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So water pollution is a reason for you being vegetarian?

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May I remind you that when Able sacrificed his lamb to God, he was blessed? Or when....ok, I can't remember his name, but I'm pretty certain it was Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son for the Lord, when he didn't have to in the end, was told to kill the ram that had caught it's horns in a bush nearby instead?

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I addressed this earlier in the thread. But I'll just do it all over again since it was early on in the thread:

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There are many places in the Bible where God commanded the Jewish people to sacrifice animals. Doesn't this demonstrate that God approves of us killing and using animals?

In The Slaughter of Terrified Beasts, Reverend J. R. Hyland, an ordained, evangelical minister, points out that the later prophets were the first voices in recorded history to proclaim that "the suffering and death of animals was repugnant to God," coming as they did roughly a century before the Indian sage Mahavira, who founded Jainism, and the Buddha. In the following passages, these prophets flatly asserted, in the face of extensive Biblical testimony to the contrary, that God had never authorized animal sacrifice.

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hands? [Emphasis added] Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moons and sabbaths and calling of convocations [ceremonies at which animals were sacrificed] - I cannot endure - they are iniquity, even your solemn convocations. Your new moons and appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am tired of putting up with them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood (Isaiah 1:11-15).

But to sacrifice an ox or to kill a man, slaughter a sheep or break a dog's neck, offer grain or offer pig's blood, burn incense as a token and worship an idol -- all these are the chosen practices of men who revel in their own loathsome rites (Isaiah 66:3).

For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. (Jeremiah 7:22).

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not savor the smoke from your solemn assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and meat offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness as
an everlasting stream. Did you offer me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? (Amos 5:21-25).

For I have desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6).

They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of my offerings, and eat it, but the LORD does not accept them; now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins; they shall return to Egypt [i.e. to slavery] (Hosea 8:13).

Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:6-8).

Writers who believe that the divine inspiration of the Bible does not allow for the existence of disagreements within it argue that the prophets are not really condemning sacrifices, but what they call "empty sacrifices," that is, sacrifices that are not accompanied by true repentance and a change of heart. But there are two problems with this interpretation. First, it is not supported by the plain meaning of the texts. Each of these passages flatly condemns all animal sacrifice, not just sacrifice that is unaccompanied by a change of heart. In straightforward language, they call for repentance instead of sacrifices, not repentance in addition to sacrifices. In fact, several call for repentance for having offered sacrifices -- "Your hands are full of blood."

Second, the italicized portions from Isaiah and Amos ask rhetorical questions about the origin of animal sacrifice which make it plain that these prophets did not believe that sacrifice had been commanded by God, while the passage from Jeremiah flatly states that it had not. All seven texts contradict the extensive passages in Exodus, Leviticus, and elsewhere which claim that animal sacrifices were divinely ordained.

On the question of animal sacrifice, the Bible presents us with two views of God. In one, after the fashion of the gods in other ancient Near Eastern religions, God demands cruelty by insisting that worshipers must torment, terrify, and slaughter innocent creatures. In the second, God calls for compassion and mercy by insisting that worshipers not inflict suffering and death upon the harmless. The question then becomes, which view represents the God of infinite justice, love, and mercy described in Jewish and Christian teaching? And which represents a misreading of God's will by people who were, perhaps unconsciously, influenced by the superstitious practices they saw all around them?

Animal sacrifice continued to be part of mainstream Jewish practice until the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, following a rebellion against Roman occupation. Since sacrifice could be practiced only in the Temple, there has been no animal sacrifice in Judaism for nearly two thousand years, with the sole exception of the lambs who are slaughtered each year to be eaten at the Passover seder. Dr. Roberta Kalechofsky has written Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb, Haggadah for the Vegetarian Family, and The Journey of the Liberated Lamb to help observant Jews make the transition to a cruelty-free seder while remaining faithful to their traditions.

(source: http://fundforanimals.org/library/documentViewer.asp?ID=641 )

Click on these links for more articles regarding this: http://www.jewishveg.com/faq03.html
http://www.jesusveg.com/qow10198.html

And here's a link I wish I would have found sooner: http://www.christianveg.com/hgc-replies.htm (animal sacrifices are mentioned there as well)

Oh, and here's another thing on the Jesus/animal sacrifice thing, Scottie: http://www.all-creatures.org/hr/hraslaughter.htm

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So can MSG, but I don't hear you condemning that.

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Fish isn't meat.
It's poultry.

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Originally posted by Amber3:
And why on EARTH would Jesus have eaten fish after arising and showing himself to his disciples? If it was wrong, Jesus would not have done it.

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God bless whoever invented high fructose corn syrup.

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And now you've made curious as to what humans taste like...

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Originally posted by Slewinca:
Eh, it's not that hard to refute actually. If humans tasted good (I don't know if they do since I've never eaten one but I have read that pork is a lot like human flesh), does that mean we're supposed to be cannibals?
If a deadly poison tasted good, that obviously doesn't mean that we were meant to poison ourselves either.
So this isn't really about taste.

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Originally posted by TeenAutonomy:
Religious fanatics need to kill themselves.