Spinoza wrote on religion, "... since they find within themselves and outside themselves a considerable number of means very convenient for the pursuit of their own advantage - as for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, cereals and living creatures for food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish - the result is that they look on all the things of Nature as means to their own advantage. And realizing that these were found, not produced by them, they come to believe that there is someone else who produced these means for their use." This is the capitalist/monotheist interpretation of Nature. It is something to be exploited. Genesis 1 says, "28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." " So in this paradigm we see everything as a gift for us, and thus we see ourselves as outside Nature, when in reality we are just as much a part of nature as anyone or anything else. We depend on things outside our bodies for sustenance and shelter, but these things are not given to us to exploit in any way we see fit. I don't subscribe to Spinoza's Pantheism. Rather, I believe in animism, the belief that there are spirits in everything and that we should worship and have reverence for all things. I agree that things in Nature are gifts, but they're not gifts given exclusively to us. We need to share these gifts with other species who need them. Hell, we can't even share within our own species!

I am a vegetarian, but I don't begrudge those who eat meat. I just wish people would have respect for the animals they are killing. Bow hunting or having your own organic farm are two ways to get meat that are both respectful and ecologically sound. When you kill the animal yourself, you see the suffering it goes through and it makes you revere the animal more. You can say a prayer to the animal thanking it for the sustenance you are about to receive. When you alienate the death aspect of meat from the eating aspect you have dishonored the animal. Factory farms are extremely disrespectful as they make animals into products, commodities to be bought and sold and ultimately to die long before their time. Forty million cows and calves are killed annually. Cows have a life span of 20-25 years, but a factory-farmed cow is used up by the time it is 3 to 4 years old and sent to the slaughterhouse.