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right to take another person's life for any reason because this life is all a person gets, and taking it away means annihilating them forever. The unique person they were is gone and will never exist again. There are no higher stakes than that. A life, any life, is no one's entitlement to take. It's no one's prerogative.
Even though I don't share your opinion that death is final, I do think your philosophy is just. I have started to question why I don't extend that to other animals, given that I am certain all life is from God. I don't know what I am going to do about these questions either, because I am a dedicated carnivore. Right now, the issue is on my list of "Should I Be Convicted of This" questions, to be looked at seriously and fully, someday.
And I'd go further and say that no one has a right to take an animal's life for their own benefit, be it food or amusement (like hunting/fishing). All sentient animals, even non-mammalian ones like chickens and fish, are entitled to live out the natural course of their lives without being killed and/or conscriped forcibly to feed us, since we can live in perfect health without their flesh or byproducts. One life is all they get, too, and it's not my right to end it.
But I understand that I lose most everyone there, even the folks who are as uncompromising about the nonviolence towards humans as I am.
You only lose me on the animals rights issues if we are talking about all farming. Factory farms are a disgrace, and until I was exposed to people who rail against them, I had no idea. I had no idea, because I have dairy farmers in my family, and the animals are well cared for and well treated. I guess I am enough of a speciesist, that I don't find the conscription of animals offensive, if the animals are respected and tended with care. I think that's what I have to look at, re my list I mentioned above--which of my opinions and attitudes about the use of animals and animal products are right and wrong, and which I just hold because of habit and/or culture.
There may be reincarnation, there may not. There may be "old souls", ones that come back again or have the energy to become "ghosts" or whathaveyou. I think there are, but I'm not one of them. I have a distinct feeling that after this life, I'm done. And that's cool. I'll need the sleep, anyway.Yeah, I'm brand spanking new. I can tell by all the bumbling. I'm like a baby who can't keep hold of mother's nipple.
I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it, and I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.You made my allergies act up, Susan. Even at the lowest points of my faith, this is how I feel.
When I think about the consequences of treating others in the way Jesus taught people to (and um, I am so not there, I'm talking lifelong journey-wise), I think it is both right, and also a good life. A while back, people were discussing Pascal's Wager, here. Someone (Betsy, I think) mentioned the downside to the wager if there is no God, and one that she doesn't see considered when the wager is discussed: if this is all we have, then we have lost it all, and this becomes as big as infinity, in the context of what is possible for an individual life. I thought about it a lot, at first, because I didn't understand what she meant. But I don't think that, for the most part, the things my religion tells me are right, are right simply because my religion tells me them, if that makes sense.