On Religion & Animals

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Esmé Wynne-Tyson, 1898-1972
The Philosophy of Compassion
...ecclesiastical teaching has kept humanity from evolving to a more harmless species. By entirely ignoring the necessity for compassion, and quoting certain discreditable utterances ascribed to Jehovah in the Old Testament, it has been possible to argue that flesh-eating is morally right and according to the will of God. [TOP]

Mithras
We have only to imagine Jesus of Nazareth slaughtering a bull or a fellow creature to understand the immense, impassable gulf existing between Mithraism and true Christianity, and the folly and peril of ignoring that guilt and trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. [TOP]

St. Francis of Assisi, 1181-1226
quoted in Life by St. Bonaventura
If you have men who will exclude any of god’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. [TOP]

Cardinal John Henry Newman, 1801-1890
Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God. [TOP]

The Holy Bible
Ecclesiastes 3:19
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ... yea, they have all one breath, so that man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. [TOP]Isaiah 11:6-9
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them ... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. [TOP]

Mother Cecilia, 1890-
from an interview
In the shelter we recognize that animals have the same right to live as humans and that “thou shalt not kill” applies to all sentient creation. We realize that animals are truly a part of God’s creation even as we are and that they share the same life. We believe that all life comes from God and is therefore sacred, and that in killing life one kills a part of God. We do not believe that an animal has a human soul; perhaps it is wrong to say that an animal has a soul at all. Or a man, for that matter. Perhaps it would be correct to say animals and men are souls, souls embodied. [TOP]

Fo-Pen-Hing-Tsihking
The practice of religion involves as a first principle, a loving compassionate heart for all creatures. [TOP]

Thomas Paine, 1737-1809
The Age of Reason
The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation toward all His creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty. [TOP]

Swami Chidananda, 1916-
The Vegetarian Way
Compassion is divine. Cruelty is unspiritual. The human body, which is the moving temple of the Living God enshrined, is not meant to be made into the fleshy graveyard of slaughtered animals, creatures who are the dumb, harmless and innocent brethren of mankind, mutely trusting man, their “superior” keeper. [TOP]

The Koran, 6th and 7th century
There is no beast on earth, nor fowl that flieth, but the same are a people like unto you, and to God they shall return. [TOP]

Anna Sewell, 1820-1878
Black Beauty
There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham. [TOP]

Walt Whitman, 1819-1892
I swear that I think now that every living thing without exception has an eternal soul. I swear that I think there is nothing but immortality. [TOP]

Vern Dollase
A man’s religion is a failure if it has not taught him kindness. [TOP]

John Muir, 1838-1914
The Story of My Boyhood
Thus godlike sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved. [TOP]

Pierre Lori
I have seen with an infinite sad disquietude the souls of animals appear in the depths of their eyes suddenly, as sad as a human soul; and search for my soul with tenderness, supplication and terror—and I have felt a deeper pity for the souls of animals than I have for those of my brothers, because they were without speech and incapable of coming forth from their semi-night. [TOP]

Charles Darwin, 1809-1882
It is an intolerable thought that these creatures, with all their capacity for devotion, affection, loyalty, and suffering should suffer total annihilation at death. [TOP]

Eugene Bertram Willard
Yes, we who love God believe that our animals survive the grave. The poor and sorrowing and suffering victims of man’s cruelties are entitled to an eternal recompense in the Great Beyond. And god in His mercy will see to it that they get justice at long last! [TOP]

Thomas A. Kempis, 1379-1471
The Imitation of Christ
And if thy heart be straight with God, then every creature shall be to thee a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine, for there is no creature so little or so vile, but that sheweth and representeth the goodness of God. [TOP]

Lewis Abbott
There is more real religion in the man or woman who feeds a hungry animal than in the miser who builds a church and prays in it. [TOP]

President Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865
Complete Works
I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. [TOP]

Rev. George Laughton
The practice of kindness toward helpless creatures is a sign of development to the higher reaches of intelligence and sympathy. For, mark you, in every place there are those who are giving of their time and thought and to the work of protecting from cruelty and needless suffering the beasts of the field and streets. And you will invariably find that these people are among the most progressive and sympathetic and intelligent of a city’s populace. They are the leaders of every good work. These are the people who make the earth ... more like what God intended it should be. [TOP]

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