To those opposed to animal rights,
the claims made by groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals often seemed to have a religious
overtone about them — now with its new www.jesus-online.com web site, PETA confirms those suspicions.
As the organization put it in a
press release, “PETA has enlisted ‘Jesus’ as its newest
Vegetarian Campaign spokesperson and hopes to make Christians the latest
veggie converts.”
PETA maintains that Jesus was a
vegetarian and that “Jesus’ vegetarianism can be discerned through
extra-Biblical accounts and sound reason.” What sort of sound reasoning?
Well according to PETA, “if
Jesus had not been a vegetarian, there would be accounts of Jesus eating
lamb at Passover.” This is a classic example of an appeal to ignorance
(concluding that a lack of evidence supports some particular position).
Of course when Biblical evidence is uncomfortable to its claims, PETA
resorts to claiming New Testament stories are mere symbolism The tale
of Jesus multiplying fish is relegated to mere “symbolism.”
If Jesus was so opposed to eating of animal flesh, however, it’s hard
to imagine why he or his disciples would choose such an image — obviously
whoever wrote that story at the very least knew his readers wouldn’t be
shocked at the idea of a fish-eating Jesus. PETA conveniently ignores
other contrary evidence, including the story of Jesus casting demons into
swine and then driving the swine into a lake (an early animal experiment?).
PETA members went to the recent
Southern Baptist Convention and tried to convert their members to vegetarianism
and animal rights philosophy. Hell, the Southern Baptist Convention finally apologized
for its pro-slavery views just a few years ago and recently passed a resolution
that women should “submit” to their husbands — sound like perfect
recruits for PETA’s cause.