Air quality is much higher in the US than it was in the middle of the last century and earlier. So air quality isn't a factor to be considered. And with a few very notable exceptions (Jackson, MS, and Flint MI, I'm talking about you) water quality is also much higher than it was a century ago. You might be better off looking at the moral collapse in this country than in environmental factors.
Not really. Instead, the more broad question of why did God deem it right for us to become meat eaters in the context of the Fall. And what might we learn from it.
Part of my point is that our moral collapse and these environmental factors are linked. There are also links - still being discovered - between GMO use in the US and our decreasing life span in comparison to the non-GMO food policy of our longer-living friends in Europe.
I largely agree. But there is a natural (and, I believe it can be argued, moral) difference between employing farming techniques such as hybridization of crops/animals and the process of planting/eating no-till GMO crops.
Do you believe animals died before the Fall?
The Lord designed us that way because He wanted to. Why did He design us with a gallbladder when we really do not need it. Does it have its function.. yes. We have canine teeth bc God wanted us to have them. It's God's business in my view.
I'm not in a position to argue for or against GMO, though I tend to be skeptical of conspiratorial thinking that equates Monsanto with the Antichrist. That said, I've never argued that modern food production is an unmixed good. I fully acknowledge mankind's capacity to wreak havoc with the best of inventions. My main point was to state that, balancing the somewhat hip notion that we all should pay more for artisanally, sorry I meant ethically, grown food - a notion curiously popular among people with the time and resources to afford paying twice as much for their food - we should be mindful of the great good, for literally billions of people who otherwise would not exist, generated by the low cost and high supply of food available to us in modern times. If that kind of thinking was allowed to have its way, there's a sizable chance I might have starved as a child, and there's a somewhat smaller chance I might have starved as an adult a few years back. None of that is to defend any of the problems afoot, or to contradict anything you've said about American health vis a vis Europe (something I agree with and have observed first-hand and which is not solely attributable to any one cause so much as it is the byproduct of a complex of factors differentiating American society from European society).
I'm not sure the distinction between hybrid plants/animals and other GMOs is quite as sharp as you make it out to be. It seems to me to just be a matter of method. Selective breeding and hybridization are forms of human-caused genetic modification. Less direct and less powerful methods, but ultimately aiming at essentially the same goal.
True, but genetic selection is not a modification of the genes. There is vast difference between me breeding my best Hereford cow with my neighbor's best Red Angus bull and experiments inserting the Arctic flounder gene that codes for the antifreeze protein into the genome of a tomato (the experiment was not effective but gives a sense of what is being tried "out there").
I'm going to suggest that in modern (post-WWII based on production/price) food production, even before GMO, there has always been enough food to prevent all starvation - starvation that has occurred is due to political (think Soviet genocide in Ukraine or war in Ethiopia) interference in distribution. It is hard to argue that we need more food to feed one half of the world when the other half is obese. I'm not sure what your situation was, but no one in the US needs to starve when we throw 40% of our food away (I'm speaking as someone who once upon a time dug perfectly good food out of dumpsters).
At this point we're just talking past each other, since you keep diverting specifically to the topic of GMOs when I'm talking about modern food production in general. Your original comments weren't aimed specifically at the GMO topic and my assertion all along has been that the modern food industry is a life-saving blessing but not an unmixed one. There's not really any point in saying anything further when you keep bringing up everything that's wrong with our food industry. I'm one of those with a non-Celiac gluten problem. To the extent that I'm able to understand, I agree with much of your assessment regarding the problems you identified. All I'm saying is that the notion that our food needs to be more expensive is an easy position to take for some people and smacks a bit of ivory tower talk. Talk all you want about how there's enough food to entirely eliminate starvation - last I checked, such talk didn't solve the problem. Over and out.
Agreed. I was pretty careful to choose wheat - which I specifically pointed out is not GMO - as my example, in responding to a comment about genetic modification.
Maybe it's the cyclamates they put in some of their diet soft drinks that gives them a longer life span.
Who says we don’t need a gallbladder? Or an appendix for that matter? Just because we pronounce these organs unnecessary because of our evolutionary presuppositions doesn’t mean they serve no purpose. God is the consummate Designer. ( I remember the childhood ritual of the tonsillectomy which happily has been abandoned.) And now we are mucking about with his exquisite design of our immune systems. The recent 2 year drop in life expectancy can be traced to our efforts to “improve” on God’s good design.
