Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

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garrethdsouza
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Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by garrethdsouza »

Just saw the new video 10 Reasons it Sucks to Be a Vegan - with Unnatural Vegan https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lM1tvLDrdH0

How about one specifically for vegan atheists/skeptics?

Problems like woo in the vegan community, pseudoscience like GMOs and medicine, privilege blindness, parochial focus and in the atheist community the pseudoscience arguments for meat eating from otherwise skeptics.
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thebestofenergy
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by thebestofenergy »

garrethdsouza wrote:pseudoscience like GMOs and medicine
I'm guessing you misstyped?
I can't see how GMOs and medicine would be pseudoscience.

But yeah, being both atheist and vegan is a lot further from mainstream than just being one of those, so there should be a lot more 'suckiness' when it comes to social interactions.
I guess you could pick the best ones among the 'Top 10 reasons it sucks to be an atheist', and best ones among 'Top 10 reaons it sucks to be vegan', then add carnist atheists and looney vegans as other 2 reasons, and you'd have your list.
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

garrethdsouza wrote:Just saw the new video 10 Reasons it Sucks to Be a Vegan - with Unnatural Vegan https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lM1tvLDrdH0

How about one specifically for vegan atheists/skeptics?
I actually have one planned for a future video.
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Archtype
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by Archtype »

garrethdsouza wrote:privilege blindness
Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Archtype wrote:
garrethdsouza wrote:privilege blindness
Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
It's a SJW (Social Justice Warrior) thing. I'd steer clear of that nonsense.

Definitions vary, but privilege in SJW dogma is typically (or at least most vocally) the idea that certain people have "privileges"(basically a made up concept, designed for rhetoric) and thus are "blind" and can not understand those who are less privileged, so are not qualified to criticize them regardless of how educated they are and need to instead "check their privilege" which basically means to "STFU" and not have opinions of their own.

E.g. A poor gay black autistic transexual woman does something terrible, like murders a bunch of kittens for fun. You can't judge her because you aren't poor/gay/black/autistic/transexual/female, so you should shut up with your criticisms of her actions since you are "privileged", and just let her do whatever she wants to do until she decides for herself (without criticism for the action) to stop doing it after seeing the light of intersectionalism through horribly fallacious arguments.

That kind of mindset is profoundly toxic to veganism.

There's something to be said for meeting people where they are and trying to understand their circumstances so we can talk to them better and more effectively spread the vegan message, but anybody abusing animals needs to be criticized for that behavior, and there will never be anybody with exactly the same credentials of being "underprivileged"(whatever that means) in whatever exact way to do it -- there's no reason somebody who is rich can't understand that poor people have more limited budgets, etc. Yes, some people are incredibly ignorant of those things (happy healthy vegan is a great example -- they have absurd amounts of money and think eating on something like $15 a day is cheap and anybody can do it), but this is just classic ignorance and bad activism, not "privilege blindness" (a term which inconsistent, and in application amounts to nothing but being inflammatory and divisive).
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by Archtype »

brimstoneSalad wrote:
It's a SJW (Social Justice Warrior) thing. I'd steer clear of that nonsense.

Definitions vary, but privilege in SJW dogma is typically (or at least most vocally) the idea that certain people have "privileges"(basically a made up concept, designed for rhetoric) and thus are "blind" and can not understand those who are less privileged, so are not qualified to criticize them regardless of how educated they are and need to instead "check their privilege" which basically means to "STFU" and not have opinions of their own.
Oh, so it's just another buzz term - pretty much an adhominem - used to try and shut down someones argument without actually logically refuting it? Why is this so typically used by the extreme, or even moderate, SJW's?
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Archtype wrote: Oh, so it's just another buzz term - pretty much an adhominem - used to try and shut down someones argument without actually logically refuting it?
Right
Archtype wrote:Why is this so typically used by the extreme, or even moderate, SJW's?
Because they think it's valid and don't understand how their reasoning is flawed, or they understand it's flawed and use it anyway because they think it's effective.
Garreth is otherwise a great guy, but it's very unfortunate how he completely ignores the core of my logical arguments against intersectionality, for example, rather than thinking about or addressing them.

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... 699#p15699
brimstoneSalad wrote: The central premise behind intersectionalism is a shared interest in "justice" which is something I DO NOT HAVE. I don't care about arbitrarily notions of justice, it's a nonsense deontological idea with no relation to rational morality. [...]

1. Adversarial nature
There is no true equality in asymmetrical issues. Matters like reproductive rights are inherently asymmetrical, and obtaining something that seems fair is about compromise; that means an adversarial negotiation. That doesn't mean people have to be unfriendly, but that they're advancing different and inherently opposing interests in negotiating that compromise.

2. FAIR doesn't mean GOOD
This is something many people misunderstand, because intuitively fair feels good, and unfair feels wrong. This is deontological nonsense, and you need to understand that in order to substantiate the wrongness of something you have to provide some evidence for the ultimate and global consequences being harmful.

3. Parsimony
This is as important in charity and activism as it is in science. If asking people to "go vegan" makes people less likely to actually go vegan, we should avoid it and do something more effective. If looking like morons by being obsessively politically correct makes our outreach less effective to the majority with only minor gains from minorities, we shouldn't do it. Cost and benefit analysis is essential to any situation where we have limited resources, and both human effort and compassion are in very limited supply.
I've seen nothing but dogma out of the movement, and I have tried to find reason in it for some time. Nobody has presented anything resembling a rational argument for modern Social Justice as an intrinsic good, or evidence for it as an instrumental one, they just spew rhetoric and venom at anybody who disagrees and attack personal character to discredit their opponents.

To Garreth's credit, whenever I make a rational argument against his claims he just runs away rather than say mean things which is the standard response, but wouldn't it be nice if he would actually read and address them rather than pretend they don't exist like a Christian with his fingers in his ears? It won't happen, which to me is evidence that this is nothing more than another dogma.

Social Justice is a particularly vicious and closed minded dogma too, not unlike many religions. Its self righteousness gives people who subscribe to it the justification to do whatever they want in support of it (like throw intellectual honesty out the window, even commit assault), but it's deontological at core rather than consequentialist, so it really is even superficially incompatible with any kind of ethical framework.

It's an evil and divisive movement filled with probably well meaning but delusional and very angry followers. I would not have spoken so negatively about it years ago, but I've seen what it has done to atheism (with atheism plus), and what it is threatening to do to veganism is much more dangerous. It epitomizes "progressive" lunacy, and does for the credibility of legitimate progressive values what the Westboro Baptist Church did for Christianity. Our own worst enemies are within, unfortunately, and if we can't clean house and present a good and sensible face to the world, but instead let tumors like these grow and fester, this fledgling movement is doomed to fail.
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by Archtype »

brimstoneSalad wrote: To Garreth's credit, whenever I make a rational argument against his claims he just runs away rather than say mean things which is the standard response, but wouldn't it be nice if he would actually read and address them rather than pretend they don't exist like a Christian with his fingers in his ears? It won't happen, which to me is evidence that this is nothing more than another dogma.
There's nothing I find more ironic than self-proclaimed rational atheists adopting behaviour typical of those they're opposed to, when they realise they have no good counters.

Great post and I really think that you could do a lot of good for the vegan movement if you set up a YouTube channel, as you're one of the smartest I've encountered (I think someone's already asked you to do so, can't remember what you said).
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Archtype wrote: Great post and I really think that you could do a lot of good for the vegan movement if you set up a YouTube channel, as you're one of the smartest I've encountered (I think someone's already asked you to do so, can't remember what you said).
Thanks! :D
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Re: Reasons it can suck being vegan atheists/skeptics

Post by knot »

Isnt social justice just a new and fancier word for communism?

Kinda feels like the millenials will bring an end to western civilization with these insane ideas. But that's probably just what people always think about the new generation. See you in the Gulag : )))
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