Believe it or not, this is a fairly common reason people give for not going vegan. When I first started doing this (going out of my way to talk with friends, family and complete strangers about veganism), my response was to ask people to show me where in the bible it explicitly says the animals are here to consume. Well, since I’m far from a biblical scholar (12 years of Catholic school being in my distant past), any actively religious person could provide their interpretation and I wasn’t going to argue. I shifted gears by asking, are there any biblical instructions that you choose not to follow? I mean, have you stoned any adulterers lately? Allowed your beard to grow to the ground? Or, here’s a good one – the bible instructs not to consume animals you didn’t kill yourself. I’m guessing this was a very practical way of keeping people from eating decaying animal bodies they’d come upon in the wilderness. This seems like a good argument because most people buy animal-based food in the supermarket where it is most certainly already dead. But, you know what? Nobody liked my counterarguments. Nobody likes counterarguments in general. It just makes people defend their views even more and it’s really no fun to engage in this kind of conversation. I’d rather connect and respect than debate. I accepted their premise and asked them to engage in a thought experiment. Let’s say you’re right. If God came here right now and I said, “God, even though you put these animals here for us, I find that in this day and age I have so much compassion in my heart for these beings, that I don’t want to hurt them and I would feel more peaceful if I could enjoy the many plants you also provided. Is that okay?” Most people acknowledge that, even if they believe the animals are an option, it is also an option to leave them alone and God would probably be perfectly okay with that choice. The point here is to shift the focus from, “it’s not me, it’s the bible that makes me do this,” to, “I have the choice (free will) to do this or not.”
God put animals on this planet for humans
