You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.
— Paul McCartney
I agree with Paul McCartney. Observe how a person treats both domesticated and wild animals and you will learn a lot about their character. The same can be said for deities. Take the Christian God. The Bible says in Psalm 145:9: The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. Is God truly good and merciful to all, including animals? I will argue in this post that he is not.
What was the first thing God did after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden? The first humans were created naked and got a show on the Discovery channel. However, the moment they ate bananas off the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, breaking God’s command to NOT do so, they sensed they were naked and took fig leaves and sewed them together, making aprons to cover their nakedness. God said their plant-based clothing was inappropriate. What did God do? He killed two animals, skinned them, and made Adam and Eve aprons. These unnamed animals were likely the first creatures to die in the Garden. God could have clothed them in garments made of cotton or polyester, but, instead, he chose to kill two innocent animals so he could use their fur to make clothingfor the sinning couple. God could have created fur garments without killing animals. Still, he wanted to establish the foundation of the blood cult that would one day be called Christianity, so he killed and skinned the animals to provide a covering for Adam and Eve’s nakedness. (Evangelicals believe that while these things really happened, they were meant to be a metaphor for the blood atonement of Jesus on the cross thousands of years later.)
In Genesis 6-9, we find the story of Noah and the flood that killed every human being, save Noah’s family of eight. The Bible gives the justification of God killing every man, woman, child, and fetus as their exceeding wickedness. How fetuses and children were exceedingly wicked is not explained; that is, until centuries later when theologians cooked up the doctrine of original sin to render all of humanity guilty before God and deserving eternal punishment in Hell. Left undiscussed is why Noah had to take pairs of animals upon the ark. Before the first drop of rain fell upon the Earth, God had determined to kill every animal on the face of the earth except those safely ensconced upon the ark. God savagely drowned billions of animals, starved to death countless birds, and killed off saltwater marine life by deluging their habit with fresh water. What, exactly, did these animals do to deserve such callous punishment? Nothing, other than being alive when God decided to violently rain judgment and death upon the human race.
In 1 Samuel 15:3, God commands Saul to kill all the oxen, sheep, camels, and donkeys:
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel, and ass.
In Joshua 11, God commands Joshua to hough all the horses. Hough is King James for hamstring. God commanded Joshua to cut the hamstring on all the horses so they would be unable to run:
And the Lord said unto Joshua, Be not afraid because of them: for to morrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel: thou shalt hough their horses, and burn their chariots with fire.
From these two passages of Scripture, what do we learn? That God has no problem with killing innocent animals or inflicting horrific suffering upon them.
And then there are the blood cult rituals commanded by God throughout the Old Testament. God commanded the Israelites to sacrifice certain animals to atone for their sin and appease his wrath. For Christians, Jesus became the final lamb sacrificed to atone for sin. What we see time after time in the Old Testament is God’s indifference to the cruel suffering and death of animals.
In Exodus 12, we find God telling Moses that he plans to kill all the firstborns in the land of Egypt, including firstborn cattle. God told Moses that the only way for the Israelites to avoid this judgment was to kill a lamb and wipe its blood over the doorposts of their homes. Countless animals died, and for what reason? God wanted to prove a point?
Christian apologist C.S. Lewis attempted to explain these passages of Scripture and others this way:
The Christian explanation of human pain cannot be extended to animal pain. So far as we know beasts are incapable of either sin or virtue: therefore, they can neither deserve pain nor be improved by it. … From the doctrine that God is good we may confidently deduce that the appearance of reckless divine cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion.
The authors of the paper, Neo-Cartesianism and the Expanded Problem of Animal Suffering, explain Lewis’s position thusly:
From the fact the animals suffer we may confidently deduce that either there is no divine Being or he is reckless, cruel, or completely indifferent to animal suffering.
Some Evangelical apologists suggest that these “problems” are in the Old Testament; and that Jesus was different. However, Jesus is God, so it is impossible to divorce him from the actions of the Old Testament deity — that is, unless apologists embrace Arianism, which none of them do.
In the New Testament — Mark 5 — we find the story of a mentally ill man, whom the Bible says is demon-possessed, living in a cemetery, often bound with chains he would break. When Jesus came nearby, the Maniac of Gadera, as he is called in other verses, ran to meet him. Jesus preceded to cast unclean spirits out of him, leaving the man in his right mind. And what did Jesus do with the demons? Why, he cast them into a herd of pigs who promptly ran over a cliff and died. Jesus could have just cast the demons out of the man, killing them with no further action, but, instead, he killed 2,000 animals. And for what, to prove a point? We are not told, but I think that Jesus thought very little of animals. The Jewish blood cult’s animal sacrifices were still going on during Jesus’ thirty-three years on Earth, yet he said not a word about the senseless slaughter of countless animals.
And finally, we come to the book of Revelation, the book that reveals that Jesus is just as bloodthirsty, violent, and cruel as his Father. God rains judgment upon the earth killing virtually every living thing, including animals. Revelation is a sick horror flick beyond imagination, a reminder of the true character of the Christian God. Why does God slaughter most animals? He’s pissed off that Adam and Eve ate bananas off the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so every human being and animal must pay for their disobedience to God.
God is, indeed, a bloodthirsty deity, and Christians have built a blood cult upon his bloodthirstiness. From Genesis to Revelation, we see a violent deity who demands blood sacrifice and has no problem shedding the blood not only of humans, but innocent animals too. This God, if he exists, is unworthy of our fealty and worship. Fortunately, this God is a myth. The only blood lust that we must concern ourselves with is that of our fellow humans, especially those who sit in seats of power, using bloodshed as a means to hold power or gain land/resources. Sadly, way too many of our fellow earthlings are just like the God they worship.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Oh so that’s how it works. When scripture supports your story it’s factual and when it does not support your story it’s metaphorical. Well! How conveeeeenient!
When I was reading the Bible cover to cover ( I was starting to doubt) I was appalled at the cruelty to both people and animals. And Revelations was a nightmare to read. I never thought of Christianity as peaceful again.
The callous and dismissive way in which animals are treated in the bible is something that preyed on my mind as a child, long before I’d come to understand that the bible was nothing more than fables. Now we have developed societal cognitive dissonance when it comes to the subject. We indulge our pets, we think that hunting wild animals for fun is fine, and we allow the most appalling factory practices in the interest of putting cheap food on our plates. Then we watch The Lion King and cry when Mufasa dies.
Boy, you hit the nail on the head, at least for me. I’m really struggling with these issues, so much so that I’ve had extensive discussions with my therapist about them. I go to great lengths to care for feral/stray cats, yet I am not troubled much over eating a hamburger 🍔 at McDonald’s that I know comes from a factory farm. One of my personal goals is to better align my beliefs with how I actually live my life.
I’m reading through a short book by Peter Singer titled Consider the Turkey. It is a direct challenge to my indiscriminate meat eating practices.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/26/consider-the-turkey-peter-singer
Bruce, that article surprised me no end. I’d never thought of the fact that making turkeys over fat might affect their legs, but of course it’s obvious. Wild turkey 8lbs vs factory turkey 41lbs!! My wife is already vegetarian, our son and his wife are strict vegans, and I’m seriously thinking of how I can approach this, mainly to make myself feel better, though perhaps with some health benefit?
I remember in evangelicalism constantly being told that humans are NOT ANIMALS, we are special, made in the image of God and that we have eternal souls, unlike animals. Furthermore, God gave humans dominion over the earth, including animals. It’s all for our use. Humans are dominant and get to decide how and what to use from the earth. If we want to strip mine, no problem. If we want to kill a certain type of animal for its fur, no problem. When someone brought up that dolphins are smart, for example, the answer was along the lines of, “Well, I don’t see any dolphin hospitals so they aren’t that smart.” The question was never whether we should do those things, just that we are given authority to do so.
Where I grew up, even dogs were kept outside for the most part, even in winter. My great-grandmother had an indoor dog, and that was novel in the South in the 70s. It wasn’t until the late 80s that we had an indoor dog instead of outdoor dogs. I was glad for the change because I always felt bad for the outside dogs, because of the weather and because every dog I had as a kid was killed by a car.
I have a problem with our meat system too and struggle with what to do about it.
Leviticus 1 gets right to the point:
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Now the LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying,
“Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When anyone of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or the flock.
‘If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without defect; he shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, so that he may be accepted before the LORD.
‘And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, so that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf.
‘Then he shall slaughter the bull before the LORD; and Aaron’s sons the priests shall offer up the blood and sprinkle the blood around on the altar that is at the doorway of the tent of meeting.
‘He shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces.
‘And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire.
‘Then Aaron’s sons the priests shall arrange the pieces, with the head and the suet, on the wood which is on the fire that is on the altar.
‘Its entrails, however, and its legs he shall wash with water. And the priest shall offer all of it up in smoke on the altar as a burnt offering, an offering by fire as a soothing aroma to the LORD.
Leviticus 1:1-9, NASB
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And the book goes on and on discussing this type of slaughter for many chapters.
How can the Bible have so much bandwidth to discuss the details of slaughtering animals to please God, and yet never have the bandwidth to discuss the scientific method, the concept of the printing press, or basic germ theory? Such knowledge could have eliminated so much suffering if people had only known. But we were told that God had limited bandwidth in his book, and he could only tell us what was important.
I do eat meat, mostly chicken. That said, the You Tube farming channels I watch (Gold Shaw Farm and Stoney Ridge Farmer) haven’t challenged my diet so much as how the animals we use for food (both meat and dairy) are actually treated. I deplore the idea of a CAFO, which Bruce wrote about earlier. I am also appalled that the Amish in particular would allow his type of operation, which is very technology dependent along with being cruel and environmentally destructive.
Both channels also explore how the proper use of grazing animals can actually improve the land. Both channels stress the proper care of their animals.
For Evangelicals, the Bible has to contain absolutely no errors or issues, much like how the Quran is among fundamentalist Muslims, who have their own animal cruelty issues I believe, particularly with how cows are slaughtered.
This is another area, among the many others, where religion allows a person to excuse their own callousness towards both animals and other people. As I always disclose, I am religious myself, and it is an issue I personally struggle with. Because along with a religious personality, I also have a conscience. That conscience tells me, especially as I get older, that all beings have the same feelings and emotions I have, so I need to keep that in mind when living my life.
If the writers of the Bible had known about the existence and extinction of dinosaurs they would have had to invent a reason for this, probably a story about retroactive judgment. God knew what would happen in the garden so he arranged to wipe out these creatures to punish Adam before the original sin even occurred. Of course you still have the issue the age of the universe being billions of years rather than 6000 but that never stopped religious nuts from making up crazy explanations.
At some point in my journey away from Christianity, I considered becoming a Buddhist. The notion of a cow as a sacred animal seemed a little whacky, but I thought it was at least more respectful than fundamentalist versions of Abrahamic religions toward at least one non-human species.
Speaking of the cognitive dissonance Bruce mentioned: Years ago, during my second day in France, I decided to try a delicacy I’d never had before: horse meat. I was fine until the following day. While cycling in the Normandy countryside, I stopped for a mini-picnic. After propping my bike against a tree, I saw a beautiful tawny foal standing by a fence. I walked over to pet it. It’s eyes met mine, and I started to cry, “What have I done?”
I haven’t eaten horse meat since. I have, however, had no problem seeing a cow after eating a cheeseburger. Ditto for encountering live roosters, hens and pullets after eating chicken. (When I tried to become a vegetarian, that was the most difficult meat for me to give up.) Or a mallard after a meal of Peking duck.
Merry Christmas!