Ashley Mathura
New Member
One of the Ten Commandants is, Thou shall not kill. Does this apply to animals as well? Should I feel guilty eating meat if animals are regarded as God's precious creations?
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Thou shall not kill!
- Thread starter Ashley Mathura
- Start date
RabbiO
הרב יונה בן זכריה
There is no such commandment.
The commandment, in Hebrew, reads - לא תרצח - You shall not murder. There is a difference.
Humans do murder other animals quite frequently, however.
Considering the book spends a lot of time elaborating which animals are okay to eat and which are not, then no, that commandment in particular should not make you feel guilty for eating meat since meat eating is rather explicitly endorsed later in the book.
RabbiO
הרב יונה בן זכריה
So that we're on the same page, your definition of "murder"?
There's no Christian laws against it. So if you feel bad about it, it's for a different reason.
BSM1
What? Me worry?
Sorry, but "murder" is a legal term. not just some liberal buzzword. Murder is determined by the justice system, thus animals cannot be "murdered" because they (thankfully) do not enjoy the rights that are afforded to humans.
Whenever one organism ends the life of another organism for reasons other than self-defense or food/resources, that's murder. Or, at the very least, senseless killing.
Our poor arachnid friends are especially familiar with this kind of senseless killing. Humans routinely murder these people simply for existing. Pardon... non-animists wouldn't even recognize spiders as persons. I wager the writers of the Bible weren't particularly animistic either, so they would not have intended basic dignity to extend to non-human persons.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
I think the command was dealt to stay the knee jerk killing among ourselves
Man was a creature with a nasty grab what you need or want
and kill anyone that wasn't strong enough to kill you
might makes right
murder would indicate a plot and design.......
killing is just that
grab a rock and hit him upside the head
the spirit of Man would not develop at all, with such behavior in play
it needed to be stopped
I hate it when people kill spiders. I hate it.
DavidFirth
Well-Known Member
God allowed us to kill and eat animals
Genesis 9
3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
Genesis 9
3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
Sleeppy
Fatalist. Christian. Pacifist.
And vice versa?
This is why I find "murder" a difficult word in most conversations. It's vague.
The laws vary a good deal from country to country and different points in time. What people usually mean in casual conversation is more like "killings that I personally disapprove of strongly".
Using it is often an impediment to communications.
Tom
Not yet. That's becoming controversial in some quarters.
Nothing about animals. This is just an unfortunate and poor English translation. This commandment literally is ,You shall not commit murder.
YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
And a potential legal nightmare (if we give rights to non-human entities),
I like spiders too.. Except that one that ran up my pant leg. I didn't like that one at all.
The problem I see with this is that it renders the comnandment meaningless: effectively: "prohibited killing is prohibited."
There's a principle of interpretation that says that, generally, we should assume that an author tries to communicate meaning, so interpretations that are either meaningless or redundant should be taken as wrong without a compelling reason to accept them.
Can you reconcile this principle with your interpretation of the commandment?