What are you asking here? You want me to define what an "animal" is? I think that's pretty clear- the same definition given in primary school biology. My point was, would you have a moral issue with eating an animal if it died naturally and you inflicted it with no pain? If the axiomatic moral pretext is such to cause no pain, than that is a legitimate question.
Not true at all. I said before, I believe in a shared physical origin with all things, not a spiritual one. It is a common belief, I think. It is true that we as humans have physical ties to other living things- that is undeniable science. The spiritual question is not. I believe human beings have been endowed with a certain kind of soul, different from other animals. All things, animate and inanimate, have some kind of soul, but are different from each other. Under those assumptions, there is a clear distinction made between men and monkeys, for example.Hmm...actually, if you DO believe in evolution, humans are just another type of animals. No escape route available there, sorry. Plus, remember per evolution, there is no reason to expect humans constitute a single homogeneous genus/species. Homo Sapiens could easily speciate into "Homo Sapiens A" and "Homo Sapiens B". They may already have. Folks living in Antartica may probably have speciated differently than those living in the hot deserts of Africa.
This was observed in the Talmud. They welcomed a bunch of primates into their towns and tested to see if they were a type of human. The benchmark they used was to see if they could teach the primate to consciously do a mitzvot (a good deed). They concluded that although the primates would, say, give money to a homeless person if you demonstrated it, they had no consciousness of why it was "good". The monkey was simply following the motions. This was also observed in an unfortunate incident. One man took a large blade and moved it back and forth across his neck, than placed the blade on the ground. The monkey picked up the blade, and while smiling, copied the motion, slaughtering himself across the neck. (They then concluded that the other primates were not human).
This type of distinction, the type of consciousness that human beings are endowed with, is rather unique and is a legitimate distinction. You seem to be jumping to conclusions pretty quickly without asking for a different perspective. Claiming that there are different kinds of humans is not relevant, we are all the same species. A German Shepard, a Chihuahua, and a Grey Wolf are all the same species, Canis lupus, even though they look and seem very different.
I am much more interested in the people who claim eating meat is bad because you are causing an animal harm than I am in someone trying to claim it is somehow like cannibalism because men and sheep had a common ancestor 10 million years ago.
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