Is it natural to eat animals? – Philip Sampson

Animals eat one-another, don’t they? So why shouldn’t we?’

I have often been asked this question. At first sight, it seems to argue that imitating the behaviour of other animal species is a good guide for human behaviour; this is not necessarily wise. Anyone who has taken a dog for a walk knows the convenience they make of lamp-posts, and that dogs greet one- another from behind. If we modelled our social behaviour on that of Fido, we would more likely be arrested than find a place in Debrett’s book of etiquette. Fido’s behaviour is simply not a good guide f ours. Nor are the carnivorous habits of lions a good guide for the human diet.

Having said this, it is quite true that some animals do ‘naturally’ eat one-another. Lions, crocodiles and other large predators seemed specifically designed to do so. Moreover, this is how Nature works; it is evolution. We may be unwise to imitate the behaviour of other species, but if eating flesh is natural, then vegetarianism is surely unnatural. If eating other animals is simply ‘getting back to Nature’ in all it sublime wonder, how can that be a bad thing? Peter Singer reports a young vegetarian who abandon her ethical objections to eating meat when she learned that ‘in the natural world there’s this thing call survival of the fittest and it’s OK to eat animals’.

Some Christians baptise this view in the waters of religion. They claim that eating other animals is the natural thing to do because it is what God intended. The American evangelical politician Sarah Palin notoriously asked ‘If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?’ Of course, Ms Palin cannot have meant all animals. I’m sure she would never eat her dog, as everyone knows that dogs are not made out of meat – at least not in Alaska.

As the young former-vegetarian mentioned above put it, this argument derives ethical values from th Darwinian principle of ‘survival of the fittest’. And, as Richard Dawkins notes, the ‘Darwinian world is a very nasty place: the weakest go to the wall. There’s no pity, no compassion’. Since Prof. Dawkins is personally a compassionate man, he rejects the argument that values can be derived in this way. Although he believes that violence, predation and death are built into the universe, he denies that humans need follow suit. He has this in common with many of my vegan friends who accept that it is natural for predators such as lions to eat other animals; my friends do not like this, but it is the natural state of things. In this view, the decision to reject Nature as our guide is a personal one, based upon o individual virtue of compassion. Sadly, some people are less compassionate than others, and for them makes less sense to reject Nature’s way. It’s dog eats dog in a hard and competitive world; and man eats cow in the culinary world.

The ancient Hebrews also noticed that the world around us is not the peaceable Eden portrayed in Genesis 1, where animals (and humans) eat plants rather than one-another (Gen. 1.29). We do not live a harmonious creation where God delights in the animals as they praise and reveal him. However, seeing the suffering and death around them, the biblical authors drew a different conclusion from Richard Dawkins. They did not consider the world we see around us to be the natural world. Rather, the natural world was the original creation of Genesis 1, which God pronounced ‘good’. From this they concluded that our world is unnatural. There is something wrong with it – it is broken. In particular, the natural diet for humans and other animals was the vegan diet of Eden; it is eating other animals which is unnatural. As the predation we see in the world around us is not natural, there is good reason to reject it as a guide to our own behaviour. This argument does not rely upon individual qualities of personal compassion, although it is likely to appeal more to those who possess such virtues.

The apostle Paul refers to this brokenness when he speaks of the whole creation groaning in pain. For Paul, suffering such as predation in the created order is not natural but a sign of bondage to decay (Rom 8.21). Where, then, did this bondage come from?

The biblical authors laid the responsibility for nature’s brokenness squarely at the feet of humans. Humanity had betrayed God’s highest purposes for creation, impeding its ability to reveal God’s divine nature to us (Gen. 3; Rom. 1.20). Moreover, while the psalmist declares that animals were made to prai God (Psalm 150:6), we have made their voices into groans of pain. Over the centuries, Christians have understood our role in creation’s brokenness in a variety of ways, from a ‘literal’ serpent in Eden, to a metaphor for human responsibility for environmental destruction. But however we understand it, the common ground has been that suffering in creation is not natural, and humans are responsible for it.

This biblical vision has a number of important consequences.

Firstly, opposition to animal cruelty is not simply a personal preference of compassionate people, but is based upon the nature of the created world, and our role within it. Cruelty is neither natural, nor is it God’s will for his world; we should never accept it. Before the twentieth century, this insight motivated Christians to campaign for laws to protect animals from cruelty.

Secondly, even in a broken world, we are able to call upon all creatures here below to praise God as they were intended to do. This is common in Christian hymnody’s exhortation ‘let heaven and nature sing’; from Thomas Ken’s doxology sung at many churches week by week, to Revelation Song’s lyric th ‘with all creation I sing, praise to the King of kings’. Of course, if we sing such words, integrity requires that we do not leave them in the pew with the hymn sheet, but live them out during the week.

Thirdly, we do not have to take our cue from the fallen world, but from every word that comes from t mouth of God (Matt. 4.4.). In fact, since animal suffering is due to our own behaviour in the first place, is egregious wickedness to make it worse by inflicting further sufferings on them (Prov 12.10).

But the bible does not stop there. After lamenting the bondage of creation to suffering, Paul affirms that it will be liberated. Luke points to the restoration of creation in Christ when God’s purposes for his creatures will be seen (Acts 3.21). We will be thinking more about this in coming weeks.

Dr Philip J. Sampson is a writer and lecturer on animals and animal ethics. For more information on
Philip J. Sampson.