: Now that you've invoked God to justify cruelty to animals, there's not much I can say in return. God told the Europeans to enslave Africans, and God told terrorists to blow up a building. God is a good excuse for anything.You proceed to equate slavery and terrorism with meat eating now. Does this thought pattern ever loosen its grip on you Mike? I hope it does, for your sake, because it appears quite habitual with you.
Whatever religious or biblical basis has been supposed by the self-centered for their behavior with respect to slavery or terrorism is wrong. Eating meat (cruelty to animals - as you put it), however, is something assumed as a normal practice by biblical writings. Indeed, the sacrafice of animals was demanded by God for the atonement of sins.
This was to teach us the allegorical relationship between that sacraficial lamb and Jesus Christ. God, in this practice, did not consider the lamb before the lesson. That is a clear deliniation of the importance of men vs. animals to God. Add to that the hundreds of biblical passages dealing with meat as a dietary staple and you see that your position is not represented here. Mine is.
Now, I don't go around to people on the street and preach an anti-vegan message with a Bible in my hand. You started this with a moral judgement of the matter. You are not content just to have your preference. You feel compelled to judge the action of meat eating to justify your choices. But there is no moral basis for your position. Your charges, whether they be leveled at me personally or at my actions, are offensive. More below.
: You repeatedly ignore all I say and stick with your initial assertions that I am judging you, when I have said repeatedly that I am judging only meat-eating to be an immoral action. Since I also said repeatedly that I do not know what it is that makes a man good or bad, and since you continue to ignore what I say, I am forced to conclude that your mind was closed from the start.
Well I'm having a miserable time trying to find the distinction between a judgment of my actions or a judgment of me. Is this how you are going to squirm out of your culpability in using inflated rhetoric and acting in an anti-social manner? In a court of law no such distinction exists Mike. Let's explore this line of reasoning a little further shall we?
If the act of doing is immoral but the person doing is not judged immoral by those actions, what link is there to a man and his actions. None, of course. Does a judge sentence a man to jail for his character?
No, it's because of his actions.
Your telling me that what I'm doing is wrong and don't have the guts to make it a personal judgment - that's all! Either I am knowingly participating in an immoral act (which makes me unequivocally immoral) or I am ignorant of a superior morality and continue with an immoral practice oblivious to a better way (Mike's way). I've given you ample room to dance but the music has stopped and you must pick one of these choices. I know what that choice is and I don't buy it. Your version of morality is not backed up by anything except your opinion. My opinion is not demonstrably inferior to yours. My opinion is widely held. My opinion is written law. My opinion is the historical worldview. You
really haven't much to say about this because you wish to be right and can't oppose the truth.
Examine your dogma Mike.
: Bottom line, Stuart: I care about animals and think people should treat them with kindness, which includes not killing them for food. You disagree.
That's about as direct a statement as you have made this whole thread. If you wish to entertain thoughts of superiority or you feel that you are running out front in the evolutionary race of men, go ahead. Just keep it to yourself unless you actually want people to know you are arrogant. Mark Twain says it best, "Better to keep your mouth shut and have people wonder about your intelligence than to open it and remove all doubt".
Examine your dogma Mike.
Stuart Gort
