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Originally Posted by CSflim
I already addressed the point that "we evolved to eat meat, therefore eating meat is morally right". Are you really suggesting that we should look to evolution (arguably the most wasteful, cruel, entriely amoral process on the planet) for moral guidance?
The analogy with breathing is not a useful one:
We must breathe in order to survive. We have no choice in the matter. We do not have to eat meat. There are alternatives.
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I'm afraid so, yes. The reason that evolution is amoral is that morality is merely an artefact of evolution.
Morality is something we have evolved because it perpetuates our own genes by helping to perpetuate the genes of our relatives. Although we are able to use our critical faculties to dissect, analyse and discuss morality, it remains a biological trait. The reason that racism is generally immoral is that killing or otherwise disadvantaging other members of our species, except where it would disadvantage us not to do so, is not fit behaviour. That is to say it is not beneficial to the human genome. Killing other species does not have the same detrimental effect.
The extension of human empathy to non-domestic animals is nothing but a neurosis (albeit a rather endearing one)