Re: Were the first humans vegetarians?

On 23 May, 16:44, Jim Willemin <jim***willemin@hot***mail.com> wrote:
"Armin Held" <armin-h...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote innews:f31ksh$6c8$01$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

And God said (to mankind!): Behold, I have given you
every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth,
and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed;
to you it shall be for food.

But to every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the
heavens, and to everything that moves upon the earth, in which
there is a living soul,
(I have given) every green herb for food ...

Genesis 1:29-31

These words are often interpreted in a way as if all animals and
humans up to the time of Noah had only consumed plants as food. But
this would prohibit all kinds of predatory animals and would
contradict the occurence of "sea monsters" in the Genesis report
(Genesis 1:21).

internal contradictions in the Bible. Well blow me down!

<snip big chunks of biblical interpretation>


Judging by our closest cousins, I strongly suspect the answer is 'no' -

the first humans wern't vegetarians? Ok, with you so far.


modern chimps eat meat, certainly, and we eat meat, suggesting that the
common ancestor of chimps and humans was omnivorous.

or both chimps and humans evolved meat eating habbits.


If that is the
case, then wherever you choose to draw the line between 'human' and
'pre-human', you are pretty sure to find your 'first' humans eating meat
now and then. While not an expert, or even very knowledgeable, I think
the dentition of most all hominid fossils will support omnivory, or at
least not contradict it. Too, I suspect there is a quite a bit of
internal tinkering with digestion necessary to go from a strict
vegetarian to an omnivore

I'm not sure that's so. I've heard that occaisionally herbivores
such as gazzels will eat baby birds- indeed will seek them out.
So probably most animals can digest a little meat.


- such tinkering I suspect takes a while,
generation by generation, and putting that much change into a single
species demands divine redesign and retooling on a significant scale (so
much so that Adam could well have been a different species than modern
humanity, simply based on his dentition and internal economy).

noting that Adam didn't actually exist. How can you seriously believe
Chimps and humans had a common ancestor AND that all human beings
are descended from a single man named Adam?

Are you trying to "Devil's Advocate" literal Genesis?


On a different note, it seems terribly wrong to me to exclude plants
from 'living things'.

no one does.


Just because they are not motile doesn't mean
they don't respire, for instance - plants require the breath of life
just as much as any critter.

"the breath of life" is some sort of metaphor I assume?


As I watch my garden brin forth leaves and
flowers from a mass of thready roots it is impossible for me to say that
plants are not alive in every sense.

yes, yes

That being said, it is one of the
delightful paradoxes of biochemistry and ethics that the fundamentals of
our metabolism, at a very, very basic level, require us to consume once-
living things -

I see no biochemistry paradox


our life requires the death of something else, be it
plant or animal, to give us sustenance. Everything you eat was once
alive, or part of a living thing. That particular fact is perhaps one
of the greatest jokes played by the Creator God:

there is no Creator God


life is to be
respected, indeed, is sacrosanct, yet we must kill to live.

so religious people tie themselves in logical knots. Surprise!


How one
deals with that paradox is, I think, a very significant aspect of one's
spiritual development and/or salvation.

I solve the "problem" by not acknowleging that there *is* a problem.
I also have no spiritual development nor a salvation. A lot of these
ethical
problems are caused by people making things up and then attempting
to reason about the things they made up. And not being very good
at reasoning.


Indeed, perhaps that is the true original sin

eat dirt?


--
Nick Keighley

.

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