Religion

[Alison]

For those who have been put in this situation and faced with the statement "Jesus killed animals, it's what they are for". Seriously!? I heard this at work the other day and said that I've actually heard both yes and no to this but don't know the real answer. I only knew that I didn't care if Jesus did or didn't kill animals but that I cared that I didn't contribute to the viscious process. I don't need to use Jesus as an excuse to make me feel it's okay to do it and eat it. I don't know what to correctly say to people like that. Any suggestions?

[vegan gaz]

im with you,
what jesus did 2500 years ago would does not have the slightest affect on my decision to kill for my tastebuds now or at any other time in the future (animals or humans) aren't we supposed to have moved on from then. skyscrapers, spacecraft, bungee jumping,not killing animals, to name but a few.
while your there, you might wanna ask em why Christians where crosses around their necks, do they think if he comes back (like they think he will) he will he want to see crosses everywhere?
have fun.:)

[Ammy]

Honestly, if Jesus was here now & saw the great alternatives to eating meat then i'm actually possitive he'd be a vegetarian/vegan too.
And it's crap that animals are for killing/eating.. =S
I don't like it when people say that.

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

I just tell them that God himself tells us **why** animals were created, in Gen 2:18-22, and it was not anything that remotely can be interpreted as "to be eaten" or experimented upon their own religious text clearly states that it was so that Adam would not be lonely, as "counterparts" and "helpers" to Adam -- similar reason why Eve was made, as stated in the same chapter of Genesis.

[Sue Hawks]

That's a weird thing for a person to pull out in defense of eating meat. I don't recall anywhere in the Bible where it specifically shows Jesus killing or even eating animals. All I am aware of is the miracle of the loaves and fishes. The thing about that is he had a basket with some of each (where it came from I don't recall the passage mentioning -I could be totally wrong on this) but he hung around with fishermen and the whole idea behind this was to make them fishers of men, it was a multi-layered metaphor. Anyway - he took what was already available among a group of people and multiplied it based on the principles of abundance and prosperity.

I always challenge people who make statements like that to provide me the Bible passage information so I can check it out and read it for myself.

Anyway times are drastically different from then to now. In my oppinion an argument liket that doesn't even apply either way. I would bet he was a vegetarian or maybe even a breatharian in his day. No one really knows for sure. There is actually not even irrefutable tangeable proof of his existence, but that is a whole different topic all together.

If anyone has numbers of passages that refer to Jesus actually eating anything (not wine) I would love to see them.

[Sue Hawks]

Oh yeah there is the passage where he cast demons into the pigs and commanded they jump off a cliff. But I still don't think that merrits that argument. Anyway when dealing with people on religious issues it's best in my oppinion to just walk away. That is ingrained often from childhood.

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

This is in Mark Chapter 5, and you should look at when modern scholars estimate this Book of the Bible that contains this story about pigs was written. ;-) Some of the Gospels (just for example) were scientifically estimated to be written NOT by those 4 apostles themselves, but by scribes/followers who lived generations after those 4 apostles died. (Think of the children's game of "telephone": The further you get from the source (in this case the "source" is hearing Jesus and the apostles ACTUALLY speak), the more likely you are to muddle their message. (I'll get more into this in another post to this topic.)

And if anyone suggested Jesus -- raised a Jew -- ate PORK based on such a story would really be laughable... The story also isn't even about EATING pigs... but it also doesn't say Jesus commanded them to jump off a cliff; it's possible the demons decided to jump off a cliff themselves. Even if Jesus had commanded them to jump off the cliff, killing the pigs' temporal bodies with the demons, it also doesn't say whether Jesus removed the souls from the pigs -- which the Bible says animals have, despite some so-called Christians claiming not: e.g. see Gen 7:15 or Eccl 3:19 for JUST TWO of the many examples -- before Jesus sent the demons into the pigs....and obviously what Jesus supposedly did in this Chapter is supernatural -- i.e. beyond human comprehension -- rather than a feat which Bubba down at the slaughterhouse is likely to be able to re-enact with the same powers Jesus might have, i.e. Jesus (God) doing this shouldn't give an excuse to mere mortals to "play God". ;-) )

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

The most important part, though, is for each person trying to follow Jesus Christ to decide whether you really follow Jesus, or if you follow some Roman emperors, because unless you think the Roman Caesars were the sons of God -- or God's messengers in some other way -- there shouldn't be any heavenly reward for following THEM, right? i.e. What is the point in calling yourself a CHRISTian, unless your intent is to follow CHRIST?).

WARNING: LONG. (-:

The early leader of CHRIST'S church, Clemente of Alexandria says "The unnatural eating of flesh meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils". (Homily XII) The Essenes also portrayed Jesus as vegetarian in their Gospel of Peace (note that they died out c.50-100 AD). They both pre-date the Romans' (starting with Constantine) adoption and CONTROL of Christianity. It's funny how this message of vegetarianism from Essenes and Nazareans (like Clemente) got changed a few centuries later when CAESAR CONSTANTINE'S church wrote the New Testament (NT) as most people in Western nations know the NT today. (Also, Hegisuppus and Augustin testify that the first head of the church in Jerusalem after the death of Christ, namely Christ's brother James the Just, was a vegetarian and raised as one; if Jesus's parents raised James as vegetarian then it would be likely that Jesus was also so raised, but I don't have a source for Hegisuppus/Augustin that's as good as Clemente or the Essenes, off-hand, I'd need to search for that one cuz I only saw it on a History Channel documentary. (-: )

I find Clemente, and how the Essenes portrayed Jesus as a vegetarian in the Gospel of Peace, a lot more credible than the (Latin-to-English) New Testament because:
1. The people at the Council of Rome were much further removed from anyone who actually knew Jesus, compared to Essenes or Clemente, i.e. Council of Rome came later in history; AND
2. The Council of Rome was convened by the Roman Caesar Constantine -- making the entire Latin bible (and derivations from it, which most Xtians today go by) a direct violation of what the Latin Vulgate itself says Jesus taught: Since it was commissioned by Roman Emperors, it is a violation of Matthew 22:21, where Christ teaches that the spiritual realm -- of his God -- is to be separated from the temporal (and corrupt) realm of the Roman Caesars. I have to guess the Roman Emperors might have overlooked Matt Chapter 22, just as sloppily as all their mistranslations that have been discovered in recent years, because...

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

continued...
3. The Council of Rome (and the later Latin Vulgate) just "coincidentally" edited out MOST (but not all; see the end of this post) issues where first thru third-century authors portray Jesus as not supporting the morals of 382-AD Roman culture, and I don't mean only vegetarianism: e.g. the Gospel of Peace also says Jesus revered an Earth Mother right alongside the Heavenly Father; for patriarchal Roman society, this would be unpalatable, so no wonder a non-Catholic found the Gospelof Peace hidden the Vatican's basement. (In contrast, luckily, the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) were found by neutral archaeologists so they weren't able to be hidden away in the Vatican for CENTURIES like the Gospel of Peace; but even then, the archaeologist trusted a large portion of the DSS to be interpreted to English from Hebrew by giving a Scroll to a ROMAN-Catholic order in the 1940's, who for DECADES only release their interpretation of this large portion of the DSS, instead of allowing people to judge the literal translation for themselves -- just as the first Protestants revolted against the Roman-Catholic insistence that their OWN (Catholic) priests were the only ones competent enough to read the Bible...(just to prove a lack of that competence by ancient/medieval Catholic priests, is the fact that modern-day scholars are finding many mistranslations from other languages to Latin). No other group entrusted with a part of the DSS in the 1940's had the arrogant gall and selfishness to hold their portion of the DSS "hostage" to exercise CONTROL over how historians and the various OTHER religions and denominations were "allowed" to view parts of the DSS (which is a proto-New-Testament written almost completely in Hebrew, i.e. devoid of the problems that arose from translating the Bible to Greek, etc., etc., THEN finally to English...); this portion of the DSS entrusted to Roman-Catholics was only released when someone anonymous stole it and leaked it, NOT because this order of Roman-Catholics capitulated and saw historians, other Xtians, and Jews/Muslims as EQUALS to Roman-Catholicism who deserved equal-access). The Essenes don't mention the Gospel of Mary AFAIK, and it's another odd "coincidence" that modern scholars carbon-dated the Gospel of Mary to 1st-century AD, because like the Gospel of Mary presenting a woman in a powerful role, the Essene Gospel of Peace saying Jesus revered a female spirit-figure as he revered his Father would be unpalatable to the Roman patriarchal leaders, and BOTH these Gospels [Mary, and Peace] which have references to female power were just coincidentally "forgotten" -- that is, until the era of archaeology (secular interest in Jesus' world) and Protestantism (i.e. when the Roman-Catholics no longer had monopolistic control over Jesus' name, along with the medieval kings of Europe who were allied with the Popes).
4. This is the SAME Church who centuries after the Roman Empire fell, was still trying to CONTROL how Jesus is portrayed until the Protestant revolution forced them to stop, who abused this monopoly on how Jesus get portrayed so laughably that medieval artists were portraying Jesus as a blue-eyed blonde despite that the Bible describes his skin as "burnt bronze" ("He not only approves of anything our kings do, he also LOOKS LIKE ourselves" (; ); as an engineer, I've seen burnt bronze (It will also come up in a google-image search.), it's olive like Mediterraneans, not Nordics nor Negroids. But the Roman-catholic Popes even tried to CONTROL the medieval economy/guilds and CONTROL medieval kings (yet again violating Jesus' directions in Matthew 22:21...), so forgive me if I don't trust ancient and medieval Roman-Catholic sources, and I think this is precisely WHY Jesus would've said in Matthew 22:21 not to allow the corrupt Romans to pervert his religion.

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

continued...
...Or as the historian WEH Lecky said: "[Middleton] contended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had admitted, eulogised, and habitually acted upon principles that were diametrically opposed, not simply to the aspirations of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most common honesty. He showed that they had applauded falsehood, that they had practised the most wholesale forgery, that they had habitually and grossly falsified history, that they had adopted to the fullest extent the system of pious frauds, and that they continually employed them to stimulate the devotion of the people."
...And as Thomas Jefferson -- who enjoyed studying history -- had put it: "But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion [Jesus], before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State." and "...they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes."

The Essenes died out circa 50-100 AD: and thus couldn't have written anything too long after Jesus died, and couldn't foresee how influential it would be to invoke Jesus' name (Xtians were still a small, persecuted sect back then and the last Apostles were being hunted down c.50 AD -- like the Essenes themselves probably were). In contrast, by the time Roman emperors -- starting with Caesar Constantine -- commissioned their first New Testaments in Latin (and most people in the Western world read a Latin-to-English translation), Jesus' name by then was very influential: This means in 400 AD the Roman emperor's had motive to distort Jesus' teachings (and whether purposeful or accidental, they did distort some things), using religious fervor to reinforce the status quo which makes it easier for Roman emperors to rule. And means and opportunity are both givens when you CONTROL society's political AND religious realms.

The Bible often quotes whole chapters from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which mostly express Essene beliefs...but the historic evidence strongly suggests that the 382 AD Council of Rome did not WANT to repeat some things the Essenes said about Jesus, despite that they seem to have trusted the Essenes as a source for OTHER issues, and purged most things -- from Clemente and other Nazareans, and the Essenes -- to make it seem like God agreed with their 400-AD morals. They could easily purge most...but the Bible is a large document, and they didn't purge SOME passages that conflicted with Roman culture: more examples are Gen 9:3-5, which Jesus himself interprets in that Essene scroll, the Gospel of Peace, to mean that Jehovah instructed Noah that food is to come from the "whole" of plant-life, but not the "whole" of creeping things, you'll notice. For "creeping thing[s]," "to you it is for food [but]...the flesh in its life - the blood - ye shall not eat". (Genesis 9:3-9:4). i.e. milk and eggs "to you [these are] for food" -- but NOT the "flesh" or "blood". Some Jews try to interpret this as allowing flesh so long as you drain (most of) the blood, but as we now know with modern science, you cannot eat flesh without getting at least a little blood in your mouth. This commandment to not eat things with blood is repeated in Lev 19:26, and perhaps BECAUSE Jews kept eating meat, it's repeated more forcefully in the New Testament: Romans 14:21 "Right it is not to eat flesh". Plain and simple, at least it's that way in Young's LITERAL Translation.), there's also the parts about animals having spirits equal to mankind's in Gen 7:15, and Eccl 3:19 even deems this speciesist attitude "vanity" when someone thinks animals don't have spirits equal to mankind's (

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

(You'll notice there's even an ENGLISH-TO-ENGLISH mistranslation between Eccl 3:19 in Young's LITERAL Translation and the KJV's Eccl 3:19, which says animals have the same "breath" [something we all can observe, so we don't need the Bible to say animals breathe just like us...] not that animals have the same "spirit" as mankind [spirits are something very different from "breathing," because spirits are supernatural and breathing is not: "Animals have a spirit" is only "proven" to the average meateating Xtian if I can show them THE BIBLE saying "spirit" not "breath"...and I cannot show them that animals have "spirits" equal to mankind's in the KJV]. The more centuries you get away from the source -- Jesus himself, the "horse's mouth" -- there's greater likelihood of mistranslations, and of all popularly-read Bibles, the KJV suffers from this terribly). The bottom line is that I always end up asking meateating Xtians: "So, can you tell me why you'd take the life of a creature who has a spirit that is equal to a human's spirit and after your G-O-D tells you not to?" Phew, and that's all I have to say about this issue (hopefully).

[Mr. Yellow Sunshine Pants]

Well, if Jesus was a carpenter, he was a fisherman too? ;-) My understanding of him being a "fisherman" is that he was a "fisher of men" i.e. "hooked" other men on his teachings, as a successful proselytizer ...just to explain the "metaphor" that Sue mentions, for the benefit of others here.

[Capture]

*Blerg* I hate when people use god or Jesus as an excuse for anything--especially things that involve violence! Frickin think for yourself and use good judgement--don't go dragging poor Jesus into it! People like that can never be reasoned with--anything you say will just be twisted to their own purpose--I usually just give some kind of glib response like "our opinions differ, have a nice day" (and please never ever talk to me again!).