Animal Souls Are Biblical...

'For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth?'

Ecclesiastes 3:21

There's your proof, if you need any. Also the Bible may support the idea of astral projections too. I just know I read some place that it had something to do with the phrase 'seventh heaven'. Does anyone know what I am talking about? And some legal protections for gays may be Biblical. I know the Roman Catholic Church seems to feel so.

I am not too religious myself. But it still makes me angry to see religious folk use their faith to justify hatred of any kind.

'The righteous one is caring for the soul of his domestic animal.' Proverbs 12:10​

 

The Seventh day Adventist Church is a protestant christian denomination which advocates vegetarianism.

You might find these links useful...

Christian vegetarianism - Wikipedia

The Christian Basis for Veganism

I am a Christian; Therefore I am Vegan - The Revd John Ryder - Sarx

 

I am human, therefore I am an Omnivore !!!

 

Reminds me of my sister who uses the Bible to prove her points. I understand the point of the OP, but I always think it is funny that this 2,000 year old book is proof of anything. I once made a point to her using the Quran as proof. She looked at me strange so I said that I know that the Quran is the true word of God. She asked how I knew that, and I answered, because it says so.


I would like to know where the bible actually says no abortions.

Ok there is that one scripture in Matthew where it says, "And the Lord said unto the crowd that had gathered unto the parking lot next to the bus stop that if the anesthesiologist is not present and the fetal tissue holds fast that the operation shall not continue unless the billing department so deems it." But what does that really mean?

 

I read that the human digestive tract is made for eating vegetables. The digestive tract of meat eaters is straighter and shorter than ours.

 

Bullshit !!! - Homo Sapiens have been Omnivores for hundreds of thousands of years and our digestive systems have evolved to cope with all types of food.

 

I'm not too up on astral projection, but Saint Paul claims to have taken a trip to the Third Heaven where God dwells. 2 Corinthians 11:22–33 and where he had "visions and revelations from the Lord. (2 Cor. 12:1). The notion of a Seventh Heaven goes back to the Babylonians, and may be based on the heavenly bodies that were visible at the time. The Hindu Puranas also teach that there are seven heavens (vyahrtis). The Zohar, Jewish mystical text, says there are 390 heavens. But the idea of seven heavens around the time of Jesus probably came from 2 Enoch, a non-canonical book that was quite the rage in the apocalyptic eschatological circles that produced early Christianity. There is no support in the Jewish or Christian canons for a seventh heaven. These ideas come from mystics who thought they were transported there for special personal revelations. Paul used his as a means of upstaging the apostles who actually knew Jesus while He was alive on earth. The idea was that at each heaven, the visitor was given special direct knowledge. Some people who had such visions were regarded as prophets.

Not sure what you're referring to there. Seems like anytime gays are brought up in the Bible it's in a negative context, notably Leviticus 18:22, which calls it an "abomination" to be punished by death, and in Romans, where Paul extends the condemnation to lesbians as well as gay men, and views it as rooted in human rebellion against God. It's doubtful though that either passage was referring to what we understand as "homosexuality" today, since the modern understanding of constitutional homosexuality or loving rather than lustful same sex relations was unknown. As for the Catholics, I haven't been keeping up, but the position used to be that homosexuality as a tendency or attraction was okay as long as it wasn't acted upon. (Good luck with that one.) Otherwise the priest shortage might be much worse. Catholicism adds to the Biblical prohibitions the notion of "natural law". Sex is for reproduction, and guys can't make babies together, so it's "unnatural". But if you're concerned about Catholic doctrine out of conscience, you might consult a priest. I'm a Methodist, myself, and we're easy.​

 

Just repeated what i read in a science article. Nothing to get huffy over.

 

It doesn't really "say" anything on the subject, but it does say :"Thou shalt not kill" (murder). What does that mean? The unlawful taking of a human life. What is a human life? That requires some interpretation. Early church fathers followed Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas that a fetus wasn't "human" until it acquired a rational soul, which didn't happen at conception. Common law said the test was when the fetus "quickented"--i.e., when movement was first detected. The Church's position was forty days after conception.for male fetuses and 90 days for female fetuses. (Hindus said the fifth month). Pope Gregory XIV confirmed the "ensoulment" tradition in 1591. Not until1869 did the pope, Pius IX, declare that life began at conception and abortions were the equivalent of murder and punishable by excommunication. Pius IX, the longest reigning pope and the one responsible for the doctrine of papal infallibility, took office in 1846 and became an increasing conservtive as a result of his experience with the revolutions in 1848. In removing the distinction between "animated" and "unanimated" fetuses, he said that it was impossible to say when ensoulment happens, and it might happen as early as conception, so it was better to be safe than sorry.
'Life Begins At Conception' Wasn't Always The Church's Position: A History Of Abortion

Evangelicals didn't join the pro-life camp until the mid-1970s, when the Christian Action Coalition formed to mobilize resistance to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decisionand didn't really catch on until Rev. Jerry Falwell used it to whip up support for his Moral Majority--proclaiming “[t]he Bible clearly teaches that life begins at conception.”.
.How Evangelicals Decided That Life Begins at Conception | HuffPost.
How Evangelicals Decided That Life Begins at Conception | HuffPost
If it was so clear, why did it take so many centuries to figure it out?

 

I'm not sure what prompted your question, but if you're looking for biblical support for being in a gay relationship, I think it's there, but hard to find and not explicit. Following the approaches of the Methodist preacher Adam Hamilton and the progressive theologian Marcus Borg, I'd start with Jesus, whose central message was love. Hamilton and Borg both argue that that provides an hermeneutic by which we can understand the rest of scripture, and Borg maintains that Jesus always trumps any particular passage that is inconsistent with this prime directive. As I mentioned, back in the day, the idea that people could be "born that way" or develop such an orientation so early in life that it is virtually a part of a person was unknown--as was the notion that it could be loving rather than lustful. To the Israelites, using a man as one would a woman was degrading the virtual image of God, doing what was done to vanquished people by their enemies, or done in certain idolatrous religious rites. And by the time Paul wrote, it was also contrary to Natural Law that the Stoics had introduced to Christian theology. We know better today. Any sex governed primarily by lust is sinful, but if a person is constitutionally gay, it seems harsh to limit their choices to celibacy or heterosexual marriage. Marriage is hard enough without adding that obstacle to it. Anyhow, that's my take.

 

This is true.

There is an interesting article in this regard.

Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians

 

Thanks for the info. Now that I am older I eat mostly vegetables and my stomach and digestive tract are happier for it.

 

If we think about it, early humans were hunter gatherers, and vegetables are easier to gather than animals. So what? Obviously, humans eat meat and have been doing so for a long time, but for much of human history, meat was scarce for non-elite types--available mostly after sacrifice of an animal to the gods. In Israel, the animal was usually a sheep or goat. In Aztec Mexico, it was us. We are omnivores. It is logically fallacious to argue from an "is" to an "ought"--that just because our digestive system is conducive to eating vegetables that we are meant not to eat meat.

 

I don't think so. If we were meat eaters we would have a meat digestive system. Why is that not logical.
I think what happened is after a forest fire early man found cooked meat and it tasted and smelled good so they started to eat it. But they still ate vegetables.

 

I really don't need a book to observe nature, and recognize a fellow sentient being.

 

If we weren't meat eaters, why do so many of us like and eat meat? Most continue to eat vegetables with their meat. The Juicy History of Humans Eating Meat.
We seem to have begun eating meat 2.5 million years ago, as a result of climate change that made green plants scarcer and forced us to turn to meat as a supplementary energy source. https://www.meathookedthebook.com/

 

(The ten minute editing rule strikes again.) We started out as scavangers, eating the scraps of meat left for us by sabre toothed tigers. As a result of our new diet, our brains increased in size--meat providing the extra energy needed to support large brains. Peanut butter could also have done the job, but it wasn't around yet. Meat gave us the brains that put us on top of the food chain. The heart disease, diabetes and cancer that goes along withe meat eating wasn't a problem cuz people didn't live long enough back then to get those.

 

I am not opposed to eating meat, but I am opposed to the way animals are treated by meat suppliers.

 

Me, too. No sense of empathy for fellow sentient beings!

 

I am not sure eating meat had anything to do with our brains. Einstein's brain was a little smaller than normal. I don't believe in evolution or survival of the fittest.