Compare:TheVeganDeist wrote: I'm not saying ALL unnecessary sentient nonhuman animal use is immoral, as I stated, there are a few exceptions. I just don't believe that these few exceptions are enough to outright dismiss a deontological approach to vegan activism.
"I'm not saying everything in the Bible is right or literally true, there are a few exceptions. I just don't believe that these few exceptions are enough to outright dismiss the idea that the Bible is the inerrant divinely inspired word of an all knowing benevolent god."
The thing is, it kind of does.
The trouble is that deontology is a very absolute view, and deontological claims (rather than those based on rule consequentialism, which is more reasonable) come off as insane to most people -- the people we need to take animal suffering seriously.
As inator said, any intelligent carnist who looks into these deontological claims is likely to be rightfully incredulous, and reject the argument being made.
It's probably closer to amoral than immoral. The good it is doing is likely futile and outweighed by the harm, and for the most part it is just impotent.TheVeganDeist wrote: I don't believe a primarily deontological form of vegan activism is inherently immoral.
However, as veganism gains ground, deontology will become more and more destructive to the movement.
Look at it like this, case one:
Nobody knows about veganism, and nobody is vegan.
You employ a terrible form of activism which only convinces one in a hundred people, and sets ten people firmly against you.
Spreading this activism, you'll still technically do a little good, since one in a hundred will go vegan, and the other ten weren't on your side to begin with.
Now consider this:
Half of the world is now vegan, and people generally know about it.
You employ the same terrible activism, convincing one person, and turning away ten -- statistically five of whom were sympathetic/vegan originally, but went back to eating meat because your argument was so bad and convinced them that veganism was irrational and that they were wrong (much like liberal Christians are put onto atheism by fundamentalist Christians).
Spreading this kind of activism, you do far more harm than good.
When nobody agrees with you to begin with, you have pretty much nothing to lose and everything to gain no matter how terrible your argument is.
Once you start getting some people on your side, or at least on the fence, you have to realize it's possible to push people away and back to the opponent's side with bad arguments (or basically to give your foes ammunition against you to draw those people away).
Moving forward, we must not only abandon deontological arguments, but actively discourage them from others if we want to keep doing good and making progress. The world will not go vegan under a deontological flag, and it does the same kind of harm to veganism as the likes of Phelps do to Christianity.