To Hunt For Sport (Part 1)

To kill animals, including fish, birds, and insects, for the sake of food, self-defense, clothing, or any other such constructive end is plainly allowed by the Christian deity.  Not only is this never condemned in Mosaic Law directly or implicitly (Deuteronomy 4:2), but it is also not as if meat itself is even condemned by the dietary laws of the Torah, so killing animals to eat their meat is not sinful; at most, even if the dietary laws are continually binding, killing animals for meat and eating their flesh is not immoral unless the consumed meat belongs to a prohibited class of animal.  In Genesis 3:21, God himself even makes "garments of skin" for the first humans after they sin, and then throughout Mosaic Law, it is clear that sacrificing animals--not torturing them or interacting with them out of sadism, but sacrificing them to Yahweh--is morally permissible.  What of hunting them for sport?  Only if the animal is one of the many non-rationalists one will meet among other people (I jest)!

There are actions towards animals that are prohibited even if casual hunting is not among them, the greatest of these being bestiality, the act of having sex with an animal (Exodus 22:19).  In fact, bestality is rape, since an animal cannot consent to having sex with a human, or at least a human could not have this willingness verbally communicated to it.  Consent is the most significant factor in sexual morality even above matters of promiscuity, marital unfaithfulness, and homosexual or incestuous behaviors.  Bestiality is indeed the only mistreatment of animals given the same penalty as the equivalent act when inflicted on a human: anyone who rapes a man, woman, or child deserves death (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).  This is a hyper-precise detail of the Bible that no one needs to realize to understand the Bible's special opposition to nonconsensual sex regardless of the gender or species of the victim, but this overlap between the just punishment for rape of an animal and rape of a human reveals that animals, although they are subhuman, have moral rights of extreme importance.

Sex with animals is a capital sin, yet killing and eating animals or using their carcasses for clothing or other products is not sinful because there is a constructive use that reflects human supremacy over other creatures as posited by Genesis 1:26-28.  Deer, crocodiles, doves, and more are not made in God's image according to the Bible.  Not even angelic beings are said to have this standing despite being more metaphysically similar to God than humans themselves in some ways.  There is a superiority humans possess which animals do not according to Genesis, and there are obvious outward differences between human accomplishments and those of many non-human animals.  Still, animals are among God's creations and are things which God called good (Genesis 1:20-25, 31).  God, moreover, is said to have intentionally spared a number of animals from the great floodwaters of Genesis 7, something which would not be a part of Biblical history if the deity of the Bible did not care about animal life.

These things alone would make it sinful to think that animals have no moral rights or that humans can treat them cruelly.  Torturing an animal, gratuitously driving entire species to extinction or near-extinction for pleasure or money, and finding an ideologically-driven delight in the needless deaths of animals are plainly things which would neglect the moral value of animals as described in Genesis and Mosaic Law.  A creature does not need to be metaphysically equal to a human to have moral value of its own that makes some treatment and attitudes towards it deserved or wicked respectively.  Again, what of hunting animals for sport?  Not for food, clothing, or protection, but for the sake of tradition, competition, or excitement?  When the conditions which would clearly permit humans to kill or use animals for the sake of the former's flourishing are not present, it is not as obvious what Biblical philosophy would lead to, but it is theologically/morally important in its own way.  Part two will address what follows and does not follow from the aforementioned aspects of Christianity that pertain to animal rights and human obligations to lesser beings.