God in our Image?

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That fine, fine teeter-totter around which every continuum revolves. The right amount of the right stress at the right time tends to result in a well rounded human, all things being equal. A tree needs breezes/winds to grow against in order to be as strong as they can be. In a culture, you need a balance of conservative and liberal ideas so that change can happen, but not too fast, nor for hasty reasons. We need food, but not too much; rest, but not idleness; purpose, but not excessive drive.
 
And at this point, Bette has stated my basic position on the importance of balance very well. Life and death, light and dark, and so on are all necessary and exist in balance. We disturb that balance at our peril, but we keep disturbing it nonetheless.

We who are Christians are called to participate in God's work of eradicating the darkness. We are not called to embrace it in some kind of balance with light.
 
We who are Christians are called to participate in God's work of eradicating the darkness. We are not called to embrace it in some kind of balance with light.

Define darkness. I was talking about the absence of photons. I think you're talking more the metaphorical sense.
 
When you think about it, life is a tragedy.....
The minute you're born you're dying.

Perhaps religion is a way to live with this sad fact, and face life with hope rather than cynical despondency? If so, then it's comforting to believe in a God who justifies and supports your own ethics/morality?

Or perhaps there is a God, independent of our creation/s?
It would seem to me a neat way for God to have us believe. Give us a situation (the demise of our existence) and then say a belief in God is the way to escape this tragedy.
 
Cats, for instance, cannot be vegetarians. They are biologically programmed to be carnivores.
I understand that in order to care for a vegetarian cat, an amino acid supplement is required.

Dogs. on the other hand, can easily become vegetarians if their owners wish.

Interesting.
 
I understand that in order to care for a vegetarian cat, an amino acid supplement is required.

Dogs. on the other hand, can easily become vegetarians if their owners wish.

Interesting.
PETA says yes dogs and cat can be fed vegetarian diets which require supplements.
 
One of the companies that brags about their supplements and the longevity of their feline (guinea pigs) is only fifteen years old. I have a 22 year old cat; here's betting she would not be so on a vegetarian diet. Obligate carnivores.
 
Now I understand why Canadians have a thing about sticking to thread topics...........:rolleyes:

The topic was God in our image - but, yikes, now it's rabbits, gerbils (whatever they are??), hamsters, guinea pigs on vegetarian diets with supplements.:ROFLMAO:

Maybe "The Donald" is too close to your border? ;)
 
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion" Steven Weinberg
 
PETA says yes dogs and cat can be fed vegetarian diets which require supplements.

I'm leary of taking supplements myself for things I can get through my diet so why would I put my pet on a diet that requires them. Cats and dogs evolved as carnivores and carnivores they should be. We are omnivores and omnivores we should be. We need to be responsible in our treatment of our food animals, but I would never advocate not eating meat. At the very least, it should remain a personal decision, so I oppose radical vegans like PETA who seem to be increasingly inclined towards imposing their diet on others.
 
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion" Steven Weinberg

It's a cute and popular quote, but I'm not sure what the actual evidence is to prove that an otherwise "good" atheist (of which there are many in the humanist sense of the word "good") could not be convinced to do something "evil." It seems to me that religion isn't a necessary requirement - a cause of some sort is a necessary requirement. I don't see that an atheist could not adopt an attitude of "the ends justify the means." That would seem to me to be a philosophical issue, whereas Weinberg is a theoretical physicist. Exactly what his credentials are to be cited as any sort of authority on questions of good and evil I'm not sure. He has an opinion (and a really good quote that got his name somewhat into the mainstream for those interested in religion) but nothing more.
 
I'm leary of taking supplements myself for things I can get through my diet so why would I put my pet on a diet that requires them. Cats and dogs evolved as carnivores and carnivores they should be. We are omnivores and omnivores we should be. We need to be responsible in our treatment of our food animals, but I would never advocate not eating meat. At the very least, it should remain a personal decision, so I oppose radical vegans like PETA who seem to be increasingly inclined towards imposing their diet on others.

Strangely enough, dogs are not obligate carnivores. Cats are.
 
I'm leary of taking supplements myself for things I can get through my diet so why would I put my pet on a diet that requires them. Cats and dogs evolved as carnivores and carnivores they should be. We are omnivores and omnivores we should be. We need to be responsible in our treatment of our food animals, but I would never advocate not eating meat. At the very least, it should remain a personal decision, so I oppose radical vegans like PETA who seem to be increasingly inclined towards imposing their diet on others.
To each their own:

Shattering The Meat Myth: Humans Are Natural Vegetarians | HuffPost
 
Strangely enough, dogs are not obligate carnivores. Cats are.

That's sort of true. You certainly don't see dogs' close wild relatives (wolves, dingoes) eating a lot of plants, though. They certainly aren't as omnivorous as us or bears.
 
If you put a butter tart (particularly uncooked - raw lard, yum! and with a honey-based filling) and a chicken bone in front of Lucy, she's more likely to take the butter tart.
 

Rights, and there's also this:

http://nature.berkeley.edu/miltonlab/pdfs/meateating.pdf

Dietary lean red meat and human evolution (which puts our consumption of meat back at least 2,000,000 years, so predating homo sapiens)

Meat-eating by early hominids at the FLK 22Zinjanthropussite, Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania): an experimental approach using cut-mark data - ScienceDirect (again, pre-homo sapiens and the question under investigation is whether we were hunters or scavengers at that stage, not whether we ate meat)

All scholarly papers vs. your huff post article. The fact is, hominids were eating meat long before Homo Sapiens appeared. We have the archaeological evidence for that. Chimps eat meat and they are one of our closest wild relatives. The general run of scientific evidence is that hominids eating meat is not unique to Homo Sapiens and probably goes back a long way. There is also the hypothesis, currently under investigation, that eating meat contributed to the development of our brain.

IOW, eating meat began because it gave an evolutionary advantage. Perhaps it is no longer necessary, but 2,000,000+ years of history suggests to me it is quite natural.
 
Dogs evolved the capacity to eat a more starchy diet than their wild relatives largely because of their close association with humans, who are of course omnivorous. On the other hand, the branch of canis that became "wolves," etc. largely stayed away from humans and remained carnivorous. Almost certainly, at first, as early "dogs" began essentially living in human camps they would likely have eaten scraps of meat left over after the humans ate. But because humans also ate other things, those dogs would have started to eat them as well and gradually their systems became accustomed to them. By the time of the New Testament, dogs were largely seen as scavengers (as they're still seen in some parts of the world) who would basically eat whatever they could find - usually living in close contact with humans (although not as pets in NT times) because of the abundance of food scraps available. There's the story in the Gospels, for example, of the woman who begs Jesus for help, reminding him that even the dogs get the crumbs from the table - the crumbs would not just have been meat scraps, but whatever bits of food of any kind were left over.
 
If you put a butter tart (particularly uncooked - raw lard, yum! and with a honey-based filling) and a chicken bone in front of Lucy, she's more likely to take the butter tart.

For the sugar, I suspect. I found dogs are more into sweet, cats more into savoury (e.g. our cat like hot buttered popcorn).
 
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