Merrick
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Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ?
Jan 14, 2003, 21:10
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In short, commercial production of honey involves killing lots of bees, most notably with the killing of the queen every year or two (less than half her natural lifespan).
From the Vegan Society website:
Queen bees are artifiically inseminated with sperm obtained from decapitated bees. Queens are systematically slaughtered every two years because over a period of time their egg producing abilities decline so their whole hive becomes unproductive and uneconomic.
Clipping the wings of queen bees prevents them from swarming (flying off!). Swarming is the natural way for reproduction, increase and suvival of the species, at least in the wild. However, bee keepers are constantly trying to prevent this natural phenomenon and will use artificial pheromones and wing clipping to keep their colony under control.
Beekeepers feed artificial pollen substitutes and white sugar syrup to colonies, often to replace the honey that has been removed. If these practices are carried out over long periods of time they lower hive productivity and lifespan.
When bee keepers manipulate combs many bees are crushed and killed.
Beekeepers have become dependent on the use of synthetic pestcides and antibiotics to combat pests, and this has led to problems of toxicological hazards to beekeepers and bees, and risks of honey contamination.
In addition a nutritional comparison of the major nutrients in honey and demerara sugar shows sugar is higher in protein, calories, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, copper, chlorine, B6, folate, pantothenate and biotin. The sometimes dubious health benefits of bee products do not warrant the use and abuse of honeybees. There are many other proven non-animal alternative medicines [and sweeteners] that are available.
http://www.vegansociety.com/html/info/info24.html
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Zastrozzi
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Re: oooh theology - my favourite!
Jan 15, 2003, 08:59
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But viewed on a purely logical level - and of course God is something which doesn't follow ordinary logical laws - the question posed illustrates the impossibility of omnipotence. Either he can create it - and thereby be too weak to lift it - or he can't; either way he's not omnipotent..
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Zastrozzi
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Re: oooh theology - my favourite!
Jan 15, 2003, 09:00
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y'see that's what I love about this site... Stella recipes to the nature of god in the twinkling of an eye...
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Merrick
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Re: oooh theology - my favourite!
Jan 15, 2003, 12:39
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This was the one that I have been putting to christians ever since I shook off the yoke of their idiocy in adolescence, except I gave it a moral twist.
Either God can't help out doing good Christian stuff (in which case he's not omnipotent and therefore not God after all), or else he can help but chooses not to, in which case he's a bastard and certainly not worthy of worship. Either way he can fuck off.
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Zastrozzi
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Re: oooh theology - my favourite!
Jan 15, 2003, 12:49
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rofl...
Yeah, that bit about heaven and hell always bothered me. God says: right, I'm giving you free will, which you can either exercise the way I tell you to, whether or not your heart agrees, and then go to heaven, or you can exercise it another way, in which case you go to hell forever.
Bit like me saying: you can have cake or biscuits with your tea, it's completely up to you, but if you have the cake I'm going to smash your face in. No much of a choice is it?
I feel an afternoon's jousting over at beliefnet coming on...
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grufty jim
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Re: oooh theology - my favourite!
Jan 15, 2003, 13:06
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nope - y'see that's the *appearance* of paradox. Put simply, if you define the universe as "a place with an omnipotent diety" then you are defining out of existence any object too heavy for Him to lift. Such things *literally* have no meaning. It's like asking whether God could create "a completely black cat with white paws". If it is completely black; then it cannot have white paws. If it has white paws - it is not completely black. The inability of an omnipotent God to create such a thing is not a limitation upon His power; such a thing is literal nonsense. That cat cannot exist in a universe so long as we insist the concept of "completely black" by definition precludes "white paws"; just as an object too heavy for an omnipotent God to lift cannot exist in a universe where we insist "omnipotence" means what it does.
To Merrick's point; i'm afraid a simple "God doesn't intervene therefore he's a bastard or doesn't exist" don't really wash, theologically. Library-fulls of books have been written on the subject going back to Aquinas and beyond. I shan't go into the *many* sound rebuttals (within the context), but just because the majority of outspoken evangelical christians you meet haven't really thought their beliefs through; doesn't mean that there are not people who have. And who have come up with coherent and robust defences for their faith.
I am not a believer in an omnipotent judgemental God. The idea seems absurd to me on so many levels. But christianity would not have remained the dominant cultural meme for quarter the world's population for 2000 years (!) if it could be intellectually dismissed with a couple of pithy comments.
(i think)
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YerArseInParsley
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Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ?
Jan 15, 2003, 14:14
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Wow. Ta.
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grufty jim
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Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ?
Jan 15, 2003, 14:25
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The reasons, it seems to me, for refusing to participate in the commercial honey industry apply *equally* to the commercial vegetable industry. Any large scale vegetable cultivation will require killing a whole bunch of insects (admittedly not bees usually; but is there an ethical difference between bees and caterpillars).
This was Einstein's big issue with vegetarianism by the way. He was a great believer in animal rights and became a vegetarian later in his life, and was vocal in his support of vegetarianism. But he couldn't see any rational reason why a person would refuse to eat fish (say) but was willing to eat a vegetable whose production required the death of perhaps dozens of caterpillars.
Is there truly any ethical difference between buying a pot of honey and buying fruit from a supermarket? When it comes down to brass tacks - number of invertebrates killed / negatively affected; i suspect not.
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RiotGibbon
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STELLA!
Jan 15, 2003, 14:32
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3 FORRA FIVAAAA!
just thought I would mention that again
2 quid a can ... ice cold beers
RG
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necropolist
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Re: Why don't vegans eat honey ?
Jan 15, 2003, 14:33
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Surely the fact that one is deliberate, and the other isn’t is of some consequence
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