On Ethics, Science, and Cans of Worms

When I read comments on blogs (such as the recent ones regarding Bruce Friedrich’s there’s-no-such-thing-as-humane-meat-but-I’m-going-to-spend-a-lot-of-my-time-talking-to-slaughterers -about-slightly-changing-the-way-they-slaughter article at the Huffington Post and CommonDreams), often it’s difficult to find an entry point into the "discussion" (this is particularly true for me at CommonDreams) because the actual article the comments are there for isn’t being discussed. There’s a lot of debate about whether veganism is "natural," whether God intended it, whether it’s healthy, what the real impact is on the environment, and of course, all kinds of ridicule for vegans who feel/present themselves as morally superior.

Let’s deconstruct:

• To say something is "natural" is irrelevant, though it is treated as relevant and equated with "good" and "desirable." Meanwhile, there are all kinds of "natural" things that are neither good nor desirable.
• As for God, once you realize, for example, that the Bible was written by men, hundreds or thousands of years ago, and revised thereafter (largely for political reasons), and there’s more than one version, not to mention the glaring issue that the premise of God is a shaky one to begin with, how could what a fictional character said or didn’t say, to people many years ago whose knowledge of the world could be easily surpassed by a ten-year old today, dictate what we do or don’t do in 2007?
• Regarding the nutrition discussion, I was under the impression that the case has been closed for some time, and what we’ve got is a problem of politics and marketing. The mainstream public doesn’t realize that a vegan diet can be perfectly healthy because there are powerful stakeholders invested in keeping them ignorant (and unhealthy and overweight). I’m amazed that the nutrition debates go on for as long as they do.
• Ditto for debates about the benefits to the environment (and fighting world hunger) of growing plants to eat directly rather than to feed to other animals so we can eat them.
• What’s most disconcerting to me is that there is a debate about whether or not it is ethical to slaughter sentient beings when you don’t have to. I’m not talking about being on a deserted island with only a chicken, or being face-to-face with a black bear who’s rushing at you and you happen to have a shotgun in your hands. I know this is a can of worms, but when scientific discoveries demonstrate facts–facts–such as the nonhuman animals we create, raise and slaughter for food have the same capacity for pleasure, pain and terror as we do, why aren’t we allowed to use our scientific knowledge as legitimate, factual support for veganism? Why is it considered a "belief" rather than a fact that killing sentient beings without necessity is unethical? If the sentient being in question were a human animal rather than a nonhuman animal, everyone would agree that killing would be unethical. Why? Because nonhuman animals aren’t humans. True, true. But is that a good enough reason? That’s like when your mother says Because I said so. Sure, it’s a reason, and sure, it does the trick, but as far as reasons go, it’s quite weak.

I return to Sam Harris and The End of Faith, who writes:

To say that we will never agree on every question of ethics is the same as saying that we will never agree on every question of physics. In neither case does the open-endedness of our inquiry suggest that there are no real facts to be known, or that some of the answers we have in hand are not really better than some others. Respect for diversity in our ethical views is, at best, an intellectual holding pattern until more of the facts are in" (182).

In the case of sentience, the facts are in for, for instance, cows, pigs, chickens and fish, yet those of us who have evolved our ethics along with the facts are told that we must respect the ethics of those who ignore the facts. And what’s more, we must defend ourselves as though we’re the ones doing the killing rather than the ones refusing to kill (or pay someone to do so for us).

It’s a twisted world when Because we can or Because we’re human and they’re not are given–and accepted–as legitimate reasons for doing, well, whatever we want to other sentient beings. And it’s a frightening world when we are told we must "respect" the "beliefs" of those who torture and/or slaughter in the name of diversity of ethical views. As Harris writes (about cultures that "raise men and boys to kill unlucky girls, rather than comfort them"):

Not learning how to read is not another style of literacy, and not learning to see others as ends in themselves is not another style of ethics. It is a failure of ethics (190).