Meat eating Christians?

[Morpheus]

[quote=Gem]That's a valid ethical consideration and good enough reason to be a vegetarian as a boycott of the meat industry, but it doesn't imply that eating meat is immoral.

One other thing, 'tribal' isn't always some magical ideal. The case of both Easter Island/Rapa Nui and the Maya to cite but two... Both exhausted their environments through over-exploitation. The Easter Islanders descended into anarchy and the Mayan Empire collapsed and was abandoned to the jungle.


People have to understand that the eco system is what enables their population, and destruction of the eco systems ultimately reduces population. It's not a difficult lesson, it's logical and it adds up, but Man wants to be the master and refuses to be a subject of Mother Nature.

Today, the Earth's population has reached nearly 7 Billion.
Expected, if the growth rate were to continue, to reach 9 billion by mid century.

How does this factor in, regarding efforts at providing enough food for everyone?

Especially with the apparent climate changes underway?

[knightofalbion]

'Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat' - The First Blessing (Genesis 1 v29)

A vegan diet is the diet God intended for man. Fully in keeping with the Prophecy of Isaiah, the promise on which all of Christianity and Judaism is based, where there will be no more killing and bloodshed and 'the lion will lie down with the lamb'.

If God had intended man to eat flesh then it would have been issued from the start. It wasn't.

The Israelites abstained from flesh eating up until the Flood. After that, due to hardness of heart, Moses permitted them to eat flesh (because at the time there wasn't enough plant food) but it was only intended to be temporary and was issued with a curse 'the blood of your lives shall I require' and it was followed by a catastrophic collapse in lifespan.
Hardly signifying Divine approval.

Abstention from flesh food was the norm for early Christians. Trustworthy, independent historical sources cite James, Matthew and Peter - the three Apostles closest to and most trusted by Jesus - as being vegan.

Many viewpoints, all entitled to be aired, but one is on shaky ground to proclaim infallibility when even the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the RCC's own official recorded history, admits that until it attained it's present form the Bible underwent "years of revision" and also that "even the genuine Epistles were greatly interpolated".

Paul never even met Jesus yet there's more Paul than Jesus in the Bible NT and indeed the Church's ideology is centred on the teachings of Paul.

Paul led a meat-eating schism against true Christianity.
That being said he contradicted much of Jesus's teachings that did make it into the Bible NT ...
http://www.danizier.wordpress.com/20...sus-and-james/

[knightofalbion]

[quote=Morpheus]

Originally Posted by Gem

That's a valid ethical consideration and good enough reason to be a vegetarian as a boycott of the meat industry, but it doesn't imply that eating meat is immoral.


Today, the Earth's population has reached nearly 7 Billion.
Expected, if the growth rate were to continue, to reach 9 billion by mid century.

How does this factor in, regarding efforts at providing enough food for everyone?

Especially with the apparent climate changes underway?

Because you can feed a lot more people using an acre of land to grow arable crops than you can using an acre of land to raise livestock.

The projected figure is 10 billion by 2050... It's 7.2 billion now.

[Morpheus]

Originally Posted by Gem

That's a point where people have wiped out nature to a degree where the Earth can only sustain a fraction of the population than it did when population was stable. The 7 billion is survived on an unsustainable system.

The species are already largely extinct, the rivers are already dirty and the habitat is mostly destroyed, so nothing makes much difference anymore. People don't understand that we ultimately depend on natural eco systems, and our population is ultimately regulated by the health of those systems.

The word sustain doesn't apply to the current population.

The population is sustained by natural eco systems. I understand that people don't understand that and they thing that population is sustained by agrigulture, but agriculture destroys eco systems, and require maintenence.

I don't really know how many the earth can sustain, but it's a lot less that it did when the world was inhabited by a diverse tribal population.

people won't agree because they think agriculture can 'sustain' populations, but actually populations simply maintain the agriculture environment. Nature doesn't need to be maintained, and it sustains human population

You seem to be contradicting yourself Gem. Didn't you also point out how civilizations like the Mayans depleted their resources? Which didn't have the fertilzer technologies utilized today? Which renew the ground continually for crops to produce?

Also, are you offering support for Monsanto, which undertakes and utilizes genetic modification to better ward of plant diseases, and pests, for the sake of better yields?


Anyway, in this chapter in Exodus, is found the commandment about farming in Biblical times. How one area of land is to be left fallow every seven years, to allow it to regenerate, and for the sake of the poor to harvest what comes out of it naturally, and also for the wild animals to feed on.

http://biblehub.com/exodus/23-11.htm

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

You seem to be contradicting yourself Gem. Didn't you also point out how civilizations like the Mayans depleted their resources? Which didn't have the fertilzer technologies utilized today? Which renew the ground continually for crops to produce?

I don't much about the mayans, but there was still a hell of a lot of jungle when they up and vanished. I read somewhere that the succumbed to a terrible drought. If in fact they did deplete the resources, then that makes my point.

Also, are you offering support for Monsanto, which undertakes and utilizes genetic modification to better ward of plant diseases, and pests, for the sake of better yields?

Monsanto is a huge agricultural firm that profits by ownership of food supplies, basically. The ecology had no need for anything Monsanto makes or does.

Anyway, in this chapter in Exodus, is found the commandment about farming in Biblical times. How one area of land is to be left fallow every seven years, to allow it to regenerate, and for the sake of the poor to harvest what comes out of it naturally, and also for the wild animals to feed on.

http://biblehub.com/exodus/23-11.htm

Crop rotation and fallow is widely practiced in agriculture, but the eco system doesn't require and interventions or methods... well, it does now that eco systems have been decimated, but complete eco-systems just keep going when they are left alone.

[Morpheus]

Well, it's common knowledge that continually re using an area of land without rest will deplete the nutrients in it, which plants need to grow.

The downside of using modern fertilizers, of course has to do with excess minerals, heavy metals and such in the runoff into streams and into the Ocean.

[Gem]

This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta_OAXQqc6o

Christians can eat meat, BUT (as I read on a wonderful Jesuit website the other day) not eating meat looks towards the day when the wolf and the lamb will be able to sit side by side. Not eating meat is about not being a predator.

Jesus said that there is nothing from without a man that he can eat or drink that will defile him, but what comes out of him, from his heart. He/God also told Peter to rise up and kill and eat animals which Peter said were unclean, but God responded ''what I have made clean, do not call unclean''. I think Paul does a wonderful job of building on the cornerstone of Christ's teachings with regards to food and drink, and summarizes it all by saying, ''whatever is not of faith is sin''. People ultimately need to work out with God themselves what he wants them to do, and we should be willing to forgo anything that could cause our brother to stumble, At the same time, we need to recognize the liberty that Christ has given us, but to not abuse it (which unfortunately has happened en mass in the meat industry).

I feel good, personally about not buying meat (though am open to doing so if God says to), but to make use of the all the wasted food thrown out by supermarkets every day. So many lives of animals are wasted in cruel fashion, and then not even given the honour of being eaten, because they just get thrown into the supermarket trash for the stupidest of reasons.

[knightofalbion]

Originally Posted by ciel_perdu

Jesus said that there is nothing from without a man that he can eat or drink that will defile him, but what comes out of him, from his heart. He/God also told Peter to rise up and kill and eat animals which Peter said were unclean, but God responded ''what I have made clean, do not call unclean''. I think Paul does a wonderful job of building on the cornerstone of Christ's teachings with regards to food and drink, and summarizes it all by saying, ''whatever is not of faith is sin''. People ultimately need to work out with God themselves what he wants them to do, and we should be willing to forgo anything that could cause our brother to stumble, At the same time, we need to recognize the liberty that Christ has given us, but to not abuse it (which unfortunately has happened en mass in the meat industry).

I feel good, personally about not buying meat (though am open to doing so if God says to), but to make use of the all the wasted food thrown out by supermarkets every day. So many lives of animals are wasted in cruel fashion, and then not even given the honour of being eaten, because they just get thrown into the supermarket trash for the stupidest of reasons.

In the first place, as previously mentioned, that verse refers to the washing of hands and was nothing to do with diet. You are taking it entirely out of context.

As for the next bit. A giant sheet descending from the sky? ... The piece is inciting the eating of unclean meats, in total contradiction of Jewish law. That's in Acts 10. Which is strange because in Acts 15 the instruction is to abstain from unclean meats and blood, in total support of Jewish law. So which is true?
As it happens, neither is true. In the Clementine Homilies, Peter says of his diet [b]in his own words[b] "I eat naught but olives and bread and less often a few vegetables."

As I mentioned earlier, Paul led a meat-eating schism against true Christianity.
As I also mentioned earlier in a classic case of the biter being bit even his own teachings were later interpolated. In plain English, a number of the Pauline Epistles weren't even written by Paul and those that were were themselves corrupted.

With the very greatest respect does it not occur to you that the ultimate reason for all the abuse, cruelty and killing is people going round declaring mankind has carte blanche to do with the Animal Kingdom as he pleases.
In just the same way the slave traders used Bible verses condoning slavery - which also, needless to say, were spurious interpolations * because the Roman Empire ran on slavery and needed it to continue - to start and continue the slave trade.