Cruelty to Animals.
I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions and enjoins unkindness and cruelty to animals.
Portions of the Old Testament, and particularly those relating to sacrifices, are calculated to foster a spirit of brutality, and a total disregard for animal life. God revels in the blood of the innocent. The offering of fruits made by Cain is rejected by him; the bloody sacrifice of Abel is accepted.
Nearly the entire book of Leviticus is devoted to such laws as these:
“If he offer a lamb for his offering, then shall he offer it before the Lord. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it before the tabernacle of the congregation; and Aaron’s sons shall sprinkle the blood thereof round about upon the altar” (Lev. iii, 7, 8).
“And if the burnt sacrifice for his offering to the Lord be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtle-doves, or of young pigeons. And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off his head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be wrung out at the side of the altar” (Lev. i, 14, 15).
The minutest directions for conducting these bloody sacrifices come from the lips of Jehovah himself, and are too brutal and disgusting to repeat.
The number of animals sacrificed was incredible. At times whole herds were killed. On one occasion Asa sacrificed 700 oxen and 7,000 sheep. David made an offering of 1,000 bullocks and 2,000 sheep. At the dedication of the temple, 142,000 domestic beasts were sacrificed by Solomon.
And this wholesale slaughter of innocent animals, we are told, was highly pleasing to the Lord. But
“What was his high pleasure in
The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood,
To the pain of the bleating mothers, which
Still yearned for their dead offspring? or the pangs
Of the sad ignorant victim underneath
The pious knife?”
—Byron.
A God of mercy, it would seem, ought to protect the weaker orders of his creation; but the God of the Bible manifests an utter disregard for them. When the being created in his own image proved too true a copy, and he wished to destroy it, he sent a deluge, “and all flesh died that moved upon the earth.” To wreak his vengeance upon Pharaoh, he visited with disease and death his unoffending cattle. In times of war, he ordered his followers to “slay both man and beast.” Saul’s great transgression, the chief cause of his dethronement and death, was that he saved alive some sheep and oxen instead of killing them as God desired. David and Joshua, God’s favorite warriors, houghed the horses of their enemies, and thus disabled turned them loose to die.
We teach a child that it is wrong to rob the nests of birds. It opens the Bible and reads:
“If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, 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” (Deut. xxii, 6, 7).
Throughout Christendom “man’s inhumanity to man” is only equaled by his cruelty to the inferior animals. The Buddhist, who has not the Bible for his guide, considers it a sin to harm the meanest creature. Even the savage kills only what he needs for food, or such as threaten him with danger. But the Christian, whose Bible gives him dominion over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, maims and murders in pure wantonness, and after years of patient service, even turns his beast of burden out to die of hunger and neglect.
For the sake of these dumb creatures, would that our world had less theology, and more humanity; had fewer Moodys, and more Henry Berghs!