Actually there is more than enough food and wealth for everyone, it's just unevenly distributed.

Not hurting anyone? Ask the cow.

From one picture, do we really know what is going on here? If they planned on drowning the calf wouldn't they have weighted it down? The one guy is still hanging on to the leash like thingy around it's neck - why do that if you were just going to dump it overboard?
I dunno.... seems like there's something else going on there.

Maybe holding it so they can slash its throat first before dumping it into the sea?

I doubt it's as simple as a sea-rescue of a cow that couldn't swim.

The guy on the far right, in the leather jacket, he's clearly saying, "Hey, I got 100 rupees says that the calf drowns in 7 minutes!"

I thought about that, but the video cam is off another boat...like maybe it's National Geographic filming an ancient ritual or something. Dudes on the boat should be concentrating on the "holiness" of it all.

BTW, I wouldn't want to see a circumcision, either!:)

Hindus practice religious vegetarianism. Beef is especially forbidden, so the calf could not provide "several hundred meals" in any circumstances. It is very likely male, and like most other newborn male cattle, is destined to die very young. Since it will never produce milk (the only "useful" thing produced by the cow) they are sacrificed, or allowed to starve to death. Take your pick.
UT, the line between superstition and religion is hard to pin down. Every person who goes to church on Sunday looks awfully superstitious to me.

To me, any follower of any religion is superstitious, and when we look at religions outside our own culture, it becomes more obvious.

That calf could certainly provide several hundred meals. It's rich in protein, and certain amino acids that are quite beneficial for human life.

Humans are built to be omnivores, and religious vegetarianism is a faulty anomaly in behavior. Sorry! If you look at your own teeth #6 and #11 you will find that they are ideal for tearing flesh and that truly vegetarian species don't have such teeth.

At first glance I thought it was a maritime deer-strike.

Can't say I've ever seen a video of a bris. (I'm assuming it's Jews who do this?)

I do remeber the SNL parody of the 1978 Mercury Grand Marquis ads with a diamond cutter working in the back seat on a rough road. In the parody the gemologist is replaced with a Mohel...

"Poifect!"

While you are correct that humans evolved as omnivores, describing vegetarianism as "faulty" goes a bit far. In India at least, it evolved in society as a way to allow *more* people to eat -- the lower down the food chain you eat, the less acreage is necessary to support you. While it may not be the best nutritional plan for an individual, as a society, vegetarianism helped India avoid starvation and malnutrition for the masses.

Why the value judgement?

I was actually taken aback by this logic, too, since there is only one other argument in which I hear it that tends to piss me off: "If you look at penis A and vagina B, you will find they are ideal for sexual reproduction, therefore homosexuality is a faulty anomaly in behavior. Sorry!"

I don't understand much of history, but I don't count India as one of the cultures that effectively worked out its starvation problems.

My values are rooted in science and trying to work out the truth. I admit bias there. If humans evolved as omnivores, we are still omnivores. Meat contains proteins and amino acids that make it easier to live.

Sure, evoultion made us omnivores -- but does that make vegetarianism wrong?

My guess is that homosexuality is a built-in behavior to regulate human culture in its early tribal societies.

We now have scientific evidence that homosexuality is more evident in younger brothers of brothers. This means it would show up in tribes where there was a lot of birthing going on. I bet it created a different male behavior in such tribes, which may have made the tribe operate better.

Homosexuality is not a fault and vegetarianism is not a fault in people who have made that choice. Both would be faults in cultures that encouraged them somehow. Not faults of the individual people who have made that choice, but faults in the culture.

If a culture overencourages homosexuality it may die off completely. There are examples of cultures who did such things!

Cultures often make such mistakes and my own culture is totally laden with massive mistakes, some of which I can't see because I am in it.

The way I see it, as a vegetarian, is this:

If you can survive without the meat, if you don't need it, I don't think you should eat it. If you're starving to death but still worshipping your cow... there's something wrong here.