ETHICS of Eating Animals...an ANSWER to a question

Mr. Hunt,

"I  MAINTAIN  IT  WAS  ONLY  THE  VERY  FEW  THAT  WENT  TO  PICK  MUSHROOMS,  AND  NORMAL  LOGICAL  SENSE  SHOULD  HAVE  TOLD  THOSE  FEW - AFTER  SOME  DIED  FROM  POISONOUS  MUSHROOMS,  TO  LEAVE  THEM  ALONE  AND  NOT  EAT  THEM."

QUESTION:

The problem with your statement seems to be that there are many poisonous plants from seeds too.  I believe that tomatoes are in the Nightshade family, and that is known to be poisonous.  In fact, I read many years ago that people in New Jersey were afraid to eat tomatoes because they were thought to be deadly poisonous.  Why would God make some plants from seeds poisonous and some not, where we'd have to test by eating and observing if that person gets sick or dies or not?  Your logical rationale for avoiding fungi is the same that can be used to avoid seed-bearing plants.

ANSWER***

Yes I know what you say, have addressed it on my website. Simply put. Seeds bearing yes is general. Genesis is very limited in what God WOULD HAVE instructed Adam and Eve. He would have no doubt actually given them in the garden of Eden all the vegies growing from seeds that were good to eat. So basically what you find in the super market and maybe others not as common in the West, Fruits are pretty well evident. God would not have given them mushrooms. So the children of God would have passed it along to other children of God and also to Noah and his children, hence God's children always knowing, and so with the Israelites.

Never heard about the tomato bit. So backing up again, from the beginning God's children would have been instructed in vegies and fruits, seed  bearing,  Hence your argument falls.

It's like God inventing sex and marriage and Sabbath keeping....from the beginning God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, God would have given them many lessons on sex, marriage, child rearing etc. The first chapters of Genesis is only a surface skim, very much a surface skim. God would not have created them without being there to instruct them on many basic subjects.  Sex is general also....as is seed bearing.  Sex can be wrong, bringing forth evil, sin, and physical pain and sickness...you know the sexually transmitted diseases  etc. So instruction on sex would have been given to Adam and Eve.  Just think waking up as a full human being, you would need instruction on many things [like wiping you bum after a bowl movement - animals don't have to do such a thing].  Obviously He instructed them on fruit trees, as he told them which fruit tree NOT to eat from. He instructed them on sex, as we see from God saying to them, "Who told you that you were naked?" Up to that time they were not ashamed to be naked.... Satan came along with wrong ideas put in their minds. We get enough verses to show us God would have instructed them on many things. God was their instruction book in person walking with them, as they went and hid themselves from Him, at one point in time.
So instruction of the correct seed bearing things to eat would have been given to them by God. Many people just don't get as Jesus would say, "But from the beginning it was not so..." In other words there was MUCH GIVEN to Adam and Eve from the BEGINNING, that is not specifically written down in Genesis, the first chapters, only a surface skimming of things. I mean stop and think how many chapters there would have to be in the book of Genesis if God had inspired Moses to write down EVERYTHING  God instructed Adam and Eve on.
Common logic tells us God gave detailed instructions on MANY THINGS to Adam and Eve, to then pass down to their children and so on down the line. If the people from Adam and Eve had ONLY KEPT the PHYSICAL laws of God that He gave to Adam and Eve; if they had kept those physical laws through all generations of people, we would be living in a far different physical world today than we do. 

QUESTION:

Why eat animals but not humans?  Both suffer, and at times have higher intelligence than we have.  My dog is more intelligent than an infant in that it is capable of understanding what I'm telling it.  The answer is that humans have a higher ontological value; This is something that atheists cannot acknowledge.  That still doesn't answer why animals need to suffer for our nourishment, though.  Relatively humane ways of killing animals have been developed, but you've told me that they cannot be used.  Blood will coagulate in the flesh of animals that are stunned so that they won't feel pain.  They need to be slit at their throats, suffering as the blood leaves their bodies until they die.  That's horrific.  I have to question God's design decisions at times.

ANSWER***

The studies I've posted from Michael Pollan show you what goes on in the large killing, fattening-up, farms of the whole industry that is producing meat and eggs for our seemingly huge appetite for meat at least, maybe eggs not as much. I know some, in fact a lot of people, who think not having meat EVERYDAY would be a terrible holdback on their diet, they are meat junkies.

Now I know how my horse and other horses feels pain from various things, as I've observed over the years. Slitting the throat is actually painless as what happens is as the blood drains the animal goes into a falling to sleep mode, of course I'm talking about clean animals for eating, but it is true of the horse if you slit its throat. Put it another way. To "float" a horses teeth [it is rasping the teeth to take off sharp edges that can develop - the horse eats in a circular motion in its mouth] they give the horse a tranquilizer, the horse is sedated, a kind of falling asleep but yet awake. Now horses have no nerves in the teeth as we humans do, so the horse feels no discomfort at all by having its teeth being rasped. Yep God created the horse's teeth that way....can eat all the chocolate bars it likes and never gets tooth-ache :-)

So slitting the throat of the clean animals God gave us to eat, is painless per se as the animal goes into a falling asleep mode. Obviously the small Israelite farmer used no "stun-gun." It is way different than say shooting an arrow say into its back-side, or the horse etc. ripping some of its skin on barbed wire, or a saddle not fitting correctly and the horse developing sores, and so going to saddle it, it will pin its ears back and even want to turn its head and bite you, because it is in pain from an incorrect fitting saddle.

Again slitting the throat of a cow puts the cow into a sleep mode, it's vitality and life just flows away literally and the animal dies in a sleep mode pattern, it's like a fainting mode. You cut that main artery, and the animal dies in a faint mode. Not at all like the pain animals feel if like us a nail sticks into the foot.
Why eat animals and not humans..... oh some tribes have done so, eating people, they have a name for it, you know the name. Simple.... God's way of life and laws, forbid eating humans, as Paul once said, "does not even nature teach you......"  We know from natural instinct eating people is wrong.

Keith