Mr Green wrote:It is how existence works, you don't have a choice in it.
Except, perhaps, the choices of whether to be the consumer or be the consumed perhaps and how much to consume? I agree with Mr Green on this. I even agree with others who say eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is not necessary the least destructive, although by choice I would do.
But I still think the "how do you know carrots don't have souls" argument is someone being very silly and the best policy is not to answer it but just tell them. I suppose you could enter into a debate with them over relative values of animals and "souls" and if all are equal, and if they are, ask them why they don't eat their mother or cat?
For me, the winning argument about vegetarian or vegan diets are, a) environmental. There is a very good argument to support it. And, b), aesthetic. If folks had to slaughter their own meat, there would be more vegetarians. Recently, there has strengthened an ethical argument based around "abolitionism" (not animal welfare but abolishing the suffering and exploitation of animals for human wants). It likens our financial exploitation of animals to our exploitation of black people as slaves. It is a good point of view.
Just stick to it calmly and keep likening meat eaters' eating of meat to the life and death exploitation by white people of black people point out how humanity evolved to condemn and stop it. They hate it.
Sinful me ... I posted the 'Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement' a long time after I posted that.