Does God Love Animals?

[vetuste_ennemi]

My wife has just been watching a film version of Black Beauty, which fact inspires this question. Can those of you who believe that the Bible is a sound basis for moral values explain to me why He is so fond of their being killed and burnt in order to please Him? And why He drowned most of them in the flood? Can you cite any passages which show that God loves His animal creation?

[waterboatman]

Which god? There are hundreds of them.

[Khandro]

waterboatman; You will not get far with this assertion; as far as 99% of posters to this site are concerned, there is only one god ('who doesn't exist') and that is the god as portrayed in the old testament of the bible, which in my opinion should be torn-up, or at least consigned to a high shelf and kept as an interesting historical record of the way people used to think. The religion of Christianity could detach itself from this archaic nonsense and we might then perhaps, get onto more interesting and relevant debates about religion and spirituality in a broader sense.

[Zeuhl]

Heaven forbid that I should defend Jehovah's Witnesses, but I must make one comment.

When I have interviewed people in the context of supporting animal or environmental charities I can recall at least two people who cited their (JW) religious beliefs and it seemed to me distinguished their beliefs from what i consider a more common, mainstream christian attitude;

'god granted us dominion over nature and animals so we can use them as we like'

theirs seemed a marginally more altruistic attitude;

'we are only guardians of god's creation and don't have the right to abuse or hurt them'

[emmie]

we are all animals, so if there is a god, one has to presume he or she does.

[jno]

he loves furry little kittens but is having second thoughts about the norovirus

[Zeuhl]

god clearly loves the norovirus too!

it's estate agents he's having second thoughts about :-)