Comparative Religion Final Exam

3. Compare the ways that Eastern and Western religions deal with the animal world. To what extent do these practices reflect a respect for life?
Western revealed religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, human nature has a set of external checks and balances. Eastern religions, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, more focus on improving the self-cultivation.
Human beings should be kings upon the animals’ world in western religions. When God created the real world, God created animals, but all the animals don’t have the intelligence, but the human beings have the intelligence, so God created human, let them control the animals’ world. Because only people worship their God, only people can communicate with the God. People always use the animals to offer up a sacrifice in these three religions.
In eastern religions, people are living with all the animals, and all the human beings and animals need to be focus the rule “coming again and again”. In Buddhism, Buddhists pursue nirvana and assert that Elysium is the final destination, so people cannot kill the animals, just because they are all have life, everything which was alive, that cannot be killed, should be respected. In Taoism, Lao Tzu said, “when people was born, they are so kind.” So in these three religions in eastern, people always respect the animals, and make a balance of the nature world.
In eastern religions, they believe in saints’ conscientious. But in western religions, they believe in God’s rule. In eastern religions, people always do the self-cultivation, the reach the Elysium and Fairyland. All of them are through their own practice to wipe off desire, perish fear, and particular about self-restraint. In western religions, people are in the hope of enter into the heaven, and afraid to go to the hell, so people always do good things because they