I have a similar argument about christianity (please, no flame wars, this is not an attack, just my beliefs). My understanding of the religion, after having been part of it for more than 20 years, is that Jesus had to come down and take our punishment because we are imperfect. Apparently god can’t stand imperfection - to the point he would punish that imperfection F O R E V E R for its flaws. Hmm!

But wait, it gets more interesting. Christians will tell you that Jesus is God, God is Jesus, but they are separate, but no, they are the same…but Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” and “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” OK, let’s take the viewpoint that Jesus is God, for the sake of argument.

That means God couldn’t stand you so much, he had to kill himself! A suicidal deity, with the handy power of being able to ressurect himself. But, if YOU kill yourself, now that is a sin!

Now I know that christians will say Jesus was the atonement, the sacrifice for our sins, and he completes the law and fulfills the Old Testament, but that still does not negate the basic principle: God cannot stand your imperfections, and you only get to heaven through a proxy. Wow! God sounds like a great guy, doen’t he!

One more point, now that I’m rambling, all over the bible christians are referred to as “children” of god. Pretty cool, but no one seems to take the next logical step to that statement, like, EVER. Baby humans become adult humans. So children of god become…adult gods? Blasphemy! I know! Because that would imply we are perfect and wonderful and amazing and powerful beyond measure! What horrible ideas!

For the record, I consider myself a “loose” christian; I pray to God, Jesus, and whoever I think is listening. I don’t believe the bible is true every word, butI believe there is truth to it. I think, if there is a hereafter (or thereafter), we are not able to pierce that veil of knowing until the time comes.

Thanks for listening, for a great post, and I hope I have not offended anyone.

looking forward to the read sometime in the future though…
cheers.

I’m going to dedicate a new post to this when I get the time because I think it’s important and demands more time than I have right now and should be in its own post. But let me hit on a couple things now.

My faith teaches me that I am to be a good steward of the earth. That means I am to respect all living things and care for them. Period.

You make the comment, “… we as a human race, have developed past the need for animal consumption in any way…”

Developed past what? If animal consumption is not wrong, and I believe the community of life would show that it’s not wrong, then there is nothing to develop past…

Where should we look to know if consuming animals is wrong? Should we look to scholars for advice? Realizing that those scholars are human of coarse seems a bit odd to me. Asking another human, even the wisest of humans if its ok to eat another animal or not seems off. SO I would submit to you that we need to look for answers within the animal community - the community itself will provide us the answers. And the animal community, if we observe it will show us this:

You may compete to your fullest, but you may not wage war. In other words, you can say that this gazelle is mine, but you cannot say that all gazelle are mine.

We are part of a community. We are fully dependent of this community and the community will provide us answers and how we should live.

again, I will go into further detail when I get time…

I completly agree that there is nothing wrong with death. It is a natural cycle that is also a mandatory to the survival of this planet. The same applies to one (of the many) methods of death, that being, naturalistic killing/hunting (from within the animal kingdom all the way down to molecular activity. That includes understanding that in any circumstance an animal could kill me or anyone . It is the human brain that applies blame/motive to the animals actions (which is quite difficult not too). That being said, we as a human race, have developed past the need for animal consumption in any way.

I have seen much in the way of animal cruelty, ranging from domesticated to extremely wild animals. None is acceptable, nor should it be. Then why is the commercial killing of millions+ animals a day, at the hands of human run machinery, acceptable. Is it because they are just animals? I hope not. Has God blessed us with animals so that we may cut them down? I hope not.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, your opinion is dead on…however, we as humans, are only artifically within the natural cycle.
We, as a general, do not respect the animals as they do one another.
A simple exampe to this is any roadside. Think about the number of roadside animals that you have seen in your lifetime. Like myself, I would imagine that the average person (children included) takes notice, then continues on their path. Now imagine if some of those animal bodies were replaced with a human bodies. It just wouldn’t feel the same, and looking at it from an objective perspective, I have to ask myself. why?

I think that at the end of the day animals need to attain a higher level of respect across the board. for instance, the baiji or white flag dolphin which was declared extinct earlier in the year (although it not officially) due to water pollution. It is offsetting to me that animals that have survived and adapted for a million+ years on this planet before us, are being brushed under the rug for the world turning dollar. And for what? fashion? delicacy? money?

And I am not so much an extreme animal rights activist, demading an absolute and ungoverned freedom to let all the animals devour our children at their own will. But there needs to be a deeper respect/preservation system put into place for not just endangered animals but those that have not reached that point as well.

Being very vague of my own religous viewpoints, I see that from a Godly standpoint, showing animals true compassion/mercy/respect as a essential in treating a “gift” as a whole-hearted, “gift”. I also see that from an evolutionary standpoint, an animal being an animal, us included we are very wrong. For if that is the case, no matter what the evoltuionary level is, skin and body remain consistent throughout all species and blood spilled is an experienced life snuffed regardless of the that species.

sorry, not quit as short as I had hoped but still pretty vague.

For starters, there’s nothing wrong with death. It’s just the completion of a cycle.

I tried to make the point earlier that there’s nothing wrong with the lion eating the gazelle. The lion has committed NO sin. The gazelle’s life is a gift to the lion and the lion, if it could, would give thanks for the gazelle.

If the lion were to eat me, I would do my best to avoid this, but if it should jump on me and sink it’s teeth into me I would not curse God for it. For I placed my life in God’s hands and I would be at rest, for yesterday was my day to live and today is my day to die.

Have you every noticed that once the lion makes a kill the rest of the gazelle will go on eating right with the lion in there presence? They are not at war with each other. It’s as if they understand the cycle and are at peace with it…

That’s my thoughts…

“I think that ‘most people’ - religious or not - would agree that humans are amazing creatures with exceptionally developed minds giving us an impressive range of intelligence. Because of this we have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. So because we have this ability we should use it.”

This mature reflection is a simple concept that I have found to be greatly taken for granted by much of virtually every society. Everybody thinks about it, but everybody also overrides it with their own, daily personal agendas.

One prime example of this reasoning is the eating of meats and treatment of animal hides as fashion. Know, that I myself am not a vegetarian nor a vegan, but a wandering mind (granted, I find myself eating less and less meats everyday). Why do we really eat meats? Have we not developed past our need for a hunting method? Do we practice this method out of habit? And why then the topic is questioned do we take offense or simply throw it away with any sort of validity? Yes every animal does it, but are we not/or have we not developed or minds further than an animals.

It is a proven scientific fact that you can lead a healthy, “vegitarian”, lifestyle. So much so that, by leading a meat-free lifestyle (correctly), you will achieve better results, fewer (cancerous) risks, and lead a better example for future generations (children). Animals may be “vastly inferior” from an intelligence standpoint. But only by human comparison. Think about, from and evolutionary standpoint, all of the feats the animal kingdom has overcome. Not to mention the countless animal behaviors that a scientifically unknown. If we as a world know so little, why then, would we still, “go out, grab animal, kill animal, butcher animal, coo animal, eat animal”? And why as a world do we allow commercial killing of all things, to be one of the dirtiest businesses perceivable? I know this is a rant, so I am ending it now.

just take away some of these questions (and beleive me, the list goes on and on), and ask them to yourself. not to the everyday person that you live to be, but to the highly developed human brain that we have developed to be. sorry for the poor correlation, it is just stuff I wonder. why?