"Gloria" wrote in message ...
Animal Abuse and Human Violence Conference
One Day International Conference on the Relationship between Animal
Abuse and Human Violence
http://www.league.org.uk/article_pri...ArticleID=2018
Keble College, Oxford, 18 September, 2007

The League Against Cruel Sports is proud to announce its sponsorship
of this conference being organised by the
http://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The conference will highlight the
importance of animal ethics by exploring the following questions:

Is there empirical evidence of a link between animal abuse and
violence to humans or anti-social behaviour?
How should we interpret the evidence?
If there is a link, what are the ethical implications?
What are the implications for social and legal policy?
The purpose of the Conference is to enable people to better understand
the nature of animal abuse, the motivation that leads to cruel acts,
and the implications for human as well as animal welfare. This
understanding is essential to help inform social and legal policy.
This will be the first academic conference devoted to this subject in
the United Kingdom.

The conference is being arranged by the
http://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/index.php
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, founded in 2006 to enhance the
ethical status of animals through academic research, teaching and
publication.

At the heart of the Centre's work is an international fellowship of
academics drawn from the sciences and the humanities. The Centre is
named after the distinguished Spanish philosopher José Ferrater Mora,
known for his pioneering opposition to bullfighting. One of the
Centre's key research areas is the link between animal abuse and human
violence.

The conference is being organised by the Centre as part of its
commitment to research and publication in this field. The aim of the
Centre is to put the issue of humankind's interactions with animals on
the intellectual agenda. During the last 30 years, evidence has been
accumulating of a link between animal abuse and violence to humans or
anti-social behaviour. This conference will document and explore the
meaning of this link, and the implications that should follow for the
making of social and legal policy.

Attendance and delegates
The Conference will appeal to academics, representing a range of
disciplines, including (but not limited to) ethics, philosophy,
theology, psychiatry, law, psychology, criminology, medicine, social
sciences, and social policy. We also expect the conference to appeal
to a wide range professionals concerned with

the care of children;
spousal and elderly abuse;
cruelty prevention and inspection;
social work;
penal policy;
veterinary services;
human and animal shelters;
humane education;
wildlife protection;
law enforcement, and
the implementation of legal and social policy.
We, therefore, particularly welcome attendance from professionals,
including anti-cruelty inspectors, teachers, medical personnel,
veterinarians, social workers, health care professionals, and law
enforcement officials.

Conference Programme
The one day conference includes approximately 17 x 15 minute
presentations, keynote presentations, including dinner and overnight
accommodation at Keble College. The full academic programme will be
published in May 2007.

Venue
Keble College is one of the largest of the constituent colleges of the
University of Oxford. Founded in 1870, its original brick Victorian
buildings have now been complemented and supplemented by award winning
contemporary developments including a purpose built lecture theatre in
the Sloane Robinson Building. Keble's self-contained conference
facilities include ensuite bedrooms and one of the largest and most
impressive Dining Halls in Oxford.

Registration
If you are interested in attending the conference please register here
and we will send further details soon, including conference costs:
http://www.league.org.uk/form.asp?Fo...ategoryID=1961

Call for papers
Academics worldwide are invited to submit brief abstracts of papers
for consideration. From the abstracts submitted, the best will be
selected for presentation at the conference. Each presentation will be
scheduled for 15 minutes.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted via email to
Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal
Ethics to arrive by 1 May, 2007.

Those whose abstracts are selected will be asked to supply a full
academic paper of between 3,000-5,000 words by 1 September 2007. All
selected papers will be published in book form.

I will forward, and am re-posting the following article here.

'Shameless Name Dropping
by Kathy Freston
The Huffington Post
Posted June 29, 2007 | 10:33 AM (EST)

There is a growing sense these days that the issues that plague
our planet -- war, injustice, and blatant abuse of nature -- are
intensifying and perhaps moving us toward the point of no return.
And that if we don't snap to attention and start doing things
differently soon, we as a civilization, could be in real trouble.

These macro-issues are big, and they require big solutions. One
question that I struggle with more and more these days is this:
Beyond the obvious, are there ways that we could live, in our
personal lives, day to day, that can have an impact on these big
picture issues?

What I'm realizing is that peace is a circle, that the more peaceful
we are internally, the more peace shows up around us. And if
you look at it at the macro-level, the more peaceful our home
lives are, the more peaceful our world will be. So is there a link
all the way from our inner lives, or inner peace, to the world at
large? Or conversely, could it be that a peaceful world would
necessarily be one in which that world's inhabitants are peaceful?
I believe so, and consider it a useful challenge -- to ourselves --
to consider changing ourselves as one part of changing our
world for the better.

I'm convinced that a world that is peaceful, a world without war,
will be a world where the inhabitants are at peace. And a world
where all the inhabitants are personally at peace will be, by
necessity, one where war is impossible.

This is Utopia, of course, and many will suggest that such a thing
is not attainable -- maybe not, though some great dreamers have
imagined it. For me, I would like to at least hope that we can move
in that direction, that we can do SOMETHING that would take us
by quantum leap into a higher standard of living across the board
for everyone. I believe this is called conscious evolution, which
describes the creative power we have to envision and then affect
the advancement of life on earth in a positive way. So the question
is this: Is there anything I can do now that approximates this world?

My focus in recent years has been on peaceful relationships
http://www.kathyfreston.com/books.html, on finding your soul
mate, in part because I am convinced that if our relationships are
broken, it makes it very difficult (if not impossible) for us to achieve
inner peace, and if our inner life and personal life are not right, it
seems inconceivable that we will be available, spiritually or
emotionally, to create a more peaceful world.

More recently, there is something that has become important to my
inner spiritual life, and which I've recently discovered has a much
longer history of spiritual and philosophical practice than I'd
previously realized -- vegetarianism and kindness toward animals.
The basic argument goes like this: How can we work toward a less
violent and more merciful world if our daily diet requires violence
toward animals and denying these others of our global inhabitants
some basic mercy?

I understand that the idea of adopting vegetarianism as a way to
move toward world peace will be met with protest among some
meat-eaters; none of us wants to consider that perhaps our most
basic of practices are not in keeping with our values or ethics.
But please keep an open mind for a moment, and please consider
that some of the giants of both philosophy and the study of
nonviolence have made this argument -- it's certainly not just me
who is finding a truth in this concept.

In fact, if not for the well tread path of a wide range of moral and
intellectual heavyweights, I would feel much less secure in my
belief that peace and violence are circular -- that the Biblical adage
that we reap what we sow can be taken all the way down to issues
of what we eat. So please bear with me as I drop a few important
names in making my very simple, but also (I know) controversial,
point.

Before the word "vegetarian" was coined, those who refused to eat
animals on moral grounds were known as "Pythagoreans" because
Pythagoras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras (~580-500 BCE)
was a vegetarian who believed that society would not attain health or
peace if people slaughtered animals. "For as long as people massacre
animals, they will kill each other," he proclaimed. "Indeed, he who
sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."

Almost 2500 years later, no less a thinker than Albert Einstein echoed
these sentiments, writing, "It is my view that the vegetarian manner of
living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would
most beneficially influence the lot of mankind." So Einstein agrees that
a vegetarian diet will influence up, from personal to social.

Also more than 2500 years ago, the Bible was begun. Whether handed
down directly from God or not, we can all agree with the beauty and
profundity of the messages of love, kindness, forgiveness, and mercy
within the texts. These writings, which are the foundation of both the
Jewish and Christian faiths, consistently include not just humans, but
all animals, as a part of God's Covenant.

For example, after the flood, the author takes pains to make it clear that
God is "establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after
you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and
the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of
the ark" (Gen. 9: 9-10). Five more times, God restates the covenant,
and every time, it is specifically stated that the covenant is with both
human beings and the rest of the animals.

And in the Gospels, when Jesus is looking for a metaphor to explain
his desires for humanity, he says that he has "yearned to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings..." (Luke
13:34). Sadly, more than 95 percent of today's hens never build a nest,
let alone meet or protect their children
http://goveg.com/factoryFarming_chickens_egg.asp.

And it's not just Pythagoras and the Bible's authors who felt that
macro-violence (i.e., wars) and micro-violence (i.e., being unkind to
animals) to be linked. In fact, Leonardo daVinci, Leo Tolstoy,
Mohandas Gandhi, and Albert Schweitzer all made exactly this point.

For example Leo Tolstoy, whose teachings are responsible for both
Gandhi's campaigns in India and Dr. Martin Luther King's in the
United States, proclaimed that "Vegetarianism is the taproot of
humanitarianism," arguing that if we were not leading lives that are as
kind as possible at the micro-level, how can our cries for peace at the
macro-level be taken seriously? How can a society that feeds on the
bodies of the oppressed (if you've ever seen animals in factory farms,
you would agree that they are indeed oppressed http://www.meat.org/)
do anything other than make war, he wondered.

One of the most studied scholars of all three men is a Jesuit Priest
and peace activist by the name of John Dear http://www.johndear.org/,
who has written and preached extensively on Tolstoy, Gandhi, and
King -- and whose brand of Christianity is so impressively universal
that even Richard Dawkins (the world's most famous and devout
atheist) would approve. Dawkins, by the way, is deeply "spiritual"
(in an "awe of the world" sort of way) and deeply committed to
humanitarian concerns. He is also passionate about debunking what
he calls "flagrant speciesism" and "speciesist vanity" because of his
recognition that scientifically speaking, other animals are our "cousins."

But back to Fr. Dear. In a lovely pamphlet called Christianity and
Vegetarianism http://www.jesusveg.com/christiantext.html: Pursuing
the Nonviolence of Jesus, Fr. Dear writes, "We need to understand
that if we're eating meat, we are paying people to be cruel to animals...
Vegetarianism proves that we're serious about our belief in compassion
and justice, that we're mindful of our commitment, day in and day out,
every time we eat. We are reminded of our belief in mercy, and we
remind others. We begin to live the nonviolent vision, right here and
now."

Similarly, the Jewish religion has an entire code of laws, Tsa'ar ba'alei
hayim, mandating that Jews not cause pain to any living being. The
Torah is full of commandments regarding the humane treatment of
animals and many Jewish religious leaders advocate a vegetarian diet,
as detailed by the Jewish Vegetarians of North America
http://jewishveg.com/. Rabbi Isaac ha-Levi Herzog explains that "Jews
will move increasingly to vegetarianism out of their own deepening
knowledge of what their tradition commands ... A whole galaxy of
central rabbinic and spiritual leaders...has been affirming vegetarianism
as the ultimate meaning of Jewish moral teaching."

Making the point, a video by the brilliant young novelist Jonathan
Safran Foer http://www.humanekosher.com/ has been getting some
traction, especially since it includes guest appearances by noted
Jewish scholars (and vegetarians) Rabbis Yitz Greenberg and David
Wolpe. Tikkun founder Rabbi Michael Lerner stated that "Watching
[Foer's video] is a moral imperative for anyone who eats meat or
chickens ... Foer's message is for all people who wish to live a morally
coherent life."

I love the spiritual arguments, but it's also worth remembering that in
addition to Einstein's support of vegetarianism and Dawkins staunch
anti-speciesism, one of the great philosophers of the 20th century,
John Rawls, was an ethical vegetarian, as was Carl Sagan, who once
famously asked just how intelligent an animal has to be before killing
her would constitute murder.

And of course, you can't talk about compassion for animals without
mentioning Eastern spirituality (or, you shouldn't anyway). Jainism,
Hinduism, and Buddhism extol the virtues of mercy and respect for
all life. During a recent speech
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...RES10/70614068,
the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhists, spoke out
against experimenting on animals, eating meat, and other practices
that harm animals. Of course, he was simply echoing the teachings
of the Buddha, who said, "Let him not destroy life nor cause others
to destroy life and also, not approve of others' killing. Let him refrain
from oppressing all living beings in the world, whether strong or weak."

Then there was Gandhi, whose program Dr. King used in the civil
rights movement, speaking for hundreds of millions of Hindus,
declared that "the life of a lamb is no less precious than the life of a
human being." And peace prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer stated
that "Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain
its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does
not limit itself to mankind."

There are those of you who might be saying, "But they're only animals"
or "Human concerns come first," I know. First, as the foremost living
Darwin scholar, Richard Dawkins, explains again and again, these
other animals -- cows, lamb, pigs, etc. -- all share common ancestors
with us, and they are more like us than they are unlike us--they are our
"cousins." Animals may not speak in words that humans can
understand, but they do have emotions, interests, and individual
personalities that deserve our regard and respect. Albert Einstein
called human bias according to species an "optical illusion of
consciousness." He stated that the human task is "to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all
living creatures ..."

Or to quote Voltaire, " ... [Animals] are animated like ourselves; they
have the same principles of life; they have, as well as ourselves, ideas,
sentiment, memory, and industry. They want but speech; if they had it,
should we dare to kill and eat them; should we dare to commit these
fratricides?"

I would not suggest that someone who is working for peace and justice
in some other realm change their focus in any way at all. I am simply
suggesting that we follow the advice of some of the greatest thinkers
throughout history and not sacrifice animals' most basic needs (e.g.,
to live, to breathe, to be animals) for our most trivial (a momentary
gustatory pleasure). Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, "You have just
dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in
the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."

Every time we make a dining choice, we make a choice between
compassion and cruelty, a choice between the law of the jungle and
the law of higher moral consciousness.

I know that these concepts can be upsetting: Some will protest that
I'm simplifying, that there is no way adopting a vegetarian diet will
bring about world peace. Of course we need the big picture full
frontal assaults on the macro-violence in our world. Yes, the micro-
peace work I'm suggesting may not lend immediate and obvious
global results. But I can tell you that it is a step -- a quantum leap
even -- toward being a more peaceful people.

And by being more conscious about the way we choose to eat,
we would be walking the path of the greats from Pythagoras to
Schweitzer to Gandhi to John Rawls to the Dalai Lama.

As our lives, day in and day out, become more peaceful in every
way where we have a choice, and as our relationships become
peaceful and soulful, we may just find that our world, also, will
circle around to peace.

Feel free to check out "One Bite at a Time: A Beginner's Guide to
Conscious Eating"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-...g_b_42211.html
for tips on how to take the first steps.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-...g_b_54327.html

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:04:15 +0100, "pearl"
wrote:

"Gloria" wrote in message ...
Animal Abuse and Human Violence Conference
One Day International Conference on the Relationship between Animal
Abuse and Human Violence
http://www.league.org.uk/article_pri...ArticleID=2018
Keble College, Oxford, 18 September, 2007

The League Against Cruel Sports is proud to announce its sponsorship
of this conference being organised by the
http://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The conference will highlight the
importance of animal ethics by exploring the following questions:

Is there empirical evidence of a link between animal abuse and
violence to humans or anti-social behaviour?
How should we interpret the evidence?
If there is a link, what are the ethical implications?
What are the implications for social and legal policy?
The purpose of the Conference is to enable people to better understand
the nature of animal abuse, the motivation that leads to cruel acts,
and the implications for human as well as animal welfare. This
understanding is essential to help inform social and legal policy.
This will be the first academic conference devoted to this subject in
the United Kingdom.

The conference is being arranged by the
http://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/index.php
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, founded in 2006 to enhance the
ethical status of animals through academic research, teaching and
publication.

At the heart of the Centre's work is an international fellowship of
academics drawn from the sciences and the humanities. The Centre is
named after the distinguished Spanish philosopher José Ferrater Mora,
known for his pioneering opposition to bullfighting. One of the
Centre's key research areas is the link between animal abuse and human
violence.

The conference is being organised by the Centre as part of its
commitment to research and publication in this field. The aim of the
Centre is to put the issue of humankind's interactions with animals on
the intellectual agenda. During the last 30 years, evidence has been
accumulating of a link between animal abuse and violence to humans or
anti-social behaviour. This conference will document and explore the
meaning of this link, and the implications that should follow for the
making of social and legal policy.

Attendance and delegates
The Conference will appeal to academics, representing a range of
disciplines, including (but not limited to) ethics, philosophy,
theology, psychiatry, law, psychology, criminology, medicine, social
sciences, and social policy. We also expect the conference to appeal
to a wide range professionals concerned with

the care of children;
spousal and elderly abuse;
cruelty prevention and inspection;
social work;
penal policy;
veterinary services;
human and animal shelters;
humane education;
wildlife protection;
law enforcement, and
the implementation of legal and social policy.
We, therefore, particularly welcome attendance from professionals,
including anti-cruelty inspectors, teachers, medical personnel,
veterinarians, social workers, health care professionals, and law
enforcement officials.

Conference Programme
The one day conference includes approximately 17 x 15 minute
presentations, keynote presentations, including dinner and overnight
accommodation at Keble College. The full academic programme will be
published in May 2007.

Venue
Keble College is one of the largest of the constituent colleges of the
University of Oxford. Founded in 1870, its original brick Victorian
buildings have now been complemented and supplemented by award winning
contemporary developments including a purpose built lecture theatre in
the Sloane Robinson Building. Keble's self-contained conference
facilities include ensuite bedrooms and one of the largest and most
impressive Dining Halls in Oxford.

Registration
If you are interested in attending the conference please register here
and we will send further details soon, including conference costs:
http://www.league.org.uk/form.asp?Fo...ategoryID=1961

Call for papers
Academics worldwide are invited to submit brief abstracts of papers
for consideration. From the abstracts submitted, the best will be
selected for presentation at the conference. Each presentation will be
scheduled for 15 minutes.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted via email to
Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal
Ethics to arrive by 1 May, 2007.

Those whose abstracts are selected will be asked to supply a full
academic paper of between 3,000-5,000 words by 1 September 2007. All
selected papers will be published in book form.

I will forward, and am re-posting the following article here.

'Shameless Name Dropping
by Kathy Freston
The Huffington Post
Posted June 29, 2007 | 10:33 AM (EST)

There is a growing sense these days that the issues that plague
our planet -- war, injustice, and blatant abuse of nature -- are
intensifying and perhaps moving us toward the point of no return.
And that if we don't snap to attention and start doing things
differently soon, we as a civilization, could be in real trouble.

These macro-issues are big, and they require big solutions. One
question that I struggle with more and more these days is this:
Beyond the obvious, are there ways that we could live, in our
personal lives, day to day, that can have an impact on these big
picture issues?

What I'm realizing is that peace is a circle, that the more peaceful
we are internally, the more peace shows up around us. And if
you look at it at the macro-level, the more peaceful our home
lives are, the more peaceful our world will be. So is there a link
all the way from our inner lives, or inner peace, to the world at
large? Or conversely, could it be that a peaceful world would
necessarily be one in which that world's inhabitants are peaceful?
I believe so, and consider it a useful challenge -- to ourselves --
to consider changing ourselves as one part of changing our
world for the better.

I'm convinced that a world that is peaceful, a world without war,
will be a world where the inhabitants are at peace. And a world
where all the inhabitants are personally at peace will be, by
necessity, one where war is impossible.

This is Utopia, of course, and many will suggest that such a thing
is not attainable -- maybe not, though some great dreamers have
imagined it. For me, I would like to at least hope that we can move
in that direction, that we can do SOMETHING that would take us
by quantum leap into a higher standard of living across the board
for everyone. I believe this is called conscious evolution, which
describes the creative power we have to envision and then affect
the advancement of life on earth in a positive way. So the question
is this: Is there anything I can do now that approximates this world?

My focus in recent years has been on peaceful relationships
http://www.kathyfreston.com/books.html, on finding your soul
mate, in part because I am convinced that if our relationships are
broken, it makes it very difficult (if not impossible) for us to achieve
inner peace, and if our inner life and personal life are not right, it
seems inconceivable that we will be available, spiritually or
emotionally, to create a more peaceful world.

More recently, there is something that has become important to my
inner spiritual life, and which I've recently discovered has a much
longer history of spiritual and philosophical practice than I'd
previously realized -- vegetarianism and kindness toward animals.
The basic argument goes like this: How can we work toward a less
violent and more merciful world if our daily diet requires violence
toward animals and denying these others of our global inhabitants
some basic mercy?

I understand that the idea of adopting vegetarianism as a way to
move toward world peace will be met with protest among some
meat-eaters; none of us wants to consider that perhaps our most
basic of practices are not in keeping with our values or ethics.
But please keep an open mind for a moment, and please consider
that some of the giants of both philosophy and the study of
nonviolence have made this argument -- it's certainly not just me
who is finding a truth in this concept.

In fact, if not for the well tread path of a wide range of moral and
intellectual heavyweights, I would feel much less secure in my
belief that peace and violence are circular -- that the Biblical adage
that we reap what we sow can be taken all the way down to issues
of what we eat. So please bear with me as I drop a few important
names in making my very simple, but also (I know) controversial,
point.

Before the word "vegetarian" was coined, those who refused to eat
animals on moral grounds were known as "Pythagoreans" because
Pythagoras http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras (~580-500 BCE)
was a vegetarian who believed that society would not attain health or
peace if people slaughtered animals. "For as long as people massacre
animals, they will kill each other," he proclaimed. "Indeed, he who
sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."

Almost 2500 years later, no less a thinker than Albert Einstein echoed
these sentiments, writing, "It is my view that the vegetarian manner of
living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would
most beneficially influence the lot of mankind." So Einstein agrees that
a vegetarian diet will influence up, from personal to social.

Also more than 2500 years ago, the Bible was begun. Whether handed
down directly from God or not, we can all agree with the beauty and
profundity of the messages of love, kindness, forgiveness, and mercy
within the texts. These writings, which are the foundation of both the
Jewish and Christian faiths, consistently include not just humans, but
all animals, as a part of God's Covenant.

For example, after the flood, the author takes pains to make it clear that
God is "establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after
you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and
the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of
the ark" (Gen. 9: 9-10). Five more times, God restates the covenant,
and every time, it is specifically stated that the covenant is with both
human beings and the rest of the animals.

And in the Gospels, when Jesus is looking for a metaphor to explain
his desires for humanity, he says that he has "yearned to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings..." (Luke
13:34). Sadly, more than 95 percent of today's hens never build a nest,
let alone meet or protect their children
http://goveg.com/factoryFarming_chickens_egg.asp.

And it's not just Pythagoras and the Bible's authors who felt that
macro-violence (i.e., wars) and micro-violence (i.e., being unkind to
animals) to be linked. In fact, Leonardo daVinci, Leo Tolstoy,
Mohandas Gandhi, and Albert Schweitzer all made exactly this point.

For example Leo Tolstoy, whose teachings are responsible for both
Gandhi's campaigns in India and Dr. Martin Luther King's in the
United States, proclaimed that "Vegetarianism is the taproot of
humanitarianism," arguing that if we were not leading lives that are as
kind as possible at the micro-level, how can our cries for peace at the
macro-level be taken seriously? How can a society that feeds on the
bodies of the oppressed (if you've ever seen animals in factory farms,
you would agree that they are indeed oppressed http://www.meat.org/)
do anything other than make war, he wondered.

One of the most studied scholars of all three men is a Jesuit Priest
and peace activist by the name of John Dear http://www.johndear.org/,
who has written and preached extensively on Tolstoy, Gandhi, and
King -- and whose brand of Christianity is so impressively universal
that even Richard Dawkins (the world's most famous and devout
atheist) would approve. Dawkins, by the way, is deeply "spiritual"
(in an "awe of the world" sort of way) and deeply committed to
humanitarian concerns. He is also passionate about debunking what
he calls "flagrant speciesism" and "speciesist vanity" because of his
recognition that scientifically speaking, other animals are our "cousins."

But back to Fr. Dear. In a lovely pamphlet called Christianity and
Vegetarianism http://www.jesusveg.com/christiantext.html: Pursuing
the Nonviolence of Jesus, Fr. Dear writes, "We need to understand
that if we're eating meat, we are paying people to be cruel to animals...
Vegetarianism proves that we're serious about our belief in compassion
and justice, that we're mindful of our commitment, day in and day out,
every time we eat. We are reminded of our belief in mercy, and we
remind others. We begin to live the nonviolent vision, right here and
now."

Similarly, the Jewish religion has an entire code of laws, Tsa'ar ba'alei
hayim, mandating that Jews not cause pain to any living being. The
Torah is full of commandments regarding the humane treatment of
animals and many Jewish religious leaders advocate a vegetarian diet,
as detailed by the Jewish Vegetarians of North America
http://jewishveg.com/. Rabbi Isaac ha-Levi Herzog explains that "Jews
will move increasingly to vegetarianism out of their own deepening
knowledge of what their tradition commands ... A whole galaxy of
central rabbinic and spiritual leaders...has been affirming vegetarianism
as the ultimate meaning of Jewish moral teaching."

Making the point, a video by the brilliant young novelist Jonathan
Safran Foer http://www.humanekosher.com/ has been getting some
traction, especially since it includes guest appearances by noted
Jewish scholars (and vegetarians) Rabbis Yitz Greenberg and David
Wolpe. Tikkun founder Rabbi Michael Lerner stated that "Watching
[Foer's video] is a moral imperative for anyone who eats meat or
chickens ... Foer's message is for all people who wish to live a morally
coherent life."

I love the spiritual arguments, but it's also worth remembering that in
addition to Einstein's support of vegetarianism and Dawkins staunch
anti-speciesism, one of the great philosophers of the 20th century,
John Rawls, was an ethical vegetarian, as was Carl Sagan, who once
famously asked just how intelligent an animal has to be before killing
her would constitute murder.

And of course, you can't talk about compassion for animals without
mentioning Eastern spirituality (or, you shouldn't anyway). Jainism,
Hinduism, and Buddhism extol the virtues of mercy and respect for
all life. During a recent speech
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...RES10/70614068,
the Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhists, spoke out
against experimenting on animals, eating meat, and other practices
that harm animals. Of course, he was simply echoing the teachings
of the Buddha, who said, "Let him not destroy life nor cause others
to destroy life and also, not approve of others' killing. Let him refrain
from oppressing all living beings in the world, whether strong or weak."

Then there was Gandhi, whose program Dr. King used in the civil
rights movement, speaking for hundreds of millions of Hindus,
declared that "the life of a lamb is no less precious than the life of a
human being." And peace prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer stated
that "Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain
its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does
not limit itself to mankind."

There are those of you who might be saying, "But they're only animals"
or "Human concerns come first," I know. First, as the foremost living
Darwin scholar, Richard Dawkins, explains again and again, these
other animals -- cows, lamb, pigs, etc. -- all share common ancestors
with us, and they are more like us than they are unlike us--they are our
"cousins." Animals may not speak in words that humans can
understand, but they do have emotions, interests, and individual
personalities that deserve our regard and respect. Albert Einstein
called human bias according to species an "optical illusion of
consciousness." He stated that the human task is "to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all
living creatures ..."

Or to quote Voltaire, " ... [Animals] are animated like ourselves; they
have the same principles of life; they have, as well as ourselves, ideas,
sentiment, memory, and industry. They want but speech; if they had it,
should we dare to kill and eat them; should we dare to commit these
fratricides?"

I would not suggest that someone who is working for peace and justice
in some other realm change their focus in any way at all. I am simply
suggesting that we follow the advice of some of the greatest thinkers
throughout history and not sacrifice animals' most basic needs (e.g.,
to live, to breathe, to be animals) for our most trivial (a momentary
gustatory pleasure). Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, "You have just
dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in
the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."

Every time we make a dining choice, we make a choice between
compassion and cruelty, a choice between the law of the jungle and
the law of higher moral consciousness.

I know that these concepts can be upsetting: Some will protest that
I'm simplifying, that there is no way adopting a vegetarian diet will
bring about world peace. Of course we need the big picture full
frontal assaults on the macro-violence in our world. Yes, the micro-
peace work I'm suggesting may not lend immediate and obvious
global results. But I can tell you that it is a step -- a quantum leap
even -- toward being a more peaceful people.

And by being more conscious about the way we choose to eat,
we would be walking the path of the greats from Pythagoras to
Schweitzer to Gandhi to John Rawls to the Dalai Lama.

As our lives, day in and day out, become more peaceful in every
way where we have a choice, and as our relationships become
peaceful and soulful, we may just find that our world, also, will
circle around to peace.

Feel free to check out "One Bite at a Time: A Beginner's Guide to
Conscious Eating"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-...g_b_42211.html
for tips on how to take the first steps.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-...g_b_54327.html


Interesting stuff. I'm not convinced society knows how to deal with a
free will, can handle it or even really wants it.

We need a dictator to stand in for the messiah until he comes. Sadly I
fear it's too late anyway, the more power the countries of the world
get, the more conflicts we have and it's too late to stamp it all out
now :-((

"Gloria" wrote in message ...

Interesting stuff. I'm not convinced society knows how to deal with a
free will, can handle it or even really wants it.

We need a dictator to stand in for the messiah until he comes. Sadly I
fear it's too late anyway, the more power the countries of the world
get, the more conflicts we have and it's too late to stamp it all out
now :-((

The darkest hour is before dawn. Look forward to a beautiful day.

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:46:49 +0100, "pearl"
wrote:

"Gloria" wrote in message ...

Interesting stuff. I'm not convinced society knows how to deal with a
free will, can handle it or even really wants it.

We need a dictator to stand in for the messiah until he comes. Sadly I
fear it's too late anyway, the more power the countries of the world
get, the more conflicts we have and it's too late to stamp it all out
now :-((

The darkest hour is before dawn. Look forward to a beautiful day.


Sooner rather than later :-)

Gloria wrote:
On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:46:49 +0100, "pearl"
wrote:

"Gloria" wrote in message ...
Interesting stuff. I'm not convinced society knows how to deal with a
free will, can handle it or even really wants it.

We need a dictator to stand in for the messiah until he comes. Sadly I
fear it's too late anyway, the more power the countries of the world
get, the more conflicts we have and it's too late to stamp it all out
now :-((
The darkest hour is before dawn. Look forward to a beautiful day.


Sooner rather than later :-)

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.

"Gloria" wrote in message ...
On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:46:49 +0100, "pearl"
wrote:

"Gloria" wrote in message ...

Interesting stuff. I'm not convinced society knows how to deal with a
free will, can handle it or even really wants it.

We need a dictator to stand in for the messiah until he comes. Sadly I
fear it's too late anyway, the more power the countries of the world
get, the more conflicts we have and it's too late to stamp it all out
now :-((

The darkest hour is before dawn. Look forward to a beautiful day.


Sooner rather than later :-)

So I believe.