Originally Posted by mynameisjim

It has to do with your intentions. If you build an amusement park and there is a freak accident where a child is killed, you may feel bad but it is not murder as your intention was to do good and not harm (assuming you were not knowingly negligent). Same with killing animals or any other living creature. Obviously when I walk around I don't intend to kill tiny insects I may step on and I avoid them if I can. But of course some will die. When you choose to eat meat you are directly responsible for the death/mistreatment of an animal and there was no intention of any good coming from it other than the few minutes of satisfaction you get when eating your steak or hamburger.

There is a distinct difference ethically between my killing dustmites when I wash my hair and me killing a chicken to eat it. The natural order of the world allows larger/more advanced species to survive at the cost of lower life forms. What makes humans different and gives us our humanity is the ability to be introspective regarding our own behavior and CHOOSE not to harm other living creatures to survive when it is not necessary. This is what makes humans different from animals. I cannot live without washing my hair once in a while at the expense of some dustmites. I can live a perfectly normal and healthy life without killing animals.

If you have the choice and ignore it then you have crossed an ethical line. If you have no choice, then generally no ethical line has been crossed. If I was trapped in the jungle and had no choice but to capture and kill an animal for food, I would do it and no personal ethical line would have been crossed as I had no choice. And as I said earlier, the natural order of the world is set up so that I can survive at the expense of lower life forms given no other reasonable alternative without compromising my own ethics. But if I have a choice and choose to ignore it, then I have compromised my own ethical boundaries.

At least that's my view.