“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 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. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
So there you have it. God told us to do whatever we want to animals, plants, fish, and all other resources on the face of the earth, because we be the boss; and besides, we’re hot stuff. God made us to look like him and her. There ain’t nobody more important than us on this planet, buddy. Since we are the top of the heap, we get to play with all other life in any way we want. If we want to use a stray cat for target practice, that’s just fun. If we want to go hunting to see if we can hit something that moves, that’s good. If the damn dog won’t stop barking, then kick it and beat it. If we want to keep bunnies in dark cages and slap burning poison on their backs to see what cosmetics will work best for our beautiful women, that’s the right thing to do. Since we all have to eat, why not raise chickens, pigs and cattle in cages so small they can’t turn around? It makes it easier to manage them, Since they only exist to satisfy our hunger, it doesn’t matter how we use them. Do you think we would have all these miracle drugs to keep us healthy and living long productive lives unless we had extensive animal research? Yeah, so a lot of animal research is cruel. Life is cruel. Unless we find out how we can live longer, better lives by experimenting on animals, we are not doing what God commanded us to do.
So sad. The whole thing is sad. It begins with Jewish tribal egomania: “God made us in his image. We are godlike creatures. We can do anything we want to anything else because we have the power of god.” All of the above is chillingly and blatantly false.
We are willing to bet every fiber of our being that we don’t look like God. We are willing to bet every fiber of our being that we don’t behave and think like God. We are willing to bet every fiber of our being that we are all in this together, humans, fish, cattle, fowl, fruits, seeds, herbs and everything that moves on the face of the earth. We are willing to bet every fiber of our being that unless we treat all other life with respect and loving attention we will pay dearly. We will rape our resources, kill for pleasure, and desecrate this beautiful planet home until it becomes a poisoned dung heap, uninhabitable for any life. We are willing to bet every fiber of our being that the native Indians were the ones who had it right: all of life was a part of God and God was a part of everything. All of life and all objects have to be treated with respect because all are sacred parts of God. We may interpret the God part a bit differently, but they sure got the respect part right. The Jewish faith got it dead wrong. We are not here to dominate everything everywhere. We are here to get along with everything, everywhere.
Do those people who do these things to animals think that animals don’t have feelings? Do they think that animals don’t have empathy? Do they think that animals don’t grieve when they lose a spouse or lose their children? Do they think that we humans are so puffed up important that anything else that lives is a nothing? We absolutely do not believe animals are nothing. We have seen gorillas stare at us with hatred because they are locked up in a cage and we are not. We see mother animals treating their young with love and affection. We see love radiating from our pets when they are able to be close to us. We see animals performing rational thought processes to solve problems. We see trained animals working with us to perform acts that are helpful to us. We see them respond to loving attention and show fear, retreat when abused. They are animals just like we are animals. We happen to be a little bit higher on the food chain than most of them, but that does not make us everyone else’s domineering power master. Put us in the water with a hungry shark and we are dead meat. We simply fit in with all other life. All of life is precious. None of it should be sacrificed without clear and justifiable cause.
Do animals have rights? You bet they do. They have rights the same as the rest of us animals. Those that treat any animal callously treat all of us callously. We all lose if we do not treat all other life with great respect. The God of Chance, the only God that matters, is watching our every move. He will find callous ways of eliminating our species if we do not show reverent respect for all of his kingdom of life.