I am an atheist because I believe the Bible is a fictional horror story. The writer of the book of Genesis is undisclosed and this is scary. How can such a scary book that has provoked wars through the ages and has encouraged the killing of thousands of innocent animals be considered fact. In real life, the parrot spoke many times for goodness sakes and the elephant painted a picture of an elephant giving a flower to another elephant in Thailand and my pet hamsters have shown me that they understand english by obeying the commands I have given them in english. How can anyone say animals have no sense of being here after these occurrences. One can only dig deep into the bible to get the fictional story out. But it is still a fictional story that is resulting in thousands of sensible nice animals being killed in the most horrible ways.
Another thing that brought me from Christianity to Atheism was that I did not like the fact that God said it was okay to kill animals for food in the Old Testament of the Bible. It did not make sense to me that God gave Moses the commandment thou shalt not kill and then went ahead to give him laws telling him which animals to kill for food. God seemed to contradict himself by commanding Moses not to kill and then commanding Moses to kill 'animals'. I love animals and I don't like them being killed for food, leather or fur. This is my main reason for leaving Christianity. I don't like the fact that Jesus taught Peter how to catch fish as fish have the right to live life to the full and enjoy swimming in the water and Peter had the right not to catch any fish and hence kill no fish. Animals have feelings too and if God really did make the animals as the Bible says he did, he would know this and not command us to kill them.
Chickens are definitely not on this planet to be food for humans and foxes. Once I saw four chickens in a cage, two females and two males and one of the female chickens kissed the male chicken on the beak and then went on to kiss the other female chicken on the beak. The other female chicken's response to the kiss was to kiss the other male chicken on the beak and the male chicken she kissed responded by kissing the other male chicken on the beak. I never knew before that chickens kiss each other. That was a pleasure to see. It is nice to be kind and polite to all people. Chickens are delightful animals to spend time with and their young are very cute and fluffy to carry and feed.
I believe in loving everyone no matter how small or large the person is. So whether the person is fly or elephant, I believe in still loving the person. So flies can live with us as humans and we can live with elephants as humans and as long as we can love everyone, the flies are safe with us as humans and we are safe as humans with the elephants.
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
The bible has many senseless acts of cruelty to both humans and animals - Noah's Flood being a prime example.
I'm a meat eater myself who periodically thinks about moving over to a vegetarian diet. I don't think it is something I could ever give up completely, but the stories I hear about the mass-produced meat industry certainly horrify me.
Wow a kindred spirit.
I started reading HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe at 6 years old and felt the Bible was more terrifying.
rmfr
Not many replies in this thread, maybe because many people, like me, don't share your passion about animals, Ann.
Dunno - just saying. Maybe we who are atheists are no better than the god that religious people worship, though that god ought to be better than us heathens.
Mu.
I never get why religious people care about animals. In the oldest Abrahamic traditions they are still being slaughtered for sacrifice. And what's the best part of the Noah flood story? Obviously it is when Noah takes one of every clean animal and burns it to death. But wait. There were not trees to start that fire with. How right you are. And that's why there is not ark any more. God loves the smell of BBQ.
Cognostic,
"And what's the best part of the Noah flood story? Obviously it is when Noah takes one of every clean animal and burns it to death. But wait. There were not trees to start that fire with. How right you are. And that's why there is not ark any more. God loves the smell of BBQ."
The Noah story just keeps giving. It's so full of shit.
As you pointed out, when Noah and his family got off the ark they immediately killed one of each of the two clean animals that they had on the ark. So how did the surviving animals reproduce when there was only one of each kind left after Noah went nuts on his slaughter?
Hello Anne:
I find it sickening that live sheep are still exported to the Middle East, especially for use in sacrifices. The conditions on the ships are appalling, resulting in many deaths en route, and the killing methods are far from humane.
New Zealand has already banned the trade, and Australia is considering a ban. The sooner the better.
What kind of idiot god likes the smell of burnt meat, anyway?
I totally agree it is inhumane to sacrifice animals especially alive. It's awfully cruel to the animals. I hope it stops. I met sheep once and one of the sheep was really cute. he was trying hard to get hold of the leaves with his teeth. He kept pulling at the branches of the tree. So I just pulled the leaves off the branches and threw them into his outdoor pen and he was very grateful. He even went towards me to rub me with his nose. True cuteness!!!
"What kind of idiot god likes the smell of burnt meat, anyway?"
And I find it more ridiculous when the theists crap all over the "Satanic/Pagan" for doing the same thing that they used to do and still do.
As Sam Elliot once said, "You are a special kind of stupid, aren't you."
rmfr
It is always the most vulnerable of us that suffer first and most. The most vulnerable? The animals.
If you cut out domesticated mammals, birds etc, and livestock we humans have managed to reduce the total biomass of mammals, birds and large reptiles by over 90%
A 3rd party alien race would see humans as incredibly vicious life destroying as humans rose to the very top to dominate all other life. Humans may have intelligence, but that trait aside we humans are the bad guys when it comes to life on this planet.
Being vegetarian or vegan, is a choice we can make to help alleviate the destruction a bit, with a bulk of the good being how incredibly resource intensive meat products are.
Every human being is intrinsically kind and good natured. We all started off cute, kind and good natured babies who did not know how to hate anyone on first instinct. Therefore human beings are being taught to not care about animals through religious dogma not through natural hate of animals. Meat is incredibly attractive to be eaten by both humans and animals so it is difficult to help animals not to be killed by telling people not to eat meat. It is easier to help animals not to be killed by approaching it from the angle of religious dogma forcing people not to care about animals when people naturally care about others when allowed to.