Be a friend to animals and shun faiths that downgrade their rights

 

The predominant religious and faith view regarding animals is that an animal has the right only not to be tortured but does not have a right to life. This implies basic care is okay.  It implies that pampering your pet is going too far.  It implies that if you are sure an animal does not have much awareness then you may torture it.  Now the same people say that human life is sacred and must never be taken except when forced to in self-defence.  They also say that the argument that quality of life and happiness cannot come first for they cannot matter much if your life does not matter in the first place.  This totally contradicts what they say about animal rights.  If an animal has the right to get basic care then its life must matter. It shows that religion's opposition to evil is not opposition to evil.  Selective opposition to evil is not opposition to evil at all.    We may have found exactly why moralistic ideologies such as Christianity and Communism and whatever else you can think of are not solutions to the problem of human violence and the wider problem of being permissive to violence.  The violence appears and we should not wonder at it.

 

Many animal species such as dolphins feel pain as acutely as humans do and seem capable of suffering.  This is what science has shown.  Despite the fact that observation by non-scientists senses that nearly all animals suffer like us even though scientists say it only looks that way we are still very neglectful and cold and even cruel.  Science can tell us that an animal is tortured but not if it is right or wrong to do so.  Religion typically ignores the torture and does not show the respect due to a suffering animal that a suffering person would get.

 

Animals suffer the loss of life and they may have pain when we kill them “humanely” for food. Humane does not mean harmless killing. It cannot mean that. We are warped if we see taking an animal’s life as harmless. Humane is us boasting that we can do that to animals and feel smug about our good intention. The animal does not care about our intention.

 

It is impossible to deny that our treatment of animals is evil. Killing an animal even painlessly is using a conscious being for our benefit. It is taking away its happiness and its opportunity to be happy. It implies that we cannot object if some alien being comes along and eats us on the grounds that it is a being better than us. The atheist may eat meat and even kill animals. That is evil. But the atheist does not make the situation worse by acting and feeling as if God approves of his behaviour. Religion deepens vice.

 

Gary Francione author of Introduction to Animal Rights deals us how "death is the greatest harm for any sentient being and…merely being sentient logically implies an interest in continued existence and some awareness of that interest…. Sentience is not an end in itself—it is a means to the end of staying alive. Sentient beings use sensations of pain and suffering to escape situation that threaten their lives and sensations of pleasure to pursue situations that enhance their lives…. Sentience is what evolution has produced in order to ensure the survival of certain complex organisms."

Religion, especially Christianity, says that without the right to life no other right matters or exists.  But what about animals?  Theologians and philosophers say animals do not have a right to life but they do have a right to be free from suffering.  Contradictions galore!  If animals have no right to life then it must be morally neutral or even good to torment them.  If unborn babies have no right to life then the Church should urge those who believe this to torment them if they wish to.  For religion to say that "Without the right to life no other right matters or exists" applies only to humans is advocating the killing of animals as murder.  If you think you murder by killing an animal it will be the lamb today and the toddler tomorrow.

We must do all in our power to make animals happy for the more happiness the better. Nature is red in tooth and claw and we must bring joy into the lives of animals.

 

We must try to get away from eating animals. We know that nature is cruel. The poor animals that it makes into predators don't understand. They have enough to suffer. The higher the consciousness in an animal the more wrong it is to kill and eat the animal.

 

We cannot stop animals being cruel to each other. But we know better. We cannot start being cruel to animals ourselves.

 

Meat-eating must be reserved for cases of necessity, when people will starve. Animals that need flesh to eat must not be deprived of it. We cannot starve our own animals so that other ones might live. We can look after our animals and we produce more animal happiness by putting their well-being before the life of the animals killed for their food.

 

Do your research and make sure that any animal killed for food has been killed as humanely as possible and has had a comfortable life.

 

If it is wrong to be cruel to an animal then the happier we can make the animal the better. We are not making it any happier by killing it.

 

Animals have the power that dwells in us that makes them aware of what their senses tell them.

 

For practical reasons, though they are equal to us in value we cannot treat them as such. We have to treat people as equals.

 

If we have to kill an animal, we must do it as kindly as possible and for grave reasons. We must not take pleasure in it.

 

To love an animal and to bless it provides an opportunity to exalt its spirit so that it can become a human being in its next life. A human being can never return as an animal.

Regarding secret camera recording animals being abused in religious slaughterhouses 2015
 
There is a lot of barbarism against animals in the name of religion. Jesus said that he didn't come to do away with the Jewish law but to have it fulfilled better. He claimed responsibility for inspiring that law. And it often commands that animals be bled slowly cruelly to death to get all the blood out. That command was retained by Jesus' followers according to the Acts of the Apostles. If any Christians read this, I'd ask them to become aware of their own hypocrisy before they condemn the barbarism in Jewish and Muslim slaughterhouses. Their hypocrisy enables the problem. You need to have a credible voice before you can challenge the evil done by others.

Even if we do have to kill animals for food, it should be seen as a necessary and regrettable evil. It is not something to be celebrated as a sacrifice. And Jesus would have worshipped at such sacrifices in the Temple. He revered evil scriptures that commanded such sacrifices. The Islamic and Jewish stress on making meat somehow holy by killing the animal according to their rules is based on a similar refusal to look at evil and admit what it is. It is denial: killing animals is never good. It is never something to be happy about.

 

Leviticus 20:15,16 says God wants an animal that is raped by a man or woman put to death along with the rapist. It goes as far as to say, “their blood is upon them”.  This meant stoning to death.  That is the kind of book Jesus said was God's unerring word and that if anybody got around its rules they would suffer for it in Matthew 5.

 

Luke's gospel says Jesus was related to the priestly class [Zechariah and Elizabeth]... did he kill animals in sacrifice himself at any point?  Well in those times he certainly killed animals cruelly for his own food.  Even today there are abuses against animals despite the regulations protecting them.  Then there was nothing and nobody cared.

 

It is typically only persons that are thought of as fair or unfair. We don't think the gorilla is being unjust when it kills one from another tribe just for encroaching on its patch. It is claimed that we learn that from observation.  But that does not fit the notion that you cannot really know what it is like to be a gorilla and that there is more to every creature than you can see.  And gorillas go crazy when someone steals their food or their babies.  They may have a rudimentary sense of fairness.  It is not observation that is telling us.  We just look at them and it is about their appearance. We don't want to think we have a lot in common with them.  Human nature calls its sense of fairness a gift from God but when you see how warped and selective it is, that is a boast and should offend any sensible God.

 

Animal rights are valid and those who hurt animals find ways to hurt people too.

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