Finally, I will address larger Christian themes and ethics. I’m no longer referencing bible passages, bible stories, or really the bible at all. Instead, I’ll use Christian philosophy and overlying themes of morality to argue my point.

I can reasonably assume that most Christians would agree to the following guideline for morality:

Do not commit acts that you would not commit in the name of God.

Because God is omniscient, then a Christian should keep God in their mind at all times and act accordingly. Accepting this premise, a good Christian would only endorse that which God would endorse. Act how God would act. Have compassion for creatures God would have compassion for. If a Christian chooses to buy factory farmed meat in the name of God, they implicitly assume that God endorses the practices used by factory farms. But I challenge any Christian to walk into a fully stocked feed-house and, while gagging on the smell, tell me where they see God’s presence. See those who have lost jobs due to the hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico and tell them it is part of God’s plan. Observe blood-stained kill floors of a slaughterhouse and announce that this is the Lord’s wish. Inform a patient suffering from infection that there is no medicine to fight their sickness because God gave us the right to use animals however we want, and that includes using enormous amounts of antibiotics. See chickens bred too heavy to stand, perpetually sick cows living whole lives on medication, and calves separated from their mothers at birth, and tell me that this is justified because God put animals in our “domain”. God would not endorse these acts. And I hope a God-fearing Christian wouldn’t either.

Endlessly, Christians lecture on God’s limitless compassion and the sacredness of life. Fighting zealously to ban abortions, they consider themselves voices for the voiceless. But they do not see their own logic through. A fully mature, thinking, breathing, and feeling cow’s slaughter is justified because it tastes good, while a newly conceived, unthinking, unbreathing, and unfeeling blastocyst must be protected at all costs*. I don’t mean to promote any abortion agenda, I only mean to expose logical inconsistencies that Christians must address.

Political hypocrisy aside, there are many philosophical arguments that Christians cherry-pick through and apply inconsistently. Consider Pascal’s Wager. There are many faults with this wager, but it still presents itself in Christian thought, so I will mention it. Pascal said that logically you should believe in God, because if you believe in God and he exists, you get infinite happiness. If you believe in God, and he doesn’t exist, your gains and losses are minimal and finite. Reversed, if you don’t believe in God and he exists, you receive infinite damnation, whereas you can gain only finitely if you don’t believe God and he doesn’t exist. Put in a table…

Applying similar logic to the vegetarian debate, we can imagine new conversations at the Pearly Gates. Here is the logic table…

The only debatable element in this table is the top-right box. It is easily explained. If you are a vegetarian, and you do so out of compassion and love for animals, then God with his famed omniscience should recognize this. The Christian God is so exceptional because he valued intent over action. If the intent is clean, the action is clean. I acknowledge the likelihood of the bottom left box is low, but while we can debate the likelihood of the logic boxes to occur and wager our actions accordingly, this line of reasoning persists. Compassion will not be punished by God.

To close, I will summarize what I perceive as Christianity’s major tenets. God instructed humility. The humility to realize that humanity is not above the animal kingdom. God admonished greed. The greed that leads us to eat Earth destroying foods and consider ourselves justified because of a claim to “dominion”. But above all, God extolled love. If God did not mean for this love to unconditionally be extended to all beings, then is it really love? While God did not explicitly make vegetarianism a precept for Christians, following this lifestyle can surely do only good.

— Ben Chapman, 2017