vegetarian that is, (could still qualify as a dummie)
A lot of the most intelligent humans in the past at some stage became vegetarian, some of which i have posted below.
More importantly the reason for this post in a Philo and Religion thread is i actually think Da Vinci is spot on, assuming the world scrapes past the next 100 years? and unlike the others, words it pretty much as a prediction which will happen, unlike the others that identify the issue but don't seem to have enough faith to predict it will happen?
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) – Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: we are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) – Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) – It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind. "Nothing will benefit health or increase chances of survival on earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) - Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and “animals” is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them–without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) - My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension.
“Flesh eating is unprovoked murder.” Plutarch (46-120): A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare . . . There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit."
