Vegetarian Conversion Thread (not exactly)!

College Confidential Community
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<p>Well, not exactly. Due to the vegans comments on the other thread, I decided to be fair and devote a thread to the subject :). This will be a poll. Please try to keep discussion to a minimum, since all discussion on this website is pretty errrr. So are ya happy now, you vegan girl you!<<<That is NOT an insult!</p>

<p>Poll: Whats better? Being a vegan and vegetarian or a normal human being (a meat and plant eater)?</p>

<p>Once again, this is not an insult thread!</p>

<p>Vegan and Vegetarian: 0
Normal human being: 1</p>

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<p>Oh btw, I think veggies and vegans should be meat eaters because thats what God intended. We are humans and we must eat others to survive. God said so and so does science.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
This will be a poll. Please try to keep discussion to a minimum, since all discussion on this website is pretty errrr.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Then you say:

[quote]
Oh btw, I think veggies and vegans should be meat eaters because thats what God intended. We are humans and we must eat others to survive. God said so and so does science.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Oh yeah, this is surely not an insult thread. (sarcasm ended)</p>

<p>Vegan and Vegetarian: 1</p>

4

<p>Vegetarian: 2</p>

<p>(I get to count for 2 because I've been a vegetarian for 25 years, and my son, now 18, has never had a bite of meat in his life, and he is lean, very good-looking, very intelligent, and stronger than most of his meat-eating friends. So there.)</p>

<hr>

<p>"I think veggies and vegans should be meat eaters because thats what God intended. We are humans and we must eat others to survive. God said so and so does science."</p>

<p>False. First of all, it is merely opinion about what God intended, since the bible was written by humans, and it is a matter of faith to believe it represents what God intended. And, even IF you accept the bible, there is much more in the bible to support vegetarianism:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.thenazareneway.com/index_vegetarian.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thenazareneway.com/index_vegetarian.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Secondly, science: vegetarians have MUCH lower risks of heart attack, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and many other degenerative diseases. So science supports vegetarianism.</p>

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<p>Who really knows what God intended in terms of meat-eating or vegan? My 17-year-old daughter has been vegetarian since she was 11 and is progressing toward veganism. The rest of us (her family) are omnivores, but leaning more and more toward vegetarianism. ... I have to wonder how anyone could seriously claim that God intended us to be meat eaters? What arrogance! Perhaps originally, we were--we do have vestiges of sharp canine teeth, but for the most part we have the same flat molars that herbivorous creatures like horses and cattle have. Any learned dental student can contradict me on this, and I'll willingly stand corrected.</p>

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<p>Christianity is both meat-eater and vegetarian-friendly. If you want to eat meat, it's all good; if not, that's cool too. What the faith does not support, however, is the idea that animals are of the same worth as human beings. Nowhere does the Bible get behind the philosophy that PETA and other extremist organizations advocate ("Meat is Murder," etc).</p>

<p>BTW, lealdragon, that website is hilarious. Those "quotes" from the Bible are dubious at best, and the ones that I can track down (the real zingers credited to Jesus are not properly credited) are taken out of context to such a degree that it is ridiculous. Anything for the vegan propaganda machine, I guess.</p>

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<p>Fides, try these:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jesusveg.com/index2.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jesusveg.com/index2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<hr>

<p>And, from: <a href="http://www.all-creatures.org/care.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.all-creatures.org/care.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>In the beginning, God instructed Adam and Eve to eat only seeds and fruit..."I have given you all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth, and every tree bearing fruit which yields seed: they shall be your food..." (Genesis 1:29, 30) "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, except for the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". (Genesis 2:16, 17)</p>

<p>Even the animals at this time were vegetarians..."And to the animals on earth, and to all the birds under the heavens, and to everything that creeps over the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. And God saw everything that He had made and it was good." (Genesis 1:30)</p>

<p>The uninformed Christian believes that after the fall, the original vegetarian diet was done away with. These Christians believe that because of the fall we are now allowed to eat meat, however, according to scripture this is not the case. Rather, the Bible says that a fruit diet will not be enough to sustain us. Because of the curse, there may not always be enough fruit for food, thus, God has added to our diet, wild plants..."Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything..." (Genesis 3:18,19)</p>

<p>It was only after the flood that animals were allowed to be eaten. As soon as Noah had left the ark, he sacrificed many animals to God (Gen. 8:20). Keep in mind that God did not tell Noah to do this. Evidently, Noah's sacrifice was based on his own beliefs and were not founded on the word of God, as were neither the sacrifices of Cain and Able. Once God noticed Noah's sacrifice, "...the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil..." (Gen. 8:21).</p>

<p>Obviously, though God had wiped out all the real evil people from the face of the earth, within the heart of Noah remained the evil urge/Yetzer haRa, a result of the fall, which manifested in a lust for flesh meats. Since the souls of humans had not yet evolved to the point of compassion towards animals, God gave allowances to Noah that he may eat animals as well as the herbs. This allowance only meant that God would not out right stop humans from eating meat, it did not mean that God intended meat eating to be an ongoing diet for humanity.</p>

<p>Another reason for the change from a strict vegetarian diet after the flood, was that the waters had destroyed all of the earth's vegetation and therefore, there was no alternative at the time. If we consider that Noah and his descendants still had a lust for flesh and that there was no other food available at the time, then we can conclude that a meat diet was only temporary. Proof for this is the ongoing condemnation, by God, through His Prophets, of animal sacrifice and meat eating. Obviously, the Prophets knew that, by their time, the temporary allowance for flesh eating was over.</p>

<p>Moses, long before the time of the Prophets, also knew that the meat diet was temporary and that the intended laws of God included a vegetarian diet. However, mankind's heart had become so black as a result of the fall, that, during his time, Moses could not have introduced vegetarianism to the Hebrews, for they would not have listened to him and would have turned from God altogether. Therefore, Moses, in accordance with God's plan, allowed animal sacrifice and meat eating. As a compromise, however, and to help guide mankind back to a life of compassion, God had Moses institute a very strict set of rules for the killing of and sacrificing of animals.</p>

<p>It was only during this time of darkness, (from the flood, up to about 700 BC), that God allowed humans to eat meat. That is why we find certain passages, such as Leviticus 11:3-22 and Deuteronomy 14:4-9 telling the Hebrews which animals they could eat and which ones they could not. These dietary laws, along with the strict slaughtering procedures, were designed to wean mankind from meat altogether and were never intended to serve as an example for all times.</p>

<p>When the time was right, God spoke out against animal sacrifice and flesh eating through His prophets. These Prophets began coming to earth around the 700s BC. Not only did God send Prophets, such as Isaiah & Hosea, to the Hebrews during this time, but God also sent Prophets to the gentile nations as well. We find arriving not too long afterwards, Pythagoras (570-500BC); as well as Mahavira (born 599BC), founder of the Jain religion; and Buddha (563-483BC), founder of the Buddhist religion. All these Prophets spoke out against the harming of and or eating of Animals.</p>

<p>There can be no doubt that God wanted humanity to elevate itself above such barbaric practices, for the Prophet Hosea says: "They love sacrifice, they sacrifice flesh and eat it, but the Lord has no delight in them." (Hosea 8:13) Referring to animal sacrifices, God Himself says through His Prophet Isaiah: "...I will hide my eyes from you: yea, when you make your prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood...put away the evil of your doings from my eyes; cease to do evil." (Isaiah 1:11-16)</p>

<p>Though there were many sects of Judaism at the time of Jesus, these groups can be divided into two camps. First of all there were the Temple and Priestly centered groups; ie., the groups that believed in animal sacrifice, such as the Sadducees and Pharisees. The other camp was made up of more spiritually minded Jews who followed the teachings of the Prophets, who in turn spoke out against animal sacrifice. These latter and pro-prophet groups would include a number of unknown small sects, as well as the more famous Essenes.</p>

<p>Out of these pro-Prophet groups came Jesus, the ultimate Prophet and Messiah of God, along with his followers, the Ebionites/Nazarenes, eventually to be hunted down and killed. They would soon be replaced by a group known as the Christians, who were started by Paul.</p>

<p>The Ebionites/Nazarenes made up the first century church and pre-date the Roman Catholic, Coptic and Eastern Orthodox Churches by almost 300 years. This fact is attested to by history as found in the writings of the Early Church Fathers and the New Testament. (for further information read our booklet: "Jesus was a Vegetarian") The precedence of the Ebionite/Nazarene church serves to show that the doctrine of vegetarianism was a part of the original teachings of Jesus/Yoshuah and should be re-established in our churches today.</p>

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<p>Fides, try these:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jesusveg.com/index2.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jesusveg.com/index2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<hr>

<p>and, from <a href="http://www.atmajyoti.org/ch_four_soul_killers.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.atmajyoti.org/ch_four_soul_killers.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"...The eating of meat directly opposes the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” God did not qualify His prohibition by adding the words: “human beings.” Killing is prohibited strictly “across the board.” The Hebrew word translated “kill” is tirtzach, which according to The Complete Hebrew/English Dictionary means: “any kind of killing whatsoever.”</p>

<p>God Himself has spoken on the severity of slaughtering cattle: “He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man.”</p>

<p><snip></snip></p>

<p>Some advocates of meat-eating maintain that after the Flood, because of altered conditions on earth, God permitted Noah and his descendants to eat meat. But this is not so. After the great Flood, when there was little to eat, God made an emergency concession to Noah which has been thoroughly distorted and used to justify meat-eating. Here is the actual text: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”6
Carnivores attempt to justify themselves–and at the same time condemn vegetarians by making this seem an eternal commandment rather than the temporary concession that it was–by pretending that this verse gives human beings the right to eat all living creatures. Nothing could be more false. The Greek term in the Septuagint which is here translated “moving thing” is herpeton, which literally means “reptile” (it is the word from which we get herpetology, the study of snakes), but in this instance it refers to crustaceans and mollusks, such as clams, abalone, oysters, lobsters, crabs, crayfish, and snails, which are not animals, but insects. How do we know this? By the explicit prohibitive qualification given by God in the next verse: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”7 No, it does not mean that we should eat dead bodies that have had the blood drained out and are therefore “kosher”! That is a second ridiculous distortion. Rather, these words mean that any organism whose life fluid is red blood is absolutely prohibited. Here is the translation from the ancient Septuagint text: “But flesh with blood of life ye shall not eat.” By “blood of life” is meant red blood–which all animals share in common with man. (The “moving things” do not have red blood, being, as has been said, insects. Not that that makes them fit to normally eat!)
So the truth of the matter is that for a short time only because of the conditions right after the Flood, Noah and his family were permitted to eat that type of insect life which would not be poisonous and would give some nourishment. Lest they misunderstand and think that they could eat other “creepers,” such as snakes, etc., God made a clear demarcation between what He was temporarily allowing and what was absolutely banned by establishing the principle that no animal with red blood could be eaten–ever.
But why would there be this prohibition? For two reasons: (1) it is physically and psychically harmful to eat the type of flesh that has red blood, and (2) it is morally wrong to interrupt the life and evolution of those life forms that have evolved far enough to develop red blood. Insects–which is really what those organisms permitted temporarily to Noah and his family were, though on the borderline of being true animals–experience very little interruption of their life chain by death. In fact, seers have observed that an insect is reborn almost instantly upon the death of its body–in a matter of a minutes to a few hours at the most. This is not true in the case of animals, who suffer real trauma at death.
Addiction
The addictive nature of meat and its consequent negative effect is shown in Exodus, when the Hebrews, although delivered from slavery, actually said to Moses: “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots”!8 And that was not all. When God was giving them miraculous food in the form of manna, they rebelled against that heavenly diet, and “the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting [the New King James version has “yielded to intense craving].” In other words, even though they were being fed on perfect, divine food, they began to suffer “withdrawal,” as do any addicts. And in their frenzy of thwarted addiction “the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat: We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely …but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.”9
What more perfect example of the evil effect of eating meat do we need than this? The food which God provided in His love, food that was perfect for them, was rejected by them like madmen because of their addiction to meat and fish. “Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven” so that “man did eat angels food,”10 that “food of angels” was hated by them in their love for dead flesh. They looked with nostalgia upon their enslavement in Egypt–which entailed the murder of all their male children–because at the same time they were getting to eat meat! Does not this show clearly the utter contradiction between spiritual consciousness and flesh-eating? In the light of this example, it would not be amiss to question the compatibility of meat-eating with sanity itself. But the matter is not finished. Because of their carryings-on God, Who does not interfere with man’s free will, sent an abundance of quail to them. And those “dried up” people, supposedly weak from a non-meat diet, spent nearly forty-eight hours vigorously catching and killing them! (Remember this the next time someone tells you that they tried to be vegetarians but were forced to start eating meat again because their health was giving out.) And then?
“And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibroth Hattaavah: because there they buried the people that lusted.”11 (The New King James version has: “While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was aroused against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague. So he called the name of the place Kibroth Hattaavah [Graves of Craving], because there they buried the people who had yielded to craving.”) These final words indicate that those who abstained from meat and ate the manna did not die. Those who ate flesh did die.
The New Testament
Turning to the New Testament, we find definite instructions on diet. The oldest known version of the Gospels is in Aramaic, the actual language which Christ spoke. The text of Luke 21:34 reads: “Now take care in your souls that you never make your hearts heavy by eating flesh and by drinking wine.” What more need be said? </p>

<p><snip></snip></p>

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<p>i hunt my own meat.</p>

<p>some of you should try it sometime. haha</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Please try to keep discussion to a minimum, since all discussion on this website is pretty errrr.

[/quote]

funny, considering it's a discussion based board....

[quote]
So are ya happy now, you vegan girl you!

[/quote]

lol, yes I am happy now! it was actually a vegetarian thread that made me join the site so I could post instead of just reading. that thread got deleted though...</p>

<p>And after I go compile a long list of facts about meat this can really turn into the vegetarian conversion thread!</p>

<p>And thanks to lealdragon for the great posts!</p>

<p>Poll results so far:
Vegan and Vegetarian: 4
non-vegan/vegetarian: 1</p>

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<p>me: 1 gazillion</p>

<p>you: 0</p>

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<p>I just can't justify not eating meat.</p>

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<p>Vegan and Vegetarian: 5</p>

<p>For those of you who saw my posts in the other thread, this vote is no big surprise. Shastarasta, perhaps you would be drumming up more support if you didn't imply that vegans/vegetarians weren't normal humans.</p>

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<p>meat eaters 2<br>
Though I may die a few years earlier, I will have actually lived more.
Exercise/quality of diet is more important to health than vegetarianism.
Why does God/the Bible have anything to do with this arguement. The Bible is a horrible way to prove a point, and you shouldn't preach tolerance to the ignorant op and then use Christianity, which not everyone believes, to justify it.
A simple analogy: I am to atheism as you are to vegetarianism. I prefer my stance but you can still have yours.</p>

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<p>"Why does God/the Bible have anything to do with this arguement. The Bible is a horrible way to prove a point, and you shouldn't preach tolerance to the ignorant op and then use Christianity, which not everyone believes, to justify it."</p>

<p>I agree completely. My vegetarianism has nothing to do with the bible. I only posted that bible stuff in response to Fides' post.</p>

<p>There are plenty of health, ethical and environmental reasons to go veg.</p>

<p>Health isn't just about living longer. It's also about the quality of life right now. Vegetarians tend to be slimmer, have more energy, more mental clarity, and don't get sick with colds & flus as much, not to mention don't get cancer, heart disease, etc. as much. Oh, and they aren't as constipated. =)</p>

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<p>Vegan and Vegetarian: 5
non-vegan/vegetarian: 3</p>

<p>Vegan, non-vegan, etc. whatever suits your style. There's no "better" but more of a personal preference. I like eating meat, other people don't, uh, that pretty much covers the entire discussion. There's isn't a point in being concerned with other people's choices, especially if they haven't asked you to be concerned.</p>

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<p>Vegetarian/Vegan: 5
Meat-eaters: 4</p>

<p>Basically... I just can't live without those cheeseburgers at Wendy's!</p>

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<p>YUM, their Jr. bacon cheeseburgers are good and cheap. I could care less that it's bad for me.</p>

<p>5
5</p>

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<p>V-5
M-6</p>

<p>But lately, I've been eating less meat.</p>

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<p>Meat's just great unless you think about it too much. Those bacon burgers are just yummy chunks of dead, fatty, decomposing flesh jammed between two nutrition-free pieces of white bread. Mmmmmm! Uh ... pass the vegetables, please.</p>