Is hunting a sin?

[JimR-OCDS]

triumphguy

You are welcome to your opinion - however…

Thank you.

Obviously you’ve never hunted.

As I stated earlier int his thread, I use to be an avid hunter. I deer hunted with a bow, but I eventually got into pheasant hunting, which I found much more rewarding than sitting on a deer stand. Also, I loved raising and training English Springer Spaniels.

However, I grew out of it, as the violence associated with hunting, turned me off.

And killing an animal is not violence. It’s part of the natural order.

There is a level of violence in all forms of killing. Raising pheasants, which are not native to this country and putting them out in the wild just before winter, where those which don’t get shot, have no chance of survival is violence to the bird.

I am personally against game ranches though as being unnatural… except maybe in Africa where it gives people who would otherwise poach endangered species a chance to make a living, and so protect the truly wild animals.

So on this we agree. No you can take flack for your opinion,.

Jim

 

[tafan]

“Well you don’t know me, so you don’t know the hunters I have met and know.”

Well you don’t know me, but that did not stop you from started all this by disparaging my spirituality because I presented arguments in favor of hunting.

 

[triumphguy]

triumphguy

Thank you.

As I stated earlier int his thread, I use to be an avid hunter. I deer hunted with a bow, but I eventually got into pheasant hunting, which I found much more rewarding than sitting on a deer stand. Also, I loved raising and training English Springer Spaniels.

I missed that - so you didn’t find deer hunting peaceful?

However, I grew out of it, as the violence associated with hunting, turned me off.

OK - obviously you don’t have to enjoy it at all, and I hope you are finding something peaceful to do.

There is a level of violence in all forms of killing. Raising pheasants, which are not native to this country and putting them out in the wild just before winter, where those which don’t get shot, have no chance of survival is violence to the bird.

So on this we agree. No you can take flack for your opinion,.

No prob

Jim

 

[JimR-OCDS]

“Well you don’t know me, so you don’t know the hunters I have met and know.”

Well you don’t know me, but that did not stop you from started all this by disparaging my spirituality because I presented arguments in favor of hunting.

Sorry you took what I said personally.

But I stand by what I said.

A person who hopes to grow spiritually will be forced to give up hunting, for eventually he’ll see God in everything and have an interior conflict with hunting for mere sport.

Jim

 

[triumphguy]

Sorry you took what I said personally.

But I stand by what I said.

A person who hopes to grow spiritually will be forced to give up hunting, **for eventually he’ll see God in everything **and have an interior conflict with hunting for mere sport.

Jim

Could that not make hunting MORE rather than less spiritual?

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Could that not make hunting MORE rather than less spiritual?

Well seeing God in a living creature, then killing it just for sport, would not be conducive for a person seeking a deeper spiritual life.

Be clear in what I’m saying. I’m not talking about people who hunt for necessity, whether it’s for food or helping prevent over populations of certain species.

Jim

 

[tafan]

Sorry you took what I said personally.

But I stand by what I said.

A person who hopes to grow spiritually will be forced to give up hunting, for eventually he’ll see God in everything and have an interior conflict with hunting for mere sport.

Jim

Apology accepted.

Now that that is out if the way, tell me again given the game ranch example: Why is it better for the animals to bit exist at all vs they exist, yet some will be killed by hunters?

I said the two options seemed morally neutral, you claim the former is always better. Why?

Lets just keep spirituality out if it and address the moral aspects.

 

[triumphguy]

Well seeing God in a living creature, then killing it just for sport, would not be conducive for a person seeking a deeper spiritual life.

Be clear in what I’m saying. I’m not talking about people who hunt for necessity, whether it’s for food or helping prevent over populations of certain species.

Jim

Here’s an interesting article on the subject:

cic-wildlife.org/index.php?id=16

Essentially, hunting is a spiritual experience precisely because it submerges us in nature, and that experience teaches us that we are participants in something far greater than man. Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher, described the hunter as the alert man. He could not have said it better. When we hunt we experience extreme alertness to the point of an altered state of consciousness. For the hunter everything is alive, and he is one with the animal and its environment.

Though the hunter may appear from the outside to be a staunch egotist dominating nature, on the inside he is exactly the opposite. He identifies with the animal as his kin, and he feels, as Ortega said, tied through the earth to it. The conscious and deliberate humbling of the hunter to the level of the animal is virtually a religious rite.

And

In a world imperiled by egoism and disrespect for nature, hunting is morally good for men and women, boys and girls. Hunters understand the meaning in Lao Tzu’s statement,

The Earth is perfect,
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it,
You will ruin it.
If you try to hold it,
You will lose it.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Apology accepted.

Now that that is out if the way, tell me again given the game ranch example: Why is it better for the animals to bit exist at all vs they exist, yet some will be killed by hunters?

I said the two options seemed morally neutral, you claim the former is always better. Why?

Lets just keep spirituality out if it and address the moral aspects.

Yeah, it’d be better if the animal hadn’t existed at all, then to be kept in a hunting ranch preserve with electric fences and baiting, just to be shot for sport.

I can’t keep spirituality out of it, because life has much to do with spirituality.

There’s a level of pride for hunters who sport hunt at these reservations, trying to kill the deer with the largest rack. Why? So they can have the head mounted and impress people.

Pride is damaging in spirituality.

Jim

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Here’s an interesting article on the subject:

cic-wildlife.org/index.php?id=16

And

This merely brings me back to the Henry David Thoreau quote I posted earlier.

There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the “best men,” as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions. Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd’s dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd. Henry David Thoreau

Also, I disagree with the statement in the article you posted that hunting is a spiritual experience, especially hunting for sport at a hunting preserve.

It is on a very primitive level, but not on a higher level.

You can commune with nature without killing animals for sport.

Jim

 

[tafan]

ort

Yeah, it’d be better if the animal hadn’t existed at all, then to be kept in a hunting ranch preserve with electric fences and baiting, just to be shot for sport.

.

Ok, a game ranch with no baiting, or electric fence. Still same opinion?

 

[JimR-OCDS]

ort.

Ok, a game ranch with no baiting, or electric fence. Still same opinion?

It’s better to have animals experience a life of freedom and breeding according to nature.

But most hunting ranches don’t operate that way.

When I was down in Austin, our sales rep took customers for a hunt at a ranch, and it wasn’t cheap. Something in the order of $4000. You could feed a family of four longer with $4000 than the amount of meat the one deer would provide.

The entire operation is run for profit, not for the benefit of the deer or other animals they offered.

The hunters are brought to a tree stand where the deer have been baited for a while. The deer merely believe they’re coming for their food, only to be shot.

The entire preserve is protected with electric fence.

To me, this isn’t natural.

What would your opinion be of such a ranch, only the animals being hunted were domestic dogs?

Would the dogs be better off never having been brought into existence?

Jim

 

[tafan]

It’s better to have animals experience a life of freedom and breeding according to nature.

But most hunting ranches don’t operate that way.

When I was down in Austin, our sales rep took customers for a hunt at a ranch, and it wasn’t cheap. Something in the order of $4000. You could feed a family of four longer with $4000 than the amount of meat the one deer would provide.

The entire operation is run for profit, not for the benefit of the deer or other animals they offered.

The hunters are brought to a tree stand where the deer have been baited for a while. The deer merely believe they’re coming for their food, only to be shot.

The entire preserve is protected with electric fence.

To me, this isn’t natural.

What would your opinion be of such a ranch, only the animals being hunted were domestic dogs?

Would the dogs be better off never having been brought into existence?

Jim

Rather strange, is my opinion. Most game ranches I have heard of are larger, and deer is not the game, other more exotic animals. Paying that much for a deer hunt? Lots of cheaper ways of doing it. Baiting? Doesn’t bother me, it keeps young bucks from being killed, baiting is accepted as part of fishing.

I am not a dog lover, a ranch to hunt dogs? Extremely strange I would think?

Lots of animals don’t have freedom. And life in the wild is rather difficult for most anyway.

None if what you describe would be of interest to me, but I don’t condemn it.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Michelle Arnold (staff apologist) addresses that question here.

That is an early answer I gave. Here is a later answer, which reflects more thinking I’ve done on the issue in the years since.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Correct me, here:

A dog = a boy

A baby = ???

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Correct me, here:

A dog = a boy

A baby = ???

And this has what to do with the topic of the thread?

Jim