For many, a divine sanction for animal exploitation is found in Book 1, Chapter 1 of the Bible: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Never mind that three verses later there appears an apparent mandate for vegetarianism, the damage had been done. Mankind has dominion; animals are our resources, a status, by the way, confirmed by the Catholic Church in its “Catechism”:
“Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity.” While the Church concedes that we “owe them kindness…it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing.” And more: “They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice, if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.” And finally, while “it is contrary to human [emphasis mine] dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly, it is unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.”
Inconveniently, however, the Bible also says the following:
Exodus 21: “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve. … If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s. … And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.”
Leviticus 25: “Both thy bondmen [slaves], and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children…to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever.”
Numbers 31: “And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. … And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. … And Moses said unto them…now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
Deuteronomy 7: “And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them [the non-chosen, apparently] before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew [show] mercy unto them.”
Deuteronomy 21: “And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.”
Deuteronomy 21: “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city…and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”
Nahum 1: “God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.”
1 Corinthians 14: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”
Ephesians 5: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”
These passages and more have provided (still provide) basis for the worst our species can do. “Collective Jewish Guilt” (for Jesus’ death) as attested in the Gospels (“good news”) gave rise to virulent antisemitism, culminating in the “Final Solution.” The Southern plantation class – otherwise intelligent and learned men, but indoctrinated in biblical myths from birth – saw human bondage as heavenly ordained.
South Carolina Congressman James Hammond, 1836: “The doom of Ham [Genesis 9] has been branded on the form and features of his African Descendants. The hand of fate has united his color and his destiny. Man cannot separate what God hath joined. … I believe [slavery] to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region.”
Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, 1850: “It is a fact which history fully establishes, that through the portal of slavery alone, has the decendant of the graceless son of Noah [Ham] ever entered the temple of civilization. … It is enough for me elsewhere to know, that it [slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God, that it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations.”
(That passage on Ham’s “African descendants” held sway well beyond the Civil War, with Senator Robert Byrd reading it during a filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
When “biblical infallibility” fails, as it eventually did with slavery, Church-sponsored scholars advise the masses to read with “context,” to disregard, if you will, the Bible’s more incongruous passages – that is, the ones in which a tyrannical deity instructs his “chosen” on the finer points of genocide, filicide, subjugation, rape, etc. The Word, apparently, is flexible. To the rational, of course, this is folly, a desperate attempt to sustain the unsustainable. With sanity now properly applied, the Bible’s moral authority is repudiated, the Dominion Defense collapses, and animals move from God’s gifts to the autonomous beings nature intended. In other words, a new paradigm emerges, one based on reason and compassion rather than superstition. Imagine that.
“The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this was the idea that finally turned that world into something like a wasteland, a land where people were living inauthentic lives, never doing a thing they truly wanted to because the supernatural laws required them to live as directed by their clergy. In a wasteland, people are fulfilling purposes that are not properly theirs but have been put upon them as inescapable laws. This is a killer…. The spirit is really the bouquet of life. It is not something breathed into life, it comes out of life. This is one of the glorious things about the mother-goddess religions, where the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity isn’t something ruling over and above a fallen nature…. Our story of the fall in the Garden sees nature as corrupt; and that myth corrupts the whole world for us. Because nature is thought of as corrupt, every spontaneous act is sinful and must not be yielded to. You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
To be clear, I am not saying God authorized cruelty to animals, just that the Dominion passage has been interpreted as such through the centuries. (Note: cruelty is inherent to exploitation, so it is wholly irrelevant that both the Bible and the Church’s catechism only advise on the exploitation of animals.)
The Bible says, “The righteous man regardeth the life of his beast….” and not regards as in simply acknowledging its existence but as in caring for it. The Bible also says that God knows when each sparrow falls, the context being that He is acutely aware of the fate of all His creation. While humans were given dominion, it was not meant to be free rein for cruelty and abuse. There are other examples, such as allowances for rescuing a hurt or trapped animal on the holy sabbath when no other work was to be done. No where is it ever implied that any form of cruelty is sanctioned by God or the Bible.
Yes, it does make matters more easily confused when you use the word ‘sanction’ which has two meanings that are opposite of each other; 1) Approval or Permission, and 2) Penalty or Punishment.
To the extent one allows their desires for things of this world to control them, the world has dominion over them, and they are mentally and physically enslaved to those desires.
To the extent one desires to be guided by the spiritual, non-material, they instead have dominion over the world, and it does not enslave them.
The reference to dominion was not intended to justify human domination over creation, as is usually interpreted. It is a warning not to let earthly desires of any kind to subdue your mind and therefore your body and therefore your destiny.
Have dominion over your earthly desires or they will have dominion over you. Show me your desires and I will show you your Lord.
Again, I think you missed the point, Wanda.
The damage was done when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and that is when sin was introduced into the world of humankind. God does not advocate cruelty to animals. He does not advocate for people to choose to do evil. He created Adam and Eve with a free will to choose. He didn’t want people to be like robots or slaves without the ability to exercise free will. He wants people to have eternal life, not death or separation from the Creator.
Because Adam and Eve was disobedient to God in the Garden of Eden, we are born into sin. We have the Free Will to choose right from wrong. Most people choose to do wrong more than they choose to do right.
There are many interpretations of the Holy Bible and Catholicism is a mixture of Paganism and Christianity. It is full of pagan symbols, pagan rituals, and pagan teachings due to the evil in man’s heart. I could go on but I will say that God doesn’t advocate cruelty to animals and for you to mislead people into thinking that God advocates cruelty to animals is wrong.
I think you missed the point, Sharon.
The Lamb that endured 6 hours of satanic cruelty is the one who defeated the sniveling coward at Cavalry…600 soldiers to arrest one man…they couldn’t kill Jesus because He willingly gave up His life on the Cross and the despicable satan couldn’t make Jesus hate – Remember Jesus’s final words? “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” You all are going to need Jesus in the very near future because sinners He will be making His return and satan will be going where he belongs to the dinner table of Maggots and Worms. Read Isaiah then Revelation because you certainly need to find Jesus before His return. As for Horse Racing Wrongs you real agenda is to start hostility towards Christians. Shame on you all for hidden agenda that had been revealed in this despicable display of gross ignorance of Jesus and all he suffered to save your sorry souls.
I view the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran, and other religious texts as basically collections of myths, legends, and fables, some of which are purported to be history, some of which are basic tenets on how to lead a good life.
Treat each other fairly.
Be kind.
Help one another.
And so on.
But, I don’t take any of them as the be all and end all as to how I should lead my life. Just a general guide.
I believe our Creator gave us brains for a reason. To use them. If using them gets us in trouble, She expects us to use our brains to get ourselves out of trouble. She made us. Her job is done. It’s up to us now.
I think our Creator gave every living being a soul. And, yes, some of those souls feed and clothe us. Some are companions, or help us in our jobs. Some help produce food by pulling plows or hay wagons. Some serve as transportation.
But mistreat them intentionally? No. Whether that’s in any religious texts,I don’t know. But it’s my belief that animals must be treated well. Not beaten, ignored, not given medical care, starved. Slaughtering of cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, must be done with no torture. As little pain as possible. I don’t judge whether we should all be vegetarians or omnivores.
There’s few reasons to test new drugs or make up on animals, since so many are made of compounds we already use in similar products. We know what happens if you force a rat to eat huge quantities of a drug that contains the same compound as a similar drug. If a dye is sprayed into a rabbit’s eyes.
It’s a money making racket. A doctor told me, to get generic status, a drug will be on the market, the patent owned for so many years by one company. After that time limit is up, anyone can make the generic. So, the original pharmaceutical company tweaks the formula a bit, and markets the newest, best way to control your cholesterol-and, takes out a new patent that allows only that company to profit. Any drug with the word statin in it, does the same thing. Controls cholesterol. But, now the company can patent this new drug, which is barely different than the one now a generic, and the company can dupe people into thinking they need this new drug. That it works better. Usually, it has the same results as the “old” drug.
So, there’s really no need to test drugs on animals.
As far as racing is concerned, there’s far too many horses born each year. That guarantees many will never race. Some will end up in good homes, and have long lives as someone’s pleasure riding horse, as a trail horse, a therapy horse. And some will end up going from owner to owner, never properly trained, so written off as being unable to be handled, so off to a kill auction they go. Those who make it to a track are raced too young and end up euthanized after a broken limb. Or a colic attack brought on by stress, poor feeding schedules, NSAIDS every day. And those who don’t pan out, they’ll end up like the ones who never made it up a track. Done in good homes,, retrained for another career, or on a stock truck bound for Mexico or Canada.
It’s a crap shoot. It shouldn’t be. A horse shouldn’t be pent up in a stall that has barely enough room to lie down in, fed on our schedule not theirs, given NSAIDS because it’s rightly suspected it’s in pain, injected with growth hormones so it’ll bulk up with muscle faster. Being trucked from track to track with little or no pasture time.
It’s intentional cruelty, and I think that’s what our Creator would object to.
Interesting thoughts. We gave up on organized religion > 50 years ago! We do not believe humans have dominion over the earth or other animals. Sometimes the natural world reminds us of that! Religions of all faiths are full of hypocrisy & contradictions! Too much cruelty to people & living things has been justified by religious beliefs. We were baptized as members of the 7th Day Adventist in 1972. The only thing we gained of good from that time was a healthful diet espousing a plant based diet which we adhere to this day.There are other systems of beliefs that accord with moral values beside religions.