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Why most Christians are speciests?


violet13
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http://www.visionforum.com/hottopics/articles/2004-11-05_001.aspx

I hope I don't get banned from what I am going to say.

I have no doubt about existence of God but I do not have same view about animals like most christian do and I get very irritated when everytime I read article written by ordinary Christian preachers like Doug Phillips' article.

I know Christian preachers who support seal hunt, fox hunt, bullfights, etc because these supposedly men of God are getting collection $$$$$$$.

 

What is your opinion?

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You can be a specieist and still be an ethical vegan. Being a speciest means having a hierarchy (not thinking all species are exactly equal) a person can do so and still not exploit animals. Not eat them, not kill them, etc. I'm a specieist and an ethical vegan.

 

Anyway I think most christians kill, eat, exploit animals because if christians were supposed to be vegan then such an important thing would have been stated clearly at some point. Instead the bible is full of animal sacrifice, etc. Even though vegan christians will claim it's all just bad translations and imperfect humans doing the writing, it's still just a bit much isn't it? I mean if they even got the vegan part wrong, that would be a good argument to chuck the whole religion and go become a buddhist or something.

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This reminds me of when our local Veg*n Society was having a meeting and dinner in one of the rooms of a local hall.

 

In the main room there was a group of Jehovah's Witnesses gathering, and one happened to find their way into our room asking if we where the JW's. We said no we were a vegetarian group, so she looked at us all and commented in a caring voice 'thats all right, there's nothing wrong with being vegetarian'. We just all looked at her thinking, ummm ok...

 

It then got into a small debate with her about Christains, the bible and vegetarianism to which she left before she appeared to be even less compassionate and unknowledgable.

 

I worked with another who claimed that vegetarianism was the way we should all be, but sin made him be otherwise so he would wait until the 'second coming' when the world became a perfect place, and then he would be vegetarian.

 

My personal pieve has always been the attitude of some Christains that because of the 'second coming' they therefore did not have a responsilibty to the environment now.

 

I think I will stick to being a Pantheist...

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I think speciests and racists have something in common.

Remember in old days?

Black people had no freedom and their rights as human were totally denied.

Speciests only believe in rights of human animals and deny the rights of non human animals.

This is what I am against and don't believe like most ordinary Christians do.

Why most ordinary Christians are removing entire animal kingdom from circle of our love and respect!

I cannot stand their twisted thinking to justify animal exploitation by telling us that we have dominion over animals and God made animals for us to eat,wear, and experiment on.

How can they be so cruel and heartless?

If we study Bible, we can find many verses where God is expressing HIS love for creatures HE created but most ordinary Christians love to paint God as evil hateful God toward animals without knowing mistranslation of the Bible.

Did he say it is not cruel to trap animals?

Yes, he did.

We all should send him educational printed materials to expose most horrible cruelty in trapping but my guess is he knows very well.

He is denying to keep his business of selling animal tails and skins.

 

As you may know, most Christians support cruel Heifer Project and they think they are doing wonderful thing by contributing to unimaginable farm animal cruelty without knowing or knowing. There is no law to protect farm animals in poor countries where farm animals are shipped and they can kill farm animals in any kind of way they wish.

 

Needless to say, there are some very serious minded true Christians who are striving to live their lives to please God without contributing to unnecessary animal cruelty.

I firmly believe that non violence start with our plate.

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I think speciests and racists have something in common.

Thanks.

 

Speciests only believe in rights of human animals and deny the rights of non human animals.

And here I thought I was an ethical vegan. Thanks again.

 

Just a language barrier right?

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Jay, I don't think you are speciest.

My understanding, speciest deny the rights of animals.

Here is more sickening article to deny the rights of animals.

I am sure you do not agree with what is written in article below.

http://www.theologicalstudies.citymax.com/animal_rights.html

No wonder why some people are turning their back on Christianity.

These people are reflecting very negatively on Christianity but I know web sites of Christian Animal Rights organizations such as www.all-creatures.org where we can find pleasant positive reflection of Christianity.

Edited by violet13
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http://www.computan.on.ca/~klawrenc/ar.htm

I really hate people who think it is perfectly ok to breed more animals when we execute millions animals while other millions of homeless animals are starving and suffering on the street.

What these pet breeders do not want to acknowledge is since the animals they breed/sell take homes away from healthy, adoptable, shelter and or/stray animals.

Pet breeders are responsible of killing of our companion animals in shelter but of course they deny about it to keep their sickening pet breeding business.

When I typed 'speciest' on search engine, I found link above.

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Jay, I don't think you are speciest.

My understanding, speciest deny the rights of animals.

It's often misspelled but the correct spelling is specieist. (RacIST; specieIST, FascIST, PacifIST, etc.) Anyway I'm sure that along with misspelling it many people misdefine it too. But it's simply a person who thinks some species are superior to others.

 

Anyway to me a right is something you get when you take part in an agreement. Animals inability to adequately communicate stops them from taking part in agreements, so they have no rights. As I'm an atheist I don't believe in universal rights bestowed by a creator or anything like that. So even by your definition of the word (which I'm pretty certain is wrong), I'm still a specieist.

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Jay, I think animals have rights because they are sentient creatures just like us.

Animals have their own language.

I don't think inability to communicate with us is reason to deny their rights.

BTW, human race is worst creatures on this earth compared to non human animals.

Corruption, war, murder, animal exploitation, environmental destruction, etc.

Animals only take what they need but people are killing animals for enjoyment and for status.

Selfishness and sinfulness is not sign of superiority but inferiority.

How many human mothers drown own children in ocean, lake, bathtub?

How many parents murder their own children in cold blooded manner?

My daughter was social worker after she graducated from Columbia University.

She dealt with worst kind of criminals who burn, stab, beat, and starve their own children and defended these abused children in Childrens Court before judge.

Higher non human animals never hurt their own offsprings.

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Violet,,

Are many japanese vegan? I'm kind of under the impression that unusally few are. Is there something about the culture that really frowns on veganism? Just curious.

 

About the rights thing, we just disagree. I just wanted to point out that there are ethical vegans who admit to being specieists. Many vegans think getting rid of specieism is the key to promoting veganism. But whether or not this is true, it should be understood that plenty of vegans are specieists.

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Jay, I think the reason why Japanese people have longest life expectancy is because we ate nothing but plant based diet.

http://search.msn.com/results.asp?FORM=sCPN&RS=CHECKED&un=doc&v=1&q=Japanese%20longest%20%22life%20expectancy%22

Many Japanese people are Budhists who do not consume any animal products but some Japanese people are adapting western style diet(meat/dairy/egg) and they are suffering from all kinds of diseases and sicknesses.

I am not sure exactly how many Japanese people are vegans but I think meat/dairy/egg consumption by Japanese people are much lower than westerners.

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I spelled it wrong myself. I'm sorry. I think I'm right and Peter Singer is wrong though. It's not racesism. The same with the definition. But anyway of course if I don't consider all species equal I then also don't assign equal value to all species. So I'm afraid I'm still a speciesist.

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I did not travel to Okinawa island so I don't know much about Okinawans.

I am sure offense74 knows about Okinawans more than I do.

Okinawa became American terriroty in 1945 and this island was returned by US to Japan in 1972.

I am not knowledgable about food Okinawans eat because their culture is different from main land Japanese culture.

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We are no different from animals, everything just evolved differently. We all contain the same energy. No offense, but I don't like to devote a lot of my time in fairy tales which were written by man. I think religion is just trying to feel secure about knowing who our Absolute Being is and becoming closer to It, because NONE of us know why we are here. Nobody likes questions unanswered, therefore books will be written throughout history. Mythology is no different from Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, etc... These are all man-made religions created which will only last for a brief moment in time, then will be considered obsolete and shall diminish.

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This Christian tries not to be speciest to the best of her ability. I still believe that the bible was written by flawed people, who were influenced by what they already knew and incorporated it into Christianity. I believe that those individuals that are convinced the bible is the absolute are a biiiiig deterrent to animal rights, because of the "man was given dominion over the animals" quote (which I don't believe) and have tried to get through to some by saying that just because you are given dominion over something or someone does not mean you have the right to abuse and murder it.

 

I agree with artystik that we are just a different type of animal and that people feel the emotional need to know their place in the universe and gain comfort from religion (sometimes myself included in that circle). IMO the only thing wrong with this is the assumption that humans make that everything was made for humans and their comfort from environment to animals, etc. I'm not going to get into a religious debate, because no matter what you or I or anyone else believes just doesn't matter. What does matter is how you treat others and other beings and what you do.

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This Christian tries not to be speciest to the best of her ability. I still believe that the bible was written by flawed people, who were influenced by what they already knew and incorporated it into Christianity. I believe that those individuals that are convinced the bible is the absolute are a biiiiig deterrent to animal rights, because of the "man was given dominion over the animals" quote (which I don't believe) and have tried to get through to some by saying that just because you are given dominion over something or someone does not mean you have the right to abuse and murder it.

 

I agree with artystik that we are just a different type of animal and that people feel the emotional need to know their place in the universe and gain comfort from religion (sometimes myself included in that circle). IMO the only thing wrong with this is the assumption that humans make that everything was made for humans and their comfort from environment to animals, etc. I'm not going to get into a religious debate, because no matter what you or I or anyone else believes just doesn't matter. What does matter is how you treat others and other beings and what you do.

 

 

Very nicely stated, Crash!

 

When I encounter the "man has dominion over the planet" I point out that "you have dominion over your children, too, but you don't eat them." Personally, I believe the true meaning of that dominion statement is stewardship. Why would anyone beleive that G-d gave humans such a beautiful & diverse planet just so we could fuck it up? How does that type of mindset fit in with the teachings of Jesus?

 

On another note, I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country." He states: " I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was G-d or not?"

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Singer basically thinks that if you view animals based on species membership rather than level of sentience and capacity for suffering, then you are speciesist. And Singer got the word from Ryder.

 

I read Dunayer's Animal Equality, and she had me lost half the time. But I think she was saying that she thinks you're a speciesist if you don't view every animal with any level of sentience at all as equal to every other animal with any other level of sentience.

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