How the Buddhist Prohibition Against Eating Meat Runs Counter to the Claims of Evolution

**This is part two of an examination into Buddhism’s prohibition against eating meat.

Buddhism often recuses itself from the debate between god and evolution, assuming it a problem of supernaturalism. Westerners who no doubt flock to Buddhism on account of staying out of this conversation and touting a godless route to spirituality, tend to promote it as a far better approach than the "sieve" that has been created as science, philosophy, and biblical criticism continue to challenge traditional monotheistic claims.

I can think of no other agitant more grueling for a scholar than the problem of God and evil. But I also want to make it clear that Buddhism hardly gets off the hook. While Buddhism does not proclaim an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god (though there are certainly gods and Buddha protectors in the traditions of Buddhism), the problems with some of its fundamental  doctrinal claims pose considerable problems. Last time, we looked at the narrowness of nonviolence (ahimsa) as an ethical issue applied to Buddhism only in the realm of eating meat by claiming that a in adopting a more consistent approach to ahimsa, a Buddhist would need to challenge the food production industry of our day and not just the mass slaughter of animals for meat.

Today I want to look again at another problem in the doctrine of abstaining from eating meat, this time from the world of science.

Buddhism, it is well-known, sponsors vegan or vegetarian lifestyles. The idea is that all animals are fundamentally connected by their karma in the wheel of life. This means that murder extends beyond human species and into the animal kingdom. One problem with this however remains with the way evolution encounters Buddhism, not as a friend, but as a competitor with competing claims.

Humans were thought to not only develop teeth for meat eating, but in two recent independent studies (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49888012/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/sorry-vegans-eating-meat-cooking-food-made-us-human/) there remains growing consensus in the scientific community that both our small stomachs and large brains (a rarity for a creature our size) was most likely stimulated by this evolution from meat-eating. Simply put, consuming meat allowed us the ability for higher thought as a species, and it was this higher thought that most likely spawned our ability to...well...do what I am doing right now...thinking about ethics in the religious imagination.

To be fair, early Buddhists did not always eat a strictly vegetarian or vegan diet. But it is difficult to reconcile this practice with one that sees the spiritual dignity of all creatures with varying levels of consciousness, since it is consciousness that binds us together in our journey.

Does this mean that just because we have the ability to do something, we do it? I have the ability to eat until I’m sick, but should I?

I can see this question raised as a possible apologetic to defend a Buddhist's conviction on this topic. But understand this:  The ability to even ponder vegetarianism or veganism as a lifestyle choice or religious conviction is a higher brain function that itself was produced by millions of years of eating meat!  We have to understand the implications of this fact because it creates a context of primary evil, similar to the story of Genesis. To become capable of the highest form of Buddhist spirituality, evolution has taken us down a path that is fundamentally opposed in Buddhist doctrine! But since Buddhism does not concern itself with stories of origination (such as the origin of good and evil in creation), it would be hard to know where to frame such meta-histories. Perhaps a Buddhist may argue, that evolution at one time had all things living peaceable, and it was only through one or another condition that animals started turning on one another. The problem with this solution is that we are still left with a path in which evil is primary to obtain the highest spiritual plane. The highest spiritual goal in the dharmachakra is not facilitated through the 8-fold path, but is first activated by murdering animals to consume their flesh to get where I must be to follow such a path!

Perhaps, Buddhism has something similar to the Augustinian Christian concept of a “fortunate fall”(felix culpa) – i.e., if it weren’t for humanity’s fall from grace, we would not experience so great a salvation in Jesus! Melius enim iudicavit de malis benefacere, quam mala nulla esse permittere. But again, to posit this effectively, it logically follows one must have a sense of origination, and because no such thing exists in Buddhism, we are only left with questions.