Did God put animals here for us to eat?!
Did God put animals here for us to eat?
I am struggling all the time with my diet. I am trying to figure out what is the most healthy diet from a divine perspective. In other words, how did God intend for man to eat. Lorraine Day and Jordan Rubin, both who believe in God, have opposing viewpoints. The FDA recommends 300mg of cholesterol daily but vegans argue that our bodies produce all the cholesterol we need. Who is right? Would God be pleased that we are slaughtering animals for good health or is he looking down at us in horror? Somebody please give me some words of wisdom. I am so confused.
Additional Details3 months ago
P.S. If you are atheist or agnostic this question does NOT apply to you so please do not even respond if you fall into this category. You will just be wasting my time and yours. I thought this went without saying but I guess not. :)
Answers:
3 months ago
P.S. If you are atheist or agnostic this question does NOT apply to you so please do not even respond if you fall into this category. You will just be wasting my time and yours. I thought this went without saying but I guess not. :)
Yes, he provided everything on this earth for us, animals, plants, water, air, etc etc. Its just the fact of life, there is a food chain system that supports life for every creature on this earth.
it is called evolution
YEAP. HE GAVE US MOLERS TO CHEW WITH
god created the food chain for a reason and were at the top of it so anything below us is up for eating. Animals eat other animals and you dont see anyone whining about making animals vegetarians. just because we can choose to be vegetarian doesnt make it wrong to eat animals as we are designed to eat meat and vegetables therefore intended to eat animals. having a purely vegetarian diet can infact be unhealthy so ive heard. some of the stuff you get from meat is needed in a good diet
Yes indeed, he also put us here for some animals to eat ;o)
I dont really think God should come into the equation when it comes to your health.
Red meat....we were meant to eat it. Same with white meat including fish. If I were you I would put your health above the issues of other religious people & focus on eating well. You might find you think more clearly too.
I think that if God put us here, then he put us here with the intention for us to be healthy and to live long lives. He gaves us everything we essentially require for this. From a science point- we are designed to eat meat, from the way our digestive system works, to the meat tearing teeth we have in our mouths. So, scientifically we are perfectly designed to eat meat- and it also gives us great benefits. And, God can back this up (or vice versa), by saying that we have been provided with animals for us to eat, most specifically beef, pork, chicken and fish. These are very good for us, as well as their produce- eggs and milk for example.
I personally do not eat very much meat, but I do understand it's neccessity, and for the baby growing inside me's sake, I ensure I have some in my diet.
So, from a divine perspective I think that we should eat meat in moderation. Ensure that the animals were kept decently, not battery farmed, and that their flesh is not wasted.
I hope that helps a little to hear my thoughts.
Our teeth are not similar to those of tigers and dogs. They have sharper cannies than us.
Our digestive system is similar to cows and some cattles. The intestines are longer than the carnivores'. So, meat would have rotted in our stomach before it is totally digested - good for baterial proliferation.
We would be able to obtain all our nutrients (cabohydrates, proteints, fats, fibre, vitamins, minerals) from plants alone. We cannot survive totally ona meat diet but we certainly can survive from a totally plant-based diet.
And God command us to only eat from the Garden of Eden, according to the book of Genesis. It is only after we have sinned that we eat animals. So, I believe we are designed to eat only plants.
Your body needs HDL cholesterol,not LDL.LDL comes from food,your body makes HDL.The 300mg's a day is supposed to be a limit,not a recommended intake.
Now for the God issue.Did Adam and Eve eat meat in the Garden of Eden?No,because nothing died.so shouldn't you strive to make the world like the Garden of Eden,a peaceful paradise.Since meat is not a requirement,we eat it for the taste.I don't think there will be slaughter houses in heaven either.I think God would be upset to see his creatures in a factory farm.He gave them the gift of life just as he gave you the gift of life.
"It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans."
-Leo Tolstoy
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us *universe*, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
-Albert Einstein
The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
-Mahatma Gandhi
- "To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to the protection by man from the cruelty of man."
-Mahatma Gandhi
"Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering."
-Rev. Andrew Linzey
"Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals ) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
-St Francis of Assisi
"To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime."
-Romain Rolland
"Since all sentient beings are equal as my only son, how can I allow my followers to eat the flesh of my son? Eating meat to me is out of the question. I have never allowed, I am not allowing, and I will never allow this practice - I have strictly condemned eating meat in every way." - Buddha Shakyamuni
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-Thomas Edison
"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilisation surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronise them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, we greatly err. For the animals shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings. They are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."
-Henry Beston
What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
-Jeremy Bentham
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
-Pythagoras
"People think of animals as if they were vegetables, and that is not right. We have to change the way people think about animals. I encourage the Tibetan people and all people to move toward a vegetarian diet that doesn't cause suffering."
-Dalai Lama
"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."
-Leo Tolstoy
"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating others when they came into contact with the more civilised."
-Henry David Thoreau
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That’s the essence of inhumanity."
-George Bernard Shaw
"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
-George Bernard Shaw
I don't believe we should eat animals. How does a cow, turkey, chicken or pig differ from a horse, dog, parrot, or cat? They are all living, breathing creatures. Many on here say we are "designed" to eat meat. I think that bogus. If we were "designed" to eat meat, we would posses the skills to hunt, capture, kill, and consume our prey without the use of tools. We have to tiny incisor teeth, and the rest are flat like all other vegetarian creatures. We are perfectly "designed" for gardening, and gathering fruits, grains, and vegetables with our imposable thumbs. Our digestive system is not at all similar to other meat eating creatures. We can get ALL of the nutrients we need from a plant based diet. I don't think anything has to die to satisfy human greed. I highly recommend a vegetarian diet from a health perspective-I healed from crippling illness, and lost 40 pounds within 2 months of going veggie. I am well now, and feel terrific. I sleep better, my cholesterol levels are perfect for the first time in many years, and I feel good nothing nothing bled for me. Feel free to email me
edit: as for the FDA, they also say its okay to eat crushed red beatles (carmine) and that a certain number of rat droppings and hairs are allowed per batch of processed food, so I don't give them too much credit for brilliance, and tend to scoff at all of their recommendations
Well, there are two instantaneous fallacies in your argument.
1. By asking atheists/agnostics not to answer, you instantly say that you don't want a logical, scientific answer, but an emotional, religious one.
2. You're only focusing on Judeo-Christian theory. Because there are some religions that advocate against meat-eating.
It is true that our bodies produce cholesterol.
I don't understand why you keep wondering what God "meant" for you to eat. Do what feels right for you and the animals you're eating. If you want to avoid killing animals, you should because you feel for animals, not because you're afraid of offending God. If you want to kill animals (you sadist, you!), you should be willing to justify it with your conscience without bringing God into it to hopelessly rationalize!
I get irritated at people who think of God "putting" things on this planet. Have you EVER stopped to think that animals live for themselves, not for us? Every living being on this planet exists for itself, not for Homo sapiens. Of course, that includes Homo sapiens itself, so while it makes sense that people would want to kill an animal because it "tastes good", it makes no logical sense to justify it because "God put it there".
I don't think you should make this a religious decision. God gave us the freedom to use our minds.
So THINK: What is good for you, for other creatures on the planet, and for the future of the planet?
Well, it's a personal choice. For me it was to be vegetarian, but for other Christians it might be different.
Also, do some research. Maybe you'll like this website:
http://www.vnv.org.au/10reasonsveggo.htm...
Btw, I LOVED Vegan&Proud's quotes!
I think the more apt question, at least from my skeptical P.O.V., is did God put animals here?
But I realize that you're looking for a biblical interpretation to support your vegetarianism. In Genesis, the only reference to food is of plants. Humans are instructed to guard-over and protect animals.
Whether or not you believe that the actual eating of animals is immoral(it is mentioned without total disdain in the bible), it seems obvious to me that the factory-farming industry (from which most of the meat we eat comes) should be considered as immoral under Christian doctrine. By no interpretation of scripture can a Christian purport that God put animals on earth with the will that they be tortured by callous and self-absorbed humans and treated as meat-machines rather than creatures of God. The morality of the consumption of animal flesh for sustenance is debatable, but the treatment of animals in the farming industry is abhorrent.
My vegetarianism doesn't stem from a Christian P.O.V., as I'm not particularly religious, but I find that Christian doctrine does, if implicitly and under certain circumstances, support vegetarianism.
And as far as the 'we were perfectly designed to eat meat' argument, that is utterly false. The human body is more closely built to the herbivorous archetype than the carnivorous - or even the omnivorous (compare primates(yourself) to raccoons, bears, etc.). Our canines are pretty much vestigial, they would be utterly inept at tearing raw flesh from bone. We have long colons, fit for digesting plant materials, in which meat sits and rots... We have relatively weak, 'cud-chewing' jaws that move from side to side instead of the strong,chomping jaws of carnivores. (If anything, early humans were largely vegetarian and loose scavengers... we were incapable of procuring meat until our brain development allowed us to use tools to hunt... ). Heavy consumption of meat in human beings obviously doesn't lead to 'good health'(we're not 'designed'/adapted for/to it) - take a look at heart disease and cancer stats for the U.S. and compare them to countries in which meat is consumed less often ...
god did not create animals for us to eat .it's mans greed.he was too tempted what will hapen if he will eat animals
God created Man, man has free will, man lives as he sees fit. If it is right or wrong we'll never really know until we die.
God gave man dominion over animals. Last time I checked, Dominion didn't mean EAT.
Have you read Eragon or Eldest? In the second book, it gives the best reason not to eat animals, during Eragon's training with the Elves.
"Behold I have given you every seed bearing plant and for you it shall be food." We are not punished for our sins, rather we are punished by our sins. The FDA is in the pockets of special interest groups and can't say that we need to eat less meat. You don't need 300mg of cholesterol, rather that is the upper threshold to slow down the hardening of your arteries so you don't drop dead of heart disease until just after you start to collect social security.
www.vegsource.com Real health advice from doctors who beat cancer and heart disease.
God sees the every sparrow that falls. I am guessing he sees if you are eating a chicken that lived in chicken hell because "we just loves our chickens!" It's pretty tragic that we eat tortured animals for pleasure (honestly, when have you seen the poor and hungry eating stuff at Applebee's? It's always the guy with the big gut eating 3x's the calories he needs for the day).
Radically reduce your meat, egg and dairy consumption and tell everyone its a sacrifice you are making until the 30,000 people dying of starvation per day get their daily bread.
Best of luck.
god puts animals for you to eat, but not me
Hey! I left the religious section to get away from these arguments! It's pretty heated over there right now, by the way.
I don't think that God will disapprove of your decision one way or the other. Do what's right for you and your health. I don't eat meat, I think it's disgusting and that our bodies aren't designed for it. I don't eat dairy because it's baby food for cows and I don't eat eggs because they're ovaries, essentially. EEW!
There is the argument about all of the animal abuse and labor worker mistreatment and that is a dandy argument, if I must say. So there, you'd have to ask yourself how much you'd care to educate yourself on the subject and then how much you really care about it at all. Would you still support an industry knowing what really goes on there just because it's convenient for you?...or tastey? Some people still shop at Wal-Mart and they know about them. You could point the finger there too.
Rest assured, though. God will not smite you no matter what. Your own conscience might...which is really an aspect of God, but....hey...!
By the way, Is that FOOF guy really Dave Grohl? (call me Dave)