Mother Nature

In order to determine whether it is morally upright or not to eat meat, one would first have to ascribe to a certain system of morality. For instance, if you believe that murder is wrong, then you have to define what murder is: the intentional killing of a living thing. (That's one way to describe it anyway.) In this scenario, eating meat would be morally wrong. But if this were the claim, then eating vegetables would be morally impermissible, and that just can't be right. What else are we supposed to eat?

I tend to think that morality is a human-made convention and that nothing is inherently wrong, as repugnant as that sounds. However, I do believe that nature has an order of its own and that we should adhere to that order to preserve life. Nature determines the things that we ought to do because nature rules us. We are products of nature, so we shouldn't go against it. Mother Nature is my god, I guess you could say. And nature reveres life. Nature's purpose is to sustain life on the planet -- to create it and sustain it -- but new life only comes in the wake of death. Spring arrives after winter concludes. Death is the other side of life.

So, I do not think that it is wrong to eat meat. But if morality is a system of that which we ought to do, then I would say that treating animals cruelly in the process of food production is something we ought not to do. In that sense, it is morally impermissible.

Kant would say it is morally impermissible to treat a living creature as a mere means to an end. I think this applies to animals, as well, for they are alive and sentient in their own ways. Humans cannot pretend to know the inner-workings of the minds of animals, as much as they would like to, but I believe that animals are at a similar level of consciousness as human beings. It just presents itself in a different manner. So, it is morally permissible to kill animals for food as long as they are treated as ends in themselves, not just a means.

Nature would not argue that you shouldn't use the resources of this planet to survive. Should we exploit those resources? No. Should we treat those resources as mere means? No. Should we revere those resources and treat them as ends in themselves? Yes. Emphatically yes. Nature urges us to treat all life with respect, even when we are destroying it.