I have been noting this more recently and it seems to be a trend, at least with people I converse with on the regular. The really religious types aren’t animal people or downright dont like them. The more chill or agnostic types seem to be more apt to love animals.
I could go on my theory of this but I’m interested to see if anyone thinks this is a trend.
Not my experience. I used to work with animals, and many of my clients, or people I did animal rescue work with, were religious. The animal rescue work, specifically, seemed to attract people who were extremely religious.
Probably, they’re both independently correlated with right-wing politics.
Assuming you live in the West. In India it’d be another matter.
It’s not that they don’t like animals. It’s that they don’t view animals as equal to humans. They believe that god made them superior to animals, so what happens to animals doesn’t really matter.
I basically came here to say this. Especially these days basically all good pet owners think of them as their children or at least living beings with rights. And abrahamic religions (I know less about others) view humans as being god’s special creatures who have dominion over all others. Same reason there’s often more child abuse in religious homes.
They also think animals don’t have souls
I’m 90% sure that modern Christianity is not actually correct Christianity because if you read about jesus, everything about him is coded in eastern spiritualism, as if he learned it from someone else and explained it to the other people that wrote about Jesus and didn’t understand the symbolism and allowed it to evolve into ego inducing assholery.
I guess I could have phrased this exact question with “the environment” and probably got the same answers. (Bad) religious people think it’s all “theirs” so they can do whatever they want and pollute all they want as “god” will take care of the earth no matter what.
You might want to note that while this probably applies to major religions, it’s not all religions
Also this is probably a good representation from the bible
Genesis 1:28 (KJV): “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
They don’t even see minorities as humans
That’s only part of it. You’ve described Dominionists, the other end are are the Stewards, Stewards believe its our duty to tend the Earth and its creatures as it is God’s dominion, not ours.
What I said also applies to stewardship, though. They both still abuse animals and then say “But Jesus ate fish.”
I don’t think an animal’s life is of equal value to a human’s. I don’t think that’s a strictly religious view point either. Should they have shot harambe to save that kid, or was that action equivalent to murder?
Typical creature that values it’s own species over all others. I really despise this mentality. Anyway have a great day.
Should they have shot harambe or let it rip the kid in half? Is it your position that all organisms are of equal value?
Congratulations on the false dichotomies.
What are the other options ? This is a binary discussion. A human life is of more impact and relevance than an animal’s. Therefore it’s value is higher. I have a ton of animals, farm and pet, I LOVE my animals. I’d put my girl’s life above all of them in a second.
For your first question: there is no certainty that Harambe would have “ripped the kid in half”.
For your second, you could value some species more than your own and others less, there’s no reason all species must be equally valuable (let alone individuals) Although the idea of thinking about things that way at all is a little gross to me.
Is it genuinely your belief that the kid would have been fine? Or even any 100% safe solution outside of what happened? What was done ensured the safety of the human child, as it should have. You’re misusing false dichotomy. The user I was responding to stated
“Typical creature that values it’s own species over all others.”
The all or nothing aspect I gave is a direct response to the one they gave. The implication being the user does not value human life over all other life. I do, which is why this started and is ending as a binary conversation. Secondary to that, whats better than what in a tier list is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
You’re using too much logic for an emotional thread, lol.
The people who are “animals over humans!!!” or equate them don’t love nor care for anybody besides themselves in earnest. They’ll stay in their little corner with their pets, shaking in fear just thinking about deep human connections until the day they die. 🤷♂️
I think you found a weird outlier and your data set is small. Like, most of the world is religious in some way shape or form, your sample size is too small to make any realistic judgement call
Thats why I asked here
Touche’.
You know how the after church crowd is the meanest to service workers? They’re famous for it. This is like that.
Depends if you’re a cow or a chicken
I was taught as a young conservative xtian that only humans have souls and that animals were put here for our use and amusement. I was taught that animal pain could not be real because they don’t have a soul. They are effectively just toys or food for humans, according to conservative christians.
Conservatism is a fkn disease that needs to be eradicated.
As a vegan, the most annoying people are religious people (specially abrahamic believers) and their unbreakable logic: ‘If God didn’t want us to eat meat, why did he give them to us’ Imo that reflects their attitude towards animals: they don’t see them as a living beings, but rather as things to be used.
I think it’s more to do with religious people coming from rural backgrounds.
Eating meat was a celebratory thing when I was still living in rural Turkey, so at first vegetarianism seemed like “a spoiled western thing”
In my mind it was grouped next to those ragebait videos of 14 year olds yelling at their mom for getting the wrong iphone model.
Animal cruelty argument didn’t work great either because, “I only eat halal certified anyway.”
Content warning : Religion. Don't tap if you don't want to learn what "halal food" is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_dietary_lawsNote: It sounds decent, especially for early 7th century Arabia standards, but no multi-billion industry is following regulations that make them less profit to 100%.
What DID convince me near instantly was someone showing how the meat industry is all exploitative and corrupt.
They waste workers, water, and animal lives on purpose because it’s more profitable than proper logistics. Fucking cruel looking into it, crazy they aren’t being universally boycotted already.
In good faith I am asking why vegans don’t consider vegetables to be living things.
They are living organism, but don’t have a nervous system or barain like animals have and there is no evidence they have a conciosness like animals have.
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They are living, not sentient tho.
you can’t prove they are not sentient
Neither can you prove they are, while you can easily prove that animals are.
I’m not the one making an unprovable claim
Or that animals are
Do you have a pet or have ever been close to an animal? If so you’d know.
Here an example of some cows if you can see that and say animals are not sentient than I have nothing else to say to say to you as it would just be a waste of time.
You’re right, I confused sentience for sapience, my bad! Of course that means plants are absolutely sentient, as we know for sure they can feel and hear. So we’re back to the beginning question, why does veganism care about the sentience of Animalia but not the sentience of Plantae or Fungi?
they are also likely to neglect them, and see them as commodities, as the current thing to have, once the honeymoon phase wears off they neglect them, anecdotes of course. consider how religious people dont really adopt people for the right reasons and railing on abortion rights.
According to one religious person I’ve talked to, animals don’t have “souls” so they’re not worth anything. I argued there’s no difference, many animals have emotions and awareness, just like us. His reply was they we are smarter than animals.
I asked what about dumb people then, because there’s considerable overlap between the dumbest people and the smartest animals. Like at what “IQ” do you obtain a soul? That’s about when he tried changing the subject.
You spoke to a Dominionist. The other end of that spectrum are Stewards, Dominionists believe the Earth is ours to do with as we please. Stewards believe the Earth belongs to “God” and our duty is to be caretakers. I am heavily in the Steward camp
One Christian will use either argument depending on which serves them better at the time.
To steelman his argument, maybe he was saying god gave people souls because we are smarter?
Oh I’d say this is definitely just anecdotal to you personally. Lots of animal shelters are owned, operated and funded by religious organizations.
that also seems anecdotal… I personally never heard of a single one (oh, anecdotal too) and in all cities I’ve lived I knew of shelters and rescuers because I’m one (and I currently take care of 34 cats and 4 dogs), and I must agree with OP, I know a lot of rescuers that have a religion (like, that vague belief in the god their parents talked about) but none that are overtly religious (wear symbols, attend temples, etc)
edit: Homeless shelters and nursing homes though, plenty of religious institutions behind them.
Ton are a google search away. Dalo Acres Animal Sanctuary UT, St. Francis Animal Sanctuary MI, Keeping the Faith Animal Shelter PA. There’s a ton of em.
The question isn’t whether they are not animal friendly, but whether they are less animal friendly. There may be a ton of them but if there are six tons of non-religious shelters, there’s a difference.
What metric would you want to see?
Self-reported religiosity and affection for animals would be a start.
So the shelters and sanctuaries I listed as brief examples?
No, the logic doesn’t hold. There being shelters run by religious people does not say anything about whether they are more or less caring for animals than normal.
This thread is basically about Dominionism vs Stewardship. A debate as old as many religions especially in the Abrahamic family
Yeah, but how do they treat them? Is it just a new way for them to make money?
Are you under the impression animal shelters are churning out big bucks?
Anything connected with churches can make good money from donations and shady financials.
While true, lets not be those jerks who associate literally every bad thing to ever happen with churches. Believe it or not there are churches with good people feeding the homeless etc. It’s probably .000000001%, but they’re out there (and it sure as hell ain’t megachurches or any church that preaches maga)
I had food and home heating oil for 3 winters when I was a kid. From a church we didn’t even go to. Parents were social workers, a unbelievably poorly compensated profession. Its why I became an engineer instead of following their path. Its much bigger than that percentage but I agree its never the mega churches. They are organizations run by people. Some good, some bad.
I agree, I have even helped my friends church with IT stuff and when I moved to a new town as a kid a church gave us food as we were the poorest family according to my school. That same church said I was going to hell a couple years later when everyone thought I was gay when a gay kid said I was cute and I thanked him.
Had me in the first half…
Damn. Thats shitty. Sorry they were assholes to you.
That is true of any charity organization, regardless of affiliation.
Yeah but it’s easier to do when you think you are righteous and have the will of your God behind you.
If you’re actively scamming the system intentionally, you don’t think that. You know you’re being shitty and you’ve consciencely chosen that over being a righteous godly person.
I didn’t take organizations into account,
They are run by people. I think if you have a generally negative perception of a certain type of person, you’ll start attributing negative behaviors to all of them, even if its only been your limited experience.
My VERY religious stepdaughter somehow sends out a ‘bite me now’ signal to cats.
She was also just going to essentially dump her cat on the street when she left the country a couple years.
So yeah, she sucks.
EDIT: to clarify, I took in that cat who is a bit of a butthead, but doesn’t deserve to die for it.
Speaking from experience, whether you are religious or not, being kind to animals are a separate thing. What I can say though, devout Muslims that I knew are either animal lovers, or animal avoiders because they are scared by furry things.
But being cruel to animals? I’m quite sure thats against our teaching though. Although we do slaughter animals for food, for example.
Yeah actually. I think I’ve observed this as well. It’s not surprising, religions are super anthropocentric. Humans are god’s chosen creatures etc. So much for love
It depends on what religion you look at you have religions with literal sacred animals, religions where all life is sacred, religions where the prophet didn’t like dogs so dogs are explicitly shunned, religions where just cloven hooves animals are forbidden etc. it’s kind of all over the place, my church is dog friendly and I’ve brought him with me before.
I do think there is a subset of Christianity that believes that 1) animals exist to serve man 2) animals don’t have souls so that would mean animal welfare isn’t really a priority. It’s also important to maintain that animals don’t have souls explicitly to justify caring less about them, if they had eternal souls it would be a lot harder to feel ok exploiting them.
So yes, I do think some religions do have an undercurrent of denying animal welfare for the benefit of animal exploitation because they believe that is the god given purpose of animals, to be exploited by man.
But “Sacred animals” AFAIK doesn’t mean all animals, but very specific one. Like you shouldn’t eat cows, but eating pigs is fine. So it isn’t against religious people general morales to avoid killing animals.
But maybe you know of a religion where all animals are sacred.
