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Well, I think you can practice Buddhism in a way that allows you to be soulless, reductive, naturalist; believe that moral action can be seated in human flourishing; and be basically religious. Go ahead and laugh.
But why isn't this just as "religious" as the alternatives. On the one hand, you want to retain a distinction between the prudent and the moral. So, someone should heed a constraint even when it is against her interests if she would prefer the counter-factual world in which everyone heeded it to the counter-factual world in which no one heeded it. But why, since she doesn't live in either of those counter-factual worlds, and since you seem like the sort of person who would make fun of counter-factual worlds in the first place.
And the reason for setting a boundary at that species is?
On your discussion of your view of "whether or not a certain constraint on self-interest ought to be normatively binding" I think you ignore the Rawlsian moral sense. I think it has a role to play even if it is not sufficient to explain morality or its constraints in and of itself.
Should my interpretive "if" be an "only if"? An "if and only if"?
Individual flourishing may be part of what grounds moral imperatives, but it would seem quite insufficient on its own (cf., for example, the problem of sadistic pleasure). Wouldn't you agree that you need a prior theory of good character (such that only the flourishing or persons with such-and-such character traits can ground a moral imperative)?
Yes.
Leaving that aside, it seems to me that it might be helpful to bring into consideration how conditionality can be related to rational ignorance on moral issues. Rational ignorance comes into the equation because it takes effort for me, and people like me, to work out a moral position from scratch, particularly on complex issues like climate change. So a lot of us tend to follow the lead of preachers of one kind or another (including the secular variety). But we don't just follow blindly - our willingness to follow is often conditional on the preacher's actions. We expect the preacher to "put his or her money where his or her mouth is" i.e. to set an example through his or her own behaviour. And we tend to stop following when a preacher doesn't practice what he/she preaches.
There is your restraint.
The debate is always if the people are actually coming first. Sometimes we put air before people. That is immoral.
Are you coming out as a rule utilitarian?
Are you ONLY making the descriptive claim? Because what you say in the third paragraph - that "if we’re talking about whether or not a certain constraint on self-interest ought [your emphasis] to be normatively binding ... I think there’s a good answer to that: because heeding the constraint will tend to make the person who heeds it better off, conditional on others heeding it, too" - sure seems to have a normative dimension as well. (Or am I missing something?)
Aren't rational choice assumptions perfectly consistent with these solutions given preferences for being moral?
Because they're rational enough to realise they have exactly zero chance of achieving that goal, perhaps?
The way they get instantly dismissed, laughed at, or funny looks if they suggest a ban on meat would tend to discourage, if not such a goal, then at least mentioning it.
(Achieving it by admitting that's their goal, at any rate - I suppose they could sneakily have that goal and have a "moral softening-up" agenda already.)