But We Have Dominion Over Animals! And Other Christian BS......

 God gave Noah and his family permission to finally eat animals, after who knows how many centuries, how many generations, people were permitted only to eat plants. The Apostle Paul talks about how meat sacrificed to pagan gods is not a big deal, unless someone makes it one. Even Jesus talks about how what comes out of a man's mouth is far more important than what goes into it. 

God has given us freedom. Freedom is necessary to make choices. Love requires freedom. But freedom to choose does not mean all choices are equally wise. Strangely enough, the choices we make about our food are some of the simplest, most practical exercises of wisdom we can make in our lives. These choices can have immediate impacts on our own health and wellbeing, the amount of time we get to share with loved ones, the amount of money we have to spend on things that are important to us; to larger, more global impacts, like making more food available to those in need, as well as decreasing the impact of some of the world's most destructive ecological practices, to finally defunding the very industries that thrive off of our binary addictions to junk food and expensive medications. 

As I have shown time and again, I aim to find common ground between Bible and science. I do not see them as mutually exclusive, or competing. Truth is truth, as Jerry from one of my favorite movies, Enemy Mine, so poignantly expressed. One of the most glaring and obvious ways they compliment each other is in the recognition of the value of a whole-food, plant-based diet. Let the eye-rolling commence.

I have touched on the serious amounts of skepticism I have gotten from the Christian community when I suggest animal products are no good. My article on Christian nihilism goes into more detail. The basic argument is this: since God gave me permission, then it's morally acceptable. If I'm going to heaven after I die, anyway, then who cares if it kills me sooner? I have already addressed why I think this is a selfish, and very mistaken, perspective. 

That being said, let's start by covering the Biblical perspective. Let's start at the beginning, with Adam and Eve. There's a lot to unpack about their story, but only a few points of it has anything to do with this discussion. First off, let's talk about Adam's relationship with the animals. It was his job to name them. But he didn't just administer names from a far off position. He got to know them. He spent time with them. One of the reasons why we're told God made Eve was so that man would have better companionship than the animals provided. Animals were Adam's companions. Any pet owner can tell you, even if human connection is important, our relationships with animals can be very special. They help us deal with our destructive emotions, like depression and anxiety. They become members of our families. 

But what about the plants? Well, when God made Adam and Eve, he told them every green thing was available for them to eat. He had made for them a garden. Now, this sounds like mythology, and I'm sure any of my non-Christian readers will just attribute it as such. But I believe that there is some historicity to the accounts of Adam and Eve and their descendants. 

Which leads me to Noah and his family. Disasters happen all the time throughout geological history. It's the theory of catastrophism. I won't argue about whether the flood in Genesis was global or regional. I don't think it matters, and I don't know one way or the other. I do believe there was a flood, one that endangered the human race. I can't imagine we were very many, back then. A few million, maybe? All located in a pretty localized part of the world. It wouldn't take a global flood to kill us all, back then. The point is, after Noah and his family survived that flood, two things happened simultaneously. The first was that God limited human life to about 120 years. The second is that he finally gave us permission to eat the animals. I believe these two are connected.

Think of the documentary Super-Size Me. Before that came out, a lot of people really liked McDonald's. They still do. But if you had nothing but McDonald's to eat for the rest of your life, how long do you think that life would be? 18 months? Less? Who would do that, if given the choice, even if they really liked the food there? You just don't pick 18 months of eating your favorite food over and over again, unless you're already gonna die in something like 24 months. If you have 50, 60 years ahead of you? You don't kill yourself eating McDonald's. Well, before the flood, humans lived for hundreds of years. Afterwards, barely more than a century, in a good life. If you lived for half a thousand years, would you choose a diet that killed you in 30 years, if you had the option of living for another 300? Um. No. That's suicidal. That's stupid. 

Nowadays, people are like, "I don't mind dying in my 60's or 70's, if it means I can die happy with the food I love. Who wants to live to 100, anyway?" My dad died young from choices he made in his life. He didn't live healthy and, because of that, he never got to meet my kids. My heart hurts about that all the time, nearly every day. I don't want to do that to my own kids. If I can be around for their graduations, for their marriages, for their kids? I want to be. 

Why did God give Noah permission to eat the animals? Because there was no way they had stored enough food to live off if they chose to stay eating plants. Doubtful they had enough grain for much of anything and back then, most fruit and vegetables had to be freshly eaten or fermented. Also, with the reduction of the human lifespan, what big difference would it make if people died at 75 instead of a hundred? No one would imagine that as a terribly shortened life, not like they would if they died at 75 instead of 400. 

God renewed our dominion over the Earth with Noah, though. As he did with Adam, he gave Noah the task of ruling over the world. Something that seems to confuse a lot of modern day Christians, though, is that doesn't mean we own it. We don't have the freedom to do whatever we want with it without consequences. We are stewards. We have authority to make decisions to safeguard the world, but we have a responsibility to all the creatures under that authority. And we have responsibility towards our fellow humans on this planet. 

Jesus talks about both stewardship and neighborliness. The Parable of the Talents shows us that God frowns on those that don't nurture the things we're given. And the Parable of the Good Samaritan shows us what is expected of us in regards to our neighbors' suffering. 

Alright. So, that's a lot of Bible. A lot of religion, a lot of theology. What about the science of the situation? My first exposure to the hard science about diet came from the Forks Over Knives documentary. I bought and read the ebook. Another documentary that really helped me was What the Health? As I often do, I went on a research binge. I found more books. The McDougall Program, The China Study, How Not to Die, Mastering Diabetes. Mastering Diabetes is backed up by over 800 scientific studies that go back nearly 100 years. How Not to Die was written by Michael Gregor, founder of nutritionfacts.org, and his entire foundation is dedicated to combing through peer reviewed journals to find out what science says about diets on their impact on health. Thousands of studies are covered by his organization. The China Study was one of the most scientifically robust studies ever done in regards to dieting. They kept most of their studies in China, because the genetic diversity in China is very low. Oftentimes, naysayers will bring up genetic diversity as a variable in many studies that haven't been accounted for. It's a "scientific" analogue to the "well my grandfather smoked and drank his whole life and he died when he was 102 years old". 

The studies all came out pretty much the same. Westernized diets kill. Animal products and processed plant products kill. People think there's a big debate over ketogenic diets and WFPB diets. There really isn't. As pointed out in Mastering Diabetes, while keto diets help control blood sugar and can help lose weight in the short term, they increase the risks of both cancer and heart disease, long term. Whole-food, plant-based diets low in fat are the only ones scientifically proven to reverse and effectively cure diabetes, heart disease, and many forms of cancer. Those are the top three killers in America. That's adding whole decades onto your average healthy lifespan. Multiple decades. 

That's just health. Imagine the long-term social effects if this were larger scale? As I mentioned, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are some of the most prolific killers in the United States. We, as a country, spend many billions of dollars every year treating them. What if we didn't? What else could we spend all that money on, instead? And that's just the Big Pharma side of the equation. More entrenched is the Big Agra side, or agriculture. The politics behind it is quite interesting. We're known for our factory farming. Unlike other industries, it's illegal to whistle-blow against industrial farms, at least in America. They're like a national rock and hard place. We are conditioned from a young age to eat animal products, then told we need to live our lives on medication when we become sick from them. 

Finally, going back to stewardship. This planet is the only one we have. When we have destroyed its ability to sustain life, we're shit out of luck. We are already seeing the effects of insane droughts and forest fires in some parts of the world, with crazy hurricanes and flooding in other parts of the world. Every one of those lives lost is on the heads of those of us who haven't done enough to stop this kind of hell from happening. I include myself in that group. The world over, people in my generation and the ones after it are more often than not choosing not to bring children into this world. I have two kids, still young. How am I going to feel if/when I find out that the planet won't last long enough for them to have their own kids? What do I say to them when we come to that realization? Well, giving up animal products has been shown to reduce carbon emissions more than anything else an average person can do. More than giving up cars, more than giving up plastic bags. 

Next, I guess, is the famine aspect. Chicken is the most efficient converter of plant-based food into animal-based food. Every two pounds of food makes one pound of chicken. Beef is at the higher end, with a pound of beef coming from every five pounds of food. Pork is somewhere in between, at about a pound for every three pounds of plant food. Billions of animals die every year to feed humans. How many billions and billions of pounds of food could we be diverting to feed the starving of the world? Instead, we divert all this grain, like corn and the like, into the mouths of all these animals, only to kill them off anyway and feed them to the highest bidder. This doesn't even take into account how many greenhouse gasses are thrown into the atmosphere as a result of all that digestion, mainly from cows. Sure, it's funny, the fact that cow farts are contributing more towards killing our planet than cars are, but it's a dark humor, for sure.

I had big dreams for this blog, at one point. Like so many of my dreams, I have had to scale back in expectations. But once upon a time, I thought it would be cool to have a whole forum attached to this blog. Have people discussing the different ideas I brought up here, creating a community of mutual support. Part of that vision included this element: plant-based recipes that were relatively cheap and healthy. I grew up, like so many Americans, addicted to American junk food and comfort food. I still am. But I spent a few years, back when I mostly had my own kitchen, to experiment with plant-based alternatives to many of those foods I loved. Burgers, pizza, hot dogs, mac and cheese, pasta, seafood, sushi, breakfast foods like eggs, bacon, and pancakes. I'm not done, but I've made a lot of progress. Found some recipes that I love. But most of my research obviously relied on what's already out there. I am a researcher, not an experimenter, at least I don't experiment too much. There are some great food bloggers out there that have made a lot of progress before me. Sauce Stache, Edgy Vegan, Vietvegan, and others. Go, look them up for yourself. If you find anything that you love, or you want to ask me anything about what I've found, get in touch with me.