Animal rights come before religion

ViaCrucis said:

Replace "Allah" with "HaShem", "YHVH", or "Adonai", and "Islam" with "Judaism" and you have exactly the same argument.

Christianity, uniquely, teaches that Jesus is the Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Father; ergo any religion that isn't Christianity does not accept the Son. And if non-belief in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God immediately renders one an idolator then this can be applied to any non-Christian religion.

It would then follow that Christians cannot consume kosher food any more than they can consume halal food.

But only if we be consistent.

Now, I don't believe Jews are idolators, nor do I consider Judaism or Jews to be "the worship of the demon spirit of antichrist"; neither do I believe this about Muslims. Islam, like Judaism, is a monotheistic religion that worships the God of Abraham--as a Christian I believe the Muslim view of God is in error, in the same way that I believe the Jewish view of God is in error--but it is still the same God. I notice that very often in order to try and argue that Muslims worship a different god many choose to use the Arabic word for God, Allah, as though Allah refers to the "Muslim god" in the way that Zeus and Aphrodite are Greek Pagan gods. Either unknowing or intentionally ignoring the fact that all Arabic-speaking people say Allah, if you were to visit a church in Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, (etc) turns out all the prayers, hymns, and Bible readings say "Allah" in them. So let's drop this "Allah is a false god" trope, anyone with even the most mild of curiosities could easily discover that Allah is the Arabic compound of the definite article "al-" and the generic Arabic word for deity, illah; and is cognate with Hebrew el or eloah.

Speaking frankly, I think this is really just more of the same in terms of standard anti-Muslim bigotry. It's not a religious or theological position, it isn't an authentic approach to biblical exegesis: it's just finding an opportunity to demonize Muslims and exercise bigoted and hateful language for the sake of spite and mean-spiritedness. Things that are not becoming of a self-professed Christian (not that this has ever stopped Christians from acting un-Christian, the thing about sin is that it affects everybody, the appropriate response here is repentance).

-CryptoLutheran

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If it's the same God why do muslims renounce him if they come to Christ, but Jews who accept Jesus don't renounce YHWH? Jews and Christians have the same Old Testament. The Quran is totally different. It's hateful to not tell a muslim the Truth. A guy from church preached in Muslim countries. The Christians there didn't dare to call God YHWH. They said Allah out of fear.
I believe you can eat Hallal and Kosher food. If Messianic Jews don't, so what? And if muslims only eat Hallal so what? Let's not judge anyone in eating or drinking, also not the Messianic Jews.

grasping the after wind said:

Who is more considerate and empathetic the one that treats you kindly because they think it is your right and a duty they must perform or the one that does so despite the fact they do not think it is required?

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Careful now, that sounds very similar to what an non theist might say to somebody who has the fear of Hell as a motivator for good deeds.

We differ in the belief of the rights of animals but I'm heartened by our shared wish for the protection of animals and regret the initial tone of my post to you.

All the best.

Messy said:

If it's the same God why do muslims renounce him if they come to Christ, but Jews who accept Jesus don't renounce YHWH?

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I'm guessing if they do that it's because they were convinced by certain Christians that Muslims worship a different God--the same as I've seen some former Roman Catholics accuse Roman Catholics of having a "different Jesus".

I sincerely doubt every Muslim that has converted to Christianity renounced God to accept God.

Jews and Christians have the same Old Testament.

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Nope. For several reasons:

1) Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians have an Old Testament that has a number of books which Jews do not accept, such as Tobit, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and versions of Esther and Daniel which differ.

2) In the case of Protestants whose Old Testament matches the Jewish Tanakh in insofar as having the same number of books (depending on how one numbers the books, e.g. are the twelve minor prophets twelve books or one book?) Protestant Old Testaments while generally using the Masoretic Text as a base nevertheless use other sources, most significantly the Septuagint and in the last century the Dead Sea Scrolls have also been used in Christian translation--meaning that the Jewish Tanakh and most Protestant Old Testaments differ in some ways. That is to say, the Jewish Tanakh is the Masoretic Text, the Protestant Old Testament largely depends on translation, while the MT is the baseline of every major translation used by Protestants, translators have also been influenced by other sources, most importantly the Septuagint, and in the past, the Vulgate (the KJV relied quite heavily on the Vulgate, the most obvious place being Isaiah 14:12)

The Quran is totally different. It's hateful to not tell a muslim the Truth. A guy from church preached in Muslim countries. The Christians there didn't dare to call God YHWH. They said Allah out of fear.

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Quddūsun Allāh, Quddūsun al-qawī, Quddūsun alladhī lâ yamūt urḥamnā.

"Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us."

This is the Trisagion, one of the most ubiquitous prayers in Eastern Christianity, originally in Greek:

Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, Ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, Ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς.
Agios o Theos, Agios ischyros, Agios athanatos, eleison imas.

The "guy from church" either doesn't know what he's talking about or is lying.

I believe you can eat Hallal and Kosher food. If Messianic Jews don't, so what? And if muslims only eat Hallal so what? Let's not judge anyone in eating or drinking, also not the Messianic Jews.

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Hey, I'm all for not judging people on what they choose to eat or not eat.

Some people like celery, I think it's the most vile thing in existence.

-CryptoLutheran

ViaCrucis said:

I was under the impression that both kosher and halal methods of animal slaughter were, generally, more humane.

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Not always. Sometimes the animal is hoisted upside down before being bled out.

ViaCrucis said:

Some people like celery, I think it's the most vile thing in existence.

-CryptoLutheran

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I agree.

I dont think that halal slaughter is per se excessively cruel - but it would be best done in a traditional context, rather than a factory farm situation. These "stun" machines are pretthy horrible in themselves, they involve the hanging upside down of a long line of birds, immersion in water, stun and... well its all to robotic and souless to me. One man on a farm with a few dozen chickens, thats where Id like to source my meat!

"Indecency disfigures everything and modesty (haya) enhances the charm of everything"

ViaCrucis said:

Replace "Allah" with "HaShem", "YHVH", or "Adonai", and "Islam" with "Judaism" and you have exactly the same argument.

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With ONE BIG EXCEPTION: Jesus was an orthodox Jewish rabbi. He was NEVER a mullah or an imam or ayatollah.

On second thought - make that 2 big exceptions. At its inception, it was God the Father that set up Judaism. No such thing can be said (from a christian perspective) about islam.

I do not disagree that there is a strong antichrist influence in traditional Judaism as well. And that is with good reason, if you look at the situation from a military viewpoint. The enemy wants to prevent the Lord's return to earth; and by keeping as many Jews away from the gospel as he can, he thinks to prevent that.

keith99 said:

Bingo!

I know the same regarding Kosher slaughtering methods and have been told the same holds for Halal. Opposition to either is simply anti religious bigotry. Specifically anti Semitism.

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Larnievc said:

Careful now, that sounds very similar to what an non theist might say to somebody who has the fear of Hell as a motivator for good deeds.

We differ in the belief of the rights of animals but I'm heartened by our shared wish for the protection of animals and regret the initial tone of my post to you.

All the best.

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It is a bit off target to characterize Christians as considering hell to be a motivator for good deeds. No offense meant by this but you seem to have a fairly simplistic and somewhat skewed view of Christian thought about why we believe we ought to love our neighbor. It is not fear that is supposed to motivate us( see the middle of my signature ) . I admit that there are Christians that are motivated by fear. The Bible states that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. So like any other group, some Christians see the beginning of wisdom and think it is all wisdom while others seek further and increase their understanding. Of course, fear of God and fear of hell are entirely different things as well.

DaveW-Ohev said:

With ONE BIG EXCEPTION: Jesus was an orthodox Jewish rabbi. He was NEVER a mullah or an imam or ayatollah.

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Orthodox Judaism didn't exist in the 1st century. Orthodox Judaism began in the late 18th, early 19th century. So it'd be pretty hard for Jesus to have been an Orthodox Jew. Of the Jewish sects of the time, Jesus is closest to Pharisaism, as can be seen in the way that, for example, Jesus alludes to Hillel in the Golden Rule, or seems to agree more with Shammai when it comes to divorce.

On second thought - make that 2 big exceptions. At its inception, it was God the Father that set up Judaism. No such thing can be said (from a christian perspective) about islam.

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Which wouldn't change anything in terms of the argument that if someone denies God's Son then they worship an idol. Which means that you would still need to insist that Christians can't consume kosher food because kosher food involves food sacrificed to idols.

And I think we can both agree that's silly. For the same reason that saying that Christians can't eat halal food is silly.

I do not disagree that there is a strong antichrist influence in traditional Judaism as well. And that is with good reason, if you look at the situation from a military viewpoint. The enemy wants to prevent the Lord's return to earth; and by keeping as many Jews away from the gospel as he can, he thinks to prevent that.

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This discussion is already straying off topic considerably as it is, so I'm not going to get into eschatological discussions here.

-CryptoLutheran

Oafman said:

Denmark bans kosher and halal slaughter as minister says ‘animal rights come before religion’

Personally, I'm very much undecided on this. I would rather animals were stunned before being killed, but I do think that what happens in the last ten seconds of an animal's life is almost irrelevant in comparison to how it is treated throughout the rest of its life.

So how do people feel about this? Is this Danish doctrine discerning, or is something rotten in the state of Denmark?!

Do you stand with PETA or with the MUSLIMS?!

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I stand firmly with Denmark on this one.

We have regulations for slaughter houses, laws about animal neglect, on how we need to treat pets, etc. Animal abuse is a serious offense.

There is 0 (zero) reason to accomodate a religion (any religion) and make exceptions for them.

ViaCrucis said:

Orthodox Judaism didn't exist in the 1st century. Orthodox Judaism began in the late 18th, early 19th century. So it'd be pretty hard for Jesus to have been an Orthodox Jew.

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Actually, it is the other way around.

Reform Judaism broke off of Orthodox in the time frame you mention - started by Moshe Mendelssohn - grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn. Then Conservative Judaism started. What was left was then called "Orthodox," but it was what had existed since the first century when Rabbinic Judaism reorganized in the wake of the destruction of the temple. Pharisaic Judaism was the immediate predecessor to Rabbinic Judaism so IMO the moniker of Orthodox is accurate.

ViaCrucis said:

And I think we can both agree that's silly. For the same reason that saying that Christians can't eat halal food is silly.

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Except for the fact that the God of the Jews and the god of islam are NOT THE SAME.

ViaCrucis said:

This discussion is already straying off topic considerably as it is, so I'm not going to get into eschatological discussions here.

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Agreed. But I set the reasons the antichrist spirit has invaded Judaism and set up the false religion of islam are entirely eschatological. That discussion needs to be in another forum.

grasping the after wind said:

I do not consider that animals have rights at all. The idea of rights is something that has come about to keep proper order in relationship to the interactions of human beings among themselves and does not have any real application to animals that frankly have no clue or thought about rights of themselves and would not afford them to you if they did.

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According to that logic, we shoudn't be giving rights to psychopaths. But we do.

animals understand dominance and submission and that is about it.

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Hmm. That's not entire true. A house cat for example... doesn't really "submit" to the "dominance" of the household. In fact, it rather seems as if the cat thinks it owns the place

A reasonable person does not treat any creature cruelly or abusively but that is not a matter of some rights possessed by an animal but a matter of a human being acting in a humane manner.

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I feel like you could repeat that statement and replace "creature" with "human" and it wouldn't really change.

Let's try something here.

Suppose a person has 5 cats and 5 dogs.
He totally neglects them and locks them up in a small cage where they have to live and eat in their own fecies. They have infections all over their bodies etc.

In your opinion, should there be consequences for this person?
Should the animals be taken away?
Or should we simply not care "cause animals don't deserve/have rights anyway"?

There is something mentally disturbed about anyone that acts cruelly to another living being not because of some right the being possesses but because cruelty is simply a reprehensible thing by innate human standards of conduct.

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Right.

And I submit to you that the idea of "rights" is nothing but a way to enforce this behaviour. Rights is not something any human has by default. It is something that is granted to them by other humans/society.

I see no reason why we shouldn't grant animals some basic rights as well.

grasping the after wind said:

I would prosecute them. Not because cats have rights but because it is a crime to torture cats. Vandalism is also a crime not because buildings have rights though.

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That comparision makes no sense to me.

Rights are being violated with vandalism. Not rights of the building, but the rights of the owner of the building.

With the act, the crime isn't that the rights of the owner of the cat were violated.
The crime is against the cat.

Clearly, if you agree that this is unacceptable treatment of the cat, you feel that the cat has some kind of right to not be tortured.

Why would you care, if that wasn't the case?

DogmaHunter said:

That comparision makes no sense to me.
Rights are being violated with vandalism. Not rights of the building, but the rights of the owner of the building.

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What about if the owner sets fire to his own building?

DaveW-Ohev said:

What about if the owner sets fire to his own building?

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I don't think they call that vandalism.

DaveW-Ohev said:

Except for the fact that the God of the Jews and the god of islam are NOT THE SAME.

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If the God of Judaism is the same God of Christianity in spite of the fact that Judaism and Christianity have sharp, significant differences in what they believe about God--most pertinent is the Christian belief that Jesus is both the Messiah and Son of God--then it would follow that similar differences between the Christian view of God and the Muslim view of God would mean the God of Christianity and the God of Islam are the same God.

Indeed, there is far more similarity in views about God in both Judaism and Islam than either have with Christianity. Both Judaism and Islam proscribe to a strict Unitarianism, the historic Christian belief is Trinitarian, an idea about God that exists neither in Judaism nor Islam but exclusively in Christianity because Christianity alone believes that the significance of Jesus demands that we consider the idea of God in more Christological terms. The result of that, ultimately, is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; a theological position that arises by apophasis by rejecting ides such as Monarchianism on the one hand and Arianism on the other. The result is a Christological position that asserts, as it does in the Nicene Creed, that the Son is homoousios with the Father, and is therefore "God of God, Light of Light", "begotten, not made", etc. Neither a separate God (heteroousios) than the Father as the Arians taught, nor a merely deified man as Dynamic Monarchianism taught, nor merely an anthropomorphic manifestation of God as the Modalistic Monarchians taught; but instead true God, Son, distinct but inseparate from the Father, of the same being as the Father by being begotten not in time, but eternity--the Son is eternally begotten.

Such ideas are exclusive to Christianity because they could only happen in Christianity. And if a rejection of the uniquely Christian views of God in response to the Jesus event and such Christological (and later Pneumatological) reflection and controversy--as Jews, Muslims, and heretical Christian groups do--renders one an idolator, then it must be held consistently against all non orthodox Christian views of God, including Judaism, Islam, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Oneness Pentecostals, etc. All must be, in order to be consistent, regarded as being idolators. Otherwise we are being entirely arbitrary.

If Islam is idolatrous, then so is Judaism. Without a better argument than what is thus far provided this conclusion must stand; either both are idolatrous because they view God differently than Trinitarian Christians or neither are idolatorous simply because their views of God differ from the Christian one. I take the position that differences in opinion about the God of Abraham does not result in an entirely different god being worshiped.

If I believe that Abraham Lincoln really was a vampire slayer I would be wrong about Lincoln, not talking about an entirely different Abraham Lincoln.

-CryptoLutheran

CryptoL - the insistence of an absolute SINGULARITY of God in Judaism (similar to islam) I would submit was a reaction AGAINST christianity in the 2nd century. Orthodox Jewish professor of Jewish studies and Talmudic era history at UC Berkely Daniel Boyarin has shown by biblical passages (mostly from Daniel) and other mid to late 2nd temple period Jewish documents (first century bc) that the idea of a composite God was intrinsic to normal Judaism. His book "The Jewish Gospels" is one of his presentations of these facts.

DaveW-Ohev said:

CryptoL - the insistence of an absolute SINGULARITY of God in Judaism (similar to islam) I would submit was a reaction AGAINST christianity in the 2nd century. Orthodox Jewish professor of Jewish studies and Talmudic era history at UC Berkely Daniel Boyarin has shown by biblical passages (mostly from Daniel) and other mid to late 2nd temple period Jewish documents (first century bc) that the idea of a composite God was intrinsic to normal Judaism. His book "The Jewish Gospels" is one of his presentations of these facts.

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Of course we aren't talking about the Second Temple Period, but Judaism as it exists now. If I go and buy a pack of kosher hot dogs for my summer bbq am I eating "meat sacrificed to idols"? The answer is no, because

A) Judaism doesn't have idols, and
B) the God worshiped by Jews is the same God worshiped by Christians.

The same, as I've said repeatedly, is true of Islam. So if we say that eating halal is eating food sacrificed to idols then it must also be said that eating kosher is eating food sacrificed to idols.

If Islam is idoltrous for having a view of God different than Christianity, then the same is true of Judaism. And, again, I reject such an assertion because a different belief about a thing does not make a new or separate thing. A different view of God is not a different god. It is simply a different view of God.

-CryptoLutheran

IIRC Allah derives from the same root word as El and Elohim.