• Ash from the Toba volcano some
74,000 years ago wiped out most humans.
There were only a few hundred of us. Around
12,000 years ago we reached 10 million. There
are 6.6 billion of us today, and we are headed
for 9.0 billion by 2050. Is there some great
work that humans are called to do that can
only be accomplished by 9.0 billion people
instead of by some lesser number?
• There is a second population
explosion – of farm animals. There
are 15 billion factory farm animals. Half the
land surface of the earth is taken up by animal
grazing and growing grain to feed to animals.
In the U.S. animals eat over 80 percent of corn
and soy. To graze animals, we cut down forests
and turn them into prairies and deserts, and 75
percent of U.S. topsoil has been lost, largely in
the cultivation of animal feed. Less forest and
less grassland means less CO2 recycled out of
the atmosphere and worsening of greenhouse
warming. Deserts can be reclaimed, but only
if animal husbandry is eliminated. Our diet
affects our land use, which affects our climate.
?
• Before 4300 BCE in Old Europe,
land was farmed and owned by women. Most
tribes worshiped a mother goddess instead of
a male god. She taught peace and partnership.
Her priests and priestesses were physicians,
midwives, and scribes. The first agriculture was
tending nut and fruit trees.
• In Old Europe cities had no walls –
because there was no war. Around 4300 BCE
Aryan, Indo-European speaking cowboys
invaded Europe, seeking new pasture. They
had overgrazed their own lands, helping
turn them into deserts. They introduced
cattle, horse, and sheep herding. Sometimes
the invading Aryans killed everyone except
the virgin girls, whom they took as slavewives
– our ancestors on the female side. The
Aryans introduced slavery and human sacrifice.
Women lost the right to own property. The
world has still not recovered from the assaults
of the Aryans – our ancestors on the male side.
• Plato in The Republic tells of a
Golden Era when our ancestors ate an allvegetable
diet, which he said was better for the
environment and health and would promote
peace. Genesis and the Talmud say that before
the legendary Flood, humans did not use
animals for food. The original kosher excluded
flesh food. After the Flood, when Noah was
given animals to eat, a curse was included – a
shortened life span.
• Pythagoras (579-480 BCE)–
mathematician, musician, philosopher,
physician, enemy of slavery – opposed killing
animals for food. He acknowledged that he
learned much from the priestesses of Delphi,
the last to survive from Old Europe, and he
saved their theories for the modern world.
Hippocrates the Pythagorean physician taught:
“Let food be your medicine, and let medicine
be your food.”
?
• Late Hebrew prophets opposed the
sacrificing of animals in the Jerusalem
Temple and predicted the coming of a messiahking
who would end the sacrifices. Ancient
writers say that Peter, Andrew, Matthew, John
the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus – in fact,
all of Jesus’ disciples – ate no meat. Jesus led
an armed force which shut down the animal
sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple. The Judeo-
Christian church, the original church, for
over 300 years, until its destruction by gentile
Christianity, refused to eat flesh food, believing
Jesus had done the same.
• My theory is that Jesus was one of a
long line of prophets extending back to
the era before the patriarchal invasions, who
strove to revive the values of the world as it
was before the invasions, when peace, law, and
justice had prevailed.
• “Eleventh Commandment? I went
half way through seminary, but I never
heard of any Eleventh Commandment. What
is the Eleventh Commandment?” … “Do unto
other species as you would have them do unto
your own.”
• I had been a runner, swimmer, and
tennis player. But in law school I began
to feel angina pains in my left shoulder. My
blood pressure was up. I learned that an allvegetable
diet would make me healthiest. I quit
all animal products and have not intentionally
eaten any for 25 years. My blood pressure
is 115 over 72. My total cholesterol is 139;
HDL is 46; LDL is 77. I eat raw and cooked
greens, sprouted and cooked grains, fruit,
nuts, sprouted bread, flax, and dandelions.
My hobbies are growing my own food and
inventing tasty recipes with my goddess.
?
• The science is in. All the nutrients
that animal foods supply are available
from plant-based foods. For adults – and
children too – a green diet is superior. Those
who eat this way are leaner, have lower blood
pressure and cholesterol, less cancer and
diabetes. They live longer, are healthier, and
are even sexually active in their old age.
• When the topic is breast cancer,
“early detection” is all you hear, never a
word about prevention, as if cancer were
unpreventable. No, a green diet can usually
prevent and sometimes reverse cancer.
?
• The biggest part of most species’
brains is the smell brain. Humans find
the smell of factory farms to be loathsome.
Imagine how factory animals find it. When
workers enter these “animal penitentiaries,”
pigs and chickens go berserk. Are they
begging their captors to release them from
their claustrophobic cages? Or are they
shrieking in rage at them?
• “We’re natural born killers.” …
“Like in the Oliver Stone movie.” … “I hear
Woody Harrelson is a vegetarian.” … “We
don’t just kill them; we torture them first. It’s
unrelenting, and it’s billions of animals. People
just don’t think about it. It’s one of our flaws as
a species.”
• The punishment does not fit the
crime, in fact, the animals have committed
no crimes. They are completely innocent. So
it is all the more unjust that we treat them
so badly. If the ghoulish tortures committed
in secrecy against our food animals were
committed against our pets, their owners
would take up arms.
• For the project to civilize the world
to succeed, all factors must be considered.
When the suffering of animals is left out, the
project is incomplete. Insensitivity to animals
is a blind spot. Within the shadows behind
that blind spot lurk moral errors which poison
the civilizing project.
?
• Capitalism loves population
explosion. It makes more consumers to buy
more goods, more workers to keep down the
cost of labor. Political parties have to keep the
economy cranked up or they get voted out.
So it’s grow, grow, grow. Democracy is a weak
force. We need another force, a moral force,
to give democracy more backbone, perhaps a
religion firmly grounded in what we should do
instead of what we should believe.
• We are not innately evil. We are
innately gullible. We are conformists. We
have huge brains, but they are mostly blank
computing space badly programmed. We
construct rationalizations that justify the status
quo and allow us to follow dictators, amoral
capitalists, and saturated fat salesmen.
• The majority has been wrong on
many issues: The majority advocated
slavery, anti-Semitism, the subjugation of
women, killing witches, and the idea that the
earth was flat. If you adopt a green diet, you
will be in the minority, but that does not mean
you will be wrong.
Order this book online at:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Serve-Goddess-Comes-Dinner/dp/1884949118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245396077&sr=8-1
