Anti Federalist
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Why Did God Issue A Stronger Penalty For Eating Meat Than For Murder?
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Ender
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I believe that all life is precious and that includes fruit and vegetables; grains etc. Because we don't relate to them like we do an animal does not mean that plants are not important and without intelligence.
My POV is to give thanks for all I have and what I eat- I am grateful for the life that gives of itself to sustain me.
My POV is to give thanks for all I have and what I eat- I am grateful for the life that gives of itself to sustain me.
lilymc
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Are you implying that it's OK to eat animals because in your view plants feel pain too? If so, not only is that a terrible argument, but it's just not true. Fruits and vegetables do not have a brain and central nervous system.
Fruits and vegetables were put on this earth by our Creator for us to eat. (Genesis 1:29-30) God would not create fruits and veggies with a mind and ability to feel pain while designing them to be our food... unless you think God is a sadomasochist.
Animals do not give themselves to be our food. They absolutely do not want to die, they have a strong will to live, just like you and I do.
Do these pigs look like they want to be tortured and slaughtered to end up on someone's plate? (watch the whole thing.)
Ender
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I'm not watching a video about torturing helpless animals for food.
I am SAYING that ALL life is important.
Because YOU do not recognize the beauty & worthiness of an apple, does not mean that it lacks intelligence or that it does not feel. EVERYTHING is filled with life and ALL life has intelligence
lilymc
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Ok, you must be trolling. So I'm not going to take the time to write out a serious reply.
As for the first thing you said, I do get the reluctance to watch horrible footage like that....but if one is a meat eater, shouldn't they be willing/able to watch what they pay for?
If not, why support something you can't bear to watch? (I'm not singling you out, that's a general 'you.')
That's akin to a pro-abort refusing to look at graphic photos or video of the reality of abortion. I think that's called cognitive dissonance.
Ender
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Ok, you must be trolling. So I'm not going to take the time to write out a serious reply.
As for the first thing you said, I do get the reluctance to watch horrible footage like that....but if one is a meat eater, shouldn't they be willing/able to watch what they pay for?
If not, why support something you can't bear to watch? (I'm not singling you out, that's a general 'you.')
That's akin to a pro-abort refusing to look at graphic photos or video of the reality of abortion. I think that's called cognitive dissonance.
Troll, eh? I'm a friend when I agree with you & a troll when I don't? Hmmmm.....
You know nothing about me.
First, I am a natural health nut; I do not eat an abundance of meat & then only from local ranchers and who I trust to take care of their animals.
Second, I am a Minister Under a Vow of Poverty; I regard ALL LIFE as sacred. That means I find trees to be as spiritual and intelligent as pigs.
Maybe you should start looking at living things around you differently- EVERYTHING IS INTELLIGENT- and thank God for all food and abundance that you have been given.
Sorry if that seems weird to you but that's how I think and operate.
heavenlyboy34
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Lilly, 1) that video is from Australia, not Murica-as you seem to imply. (practices like that, as I understand it, have been mostly phased out in the US) What happens in that is absolutely inhumane and unwise. (We know that animals who experience distress during slaughter produce poorer quality meat) Please review Leviticus 11. It is extremely explicit here that *certain* animals are for consumption.
lilymc
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No, I didn't think you were trolling because we disagree. It honestly sounded like you were trolling because of the way you said it. Like you were pulling my leg.
But since you're serious, I'll ask... why even state that? What is your point? It sounded like you were justifying eating animals by implying that it's no different than eating fruit.
There are many problems with that. Number one, it's flatly false. Fruits and veggies do not have a brain or a central nervous system. A banana is not crying out, "Do not eat me, please don't kill me, I want to live a long life and die of old age!!!" Animals, on the other hand, DO feel pain, DO have a will to live and not be eaten.
From a Christian (or just about any) perspective, fruits and veggies exist to be our food, it's the way God (or mother nature, for the non-Christians) designed it. Are you Christian, if you don't mind me asking?
Also... if you honestly believe that vegetation feels pain and has a will to live, like animals do.... why do you eat them? Why eat animals too, for that matter? I used to think differently, but I've learned that the whole "humane killing" thing is a misnomer. But that's a topic for another day. The bottom line is, animals do not want to be killed and eaten. So if you genuinely respect all living beings and think all life is sacred, why disregard their will by eating them?
lilymc
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No, I did not imply that. It clearly says it's from Australia at the start of the video. And it doesn't matter where it took place, the point of posting it was to show that animals do not "give themselves" to be our food, they do not want to die for us, they have emotions and a strong will to live.
Leviticus 11 does not state God's original design regarding animals and diet...Genesis 1 does. Read 1 Corinthians 10:23. Not all things that are permissible are beneficial. Should Christians aim for God's permissive will or perfect will?
Ender
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Some scientific discoveries with a few excerpts from websites:
Plant Intelligence
What the new botany is suggesting is that plants are sensitive and problem-solving but bypass the need for self-consciousness and brain activity that we assume is necessary for intelligence. People who think this are often accused of being anthropocentric, believing that plants are behaving like humans. The philosopher Daniel Dennett marvelously riposted that critics of this theory are "cerebrocentric," believing intelligent behavior is not possible without the infinitely superior human brain. What the new work shows is that plants, by means we do not yet fully understand, are capable of behaving like intelligent beings. They are capable of storing—and learning from—memories of what happens to them.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160221-plant-science-botany-evolution-mabey-ngbooktalk/
The Intelligent Plant. That is the title of a recent article in The New Yorker — and new research is showing that plants have astounding abilities to sense and react to the world.
But can a plant be intelligent? Some plant scientists insist they are — since they can sense, learn, remember and even react in ways that would be familiar to humans.
Michael Pollan, author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire," wrote the New Yorker piece about the developments in plant science. He says for the longest time, even mentioning the idea that plants could be intelligent was a quick way to being labeled "a whacko." But no more, which might be comforting to people who have long talked to their plants or played music for them.
The new research, he says, is in a field called plant neurobiology — which is something of a misnomer, because even scientists in the field don't argue that plants have neurons or brains.
"They have analagous structures," Pollan explains. "They have ways of taking all the sensory data they gather in their everyday lives ... integrate it and then behave in an appropriate way in response. And they do this without brains, which, in a way, is what's incredible about it, because we automatically assume you need a brain to process information."
And we assume you need ears to hear. But researchers, says Pollan, have played a recording of a caterpillar munching on a leaf to plants — and the plants react. They begin to secrete defensive chemicals — even though the plant isn't really threatened, Pollan says. "It is somehow hearing what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves."
Pollan says plants have all the same senses as humans, and then some. In addition to hearing, taste, for example, they can sense gravity, the presence of water, or even feel that an obstruction is in the way of its roots, before coming into contact with it. Plant roots will shift direction, he says, to avoid obstacles.
So what about pain? Do plants feel? Pollan says they do respond to anesthetics. "You can put a plant out with a human anesthetic. ... And not only that, plants produce their own compounds that are anesthetic to us." But scientists are reluctant to go as far as to say they are responding to pain.
How plants sense and react is still somewhat unknown. They don't have nerve cells like humans, but they do have a system for sending electrical signals and even produce neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin and other chemicals the human brain uses to send signals.
"We don't know why they have them, whether this was just conserved through evolution or if it performs some sort of information processing function. We don't know. There's a lot we don't know," Pollan says.
And chalk up another human-like ability — memory.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-...may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
Humans have five basic senses. But scientists have discovered that plants have at least 20 different senses used to monitor complex conditions in their environment. According to Mancuso, they have senses that roughly correspond to our five, but also have additional ones that can do such things as measure humidity, detect gravity and sense electromagnetic fields.
Plants are also complex communicators. Today, scientists know that plants communicate in a wide variety of ways. The most well known of these is chemical volatiles – why some plants smell so good and others awful – but scientists have also discovered that plants also communicate via electrical signals and even vibrations.
“Plants are wonderful communicators: they share a lot of information with neighbouring plants or with other organisms such as insects or other animals. The scent of a rose, or something less fascinating as the stench of rotting meat produced by some flowers, is a message for pollinators.”
Many plants will even warn others of their species when danger is near. If attacked by an insect, a plant will send a chemical signal to their fellows as if to say, “hey, I’m being eaten – so prepare your defences.” Researchers have even discovered that plants recognize their close kin, reacting differently to plants from the same parent as those from a different parent.
“In the last several decades science has been showing that plants are endowed with feeling, weave complex social relations and can communicate with themselves and with animals,” write Mancuso and Viola, who also argue that plants show behaviours similar to sleeping and playing.
And it turns out Darwin was likely right all along. Mancuso has found rising evidence that the key to plant intelligence is in the radicle or root apex. Mancuso and colleagues recorded the same signals given off from this part of the plant as those from neurons in the animal brain. One root apex may not be able to do much. But instead of having just one root, most plants have millions of individual roots, each with a single radicle.
So, instead of a single powerful brain, Mancuso argues that plants have a million tiny computing structures that work together in a complex network, which he compares to the Internet. The strength of this evolutionary choice is that it allows a plant to survive even after losing 90% or more of its biomass.
“The main driver of evolution in plants was to survive the massive removal of part of the body,” said Mancuso. “Thus, plants are built of a huge number of basic modules that interact as nodes of a network. Without single organs or centralised functions plants may tolerate predation without losing functionality. Internet was born for the same reason and, inevitably, reached the same solution.”
Having a single brain – just like having a single heart or a pair of lungs – would make plants much easier to kill.
“This is why plants have no brain: not because they are not intelligent, but because they would be vulnerable,” Mancuso said.
In this way, he adds, it may be better to think of a single plant as a colony, rather than an individual. Just as the death of one ant doesn’t mean the demise of the colony, so the destruction of one leaf or one root means the plant still carries on.
The wide gulf
So, why has plant sentience – or if you don’t buy that yet, plant behaviour – been ignored for so long?
Mancuso says this is because plants are so drastically different from us. He says it is “impossible” for us to put ourselves in the place of a plant.
“We are too different; the fruit of two diverse evolutive tracks...plants could be aliens for us,” he said. “But all the same we share with plants life, the same needs, we evolved on the same planet. In the end we respond in the same way to the same impulses.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ligent-sentient-book-brilliant-green-internet
Plant Intelligence
What the new botany is suggesting is that plants are sensitive and problem-solving but bypass the need for self-consciousness and brain activity that we assume is necessary for intelligence. People who think this are often accused of being anthropocentric, believing that plants are behaving like humans. The philosopher Daniel Dennett marvelously riposted that critics of this theory are "cerebrocentric," believing intelligent behavior is not possible without the infinitely superior human brain. What the new work shows is that plants, by means we do not yet fully understand, are capable of behaving like intelligent beings. They are capable of storing—and learning from—memories of what happens to them.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160221-plant-science-botany-evolution-mabey-ngbooktalk/
The Intelligent Plant. That is the title of a recent article in The New Yorker — and new research is showing that plants have astounding abilities to sense and react to the world.
But can a plant be intelligent? Some plant scientists insist they are — since they can sense, learn, remember and even react in ways that would be familiar to humans.
Michael Pollan, author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire," wrote the New Yorker piece about the developments in plant science. He says for the longest time, even mentioning the idea that plants could be intelligent was a quick way to being labeled "a whacko." But no more, which might be comforting to people who have long talked to their plants or played music for them.
The new research, he says, is in a field called plant neurobiology — which is something of a misnomer, because even scientists in the field don't argue that plants have neurons or brains.
"They have analagous structures," Pollan explains. "They have ways of taking all the sensory data they gather in their everyday lives ... integrate it and then behave in an appropriate way in response. And they do this without brains, which, in a way, is what's incredible about it, because we automatically assume you need a brain to process information."
And we assume you need ears to hear. But researchers, says Pollan, have played a recording of a caterpillar munching on a leaf to plants — and the plants react. They begin to secrete defensive chemicals — even though the plant isn't really threatened, Pollan says. "It is somehow hearing what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves."
Pollan says plants have all the same senses as humans, and then some. In addition to hearing, taste, for example, they can sense gravity, the presence of water, or even feel that an obstruction is in the way of its roots, before coming into contact with it. Plant roots will shift direction, he says, to avoid obstacles.
So what about pain? Do plants feel? Pollan says they do respond to anesthetics. "You can put a plant out with a human anesthetic. ... And not only that, plants produce their own compounds that are anesthetic to us." But scientists are reluctant to go as far as to say they are responding to pain.
How plants sense and react is still somewhat unknown. They don't have nerve cells like humans, but they do have a system for sending electrical signals and even produce neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin and other chemicals the human brain uses to send signals.
"We don't know why they have them, whether this was just conserved through evolution or if it performs some sort of information processing function. We don't know. There's a lot we don't know," Pollan says.
And chalk up another human-like ability — memory.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-...may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
Humans have five basic senses. But scientists have discovered that plants have at least 20 different senses used to monitor complex conditions in their environment. According to Mancuso, they have senses that roughly correspond to our five, but also have additional ones that can do such things as measure humidity, detect gravity and sense electromagnetic fields.
Plants are also complex communicators. Today, scientists know that plants communicate in a wide variety of ways. The most well known of these is chemical volatiles – why some plants smell so good and others awful – but scientists have also discovered that plants also communicate via electrical signals and even vibrations.
“Plants are wonderful communicators: they share a lot of information with neighbouring plants or with other organisms such as insects or other animals. The scent of a rose, or something less fascinating as the stench of rotting meat produced by some flowers, is a message for pollinators.”
Many plants will even warn others of their species when danger is near. If attacked by an insect, a plant will send a chemical signal to their fellows as if to say, “hey, I’m being eaten – so prepare your defences.” Researchers have even discovered that plants recognize their close kin, reacting differently to plants from the same parent as those from a different parent.
“In the last several decades science has been showing that plants are endowed with feeling, weave complex social relations and can communicate with themselves and with animals,” write Mancuso and Viola, who also argue that plants show behaviours similar to sleeping and playing.
And it turns out Darwin was likely right all along. Mancuso has found rising evidence that the key to plant intelligence is in the radicle or root apex. Mancuso and colleagues recorded the same signals given off from this part of the plant as those from neurons in the animal brain. One root apex may not be able to do much. But instead of having just one root, most plants have millions of individual roots, each with a single radicle.
So, instead of a single powerful brain, Mancuso argues that plants have a million tiny computing structures that work together in a complex network, which he compares to the Internet. The strength of this evolutionary choice is that it allows a plant to survive even after losing 90% or more of its biomass.
“The main driver of evolution in plants was to survive the massive removal of part of the body,” said Mancuso. “Thus, plants are built of a huge number of basic modules that interact as nodes of a network. Without single organs or centralised functions plants may tolerate predation without losing functionality. Internet was born for the same reason and, inevitably, reached the same solution.”
Having a single brain – just like having a single heart or a pair of lungs – would make plants much easier to kill.
“This is why plants have no brain: not because they are not intelligent, but because they would be vulnerable,” Mancuso said.
In this way, he adds, it may be better to think of a single plant as a colony, rather than an individual. Just as the death of one ant doesn’t mean the demise of the colony, so the destruction of one leaf or one root means the plant still carries on.
The wide gulf
So, why has plant sentience – or if you don’t buy that yet, plant behaviour – been ignored for so long?
Mancuso says this is because plants are so drastically different from us. He says it is “impossible” for us to put ourselves in the place of a plant.
“We are too different; the fruit of two diverse evolutive tracks...plants could be aliens for us,” he said. “But all the same we share with plants life, the same needs, we evolved on the same planet. In the end we respond in the same way to the same impulses.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ligent-sentient-book-brilliant-green-internet
heavenlyboy34
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Perfection is the ideal, but unachievable in our fallen nature. Genesis 1 assumes an unfallen nature. You're right about 1 Corinthians, but in this context your application of it is rhetorical sleight of hand. I prefer to view the Bible as a unified whole (the NT a fulfillment of the OT) instead of picking and choosing like you do.
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lilymc
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Not at all. The principle behind that verse can apply to numerous things, and it absolutely can apply to what we eat. Actually, YOU just did a rhetorical sleight of hand, because I never claimed that we can achieve perfection. I was talking about what we should aim for, in terms of God's will - His perfect will or permissive will?
And one doesn't need to be perfect to be a vegetarian or vegan.
You act like it's impossible.
heavenlyboy34
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Not at all. The principle behind that verse can apply to numerous things, and it absolutely can apply to what we eat. Actually, YOU just did a rhetorical sleight of hand, because I never claimed that we can achieve perfection. I was talking about what we should aim for, in terms of God's will - His perfect will or permissive will?
And one doesn't need to be perfect to be a vegetarian or vegan.
Does it come off that way, srsly? Nah, it's not impossible. My fasting days are all or mostly vegan. It's just not AS good as you and the OP would have us believe.
Anti Federalist
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Since so much of his creation is based on this suffering, torture and consumption of living sentient creatures, that you abhor, I'm left with that impression.
Anti Federalist
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Then why did god design us with meat tearing incisors and without three and four stomachs as ruminant animals have to process strictly vegetation?
lilymc
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That wasn't God's original design. As I said to TER earlier, God’s original design for mankind was peace and harmony among all creation, non-violence, and a plant-based diet, as stated in Genesis 1:29-30. And in the end, the peace that existed in the beginning, which is God's will - will be restored... and be even better than before. (Isaiah 11)
Now we live in a fallen world, but that doesn't mean we should throw our arms in the air and give up on doing something different... and (for Christians) matching our actions to our words when we pray "Your kingdom come Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
Please watch this:
heavenlyboy34
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She appeals to evolutionary biology and then proceeds to ignore everything taught in basic human evolutionary biology taught in universities. You might want to rethink using this as your argument, lily. ~hugs~
Anti Federalist
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So god's design now is suffering and death?
And as Ender put it, I also am of the mind that plants possess sentience and the will to live as well and suffer when they die.
I can't watch videos where I am right now, so I'll wait until I can, unless you want to thumbnail it for me.
That said, of course you're free to do and believe as you wish, but I for one, remain unconvinced.
lilymc
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I don't even believe in evolution, as taught in government universities. Do you?
And what she is saying is visibly true. You don't need to consult with a university professor to see that we have flat teeth, or a small mouth, or a long digestive tract, unlike carnivores.
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