The Unanswerable Questions Which Caused Me To Deconvert

[cogitoergosum]

I believe deeply in animal rights (and no, I am not a vegan, fanatic, or terrorist) and I was raised a YEC fundamentalist Bible literalist. I posted on a vegan board three months ago, desperately seeking answers to some things that were seriously bothering me about God's viciousness towards his own creation. At the time I was still a fundamentalist literalist YEC. In a desperate search to reconcile my conscience, morality, ethics, and compassion with what I increasingly saw as a faith based on a violent, arbitrary, incompetent, and unintelligent God, I even consulted with Christian animal rights activists as well as clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. I was told by one that in 25 years no one had ever asked him the questions I was asking. I was stunned. I think both my questions, and the answers I was given, are quite telling. Here is what I wrote:

 

"I was raised as a Protestant Christian. After watching a number of documentaries and reading a number of books - I committed to the animal rights movement. I did so based on the things which I believed I had been taught by my religion: love, compassion, care for the lives of others, morality, a sense of right vs wrong, a conscience, a sense of personal responsibility for the effects of my actions.

 

And yet, these same traits of conscience, morality, and compassion which supposedly came about due to the Bible, have caused me to question and disagree with many of the things in the Bible. The ultimate paradox! I am now left with a feeling of utter confusion and bewilderment in regards to the conflict between my beliefs and ideology vs. my faith. I have found that the faith which now most closely resembles my beliefs is Jainism; yet, I cannot adopt it as a religion since I don't believe in it's theological theories about the origin of the world, the afterlife, karma, etc, and I cannot wrangle my mind into adopting their views on these matter as logical. So theologically, my beliefs on those issues are still Protestant, yet I cannot wrangle my mind into accepting the Bible's views on diet or animal rights or God's treatment of the animal kingdom throughout the Bible! So I am having a huge crisis of faith, where I believe my religion's theology on the path to redemption, the purpose of man, the afterlife, etc, yet I find many of the aspects of my religion morally repugnant, unethical, and utterly opposite to my ideology, beliefs, and conscience, reason, and logic. Is my own conscience wrong? God supposedly gave us the power of reason, rationality, questioning, and thought - then why would his scriptures not stand up to analysis by these powers of mind which he endowed us with? I have heard from various Christian vegans that the Bible actually supports veganism and animal rights, but I must be missing something because I can't seem to find that. I'm not asking for people to tell me to simply abandon my faith, I'm looking for someone to EXPLAIN to me the things I don't understand. Here are the things which bother me the most...

 

CLOTHING

------ Why, after Adam and Eve fell, and became 'aware' of their nakedness, did God cloth them with the skin of animals? This would make God, rather than fallen man, the very first one in history to kill an animal, the very first one to commit an act of violence against another living being. Cain was not the first one to shed blood or cause the death of another living being, God was.

 

Why did he not make them clothing out of any of the multitudinous natural plant resources available - cotton, hemp, pineapple fiber, soybean/corn fiber, or the many other plant fiber clothings which have been used by various civilizations over thousands of years? Technically, he would not have had to do any work or processing to make these clothes; if he was capable of creating the universe by the 'word of his mouth' and all sentient beings from the 'dust of the ground', then he should have been perfectly capable of creating fully finished and functional clothing by speaking it into place or merely taking a plant and breathing on it. For that matter, if he was capable of creating the vastly complex human body, it would have been well within his power to create Goretex or any other technologically advanced clothing from scratch. Since science still cannot fully approximate the functions of the human body, even through advanced prosthetics, etc, then it stands to reason that He could have created clothing BETTER than anything humans are able to come up with. Why would he rely on something as utterly crude and primitive as animal skins? He could have created clothing that was its own biological entity, just as humans, animals, and plants are unique entities within the universe - he could have created breathable, waterproof, sunprotective, flexible, bodyhugging, comfortable, light, extremely durable clothing from scratch. He could have made it self healing if he wanted to, like human skin. He could have made it color-adaptable, like a chameleon's skin. He could have done anything, if he is the Creator. Why could he not CREATE clothing, rather than have to rape nature to make it? Further, why was man the only sentient being created whose body did not contain the capability to protect itself from the harsh environment outside the Garden of Eden. All the other sentient beings were created equipped with EVERYTHING they needed to survive. They didn't need clothing or protection, it was built in - tough hides, feathers, scales, fur, plate armor, your name it. It protected them from the cold, the sun, other animals, and whatever environment they lived in, whether water, mud, sawgrass marsh, jungle, etc. Why were humans made to even need clothing at all?

 

I think of the vegan slogan 'Wear your own skin' and wonder why God even came up with the horrifying idea of flaying a living being for clothing in the first place. It was HIS idea... and yet he is supposed to be perfect, holy, and capable of no evil. So how was this thought, this gory idea, even able to enter his head in the first place? In the original Hebrew of the old Testament (the Torah and Haftorah), no semantic distinction is made between an animal and a human; both are called 'living souls'. If God decided to go so far as to kill one living soul, what's the line that kept him from not just killing Eve, and giving her skin to Adam to wear? What made taking an innocent animal from the Garden of Eden and flaying it okay? How did he kill the animal - just walk into the Garden of Eden and strike it dead? What did he skin it with - his bare hands or the 'word of his mouth'? Or was he the first on to invent a skinning knife - uggh? It DOESN'T make sense to me."

[Ouroboros]

You're a thinker. That's the worst enemy to religion.

 

It's a very interesting point you're raising here. I never thought too much about Yahweh's cruelty towards animals. It's a very good point. Why would a good God do that? It's a twisted and sick "goodness."

[Shyone]

Questioning is the death of faith. And good riddance.

 

Apologetics interests me, and I wonder why no one could come up with some apologetic for your questions.

 

Regarding the animal sacrifice, clothing and such: If they can justify executing captive unarmed women and children, then surely they could make something up justify the "primative man's" need for animal slaughter.

 

And I'm sure they could say that God made the animal skins de novo without slaughtering animals (kind of like faux fur except real). "Huh? Huh? Didn't think of that, didja?"

 

I'm sure if you keep reading, thinking and questioning, you will only reinforce your initial impressions. Animal rights and Christianity have never been close relatives.

[cogitoergosum]

You wouldn't believe the ridiculous and convoluted logic the clergy came up with to try to answer my question. Such as that it never said HE killed the animal, maybe he found it lying dead in the garden of Eden after the fall of man and then skinned it. Or, maybe there was no death involved, maybe he CREATED the dead SKINS!

 

OMG. Their logic stunned the hell out of me, since I was expecting pastors, theologians, and bishops to be able to actually explain things to me. I thought they had some answers I was not aware of based on their vast theological knowledge and when they were done talking to me it would all make SENSE... but their rationalizations were so childish it was embarrassing and I was pretty much left staring at my email screen with my jaw hanging open.

[Hydroman74]

Great questions.

 

Here are a few more about that. What did it matter if they were naked? It was just the two of them right? And they were made for each other, right? So who gives a rat's ass if they were naked? Were they trying to hide their little penis and boobies from each other, or from god who created them? Why would they give a shit? They, as well as god, had been seeing each other this way all this time, so why now change it?

 

Were Adam and Eve created immortal? If so, what was the purpose of the Tree of Life? What was the need for it if they already had immortality? There must have been some need for god to plant that tree. Next, if they weren't created immortal and had to eat from the Tree of Life to have a long life, then they were going to die anyways whether they sinned or not. Booyah!

[ebonileigh]

I am soooo glad you've brought this up, I too am a strong advocate for animal rights, I am a vegetarian. When I was a christian I was horrified at all the animal sacrifice in the bible, beginning with the slaughter of animals to cover adam and eve. I was even more horrified at the total indifference and justification, by the fundies I was surrounded by, in the current world we live in. It sickens me, there is a huge amount of suffering in this world of the human animal but all the other animals and creatures suffer much more and in far far greater numbers. Sometimes I get so depressed about it all I just want out of this world, but those feelings and anxieties I work on very hard and quickly because I don't really want an early exit, life is far too short as it is, so I do what I can when and where I can to alleviate suffering, and get on with trying to enjoy as much in this life and world as is possible.

With regard to your dilemma about the christian god concept and all the horrors in the bible, I can only say that once you study evolution and all the sciences and leave belief in the god concept behind, you will have a far better understanding of the world. It is very liberating to say the least.

I look forward to the day when all animals and creatures have the same rights as the human animal, and not slaughtered en mass or exploited. But, that's not going to happen in my lifetime unfortunately.

Great to see another animal lover here.

[cogitoergosum]

 

With regard to your dilemma about the christian god concept and all the horrors in the bible, I can only say that once you study evolution and all the sciences and leave belief in the god concept behind, you will have a far better understanding of the world. It is very liberating to say the least.

 

 

I already have, I'm now an atheist evolutionist (horrors!). As I said, this was just one of the questionswhich I had emailed to clergy, theologians, and christian animal rights activists around the world and their failure to be able to provide me with any intelligent, satisfying, or moral answers was part of what led to my deconversion.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

In defence of human sacrifice, humans as carnage loving animals, now settled down to live "civilly" in the bronze age just wanted a way to be able to viciously kill animals like their ancestors. It's our instinct, we were born to kill animals. Though now we should do it in the most humane way possible, and definitely not as often as the bible prescribes. But the animal is going to die anyway to become food, I don't see what difference, other than minimizing pain, that it makes.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Great questions! The bible is loaded with sadistic nonsense that is allegedly approved by gawd, including the pointless slaughter of animals.

 

God supposedly gave us the power of reason, rationality, questioning, and thought - then why would his scriptures not stand up to analysis by these powers of mind which he endowed us with?

 

Exactly! That was the approach I took, and it led me to my loss of faith.

 

Why, after Adam and Eve fell, and became 'aware' of their nakedness, did God cloth them with the skin of animals?

 

I suspect that the story probably originated with hunter-gatherer types who used animal skins for clothing, so that's what made it into the story since that's what they were used to.