Morality is illogical; deal with it. Why is it not logical? Because you cannot support a moral claim without making other moral claims beforehand, and then those claims have no grounding unless you create more moral claims before them etc. etc. ad infinitum. Pain is bad (moral judgement) because suffering is bad (moral judgement). Suffering is bad (moral judgement) because people shouldn't have to experience things they don't like (moral judgement). People shouldn't have to experience things they don't like (moral judgement) because... well that doesn't really need a reason does it? It's 'self evident'; [i]"OF COURSE people shouldn't have to experience things they don't like."[/i] Lol. It isn't self evident at all, but people dogmatically say so in just the same way they dogmatically say there 'must' be a beginning to the universe. It's an assumption with no real grounding that people take for granted so that they can feel comfortable making otherwise baseless assertions. None of these moral judgements can be empirically verified in and of themselves; they do logically flow but only from a base point of illogical dogmatic assumption, which undermines the whole argument. Logically ironclad? Don't make me laugh. Question: if an animal had been killed by another animal, say a deer by a tiger, but for some reason the tiger went away, would it be OK to eat the deer? If so it is presumably because you think the immorality is in the human action of killing an animal, rather than just eating an animal which has died. I don't see how you could object to eating the deer; there is no moral grounding to do so anyway. Therefore, so long as I do not kill any animal myself, eating one is not morally reprehensible of me. If you think that by doing so I'm condoning the wrongdoing of other humans then that is an argument, but it is also an opinion, and in my opinion it is much more wrong to be against the killing of animals and then to let the animals who are already dead go to waste. You brought up points against the meat industry and I'd like to state here (in case you didn't notice the first time) that I do not have any problem with arguments against the meat industry. But simply killing animals and eating them is not what the meat industry's about. Also; why end the life of an apple when there';s a perfectly good fish? As i said the reasons you put the fish first are not justifiable,. Consvciousness brings about pain but ultimately you're basing your claim on the assumption that people shouldn't feel things they don't like, which is not itself justifiable, or if it is, that justification is just another moral judgement which needs a justification. There is at some point beyond that, somewhere where you 'just think x is morally better than the opposite' without any reasoning behind it.