[gela]

It's not animal cruelty to harvest animals for food anymore than it is vegetable cruelty to harvest vegetables for food. Why are animals treated with so much more love and respect than vegetables? Is a puppy cuter than a turnip? Do we treat the better looking and cuter better than we do the ugly and unappealing? Is that why we have beauty contests instead of ugly contests?

This is the opinion that I dislike.
Animales have nerve endings(thus can feel pain) and emotions.
Vegetables don't.
I have no problem with killing animales for food. I don't like putting animales through pain, with practices such as intensive farming.

But according to the christian religion, this is fine.

It's this kind of favoritism that makes mankind incapable of making just and fair judgments. I kick a dog and I am a monster. I swat a fly (or squash a roach) and I am a hero. Justify this, please.

A dog has a bigger brain. A dog has emotions. You can tell because it will welp if you kick it.
A fly or a roach has no noticible emotions. Their brains are tiney, there is probably only enough room for raw instinct. Someone can correct me if im wrong on this one, Im just guessing.

Divides people? If ALL people were Christian (and knew what that meant), we would have a BROTHERHOOD OF MAN, all for one, and one for all! What divides people is (unyielding) people. It's not what Jesus taught (division).

Everyone will never agree with the same thing. It is impossible. Its the beauty of having a little thing called freedom. We can have freedom OR stability.
What people need is tolerance. We need to tolerate other peoples beliefs, we need to let others do what they want.

Unfortunatly, the christian religion says that anyone who doesn't believe what you believe is going to hell. Anyone who isn't one of us is being manipulated by the devil. The devil is just evil without reason(another unrealistic aspect of christianity); thus anyone who isn't us is evil and they are going to hell.

Can you see how this breeds division and intolerance?

Christans with good will towards other cultures do more harm then good, because they are just want to save the other people from hell. The 'make everyone the same as us' attitude is doomed to fail.
Look up the stolen generation to see how much damage this has done.

As far as "environmental apathy", that's NOT a Christian tenet. God's first commandment to man was to "...replenish the earth...". That's the EXACT OPPOSITE of apathy. Replenish means to nourish or fill or make complete again. See how screwed up man's understanding is?

Well, thats one quote.
But the bible being the bible, its contradictory.
Im no expert on this, but my friend does developmental studies at uni, and she was telling me how christianity directly affects peoples disinterest in the environment throughout history.
But I can't recall the details of it, so I will drop this point in the debate.

"dependence on something other then yourself is bad" That, too, is not Christianity. Christianity is not about being served, it's about serving others. Christianity is not about what God can do for you (in the here and now) but what you can do for God (in the form of doing for others). Notice: Mat 20:25 But Jesus called the disciples together and said: You know that foreign rulers like to order their people around. And their great leaders have full power over everyone they rule. Mat 20:26 But don't act like them. If you want to be great, you must be the servant of all the others. Mat 20:27 And if you want to be first, you must be the slave of the rest.

Playing quote the bible is unfair, because I don't know the bible.
But I do know its contrary. I could probably find plenty of quotes which contradict it.

I went to a funeral not long ago; and the preist was quoting from the bible. He was saying that god is your shepard, and that he sustains you, and he protects you, and that you belong to him, and that you are a part of him. He said that someone else is guiding you through life.

If that doesn't spell out dependence then I don't know what dose.