Atheism and vegetarianism

[lrh9]

I'm not sure about this. Killing anyone over the age of seventy would benefit society, and be in our self interest, but there are laws against it nonetheless. Having a slave class of the unintelligent would be to our benefit, but it's illegal. Dealing arms to dodgy people who hurt the citizens in their own country would be to our benefit, but governments generally don't go in for that (though sometimes do, unfortunately). Having no animal cruelty laws whatsoever would be to our benefit, but there are some. Or are all these cases ultimately in our interests?

I said group policy can maximize the fulfillment of member's desires. I didn't say that member's desires would always be beneficial to society.

Material or bodily benefit is not the whole of self interest.

People can desire other things, and when those desires conflict with material or bodily interests (or when anticipated desires in the future conflict with present desires) they prioritize. This leads to a non-obvious but rational and optimal maximization of expected fulfillment of desire over the whole range of desires or the whole lifespan.

No doubt a group could fulfill material and bodily desires by eliminating or enslaving people, but at a great detriment to emotional desires and at a great detriment to desires to behave according to behavioral programming. So even if policy only serves emotional desires and reinforces behavioral programming there is an amoral explanation for laws.

And there are policies that do permit meat industry workers to inflict or facilitate pain on their animals to maximize meat production. The condition industry pigs are raised in can induce them to bite other pigs' tails or to allow other pigs to bite their tails. This can lead to infection. To counter this problem, industry workers stub the tails of their pigs. This makes the tail remnant much more sensitive. So much so that even the most demoralized pigs will fend off another pig trying to bite its tail.

That is a clear case of the law favoring our material and bodily desire over 'morality'.