As I wrote in my last post announcing my imminent vacation, I don’t do guest posts here (and I get at least a request per week). I’m not sure why I don’t. I suppose because it’s a blog and I think blogs ought to be written by their owners / creators. But I guess every rule has an exception now and then, especially when the writing is of the quality you’re going to see and the content, edge & style is so right up my alley. Also, she follows this blog and references it in the article. So there.
Here’s the author’s introduction:
Lorette C. Luzajic writes from Toronto, Ontario. A former vegetarian, she’d been a reluctant carnivore for several years. In early 2008 she found true health after removing gluten from her diet, nullifying a lifetime of mysterious ailments and diseases. She scaled back on other grains, lost her fear of animal fat and protein, and is now a proponent of nature’s heritage diet. Lorette is also a self-taught artist and a widely published poet. She is the author of four books- the acclaimed Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos, Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (irreverent ramblings from the end of the world), Dendrite Pandemonium: hits, misses and random b-sides, and goodbye, Billy Jean: the meaning of Michael Jackson. Lorette writes about meat, life as a bipolar artist, and interesting people. Visit her at thegirlcanwrite.net, fascinatingpeople.wordpress.com, and thepaleogarden.com, or click here to see all of her books.
Life and Death and the Garden of Eden
by Lorette C. Luzajic
We’ve been told so frequently that vegetarians are healthier and live longer than shameless carnivores that even Paleo diet proponents may be surprised by new headlines refuting this common “wisdom.” Because we’ve had to dig deeply for truth under the monocrop and animal liberation propaganda. When Sally Fallon suggested that saturated fat is “good for you,” her outrageous assertions spawned websites bickering about how some people also think the world is flat. The idea that shunning animal foods is the ticket to paradise is widespread today. It is considered common knowledge that vegetarians enjoy better health benefits, a miraculous life span, and shining skin, along with a squeaky clean conscience. But the truth is that behind all these glowing good intentions 0and nutrition “facts” is that vegetarianism is not a diet- it is a fundamentalist religion.
When the 1950s Lipids Hypothesis guessed that animal fat in the western diet was responsible for our growing rates of death and disease, it was good news for the vegetable oil industries to glom onto. Where for millennia, we had used lard and butter, now we used corn and soy oils. That these same oils and white sugar and flour might be the guilty party in the deadly western diet wasn’t given the time of day. Forever after, animal fat was vilified as a vicious foe.
But before that, the monocrop monolith took our meat away for moral motivations, not merely monetary ones. In the 1800s, Doctors Graham and Kellogg came onto the scene, pushing their corn and wheat fibre snake oil. Avoiding constipation with fibre, you see, would keep us pure and save us from our sins. Meat had to be avoided at all costs, not because of compassion for our fuzzy friends, but because it incited lust. Leo Tolstoy’s “peaceful” lifestyle was mainly about how meat inflamed lust. Early waves of western vegetarianism were totally based on the religious ideal of avoiding meat to avoid sexuality. (Yes, monastic practices avoid meat to avoid killing, but also to make celibacy easier. Monks knew that soy had a feminizing effect on their manhood.) Incidentally, the infantile obsession that some vegetarians have with “impacted fecal matter” clogging colons everywhere comes from these ancient cereal quacks. Kellogg wrote extensively about how meat clumped into the colon and rectum and pushed onto the sex organs, pressuring them into lust. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. There is zero truth behind this “condition.” It doesn’t exist.
But as the aftermath of this obsession with sex and feces was a fortune in the cereal markets, and as moralizing brought about vast gains in the vegetable oil industry, the world over came to believe that a vegetarian diet was the key to eternal youth and happiness. This is precisely in line with fundamentalist religions. True Christianity is about personal faith and humility- about following a compassionate pauper’s loving imperative. But fundie faith is about raising monolith churches, a “prosperity gospel” that happily robs the poor after lying to them, and builds glowing empires of Porsches and private jets. If you weren’t feeling His abundance, then you just weren’t giving enough, or there wasn’t enough faith, or there was still too much sin in your heart.
This is no different from today’s veganism. If you dare to feel sick or undernourished or starved, it is because you are a slovenly, greedy, murderous, lustful human being. If you are getting sick, you MUST be sneaking in some vile meat products somewhere, or else you are being punished because your envelope adhesive was made out of mosquito testicles.
To these new fundamentalists, veganism is the answer, the key to salvation. It would get rid of disease and wrinkles and let you live longer than the fat, lascivious, pimply gluttons who ate eggs or beef. Indeed, it even became familiar truth that the natural human diet was a vegetarian one, in that idyllic meadow where we played happily among dancing flowers, before the fall of man, when we were seized by the bloodlust killing our species.
The few voices who maintained the reason of our ancient lifestyle, such as Dr. Atkins, were considered new and dangerous radicals. It has only been in the past decade or so that ancient ideas are becoming popular again. The Paleo movement was a result of various convergences- including archeology and anthropology, which were demonstrating that the less meat and the more carbs a culture ate, the more we saw the so-called protein diseases. It became crystal clear in a heartbeat- the diseases of “civilization” were the disease of civilization- of grain, of sugar, of industrial plant oils. Hunting was, after all, not “civilized” and nor did said “uncivilized” societies have disease. In fact, the more “primitive” and the more meat-based the culture, the more healthy and beautiful the people. It seemed that if we wanted to be strapping, solid, sexy, and possess all of our teeth, we should be feasting on carcass and drinking blood like Kenya’s incredible Masai.
Sigh. But these voices of reason were just voices in our heads. A few scientists and doctors led Team Heritage, and surprise, surprise, our natural diet was healing the sick. But our truth has been largely drowned out of the mainstream by the idealist agenda-ists who value animal life over human life, or by the massive money making machine that keeps pushing grains and sugars on us and tells us we will live forever, if only we trust them. In truth, even the “studies” famous for “proving” vegetarian health and longevity did not prove it. This includes the China Study, the infamous Seventh Day Adventist study, and beyond. Many scientists and statisticians examining the data of these bulwarks found that the results were very different from the politically correct information that was touted into the popular canon. The true data of death in the China Study implicates carbs.
Some escape the clutches of cults, or find a more reasonable faith. And so sometimes, the facts begin to reach the masses who need them. Turns out the cause of arterial blockage is sugar after all. Turns out sugar is the cause of diabetes- d’uh. Turns out that sugar causes cellular damage and aging. The animal liberationists posing as doctors concerned for human health who have been pushing the plant diet for diabetes and heart patients are starting to look like idiots, just like the TV evangels who promised salvation and healing and were exposed as shams. It’s turning out that soy protein is deficient in certain animo acids and high in estrogenic compounds, wreaking havoc on human testosterone levels. Turns out meat is loaded with antioxidants, and the strongest antioxidants are not found in plants, but in our own bodies- and they are nourished with, guess what, the amino acids in meat. Turns out that vitamin B12 is one of our most potent protectors from coronary disease. That’s the vitamin found largely in animal foods.
It is reprehensible to withhold knowledge or misguide people for financial gain or an “ethical” agenda. Since B12 was the “only” nutrient found in meat that could not be obtained from plant foods, its importance was greatly minimized in vegetarian literature. Gurus of “compassion” like John Robbins went so far as to instruct followers not to worry about it. But even the China Study’s Dr. Colin Campbell says he takes supplements.
While news about disease caused by the absence of dietary B12 is now finally reaching people, the truth that meat contains a whole host of nutrients not found in plants is still suppressed. Vitamin D, Vitamin A, zinc, iron, chromium, DHA, cholesterol, saturated fat, carnitine….Since some of these nutrients are “technically” found in plants, idealists can fool the populace. Zinc is one example. This extremely important nutrient can certainly be obtained from vegetables. You need to eat hundreds of servings a day. Saturated fat is a vital nutrient, but idealists got rid of the problematic absence in plant foods by declaring it a disease monger.
Yes, our greatest hope of longevity and vibrant health is meat. Cutting modern plant foods out of our diet- grains, sugars, processed foods, vegetable oils- means our antioxidants don’t have as much work to do. Filling up on meat, fish, eggs, and fresh veggies means living longer.
Meat may indeed be the fountain of youth. The much ballyhooed “proof” that most centenarians are vegetarian is another idealist fairy tale that has replaced reality with fantasy. Tribes and cultures that only eat plants apparently live forever, according to much rhetoric. One “vegan” culture constantly referenced in the popular literature is the Hunzas- yet goat milk, high in saturated fat, actually makes up a huge portion of their calories. The fabled Eden of Okinawa, where nary an animal is killed and soy reigns supreme, is where most people make it to 100. This argument comes up nearly every time I have a conversation about meat. The ludicrousness of this information is lost on those who brag about Okinawa’s testament to soy and vegetables. Why? Because Okinawans are not vegetarian soy eaters. They eat loads of raw fish, like most Japanese. But the clincher is that they love lard and pork. They don’t just love lard- their whole culture revolves around pork. Just ask your vegetarian friends to head to Okinawan tourist or history sites. Okinawa “begins and ends” with pork, says one. “Pork is number one,” says another. Recipes for Okinawan-style pork abound.
Plant eaters and carnivores alike may be surprised to discover that many “aging” processes are nothing more than physical damage caused by carbohydrates. With all the talk about antioxidants, we know that much aging is the result of oxidative stress. The newest darling of discovery is carnosine, and the “carn” part is correct- only carnivores, or meat eaters, get it. What is it? Not to be confused with carnitine, another good friend, it is a dipeptide of the amino acids beta-alanine and histidine, found concentrated in muscle and brain tissue. It occurs in our own bodies, and diminishes with age, oxidative stress, etc. We can consume it in our diet, through animal foods.
It is proven to be a high performing antioxidant. It is an antiglycator- those familiar with words like “glycogen” and so forth will recognize the “glyc” and the “anti” from which you can surmise that it “gets rid of sugar.” Well, yes. It gets rid of sugar damage- helping to prevent and repair glycation and glycosylation. Those are fancy words, loosely referring to sugar aldehydes reacting with the amino acids on the protein molecule. Picture, more simply, what happens when you cut fruit open and it goes yellow. Glycation is one of the primary mechanisms for wrinkles!!!!!
Preventing and repairing glycosylation is far reaching- it positively impacts the immune system, the heart, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, kidney problems, cataracts, autism, pain, retards cancer, alcohol damage, liver problems, longevity, neurodegeneration, olfactory sense, cellular health, wound healing, inflammation, protection from radiation damage, muscle mass, and skin health.
Animal foods are the only sources of this nutrient, and this nutrient is absolutely vital in aging gracefully and avoiding cancer, diabetes, brain deterioration and immunity problems. So once again I must ask why we are always told to avoid or cut down on our meat intake and eat a plant based diet. I must ask why the truth is suppressed, twisted, or outright denied.
Vegetarianism is completely foreign to the human diet. The only vegetarian societies were meat-free for religious reasons. Vegetarianism is, and always has been, about religion, one that must not be imposed on anyone unless they come to it of their own free will, in full knowledge of their true dietary heritage. Religion has often been about denying the body and sacrificing its needs and lusts. It has often been about controlling the sex lives of its followers. Fasting, flagellation, sexual “purity” and ascetic denial are behind many faith practices. They are behind the agenda of early vegetarian proponents like Tolstoy and Kellogg, who were both obsessed with sex.
But the life of a monk is for a contemplative, not for a layman. And packaging idealism as nutritional science is reprehensible. Some of us see a simple spirituality in accepting our full humanity rather than denying it. Certainly spiritual principles call for truth, not lies. Eating meat is no more immoral for me than it is for a cat- since all claims to the contrary, this IS the way I was “designed.”
But scientific truth will not dissuade ardent veganists. This is because veganism is a fundamentalist religion, and fundamentalists believe the fossil record was put there to test our faith in the Genesis story. Fundamentalists in Iran execute gays despite vast science showing that homosexuality is natural and not a “lifestyle” choice. Fundamentalists decry the healing possibilities of stem cell research that are so far our best hope for disease cures. They defy the facts that stem cells have no brain and fewer cells than a fruit fly, and that only a teeny tiny percent of stem cells ever become children since the womb gets rid of most of them all by itself, all the time. Fundamentalist religions believe their truth is the only truth and that everybody else is going to hell. The rest of the world is sinful slime. No amount of proof that humans need meat to function optimally will change a vegan fundamentalist’s mind that eating meat is sin. There is no room for humanity in fundamental religiosity, just for false morality. Even Jesus spoke against the Pharisees, who were the religious fundamentalists of his day.
Maybe you’ve never run into the Vegan Militia. They are angry, violent people and in true fundamentalist fashion, their approach to their faith is totally blind. They purport to love animals, but refuse to accept the animality of animals. Indeed, some, like Matthew Scully, even speak about the “moral degradation” of meat eating animals like cats! These people actually feed cats vegetables, not meat.
There is no extremism quite like the insanity of the vegan politic. Like fundamentalists of any faith, they refuse to believe in history, anthropology, biology, geography, physics, or any other science or scholastic enterprise, or they rewrite all of these according to their dogma. Like fundamentalists of the conservative Christian right wing, they don’t actually care about people at all, despite puppeting false data about that “16 pounds of grain” for every pound of beef. They have no care or concern for people in need or otherwise, unless those people have converted to veganism. Vegetarians aren’t the “right kind of Christian” since they are not vegans.
But worse than all this, among all the yapping about ethics and caring and compassion and value, veganists don’t care about anything at all. I love my cats and I grew up with chickens on a farm, but just once I’d like to hear veganists talking about the genocide in Rwanda, the terrorist mining for minerals in the Congo (which also affects the gorillas if you need that to give a damn), blood diamonds, the lack of hospitals and doctors in Afghanistan and everywhere else, the million plus child prostitutes in Thailand, Philippines, and the men who buy them, the political torture in Eastern Europe, East Africa, and beyond…Of course, veganists all give lip service to their care for human “health” and the “environment.” But in truth, they really don’t like or care about people at all.
Like fundamentalist believers of any faith, they are certain that other humans following their humanity are simply choosing to defy God and worship the devil. They call for “total animal liberation.” Total? My friends, the wild is a savage place, filled with “immoral” hurricanes and volcanoes and famines that mutilate human and nonhuman animals in unimaginable ways, all of the time. The truth is, the religious type of vegetarian hates humans, and being vegan is a great way to refuse being one.
Activists like Camille Marino say “mutilated cadaver parts have been sold and fed to the all-too-eager-to-eat-misery corpse-munching consumer.”
“It’s time to stop waving signs at cars or trying to enlighten the apathetic. The fight for the rights of non-human people is urgent and requires us to act outside the box,” she writes. “Being vegan is the first step in being an ethical human being… Negotiation is over: go vegan or die.”
When President Obama described a wonderful lamb dish from Pakistan, this extremist called him “an enthusiastic participant in the holocaust; Barack prefers to molest and ingest the cadavers of exotic non-humans.”
Most human beings, including, likely, President Obama, are brought up to believe that the only justification for killing an animal is for food. Far from attesting to our atrocity, this is a “moral leap” above other “innocent” animals who attack, mutilate, and kill other animals for fun. Indeed, humans who still do this are anomalies- serial killers and sickos that we consider “unevolved” and especially heinous. They are “still savage.” Far from being the vegetarian peaceniks we are told they are, chimpanzees will tear baby chimps limb to limb and cannibalize them just for fun, laughing and tossing the child chimp around amongst themselves.
I follow Richard at freetheanimal.com and he is very outspoken and eloquent on these matters of morality. He has a video on his blog showing the chimpanzee having a gory hey day with its young. He was also raised to avoid torturing animals, justifying their death only for food. He says about vegans, “In the end, y’all remind me of the born-again Christian fundamentalists I grew up around. It’s always about denial, penance, guilt — and over man’s very nature (’original sin’). Vegetarianism offers the very same unearned guilt trap, and there’s no mystery that it’s the young and as-yet dumb and ignorant where lies the biggest push. In the end, you need emotion and feelings-based ignorance: the only life truly suited to the diet of a pea brain.”
The vegan militia is missing the point entirely- caring about nature, embracing it, loving it, existing within it- these cannot possibly mean denying it. Since vegetarianism is absolutely not about nutrition, then it is entirely about morality. I’ll respect your choice to be a vegetarian if and when you respect my non-choice reality of being a carnivore.
Like most fundamentalists who rail against heathen sinners, vegans who “use no animal products” are also hypocrites. If they live in cities or eat farmed crops, they have destroyed thousands of insects, birds, rodents, and animals. They may argue that this is unintentional, and that’s fine. But not one of these vegans would turn down miraculous morphine or anesthetic and opt for surgery without. Yet some of these would open the door to animal laboratories and “free” the “inmates” who are helping us find cures for disease. Not one would say yes, yes, eat your carnosine so that you can avoid cancer and glycation-related diseases and spare some animal tests or some human animal pain.
It is absolutely moral to feed ourselves and our families on the food nature made for us. Far from being vicious and bloodthirsty, it shows a profound respect for nature unencumbered by naïve fantasy. It shows a respect for the circle of life and death, for the sacrifice another makes to nourish me fully and keep me alive. Amen.
Katie 
Aaron Blaisdell 
matt 
Steve 
Wow. Thank you for posting this.
“The truth is, the religious type of vegetarian hates humans, and being vegan is a great way to refuse being one.”
So true. I believe Lierre Keith in the Vegetarian Myth talked about how wanting to believe that nothing has to die for a human being to live is a very childish thought–it’s like saying if I close my eyes I can make the icky reality go away.
It’s the circle of life folks. I thrive on a mixture of plants and animals while I live, and when I die, my body will return to the Earth and the fungi and insects and eventually cows, pigs, and other cuddly animals will feast.
Very well said! Yes, echoes much of what Lierre Keith wrote in The Vegetarian Myth. I have always wondered, all my life, what produces the fundamentalist mind set. You see it in all civilized cultures. Yet, I think it’s relatively absent in hunter-gatherer societies, or at least has no fodder to grow on within them. My guess is that it is just another manifestation of the diseases of civilization–in this case a mental disorder. If we liken civilization to the human body, then fundamentalism is a cancer and its only intent is to self-perpetuate at the expense of the host. I think a ketogenic diet might help rid us of this “cancer” as it seems to do for other types of cancer.
Fundamentalism’s pre-civilizational, it has nothing to do with diet. It has to do with enforcing rules which were once beneficial to group survival, for small groups (i.e., extended families, tribes, etc.).
Sort of. Human society must have rules, and at least some of them must be enforced. The sort of fundamentalism we’re seeing now, though, is largely made up whole-cloth and is book-based. The rigid rules you see in pre-civ societies arise mostly out of group experience. They may not remember why they have all their rules, but all their rules arise out of trial and error. Modern fundies just make it up as they go along. “Oh, I know! Meat-eating is bad!”, even though they have zero evidence to back that up.
I don’t liken civilization to the human body. I think it’s antithetical to the health of the human body. I differentiate it from human *society*, though. I believe it’s possible to have the latter without the former, and to even have good behavior and mutual peace. Civilization, though? Do not want. It’s what brought about all these diet-based diseases to begin with. (Not to mention assisting in the spread of infectious ones.) Do a Google search for The Anthropik Network. Lots of interesting writing by an anthropology major in this vein. Daniel Quinn is also good, although he’s more philosopher than scientist.
My son has a close freind that is a veg. Her dad’s a long time veg too. He just had his first heart attack. Will they treat it as a wake up call? Somehow I doubt it.
In doing research through JAMA for a company project I ran across several studies that showed that a diet low in fat, with PUFA’s repacing animal fat, and high in vegitables resulted in some negative changes. From one of the studies:
“The major, and unexpected, findings of the present study
were that dietary changes altered the plasma concentrations
of OxLDL-EO6 and lipoprotein(a). Our subjects consumed
diets containing decreased amounts of total and saturated fat.
The study protocol used a randomized crossover design for
each of the study diets, which further adds confidence to the
main findings that plasma levels of OxLDL-EO6 and Lp(a)
were significantly increased on the low-fat diets…”
I liked their conclusion:
In conclusion, we found that a diet traditionally considered
to be anti-atherogenic (low in saturated fat and high in
polyunsaturated fat and naturally occurring antioxidants)
INCREASED plasma levels of circulating oxidized LDL and
Lp(a).
I found three others as well, one with thousands of participants over 8+ years. I wonder why these studies wern’t shouted from the rooftops. Well, not really I don’t…
Do you have links, Dave?
Here’s the one I quoted from.
bit.ly/9FxKwk
This is the smaller study. There were two others, but I just happened upon them while researching vitamin D and cardiac disease/muscle weakness/cognition aspects. (I work for a cardiac specialty home heath agency, and I’ve about got them convinced to start a D3 program).
I’ll try to find the others, but it might be a needle and a haystack kind of thing. If i do see them, I’ll get you the links.
I actually found one of the others. This one I still need to go through, but the abstract is interesting:
bit.ly/9vfCV7
I dunno, man. This was kind of preachy and I didn’t even finish it. At least when you get angry and start railing against people you keep it FUN, you know?
I found this to be some of the most tedious and boring shit I’ve ever attempted to read. I don’t care for the religious fervor. What attracted me to the paleo scene in the first place was facts and logic, not this sort of preachy stuff. I don’t see vegans as the enemy, just people who mean well but are somewhat misguided and dogmatic. I know veganism is something of a religion, let’s not make paleo a counter-religion.
Sorry Jim, I didn’t mean to put this reply on your thread.
Counter religion?
C’mon, that’s just projecting. If you don’t like it it suffices to say so rather than make up bullshit.
Yeah, you are right. And I was way over the top with my criticisms in general.
I agree, this post was way over the top. You’re right, it had the feeling of one religion argueing why the other was incorrect.
….because, after all, feeeeeeelings are what’s really important.
If they kept their lifestyle to themselves and never preached it at anyone else I wouldn’t see them as an enemy. And a few of them I still don’t see as enemies; that young woman who debunked the China Study comes immediately to mind. But most of them are dispensing advice that destroys health and kills people. If someone shot you with a gun, wouldn’t you consider them an enemy? This just happens to kill more slowly than a gun. Which, in some ways, is worse.
I agree, this post was ridiculously preachy. Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to ridicule vegans for trying to change the way you eat, but yet at the same time, you are trying to change the way that vegans eat? Making ridiculous statements like “eating meat is absolutely necessary for optimal health” reflects very poorly on your nutritional knowledge. there are plenty of populations that are perfectly healthy living off nothing but plants, and there are plenty of populations that are very healthy living off of nothing but animal products. the human body is very adaptable, and it’s possible to thrive on both a plant based diet or an animal based diet. here’s a novel idea, how about we all stop judging each other for the way we eat? i have no idea who this lorette Luzajic bitch is, but she sounds like a total tool
Spencer:
Go fuck off.
No, it’s not possible to thrive on a diet of plants. Not for humans. We are not herbivores. It’s possible to become healthier temporarily if you go from SAD to vegan, but only because you’re cutting shit out of your diet. However, you will only get away with that because your body stores several of the nutrients that you cannot get on a vegan diet: vitamin A and vitamin B12, for instance. Once you run out of those? Forget it, especially if (as with many people) you can’t convert beta carotene.
I don’t think it’s a “valid lifestyle choice” to jump in front of an oncoming train and I similarly don’t think it’s a “valid lifestyle choice” to eat vegan. If you MUST commit suicide I guess I probably can’t stop you but, if asked, I will still tell you it’s a stupid idea.
Dana,
Flawless _moral_ logic.
And what I mean by “moral” is a totally naturalistic principle: what’s good for the human body/mind (the integrated organism in total)vs. what’s bad for it.
Clap clap.
Off topic, but have you seen Campbell’s 11-page tome responding to Minger? His whole discussion of “biological plausibility” smacks of bias to me and seems to go against the entire idea of the scientific method. It seems like he’s saying that we should conduct studies to CONFIRM hypotheses (in his case, it was that plant foods = good, animal foods = bad) rather than actively trying to disprove them, and when you have a sample size as large as the China study, of course he could find what he wanted to. I also laughed out loud at the idea that there’s no “biologically plausible” mechanism or evidence that wheat can cause diseases, such as CHD.
Yeah, the drama goes on. I downloaded the data that Denise used (from the China Study), and did a multivariate analysis with it, since some have been criticizing Denise’s use of univariate stats to reach conclusions. I posted the results here:
healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2010/07/china-study-again-multivariate-analysis.html
Vegan
Vegan: n. A person meddling in everybody’s affairs, coincidentally characterized by his refusal to eat animals or use animal products. That he enjoys meddling is obvious; that his diet is sub-optimal is scientifically evident; that he doesn’t use animal products is fabulously impossible.
VEGAN
Alternatively, an imported alien from Vega, a star in the constellation Lyra.
Vegans do not have a good press in popular sci-fi.
For e.g.
In Roger Zelazny’s book This Immortal, the Vegans are a species of humanoid aliens who use the Earth as a vacation resort.
In James Blish’s Cities in Flight series, the Vega system is home to a civilization called the Vegan Tyranny, which the Earthmen must defeat before expanding out into the galaxy.
Fantastic, loved it and glad you bent your no guest posts rule to bring us this excellent piece by Lorette.
So can I get a link to a study that proves that all fundamental Christians don’t care about anyone?
“Fundamentalists decry the healing possibilities of stem cell research…”
Should say EMBRYONIC stem cell research.
She should have also hyper-linked text such as, “It is proven to be a high performing antioxidant…”.
Many examples of statements that need references.
I thought it was pretty good although a bit breathless and repetitive. If I didn’t like ranting though I wouldn’t be a regular reader of FTA.
Did you know you can remove cells from a very early embryo without harming it? True story. That’s how you get identical twins. The ball of cells splits in half. It’s still in an undifferentiated state, so it just divides some more to make up the lack.
People get so hysterical about shit they don’t even understand. By the time most women get an abortion it’s a fetus, not an embryo, and even if it’s an embryo it’s too advanced to be useful.
Dana
I’ve long been fond of pointing out that “god” ismthe world’s greatest abortionist.
“If you dare to feel sick or undernourished or starved, it is because you are a slovenly, greedy, murderous, lustful human being. If you are getting sick, you MUST be sneaking in some vile meat products somewhere, or else you are being punished because your envelope adhesive was made out of mosquito testicles.”
In the name of the Falafel, the Salad, and the Holy Sugar, amen!
“Fundamentalist religions believe their truth is the only truth and that everybody else is going to hell.”
So in that same line of reasoning, isn’t this post from a “fundamentalist” in her own right, that believes everyone who disagrees with her is 100% incorrect? We are all fundamentalists in some of our beliefs.
Her a fundamentalist in any sense? Bullshit nonsense.
Just more making shit up because some, I guess, feel a need to defend Christianity, fundamentalism in particular.
Richard- look up the definition of a fundamentalist view point. Just because her point of view happens to be your own, does not mean that it is not fundamental in nature. You are obviously opposed to Christianity, and completely intolerant of Christian beliefs. THAT intolerance, and the strict adherence to your own point of view is a FUNDAMENTAL view in it’s own right. I don’t feel a need to defend Christianiy anymore than I feel the need to defend the notion that my name is Matt, but I do (at times), feel the need to point out hypocrisy when I see it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be claiming that any strongly held viewpoint is fundamentalist, which is incorrect. Fundamentalism requires dogma and generally implies an adherence that ignores evidence.
Fundamentalism, in addition, always has a goal to IMPOSE their belief system on those who have an alternative belief, if necessary, by law and/or force of arms.
Fundamentalism is a term that means a strict adherence to a set of beliefs in the face of criticism or unpopularity.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism
Extremists would probably be a better term for those who impose their belief system by law or force.
Paleo doctrine certainly has “fundamentalism” at its core, with different denominations (orthodox paleo, moderates (some dairy, etc.), liberals (80/20 rule)).
You have evangelism and mission work going on thru various books, blogs, media, etc. with donations being made to “bring the truth to the masses”.
While I’m at my core a complete libertarian and believe each should be able to choose how they will live their life (what they eat, how they worship or don’t, career, etc), I also recognize that everyone is to some extent a fundamentalist is some type of belief system and paleo is no different.
I liked a lot of the points of the article but it definitely came off as hypocritical to this reader.
Hello pot, this is kettle… you’re black.
It’s one thing to be a fundamentalist about something you know to be a fact and can back up with sources, quite another to be intolerant about something you can’t even prove.
It’s a fact that standing in the way of an oncoming train is going to fuck you up royally. If I push you off the tracks in the nick of time, am I intolerant?
Yes meat or fish is required, but it need not be a major part of the diet.
I don’t agree that the Masai are more healthy than Kitavans. I do agree that Masai have more muscles than Kitavans, but that is immaterial, because kitavans don’t require those extra muscles.
It is wrong to say that health is some how proportional to meat eating.
Most vegetarians I know are cultural vegetarians, who don’t eat meat because they have never eaten it, and others in their family don’t eat it. They couldn’t eat meat, even if they knew that it was required for life. They do find it easier to follow their path if they think that it is healthy.
Indians have been vegetarians for the last 2500yrs, its not that people could survive on this diet, if it was totally unhealthy for this long. There are some reasons why it worked in India. Unfortunately those reasons don’t exist in this age of factory farming.
Vegetarians for the last 2500 years? I doubt it.
What about ghee, which is made from cow milk? There are also lots of traditional Indian meat dishes. Sure, some parts of Indian have probably been mostly vegetarian, but have they been healthier than their omnivore neighbours?
We do include dairy and also honey in vegetarianism. In the Indian brand of pure vegetarianism, eggs are not allowed. There are different levels of vegetarianism in India. Some parts meat offered to the gods are allowed, not too frequently I think. There are parts where fish is considered vegetarian.
I never said that it was a very healthy diet. I said it is not very unhealthy, if you eat pastured dairy, and traditionally raised crops. Nowadays due to factory farming, there is a constant erosion of nutrients, and milk is no longer pastured. So yes its no longer a healthy diet. But I guess nothing much is very healthy either. We can just hope to get most of the nutrients required.
Vegetarianism can be a decent diet- pastured dairy provides most of the same nutrients as meat. However, India is now suffering from very high rates of heart disease and cancer because of PUFA and grain consumption.
The Kitavans are healthy because all that saturated fat they’re eating offsets the worst effects of the stuff they eat that isn’t so good for them.
The Maasai do have hardening of the arteries but *not* the heart disease that we’re told is supposed to accompany that. They are also tall, strong, and have near-perfect teeth. Dental health, by the way, is one of the first things impacted by poor health and bad diet. If your teeth are rotting, something is wrong with you and it ain’t failure to brush.
(I low-carb, though I’m not primal/paleo. And I hardly ever have to brush my teeth.)
Ten to one both Kitavans (who are nothing like vegetarian) and Maasai are healthier than the vast majority of Indians. I’ll bet money I don’t even have.
Lorette made an interesting observation that vegetarianism is a religion. Just to play the devil’s advocate, I’m wondering if the primal, paleo or ancestral living philosophy is becoming a religion to some people.
While some treat it as a religion in style, it could never actually be one because it’s based in some semblance of reality with observed evidence.
Religion is what you do when you just pull shit outta your ass
I find that those who demonstrate an high level antipathy toward Christianity do not somehow appreciate the selflessness of Christ’s message. The dissolution of the id/self in favor of humbly helping not just your friends but strangers was, and still is an emancipatory and revolutionary message. Love is God.
I have known, and know of, people who’ve suffered various forms of emotional imbalance/breakdown. These folks engage in “secular” counseling and end up coming to terms with the basic notion that they are not “entitled” to anything. This is a liberating revelation.
Richard, seems to me that you as an anarcho-libertarian type would value people coming together freely in order to love and support each other’s emotional well-being. That they are doing it on their own dime and not engaging in public health services ought to make you a fan of authentic Christianity.
And yes we know, you were exposed to some real power-hungry, selfish assholes that happened to be disguised as Christians.
Love is entirely different than God. Love is a chemically induced emotion that we developed from millions of years of evolution; God is a made up person in the sky who people worship and pray to.
“I find that those who demonstrate an high level antipathy toward Christianity do not somehow appreciate the selflessness of Christ’s message.”
I admit it, I don’t appreciate messages of selflessness, the dissolution of self, unnecessary depths of humility, melting into some kind of uni-consciousness or anything like that.
Me either fireandstone. Hoping someone would take that up.
Ok – that last line made me laugh more than anything I have heard or read in the last month – thank you Richard – is this at all related to constipation?
I love this site.