Does God Support Factory Farms?

Copied from Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians http://www.serv-online.org/


Does God Support Factory Farms?
Why You Should Care about the Faith-Based Arguments for (and against) Animal Liberation
by Bruce Friedrich

I’ve been a vegan for 15 years and a full-time animal advocate for more than 6 years. During this time, I’ve noticed that many animal activists are not as well-versed as they might be in discussing vegetarianism and animal issues with people of faith. I can understand this. Although a practicing Roman Catholic with a degree in Religion and a continuing interest in Biblical exegesis, I’ll admit that even I tire of the common faith-based arguments against animal rights and vegetarianism. You know them: “God put animals here for our use,” “What about animal sacrifice in the Bible?,” “But Jesus ate meat,” and so on.

It’s understandable (and easy enough) to simply throw up one’s hands and go about the business of talking to all the people who don’t subscribe to the monotheistic faiths. But I would like to suggest that the level of animal suffering requires that we make pragmatic decisions, and that a dismissive or disdainful attitude toward religion does our constituents, the animals, a grave disservice.

According to polls, forty percent of Americans believe in strict creationism, the Bible-based view that humans were created in final form by God, and are not the product of evolution. Surely, I figured, this must be the more liberal notion that, although humans evolved over time, God was involved in setting the process in motion. But no; according to polls, forty percent of Americans believe that evolution is wrong. Heck, even my own Catholic Church, no bastion of liberal thought, accepts evolution.....

Read the entire piece at:
http://www.serv-online.org/Bruce-Friedrich.htm

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