A theological question Catholics cannot answer?

[jcrichton]

Incomprehensible… as that movie quoted “mayhaps.” Yet, are you making any more sense in attributing to Christ/the Church/Christianity the warring of the world?:

Christians have slaughtered on mass 'in the name of Christ". In Buddhism there is a saying “No drop of blood has been spilled in the name of Buddha”. Note the ‘in the name of’. Even if it is not exactly true historically (perhaps it is) there are reasons for the claim, whereas the same claim for Christianity could only result in astonished laughter!

Your response to Buddhists (the feel-good people who would not hurt a living soul) killing Christians because they were Christians is that Christians have slaughtered on mass in the name of Christ.

Any reasonable person knows that Christ Commanded that His Followers do not resist evil so any person or organization that has ever stood up to kill in the name of Christ is folly.

However, when Christians are killed because they are Followers of Christ, specially by those who claim to be “enlightened” or “following a just God,” the killers are folly by their assailment on those who believe/think differently.

You, as many have and still will, continue to perpetrate that same infliction of projecting into Christianity what governments/monarchs do as “proof” of Christian “atrocities.”

Interestingly enough, just as those who export their hatred and terrorism, you whitewash the states’ (which constantly debase, oppress, and exterminate their citizens, as well as world peace and security) responsibility in the running of innocent blood.

So what is to be gained by your ‘put it on Christ’ argument?

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

I am speaking from your posts.

I do not imagine anything about anyone on line; for all I know any poster could be a rocket scientist wanting to believe in God or the Pope himself wanting to exercise his alter ego… so I make no connections past the posted material.

While it is true that I allow my past experiences with non-Believers, fringe “Catholics,” and “Catholics and non-Catholics” to sway my intake, I do not make it a personal “thing.” I do not internalize any post/poster.

So if a person has a pet or a peeve I will not dwell on either possibility… other than the insight that I gain from that person’s own posting.

when you know little or nothing about me

Exactly my point.

So you transfer” another personal remark

No. Not a transfer: summation (I take what you offer and synthesize it).

I know that, as with you, I may not always hit the mark; yet, this is the reason why I postulate–the poster, you or who ever else, can then clarify/expand on what it is that he/she is trying to convey, correcting, when necessary, any misunderstanding that I may have gathered from the previous posting/s.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

This is not a good way to conduct a forum discussion or find the truth of what someone is trying to explain, so after these current comments I am no intending to respond to again.

I hope the others who are more able to conduct less personalised conversations will continue as there are still issues I would like to clarify, and a few new points to raise.

I confess that I may be a blunt instrument (forcing issues from the peripheral onto the foreground), yet you must confess that “beating a dead horse” does not gain anyone anything.

You have offered the 'unanswerable" “theological.” Yet, if it is stripped from the pretense (yeah, here I go again being blunt) it is just a demand to have God become a mouse (puss in the boot) so that we can control Him.

The premise of the “unanswerable” is that human dignity, justice, mercy, and love outshines God’s. Ergo, either God is a callused and hurtful Omnipotent Being or God does not exist or, in the least, is not as Omniscient and Omnipotent as He is made out to be.

This whole argument hinges upon the premise that you (or whoever first introduced the argument) can determine what is necessary or unnecessary and what is just or unjust–which means you (or whoever) are the gauge of “perfection”/“Creation”/“Balance.”

Now, in spite of what you may think, my intent is not to render a personal attack but to have you and myself, as well as anyone reading through these threads, do some retrospection (seek out the truth of our ‘who, what, why, and ifs’) in light of different perspectives.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

More personalised offensiveness about someone you know virtually nothing. You! really should try to give up pointing in an accusatory way and shouting “you!” It is not at all good for your case.

I apologize for what you may be gathering… when I write/post I am being quite cognizant that the “you” also refers to me, as well as any reader other than the person to whose post I may be responding.

While it is true that I could be using a more generic/exclusive term (“a person” or “one” or “those”), it is also true that language does matter (I sited the pet owners who insist–which has evolved into an accepted practice, at least in the industries that have much to gain from “pet family’s” wallets–that fido must be address as he/she not it); so drilling it home is better if the second person is used instead of a phantom third.

Again, I apologize for your feeling of personal attack–my intent is to get you to think beyond what you’ve become accustomed.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Theophilusopher]

Can you explain how a supposedly all powerful and benevolent God could have created a world in which a great many animals, who experience pain and fear, have to tear each other to pieces to be eaten, in order to survive?

Hi, I’m new too.

Firstly, I’d like to commend the OP (original poster?) on striving to unite his/her seemingly incompatable beliefs (knowing them to be compatable).

Next, it is necessary to affirm that creation was affected by the Fall:

“Because of man, creation is now subject ‘to its bondage to decay.’”
-CCC 400

But we are also reminded that:

“the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand.”
-CCC 404
(Admittedly, I have expanded the context.)

And perhaps most significantly:

“‘God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. . . . It was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world’ (Wis 1:13; 2:24).”
-CCC 413

Jumping back we see that:

“God wills the interdependence of creatures. . . . . Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other.”
-CCC 340

 

[Theophilusopher]

Next, I want to consider eating, consumption.

The first thing I think of is the Eucharist. Now the Eucharist is neither bloody nor meaty, but we do consume the Body of Christ, and we consume Him entire.

Perhaps we can see the consumption of a creature as an allegory for our consumption of God. This is very similar to the way that we see Old Testament animal sacrifices as prefigurings of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Although a notable difference must be recognized, that Christ made further animal sacrifices unnecessary, invalid, and even wrong, whereas consumption of another being’s matter is still necessary and the lack of which would be quite wrong.

 

[2towers]

I hate to drag out free will, but often it is the correct answer to many of these questions. The real tragedy, I think, is not the question of eating, but rather the cruelty to animals. It just tears me up. And what has really torn me up lately was the picture of this woman who hunted for sport a giraffe, and had her picture taken of it for the world to see in all of her triumph.

This animal, the giraffe is a sensitive, peaceful, intelligent vegetarian. There have been studies about their amazing ability to communicate with each other. Why should we expect though, anything different from “humans” when they show again and again how cruel they are to each other, without limit.

Free will is a very hard fact, and its effects travel far and deep, yet without it, there would have been no reason at all to create man in the first place. If you love it, set it free, if it comes back to you, it is yours forever.
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Theophilusopher]

Looking again at death we see that God has condoned our usage of it to feed ourselves:

“Any living creature that moves about shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants.”
-Genesis 9:3 (NABRE)

God uses death Himself for the salvation of man: He defeats death with death. And yet:

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death,”
-1 Corinthians 15:26 (NABRE)

Perhaps this is telling us that in a similar way to Christ’s death giving us life, it is not ultimately evil that animals should die to give us life, and that while not ideal it is necessary in our transitional world and, as all real things do, reflects the goodness of God.

 

[Theophilusopher]

The real tragedy, I think, is not the question of eating, but rather the cruelty to animals.

I understand, but the question being asked is regarding the way the world is: how death and pain seem necessary for life and why that is.

 

[Theophilusopher]

Next I think we need to consider the necessity of pain. The apex of pain is the Passion, and we have the divine opportunity to unite our suffering with the suffering of the Cross. Some posters have said that pain (or suffering) is morally neutral, but even further than this we recognize a joy in suffering.

Christ has made suffering honorable and beautiful. If we look at the world this way, pain is more than a tool for telling us what is wrong with us, but also a tool for us to unite ourselves to Christ and, through Him, each other.

It may be that all creation echoes and imitiates the suffering of Christ.

 

[woolycaterpillar]

I have often wondered that myself…all my life. It breaks my heart when I hear of animal cruelty. People are often an animal’s worst enemy. I get all sorts of mail from animal shelters, and the things some people have done to “man’s best friend” is horrific.

I won’t go into that now because it would set me off on a bad day. Unfortunately some animals are carnivores. The ones that eat vegetables and hay, like horses, are not carnivores. Someday it may happen when at the end of time animals will all eat fruits, vegetables, hay, etc. If that happens there would be no need for slaughtering animals. I believe that all animals ate veggies in Eden. I don’t think it was intended originally for them to kill and eat each other.

 

[Peebo]

Did God mean for us to consume animals the way that we do…we breed them…feed them …slaughter them by the millions just for the purpose of eating them…as many people do daily…yet others we have as pets and become very attached to them…God created animals and whatever he created was good…but God knew that man would sin against him and so creation would suffer great travail…maybe that’s why God allows us to kill and eat animals…not because he wants it…but because of our fallen nature…why pain…death…suffering is necessary…we also kill each other by the millions…wars… starvation…abortion…hate etc…they are all lifes conundrums… we’ll probably never understand until we stand before God

 

[Theophilusopher]

And next I deal with fear.

One must always remember:

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.”
-1 John 4:18 (NABRE)

I think that the question, whether animals fear or not, is for another thread (although it has been discussed here somewhat).

If animals do fear then they fear death and pain in a similar way to Christ, in that they want to avoid it. Now I dislike saying that Christ fears but for the sake of the question I use this word. (I would say that Christ did not fear the Cross but that he desired to avoid it. Likewise I would say that animals do not fear things they desire to avoid them.)

If this is so then we have the chance to unite our fear with the Passion (as we do).

 

[Theophilusopher]

Can you explain how a supposedly all powerful and benevolent God could have created a world in which a great many animals, who experience pain and fear, have to tear each other to pieces to be eaten, in order to survive?

In full answer to your question: Yes.
God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
He created a world full of animals.
Death entered that world along with pain and fear.
These animals must kill and eat each other to survive.
All of this is compatable in that God gave us Himself. The great drama of the world is a reflection or image of the Passion of Christ. Through fear, pain, sacrifice, and consumption we can unite ourselves to Christ. If we could not, I don’t know what would become of us.

I hope that answers your question, and I hope that your operation went/is going/will go well and that your computer is managable.

Goodbye.
(That’s short for God be with you.)

 

[Gorgias]

The real tragedy, I think, is not the question of eating, but rather the cruelty to animals. It just tears me up. And what has really torn me up lately was the picture of this woman who hunted for sport a giraffe, and had her picture taken of it for the world to see in all of her triumph.

So, I don’t have a horse in this race, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate, if you don’t mind. The woman at the center of this ‘controversy’ has made the following claims:

• the giraffe she hunted was older than breeding age
• it had killed younger, breeding-age giraffe bulls
• she harvested 2000 pounds of meat from the giraffe she hunted

If the assertions she makes are true, then her hunt has not negatively affected the numbers of giraffes (and may have actually increased opportunities for giraffe breeding). Moreover, she didn’t ‘trophy hunt’, but hunted for meat.

Now, you make the point that giraffes are “sensitive, peaceful, intelligent vegetarians”. Couldn’t we say the same thing about cows, or chickens, or sheep? Other than the fact that it’s not common for us in America to eat giraffe, what is it about her harvest that causes angst?

Anyway… just thought I’d put those questions out there…

 

[2towers]

Thanks for sharing that. Makes me feel a little better to hear they harvested the meat, that it was for food and the other mitigating factors. I couldn’t bear to read the article. I kept thinking of Cecil the lion.

I chime in on change.org often, and always sign petitions for the humane treatment of US livestock and poultry btw.

 

[HarryStotle]

I do not anthropormize, I base most of what I say on the findings of recent scientific research …

A current very relevant case is studies into whether fish and crustaceans experience pain…

I suspect the problem is that you are anthropomorphizing, although unwittingly.

You claim fish and crustaceans “experience” pain. While it may be true that physiologically speaking many animals have pain receptors as humans do, it is not clear that those animals “experience” or are conscious of pain in the same sense that humans are.

Consciousness, as the awareness of being aware, has a number of requirements, not the least of which is a very complex brain which would minimally support abstract thought processes, persistence of subjective identity, the ability to store and access past whole experiences in memory, and the capacity to retrieve those memories by “visualizing” or imagining them in multimodal or “whole experience” form.

To be conscious of pain means to have the immediate awareness of an identifiable and persisting “self” experiencing the state of pain as an event that you – a self-aware being – have, simultaneous to pain receptors transmitting the pain signal.

That is quite a burden of proof for you to demonstrate, given that research psychologists and philosophers of mind (the so-called “experts” in the area of consciousness) are loath to make any conclusive statements about the physiological bases of consciousness itself. That is referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness.

To put it as simply as possible: to experience pain, in the relevant sense, requires a brain that supports consciousness. What precisely that involves is a vexing problem, but fish and crustaceans do not have such a brain. Therefore, your claim that fish and crustaceans “experience” pain is demonstrating something other than what you think it does, because you are claiming that even lower animals forms experience pain as humans do, despite that they do not have brains capable of conscious awareness, which would be a necessary condition for the actual experience of pain.

The requirement of a brain capable of conscious self-awareness as the key condition for any potential to experience of pain – as the subject of it – means most animals do not experience pain in the relevant sense that you are claiming. That leaves dolphins, some primates and some birds as the potential candidates for possibly having the experience of pain in the same (and relevant) sense that humans do.

Most of these are either apex predators or sufficiently intelligent (given their brain capacity and function) to avoid pain, that you might have to concede that God might have known what he was doing after all.

In the end, you are reduced to arguing that God should not have created self-aware beings capable of experiencing or suffering unnecessary pain. At that point, I would direct you to discussions on the distinction between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil.

 

[jcrichton]

but rather the cruelty to animals

This should be an affront to all who claim Christ as their head and anyone else who claims humanism as their code of life.

Sadly, both “Christians” and “humanists” have (and perhaps will–into perpetuity) been guilty of cruelty to all of Creation, including the one Creature Created in the Image and Likeness of God.

This temerity comes from exercising “freewill” as man places himself both against God and as god. We can witness this as technology has now abetted in this practice as many chose to record and post recordings of abuses and cruelty to both man and nature rather then to be agents of good (calling the authority for help and/or uniting against perpetrators of ill–as well as refusing to engage (support) through passive aggressive acts [laughing, egging on, recording and posting].

Just as sad is our constant abuse of animals as we force our human experience to become theirs (forcing animals to perform, dressing them up in customs/clothing, anthropomorphizing {'my baby or ‘say “mama”’ or sitting them on the kitchen table or taking them to bed or carrying them around in our arms/bags} them into pseudo human creatures.

Cruelty does not always come in a violent oppressive way…

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[jcrichton]

we’ll probably never understand until we stand before God

…or until we give up the need to conform God to man’s way:

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts. (Isaiah 55)

We see the picture of Creation from a very fixed and limited perspective… God’s Perspective is this:

18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us. 19 For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: 21 Because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now. 23 And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. (Romans 8)
29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. (St. Matthew 10)

How do we know if God is not taking the pain of Creation onto Himself?

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[misstherese]

I have always understood it that sin is a sort of chaos. The world was created perfectly; everything was beautiful and ordered. The animals approached humans without fear because God was within them too. Animals have souls, though not immortal. When sin was brought into this world, everything (plants, animals, earth) decayed and lost it’s perfect beauty and order. The animals wouldn’t approach humans, the plants and trees were exposed to death and ugliness. So we alone didn’t suffer the outcome of sin, but everything else did too. This I summarized from Blessed Anne Emmerich.