A speciesist God isn’t worth worshiping
Recently, I’ve been trying to learn a little bit about the history of Hinduism in America, and how it interacted with the animal-protection movement here. In the process of this, I stumbled across a beautiful passage about God and animals from a collection of lectures by Swami Vivekananda.
I’m hoping to read Ruth Harris’ biography of the Indian monk, who died in 1902, but from the little I know now, he seems similar to my spiritual teacher, Eknath Easwaran. Both were Hindu perennialists who sought to appeal to Western audiences. Easwaran frequently cites Vivekananda approvingly.
The passage begins with Vivekananda explaining his pantheism or panentheism. “There is but One Life, and One World, and One existence,” he says. “The Vedānta entirely denies such ideals as that the animals are separate from men, and that they were made and created by God to be used for our food.”
Vivekananda goes on to recount a conversation he had with an anti-vivisectionist. The monk was pleased with the activist’s work, but didn’t understand why he thought it was acceptable to kill animals for food. The anti-vivisectionist told Vivekananda animals had been given to humans to eat.
Obviously, the Hindu luminary disagreed with this. For him, the aforementioned oneness includes all animals. The difference between humans and fellow creatures is one of degree, not of kind. Both have immortal souls. Then he employs a metaphor which I found particularly useful.
“A man may see a great deal of difference between grass and a little tree, but if you climb a very high mountain, grass and the biggest tree will appear much the same,” Vivekananda says. “If you believe there is a God, the animals and the highest creatures must be the same.”
In other words, from God’s perspective — which presumably we must seek to adopt, so far as possible — animals and humans are fundamentally identical. Vivekananda takes this egalitarian vision so far he says, from a high enough vantage point, there is no difference between him and an amoeba.
The monk continues, arguing a speciesist God wouldn’t be worthy of love. “A God who is partial to his children called men, and so cruel to his children called brute-beasts, is worse than a demon,” Vivekananda says. “I would rather die a hundred times than worship such a God. But it is not so.”
As a former atheist, who struggled for a long time with the theological problem of evil, and still does, I found this immensely validating. Vivekananda finishes the passage by conceding he’s not a strict vegetarian. It’s unfortunate, but I thought his defense of the position in spite of his shortcomings to be refreshing.
“When I eat meat I know it is wrong,” he says. “Even if I were bound to eat it under certain circumstances I know it is cruel. I must not drag the ideal down to the actual and try to apologize for my weak conduct in this way. The ideal is not eating flesh, not injuring any being, for the animal is my brother.”