PANDEMICS, ANIMAL ABUSE, HUMAN SUFFERING, AND YOU
There is likely not a single person reading these words who is unaware of the new reality in which civilization finds itself. New terms such as social distancing, shelter-in-place, and community spread have already entered our popular lexicon. By far the most sinister new word, however, must be pandemic. An ugly word that represents an even uglier threat of mass disease and death.
The disease causing all this fear and disruption is called Covid-19. It is spreading worldwide and seems to overthrow every effort to stop it. Many people who contract it survive without undue difficulty. Many people become badly sick before recovering. And some people die despite all the efforts made to save them.
Is this the worst disease ever to plague humanity? Hardly. Other pathogens throughout history have had higher lethality rates or more gruesome symptoms. Does that make the anguish and suffering of those infected or their families any less now? Of course not. This is a terrible crisis that is ruining people’s lives, either physically, mentally, or financially. And the death totals will only be certainly determined by history. If ever we needed proof that this world is not our true home, it is times like these that show the misery of a world run by Satan.
Is there nothing we can do at times like these but to wring our hands and lament the wretchedness of our lot in life? Or perhaps we should blame the faceless “bad guys” who have inflicted this evil upon us all. I have already heard countless versions of who started this current pandemic, with detailed descriptions of the motives and methods of those responsible. Unfortunately, no two versions agree, and attempts to prove any of them bog down into endless speculation and rumor. I will not chase those theories, since the real source of this virus is already well established.
The Source of Pandemics
In Asian cultures we find a gruesome tradition called “wet markets.” Animals captured in the wild or raised in captivity are brought to these marketplaces and kept alive for buyers to choose from. The conditions are frightful, the sanitation is horrible, and the methods of slaughter are brutal. I will not go into too many details because these places really are as wretched and graphic as it gets. For those “Doubting Thomases” who need to see to believe, google “wet markets” and then see if you can forget what you find.[1]
These vile places have been around for a long time, but increases in global trade and smuggling have allowed more species to be marketed than ever before. Combine this with a rising affluent class and a capitalistic urge to buy anything novel that is offered, and you have a booming business based on death.
The animals killed in these markets suffer in every way possible. They are ripped from their wild homes or raised in squalid conditions. They are transported in shocking ways and crammed into cages or hung on display. The animals are often killed in front of the buyer to guarantee freshness or to fulfill some mystical ritual. Some buyers want exotic flavors; some want the supposed medicinal benefit that different animals are supposed to confer.[2]
None of this matters to the animals. The only thing that matters to them is that they are tortured and killed in Satanic ways and then their existence is over, wasted and pointless. But that’s not the end of it for humanity. During this process of corruption and degradation, a strange thing is taking place. Diseases carried by the animals, usually not terribly dangerous to themselves, are being transmitted from them to us. The humans involved end up carrying these novel diseases to other humans and pandemics are born.
It is very hard to pinpoint the source of these diseases, but our current crisis may have originated from bats. How? Some may assume that a bat landed on a human’s neck, sucked the victim’s blood and infected them. But of course that never actually happens.[3] In reality, the bats are killed for customers’ exotic dining pleasure after having suffered greatly. So the real victims in these markets are the poor bats.
There are a couple other candidates and scenarios for the source of the disease, such as pangolin meat. But regardless, it is clearly from some form of animal-to-human market transmission. Our society’s acceptance of these markets is the reason Covid-19 is ruining our lives. Toleration of animal abuse is directly responsible for the hundreds of thousands of humans who are now dying. Cruelty to animals has translated directly to suffering of people. Any other interpretation of events is a denial of reality. Animal abuse ➔ human suffering.
The Animal/Disease Connection
But surely this is an isolated incident, a regrettable but unavoidable disaster. There’s nothing we can do about it…. But that is not the case. It not only has happened before but it has happened repeatedly. Let’s briefly look at a few examples:
- SARS coronavirus. First identified: 2003. Source: Masked Palm Civets imprisoned in live animal markets of southern China.[4]
- H1N1 (Swine flu). First identified: 2009. Source: domestic pigs raised and slaughtered for food in Mexico (or possibly America).[5]
- H1N1 (Spanish flu). First identified: 1917-1918. Source: unknown bird and/or pig combination, either from Europe or China.[6]
- Ebola. First identified: 1976. Source: either wild monkeys or apes or fruit bats or duikers killed for human consumption as “bush meat”.[7]
In fact, 60% of all human diseases and 75% of all emerging infectious diseases are transmitted from animals to people, mostly from animals enslaved and killed for human food.[8] This is staggering. It means the meat industry is mostly responsible for human diseases and death. Animal exploitation ➔ human disease."
Perhaps this should not be surprising. Eating animals has been a cause of suffering and death since the beginning of time. No animal was allowed by God to be used for food until after the flood. Many corrupt people before the flood killed animals in defiance of God’s will, and eating animals “rendered them still more cruel and bloodthirsty, until they came to regard human life with astonishing indifference.” [9]
After the flood, certain animals were allowed as food in the devastated new reality. But only a few species were permitted and no blood (which usually carries the diseases) was allowed under any circumstances. {Genesis 9:4} This not only maintained the highest health standards possible when eating corpses, but made it as unpleasant a diet option as possible (no blood=little flavor) and therefore discouraged meat gluttony.
The Bible offers examples of rebellious people eating meat and suffering the consequences, such as Israel and the quail {Numbers 11} and the captives of Babylon {Daniel 1:8-16}. Some diseases are purely meat eaters’ diseases (like gout) and most killer health problems are now linked directly to meat (heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obesity, etc.).
A common misconception is that clean meats, as listed in the Old Testament, are healthier than unclean meats. That was true 3000 years ago. But since most meat available today is contaminated by blood and cancers and general filth, both clean and unclean meat are toxic and dangerous. “The whole animal creation is more or less diseased. Diseased meat is not rare, but common. Every phase of disease is brought into the human system through subsisting upon the flesh of dead animals.” [10]
Avoidable meat-caused illnesses kill far more people in modern society than more sensational wars, car accidents and natural disasters. Meat diets ➔ human illness.
All Actions Have Consequences
One of the great threats on the near horizon is the ineffectiveness of antibiotics treating disease. The medical and scientific community have warned us for years, calling it the coming antibiotic apocalypse. Why are antibiotics suddenly losing their effectiveness? The factory farm industry constantly feeds antibiotics directly to farmed animals. This overuse breeds antibiotic resistant bacteria. Then when humans eat their contaminated flesh or drink their milk, we take on the antibiotic resistance into our bodies. Society is showing more and more resistance to the effectiveness of our most useful aids in fighting illness. This means that a formerly treatable illness will be lethal, and typical treatments won’t work anymore.[11] Meat industry ➔ human death.
Starvation afflicts people around the globe while food is grown and fed to cows and pigs. Those who insist upon a meat diet are taking food out of the mouths of poor people around the world.[12] Meat diets ➔ human starvation.
Waste from the factory farming industry pollutes many rural areas. People are dying from the pollution of their air and water.[13] Meat industry ➔ human contamination.
But the underlying crisis is actually much deeper. Meat is the driving force behind virtually every area where humanity is destroying itself: deforestation, topsoil erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, as well as human disease. I have examined these issues elsewhere and will not repeat them here, but it is safe to say that the global meat industry is the single greatest threat to the survival of life on earth.[14] Meat industry ➔ human extinction.
There are other examples of how the casual destruction of animals causes problems for ourselves. Lyme disease is increasing across America. It is given to humans by ticks and ticks are increasing. Why? Several factors are combining to increase the tick population:
- Opossums are never very popular, but they are tick-eating specialists. Opossums attract and then kill thousands of ticks per acre, per week, making them one of our best allies in stopping the spread of Lyme disease. As their forest habitats have become fragmented, opossum populations have declined, and no one seems to care.[15]
- Sport hunting over the last century has increased White-tail Deer populations to levels never seen before in America. More deer provide food for more ticks and bring them into closer contact with us.[16]
- Small rodents harbor many ticks. People slaughter snakes unmercifully for the high crime of being snakes. A single medium-sized snake eats enough rodents to destroy around 4000 ticks per year. Every snake killed boosts the local tick population by 4000 ticks.[17]
So now people are suffering increased cases of Lyme disease, and it’s due to killing other animals for no good reason. Animal killing ➔ human illness.
The most famous plagues in history took place in the Middle Ages across western Europe. Spread by fleas on rats, the diseases were horrific both in terms of symptoms and the high mortality rates. The best control agents were predators of rats, such as domestic cats. But cats were demonized by the Catholic Church as agents of Satan, and people tortured and killed cats without mercy. So the predators suffered for no reason and humans died accordingly.[18] Predator eradication ➔ human deaths.
Sport-hunting results in millions of animals killed for meat, trophies and bragging rights. But American hunters alone also cause roughly 1100 human injuries and around 100 human deaths every year--hardly a trivial amount.[19] Sport hunting ➔ human deaths.
The most trafficked (enslaved & killed) animal in the world right now is the pangolin. These walking pine cones are the only scaled mammal alive today. They eat ants with a tongue nearly as long as their body! They are gentle and sweet animals whose only defense is to roll into a ball. They are wonderful creatures who are curious and affectionate when cared for in captivity. And they are nearing extinction.
Asian markets fuel a demand that results in hundreds of thousands of them being killed in the last few years. Their scales are turned into aphrodisiacs and quack medicines for those who are naïve enough to believe everything they are told by unethical sellers. Also, their meat is a delicacy for depraved appetites. And guess what? They are the only mammal known besides bats to be carriers of the coronavirus that is plaguing us right now. The next pandemic (or even, perhaps, this one) could easily come from them as they are brought unnaturally into contact with humans by way of exotic meat markets.[20] Animal-based folk-medicines ➔ human illness.
The best way to prevent future outbreaks is to shut down the meat markets for good and stop forcing animals into these horror shows.[21] China closed the wet markets temporarily after the SARS outbreak but later quietly opened them, leading to our current crisis. China closed the markets recently after the current outbreak but is already opening them again![22] In fact, the only changes China has made is to post security guards in the markets to prevent anyone taking pictures of the brutalities committed.[23]
China has even recommended as a treatment for the virus to take bear bile. Not only is this a quack remedy that has no chance of stopping the virus, but it perpetuates animal abuse. Bear bile is obtained by imprisoning bears in horrible cages with a permanent tube surgically implanted into their gall bladder. These poor bears spend their lives as bile taps and suffer terribly.[24] Once again, China is shown promoting cruelty.
But there is plenty of criticism to direct at our own government. When asked if he would use his influence as president to make sure the disease vector markets would be closed for good, Trump said that this is “not his priority.” Unsurprisingly, the obliviousness of this administration continues. In fact, instead of working to address the sources of the pandemic, Trump has used his powers to force U.S. meat plants to stay open during the pandemic crisis even though workers in them are dying. In effect, this administration has placed the "meat supply" above human life.
The Animal/Human Connection
What can we learn from all of these examples? A common attitude among many Christians is that human suffering and animal suffering are two entirely different issues and that human suffering is vastly more important than animal suffering. Anyone who cares about animals is said to be either wasting their time or showing unconcern for human problems. But this is not true at all. As we have seen above (and we could list countless more examples), animal suffering leads to human suffering. In fact, they are NOT separate issues at all but are all part of the same issue: Suffering.
Is Jesus really our example or not? “Jesus worked to relieve every case of suffering that He saw.” [25] We all know about His compassion for every human He encountered. But did it end there? “Jesus was the fountain of healing mercy for the world;…His life flowed out in currents of sympathy and tenderness. The aged, the sorrowing, and the sin-burdened, the children at play in their innocent joy, the little creatures of the groves, the patient beasts of burdens,—all were happier for His presence. He whose word of power upheld the worlds would stoop to relieve a wounded bird. There was nothing beneath His notice, nothing to which He disdained to minister.” [26]
Does this mean that animals are of equal importance as human beings? Absolutely not. Does this mean that animal suffering doesn’t matter? Absolutely not. “He [Jesus] pointed them to the birds and told them that their heavenly Father cares for even the little sparrow. He sustains the worlds, yet cares for the little birds, and how much more will He care for those who are formed in His image.” [27]
Part of our attitude of a lesser importance of animal suffering is the false medieval separation of animals and humans based on the unbiblical heresy of the immortal soul. Catholic theologians stole this concept from Greek philosophers and then passed it on unchanged to Protestants. Humans supposedly have immortal souls, animals don’t. Therefore, humans matter, while animals don’t.
But true Biblical theology refutes this false separation. Scripture defines both animals and humans as living souls, since they all have been given the breath of life.[28] If we respect the proper value God gave to all life, then we would be unwilling to tolerate any form of abuse, either to animals or humans.
God has inspired His messengers to show how we are all related. “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.” {Ecclesiastes 3:18-19} The Hebrew word translated here as “preeminence” may be better translated as “advantage,” as found in several versions.
Just as we consider death to be evil for us, we should regard the death of other animals to be just as evil for them. “For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.” {Ecclesiastes 9:12}
False Leads and True Faithfulness
Those who are committed to abusing and killing animals for profit are always trying to misdirect attention away from their cruelty. A typical ploy is to tell stories of animal lovers who are callous to human misery, hoping to negatively paint all people who call for compassion. Do such people exist? They may, but I’ve never met any of them.
As a public speaker and traveler, I have met many people who are indifferent or opposed to caring for animals. I have met many people who care for both animals and humans, understanding the true role God has given to His representatives. But I have never met anyone who just cares only for animals.
Caring for animals and nature means caring for everyone. With all the examples of the human-animal connection we have examined, we see that eliminating these cruelties to animals would have avoided the human problems that resulted. A holistic approach to caring for all life, human and animal, is the best way to fulfill the golden rule and be a faithful representative of Jesus. Compassion ➔ faithfulness.
With all the problems in the world, we often grow discouraged and give up. It is true that suffering will never end as long as this world exists. Satan will continue to afflict and torment all life until he is finally overthrown when Jesus comes again. But our job remains straightforward. Be the salt of the earth. {Matthew 5:13} Love your enemies. {Luke 6:27-35} Care for the poor and needy. {Deuteronomy 15:11} Let your light shine. {Matthew 5:16} Don’t kill anyone. {Exodus 20:13} Stand for truth. {John 16:13} Warn others before it’s too late. {Isaiah 21} Care for the animals around you. {Proverbs 12:10} Don’t support or be one of those destroying the earth. {Revelation 11:18} And in the closing days of history we can add: Be a vegetarian or, better yet, a vegan.[29]
All of this is achievable, but it does require total unselfishness. The single defining requirement Jesus laid out for entrance to His kingdom is total unselfishness. If we follow that principle to its logical conclusion, we will never need to place an artificial barrier between us and them, whoever “them” might happen to be at the time. It will make all of our lives on earth better and it will prepare us for the perfect world to come. True love ➔ salvation.
[1] For an insightful comparison between Eastern live markets and Western factory farming, see:
Matthew Scully, “China’s Wet Markets, America’s Factory Farming” (https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/chinas-wet-markets-americas-factory-farming-both-violate-moral-common-sense/)
[2] For the insanity of traditional medicines and the horrendous cost to animals, see:
Charlie Campbell, “Traditional Chinese Medical Authorities Are Unable to Stop the Booming Trade in Rare Animal Parts” (https://time.com/4578166/traditional-chinese-medicine-tcm-conservation-animals-tiger-pangolin/)
[3] See my “Spotlight on Creation--Mammals” for a description of the three species of true vampire bats and how their behavior is nothing like the slanderous myths about them. (http://www.ask-the-animals.com/)
[4] See: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masked_palm_civet#Connection_with_SARS)
[5] See: (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160627160935.htm)
[6] See: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu)
[7] See: (https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/ebola_ecology_800px.pdf)
[8] See: (https://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/diseases/zoonoses/en/)
[9] Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, page 92, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., 1890
[10] Ellen G. White, Counsels on Diet and Foods, page 292, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., 1938
[11] See: (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/08/world-faces-antibiotic-apocalypse-says-chief-medical-officer)
[12] For an overview of all the issues involving the inefficiency of meat eating, see: George Monbiot, “Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/11/mass-starvation-humanity-flogging-land-death-earth-food)
[13] See: Bibi van der Zee, “Why factory farming is not just cruel – but also a threat to all life on the planet” (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/04/factory-farming-destructive-wasteful-cruel-says-philip-lymbery-farmageddon-author)
[14] See my presentation: Matthew Priebe, “Without This Animal You Will Die!” (http://www.ask-the-animals.com/)
[15] See: (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2825780/)
[16] This concept is opposed viciously by all those who profit from killing animals, but the truth is available for those who look. For examples, see: “Hunting has increased deer population, not reduced it” (https://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Hunting-has-increased-deer-population-not-643259.php) & “The Buck Stops Here: Do We Really Need to Cull Deer Herds?” (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-really-need-to-cull-deer-herds/)
[17] See: Clara Turnage,“Sssinuous friends: Snakes help humans by devouring disease-carrying rodents” (https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/sep/05/sssinuous-friends-20160905/)
[18] See: Marija Georgievska, (https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/02/06/in-the-middle-ages-devil-fearing-christians-killed-cats-which-carried-the-unintended-consequence-of-increasing-the-rat-population-and-the-spread-of-the-black-death/)
[19] See: Ron Baker, The American Hunting Myth, Vantage Press, New York, 1985. Current human mortality numbers caused by hunters are about the same as they were decades ago (despite sharply dropping numbers of active sport hunters), and hunting groups are forced to downplay these human deaths as unimportant, see: (https://www.thoughtco.com/hunting-accident-rates-127877)
[20] See: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin_trade)
[21] For an overview of all the above issues, see: John R. Platt, “Where Pandemics Come From — and How to Stop Them” (https://therevelator.org/biodiversity-health-pandemics/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=no125&emci=ec47d061-c16e-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&emdi=2c2edd69-626f-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&ceid=426353)
[22] See: Joseph Guzman (https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/491025-fauci-mind-boggling-that-chinas-wet-markets)
[23] See: (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8163761/Chinese-markets-selling-bats.html)
[24] See: Rachel Fobar (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/chinese-government-promotes-bear-bile-as-coronavirus-covid19-treatment/)
[25] Ellen G. White, Desire of Ages, page 87, Pacific Press Publishing Association, Mountain View, CA, 1898
[26] Ellen G. White, Desire of Ages, page 74, Pacific Press Publishing Association, Mountain View, CA, 1898
[27] Ellen G. White, This Day with God, page 279, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., 1979 [taken from: Manuscript 21, September 27, 1889]
[28] See my book: Matthew Priebe, Animals, Ethics & Christianity, pp. 4-7, Ask the Animals Productions, Galt, CA, 2018 (http://www.ask-the-animals.com/)
[29] For some of the most powerful condemnations of the way we raise and treat animals for food and a call for vegetarianism a century ahead of her time, see: Ellen G. White, Counsels on Diet and Foods, pages 380-386, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., 1938
All internet sites last accessed 04/2020.
When we look at nature, what do we see? Is nature a simple display of a few basic components that are all alike? Or is nature found to be far more complex than we ever dreamed possible? When God created the universe, He made a construction that we can only begin to comprehend with our limited knowledge. So perhaps we can focus on the Earth to try to understand one small speck of creation. When previous generations tried to comprehend our world, they found such intricacies that they often resorted to superstition to explain the mysteries. Modern science has delved deeply into the lives of plants and animals and the ways they interact. But instead of reaching the end of the mysteries, science has only uncovered new questions that lead to even more mysteries. In fact science is as far from solving the intricacies of nature now as it was centuries ago.
God made life more interlocked than seems possible. Plants and animals and the world that supports them are meshed together in a web of interactions. We have found that every form of life is dependent on another form. If we pluck one thread of life, we find it attached to the rest of creation. Plants require both animals and other plants. Animals require both plants and other animals. Both plants and animals require the minerals, gases, and weather that the planet provides.
And we have found the same is true of us. Humans are more dependent than we realize on the complex interactions of all life around us. Often we assume that we are so advanced in technology and civilization that we are now immune to what happens in nature. But with each new discovery and each new interaction found, we find that we actually depend on a great many other forms of life for our own existence. Rather than being impregnably secure, humans are actually on a knife-edge of survival, relying on a host of other organisms for our very existence. This is no surprise, as God has created all life to be dependent on other life.
So what are the interactions that we need to survive? Is it really true that without a particular animal, we would die? And if so, which ones? We would be well advised to discover and protect the animals we need to keep us alive. In this program, we will examine those processes God established on Earth that maintain human life, and the individual animals that make those processes work. We might be surprised which are the most important animals to our survival.
Of course, everything we see today on Earth is God's backup plan. The perfect world of Eden was a very different place than what we see now. No death, disease, danger, or competition existed. When sin began, almost every aspect of life had to change. God had to totally remake His original creation. Without drastic intervention, life on earth would likely have ceased to exist. So we should remember that the nature we study today is not God's original plan, but rather, His temporary way of dealing with the curse of sin. Also, it should be noted that everything I say here is a simplified version of the complexities existing in nature. To go into excessive detail would needlessly confuse the issue. There are exceptions and subtleties to every area we will examine.
POLLINATION
We will first look at the plant world. Without plants, the survival of most animal life is impossible. Plants produce the oxygen animals must breathe. No plants, no more breathing. But there is a second major service plants provide. Food! Without plants most life will starve. Even predators depend on plants to feed their vegetarian prey. So whatever keeps plants alive is obviously crucial.
Plants grow from a seed, reach maturity, and then reproduce the next generation. Plants usually reproduce by cross-pollination. This gives plants diverse genes that keep them healthy. Some plants, especially conifer trees, let wind blow their pollen randomly. But most plants use animals to spread their pollen to others of their species, including most food plants we eat. 70% of flowering plants need insects to pollinate them, including two thirds of our crops. Plants attract specific animals to their flowers, place pollen on animals, and gather pollen brought to them by animals. So now we will examine animal pollinators, as they must do the job of pollination or we will die.
Bats pollinate many desert and tropical plants. They drink nectar from night flowers and carry pollen on their fur. Birds that drink nectar do the same thing with day-blooming flowers. But relatively few birds or mammals pollinate. Of the other vertebrates, only some gecko species regularly visit flowers and carry pollen, especially in jungles. The vast majority of pollination is done by insects.
The insect pollinators are legion. Butterflies by day, moths by night. Bees and wasps either visit many varieties or are specialized for a single species. We all know that honeybees industriously drink from flowers, but native bees, usually small, are actually much more important in keeping plants thriving. Localized bee species are the backbone of healthy habitats. Some bees, such as bumblebees, vibrate their bodies at a specific frequency to loosen pollen grains for collection. Certain plants require this buzz-pollination for existence. Beetles come in so many forms that it's no surprise that a large group are pollinators. Tiny beetles are often abundant, all working hard feeding themselves and keeping their food source successful. We think of flies as biters and spreaders of disease, but only a few do so. Most drink nectar from all types of flowers. Flies have scent detectors on their head and large eyes with color vision to help them find flowers. Taste receptors on their legs and feet let flies taste the flowers. We know of over 1100 plant species pollinated by flies.
So when it comes to our food, clothing made from plants, and the very air we breathe, we depend on the great insect world in all its many forms. This is why pesticides have been so dangerous. For every harmful insect species killed, many more harmless and beneficial species are also destroyed. Every insect form lost will mean the plants that rely on them will be lost too. Areas in China that have lost insect pollinators now require humans to hand pollinate each individual flower. Do we really want to take on the arduous job of pollinating our food ourselves? Insects pollinate plants for free and are happy to do it! Temporarily reducing mosquitoes is not worth losing our food supply. In one case alone, 50,000 bumblebees were killed after insecticides were sprayed in trees to kill aphids. This was in a shopping center parking lot near Portland, OR. 50,000 bumblebees from one application of insecticides. Is killing a few aphids the easy way really worth it?
DECOMPOSITION AND WASTE REMOVAL
If pollination is the science of the continuation of life, then decomposition is the science of the end of life. Death is always a tragedy, never part of God's original plan, and will be eradicated when all is made new. But for now, death is an element of existence that we cannot ignore. At the time of the fall, God recreated a huge segment of the life He made to deal with the new reality of death. If He hadn't, nothing would have lasted for long, as we will see.
When a body dies, animal or plant, the cells cease to function, but they don't disappear by themselves. Other organisms are needed to physically break them down and recycle the nutrients for use again. Whole new kinds of life, unneeded in perfect Eden, became indispensable. Bacteria, which is neither animal nor plant, was tasked to do this on the microscopic scale. Fungi, another unique form of life, also became a force for decomposition, attacking both dead plants and animals. Fungi is incredibly diverse and has many beautiful forms. But the real work of fungi happens invisibly in the dead wood and soil and grass all around us.
Aiding these microscopic workers are the slightly more visible animals digesting dead plant and animal cells. Beetles are fantastic in this area, both as adults and larva. Munching away on dead wood, larva break wood down to even smaller parts that can be tackled by bacteria. Carpenter Ants grind up dead wood in bulk, turning it into sawdust. Dust mites live in our homes and devour the skin we shed constantly. Without them we would be wading through our own lost skin cells like snow.
Beetle larva also tackle animal corpses. Carrion beetles arrive from far and wide as soon as an animal dies. Dermestid or skin beetles are so efficient at stripping flesh from bone that museum curators use them to clean skeletons before mounting. Many flies lay their eggs on dead bodies, and their larva quickly eat it. Many adult wasps feed their young with flesh they have scavenged. Yellow jackets and other hornets are like small vultures, cleaning up tiny bodies before they rot. Normal vultures do the same on a much larger scale. They are among the many birds that scavenge, like Caracaras and Ravens and Marabou Storks. Many mammals do the same. Jackals, hyenas, and foxes all specialize in following other predators and cleaning up leftovers. Lobsters clean up the seafloor, removing decaying carcasses. Conch and whelk snails eat dead fish as well, using a long tube mouth to reach into small spaces. Water snakes eat dead and dying fish before bacteria can pollute our fresh water. Wolverines are as happy to scavenge as they are to hunt for live prey.
Why is all this important? Without plant decomposers, all dead plants would lock up the nutrients they had absorbed during life. With no nutrient recycling, the soil would become impoverished to the point of uselessness. Plus the heaps of dead plants would soon pile so high as to bury everything around them. Nothing new could grow and eventually all life on Earth, including us, would cease. But thanks to the decomposers, decaying plant cells release nutrients for reuse by the next generation of growth, and so life continues. Animal corpses have an additional complication. As they putrefy, corpses foster disease, and so need to be removed as quickly as possible. So all the varieties of scavengers are vital in maintaining a clean habitat, and preventing disease. Again, without scavengers, dead bodies would soon cover the landscape and make life unbearable.
There is one more related area that needs addressing. Waste removal. When vertebrate animals leave waste behind, it is a health hazard. Even when some animals, like cats, carefully bury their waste, that still doesn't solve the problem. Someone has to clean it up and prevent contamination from spreading. Many specialized insects are tasked with this important cleanup, but the most famous are the dung beetles. Found throughout the world in desert and grassland ecosystems, 6000 dung beetle species are vital in cleaning up the dung of many herbivores. By burying waste, they achieve soil aeration and fertilization, reduce fly and parasitic worm numbers, and plant seeds in safe growing spots. A beetle finds a fresh manure pile and goes to work, carving out a ball to lay her eggs on. Usually, she will need to move it to a proper place to bury it, and so the great backwards rolling expedition begins. She will push her treasure over every obstacle until she finds the perfect spot. She can roll a ball fifty times her own weight. They are the only insect proven to navigate by starlight, using the Milky Way as a guide. Star gazing beetles! How about that?
SOIL AND WATER PROCESSING
In order for plants to grow properly, soil needs to be well aerated and well fertilized with various nutrients. Enter the many species of humble earthworm. Feeding underground on soil, they break up compacted soil into much healthier loam, ready for plant germination. Also, soil goes in one end of the worm and fertilizer comes out the other end. A healthy earthworm population processes forty tons of dirt per acre every year. Other insect burrowers including ants, beetles, and millipedes process soil as well. Ants may even be the most essential in bringing minerals to the surface to replenish our topsoil. So we can thank these tiny hidden creatures for productive soil.
Clean water is mandatory to human existence. As water gets dirty, a cleanup system engages to purify it. Marshes and swamps clean the water that passes through them by filtering out toxins. God gave us wetlands to be a giant filtration system catching impurities in the water. As these habitats have been drained and filled with soil, the water flowing through does not get cleaned, resulting in polluted drinking water and poisoned animals. One of the key animals for cleaning water is the mussel. Found in flowing fresh water, mussels burrow into the mud and pump water through their bodies using powerful siphons. They filter out their microscopic food and in the process remove pollution from the water. One mussel can filter over 18 gallons of water every day. Amazingly, some mussels have been found to live over a century, never moving from their chosen spot. God certainly gave the mussel a supply of patience when He handed out gifts to His animals!
In salt water, oysters and clams and scallops do the same job cleaning out toxins from the water, storing them in their bodies in ever increasing amounts. In recent years, these animals have registered some of the most polluted bodies in the sea. Without them taking the brunt of our contamination, sea water would have deteriorated much faster and reduced our own survival.
PLANT HEALTH
Since we know how important plants are to our survival, any animals that care for plants are crucial as well. Many animals are gardeners, planting seeds for their own purposes. Ants are especially adept at this, tending both flowers and whole trees around the world. The Acacia Ant lives inside hollow thorns of acacia trees, driving away any animal or plant that threatens or competes with the tree. The acacia provides sweet ant nectar from wells as a reward for the ants to drink. With all their food and shelter needs provided for, the ants can focus on attacking any plant and animal that comes near their acacia home. Banana Slugs aid the sprouts of giant Redwood trees, by eliminating the competition. So slugs in their natural habitat can be helpful gardeners. Bats transport rainforest fruit seeds to new locations. Birds do the same in every warm habitat on Earth. They eat the seeds, the seeds pass unharmed through the birds system, and get dropped with a bit of fertilizer to get them started. In some cases, seeds can only grow after they have passed through the intestines of a specific mammal, such as African acacia seeds eaten by elephants.
Grass is an enormously crucial plant, relied on for food by many animals. It grows very fast from underground runners. Grasslands have been described as upside down forests, as most of each grass plant grows underground. When grazers eat the aboveground leaves, the underground stem allows instant regrowth. Fresh grass is more easily digested than old tough grass, so the faster grass is eaten, the more nutritious the grassland will be. Cows, antelopes, rhinos, sheep, horses and rabbits are all built to eat grass, keeping the grass renewed. But the most important grazers are not what we might expect.
Termites abound in every tropical grassland. There are a half-ton of termites for every human being on Earth! Each mound contains several million individuals, all working to maintain the colony. Grassland termite species feed on grass, clipping them down to the ground, letting new growth spring up. Grasshoppers do the same thing in temperate grasslands. Even before Bison were destroyed from the Great Plains, grasshoppers were as important as Bison in eating grass. Rather than being pests out to eat our crops, God designed grasshoppers to cycle nutrients to keep the habitat healthy.
Trees have mutual interactions with funguses that keep them healthy. Funguses attach to underground roots and enable them to absorb water and nutrients more efficiently. As new seedlings sprout, they bond with the funguses around them, giving them the best chance of survival. When clear-cutting removes the entire forest from a landscape, there are negative results. The sun dries and heats the exposed ground and kills the local funguses. If there are uncut forests nearby, the funguses can recolonize the newly planted seedlings. But when clear-cuts devastate too large an area, the fungus partners are lost and the regrown forests are crippled.
We now know that 80% of plant species have symbiotic relationships with funguses. So animals that maintain the fungus populations are very important. Principal among these in temperate forests are rodents such as voles, pocket gophers, and deer mice. They dig up truffles and other species and spread spores throughout the forest. The health of giant trees hundreds of years old, and the entire ecosystems they support, can ultimately be traced to the tiny mammals scurrying through the branches or undergrowth. God uses these humble creatures to maintain His special gardens.
When it comes to soil health and the grass and trees we depend on, there is an exceptionally complicated network of microbes, plants, animals, and funguses maintaining the whole. Most of these are still barely understood, and more interactions are being discovered constantly. As we cut down forests, spray pesticides and herbicides irresponsibly, and kill animals, we break connections and destroy vital processes God established long ago. Destroying the network we depend on is an unintelligent plan.
There is one more benefit that plants provide humans besides air or food. Modern studies have found that experiencing nature results in physical and mental healing. People heal better and faster in a country setting than a city one. Patients looking at visual scenes of flowers and flowing water and forests have a reduction of pain levels, even during surgery. Exercise experienced in a natural setting increases its effectiveness when compared to exercise experienced indoors or on city streets. God revealed this to His messenger over a century ago. "Nature is God's physician. The pure air, the glad sunshine, the beautiful flowers and trees, the orchards and vineyards, and outdoor exercise amid these surroundings, are health-giving—the elixir of life.... There are life- giving properties in the balsam of the pine, in the fragrance of the cedar and the fir. And there are other trees that are health-promoting. Let no such trees be ruthlessly cut down. Cherish them where they are abundant, and plant more where there are but few." Testimonies Vol. 7, p. 76-77.
Satan knows this and has tricked people into fearing nature as dangerous. Biophobia is a real mental disease that the devil inflicts upon many people. The same people that happily drive around cities in the death traps we call cars are scared to take a walk in the woods where they think animals are waiting to attack them around every corner. In the United States, an average of 40,000 people are killed every year in auto accidents. Around 88,000 die from drinking alcohol. And a staggering 500,000 die from tobacco use, including 50,000 non- smokers who are killed from secondhand smoke. Less than 100 Americans are killed by wild animals each year. And most of these deaths are allergic reactions to honey bee stings, not the extremely rare predator attacks overhyped by the media. Spiders only account for about 7 deaths, and snakes only cause about 5 deaths a year. No animal you can think of kills even a fraction as many people as car accidents, smoking, or poor diets. Satan fools people into fearing the activities in nature that will actually heal their mind and body. You should be far more terrified of the smoker you pass on the street than the snake in your backyard. The real danger to our health comes not from the wild but from civilization.
PREDATION
Animals feeding upon other animals is a complicated topic for a creationist. I examined this in depth in my presentation Red in Tooth and Claw, so will only summarize here. Without predators in our world, animals would overpopulate and soon starve. The animals that feed on other animals, the predators, are indispensable in maintaining other animal populations at healthy levels. When predators are eliminated by humans, their prey soon overpopulates, spread disease, and die in large crashes. So all predators are crucial to maintaining healthy ecosystems and all the life that depends on them, including us.
Predators come in all sizes and forms. Every type of animal has predators among its ranks. From the largest animal on Earth, the Blue Whale, to tiny insects such as assassin bugs, we find predators. They form an indispensable part of every ecosystem, land or sea, on Earth. Remove predators from any habitat and the system immediately begins to break down. Restore them and life begins to stabilize. For example, Gray Wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park have changed the entire ecosystem for the better. Thanks to wolves reducing the overpopulation of Elk, many overgrazed areas are recovering. Surprisingly, wolves have aided species such as the Quaking Aspen, goldeneye ducks, and Grizzly Bears. Once the Elk numbers reached a healthier level, the damage caused by them was eliminated and the habitats revived, especially streamside areas.
Despite these proven benefits, wolves and all other predators are hated and destroyed savagely. Around the world, snakes and otters and seals have been senselessly slaughtered because of their diet. Hawks, owls, and eagles get the shoot on sight treatment as well. We poison predatory fish so that we can have more game fish for our exploitation. Around the Great Lakes, cormorants are being pointlessly destroyed at the whims of fishermen. All of this is a visceral reaction to systems we don't understand, as we eliminate the animals that keep these systems healthy.
Some of the most crucial predators are the insect eaters. For every human being on Earth, an estimated 200 million insects exist. Due to insects' enormous reproductive abilities, we need all the help we can get in keeping even the beneficial ones from taking over. Chief among our allies are the spiders. They are actually insect catching specialists. Some actively chase their prey, pursuing small insects and using their venom to subdue them. Wolf spiders are named for the large canines to illustrate their hunting prowess. Lynx spiders make up another group of often brightly colored ambush spiders. Night crawling spiders emerge after dark to hunt. Spitting spiders spit glue onto prey, gumming them down until they can be eaten. Jumping spiders have extremely diverse colors and forms, some very flamboyant. They leap upon prey like leopards, using the best vision that God gave to any spiders. They are the only spiders that will relate to us, turning curiously to watch us as we watch them. Many spiders use silk to make insect traps. Orb weavers lay out a large web that catches insects with sticky threads. Sheet webs are non-sticky webs that entangle prey long enough for the spider to seize it. Dozens of other web styles snare insects in different ways. Without spiders catching their food, we would be overrun with insects, and nobody wants that. Every time we crush a spider, we are allowing hundreds of insects to live and reproduce. Rather than an enemy, spiders are our allies that God has tasked in keeping insects controlled. The mosquito carrying the disease that will kill you can be caught and eaten by a spider first, but only if you don't kill the spider!
Spiders are classed as arachnids, but there are several other insect-eating arachnid groups besides spiders. They are some of the strangest looking life forms God ever created. Solifuges race after insect prey at up to ten miles per hour in deserts around the world. The hairs that cover them detect odors, vibrations and chemicals. When they catch a meal, they chew it up with their venormous jaws. Pseudoscorpions are micro predators that can live in many strange places, such as pinecones, caves, or even under the wings of beetles. Most carry their babies in a pouch and feed them a form of milk! Vinegarones subdue food by spraying vinegar-scented acid from their tail. They use their heavy front pincers to hold prey, and their delicate second pair of legs as feelers. Harvestmen tiptoe around trees and on the ground, sometimes gathering into dense clusters. Note that they are not spiders, as spiders have a body divided into two distinct parts. In humid tropics, tailless whipscorpions grab their quarry with long bent front legs that they can fold out of the way. They are so flat that they can live safely under loose tree bark. Scorpions use their venomous stinger to subdue their insect prey. Of all of these weird arachnids, only some of the scorpions pose any danger to man. The rest are all totally harmless, despite their fearsome appearances. Humans have invented artificial ideas of beauty and ugliness and condemn those animals which don't fit our prejudices. But as the writer Montaigne wrote, "Those which we call monsters are not so with God."
But we've only looked at the arachnids that feast on insects. There are many others that do this important job. Insect feeding bats are especially well designed for this, as one bat can catch 2000-3000 insects every night. A single colony eats hundreds of tons per night. Insectivore mammals like shrews eat their weight in insects every day. They scurry through the ground cover, pouncing on any small prey they can find. Some ant species raid in swarms, devouring all insect life in their path. Praying Mantis seize food with their strong, fast forearms. Chameleons snag insects with a long sticky tongue. A single bird captures thousands of insects to feed themselves and their chicks. 90% of birds feed on insects at some stage of their life. Anteaters slurp up tens of thousands of ants or termites with their enormously long tongue. Frogs sit by the water and eat mosquitoes as they emerge, before they can do any harm. Flycatchers dash out from a high tree perch and snag flying insects. Dragonflies and damselflies spend all day grabbing insects, while their young do the same underwater to aquatic insect larva. Fence and rock lizards pick off flies wherever they land. Swallows rake the air for the gnats and flies they need. Armadillos shuffle through soil and leaf litter as they smell their way to lunch. Even fish get in on the insect action by leaping above the surface to grab low flyers. This is only a tiny list of insect feeders. Every species contributes to the effort of maintaining insects below explosion populations. When predators are killed, deliberately or accidentally, the insects are able to increase, and this has often happened. When exploding insect levels eat our food supply, spread disease, or invade our homes, we often find that the controlling predators have been lost through our own carelessness or cruelty.
The entire system of predation is part of the intricate system called the food web. Many people think humans are at the center of the food chain. But in reality every animal and plant on Earth is part of this interconnected web, since life cannot exist apart from it. Plants are fed upon by herbivores, and predators catch both herbivores and other predators. Every animal is built to eat specific types of food, and cannot just change to another food source on a whim. In grasslands, birds are dependent on grasshoppers to raise their chicks. If the grasshoppers are destroyed, so are the birds. Prairie birds have starved many times after insecticides have destroyed their food.
Some animals eat many types of food. If they lose a critical food source at a key time of year, it won't matter if the rest of the year's food is abundant. For example, Grizzly Bears feed on grass, berries, meat, fish, and grubs, depending on the time of year. For the bears in Yellowstone National Park, for a few weeks each year bears climb the mountains and start overturning rocks where cutworm moths gather. A single bear eats 10,000-40,000 moths every day. In one month a bear will eat a fourth of his caloric intake for the entire year! If they miss their moth feast, they enter hibernation undernourished and may starve.
When any part of the food chain is lost, a ripple takes place that affects everything in the web. Lose enough pieces and the effect is magnified. Eventually a crash will devastate the local ecosystem, leaving very few working parts left. We depend on these systems as well, so when we lose them, we end up hurting ourselves.
Examples of this can be found around the world, but are especially obvious in the oceans. When the Newfoundland fishermen of Canada overfished the Cod, a collapse occurred that destroyed their industry. Over twenty years later, the Cod are still gone and are not coming back. To deflect criticism for their incompetence, the Canadian government and the fishing industry created a false scapegoat of the Harp Seal. They claim that seals are destroying the Cod, when in reality seals eat other fish that eat Cod. So now savage men slaughter hundreds of thousands of baby seals every year, hoping to exterminate them completely. Killing is done in the most barbaric, cruel conditions imaginable, and the ocean system continues to disintegrate. We are destroying our own life- support system by our stubborn foolishness.
Many pieces of many habitats have already been lost. Some have been lost for so long that we don't even realize what we are missing or how impoverished nature has become. When John Muir walked across the Central Valley of California a century ago, he described endless flower fields in pristine grasslands. None of that complex habitat has survived, and all the resident animals have disappeared. Too many species and habitats are following that route to oblivion as land is lost to development. We need the diversity of life far more than we need another Sprawlmart.
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED
We have looked at a few facets of life to see how they work together. We have only examined those areas that include living organisms. We haven't even touched non-living processes such as fire, weather, or the seasons. They are also extremely complex and have massive effects on our planet's life. But I have focused our study on the plants, animals, and other organisms to illustrate the God-given importance of life maintaining other life.
What are the lessons that can be learned from this examination of the natural world? And what are the effects on our daily lives? The first issue of critical importance is that Earth's system of life is so complex and interdependent that there is no way it could function except as a working whole. Remove part of the system and the rest will stop functioning. This means the evolutionary theory does not explain how the primordial Earth could have grown from a primitive ecosystem to the complex one we see now. There are so many working pieces in the system that the slowly increasing complexity that evolution demands is impossible to realize. No system we study becomes more complex as it develops. This is both logical and demonstrable, unlike the fanciful and scientifically unprovable claims of evolution. Without God's intervention, everything breaks down rather than improving. The evolution-killing concept of irreducible complexity applies just as well to our ecological system as it does to microscopic structures. Life could never have lasted long enough to diversify into a self- sustaining bionetwork. So the study of ecology is a study refuting evolution.
If we try to understand our world only using naturalistic scientific principles, we will fail. Unless we include God's overall role in shaping and reshaping the system, we will lose our way in endless philosophical quagmires. Ellen White described this perfectly. "Young men talk about science and are wise above that which is written; they seek to explain the ways and works of God to meet their finite comprehension; but it is all a miserable failure. True science and Inspiration are in perfect harmony. False science is something independent of God. It is pretentious ignorance." Testimonies Vol. 4, p. 584.
The second lesson of importance concerns the animals themselves. When we look at the animal life God has made, we find it to be overwhelmingly composed of invertebrates. Vertebrate mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds compose only 3-4% of the total discovered species. And over half of those vertebrates are found in the fish world! One family of insects, the beetles, have over 350,000 named species, with many more waiting to be discovered. But there are only around 4000 mammal species, with relatively few left to be identified. And it is not only species diversity in which invertebrates dominate. The total number of individual invertebrates are millions of times greater than individual vertebrates, including us. If we add up the total weight of all the animals on land, we find insects by themselves reach 85-93% of the total weight. This is astonishing and completely turns our perceptions upside down.
If all vertebrates went extinct tomorrow, invertebrate animals would be disrupted and some would themselves go extinct, but many would settle out and continue to function normally. But if all invertebrates went extinct tomorrow, the vertebrates would quickly follow them into extinction. This includes humans, since we could not exist for even a few months without the ecosystem services maintained by invertebrates. This really shows how complex God has made our world. Life is not made of individual parts that can be casually destroyed with no consequences. Humans have been busily destroying many species of plants and animals for centuries. Some of the species lost have been of limited impact. Some lost species have had ripple effects that have resulted in other species also going extinct. And some lost species have had major impacts on the ecosystem. How many species can we lose in any local area without beginning a chain reaction of destruction? We never know...but many local ecosystems have already been destroyed in this way. On a worldwide scale, we are playing a global game of Russian roulette, where every lost plant or animal takes us another step toward disaster.
An unexpected side effect of this is that our value judgment of an animal's importance is usually way off. When we look at Giant Pandas or Whooping Cranes or White Rhinos, we are concerned about their rarity and are often willing to work to prevent their extinction. This is good, since they are wonderful animals that should be protected. But if any of them went extinct, the results to the ecosystem would be limited. But if a worm or beetle or shrimp or mussel is rare, we are indifferent and make no effort to protect them. When they go extinct, the damage to us is much worse than if a more charismatic bird or mammal is lost.
People wonder why I spend so much of my creation presentations talking about invertebrates, when there are so many pretty birds and cute mammals available for study. Not only does the Bible tell us to go to the ant in Proverbs, but Ellen White gives us a wonderful glimpse of God's view of life. "The perfection of God's work is as clearly seen in the tiniest insect as in the king of birds." Testimonies Vol. 4, p. 591. We must stop categorizing animals into good or bad, important or irrelevant, useful or disagreeable. We know too little most of the time to make value judgments of any species' worth. The most ignorant question asked by humans is, "What good is that animal?" ALL species matter to God, or He would not have created them as part of His plan.
This does not mean that there are not pests to be dealt with. Due to sin, some animals have been changed by Satan to directly cause humans problems. Parasites are clearly part of Satan's attack upon our wellbeing. Parasites serve no useful function to any other life, they only cause harm. Other animals compete with us indirectly as they eat our food or damage our homes. We must protect ourselves from injury from animals that harm us. But we must be careful to only control these animals that are actually problems. Too often we destroy every insect and spider for the high crime of being an insect or spider. We casually crush every small life form as if it is our duty to eliminate the creatures God has made.
Is it a sin to kill insects? No. Ellen White has made this clear. "Letters have come to me, asking in regard to the teaching...that nothing that has life should be killed, not even insects, however annoying or distressing they may be.... The Lord has never given any human being such a message. God has told no one that it is a sin to kill the insects which destroy our peace and rest." Selected Messages Vol. 1, p. 170. So we are not talking here about a moral issue. By contrast, it is a sin to kill animals for sport, for their fur, or for blood-filled meat, as we examined in my presentation Animals, Ethics & Christianity. Obviously, killing insect pests do not fit these categories. But do we really want to kill the invertebrates which aid us? Should we kill the insects that pollinate our food, that recycle our soil and forest nutrients, and that clean up pollution? If we look at the financial benefit of insects in the U.S. economy alone, insects save us fifty-seven billion dollars per year! And this amount is a conservative estimate.
We need a much better understanding of nature to know which species are harmful and which species are helpful. Then we can target more intelligently those species that really are a threat. We fear spiders, but of the Earth's 38,000 described species of spiders, less than 100 have a strong enough venom and bite to be dangerous. Of these, only two kinds are native to North America; the Brown Recluse and the Black Widow. The vast majority of spiders should be left alone to do the job God directed them to do. If we wanted to roughly estimate, maybe 80-90% of invertebrates are useful to us directly or to the ecosystem that we depend on. Only a tiny fraction actually cause us harm, so we should be educated as to which those are and leave the useful majority alone. This is not sentimental new age mysticism; this is self-interest and preservation of ourselves and the system God has established.
Our final important lesson is how careful we need to be with the life we depend on. As we have seen, human life depends on animal life to exist. So we need to protect all the pieces that keep the system functioning well. This seems obvious, but humans have a terrible record when it comes to protecting important creatures. If a moth or crayfish, mussel or frog becomes rare enough to need protecting, the usual reaction by people is anger and resistance. Anything that interferes with business or recreation or blood sports is fought viciously, especially if it is to protect some "worthless bug." So we let tiny and valuable creatures die and mourn them not, even though priceless and unique creations of God are lost.
The variety of life, called biodiversity, is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. It is the fiber that holds our life support system together. The greater the diversity, the stronger the system. Island ecosystems are more easily destroyed because they lack this diversity. When the inhabitants of Easter Island cut their forests and destroyed the native animals, they destroyed their own ability to survive. Their entire society imploded as resources disappeared. With no trees left to build boats, they had no way to escape and most of them died, some even turning to cannibalism. Our modern world is following the same path of self-destruction by degrading the network of life we rely on. Every day in the U.S., 6000 acres of natural habitat are destroyed, either paved or farmed for cow feed or strip mined. All the resident animals and plants in those acres are killed, since they have nowhere else to go. Does anyone think this is a good idea? Every day, another 6000 acres lost? Appalachian mountain tops destroyed for coal or farmland wasted on high fructose corn syrup or deserts paved for the next identical shopping center two miles closer to our house. Since 1970, the world has lost half its land and freshwater animals. Not species lost by extinction, but actual individuals of all animals both common and rare, destroyed for food, sport, greed or lost habitat.
Consumerism is the curse of our age, putting greed and fashion before health and sanity. Now don't misunderstand me. I did not say capitalism, which I totally support. I said consumerism, which is the endless buying of things we already have or don't need. We measure success by how much money we spend, how well we keep up with the Jones, and how many toys we die with. By buying the latest device, the hippest outfit, and eating the trendiest diet, we are funding the continued destruction of the natural world.
Inspiration condemned consumerism long before we even coined the term. "We see men eagerly striving to accumulate property. They put forth all their energies, tact, wisdom, and inventive powers to gain their object, in securing earthly treasures that they will not need, and cannot use for their own profit or for their children's benefit. These persons have not time to devote to prayer, or to seek God, or to place themselves on the side of Christ....It is most sad, indeed, when those who profess godliness exhibit to the world such a perversion of their powers....All their powers are employed in securing earthly possessions, and time and talents, consequently, are spiritually dwarfed." The Review and Herald, March 1, 1887.
Environmentalists talk about taking shorter showers, driving electric cars, and recycling. But they usually ignore the single greatest way of preventing destruction to nature, and that is our diet. Huge areas of forest and grassland are destroyed to raise farmed animals. 75% of all the grain grown and 50% of all the water used in America are wasted by the meat industry. A meat eater is responsible for this massive waste of natural resources. Farmed cattle alone consume enough grain to feed 8.7 billion humans. If meat eating ended, there would be enough vegetarian food available to feed the world's humans many times over. A meat eater is responsible for human starvation around the world. U.S. ranchers and farmers destroy competitors and predators by the millions, then slaughter 10 billion helpless livestock every year. A meat eater is responsible for this cruelty to both wild and domestic animals.
And someone who avoids eating dairy products and eggs saves even more lives and resources, since those industries are just as cruel and wasteful. 33% of America's raw materials and fossil fuels are wasted by the meat industry. In a vegan economy, only 2% of those resources would be used for food. A vegan driving a Hummer wastes less energy than a meat eater driving a Prius. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but 2500 gallons to produce a pound of meat. A vegan can take a shower all day and use less water than a meat eater who never showers. A vegan can never recycle and save more resources than a meat eater who recycles everything they have ever used. Meat is the driving force behind virtually every area where we are destroying ourselves: deforestation, topsoil erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, social injustice, and the spread of human disease. To be a meat eating environmentalist is an oxymoron.
We need to make decisions about our priorities and how our actions affect the life around us. Killing animals because it is convenient or fashionable or profitable leads to the loss of those animals that keep us alive. Without animals we will die. Some of us will die sooner, and some of us later, but there are real and fatal consequences to losing species. The Endangered Species Act is the most important law ever passed to protect the diversity of life. It tries to restore rare animals and plants before they go extinct. It is hated beyond measure by industry and developers and has been attacked relentlessly for decades. The Endangered Species Act is actually a rescue net for humanity, by saving the animals and plants we depend upon. Until we learn to protect life rather than destroy it, we will continue to hurt ourselves by our shortsightedness.
We should always remember that we do not own the Earth or its creatures, as shown in Psalm 50:10-12. "For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine...for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof." Thanks to sin, nature and animals suffer under the curse of sin. "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Romans 8:22. But rather than blaming just Adam and Eve, God holds sinful humans of all ages responsible for the curse affecting the land and the animals. "How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they [the people] said, He shall not see our last end." Jeremiah 12:4. The same thought is expressed in Isaiah 24:5 and Hosea 4:1-3. So humans, as caretakers of creation, can reduce the burden of sin by faithfully following all of God's directions as revealed by inspiration.
Often Christians feel that what we do to this world's creatures doesn't matter because Jesus is coming soon and will start over with a perfect world. Unfortunately, God has not allowed us the luxury of such selfishness. God gave all of us a duty of stewardship for His creation. At the second coming, God brings reward and judgment to the living and the dead. Those who ignore God's commands will have a reward not to their liking. "And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou [God] shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth." Revelation 11:18. This is very serious and shows that God does not respect a "trash the world and get a new one free" attitude. Will the earth continue to be ruined by human greed and be eventually remade by Christ? Absolutely. Nothing we do will prevent that end result. But if we contribute to the continued death of life by our carelessness and selfishness, we will be held responsible for our choices. We are always accountable for our own actions, even when evil continues without our participation. Child abuse, pornography, and even slavery will all exist until the second coming, but our loyalty to Christ will always shun and oppose these vices in all their forms. Our stewardship of animals, plants, and the land itself is a vital aspect of faithful Christianity, one that we ignore at our own peril.
So when we look at the science of ecology, we find a wonderfully complex and important area of study. God has revealed Himself in Earth's living systems by their infinite complexity that evolution could never have produced. Chaos cannot produce complexity. It never has and it never will. Ecology is also a window into the wealth of species large and small that share our home. From the largest whale to the tiniest living speck, we find most creatures working together to bring praises to their Creator by doing the job God assigned them. As we fulfill our own role as God's representatives and stewards, we will stand as faithful witnesses to the wonder and glory of our infinite Creator.
One of the most deeply held beliefs of mankind is that human beings are the absolute masters of the earth. In our society many of our practices impact on the lives of animals in a variety of ways. What is our duty as Adventist Christians to the animals around us? Is there any debt we owe to them or are we free to ignore the results of our actions? This presentation is an attempt to answer that question from the Word of God.
Developing Christ's Character in Us
There is a text that we as Adventists are very familiar with. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus tells His disciples, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." Now this does not mean that we will be absolutely perfect as God is, but instead we need to have the same type of character as God. God's motives, values, and way of dealing with us, as shown by the life of Christ, are to be our motives, values, and way of dealing with others. The importance of having this experience is found in Christ's Object Lessons p. 69. "When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own."
Everything we do should be measured by what Christ would do in the same situation. The character we develop now will be taken unchanged into heaven, only the body will be made new. It doesn't matter if a person dies and is resurrected or is among the final generation that lives to see His coming, all will take the character they've developed here straight to heaven. We are to make every effort to live on Earth as we will live in heaven. "Every right principle, every truth learned in an earthly school, will advance us just that much in the heavenly school." (Maranatha p. 327) So it becomes our duty to discover the "right principles" that have been revealed to us to learn. We will focus on one of those principles here.
What God Meant By Dominion
We begin with one of the more famous texts of the Bible. I've found that virtually every Christian is familiar with it and so are many non--Christians. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Genesis 1:26) This is the text always used to show that whatever we do to the animal creation is acceptable and approved by God. It is the Divine mandate that justifies any action we choose. But are we completely sure that we have applied this verse correctly? What is the principle being given here? The answer to that question will determine how we apply that principle-the Dominion Principle-to our daily lives.
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him." (Colossians 1:16) Everything in this world has been created for Christ, including ourselves and everything around us. All of the animals were created for Christ. As Psalm 50:10-11 shows, God claims all animal life as His own. "For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine." We cannot own what belongs to God; the most that we can be are caretakers. In Genesis Christ did not give us ownership of the animals, He gave us dominion.
So what does the word dominion really mean? To find out we need to understand what it meant to the original writers and readers of the Bible. In 1 Kings 4:24-25 we have the same Hebrew word meaning dominion. "For he had dominion over all the region on this side of the river..., over all the kings on this side of the river: and he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree." King Solomon's dominion is described here as a very positive thing. Further, Psalm 72:2-17 is a model of how a good king is to rule over his subjects.
He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment:. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. . . .He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.... For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight. And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba: prayer also shall he given unto him continually; and daily shall he be praised....His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.
I'm sure we can all agree that any king behaving in this manner is doing everything as he should. He has dominion over his subjects and they praise him for it. He is blessed. This is a beautiful description of what dominion means to God. Yet there is more to it then that. Verses 4-8 are mentioned in Patriarchs and Prophets pp. 754-755 as a promise given to David which finds its complete fulfillment in Christ - Christ is to have dominion from sea to sea, from the river unto the ends of the earth. As David says in Psalm 103:19, "The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all." Jesus is our king! He has dominion over humans, just as we have dominion over animals. To understand how we should exercise our dominion we must first understand how He exercises His dominion over us. This is the Dominion Principle -- God is over us in the same way that we are over the animals. If we can understand this principle we will have gone a long way to understanding our role in God's creation.
We've seen in Psalms how Christ exercises His dominion. In Genesis 1:28-29 we see our dominion responsibility.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
What was included in Adam's dominion? One glaring thing not included is the eating of animals. Verse 29 makes that very clear. Adam's duty is illuminated further in Genesis 2:15, "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it." Adam was the caretaker of Eden. He had a responsibility to it. It was a mutually beneficial system. Adam was the steward of God's created works. He was God's servant taking care of God's creations. Adam's dominion was no tyrannical, dictatorial, exploitation. This is the beauty of God's dominion, that those He has dominion over praise Him for it. Doesn't Adam's dominion here sound a lot like the dominion described in Psalm 72? This is God's dominion. This is how it is in Heaven, in Eden, and in the New Earth.
Satan's Counterfeit
But like every other principle of God, Satan has a counterfeit. He has warped our concept of God's dominion over us. God is believed to be a tyrant, a predestining God that chooses who will be saved and who will burn in hell. Satan sends natural disasters to wipe out homes and lives and has convinced us to call them acts of God. When children die of starvation and when friends die from disease or accidents we are told to lay the blame on God. All of this is Satan's version of God's dominion, and of course, there is Satan's version of our dominion over the animals. Satan's dominion vs. God's dominion. To find out Satan's dominion we should first discover God's dominion. Whatever doesn't belong in God's dominion must fall into Satan dominion. If we are not following God's plan we are following Satan's plan.
The Principles of Taking Life
So what is God's plan? God's dominion? Since sin entered the Earth we now have permission to kill animals. Our question then is: When is it acceptable to take an animal's life? To answer that question we must first look at God's example with us. When is it acceptable to take a human life? Under what circumstances does God allow or direct the taking of human life?
- Capital punishment. Spelled out in the Old Testament is a detailed list of crimes that require the death penalty.
- Self-defense. This applied not only to the individual but also when Israel was being attacked by other nations.
- God's command. Israel was to destroy all the Canaanites out of the land. All of them without exception. When Achan was stoned, his entire family and household were stoned also, even though it was Achan who had committed this crime. There are many instances where God Himself or His human agents killed people at God's command.
These three categories cover the killing of humans allowed by God. Now we can discover when it is allowed to kill an animal. The first category for humans, capital punishment, does not apply to animals. Since animals cannot know the law of God, they are incapable of knowingly breaking it. So the categories for animals are as follows.
- Self-defense. If an animal attacks a human it is acceptable to kill that particular animal. An obvious example of this is David and the lion. But this does not extend to an entire species, only to the individual animal involved. This is the same as with humans. Killing a human in self-defense does not mean we can kill that person's relatives and friends.
- God's command. Two main areas are included in this. The first area is animal sacrifice. Immediately after sin God commanded sacrifice. In Leviticus they were structured and organized. All pointed to Christ's sacrifice and were intended to bring home to man the horror of sin, the vileness of every act committed against God. But what God commands He also can change. When type met anti-type, the sacrificial system reached its completion and Jesus made it clear that all sacrifice was to end. So now one area where God commanded man to kill animals has been repealed.
The second area is the killing of animals for food. This started after the flood in Genesis 9. But it is important to note that key restrictions are given to Noah at the same time. The clean animals only are to be eaten, as specifically listed in the Levitical law. But the more important restriction is in verse 4. "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat" No blood was EVER to be eaten! The Levitical law spelled it out in detail in Leviticus 17:10-14. Is this command obeyed by anyone today other than orthodox Jews? Ezekiel 33:25-26 lists the eating of blood with idol worship, murder, and adultery as Israel's chief sins. This indicates how serious God considers this sin.
Some people claim that this restriction was part of the ceremonial law done away with at Christ's death, but as shown above, the prohibition against consuming any blood preceded the Levitical law by approximately 1000 years. It continued to be the rule for the growing Christian church after the death of Christ, and was stated in official church policy. "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well." (Acts 15:28-29) Paul reaffirms this policy in Acts 21:25. So, far from being abandoned at the cross, the divine mandate never to eat blood was continued as a vital aspect of the Christian life. It was only during the Middle Ages that apostate Christianity ignored this as they ignored so many other Bible teachings.
If the Christian basis for the permission to eat meat is from the Bible, then why don't Christians follow the entire mandate? Obviously because bloodless meat is tasteless meat. All the flavor is in the blood. This suggests that the ability of the post-flood humans to eat animals is intended to be a necessity, not a pleasure. Ellen White confirms this in Counsels on Diet and Foods p. 373. On the same page she also gives a second reason for God's allowing them to eat meat. "God saw that the ways of man were corrupt, . . . And He permitted that long-lived race to eat animal food to shorten their sinful lives. Soon after the flood the race began to rapidly decrease in size, and in length of years." So in effect, it is a discipline for the race's wickedness. Those today who argue for meat eating because the Bible allows it are, in effect, arguing for the opportunity to be disciplined and to have their lives shortened.
If meat eating was a necessity, that leads to the conclusion that when it was no longer a necessity, it would no longer be done. Less advanced cultures in all ages have had a justifiable need for meat, when better food was unavailable. But does that apply to us today, in the United States and other developed nations, where every conceivable food is available? A century ago, Ellen White extensively detailed how meat was not only unnecessary, but harmful. We are in the last days, the Final Atonement, when we should be striving to rid ourselves of the world's attractions.
An Example from the Children of Israel
An important example of God's dealing with His people is recorded in the books of Moses. Soon after the children of Israel had been brought out of Egypt, they began to complain about the lack of food in the desert. "Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger." (Exodus 16:3) The flesh pots they referred to meant the meat they had eaten. God answered their complaints by sending a flock of quail that "covered the camp" (verse 13) and the people ate their fill of them. But the next morning God sent something even more miraculous.
Upon the ground lay a white substance that the people called manna. (verses 14-15) It was like nothing ever seen before and tasted like "wafers made with honey". (verse 31) It appeared for them throughout their forty years of desert wanderings and was all the food they ever needed. God had given them a food beyond anyone's imagination and it reminded them every day of His generosity. But something went wrong. For many the manna wasn't enough.
God brought them to Mount Sinai and gave them His law and then led them on the way to the Promised Land. But during the journey the people began to complain again about having no meat. They cried out, "Who shall give us flesh to eat?...There is nothing at all, beside this manna." (Numbers 11:4-6) Imagine being ungrateful for something as wonderful as manna! God answered their complaints again by sending quail again but with one critical difference. "And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague." (verse 33) All those who ate the quail died.
Why the difference? In both cases the people complained the same way, the same birds were sent for them by an unchanging God. So why were they punished the second time? "The anger of the Lord was kindled greatly." (verse 10) Why? The only difference lies in the time frame. The first time was when they had barely come out of Egypt, before God had given them the miracle of the manna. God gave them what they asked for and then showed them something better. All should have been happy, but instead many rebelled and demanded their old ways. They had no excuse; they should have and did know better. The manna was always there and they had no lack. The first was a case of ignorance but the second was a case of defiance. God's response shows His way of dealing with each mindset.
"And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent." (Acts 17:30) As Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 9:41, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin." Those who have seen the light of truth and reject it, are in a far worse state than those to whom the light has never come. As God gives light to His people, He expects them to utilize it. "After the flood meat eating was allowed because of the hardness of man's heart." (Manuscript, Nov. 5, 1890) As we move into the twenty-first century, God has clearly spelled out a better way. Will we continue to harden our hearts to His will?
The Principles of Causing Suffering
The next question that we need to examine is: When is it acceptable to cause an animal to suffer? Again we first examine when we can cause a human to suffer.
1) Discipline. Spanking a child, locking up a thief, giving leprosy to Elisha's servant, wandering 40 years in the wilderness, letting cause and effect run its course in all its myriad forms; all are forms of discipline.
2) To save life. An example is an operation that causes pain but saves the person's life.
So then what about animals? But there are many in our society who say that the animals suffer much less than we do or not at all. Why would that be, we ask? Because they are different from us, is the answer given. But what really separates humans and animals? Ask an evolutionist that question 60 years ago and he would have glibly given a whole list of differences. Ask that same evolutionist that same question today and he'll scratch his head and try desperately to come up with something-- indeed anything-- that separates humans and animals. Every difference they hold has crumbled in the face of modern discoveries of animal behavior. Tool use, modifying of the surroundings, existence of culture, language; all are now known to exist in animals. Ask a mainline Christian what the difference is and he'll say that we have an immortal soul but animals don't. Adventists have discarded the concept of the immortal soul but unfortunately the attitude toward animals that goes with it has been retained.
How was man created? "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul [Hebrew nephesh]." (Genesis 2:7) Take away the breath of life and man ceases to be a living soul. What about animals? "And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life." (Genesis 7:15) So animals also have the breath of life. Does that mean they are living souls? "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature [nephesh] that hath life...Let the earth bring forth the living creature [nephesh] after his kind." (Genesis 1:20, 24) "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air: and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature [nephesh], that was the name thereof." (Genesis 2:19) "And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea." (Revelation 16:3) Just as man has the breath of life and therefore is a living soul, so do animals have the breath of life and therefore are living souls. They are identical to us in that respect!
The only defining difference that sets us apart from animals is having the image of God. That, in its most important aspect, means we have a conscience and can choose between right and wrong. That is the only thing we can claim that the animals do not have. That's all!
But in terms of pain and suffering there is no difference! We feel pain because we are vertebrates with a nervous system, and all vertebrate animals have the same nervous system and capacity to feel pain. Our vertebra protects our spinal cord. From our spinal cord radiates nerves that lead to every part of our body. The free-nerve endings are what register pain, heat, and cold. All animals with a vertebra have a spinal cord and a nervous system like ours. Their free-nerve endings register pain, heat, and cold like ours do. Animals with a vertebra are divided into five groups: mammals (including humans), birds, reptiles, fish, and amphibians. ALL of these animals feel pain in the same way that we do.
Animals feel with emotions. Animals have intelligence. They think things out and make choices based on their experiences. Entire books have been written documenting cases of animal emotion and intelligence. I could write pages upon pages reciting examples of animals using their intelligence or showing their feelings. But I don't need to, since there is clear inspiration proving the truth of it. As we look at The Ministry of Healing pp. 315-316, let us remember three questions. Do animals have intelligence? Do animals experience emotions? Do animals suffer?
The intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for many which are not broken without great suffering to them.
Animals experience physical suffering (pain, heat, cold) and emotional suffering (loss, unhappiness, terror). So since we have shown that they suffer as we do, we can now go back and answer our question of when we can and when we cannot cause them to suffer.
As with taking life, causing suffering is the same as with humans.
1) Discipline. We use a leash to prevent the dog from chasing the neighbors. We spay and neuter dogs and cats to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. Where ducks gather to nest, we put electric fences around them to shock any fox out to eat the eggs. My grandfather raised many chickens over the years, and sometimes they got into the very bad habit of egg-eating. So he would fill a few eggs with extra strong hot sauce and put them out for the chickens to eat. Soon it was clear which chickens were egg-eaters and which weren't. The innocent ones looked as they always did. But the guilty chickens were wandering around with a dazed look in their eyes, bills hanging open, panting. Very soon all the chickens were innocent of egg eating, for it was a discipline that worked very well.
2) To save life. Taking animals to a vet terrifies them, but it's necessary. Giving them medicine or restricting their food also is sometimes important.
The Principles of Caring For Animals
We have looked at the principles that relate to what is permitted in our actions against animals. But what about our responsibility for them? "The merciful provisions of the law extended even to the lower animals, which cannot express in words their want and suffering." (Desire of Ages p. 500) Mrs. White then quotes Exodus 23:4-5 and explains how that was meant to relieve the work-animal's suffering.
The fourth commandment extends the day of rest to the work-animals. Other passages in the Levitical law also are directed at protecting the animals from abuse. "If a bird's nest chance to be before thee-thou shalt not take the dam with the young: but thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days." (Deuteronomy 22:6, 7) Here we have guidelines setting limits on how many can be taken to keep them from being exterminated. "Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together." (Deuteronomy 22:10)" This is designed to prevent the suffering caused by unequally yoking two different kinds of animals together; the differing size and strength make it difficult for both animals to function. "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." (Deuteronomy 25:4) Paul shows that this is designed to ensure that the working animal is not deprived of his just reward for his labor. "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor....For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward." (I Timothy 5:17-18)
The verse that sums it up is Proverbs 12:10. "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." Mrs. White expands this in The Signs of the Times Nov. 25, 1880.
Here is a lesson to all who have reasoning powers, that harsh treatment, even to the brutes, is offensive to God. Those who profess to love God do not always consider that abuse to animals, or suffering brought upon them by neglect, is a sin. The fruits of divine grace will be as truly revealed in men by the manner in which they treat their beasts, as by their service in the house of God. Those who allow themselves to become impatient or enraged with their animals are not Christians. A man who is harsh, severe and domineering toward the lower animals, because he has them in his power, is both a coward and a tyrant. And he will, if opportunity offers, manifest the same cruel, overbearing spirit toward his wife and children.
If animals could speak, what deeds of horror would be revealed, what tales of suffering, because of the perversity of man's temper! How often those creatures of God's care suffer pain, endure hunger and thirst, because they cannot make known their wants. And how often is it determined by the mercy or the caprice of man, whether they receive attention and kindness, or neglect and abuse. Punishment given in passion to an animal is frequently excessive, and is then absolute cruelty. Animals have a kind of dignity and self-respect, akin to that possessed by human beings. If abused, under the influence of blind passion, their spirits will be crushed, and they will become nervous, irritable, and ungovernable.
Why do we as Adventists promote vegetarianism? Is it only because it is healthier? If we think that the only reason to avoid meat is because of our own health, then we are ignoring a large section of Ellen White's writings on this. She has as much to say about the cruelty to animals involved as any other reason. Even if meat was perfectly healthy, it would still be wrong because of the cruelty to animals. The following are only a few of her statements.
I might fill pages with descriptions of the sights I have seen, the suffering among the animals that are to he used for food. When a sheep in a flock lies down and cannot rise, the others leap over or upon it as they proceed. A large box wagon follows the flock, and I have seen the drivers take up the heavy sheep, when unable to travel farther, and bounce them into the wagon, right upon their backs. And I have counted no less than eight sheep, some already dead, and others in the agonies of death, lying by the roadside, after the flock had passed. But I will not go on to describe these sickening sights. If I had not, prior to this time, discarded the use of the flesh of dead animals, I should now take the pledge to eat no more meat as long as fruits and vegetables can be obtained. (Manuscript Releases Vol. 7, p. 423)
We saw a large herd of cattle in the road ahead of us.... Some animals had been wounded; some were limping along. One poor suffering creature had both horns broken off close to his head, and the blood was flowing from the wound. Some were very lame, and were pictures of brute misery. Taken from the green paddocks, and traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty road, these poor creatures are driven to their death, that human beings may feast on their miserable dead carcasses. (Manuscript Releases Vol. 7, p. 421-422)
Your wrong habits of eating have so educated your moral powers that you have not the spirit of a Christian. Your temper is perverse, and your treatment of dumb animals is wrong. (Manuscript Releases Vol. 3, p. 306)
Not an ounce of flesh meat should enter our stomachs. The eating of flesh is unnatural....Let them, rather, return to the wholesome and delicious food given to man in the beginning, and themselves practice...mercy toward the dumb creatures that God has made and has placed under our dominion....Will the people who are seeking to become holy, pure, refined, that they may be introduced into the society of heavenly angels, continue to take the life of God's creatures, and enjoy their flesh as a luxury?...Many who are now only half converted on the question of meat eating will go from God's people to walk no more with them....Think of the cruelty to animals that meat eating involves, and its effect on those who inflict and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness with which we should regard these creatures of God!...Animals are often transported long distances and subjected to great suffering in reaching a market. Taken from the green pastures and traveling for weary miles over the hot, dusty roads, or crowded onto filthy cars, feverish and exhausted, often for many hours deprived of food and water, the poor creatures are driven to their death, that human beings may feast on the carcasses... .Some animals are inhumanly treated while being brought to the slaughter. They are literally tortured, and after they have endured many hours of extreme suffering, are butchered. (Counsels on Diet and Foods pp. 380-386)
Treatment of Food Animals
In the century since Mrs. White wrote her strong statements condemning the way we use animals for food, we have developed a new way of raising animals called factory farming. The animals killed for food today are completely removed from the Old McDonald's Farm of the past.
Factory farming is big business. Whatever is cost effective is the only consideration. Mass-produced chickens and turkeys are raised in warehouses. As they grow to full size they become a solid mass of birds with no space to spare. Far overcrowded, they literally rub each other raw. The weaker are trampled to death, disease spreads like wildfire, injured and diseased birds are left untreated until they die.
Pigs and many cows are kept in closed concrete stalls. They are fed whatever fattens them quickest, not what keeps them healthy. To prevent disease, they receive massive amounts of antibiotics, in the long run making them even more unhealthy. All end up being transported long distances unprotected from heat or cold. To save some money, they are not fed or watered on these trips. They are pushed, dragged, prodded, shocked, and beaten. Many fall and break legs or hips or are too sick to move. Those are called downers and are left where they lie to die, however long it takes. If the slaughterers get to them before they die, they attach chains to their legs and drag them to the kill floor. If the animals die first, they are used for pet food. God's dominion or Satan's dominion?
Most beef cattle and sheep are raised on open rangeland throughout the west. Any animal that even remotely competes with them are considered vermin and killed on sight. The ranching industry is directly responsible for the eradication of scores of species, including eliminating grizzlies, condors, wolverines, and wolves from most of the United States. Little prairie dogs have been killed by the billions for no other reason then that they dig burrows and eat grass. The rarest mammal in North America, the Black-footed Ferret, depended on prairie dog towns to survive. So now we spend millions of dollars to save and restore what we spent millions of dollars to destroy. For not only do the individual ranchers slaughter the animals. The government's Wildlife Services kills a million animals a year, solely to benefit ranching. And how do they kill them? With traps and poisons that kill anything indiscriminately. They corner babies in their dens and gas or burn them to death. All of this bloodshed so that we can butcher the cows ourselves in our meat-addicted culture.
We rake the oceans with fishing nets that kill everything in their paths: fish, dolphins, whales, birds. 75% of the world's fisheries are at the maximum level of sustainable fishing. Any increase in the fish killed would cause biological collapse; a chain reaction that leaves almost nothing left alive. The other 25% of the fisheries are already in a state of biological collapse. And when the fish disappear, we blame the animals--never ourselves. The seals, dolphins, and sharks become our scapegoats and we wage war upon them. Dolphins are rounded up in Japan and elsewhere and hacked and stabbed to death. They are not killed for food, but only because they eat fish. The ocean turns solid red with the blood of these innocent, intelligent, sensitive creatures. God's dominion or Satan's dominion?
Dairy cows are also confined extensively. Their life is a constant cycle of being impregnated, giving birth, and having their day old calves taken from them. The bond between mother and calf is as strong as in every other large mammal, as a story of one mother cow in England demonstrates. When she gave birth, the farmer sold the calf to a farm and the mother to a different farm. The next morning, the farmer who had bought the mother discovered that she had broken out and had run away. The farmer who had bought the calf came out that morning to discover it nursing from its mother. The mother had traveled seven miles to a farm she had never seen before to find her lost calf! What a wonderful example of motherly love and dedication.
Female dairy calves are sent back into the system; males are taken to veal stalls. There they are chained in a two foot wide box. They can stand up and lie down, stand up and lie down. Nothing more. They are fed a nutrient deficient diet to keep their flesh the right color. They are prevented from exercising to keep their muscles soft. For six months they are purposely kept anemic and sick, all to provide their flesh as a delicacy.
One of our Adventist colleges has a flyer promoting their Animal Science program. In it they tell about what a great career you can have running a dairy farm or cattle ranch, and how much money you can make doing it. There, in living color, is a picture of a student feeding a veal calf on the campus farm. Is this what we really want our colleges to be teaching at this time in Earth's history?
Female dairy cows are so bloated by growth hormones and milk producing drugs that their bodies are far too large and easily break down or become infected. They are treated as living machines and are disposed of the same way.
I used to believe that since I ate no meat, I was free from causing cruelty. But I still ate eggs and was dismayed to learn how laying hens are treated. In cages two feet square, up to nine full size hens are jammed. They cannot spread a single wing. Their feathers are rubbed off, and soon they have open sores. In such crowds cannibalism becomes common, so every hen has her beak sliced off to cause her intense pain whenever she pecks at another. Of course, all the male chicks are immediately killed by the millions. The ammonia buildup in the warehouses from their droppings is so bad that workers must wear masks when they enter, but the hens are forced to breathe it twenty-four hours a day.
Wire floors are not good for chicken feet, and often their toes become enmeshed in the wire and they never free them again.... If they are near the food, they survive. Come slaughter time, when their egg-laying rate slows, they are so violently removed from their cages that often feet and partial legs can be found in the empty cages, still attached to the wire floor.
If you want to know what it is like to be an egg-laying hen, try this test. Get in a normal sized car in a closed garage and bring seven or eight other people with you. After everyone has squeezed in, roll up the windows, lock the doors, and never leave again for the next two years! That's the life of a battery hen today. I have a simple equation that I use now whenever I'm tempted to have an egg. 1 egg = 22 hours. (22 hours is the average time between each egg laid by a battery hen.) 22 hours of absolute, unrelenting, misery of an innocent, helpless, suffering creation of God. One hard boiled egg = 22 hours. A couple fried = 44 hours. A large quiche or an omelet is worth days of suffering, all contained on one plate. God's dominion or Satan's dominion?
Sport Hunting and Fishing
For thousands of years, much of people's food has been obtained by hunting and fishing. But with modern farming, hunting is mainly for sport. There is no stronger indictment of the way we treat animals than that we kill them purely for fun and entertainment. "Satan's hatred against God leads him to hate every object of the Savior's care. He seeks to mar the handiwork of God, and he delights in destroying even the dumb creatures." (Desire of Ages pp. 356-357) A better definition of sport hunting and fishing could not be written. Millions destroyed every year in the U.S. alone, all for trophies and bragging rights. Safaris that kill one of every species of African antelope to have each variety of horns. To make it more fun, many hunters use as inefficient a weapon as possible. Bow and arrow users lose half the deer they shoot. Those that escape end up dying by themselves from blood loss, infection, or from the arrow penetrating deeper to a vital organ. State wildlife agencies build up "game species" for hunters at the expense of all other wildlife. Hunters cause an average of 1100 human injuries per year and between 100-200 human deaths per year!
And then there's sport fishing-merely hunting for fish. Now remember, fish are vertebrates with a nervous system that feels pain just like our nervous system does. They don't show it like other animals because we can't hear the sounds they make without special equipment. Fish have the same social lives and emotional feelings as every other vertebrate. In South Africa an aquarium had an Oranda goldfish named Big Red. Into Big Red's tank was put a severely deformed Moor goldfish named Blackie. Blackie could barely swim or move around the tank. From the start, Big Red sensed Blackie's helplessness and took it upon himself to be Blackie's friend. Big Red would pick Blackie up on his back and help him around the tank. When food was sprinkled onto the surface, Big Red carried Blackie up to the surface so that they both could feed. At the time this story was reported, this had been going on for over a year. A year! This is altruism, the giving to others with no thought of reward, being shown from a small fish on a continuing basis. But no regard is ever given to fish and the worst tortures are heaped upon them so that we can "relax and enjoy the outdoors."
The fishhooks we use rip into their mouths with all the intensity that a nail would feel in our mouths. They use their mouth to examine their surroundings since they have no hands or paws. Often, hooked fish lose their ability to eat until the gaping wound heals. Fish lose their protective coat of mucus by being handled by humans. Without it they are susceptible to bacteria and waterlogged tissues, both of which can be fatal. Many fish are so exhausted from fighting the fisherman's line that when released they go into shock for hours and are easily caught by predators. A Canadian study found that a hooked fish removed from the water for only 60 seconds has a 72% mortality rate. Those not thrown back slowly die by "drowning in air." Sometimes it takes well over an hour. I have watched fish being skinned alive as they struggled! Our casual acceptance of cruelty to fish because they look and act differently from other animals is based largely on our emotional attachments to animals that seem more like us.
Now please understand that what I'm discussing here is not part of a political agenda or the regular environmental issues being discussed in our society. Many meat-eating, hunting, fishing environmentalists would he quite unhappy by the subjects I'm discussing.
We must examine each of our practices with animals to see if we are following God's dominion or Satan's dominion and take steps to change things if wrong is being done. Mrs. White had much to say about the North's responsibility for the Civil War. "God is punishing the North, that they have so long suffered the accursed sin of slavery to exist." (Testimonies Vol.1 p. 359) God holds us responsible if we allow wrong to continue by our silence and apathy. To say it's not our problem is to shirk our God-given duty.
Animals in the Entertainment Industry
Animals are abused on a continual basis to provide us with entertainment. Circus animals travel most of the year in tiny cages, unprotected from the weather. Look at any major circus and virtually every animal there has been or is being abused. There are blood sports such as bullfighting and cockfighting, whose only aim is to kill the animals painfully. Even such a tradition as rodeo involves broken bones, pain, fear, and death as a matter of course. Greyhounds are taught to race using live rabbits hanging from the end of a pole. Thousands of rabbits per year are killed to train greyhounds. Of course, those greyhounds not fast enough are also killed, often in secret. Is abusing animals for entertainment God's dominion or Satan's dominion?
The brutality and bloodshed that occur at rattlesnake roundups are almost too gruesome to describe. Gasoline is poured into rattlesnake dens and burrows to force them out. Many never recover from being so poisoned and many animals that share those burrows, such as the Gopher Tortoise, are also poisoned as well as having their homes ruined. The Gopher Tortoise is nearing extinction, in part due to this rattlesnake gassing. Every conceivable torture is inflicted on the rattlesnakes ripped from their wild homes. No protection or mercy of any kind is allowed for an animal so vilified by society. They are burned, beheaded, crushed, blinded, stabbed, maimed, beaten, skinned, and eventually eaten in a carnival-type atmosphere. And they feel and suffer as much as every other animal would in the same situation
Animals We Wear
Mammals used for fur are killed in two ways. First are those raised on farms such as mink, foxes, and chinchillas. They spend their short miserable lives crowded into wire cages unprotected from the weather until they are killed by electrocution, strychnine, gas, or having their necks broken. Second are those caught in the wild with leg-hold traps. Traps catch anything that touches them: pet dogs and cats, songbirds, deer. For every fur animal caught in a trap, two so-called "trash animals" are killed by the trap and thrown away. Animals caught remain for hours or days until the trapper returns. Some chew off their leg and bleed to death elsewhere. The returning trapper does not want to damage the pelt, so they club, crush, or stomp the trapped animal to death.
Around the world most cat species are now endangered due to the fur industry. Seals and kangaroos are slaughtered endlessly. All of this bloodshed for fur-lined gloves, jacket trim, coats, knickknacks, and trivial souvenirs. Alligator shoes, snakeskin belts, bearskin rugs, ostrich skin wallets. Eight million fur-bearers, plus five million non-target "trash" animals killed every year for nothing at all but fashion and appearance. God's dominion or Satan's dominion?
Our Companion Animals
We lavish millions of dollars on our pets, give them the best of attention and love, until we grow tired of them. If they become inconvenient or too expensive, then we dispose of them. Some people "set them free" at campgrounds, rest areas, in forest and town. Hardly any survive. Most die from disease, starvation, and being hit by cars. Those that live eke out a slim living. I once found a pair of skin-and-bone hunting dogs in a national forest that gorged themselves on the cat food we put out for them.
For every human born in this country 15 dogs and 45 cats are born and there's nowhere for them to go! So we leave them at pounds and that's where most die. Roughly ten million companion animals are "put to sleep" every year. That works out to something like every five seconds, all because we will not take the effort to spay and neuter the pets in our care and because we allow animal-breeding puppy mills to continue to exist. Are we fulfilling our God given duty of stewardship toward our most loyal friends?
Parrots are being driven to the brink of extinction to supply the illegal pet trade. On their way to us, nine out of ten die --- 90%! Those that survive end up as living curios, stuck in a cage for their color and beauty. Many live as long as we do, 80 to 90 years, forever cut off from the life they should be living.
Tropical fish are caught with cyanide, again up to 90% dying on route to pet stores. But in addition the coral reef and any non-target animals are left dead from the cyanide, all again so that they can end up in tiny tanks for our amusement.
Experimenting On Animals for Science
In the past it has been taught that the best way to learn about human anatomy and the theory of evolution was to dissect other species such as frogs and cats. But modern advances in computer programs and detailed human models have made such studies obsolete. Because of dissection, many wild populations of frogs have been wiped out, and it is not uncommon for lost or stolen dogs and cats to end up on a classroom table. We must not devalue life by killing just because it's convenient. We should teach the most important lesson of all, the respect for life.
One area we need to examine is whether we can cause animal suffering to save human life. This is an important subject and needs careful thought. Is experimentation on animals a justified practice? First we need to note that we experiment all the time on humans to test new products. They are called clinical tests and they involve only volunteers. We must always remember that animals in tests are never volunteers, they have no choice. So we must strive very hard to limit such tests to only the absolutely crucial. We cannot cause their suffering for trivial, repetitive, or useless tests. We must examine animal research on a case-by-case basis to determine its worth. Let us examine some examples.
One major area of animal research is cosmetic testing. Dozens of rabbits per test are enclosed in metal boxes with only their heads protruding. Then various substances are poured into their eyes to see how much damage is done. Go into your bathroom or laundry and try to find any product that hasn't been tested in this way. It can't be done. Bleach, hairspray, shampoo, mascara, and detergent are all being used to blind rabbits in pointless tests. Other animals are force-fed large quantities of toothpaste, lipstick, or creams until half the animals succumb to convulsions, paralysis, and death. Others have chemicals applied to their bare skin, causing massive chemical burns, to measure skin irritancy levels.
The companies that continue these tests say that it is for public safety and because the tests are required by law. THAT IS A LIE! No law requires it and 500 plus companies that never test on animals prove it. Results of cosmetic tests are only valid on the animal species they were performed on. To help humans, tests would need to show the exact amount of the substance required to injure a human--which these tests never show. Every time we buy a product from a company that tests on animals, such as Procter and Gamble, we are saying to them, "It's all right to do this. You don't need to change. Here's some more money to blind rabbits."
We are making it possible for the suffering to continue by our buying choices. Modern alternative tests that do not use animals and are as accurate as or better than animal tests are readily available, but companies will not switch until we force them to by our wallet.
Another vast area of animal research involves psychology tests. These are done with the stated purpose of discovering how the animals think, learn, and develop. They are not intended to show anything about humans, except to evolutionists wanting to show how our behavior evolved from monkey behavior. Endless tests are done on every variety of animal to find out how they react to punishment, such as electric shock. Finding out how dogs suffer from electric shock and the lengths they will go to avoid it, does not in any way benefit humans, and it certainly is not a benefit for dogs.
Young monkeys are placed in smooth-walled "wells of despair" for days, weeks, and months at a time. They have no light, no interaction, nothing to touch or feel for the entire time. The point is to see how they react socially after their isolation. Not surprisingly, they are severely psychologically damaged, spending the rest of their life huddling in corners, arms held around their bodies, terrified of everyone and everything.
As sad a case as any are the monkeys taken from their mothers at birth and given to fake mothers that look and feel like monkeys but that act very differently. Designed to be monsters, these fake mothers become red hot or ice cold, eject compressed air, or hurl the baby away from them. Others eject sharp brass spikes from every surface of their body, impaling any baby that won't let go. The terrified monkeys have no real mother to turn to, nowhere to go. They wait for their "mother" to stop hurting them and then crawl back onto it, until the next time their "mother" becomes a monster. All monkeys raised like this are forever mentally unstable and are unable to interact with normal monkeys. Their lives become constant isolation and fear. God's dominion or Satan's dominion?
The researcher who conducted these tests also was the editor of a magazine that published psychology test results. Over the years he reviewed thousands of tests to decide which should be published. He made a very interesting comment about the tests he reviewed. "Most experiments are not worth doing and the data attained are not worth publishing." A telling comment from a defender of all research.
The unfortunate reality is that most tests done have been done before. Tests done over a hundred years ago are still being done with only minor variations and nothing new being learned. There is such a mind-numbing mountain of tests conducted that no researcher is able to keep up on what has been done before. Many researchers come up with new variations to ensure a continued flow of grant money, not because anything important will be discovered.
If a test benefits human life then we can understand its value, but what about tests that are incapable of helping humans in any way? A famous series of tests have been performed by Dr. Robert White, a vocal spokesman for unrestricted, unlimited animal tests. His tests involve cutting off the heads of monkeys and switching them; transplanting heads on still-living beings and keeping them alive. Can humans in any way benefit from head transplanting? The only one I can think of is Frankenstein.
One final area that I'll mention is the area of drug testing. Surely we would think it would be necessary to test a drug on an animal first to make sure that it is safe. A government study was conducted on every new drug marketed between 1976-1985. The study found that half of those drugs had been relabeled or withdrawn because they were found to be more dangerous on people than the animal tests had shown.
In this country we use 40,000 different pesticides. Every single one has been proven safe using animal tests. Does anyone really believe that all 40,000 are safe? One pesticide (no longer used in the U.S.) that was also proven safe by animal tests is DDT, and we all know how lethal DDT has turned out to be.
Animal research can often be used as a "wax nose" to prove whatever the researcher wishes. Government agencies, by using animal tests, have been proving for years that cigarettes are addictive and harmful. Meanwhile tobacco-run animal tests have been proving for years that cigarettes are not addictive or harmful. And these tests continue to this day, "proving" whatever the researcher wants them to prove.
But how can this be? How can the results be so different between humans and animals? The reality is that every species is a different biological and biochemical entity. Each reacts differently to any given substance. Aspirin kills cats and penicillin kills guinea pigs. When the discoverers of penicillin were testing it they had just run out of guinea pigs and had to use other animals. If they had tested it on guinea pigs it would have been fatal and they would not have known the effectiveness of penicillin at all. But the same guinea pigs can safely eat strychnine, one of the deadliest poisons for humans, but not for monkeys. Sheep can swallow enormous quantities of arsenic. Potassium cyanide, deadly for humans, is harmless for the owl. Insulin produces deformities in infant rabbits and mice. A dose of opium that would kill a man is harmless to dogs and chickens. These are only a fraction of such examples. A list of this type is virtually endless, as every substance used will have different results on different species and even between strains of the same species.
About thirty or forty years ago some scientists thought there might be promise in an extract from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree in treating cancer. So they infected healthy animals with cancer and then used the extract to treat them. No result occurred. There was no improvement. The scientists decided the extract was useless and abandoned it. Now the Pacific Yew is a small, scraggly, understory tree that only grows in the Pacific Northwest. Lumbermen dislike it because it is worthless for timber, and they usually cut and burn it. A decade ago scientists decided to try again with the Yew extract, but this time they used clinical human tests instead of animals. The results were astonishing. The extract was extremely effective on certain forms of cancer. In fact it was the most promising treatment to come along in ages. But now there was a serious problem. For thirty years lumberman had been wastefully destroying Yews as a "trash tree". It was now hard to find enough Yew trees to provide the extract. So two drastic consequences resulted from our faith in animal testing. First, the treatment of cancer patients was delayed for three decades. Second, for all that time the main source of the treatment was allowed to be foolishly destroyed instead of being utilized. How many other life saving drugs have been lost to us in this way?!
In this Yew case, our reliance upon animal tests has actually cost human life. We must ask ourselves if the cases of vivisection we have looked at (and many others) truly save human life, and if not then why are they allowed to continue? Roughly one hundred million (100,000,000) animals suffer and are killed every year in U.S. labs. That works out to about one killed every half second! I wish everyone could know the things I have learned in the last decade, could see behind the closed doors of the lab. Monkeys with steel bolts drilled into their skulls to hold in electronic attachments wired into their brains. The monkeys are not given any anesthesia as that would affect the results of the test. A simple question I would have; does screwing steel bolts into a monkey's head without anesthesia affect the results of the test?
Chimpanzees are infected with the HIV virus. They can't get AIDS, of course, no matter what we try. But once infected they can never be let out of their cage or have any contact with humans or other chimps. They are a carrier. They spend their entire lives in a cell the size of a closet. They can live that way for forty to fifty years. All alone, in the dark. Sitting in there with nothing to do, they slowly go insane. Rocking back and forth, circling endlessly, biting their hands and feet, banging their head on the wall, they are living death, and a live testament of our treatment of animals.
Reforming Our Attitude Toward Animals
We need a new perception of the other animals from that which we have inherited. We lavish attention, time, and money on our cats and dogs. Pets are wonderful. Everyone loves kittens and puppies. But beyond them things change. Cows and chickens are for eating. That's what God made them for. Ducks and moose are here to be hunted. The only possible purpose of a fish is to be impaled on a hook. All predators are pure evil and must be eradicated. The only good snake is a dead snake. We think animals are beautiful in pictures and nature films, but let them do anything that causes us the slightest inconvenience and the first solution proposed is to kill them.
We marvel at the colors on a butterfly and unthinkingly squash every moth we can find, when in reality moths are virtually identical to butterflies. For woe unto any animal that doesn't meet with our standard of beauty. Everyone "knows" all about bats and spiders, octopuses and snakes. They are ugly so they must be bad. The reality is that most people know next to nothing about such animals and what they do know is 95% nonsense. Test yourself, true or false? Bats fly into people's hair. Bats suck blood. Tarantulas swarm onto people, biting them to death. Snakes leap out of trees to strangle people. Octopuses pull swimmers down to their death. And all the answers are...false All false, as are hundreds of other stories that I'm sure we're all familiar with. Stories created hundreds of years ago to scare people are passed on as gospel truth from generation to generation. Until we throw away the myths, we will never appreciate animals for what they really are--living, breathing, feeling creations of God, with their own lives and purposes in God's plan. We may not understand that purpose, and it may in fact have nothing to do with us, but that in no way negates the importance of it.
As an illustration of our thoughtlessness in caring for the animal creation entrusted to our dominion, we need only look to the list of animals threatened with extinction. That list has grown over the years until it includes over a thousand animal species. This does not include the hundreds of species that have already become extinct in the last five hundred years. And once they are gone, we can never get them back, no matter how much we may want to.
Are There Any Solutions?
The question has often been asked, "These are terrible things being done to the animals, but what can we do about it?" We often feel helpless to stop wrongs being done, but we actually have more influence than we realize. In this presentation, I have very carefully chosen only those issues that we in this country can alter by our actions. There are three steps that we can all take to save the lives of animals.
1) Never directly cause an animal to die. Hunting and fishing are obvious but just as deadly are meat and fur. Every time we buy any fur or ivory or meat, we directly cause animals to die. Don't kill that snake. It's not out to get you. There is never any justification to ever kill any non-venomous snake in North America, and only in the most unusual and extreme cases should venomous ones be killed. They are vitally important to the ecosystem and only use their venom for two reasons: to catch food and to defend themselves. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. Find non-lethal solutions to animals in your yard that annoy you. Whole books are available detailing how to deal with backyard animals humanely. Death should never be the first option.
2) Never indirectly cause an animal to die. By buying milk and eggs, cosmetics and toothpaste tested on animals, or animals from a pet store, we allow and fund the suffering and death of animals to continue. When we visit places like circuses and marine parks that exploit and abuse animals, we make it profitable for them to exist. Most animal abuse exists only because it is profitable. When people stop giving money to the abusers, the suffering and death will stop. And don't say that you're only one person and can't have any impact. A vegetarian saves the lives of hundreds of animals by his food choices. As with spreading the gospel, our task is to help save the individual, not to look at the unsaved billions and give up.
3) Educate others of what is going on. Tell your family and friends what you've learned here. Express how much these things bother you. Vivisection exists only because the majority of people are unaware of what is happening. Abuse thrives on secrecy.
If we would adopt these three steps, we would save countless lives. We as individuals can make a difference, if we will only make the effort. It is our duty and responsibility as God's caretakers of His creation.
Conclusion
As long as we allow and/or participate in practices that hurt animals we will forever come short of Christ's admonition in Matthew 5:48. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." We cannot have the character of God when we are tainted with such cruelty. We, as followers of Christ, are to be an example to the world and universe of His law working in His people's lives. When we fulfill the Dominion Principle we will have taken one more step toward that goal.
In this presentation I've shown our responsibility to animals and the ways in which we've mishandled it. I very much condensed what could have been said, since books have been written on virtually every subject mentioned. But it can be summed up further yet in one brief passage by Ellen White. Everything I've talked about today is embraced in it.
Balaam had given evidence of the spirit that controlled him, by his treatment of his beast. "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." Proverbs 12:10. Few realize as they should the sinfulness of abusing animals or leaving them to suffer from neglect. He who created man made the lower animals also, and "His tender mercies are over all His works." Psalm 145:9. The animals were created to serve man, but he has no right to cause them pain by harsh treatment or cruel exaction.
It is because of man's sin that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together." Romans 8:22. Suffering and death were thus entailed, not only upon the human race, but upon the animals. Surely, then, it becomes man to seek to lighten, instead of increasing, the weight of suffering which his transgression has brought upon God's creatures. He who will abuse animals because he has them in his power is both a coward and a tyrant. A disposition to cause pain, whether to our fellow men or to the brute creation is satanic. Many do not realize that their cruelty will ever be known, because the poor dumb animals cannot reveal it. But could the eyes of these men be opened, as were those of Balaam, they would see an angel of God standing as a witness, to testify against them in the courts above. A record goes up to heaven, and a day is coming when judgment will be pronounced against those who abuse God's creatures. (Patriarchs and Prophets pp. 442-443)
I can add nothing to that but to ask that we please allow that day to come quickly, for the animals' lives and the vindication of God's character are in our hands. Let us remember the words in Isaiah 11:9, "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain."