I can understand where you come from in the thought that we can not judge god. I felt that way for years as I struggled to cling to my faith. This can easily stop a conversation dead in its tracks, which was my concern. Eventually though I came to the conclusion that in order to know god best, I had to open up everything to review, and subsequently possibly change. As long as this won’t be a sticking point, we can keep it tucked away to the side for now and agree to disagree on that.
You and I kill and consume animals in large part because of biology…we are indeed omnivores by nature. Nevertheless, our biology gives us dominion and some degree of sovereignty over them. Animals lose habitat to us and we kill them for reasons other than food. From the animals position, biology, nature, and perspective this is just the way it is. No amount of instinctive or mental protest within them makes a dime’s bit of difference in what we do or whether or not we are justified in doing it in within their limited understanding. You are still unable to reconcile the dilemna I presented. Your judgments/ insights about God’s actions are at least to some degree no better than the animals judgments/insights as they pertain to your actions. As stated above I agree with some of what you say here. However, it is also true that the animals you kill and consume do not understand or care about your biology of your moral views. They only know that something terrible is happening to them. You cannot claim that you do not inflict undue suffering on animals. You may not do it directly but you pay others to raise and slaughter animals, and the treatment of these animals is often far from what most would consider humane.
Very true, conditions are by far not ideal. So let’s look at the modern human’s options. They could become vegetarian, however, run the real risk of malnutrition, as well as have a significant increase in spending and a significant increase of time to prepare vege meals. Fresh fruit and vegetables are not cheap (nor is quality meat). Most middle class people do what they can to live a good life, while putting their family’s survival as the number 1 priority. Many work 2 jobs and still live paycheck to paycheck. The majority do not fully understand the conditions that many slaughterhouse animals go through, and of those that do, most have enough on their plates already (no pun intended! ) to be able to fully ensure the highest standard of ethics of how the animals are treated. Though really, we should do more with the options we do have. I don’t agree with the morality of killing for fur, as there are less expensive more humane options out there for warmth. Come to think of it, the issue of animal ethics here is so large it could be its own separate thread! So to quickly surmise, if humans weren’t constrained by a relatively small amount of options, we could easily assure superior humane treatment. God has options which are not available to humans, therefore, should be held to an even higher standard than humans, which is why I see choosing an option for more pain, when other options are readily available, as suspect, and that’s the sticking point.
You are not in a position to know what other options are open to God in dealing with men. Men, unfettered by religious restraints, have been left to their own devices and have demonstrated over and over how evil they can be. In many cases they clearly deserve death even by the most gentle of human judgements. Unless God were to eliminate free will, which is an essential human characteristic, then it is very difficult to tell just what options are available. Again, this is not something that we are in a position to really know or judge.
God has infinite power and therefore multitude of options. The Bible is one place to start to see what god’s abilities/options are - miracles, control the weather, send angels to kill, kill instantly, protect, etc.
Actually, many vegetarians simply look at Michael Vick’s actions…
This reply could be combined with the one above, plus more, for a big animal rights thread
I’ve tried to cut down my comments in this reply about vegetarians and animal rights, since it could otherwise take up a lot of space and might detract from the larger issues we are looking at, and I was already wordy enough a few paragraphs up! I’m going to try to keep my view simply “It is not wrong to kill an animal to satisfy biology as long as it is done in the least painful/most humane option available(considering the many shades of gray this issue holds)”. If you feel I’ve skipped over part of the vegetarian issue that is important to the larger discussion, please just let me know.
Also, I see you’ve posted a couple more posts since I started typing this. I need to get some rest before work so won’t have time to respond to those yet. I look forward to our continued conversation
