i don't understand why a personal choice would get you called everything under the sun. it's just not their business what you eat. perhaps they thought you were undermining their own beliefs by believing something different. i don't really see how what one person eats affects another person. maybe they need to take a step back and realize that vegetables can sometimes kill a person. look at what happened with simple bags of frozen spinach.
I'm entirely with you here. It is, of course, true and well known that certain religions lay down some rules about what may and may not be eaten by their adherents and, whilst it is not my place to argue with tenets of religious faiths to which I do not subscribe, I nevertheless do not agree that this should be so, as diet and nutrition are not an intrinsic aspect of religious belief and practice and such rules are therefore unduly proscriptive. I would add only that most foods can be potentially dangerous, not only in general terms (diseased meat or fish, accidental errors in genetic modification of fruits and vegetables, the presence of pesticide residues, etc.) but also in the specific terms of what may not suit the dietary requirements of certain individuals; inevitably the more processed food is, the greater the potential risk of such dangers (hence the frozen spinach case to which you refer).
if one wants to know what the bible says - one merely reads the chapters about clean and unclean meats. eating meat is in the bible after the supposed 'fall.'
The Bible is specifically relevant to Christians, whereas this thread addresses religion in general; you should therefore make allowances for the fact that the Bible covers only one religion of many in this context. Furthermore, the Bible is some two thousand years old; it therefore dates from an era long before refrigeration, freezing and other means of food preservation came into being and in which almost all agricultural practices and the infrastructure of distribution and retailing of food as we know them today were entirely unknown. To examine what the Bible says about what may or may not be eaten has therefore to be done in a solely historical context rather than as one that can have any relevance today; this is the same about almost everything else in the Bible, as I've said many times before - it's an historical chronicle. Lastly, I would end by adding that what this so-called "fall" can possibly have to do with the state and edibility of meat is beyond me.
my theological differences with people are usually about the 'fall' and involve whether sex is bad. as i see it - adam and eve didn't get reprimanded for having sex and told they 'fell.' God merely asked them how they knew they were naked. ok. different subject.
Yes, indeed it is, so why have you raised it here? Since you have done so, incidentally, do you really get embroiled in theological debate about "whether sex is bad"? I always know that I'm in for a problem when I see the words "as I see it" from you, Susan. I just don't get this "fall" business in any case; it makes no sense to me. And if certain sexual activity between men and women were frowned upon and accordingly didn't occur, we'd not be having this discussion and no Bible would have been written, because it is the word of a bunch of humans, not of God.
in the new testament - paul explains that 'all things are clean' but not all manners of eating it are beneficial to worship of the true God. for instance, if food is offerred to idols - why pretend you are worshipping an idol. today, typically people aren't in temples eating to artemis or whatever. also, there is a prescription in the bible not to drink the blood of an animal because it's life is in the blood. i tend to be very careful on that one because uncooked meat also carries disease and/or bacteria. also, a correlation has been found between some shellfish and certain cancers. perhaps God knew why he called scavengers 'unclean.' they eat garbage off the bottom of the ocean. also, scavengers like the owl, cormorant, hawk - they're also called 'unclean.' basically clean animals and birds are listed in the bible as having specific features to look for (they are interestingly divided into categories - uncloven or cloven hoof, chew or don't chew the cud) two of those features must exist for an animal to be considered clean. the clean animals must have a cloven hoof and chew the cud. the camel has a cloven hoof but doesn't chew the cud. who would want to eat a camel anyways? birds are listed specifically as to type of bird and the distinction is that they are not predatory over dead animals.
All of what you write here is once again predicated upon writings dating back two millennia; our entire present-day attitudes to food - growing it, marketing it, manufacturing it, retailing it, storing and preserving it, preparing it, eating it - as well as our dietary and nutritional knowledge - would almost all have been utterly unrecognisable to people in the Middle East in Biblical times.
what churches make an issue of vegetarianism vs. omnivorianism? scientology? i think to some jewish faiths (ie messianic) there is an indication in the bible the shabbat looks backwards and forwards at the same time. for one brief moment (day) we rest and feel the birth of creation and the renewal of it at the second coming. if the earth will be in complete harmony again - then the animals and trees and everything alive will feel this peace as we do. it is said that the little child will lie down with a lion. and the lion is said to eat straw like an ox. as i see it - God can make life any way He sees fit ...and if He did at creation - what is stopping Him at the return of Jesus Christ? that is an issue of faith vs seeing, though. what we see now is far different. the food chain is basically following predatory instead of vegetarian ideals.
Here we go again, off into your world of fantasy! What I wrote about the general irrelevance of the Christian Bible to present-day issues of food production and consumption likewise applies to the equivalent texts of other religions, partly because it is not, "as I see it"(!), the business of religions to be proscriptive about their adherents' diet and partly because these texts are ancient and we now live an a world where attitudes to all aspects of food are entirely different to the eras in which these texts were written.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: Vegetarianism and Religion