Jesus also condoned slavery (http://www.atheistresource.co.uk/jesusandslavery.html). It’s clear that if you want to be ethical you can’t rely strictly on the bible. Would you say the was animals are raised in intensive farms (see this video: http://meat.org) is ethical.

To open up a can of worms, biblically God did not create man to eat meat and throughout the old testament the blood of an animal was held as sacred and was to be spilled on the alter or the ground and not consumed. It is only because people are now taught evolution that they think that life comes from death. This false doctrine justifies eating meat, and is a precursor to the belief that eating meat is necessary for human health. Christianity has adopted this pagan teaching of life coming from death, and added some new testament stories to pagan traditions like christmas and easter. Sin, which is the breaking of God’s commandments leads to death, and animals were sacrificed on the alter, according to the law of moses, to atone for sin. Death was meant to be ugly. It was meant to be heart wrenching. You were meant to feel sick to the stomach when you witnessed the priest kill the lamb or goat as part of sin offerings and sacrifices.

When God took the people of Israel out of Egypt, he fed them from heaven with manna, which was a bread and then the people craved meat “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” God heard their wailings and gave them quails to eat but he was angry with them because they lusted after meat. “All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp. But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague. ” Today’s people lust for meat in the same way and they convince themselves that they were made to eat meat and their bodies need meat but there is no proof that meat eating is necessary, the truth is that people lust after the flesh of animals because they like the taste of meat.

Further Daniel, under babylonian rule did not want to defile himself with the kings delicacies and he and his friends ate a vegetarian diet and were found to be physically and mentally superior to those who ate meat. People are no different today as in Daniel’s day, they truly believed that eating meat made them healthier and that Daniel and his friends would wither away without meat.

From personal experience, I have been a vegetarian for almost 2 years now and I have never felt better. I have heaps of energy but I am also careful to eat a strict Old Testament diet - I don’t eat processed food, grind my own flour, make my own bread, eat lots of fruit, milk, cheese and legumes. My children have no problems being vegetarian - they have strong bones, clear skin, shiny hair, great appetites and the closest they get to being sick, is a runny nose, usually if they have stayed up too late on several successive nights. They are athletic, mentally alert and full of energy. They are not withering away because they don’t eat meat but quite to the contrary, they are thriving on a vegetarian, grain based diet.

Although people may like to look back to the hunter gatherer stage and say, they ate meat, they were our ancestors and we should eat meat too. They do not ask themselves the question, what preceeded the hunter gatherer phase. The hunter gatherer phase was a result of exile from God’s original creation where man did not strive by the sweat of his brow to eat but who like the animals today, was well provided for. Evolutionists do not ask themselves, why is it that man evolved to wear no clothes, to need shelter and why is it that man is vulnerable in the natural environment. Put a kitten in the bush and it will adapt and thrive but a human in the bush with no means of getting to a community and they will likely die. The Old testament gives a clear explanation for how these things came to being but it just doesn’t make sense that if we evolved from apes, we gave up our coats for a brain, so that we would need clothes and shelter to survive.

My husband’s father was a great meat eater. Every night was a meat night. By the time, he was sixty he had a blocked colon, then it was surgery, heart attack, couple of strokes, skin cancer, eye cancer and a host of other problems. But his health deterioriated long before he was sixty. According to all the theories on meat eating and health, he should be in peak health but he is not.

I think watching Hugh Fearnley from the tv series, River Cottage, who is the champion of this kind of meat eating where he buys a couple of pigs, fattens them up and tells them what a lovely life they lived and what a wonderful end it is, to have them grace his dinner plate, is plain aweful. He looks unhealthy. He is not athletic or strong, and he is constantly thinking about what animal he is going to kill next and if Hugh lives to he’s a hundred on this meat eating diet, I’d be surprised because he already looks old for his age.

People who eat meat should at least acknowledge that it is ugly and brutal. Trying to say that the animal led a good life is unjustifiable. Perhaps we should be eating humans when they die rather than waste such good meat. After all, why not - if we evolved from animals and if life can come from death? Why should a human body be held sacred - perhaps we should clone humans, raise them and slaughter them or use them for transplants. The same argument applies - if their wasn’t a need for them, they wouldn’t exist and we could give them a happy peaceful life in the countryside before we send them off to slaughter or transplant surgery, then their death would mean that someone else had the chance to live on their organs and meat.

If you think, perhaps this last paragraph is going too far, perhaps you should ask yourself why? Farming meat to eat, is certainly not biblical. And if you believe in evolution, then why is farming humans wrong? Aren’t they just another form of ape? If we clone them, they aren’t really human just a product of our advanced intelligence.
We need to be honest. Killing animals for food is brutal. Unless you can go out to the farm, raise a lamb from birth, put your hand on a lamb and cut its throat, skin it, wash off its blood, cut it up and eat it, you can not really know how brutal killing is and looking at an animal that was alive and now is dead, there is no beauty in death. WEll not any that I can see.

I understand this is a moral and ethical issue for some people. Each person must decide this for him or her-self. I have no problem eating meat from animals raised locally, ethically, humanely by farmers I know. There are also decent, ethical ways to slaughter animals. I feel that I would have no problem say, killing a chicken or taking part in an animal slaughter, in order to feed myself and my family. But I don’t have any actual experience with this, just no squeamishness at the thought.

I know that is not the case for others. You must do what you feel is right.

http://pastureperfect.nourished.com.au/thank-god-i%e2%80%99m-a-country-girl/