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Amends (2018-05-23)
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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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Funnily enough there's actually wording in Genesis that could be taken imply humans are just supposed to eat plants, with humans just ruling the animal kingdom and not devouring it.
Feel free to look up Genesis 1:25-31 to see what I mean, though of course translations are..
Very variable.
Regardless, most interpretations agree that what humans absolutely shouldn't be doing is causing a mass extinction that is set to kill just about every complex life form on Earth.
That's really interesting! I'd be curious to see what other translations read as (especially ancient languages, if I were smart enough to read them), but in the NIV translation, you could absolutely read that as a call to eat only plants, and to care for the animals.
It could also be taken another, slightly more terrifying way, too.
If we assume what we're doing is right, farming and killing animals for food, and work backwards from there, the verses say that God made the animals, and gave us dominion over them. If we assume the way we currently treat animals and view them is how that dominion works, then when it goes on to say that God made man in God's image, it could be implied to say that man is to animal as God is to man.
Which could mean God is farming and killing us for God's sustenance. We're nothing but chickens in cages.
This makes more sense to me than the explanations western religion normally gives
25 God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
26 God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 God said, “Behold,[a] I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. 30 To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so.
31 God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
Footnotes
1:29 “Behold”, from “הִנֵּה”, means look at, take notice, observe, see, or gaze at. It is often used as an interjection.
Public domain, WEB translation.
I kinda think if god made all the creatures and plants, saw them to be good and left us to tend to them, He probably wouldn't be too pleased about the factory farming.
Like, we're made in his image and given dominion over his creation, a microcosom of his dominion over everything. If he wanted pigs to live a life without turning around, he could have just... made them that way. Do we really interpret "dominion" as a way to OK total subjugation of the life below us? 'Cus I always thought of that more as... like, a groundskeeper/caretaker's dominion.
"Dominion" is already an interpretation. The word didn't exist back in the day and the translator had to choose it to interpret the original text.
I'm not a Christian, but while I was that is how I interpreted it. I was taught we were supposed to be good stewards of creation. I personally never saw a problem with things like slaughtering animals, but thought the conditions of most farms weren't acceptable. I never had to think about it enough to really draw a line about what ways to treat animals was okay and what wasn't, but things like stuffing as many animals as possible I to as little space as possible getting them as far as possible as quick as possible just felt like too much. I also believed things like rampant deforestation were wrong for the same reason. God didn't give us a free pass to treat the environment how we see fit.
I mean, neither am I anymore, but yeah.
In evolutionary terms, domestication was reciprocal. We see them safely into the world, protect them through life, and see them out. Both species benefit. Factory farming is a short-sighted violation of that; the animals lead miserable lives, the surrounding ecosystem (as well as any human habitation) suffers, and you couldn't design a better laboratory for new zoonotic plague if you tried.