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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
