they have a will to live even though they are a different species they do possess the same traits present in a human that would grant a human being a right to life so claiming species differences are what morally justifies killing animals is logically invalid for the same reason it's logically invalid to claim racial differences are what justifies enslaving black people using race or species as distinctions does not take into account trait differences or trait similarities and if you don't consider trait differences or similarities then you run into very obvious contradictions if we were to use Matt's species morality then it would be morally justified for us to kill off a peaceful alien species that is just as intelligent and sentient as us humans simply because they're not the same species as us obviously Matt would be against such a thing because in reality he does not use arbitrary distinctions like species to justify mass murder and genocide just as he doesn't use arbitrary distinctions like race to justify slavery also again the species morality concept removes the analysis of traits so you can use species to justify anything is it morally justified to skin an animal while it's still alive well yeah it's a different species is it okay to shoot your dog with a BB gun yeah it's a different species is it okay to cut out your cat's eyes with a knife it's a different species Matt would of course not condone any of these horrible actions because he recognizes animals possess sentience and the ability to feel pain and suffering just like humans and because we share these trait similarities it is there for wrong to torture animals and it's also wrong to kill animals without any proper justification unless Matt can point to a specific trait or set of traits that animals lack that if we're also lacking in a human would justify killing that human Matt is being completely logically inconsistent by suggesting it's ethical to kill and eat animals so Matt's video goes on for another 14 minutes but there's no sense in responding to the rest he just repeats the same assertions and logical fallacies and at one point he was talking about whether or not it would be ethical to eat a human being that died in a plane crash when you're struggling to survive on a mountain just complete nonsense that has nothing to do with the topic but Matt if you're still not convinced that veganism is a moral obligation then I'd be more than happy to debate you we can have a live debate on any platform you want we could do it on the Atheist experience we could do it on my channel your channel I'd love to hear a response from you there's no shame in admitting you're wrong but if you want to further publicly embarrass yourself I'd be more than happy to oblige best way to get into contact with me is through Twitter and if you liked this video maybe consider supporting me on patreon I have some funding perks you might be interested in also if you're looking for clothing you might want to check out the vegan gains apparel store and as always keep making those vegan and ethical games

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Moral Virtue v Moral Obligation & Animal Rights | Kayvan - Oakland, CA | Atheist Experience 21.31
https://youtu.be/7jRPgDAHuoI

The Atheist Experience 21.31 for August 6, 2017 with Matt Dillahunty and John Iacoletti.

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Transcript:

I was calling about you know a vegan diet and the morality of iya being diet versus a meat diet okay I don't know what that has to do with atheism well I guess it has to do with um the idea that I like fashion and not killing animals that want to live more or less you know that but that why should I don't know should I care if they want to live because you talk about not owning slaves and not killing people yeah that's people buy a book and will also have feelings and or you know I have I want I wouldn't have I wouldn't deny that but so are you do you know the difference between a moral virtue and a moral obligation um moral obligations no I guess or no okay so let's say there's a kid standing on the road and there's a bus coming and you would you would not you have the opportunity to rescue that kid without putting yourself at risk at all you can make a good argument that you have a moral obligation to rescue that kit because there's zero risk everything else if the bus is really close and you would be putting yourself at risk it would be morally virtuous of you to rescue that kid but you're not necessarily under an obligation anymore you're under a moral obligation to not run around killing people but you're not under a moral obligation to never tell a lie although that might in fact be virtuous my my views when it comes to morality is it's decidedly species it's undeniable and I'm not at all bothered by that it may in fact be morally virtuous to not eat animals but I don't see it as a moral obligation that said there are certainly problems with meat industry that I object to where we may be doing harm to the planet in some cases but what I find the most at a time when I talk to especially ethical vegans is if there's a gross oversimplification because they've been you know listening to Peter Singer or whoever just talked about a simplified view of morality that's about suffering and you know would it then be wrong to eat insects who suffer mm-hmm I agree with that you though so you wouldn't want you down a not sex shirt no cool I I don't have that from how many animals how many animals died well we're farming the vegetables that we I mean that's been it's unfortunate and I'm sure if we you know if we become more you know aware of the situation and more compassionate least figure out ways not kill what about people who have died for what about P because humans aren't herbivores they're omnivores so what about people who have a specific diet problems that would require them or financial constraint that don't make a vegan diet particularly beneficial or cost-effective well you know I just thought a paper actually that said only herbivores get at roaster OSIS and humans and humans are herbivores well it's not that's not a paper so the paper is the queen is saying that only fiberboard get atherosclerosis and only humans get a poker versus dogs ok ok the papers on the paper is full of crap because all that is that is all that is is a redefinition humans are not obligate are befores at all you can choose to have an hour based diet you can choose to have a plant-based diet and there if you live in the monumentally privileged West you have access to all sorts of things that might make it easier for you to have an herb based diet and you're welcome to have a view and I don't go out I don't eat whatever you want I'm not I'm not objecting along those lines but the question is in order the question the question is is it immoral to eat right meat yes so if I come across a dead animal on the side of the road it's immoral for me to eat that no oh well then it's not immoral to eat meat so now we're talking moral to kill anymore to kill an animal you're right but now we're talking about something else so it's not the meat eating that is immoral no it is it is the killing and I disagree with you that I have no problem at all with killing to sustain life it's a you can talk about it being unfortunate but I don't you need to make a gauge sure I'm flying with that I like animals I like some of more than others I like you know but the issue is you have to make a case that there's a moral obligation to not kill an animal in order to get me to change my mind but well I went out I mean like the 99 probably 99% of the animals that we do you are a couplet who eat our farm you know like factory farms but the and I've been the matter okay that's not an argument for why there's a moral obligation to know you're okay with the fact you're okay with like a screaming Pig as you kill it you're okay with that or like a chicken now what's it like eat food and walk around you accuse brigands neck and yes and then trying it up it while you can eat fruits or vegetables or yeah you know you know and you're okay with that yes I have hunted killed cleaned and cooked meat on my own right so that to me that sounds like it's okay like slavery artment no because they're not people I already said it with species issed so the thing about morality is I think about right that now think okay it doesn't mean I'm wrong either congratulations we're at an impasse saying that doesn't mean I'm right I'm telling you what my views on morality are that's where Matt draws the line you draw the line and do in a different place and you have to make a compelling case for why I should change my mind and draw the line there I feel it's the same case of what what people thought about African slaves in America I don't know how many know that was racist I mean like this is a fake well I mean there is there's really only one race so they're so angry she oh I'm sorry I was just trying to clarify is that what you mean that they said they were being racist in much the same way mad as being specious now is that kind of what you're getting at yes I wanted something and that's different because they're black different because they're not people well even if you're correct even if I behave in Haven even if you're correct and my speciesism is as wrong as the racism that allowed for slavery you have to actually make a case for why that is you don't get just say well you know hey people used to think this way I mean it's it well it's why is why is he says I'm wrong was wrong why is speciesism my own feces isn't wrong it's because we well one is it's like killing us eating amps and - no I'm not you know it's not killing us at sustaining this is another one of those over is a shark immoral for eating a fish no why not because that's its ecosystem that's his life we have your spear smarter than the shark you said what once I have to do with it I mean it has a lot to do with it because we have we now have no work we know not to kill a fish we know we can live without killing the fish you know the fish who's coming out of the water with a hook in his mouth and like gasping for life his tasting ream sure is safety but so human you know and so glassy I I don't know whether or not humans tasty but the point is character name if it's not immoral for the shark to eat of fish and it you know you're saying it's immoral New York I'm aware that we're not sharks but you're saying it's immoral for the shark they're not immoral for the directive it's immoral for me to do it I'm asking what's the distinction because we know better we don't know better I don't know better I don't know that it's immoral you don't just I mean now you're just making an assertion okay well I mean well I tell morality moral responsibility from my view from my view moral responsibility is tied to a capacity to understand the consequences of one's actions and we draw lines along species we draw lines along species for very good reason because let's say there's someone a young boy for example I had somebody my family who's basically born with no cognitive abilities at all okay he's still a human being and the reason that we include that individual even though they are not a thinking being at all you know human born with their cognitive abilities they can't possibly assess their actions they are under no moral evaluation they have no moral reasoning but we treat them within this category of humans because there are other people who care about that kid okay right and so it would be wrong of me to kill that kid even though he's brain-dead because of its impact on those other people who are moral reason errs and moral actors great this is not an equitable arrangement when we start crossing the boundaries of species now are there some species that I would put on you know the side of the line for moral evaluation such that they would be on the side of the you know do not eat shirt but that doesn't mean everything it doesn't mean insects which is why I went to that first it doesn't necessarily mean fish which is why even a lot of people who have a problems with factory farming or still pescetarians this is not a resolved issue and I'm not claiming that I'm right I just have not been convinced and when when ethical vegans in particular try to make the case that is the same responses over all the time it's all doesn't it bother you that the Linnell animals suffer sure what difference does that make that because the fact that that enough difference at least am less suffering okay what have we killed animals where they felt nothing no suffering would it still be immoral um where they felt nothing at all would be immoral yeah it might be yeah I think it would be because exactly so why are you hanging up suffering this is the problem I have every time I get in this argument you state what your state what your primary foundation is and then when we come up with an example that negates that primary foundation you want to stay with it still immoral so you guys got to figure out right what is the actual plan are necessary it's not saying unnecessarily okay what did what cetera termination what's the determination of whether or not it's necessary if I'm out in the woods and I'm about starve to death and there's a squirrel next to me is it on it becomes necessary right well I mean like it depends on how you know we will live a long time that eating humans can live a long time without eating I don't know how that addresses the question I'd altercation scenario one scenario set it up with Dan will day that's not that's one thing and so it's morally permissible that animal to live if it's morally permissible then so it's morally permissible in those situations right allergies moral out say it's a necessity let's say John and I crash lights I guess it let's say we let's say John and I crash at the top of the mountain is there ever scenario where it's morally permissible for him to eat me if you're dead that's cool if I'm if I'm already dead anything he needs to survive and he needs like like that that movie alive or that the soccer team that planted in Alps forever but apart from Edina another part from a dying of natural causes even if like you know I'm going to die if he suffocated you to eat you then that's we eat be moral okay if you're already dead and he needed to eat you and I'd be a go for it but what if we're both just about dead and I happen to die first yeah but John knows that if he waits for me to die he will no longer have the strength to build a fire and cook and eat me well that's that that's between you two I guess that's it that's a okay then me eating a chicken is between me and the chicken and as soon as the chicken tells me know if that is how to send us a chicken tells me that you want a jet how do you know that how do you know what a chicken once what if it's that you can say you want to eat that you do your things in case your fridge here's the problem here's the problem came upon you here's the problem burn yeah the chicken doesn't know it's going to be eaten it doesn't want to be handled it doesn't want to be touched in danger it doesn't it doesn't either it may know so that you turn on a fight-or-flight response you don't get to right you know doing good to anthropomorphize it to say that oh it doesn't want to be it doesn't have a concept of being well they know not to they know and quite frankly you're to die I mean I'm okay with being eaten if I morrow you know that I'm okay with thing if I'm not - and I'm okay with eating animals there's already dead but it's the fact that we animals I don't think a shark is a hobby anymore especially young EQ well okay either so first of all if you're just going to base it on need get rid of your phone you don't need it but you do need it no you don't turn you here and survive an ephah job here Microsoft survived for millions of years without any sort of cell phone I survived yeah do you ever drink anything other than water like you have to have a soft drink I only took wallet now I only drink water but I have yet I drink I have thrift and soft drinks and it's like a tree there I mean it's not good for okay but you don't leave the tooling I needed so this is one yes is why I wasn't particularly interested in digging this coal and it's because these conversations get roadblocked because I have a particular view of morality and when I what needs to happen is somebody needs to show me why that's wrong and what I get are assertions about suffering what I get are it's just wrong for you to be speciesist with no demonstration of why what makes you think that slavery is wrong what makes me think that slavery is wrong because morality is about well-being and I'm talking about humans and thinking creatures that I might actually include that category and this diminishes the well-being of the individuals that are enslaved and it also diminishes the well-being of the culture that is doing the inflating right I agree and I agree it's equally the same with annual weird admission on the origin missionary all right environment or environment no or not there's no and how are we so so first of all if your primary objection is about the methods by which you know factory farms operate or whatever that are harmful the environment I already said at the beginning I'm fine with that being a problem that needs to change but that is an eminently different from the from your claim that it is immoral to kill an animal yeah I mean okay and you and you won't eat insects but I bet you're okay with the fact that insects and animals die is a you know necessary by-product now happy with it I'm not okay with it okay what are you doing about that I mean I earn olenek to do about that I would like to I have heard of vegan farms where I do believe analysts are knocking it her harmed really so they're able they're able to they're able to a whole row and plant seeds without you know hurting worms or anything I'm not sure exactly but I'm not even I did hear it debate but at the end of the day huh at the end of the day your issue is that it's wrong to kill animals and I don't I'm trying to figure out what what back set up that is wrong about my view other than that we just have a disagreement well I mean it's because you can physically see the animal like tort being like in pain when you kill it you know what if you like I I don't I'm sorry I just I don't get it I'm not saying that torment or torture is good I'm not saying I don't like animals or let's just willy-nilly slaughter everything I'm not anyway anyway everything's assignment I'm just saying that I don't see the justification for saying that killing and eating the flesh of animals is immoral and the mere fact that you keep saying oh well you can see it you know squirming or whatever I even gave you a hypothetical where there's no pain no suffering or squirming you're still want to say it was yeah different you said it was I'm fine I mean and and if we and if we can get the lab meat that that's totally fine good culture from an animal without current and we eat that you want to kill yourself a meat that's cool too okay now you now you have slipped over into the sort of hyperbole that guarantees that I'm about to hang up when you start talking about killing yourself by eating meat you have gone well beyond the pale and we've spent more than enough time on this it has nothing to do with atheism so put together your case and send it to email a TV atheist type of community or maybe I'll give it some more time I thought but if you don't have a case for why it's actually immoral but beyond just you personally are not comfortable with killing animals I don't know how we can fix this but when you start doing the you're free to kill yourself with me I'll just and I'll just give me my opinion I'll giving my opinion I don't give a shit about people's opinions about health issues I care about the scientist me not you might care about the science I am except Elvis has shown that eating meat is killing you the that edia science has shown you that eating meat is killing you yes yeah Wow and this please looks and they say no no no stop send me the scientific papers that show that eating meat is killing you and you better not send hay too much red meat is harmful I want to filter that is eating meat is killing you and then we'll talk again okay now here's the thing I have lots of vegan friends we're thinking certain different reasons at different times eat you know if you want to being a diet because your view of morality is that it's immoral that's fine I may even be wrong this is something Sam Harris and I will probably talk about at some point we're doing three or four events together and I know that he's video vegan I know though and either Richard but Richards acknowledged that he may in fact be engaged in immorality inviting me at least in one conversation that vegans love to pass around all over the place the issue is if I'm wrong you've got to come with a compelling case because what you're saying is it what I'm advocating is immoral not that it's morally neutral not that it not that we don't have a settled understanding of whether or not it's moral but then it's actually wrong and time you can make a case that is in a strong I'm nineteen change your mind but I'm not saying that you're wrong I'm saying I remain unconvinced in much the same way that I don't say generally there is no such thing as God I'm unconvinced that there is a God I may be strongly convinced that there's not depending on the definitions and I'm happy to have the conversations but there are people who seem obsessed to the point of making multiple videos on whether or not I'm a vegan because they see it as immoral so make your case we watched a video recently from I was it was a Peter Singer that we watched anyway it was so full of fallacious reasoning I had it like two pages of notes on it and it still doesn't mean that they're wrong it's about making a compelling Case

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Matt Dillahunty vs. common sense.
https://youtu.be/ghQCeb0Evvo

Matt continues to resist basic morality.

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkPevjGWN4U

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Transcript:

hey guys alright so I thought I'd come to you in live form today that's not the usual but fuck it why not I like experimenting with different styles this is good because you guys can see me it's a quicker way to produce videos you can just shoot through them in one take but it's bad in some other ways when I don't have all the time to formulate my points and I don't have infinite shots at hitting any individual point there's some clarity lost there's some precision lost so it's a bit of a trade-off but whatever I like to try new things so I guess a lot of you have probably seen the recent battle going on between vegan gains and Matt Dillahunty I've been finding it absolutely hilarious I've laughed my ass off multiple times Dillahunty is clearly trying to avoid vegan gain sending him on a wild goose chase to Pangburn philosophy to set up a debate claiming it doesn't respond to YouTube randoms while appearing on far smaller channels than vegan gains or even myself like in the video today that I'm gonna respond to telling Richard acting surprised that Richard didn't call into the show to speak to him when he hasn't even been on the show in the time between Richard producing his video and Matt claiming that it's weird that Richard didn't come on the show so just tons of evasion tons of bullshit Matt you're fuckin wrong on this topic you need to just get over it and accept reality so today Richard sent me a little clip of a video with Matt Dillahunty in it it's pretty stupid I don't think anyone's hit it yet so I'm gonna respond to this one okay here we go first was when I left off I was having this back and forth with Hamish do you remember Hamish I remember the name and I couldn't tell you the specifics of all the discussions but yeah he was he was saying that the Lord is the only the only way that you can have morality and we just went back and forth about it and it wound up getting too veganism and and how such a fucking bitch hmm I don't know maybe I'm just triggered by mad at this point cuz I know he constantly avoids the point when it comes to veganism but every single thing he says on the topic just his little mannerisms and reactions they they annoy me um we how can we be moral creatures and eat meat we can't or it has to be some weird condition like the it's a lab-grown animal or the animal was already dead and that kind of put me in a weird position because it never really it put you in a weird position because you're wrong and you can't defend your position interested me enough as a subject to investigate it right and so I looked at the facts the facts I loved oh this guy's like it invested me enough as a subject to investigate it Matt's just like facts are that I value animal life more than human life I eat meat and I don't feel guilty about it I think he means to say he values human life more than animal life when do you value animal life more than human life or other way other way around I value we are animal boy so I well I mean you value human life over non-human life yes yeah yes which isn't to say that I'm a monster right if it doesn't make you a monster but it means that you have a very strange inconsistent moral position I had the chance to save the last polar bear and I think that you become a monster or you become evil when you're sufficiently aware of how wrong you are and how wrong what you're doing is and you find ways not to care either by an ignoring the topic by trying to rationalize it etc so know you're not just evil to begin with but after a certain point I'm just not willing to give people the benefit of the doubt anymore and assume that their failure to go vegan is just due to them not totally grasping it no I mean eventually it's like even an idiot could understand this once we've conveyed enough information to you and if you're not gonna change then yeah I would actually say that you are just a immoral person a bad person I mean what does bad mean it at all if not immoral where I would yeah it's what is that what does that mean about me and how am I you're finally considered fuckin Matt Dillahunty it means you're fine yeah means nothing's wrong with you uh no what what does it say about you it says well I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt right now I think it just says that you haven't thought about the topic but if you persist in this it says that you are someone who does not value morality who doesn't value the lives of sentient beings in any kind of consistent manner and that you're someone who will put your own petty personal pleasure which you've been indoctrinated into that was bad sentence it means you'll put your petty personal pleasure see that's where if I were editing the video I would have taken another shot at that one means you'll put your petty personal pleasure above the lives of sentient beings it's done about that yeah and so when I looked it up I thought you know okay I'm species list yeah it's what I looked it up but it's just yeah I discovered I'm a racist yeah and that's and that's okay and then and that's fine which now congratulations you're now going to get the ethical vegan oh we've been getting them already oh yes you are yeah yeah that's all right I'm probably gonna do a video for the atheist debates thing roughly talking about this because please do Matt we will destroy it the whole community will destroy it speaking of the whole community destroying Matt go check vegan gains last video to make sure that I have the date right I think it's the 21st but Matt Dillahunty is gonna be on the Atheist Experience Richard's gonna call in I've been asked a fucking billion times to call in so I think I'm gonna try to call in too and I suggest that the whole community calls in I think that everyone should just fucking bombard the Atheist experience on Matt's next appearance is in the 14 years I've done the Atheist Experience the subjects come up you know a handful of times and and and you've deployed hilariously retarded rationalizations every single time and if anyone hasn't seen it go watch my last video no my last video my my last video on Matt just look up ask yourself Matt Dillahunty everything he says on this topic is demented mostly what happens if somebody calls in and they present their arguments and my job is to take those arguments apart all right and point out what's wrong with them where they went right where they went wrong to explain why I don't agree I hear that Matt but the way that you talk to vegans when they call in you instead of steel Manning their position instead of trying to understand the obvious thing that they're saying you pick on little semantic logical details to avoid accepting their point I mean you can say I'm just fact-checking I'm just looking for optimal logical clarity but I think you're also deliberately being obtuse quite a lot of the time like in that last video that some people are talking about Richard made a video on it it's a moral obligation versus moral virtue like you know the guy is saying all these coherent things but just not quite perfectly and you harp on the little problems you know you're at one point you ask your classic question of is it wrong if for a shark to kill a fish well I mean no it's not the guy the guy tells you it's not and then you try to ask so why is it wrong for me to kill a shark or to kill an animal what's the problem animals kill each other and you know the guys not laying out a perfect justification but it's extremely obvious after listening to him that he's getting at the general idea that humans can understand morality and animals can't but you just keep resisting the point not trying to understand what he's saying you do this with every question I ever hear you get on veganism so I have a hard time believing it's just purely you trying to be philosophically careful with the arguments and and fact-check them I think you're being deliberately obtuse and if anyone doubts that I think you should just watch through Matt's videos talking about veganism see if you agree that is not the same as I'm now putting forward what my position is that would be a I need to think about that what does that mean checking other positions is not the same as saying that I haven't I need to hear that again we're going back guys you know a handful of times and mostly what happens is somebody calls in and they present their arguments and my job is to take those arguments apart all right and point out what's wrong with them where they went right where they went wrong to explain why I don't agree that is not the same as I'm now putting forward what my position is yeah I mean I understand technically what you're saying I mean if you're saying that fact-checking someone else's argument doesn't necessarily mean that I'm articulating my own position like you could play devil's advocate against their position you could generate arguments that you don't technically believe but that still expose a flaw in their position so I hear what you're saying but it doesn't make me take back my statement that you'll have to fact check for yourself that you're being deliberately obtuse when it comes to veganism that would be a brief talk or a lecture yeah I can't put I I have not put forward in any concise sense what my view is on morality as it relates to non-human animals that okay I mean that's not true Matt because you I get that your it's not fair to hold you accountable to everything you've ever said in responds to a vegan because sometimes maybe you're playing devil's advocate or something like this but it's also not fair to say that you've never conveyed anything about what your position is when it comes to veganism I'm not gonna go dig up a bunch of clips but I'm a hundred percent sure of this and any of you can look at the videos to go check Matt often makes little statements about his morality or his beliefs when it comes to animals and what's okay to do to them so yeah it's fair to say you're not accountable for every single thing you've said you might not have been always representing your position but to say every single time I've talked about veganism I've never represented my position that that I'm skeptical of and if you're even edging in the direction of saying that right now I don't buy it it's better I didn't want to take the calls on the Atheist experience quite often because it doesn't have anything to do with atheism it doesn't have anything to do with religion that that's actually fair I mean it does in some way there's some basic level of connection I mean if you set the bar for connection between topics this low though you'd be able to talk about a whole ton of shit on the Atheist experience but they both are basic rational logical positions they both are positions that generate huge amounts of bad argumentation and cognitive dissonance from people who won't accept them I mean there's other similarities I think I started adding in a third finger it's like during the second point so technically those are only two similarities but I'm sure there are a bunch more now saying that but but either way fair though if you don't want to talk about veganism on the Atheist experience that's fine but once you put some of your views out there you're obviously gonna get responses from the vegan community you also have to understand Matt I mean you're I understand that you think that you're safe and holding this position and people will always still take you seriously maybe that will be true till the end of your life I don't know but eventually the position you hold is going to be looked at as absurd kay you have to understand that car nests are in the same place as religious people were a while to go and still are in many places in the earth it's an irrational indefensible position and there's just like there is the Atheist community that slowly just eroded religion in a lot of the West the vegan community is doing the same thing to carnism and you're on the wrong side of that battle it does have something to do with you know morality if you're talking about veganism from an ethical standpoint yeah it certainly has a value in discussion and debate but the real thing is is that not everybody on the Atheist Experience horry perhaps you can undock has the same view and agrees and so as the public face of the Atheist experience when I'm on it I need to make sure that I'm representing the ACA is position statements yeah and that if I'm departing from you know what the consensus is to make sure people know I'm speaking on behalf of me that Jen Russell's racy Martin Jeff whoever yeah okay I understand that there's not perfect consensus among the Atheist experience and I understand you have to represent the the views of the community or whatever you want to say you should announce when you depart and you're talking about your own personal views and I'm I mean I can't honestly remember maybe you do a good job of doing that maybe not but if this is being said in the service of suggesting that you can't be held accountable for anything you've said on veganism because oh I'm playing devil's advocate or oh I'm representing the position of everyone here not necessarily myself if that is what you're trying to say again I don't buy it Don they don't necessarily share that view yeah that's true and so I would prefer to keep calls on this show within the realm of really well yeah that's fair enough it's your show do whatever you want it worked its way there and I think that it really struck a chord with me because it's a rabbit hole that I just did not know was there and it goes deep yeah yes I mean this guy sounds like Eric Murphy I don't fucking know he sounds pretty honest and genuinely interested though he's just like whoa this was like a serious big topic I didn't even know that this was here and it actually runs deep I mean that sounds to me like someone who is considering the arguments honestly I might be wrong but that's the vibe I get and there's like he goes really even this week there's a guy who put together a 30 minute video tearing apart a call I did is he talking meeting Gaines oh that I just did not know was there and it goes deep yeah and there's like he goes really even this week there's a guy who put together a 30 minute video tearing apart a call I did he's totally talking about vegan gains that's so far and I haven't watched I watched a minute and 45 seconds and in the first well he thinks he watched a bit more than that but whatever a minute and 45 seconds he'd already poisoned the well and made assumptions he's like okay I don't know Richards video enough to 100% speak to this but the guy's not known for logical fallacies not trying to poison the well it seems to me like he's giving commentary in that section of the video he's not actually making logical arguments at that point he's you know stating what he thinks about just the way you talk about veganism I mean he he goes off from I think you saying in fact I don't even need to get into the details of it I'm pretty sure he's giving commentary and you're treating that commentary as well poisoning which I don't think that's that's a totally fair thing to do I mean by that standard I bet a lot of like news articles and stuff would be well poisoning I don't know we could we could see this is another thing here's here's where clarity is lost if I had longer video format I wasn't just doing one take I'd spend time I'd hash that thought out and I'd deliver something cool so again ups and downs and you should debate vegan gains that's that's the other thing and not send him on wild goose chases tell you to tell him to appear on the show when you're not on the show or marvel at how he didn't try to appear on the show when you're not there etc you should just hop on Google Hangouts and hang with him you can't dismiss him as some you know he's a YouTube random it's like the guy has a following that's pretty large like you I mean as far as I know it's bigger than yours you would be the one who stands to benefit from talking to him he points this all out in his second video to you which I recommend you go and watch if you've made it this far in mine I don't know like oh I can see that Matt doesn't want to discuss this maybe it's because I'm just trying to honestly think what I think about that Matt doesn't want to discuss this I do think that you tend to be dismissive when it comes to veganism I think that I think you're very quick to misinterpret what people are saying or take the worst possible interpretation never try to steal man their position so I think there's resistance to the topic I don't know if you actually try to avoid speaking about it overall like you will talk about it but I definitely sense like aversion and cognitive dissonance no I goes on to I guess try to guess why I don't didn't want to discuss it yeah and it is a guess and I mean this is a bit of a difference between how Richard and I think I mean or well it's not just what we think because I have my guesses - he's just a bit more willing to come out with his sort of interpretation of what someone's about I tend to wait before declaring motives but having said that richard has been correct about motives many times oh and he's been willing to assume them faster than I have like with roaming millennial I think it's clear to everyone in the vegan community that she's intellectually dishonest at this point I think that's a fair thing to say I don't think any mind-reading is required I could make the case in detail if I want to dig up samples from her in debates and talking to vegans after her initial anti-vegan video but I think most people are on board with it so it's basically common knowledge so I'm not gonna do that here uh Richard called that she was intellectually dishonest from the fucking get-go and I was sitting there I'd be like oh no you know she uh she you know maybe she's intellectually dishonest but we don't really know like I mean we'll have to talk to her for a bit and see how she reacts to things and then then we can make a decision and I still go by that standard I still do hold judgment for a little bit but having said that Richard does have pretty good intuition with where people are coming from a lot of the time especially on veganism and the real reason is one as I stated before I wanted to keep the show primarily about atheism religion etc and the other one is is that every time okay well the first one is totally fair it's your show we've had an ethical vegan call to make their case it's fallacy ridden fallacy ridden see I don't know that it's fair to say it's fallacy ridden I agree that you haven't had any like really brainy philosophically minded vegans call in and explain us a super coherent really articulate vegan position to you but again I think that you're very uncharitable when you talk to vegans it is emotional please or there are emotional pleas but here's an example of your lack of charitable 'ti is actually how you handle those emotional pleas someone will say you know are you okay with just a pig being stabbed and screaming and you'll be like taste good or you know are you okay with a fish just having its eyes exploded being taken out of the water these these are paraphrases the I don't know if these were the exact things and and you'll say yeah Fisher case T and I mean I understand that that is an appeal to emotion the way that the person is talking but you know someone who's honestly interested in steel Manning their position and finding the the core of it and what it's about wouldn't just blow it off as as mmm tasty fish they'd say okay and what exactly is it that makes that action wrong what is it that's like I mean I understand it's it's wrong with a human is are you saying it's wrong for similar reasons with an animal like what are those reasons there's not that kind of effort on your part to understand their position and again I understand that a lot of this can be dismissed because I'm not actually providing evidence for it so that you know that's fair enough the logical points I make in here will stand but as for my assessment of Matt sort of character and how he acts on this topic I encourage you to watch my other video watch Richards videos and just type in atheist experience or Matt Dillahunty and veganism and you'll find a whole ton of these videos and in all of them it's him doing the same thing it's him just playing around with the vegans they're saying you know eating meat is wrong and then he'll he'll ask okay well like is it wrong to eat lab meat well no so so it's technically not the meat-eating that's wrong but he's not he's not just saying it to get to the core he is totally saying it to dodge the point and - yeah just to prolong his resistance to veganism and his to prolong his time before actually clashing with reality on this topic seriously we just fundamentally disagree on an aspect of morality but we can't discuss that fine point of disagreement because what is that aspect it's just oh I mean I mean as far as I can tell that aspect is that you say mmm tasty fish I'm a speciesist I mean that that's not you agree I cuz you're I think you're a moral Objectivist or are you at least I know believe that we should have some coherent system of morality because I know you say sam Harris's views on morality are sensible I mean I just I don't understand how you can think that you've ever made anything even close to an argument on this topic but well I mean I guess you're fine with you know eating meat and I'll give you a couple of quick examples to just just seen today on Twitter there's a guy veganism is unstoppable I think is his I think it's based on atheism is unstoppable and I think I've seen that guy on Twitter before I think he follows me Twitter handle though I'm sure he's losing his shit right now and maybe any he tweeted up bro its you're just a YouTube channel like people don't care that much about being mentioned on a YouTube channel what is what is the big deal there something about you know like oh do you have a moral obligation just to not have dog fights you know like in your backyard yes and whoever he was talking to is like yes and he's like ah then you know your moral view is gonna crumble if it if it doesn't lead to veganism from there yeah so that's that's a statement that's not an argument and you are on Twitter so you have to be concise but that statement is true and there are arguments for why that statement is true so here's the thing veganism is not eating meat no I mean you could be a vegan and you could eat lab meat veganism is opposing the needless exploitation and death of animals that is separate from why you don't eat meat I need to think about what he said right there that is separate from why you don't eat meat what ah then you know your moral view is gonna crumble if it if it doesn't lead to veganism from there so here's the thing veganism is not eating meat that is separate from why you don't eat meat Brett veganism is not eating meat that is separate from why you don't eat meat am I am i retarded okay so they would are like what the fuck am I honestly not understanding what he's saying ah then you know your moral view is gonna crumble if it if it doesn't lead to veganism from there so here's the thing veganism is not eating meat yes that is separate from why you don't eat meat veganism is not eating meat that is separate from why you don't eat meat I don't comprehend that sentence right okay so they would argue oh it's about harm well my morality is not based in any on any simple understanding harm yeah well I mean I would say it's about harm sure give harm because sometimes harm may actually be a net moral good I mean you can argue when you're performing a tracheotomy you are doing harm but you are doing harm and to save your life it's said yeah I mean I like this is what Matt always does he'll be like is it about is it about eating meat well there's some times when eating meat is okay is it about doing harm well there's some times when doing harm is okay it's about harming others in a way that you would never accept being harmed it's about inconsistent application of morality it's about when you have a set of human rights on the table you have a certain standard for how humans should be treated and you have a separate standard for how animals should be treated and that separate standard isn't actually justified by a rational difference between the two beings which if true of the humans would justify it for the humans this is what Richard was getting at when he was talking to you about tray differences so it's hard to condense down exactly what veganism is about I mean the the core of it as far as like the vegan society definition it's about reducing needless animal what suffering exploitation harm death as much as possible it's like some set of those words I mean the general thing we're trying to do is avoid harming animals in ways that can't be morally justified now that leads leave some ambiguity what is moral justification well again I would kind of just go back to you have a standard for what constitutes moral justification in the human context and wherever that standard is going to be different for animals has to be justified by a difference between the two that would justify changing the standard for humans if they possessed the difference so veganism is about in my view at least it's about maintaining logical consistency between how we want to treat humans and how we want to treat animals well and then so we went from the dog bite in the backyard to factory farming of animals and to veganism well yeah well I mean if you oppose the dog fight it's pretty hard to understand why you wouldn't oppose for example stabbing a cow in the head or bolt gunning it in the head and stabbing it in the throat you can't do that because I could be opposed to dog fights I could be opposed to factory farming in fact I am opposed to both of those things do you buy factory farmed meat are you just paying lip service and yet I am NOT a vegan yeah well I mean it's possible to be opposed to certain types of bad animal treatment and not be a vegan I mean what what are you what are you getting at he said Oh cuz the Twitter comment said that if you oppose the dog fight it'll lead to you being vegan well I mean it's that's not technically logically true it depends why you oppose the dog fight but if you're opposing it for any kind of like rational reason yeah it's probably also going to lead to veganism because I the the idea that therefore you shouldn't eat me you are conflating the eating of meat with how we got about getting the meat maybe I should also just clear up the dog point like for example you could have a totally coherent moral standard where it's just it's wrong to kill or let like clawed animals be killed for human need so then you could be fine killing all the animals that don't have claws and you could hold that consistently across the board so the reason you object to the dog fight actually doesn't lead you to object to all animal exploitation that is obviously possible but those positions have to be based on pretty arbitrary things because non arbitrary discrimination if you reject arbitrary discrimination which you can get people to that position pretty easily then it's pretty it's pretty hard to picture how you would resist the dog fight and not resist veganism resist the dog fight and not be a vegan sorry right which is what why because I the the idea that therefore you shouldn't eat me you are conflating the eating of meat with how we got about getting it's such a petit point mat if you ask any vegan for clarification on that we'll be like yeah it's not technically about consuming the meat it's obviously about what happens to the animal and this again what I mean by you being uncharitable you can put it all in the guys if I'm just you know arguing against your position as best as I can to expose fallacies but I mean it's pretty obvious that what vegans are concerned with isn't just literally the consumption of flesh it's about what has to happen in order for that flesh to be there right which is why I asked about you know roadkill if I find roadkill is it immoral for me to eat it no it's not immoral to eat roadkill or lab meat and you'll get two different answers so if the call two different answers as in they'll say it's wrong to eat meat and then they'll say it's okay to eat roadkill which is not a technical logical contradiction I have this permanent autistic voice in my head now it's like you you understand there's a contradiction underlying that sentence right I mean yes it's not it's not a flat contradiction to say it's wrong to it's fine to eat Road it's wrong to eat meat but the contradiction is obviously that roadkill is a type of meat so saying that it's wrong to uh or it's okay to eat roadkill includes the statement that it's okay to eat meat at least some times which contradicts a categorical statement that it's wrong to eat meat hmm permanent mental autism or that I'm talking to gives one answer and I offer the rebuttals for why that's wrong yeah you can't take that call and say here's the sum total of Matt's views on it okay yeah you do can't take that call and say here's the sum total of Matt's views on it because we just went down this one okay well no one's saying well at least I'm not saying it's the sum total of your views but you have expressed some views on the topic and those views are ridiculous rabbit hole with the caller if the caller had said no there's nothing immoral about you know eating roadkill okay now we go down another one so there needs to be an actual discussion and it doesn't quite get there well III think again I I mean I'm just gonna be repeating myself but it it doesn't get there because you make it unnecessarily difficult for the vegan you use the fact that you have knowledge of logic and philosophy to kind of like dance around their points and find little technical ways that they're not true instead of steel Manning them and trying to genuinely understand the core of what they're getting at it can does Taylor really well into situational ethics and and evaluating any moral judgment based on its merits in in context to what's going on so there's one big mistake that that they make that you pointed out early on you value human life over non human life yeah you you can still be a vegan and value human life over non human life at least if you're talking about non-human life like less sentient non-human life may be wrong to do that I mean technically you could still value human life the most and still be vegan but it may be wrong to do that you you aren't wrong to value human life more because the reasons you value human life like the fact that that life is sentient and capable of experiencing well-being that's more true of a human than it is of a mouse and it's more true of a mouse than it is of a flaw so there is a hierarchy of moral value but the fact that that hierarchy exists doesn't mean that it's just okay to murder creatures lower on the hierarchy to justify that when you already have ethics in place for creatures at a certain level on the hierarchy you need to point out what is it about these creatures lower on the hierarchy which it that which justifies killing them needlessly and if that trait whatever it is were applied to those creatures higher on the category who you have morality operational for would it justify killing them if not then it's logically inconsistent so this is again what vegan gains was getting at in the end of his last video it's when he's talking about trait differences when he's dropping trait bombs on you you have to actually spell out what the justification is for mistreating animals or else you're arguing for arbitrary discrimination and if it's arbitrary then I mean you can just just file sorts of ridiculous shit so what specifically is it about animals which if which justifies murdering them which if true of humans would justify murdering a human that's the current view that we both share the fact that you value human life more than you value non-human life does not mean that you don't value non-human life pigs yeah that's that's what a vegan would say but if you because because yeah obviously the fact that you value human life okay wait let's let's go back view that we both share the fact that you value human life more than you value non-human life does not mean that you don't value non-human life they know of course not but when you murder those beings that suggests that you don't value them significantly or if you want to be technical it shows that the amount of value you put on them is very likely not a a proper logical extension of the amount of value you put on humans exactly yeah it's it's I like Beth more than I like and why do you say exactly I mean that that is the kind of thing that that a vegan would say like yeah you the fact that you value human life more than non-human life doesn't mean you don't value non-human life and I often say the fact that you value human life more than non-human life doesn't justify stabbing non-human life to death needlessly without any kind of moral justification IQ that doesn't mean I don't like you I hope you like that one a little bit but I like you I do Matt yeah I'm gonna make you awkward alright so what I'm I'm glad you brought that up what I'm probably gonna do and this will partially be based on feedback my atheist debates projects at patreon.com slash atheist debates every month I put out three videos there'll be debates that I do reviews the debates that I do specific treatments of arguments for the existence of God tips and tricks for how to better defend a position mistakes that we make mistakes that atheist make I will probably I'm thinking this week or next week outline my view of morality as it relates to food I am very excited for the entire vegan community to intellectually bukake that video I that you're gonna get hate no matter what yeah yeah you're not just gonna get hate you're going to get deconstructed but at least this way they will have because what's happening right now is somebody will show a clip from the show yeah and some of the ethical vegans now I'm not saying all of you are bad or stupid or irrational whatever but some of them will take that clip and go ah this is one of them called it absolute retardation the immediate thing that came to my mind was was that me no that was also vegan gains you know just start off with the name-calling and what did I call my video on Matt Dillahunty I think it was like Matt Dillahunty deploys terrible carnist argumentation well I'm glad that the fucking vegan videos coming out about you are getting your attention this is good this is ridiculous and there's you know that's how you start a good well reasoned argument people who have no demonstrated ability to debate and no demonstrated expertise and morality no demonstrated ability to debate I mean the person who called it absolute retardation has been in plenty of debates that are pretty well aware it's pretty well agreed that he won he's done plenty of debates he's been making logical content for a long-ass time how is it fair to say that he doesn't have any merit in debate and most the other little thing he said there people who have no demonstrated ability to debate and no demonstrated expertise and morality well I mean expertise it's not a fucking moral philosopher not all vegans are moral philosophers only some small fraction are that doesn't mean that they can't express coherent ideas about morality expert he sets the bar high how about just basic coherent thoughts but they go down that track so what I'd like to do is well they go down the track because like no offense Matt the kind of things you say are absolute retardation when you're talking about sharks though or when you're talking about insects killed in pest like pest killed in fields or this kind of stuff I mean these are the most typical anti-vegan points ever made and they've been debunked a million times at least give them here's a video this is you have to understand you're in the position of someone who doesn't know all the standard bad arguments for atheism like this is an analogy right picture someone who doesn't know all of the standard bad arguments against atheism you know they hear the they might think that something like the ontological argument is you know that's that's a unique and interesting argument well no I mean someone who's heard all of these arguments a fucking million times I mean maybe you wouldn't say this publicly whatever people are be different but they just say this fucking retarded this is absolute retardation we've heard these things we understand why they're false it's well understood within our community and people who actually look into this topic why these things are false so that's why it's it's such a obvious but basic dismissal of what you're saying that's why people are comfortable calling it absolute retardation because you're deploying these standard carnist arguments you can find vegan debunks of these things that are years and years old there's what Matt thinks the how and the why and that way if they want to point out flaws in that that would who is at least give them here's a video this is what Matt thinks the how and the why and that way if they want to point out flaws in that that would actually be you know one thing that would be funny to point out is everything that you say in that video that's overlapped with anything you've ever said in a vegan video before just to point out the fact that we're not criticizing views that you don't hold there's plenty of things that you've said that actually represent your opinion closer to a discussion between the two of us than pointing out objections to my objections - no I agree Matt it would actually be better if we had a clear video where you fully explain your stupid position so please do that for us we'll all have a fun time carpet-bombing it somebody else's point well then it's and it's just not it's not that interesting if it's really not when you're following and just doing that it's it's much nicer to have an organic call and let it go yeah on that rabbit right and I'm not doing what did he just say wasn't interesting doing a debate or seeing a certain type of video responce pointing out objections to my objections to somebody else's point well that's and it just not it's not that interesting if objections to my objections to somebody else's point not that interesting well I mean it's interesting enough to get like far more views than this video so just saying it's really not when you're following and just doing that it's it's much nicer to have an organic call and let it go yeah on that rabbit right and I'm not doing debates on Twitter and I'm not doing back-and-forth I mean I don't think people are trying to debate you on Twitter people are trying to connect with you through Twitter for an actual debate because you're responsive on Twitter for debates on YouTube your post of it debates on YouTube but you're saying debates on YouTube are video response sequences that's not what people are asking for someone like vegan gains or like me would like to actually see if you can withstand a real conversation on veganism with someone who's thought about it a good amount you will not last long in that crucible my friend do I post a video sorry for all of you who absolutely loved YouTube culture I despise the but you don't have to but there's tons I mean there's no there's no just blowing off YouTube YouTube is seen by tons of people there are plenty of respectable academics who will do interviews on YouTube there are politicians who will do interviews on YouTube there's tons of completely respectable shows on YouTube like your show for example the thought of appearing on someone else's show I mean there's there's just nothing wrong with that if you want to say you don't want to do response video sequences fine even if you want to say you're not into appearing for a live debate that's I mean it's your decisions free society but I don't I don't see why you would try to say that that's some ridiculous thing to do you don't have to be filling out a fucking real-life concert theatre there's you can get more people to see it by doing a fucking YouTube debate I'm actually glad to get the plug atheist debate soon if for those of you fans of talki then who don't know this is Matt Dillahunty he's uh he's getting there he's working his way up in the atheist community um and yeah anything we can do to help plug him would be fantastic so give him a shot you know take a look alright so I guess that's the end I really look forward to Matt posting this certainly very silly video I'm excited for the whole vegan community to destroy it I'm excited for vegans to bomb the atheist experience with calls on whatever day it is the 21st I really hope we get to hear him talk to Richard so I think that'll be all thank you guys for watching thank you so much to my patrons for making this all possible well I mean I guess it was possible before but thank you for your support that's all until next time

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Eric & Matt Talk Veganism | Talk Heathen 02.01
https://youtu.be/JkPevjGWN4U

Talk Heathen 02.01 for January 7, 2018 with Eric Murphy and Matt Dillahunty.

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Transcript:

First was when I left off I was having this back and forth with Hamish do you remember Hamish I I remember the name and I couldn't tell you the specifics of all the discussions but yeah he was he was saying that the Lord is the only the only way that you can have morality and we just went back and forth about it and it wound up getting to veganism and and how come we how can we be moral creatures and eat meat and that kind of put me in a weird position because it never really interested me enough as a subject to investigate it right and so I looked at the facts the facts are that I value animal life more than human life I eat meat and I don't feel guilty about it when you value animal life more than human life or other way other way around I know we are animal boy so I well I mean you value human life over non-human life yes yeah yes which isn't to say that I'm a monster right if I had the chance to save the last polar bear I would yeah but what does that what does that mean about me and how am I you're finally consistent about that yeah and so when I looked it up I thought you know okay I'm species list yeah and that's and that's okay and then which now congratulations you're now going to get the ethical vegan oh we've been getting them already yeah yeah that's alright I'm probably gonna do a video for the atheist debates thing roughly talking about this because in the 14 years I've done the atheist experience the subjects come up you know a handful of times and mostly what happens is somebody calls in and they present their arguments and my job is to take those arguments apart all right and point out what's wrong with them where they went right where they went wrong to explain why I don't agree that is not the same as I'm now putting forward what my position is that would be a brief talk or a lecture yeah I can't put I I have not put forward in any concise sense what my view is on morality as it relates to non-human animals etcetera I didn't want to take the calls on the Atheist experience quite often because it doesn't have anything to do with atheism it does have anything to do with religion now saying that it does have something to do with you know morality if you're talking about veganism from an ethical standpoint yeah it certainly has a value in discussion and debate but the real thing is is that not everybody on the Atheist experience or II perhaps even talked like even has the same view and agrees and so as the public face of the Atheist experience when I'm on it I need to make sure that I'm representing the a CAS position statements yeah and that if I'm departing from you know what the consensus is to make sure people know I'm speaking on behalf of me that Jan Russell's RACI Martin Jeff whoever dawn they don't necessarily share that view yeah that's true and so I would prefer to keep calls on this show within the realm of really well it worked its way there and I think that it really struck a chord with me because it's a rabbit hole that I just did not know was there and it goes deep yeah and there's like he goes really even this week there's a guy who put together a 30-minute video tearing apart a call I did and I haven't watched I watched a minute and 45 seconds and in the first minute and 45 seconds he'd already poisoned the well and made assumptions he's like oh I can see that Matt doesn't want to discuss this maybe it's because you know I he goes on to I guess try to ask guess why I don't didn't want to discuss it and the real reason is one as I stated before I wanted to keep the show primarily about atheism religion etc and the other one is is that every time we've had an ethical vegan call to make their case its policy written it is emotional please or we just fundamentally disagree on an aspect of morality but we can't discuss that fine point of disagreement because it's just oh you're fine with you know eating meat and I'll give you a couple of quick examples to just just seen today on Twitter there's a guy veganism is unstoppable I think is his Twitter handle though I'm sure he's losing his shit right now and maybe and he he tweeted out something about you know like oh do you have a moral obligation to to not have dog fights you know like in your backyard and whoever he was talking to is like yes and he's like ah then you know your moral view is gonna crumble if it if it doesn't lead to veganism from there so here's the thing veganism is not eating meat that is separate from why you don't eat meat right okay so they would argue oh it's about harm well my morality is not based in any on any simple understanding of harm because sometimes harm may actually be net moral good I mean you can argue when you're performing a tracheotomy you are doing harm but you are doing harm and to save your life etc and then so we went from the dark right in the backyard to factory farming of animals and to veganism well you can't do that because I could be opposed to dog fights I could be opposed to factory farming in fact I am opposed to both of those things and yet I am NOT a vegan because I the the idea that therefore you shouldn't eat me you are conflating the eating of meat with how we got about getting the meat right which is why I asked about you know roadkill if I find roadkill is it immoral for me to eat it and you'll get two different answers so if the caller that I'm talking to gives one answer and I offer the rebuttals for why that's wrong yeah you can't take that call and say here's the sum total of Matt's views on it because we just went down this one rabbit hole with the collar if the caller had said no there's nothing immoral about you know eating roadkill okay now we go down another one so there needs to be an actual discussion and it doesn't quite get there well III think that it can dovetail really well into situational ethics and and evaluating any moral judgments based on its merits in in context to what's going on so there's one big mistake that that they make that you pointed out early on you value human life over non human life yeah you may be wrong to do that I may be wrong to do that but that's the current view that we both share the fact that you value human life more than you value non-human life does not mean that you don't value non-human life exactly it's it's I like Beth more than I like you that doesn't mean I don't like you I hope you like Beth more than I a little bit but I like you I do Matt yeah I'm gonna make you a chord alright so what I'm glad you brought that up what I'm probably gonna do and this will partially be based on feedback my atheist debates projects at patreon.com slash atheist debates every month I put out three videos there'll be debates that I do reviews the debates that I do specific treatments of arguments for the existence of God tips and tricks for how to better defend a position mistakes that we make mistakes that atheist make I will probably I'm thinking this week or next week outline my view of morality as it relates to food I that you're gonna get hate no matter what yeah yeah but at least this way they will have because what's happening right now is somebody will show a clip from the show yeah and some of the ethical vegans now I'm not saying all of you are bad or stupid or irrational whatever but some of them will take that clip and go ah this is one of them called it absolute retardation you know just start off with the name Colin and this is ridiculous and there's you know that's how you start a good one reasoned argument people who have no demonstrated ability to debate and no demonstrated expertise in morality but they go down that track so what I'd like to do is at least give them here's a video this is what Matt thinks the how and the why and that way if they want to point out flaws in that that would actually be closer to a discussion between the two of us then pointing out objections to my objections to somebody else's point well then it's and it just not it's not that interesting it's really not when you're following and just doing that it's it's much nicer to have an organic call and let it go down that rabbit row and I'm not doing debates on Twitter and I'm not doing back-and-forth debates on YouTube you post a video I post a video sorry for all of you who absolutely love YouTube culture I despise that but I'm actually glad to get to plug atheist debates if for those of you fans of talki then who don't know this is Matt Dillahunty he's uh he's getting there he's working his way up in the atheist community um and yeah anything we can do to help plug him would be fantastic so give him a shot you know

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Matt Dillahunty was live.
https://www.facebook.com/matt.dillahunty/videos/10213453468145318/

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Transcript:

Upcoming things for me, I’ve got three videos to do in January. Pretty sure that one of them is going to touch on my views on ethical veganism and animal rights. Not because it’s relevant to the atheist debates project, but because there’s been so much confusion. And one of the things I’ll note is that if somebody calls in and states their position, and I point out why their position is fallacious or reject it etc. That doesn’t tell you my position on the issue, that tells you what my position is on their arguments. I could in fact be an ethical vegan, and still object to them. Just like I am an atheist and still find problems with arguments from various atheists about religion.
There’ll be some of that in there, I’ll also, so at a minimum when people say they’re going to take apart my position on animal rights, at least they’ll be addressing my position on animal rights, and not taking apart my response to somebody else’s bad position. So that’s coming.

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Patrick Aramouni
3:04 You should debate vegan gains.

Matt Dillahunty · As noted... he's welcome to call in despite his name calling and fallacious, dishonest video

Patrick Aramouni · Matt Dillahunty Without getting deep into the subject matter, I just think that you're very wrong on the subject matter. The simple fact that you used the example of a shark killing a fish to justify your entitlement to also kill a fish, proves that you have little to no understanding on the subject matter. That's OK. I felt like you were intellectually dishonest, similar to many callers on your show. By the way, I am a big fan of your work and your show.

Matt Dillahunty · You, like many others wrongly assume that because I used an argument to expose the flaw in a caller's argument... that this represents an argument FOR my position. Wrong.

I could be an ethical vegan and still use examples that expise flawed arguments from others.

Those claiming that it is immoral to eat meat habe the burden of proof. I am unconvinced.

Patrick Aramouni · Nobody is saying that your response to someone else's argument is your sum total of your views, yet you have expressed some views on the topic, which I and many others found ridiculous. You're dancing around the subject, which is why I feel that this merits a debate. The point vegan gains was challenging you on was the following: Name a trait present in animals, which if present in humans, would justify the treatment proposed by omnivores if applied to a human. I'm looking forward to your video addressing your views on the subject of morality as it relates to food Ps: I'm sure you'd end up liking Vegan gains if you got to know him. have a good night!

Martin Flores · I mean I think an example of what has people's jimmies rustled is when you used the example of eating a dead raccoon on the side of the road or something and then when the caller was like "Well that animal was already dead" you jumped into "Oh so it's not immoral if it's dead already!"

And it's like, no shit, it would be ludicrous to conclude otherwise. But to my knowledge there isn't a large contingent of vegans walking around claiming that it would be, so when you make that point, it really comes across like you're just taking down a straw man. To be clear though, I'm 100% in agreement that ethical vegans haven't met their burden of proof.

Shawn Williams · Who cares if other animals have traits like humans.

You’re trying to apply the morals of people onto animals we eat.

Patrick Aramouni · Shawn Williams Why don’t these morals apply? That’s the question you have to answer. Ps: “because they’re animal” is not an answer. The fact that you eat them doesn’t justify that it is ethical to eat them(which is the point you made whether or not you realize it)

Patrick Aramouni · Shawn Williams It seems like you didn’t fully understand the “name the trait” challenge. If you believe that it is ethically right to eat an animal, you have to Name a trait present in animals, which if present in humans, would justify the treatment proposed by omnivores if applied to a humans. If you need more explanation, let me know. If not, type “name the trait” on youtube and you’ll find plenty of interesting videos and debates on the subject matter. Best of luck.

Matt Dillahunty · I doubt I'm going to like someone who started off by referring to my thinking as 'retarded' and called me a coward and dishonest.

My 'justification' for eating meat has NOTHING to do with sharks and fish. The fact that you, and others are confused about this and arrogantly think that I'M the one who doesn't understand the issue is laughable.

As to the question: "Name a trait present in animals, which if present in humans, would justify the treatment proposed by omnivores if applied to a human" is a confused attempt to shift the burden of proof. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding which demands that omnivores justify their behavior rather than ethical vegans actually making their case.

THIS is why I give glib, dismissive answers - because NO ethical vegan, to date has managed even a WEAK attempt at establishing their case and, when challenged, they constantly move the goal post from 'eating meat is immoral' to 'the way we get our meat is immoral'...as is evidence in the "challenge" you list here. The challenge addresses the TREATEMENT of animals...NOT the eating of meat.

It's like these folks don't even know what 'vegan' means.

Pick a position and actually make the case.

Matt Dillahunty · And your last 2 replies show that you are guilty of the SAME thing...demanding that someone defend eating meat as moral rather than defending your assertion that it's immoral.

The vegan community, not all - but most, are embarassingly bad at being able to actually argue their case.

Shawn Williams · Matt beat me. I was going to say exactly you are shifting the burden. I don’t have to name a trait, as I don’t care. I don’t believe it’s unethical to eat meat. You do, you must show it is. You can’t. Even if you could it really wouldn’t matter for the same reasons people own the animals they do for pets. You can say certain dogs shouldn’t be owned but that doesn’t make it true. You can say we shouldn’t eat meat and that still doesn’t make it true.

Yeah I’m sorry I just don’t give a shit about “naming a trait.” I don’t even like a lot of vegetables and I’m not going to live a life with shitty food I hate to appease some people I don’t know, don’t agree with their “ethical message” and think if I became a vegan it would save any amount of animals.

So, if you want to give us some evidence I will gladly listen.

Patrick Aramouni · Matt Dillahunty I sure hope that you can agree to the fact that eating ANY animal, is the consequence of killing the animal, no matter how good their treatment towards the animal is. This argument has not everything to do with the treatment of animals, but everything to do with the fact that it is morally wrong to kill a sentient being simply for pleasure”taste”, when we have many alternatives available to us. Your attempt to then ask me if it would be ok to eat a dead racoon at the side of the road is precisely your attempt to shift the goal post. I am looking forward to hearing you both debate. Thanks!

Shawn Williams · Who says it’s morally wrong? What proof do you have to make that claim? Extrapolations and interpretations?

I’m just curious why you don’t have these same feelings towards plants? Probably the same reasons we don’t have the same feelings towards animals.

Matt Dillahunty · No...eating is not the result of killing.

If your issue is with HOW the meat is acquired, that's different from having an issue with the fact THAT meat was eaten.

The continued failure to recognize this is the problem and the 'roadkill' question exposes the dishonest bait-and-switch which disqualifies many of you from any hope of a debate on the topic.

In a debate, you define a topic.

"Eating meat is immoral"
"Factory farming is immoral"
"Wilfully killing a sentient being is immoral"

When you claim the first and argue for one of the many others...you're the one being dishonest and you CANNOT ever win a debate (or even have a productive one).

Patrick Aramouni · Shawn Williams You both speak as though there aren’t any good arguments in support of veganism: Eating animals isn’t a necessity for survival, which makes it therefore a choice. A choice that results in the mass murder of sentient beings who are capable of experiencing pain and suffering the same way that we do. We as humans have reasons to appreciate why sparing them from this pain and suffering would be the right thing to do. Looking forward to that debate!

Matt Dillahunty · Oh..and your dishonest poisoning of the well with the "simply for pleasure"taste"" comment also disqualifies you from discussion.

You guys just cannot argue honestly. Always a fallacy. Always smuggling in motivations, avoiding the burden, etc.

Its honestly not worth my time after years of the same garbage.

Matt Dillahunty
Oh, and now you're talking about 'good arguments in support of veganism'...but those examples may, at best, ammount to supporting a moral VIRTUE but do not and cannot establish a moral OBLIGATION.

It seems your camp has a problem distinguishing between those two, as well.

Matt Dillahunty
Bacon.
I'm done.

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NonZeroSum wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:39 pm ________________________

Recent Videos from and to Matt Dillahunty on Veganism

________________________

Matt Dillahunty is Wrong, But So is Vegan Gains
https://youtu.be/QlORoDPSL5E

Thoughts on "Matt Dillahunty vs Vegan Gains".

-------------------------------------

I found this video of UV very helpful (especially as someone who lacks time to follow the entire exchange). I'm just wondering: has anyone asked Dillahunty about cases in which the parents of a profoundly intellectually disabled human (and others) DON'T happen to care about her - but e.g. want her to be painfully destroyed on the grounds that she's disgusting / an abomination / a waste (as has presumably happened very frequently in human history)? [Apologies for cross-posting]

Margaret Hayek wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2018 6:21 pm I found this video of UV very helpful (especially as someone who lacks time to follow the entire exchange). I'm just wondering: has anyone asked Dillahunty about cases in which the parents of a profoundly intellectually disabled human (and others) DON'T happen to care about her - but e.g. want her to be painfully destroyed on the grounds that she's disgusting / an abomination / a waste (as has presumably happened very frequently in human history)? [Apologies for cross-posting]

You're grand, thread to discuss all things Matt Dillahunty and veganism.

It's an interesting point because his fundamental separation between obligation and virtue is that we wouldn't want to be a society who does that to our species/genus, because they could have been anyone's son/daughter who we should feel warmly to as the reason we decided to have a kid to have someone to care for and raise. So yea he's tying moral obligation to a social contract between species, that he doesn't care to see change anytime soon because no one in other species are able to conceive of rights. Whilst still acknowledging there is a spectrum of well-being that it would be virtuous to uphold.

Similar case:

R. G. Frey, professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, is a preference utilitarian, as is Singer, but reaches a very different conclusion, arguing in Interests and Rights (1980) that animals have no interests for the utilitarian to take into account. Frey argues that interests are dependent on desire, and that no desire can exist without a corresponding belief. Animals have no beliefs, because a belief state requires the ability to hold a second-order belief—a belief about the belief—which he argues requires language: "If someone were to say, e.g. 'The cat believes that the door is locked,' then that person is holding, as I see it, that the cat holds the declarative sentence 'The door is locked' to be true; and I can see no reason whatever for crediting the cat or any other creature which lacks language, including human infants, with entertaining declarative sentences."[140]

NonZeroSum wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2018 7:28 pm

Margaret Hayek wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2018 6:21 pm I found this video of UV very helpful (especially as someone who lacks time to follow the entire exchange). I'm just wondering: has anyone asked Dillahunty about cases in which the parents of a profoundly intellectually disabled human (and others) DON'T happen to care about her - but e.g. want her to be painfully destroyed on the grounds that she's disgusting / an abomination / a waste (as has presumably happened very frequently in human history)? [Apologies for cross-posting]

You're grand, thread to discuss all things Matt Dillahunty and veganism.

It's an interesting point because his fundamental separation between obligation and virtue is that we wouldn't want to be a society who does that to our species/genus, because they could have been anyone's son/daughter who we should feel warmly to as the reason we decided to have a kid to have someone to care for and raise. So yea he's tying moral obligation to a social contract between species, that he doesn't care to see change anytime soon because no one in other species are able to conceive of rights. Whilst still acknowledging there is a spectrum of well-being that it would be virtuous to uphold.

Similar case:

R. G. Frey, professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, is a preference utilitarian, as is Singer, but reaches a very different conclusion, arguing in Interests and Rights (1980) that animals have no interests for the utilitarian to take into account. Frey argues that interests are dependent on desire, and that no desire can exist without a corresponding belief. Animals have no beliefs, because a belief state requires the ability to hold a second-order belief—a belief about the belief—which he argues requires language: "If someone were to say, e.g. 'The cat believes that the door is locked,' then that person is holding, as I see it, that the cat holds the declarative sentence 'The door is locked' to be true; and I can see no reason whatever for crediting the cat or any other creature which lacks language, including human infants, with entertaining declarative sentences."[140]

Interesting. First, just to clarify, I take it that Dillahunty is NOT, like Frey, engaging in a silly and fallacious denial of ethically relevant mental states to non-human animals (For arguments against this preposterous view that ethically relevant mental states depend upon the internalization of public languages like English, see e.g. the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on things like Animal Cognition, Belief, Higher Order Theories of Consciousness, etc.).

Second, I don't think that you've actually spoken to whether Dillahunty considered a case in which the profoundly intellectually disabled human's parents AND OTHERS don't care about her. You've suggested that he's made a claim about what kind of society "we want" to live in - which I suppose at least involves "us" (whoever "we" are supposed to be) caring about the profoundly intellectually disabled child (because of some muck in our heads regarding freaking out about it being our child and perhaps also some crazy view about why we want to parent human children that involves thinking that bare biological species have underivative ethical significance - in which case our reasons for caring about all of this just go back to that indefensibly arbitrary view anyway? I'm not charging Dillahanty with actually thinking this, I'm just trying to make sense of the view that you're saying he holds). But if NONE of us care about the profoundly intellectually disabled, then the reason to give us what "we" want no longer supports not harming the profoundly intellectually disabled. Societies as wholes have surely done this; e.g. the Spartans. I meant to be asking after what Dillahunty would say about whether there is any reason not to harm the profoundly intellectually disabled in such circumstances - or whether we are morally required not to do so for relatively trivial reasons (like eating things that we do not need to be at least as healthy as if we don't eat them - cf. we can be at least as healthy vegan as not vegan - etc. ).

By the way I don't know what evidence you have of Dillahunty appealing to social contractualist / contractarian views. From everything I've heard him say he hasn't yet invoked any, although they would be a natural home for his views about moral agency being necessary for underivative moral patiency (or moral patiency of the kind that involves others having not only some moral reason but moral requirements to not harm one). But if Dillahunty or others are trying to push the social contract argument in interesting and initially somewhat plausible (but of course ultimately mistaken) ways that actual philosophers like Jan Narveson and Peter Carruthers have pushed it, Mark Rowlands, Alastair Norcross, and Jennifer Swanson have a pretty good discussions and responses to this in their respective "Contractarianism and Animal Rights" (http://fewd.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/inst_ethik_wiss_dialog/Rowlands__Mark_1997_Contractarianism_and_AR_1468-5930.00060.pdf), "Contractualism and the Ethical Status of Animals,"* and Contractualism and the Moral Status of Animals (http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1171&context=bts). As I remember, one of the main problems with this literature in general is that people tend to run together a contract theory motivated by trying to give self-interested reasons to be moral (as embodied by philosophers like David Gauthier) and a distinct sort of contract theory trying to explain morality in terms of fairness (as embodied by philosophers like John Rawls). For an argument that the Gauthier project fails in its own terms, see e.g. Holly Smith's “Deriving Morality from Rationality”* and Anita Superson's “The Self-Interest Based Contractarian Response to the Why-Be-Moral Skeptic."*

Another way someone might try to push the view that moral agency is necessary for moral patiency of the kind that involves others have moral requirements to not harm one would be to adopt a version of Kant's ethics, to which Christine Korsgaard has a nice response in her "A Kantian Case for Animal Rights" (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.Animal.Rights.pdf). I think that this whole project of trying to show that one is committed to being moral just by doing anything for any reason is deeply misguided, but I think that Korsgaard does a decent job explaining how it's supposed to work, and how it can be argued that if it actually justifies duties to other deliberating agents, it also justifies duties to non-deliberating but sentient beings.



*Sorry, I can't seem to find links to these free of a pay wall. If you want a copy just PM me.