XPost: alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian, alt.food.vegan, talk.politics.animals   
   From: derek.nash@gmail.com   
      
   On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 18:16:25 GMT, dh_ld@nomail.com wrote:   
   >   
   >    The lives of potential future animals raised for food   
   >are more than just "nothing" in the sense that they will   
   >exist if nothing prevents them   
      
   If we're going to give potential future beings any   
   consideration at all, why should we assume that   
   'their' current position can be bettered by bringing   
   'them' into being? Preventing 'them' from coming   
   into being might be preferable to 'them', especially   
   if 'they're' going to be farmed and slaughtered for   
   food or medical research.   
      
   > and possibly as Gonad   
   >suggests they also exist in some pre-conceived state.   
      
   He's never suggested that.   
      
   >Regardless of whether they do or not, whatever stops   
   >their lives from happening is truly preventing animals   
   >from having life they otherwise would have had.   
   >    Revised - 02/02/05   
      
   Until we know something of 'their' current state   
   we might be doing 'them' a disservice by bringing   
   'them' into our World, merely to be farmed and   
   slaughtered after a few months, or used as human   
   models for medical research.   
      
    [It is interesting to note that this fallacy—the   
     assumption that it is a kindness to bring a being into   
     the world—is as old as the time of Lucretius, who   
     deals with it, in another connection, in a passage of   
     his great philosophical poem, De Rerum Natura   
     (v. 176-180), which may be rendered thus:   
      
    What loss were ours, if we had known not birth?   
    Let living men to longer life aspire,   
    While fond affection binds their hearts to earth:   
    But whoso ne'er hath tasted life's desire,   
    Unborn, impersonal, can feel no dearth.   
      
    We see, then, that a vulgar sophism of to-day was   
    clearly exposed nearly two thousand years ago. It   
    is quite possible that fools may be repeating it two   
    thousand years hence.]   
    Logic of the Larder by Henry S. Salt   
    http://tinyurl.com/59lku   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)