Animal Rights Sound Bites, Vegetarianism

Animal Rights Sound Bites

For Conversations with Religious Christians

CLC = Christian Lacking Compassion, AR = Animal Rights

AR: I am a Christian, eating meat is against my religion. Jesus has taught me to be merciful and a steward of God's creatures and the environment.

CLC: You should not be concerned with diet, health, and clothing, you should be concerned with God and your soul.

AR: My advocacy of compassion for God's creatures really is not based on eating a healthy diet or on fashion. I advocate compassion to God's creatures for moral and spiritual reasons only. The benefits of a plant based diet are significant in terms of improved health and protection of the environment, but they are only fringe benefits.

CLC: You should not be so hung up with vegetarianism. You should be concerned with God and religion.

AR: To animal rights supporters, every meal that does not contain God's creatures, is a spiritual experience.

AR: I am not the one hung-up or addicted to the primitive practice of eating the flesh of God's creatures.

CLC: Eating meat is not an addiction.

AR: My definition of addiction is something that is detrimental to yourself and others that cannot be voluntarily stopped for extended periods. Allow your heart to overrule your tongue when making food choices. Seek counseling or spiritual guidance for your addiction.

CLC: I did not fight my way to the top of the food chain so I could be served a plate of lettuce.

AR: Actually you did not fight your way to the top of the food chain. You have been put there by people who profit from exploiting your health, the environment, and God's creatures. In the animal kingdom food chain, stronger and more intelligent non-human animals consume the weak and less intelligent. Humans are comparatively weak and are not equipped to kill non-human animals with our bare hands. Our teeth cannot even tear through raw cow hide. Our intestines are more like a plant-eater in that they are long in comparison to our body length, and we surely do not show our intelligence by consuming an unhealthy meat based diet.

CLC: Well animals eat other animals, what about that?

AR: I do not make moral judgments of non-human animals. I also make it a point not to get dietary guidance from non-human animals. If I used non-human animals as a model, I might be tempted to father multiple children from multiple partners or steal. I think it is more wise to get my dietary guidance from the 1) the bible, Gen. 1:29, I give plants for food; 2) morality, eating only plants prevents horrific suffering, and 3) science which tells me I can live a more healthy life by eating a balanced diet of fruits, legumes, vegetables, and grains.

CLC: What if you do not intentionally kill the animal? What about road-kill, is it OK to eat road kill?

AR: Dead animal flesh is not part of a healthy diet (i.e., the four food groups including vegetables, legumes, grains, and fruits) and does not comply with God's dietary guidance in Gen. 1:29. However, the question seems to ask "is it morally wrong to eat an animal that was accidentally killed?" The question is similar to "is digitally created child pornography harmful?" The answer in both cases would likely be yes, because it could condones unhealthy practices. Ex 22:31, And ye shall be holy men unto me; neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs. This is likely a survival instruction warning man that scavenging meat from predators was not healthy, and the same concept would apply to road-kill.

CLC: What if you were starving, would you kill and eat an animal?

AR: The question of "would you kill and eat an animal if you were starving?" is often asked in an attempt to justify today's practice of killing and eating animals for pleasure. History has shown that starving men will do desperate things including eating the flesh of man. The point is that today we have abundant supplies of plant foods and we are not faced with that choice. Our only choice today is "are we willing to sacrifice the pleasure of eating dead animal body parts in the name of compassion of God's creatures?". What a starving man would do is irrelevant.

CLC: What about plants, don't they feel pain, don't you kill them when you eat them?

AR: Gen. 1:29, I give plants for food.

AR: Plants may experience an insult to their bodily integrity, but they lack the pain receptors, the spinal cord, and the brain that are necessary for animals to feel pain.

AR: The ability to experience pain helps animals survive; it really would serve no purpose in plants.

AR: Less total lives are lost (plant and animal) if we only eat a plant based diet. It takes 16 lb.. of grain to produce 1 lb. beef. It is much more efficient and healthy for us to eat plants directly rather than feed them to non-human animals and then eat the animals. Ref. [6] Page 293

CLC: You cannot get adequate nutrition just from plants, what about calcium in [cow] milk, and the protein and iron in meat?

AR: By eating a balanced diet of the four food groups, vegetables, legumes, grains, and fruits, you can easily meet all your nutritional requirements for calcium, protein, and iron. The only reason we eat meat is because we enjoy the taste of dead animal body parts. Ref. 5 PCRM.org

AR: Humans are the only animals that drink milk past infancy, and we choose to drink the mammary fluids of another species. I get my calcium from the same place cows and elephants get their calcium from; plants. Also, to my knowledge, protein deficiency is an extremely rare condition in the US, how many protein deficient people have you actually met?

AR: Humans are the only species that drink milk past infancy, and we drink the mammary fluids of another species. Strangely, the countries that drink the most milk have the highest incidence of osteoporosis. I get my calcium from the same place that elephants and cows get there calcium: plants. If I want more calcium, I can get it through supplements. It is not necessary for me to support the veal industry to get calcium.

CLC: God intended us to eat meat to get adequate nutrition. For example, a vegan diet is inadequate because it does not include Vitamin B-12.

AR: Our nutritional requirements for Vitamin B-12 are very small, on the order of micrograms per day. We used to get adequate B-12 from the bacteria in the dirt that was present on vegetables. If vegetables are thoroughly cleaned, it removes the bacteria and vitamin B-12. We can receive adequate supplies of vitamin B-12 from supplements similar to how industry already places vitamins in cereals and orange juice. You cannot really justify horrific torture and killing of God's creatures to get vitamin B-12, when we can easily get it through supplements.

AR: I would choose a vegan diet for moral reasons even if it were not healthy; however, as it turns out, a balanced vegan diet is more healthy and causes less damage to the environment. A truly compassionate person could make no other choice.

CLC: It�s OK to be a vegetarian, but that won�t get you into heaven!

AR: I advocate veganism and animal rights for moral reasons only; not for a ticket to heaven.

AR: Similarly, causing animals to suffer for pleasure does not qualify one for heaven either. However, I do feel more comfortable that when I finally meet Jesus I can tell him that I tried to live a life of compassion.

CLC: There are vegetarians at my church that say you give them a bad name!

AR: �The only thing necessary for evil to triump is for good men to do nothing.� Edmund Burke.

AR: �I think not much of a man�s religion whose animals are not better off for it.� Abraham Lincoln

CLC: I�m sorry, meat just tastes good. God must have intended us to eat meat.

AR: Dating my sister-in-law might be pleasurable, but I wouldn�t do it. Eating veal might be pleasurable but it is not worth the suffering.

AR: Meat might taste good, but one cannot call meat "good" if it is produced by killing God's creatures, causes harm to the environment and human health, and teaches children that killing and torturing for pleasure is acceptable.