I dont understand. If Eccles 3:19 is correct (just image that it is) then dominion doesn't mean we have control to do whatever we want with animals. We are to protect and watch over them for God. Animals do have souls....there are ALOT of Bible verses that say animals are in Heaven. But I just dont get it. I'm sorry. But a loving, caring, compassionate God wants us to make an animal suffer just to eat an animal body when humans don't need to eat the animal. I would understand if we NEEDED to eat the animal, but we don't and you are saying God says kill animals to satisfy human greed. I'm sorry but that's what it is. Greed. In the Garden of Eden, we only ate fruits until Eve ate the bad apple. So really God wanted us to eat fruits, not meat. But im sorry, all humans want to live in the fall, right??? That's what we are living in....the FALL. The fall is something satan did and man wants to continue to let satan have his way.

But I understand you dont want to believe animals are the same as you. Who would? But it's the 21 century and man do "mistreat" animals and that is wrong. You know they do in factory farms. Don't go to one, but take a job at one and you will see they mistreat those animals. You eating meat is causing the "mistreatment" of animals. Do God approve of that? Does Heaven have factory farms? Does Heaven have butchers killing animals so we can eat them in Heaven. I would hope not....lol. The Lord's Prayer says.....Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. But anyways I kinda get what you are saying...do you get any of what I am saying or trying to say??

If it wasn't for a Pig.....I wouldn't know the meaning of Love. My Grandmother died and I had a Pig who was nonjudgemental and who never critcized me actually helped me cope with my Grandmother's death. May sound wierd, but a Pig was the only being that saved my life from killing myself when my Grandmother died. My family never knew my hurt after my Grandmother died, but a Pig could tell I was hurting. My family could care less, all they thought about was my dead Grandmother's money. Animals may not be intelligent creatures or beings, but they are non-judgement and they will accept anybody regardless of race or disability. And you are telling me that dominion towards these loving creatures means "treat them anyway we want" WOW. Sorry but I could NEVER eat a Pig or even say they have no right to life. We didn't create animals.

I'm guessing you don't "get" irony, so I won't belabor whether or not I said mistreating animals was right. I only said mistreating animals was "Christian" — that is, biblical — and supported by 2000 years of Christian exegesis and history.

[—name—] if you're going to argue with me, do you have to make my part so easy? Here's a hint: be careful not to say too much!

Referring to the Bible as one book tells me you have no idea what the word "bible" means. The word is a plural diminutive of biblos (book), and means "the little books," which is what the Bible is: a collection of books written at different times by different authors. But "Bible" is understood as a singular noun, and in this sense the "sacred books" of other peoples — Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, etc. — are "Bibles," too.

How can I listen to one part of the Bible and not the another? People do it all the time! When religious people want to condemn something they don't like, they find a passage they can put to the purpose; when they want to prove that God is Love, they find another passage. As Michael Scott Earl pointed out, let's say a politician gives a speech condemning his opponent and saying he would like to see his opponent killed. So the news media calls him on it and says that's a beastly thing to say. The candidate then says, "Oh, you took what I said out of context. I made that speech on Tuesday, but on Monday I gave a speech and said I really liked my opponent." The Bible is just like that.

Saying you "don't see God mistreating ... humans" tells me you haven't read your own "sacred book." Here are some examples:

* God condemning all humans for the "sin" of one (Original Sin)
* God kills all species because he made one of them imperfect (The Flood)
* God commanding human sacrifice
* God hardening Pharaoh's heart as an excuse for punishing the Egyptians with plagues, and murdering all the first-born in Egypt (what did they do to deserve that?)
* God massacring whole nations
* God sanctioning slavery and rape
* God commanding the killing of witches (FYI: there is no such thing as a witch)
* God decreeing death for idolatry, heresy and blasphemy (that is, for imaginary crimes)
* God decreeing death for breaking the Sabbath or for not keeping Passover
* God decreeing death for failing to be circumcised (ouch!)
* God decreeing death for sacrificing without a priest's help
* God decreeing death for touching a "holy" thing or for entering a holy place
* God decreeing death for sexual intercourse during a woman's period...

Don't these qualify as mistreatment? I'm sure there's an explanation for them, but "God's ways are not man's ways" will not do. That's tantamount to giving yourself a moral lobotomy. How can you seriously admire in a God the same behavior you would despise in a man? Maybe we should look up the definition of "mistreating," too?

And that brings me to your challenge to look up the Hebrew (or Hewbrew) word for "dominion." I could, of course, but it really doesn't matter. I'll tell you why.

Whether God's Word was originally in Hebrew or in any other language, the fact that it had to be translated demonstrates a fatal weakness in the process of communication between God and humanity. "Human language," said Thomas Paine, "is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information [i.e., revelation]. ... Scarcely any two nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages knows that it is impossible to translate from one language to another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense...."

If "dominion" doesn't mean ruling power, authority, control, or somebody's area of influence, then the translators, under the guidance of God, used the wrong word. And that means 2000 years of Christian cruelty to animals were all a horrible mistake, which God did nothing to correct. The RSPCA was opposed by the churches precisely because it was contrary to scripture!

I'm not going to argue vegetarianism with you. The Old Testament is very particular about how to kill animals for food, but it does not condemn the killing of animals for food.

As for living in the "Fall," as you call it, let's hear it for degradation! By every measure imaginable, humanity is living a better and more moral life now than ever before in history. We have longer lives, better health and health care, better sanitation, more free time, more wealth, more rights, more equality, and more social progress (which means we're more moral now, as a species, than we ever were) — and on and on. If you disagree, please name a specific time and place in history when these conditions I've listed were better than they are now.

The very fact that women today live longer than men is a testament to godless scientific progress in virtually eliminating the chief killer of women: childbirth. That's not something any god gave to us — or, of he did, he took his sweet time about it! If this is the Fall — if the world we live in is Satan's work — so be it. That only proves which imaginary being is to be thanked!

You are correct about one thing: I don't believe animals are the same as humans. But neither do you, or you would put the lion on trial for eating the gazelle! I do think humans are more important than animals, but that doesn't give us the prerogative to mistreat them. On the contrary, we are obligated to protect them. I believe stewardship of the earth is a human obligation, but it seems somehow to be missing from God's Word. It's certainly missing from the great religious doctrines of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Leave it to us doubters of the Sky-God to come up with the first organizations for the protection of animals and the environment. But this was possible only after many people felt it safe to doubt the Bible!

As for the pig that saved your life, if you believe it's true, it probably was — for you. But I don't have to believe it because I didn't see it. And I never suggested that humans created animals. In fact, your statement begs the question: I don't believe anything "created" animals. Instead, animals evolved from ancestral forms. Creation implies the making of something out of nothing. That is not only a logical impossibility, but it is beyond human experience.