Re: extropians-digest V4 #13

Ken Kittlitz (ken@audesi.com)
Fri, 15 Jan 1999 13:35:45 -0700

At 01:51 PM 1/15/99 -0500, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:

>> Why should we look to them any more than looking to vegetarians?
>> The human body can adapt to any number of culturally diverse diets.
>
>It may adapt, but what is it most efficiently evolved for? The page she
>referenced purports to show that the human digestive tract is, in fact,
>optimized for a meat diet. On a basis of natural law, this means that it
>is in fact not naturally immoral for humans to kill animals and eat their
>meat. One might say that it is more moral than displacing herbivorous
>animals in the food chain of an ecosystem with humans practicing the less
>efficient herbivorous lifestyle.

I think good arguments can be made both for and against a meat diet, but bringing "natural" into it isn't a wise idea. By the above rationale, it would be immoral to live past one's "natural" life-span. After all, the same evolutionary history that caused our digestive tracts to be the way they are also saddled us with finite life spans. In fact, a common argument against immortality is that "death is natural".

I don't know what your own views of the morality of life extension are, but assume that like most people on this list, you are probably in favour of it. If so, how do you reconcile your stance with its violation of natural law?


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