Pro-Vegetarian Pro-Vegan

John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S.

Man not Naturally a Flesheater

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It is to be noted at the outset that our present mode of life is far from natural. Since he left his primitive state, in his wanderings up and down the face of the earth to escape destruction by terrific terrestrial convulsions and cataclysmic changes in climate and temperature, chilled during long glacial peridos, parched and blistered by tropic heats, starved and wasted by drouth and famine, man has been driven by ages of hardships and emergencies to adopt every imaginable expedient to survive immediate destruction, and in so doing has acquired so great a number of unnatural tastes, appetites, and habits, perversions and abnormalities in customs and modes of life, that it is the marvel of marvels that he still survives.

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Man no longer seeks his food among the natural products of field and forest and prepares it at his own hearthstone, but receives it ready to eat, prepared in immense factories, slaught-houses, mills, and bakeries and displayed in palatial emporiums. No longer led by a natural instinct in the selection of his foodstuffs as were his remote forebears, he finds his dietetic guidance in the advertising columns of the morning paper, and eats not what Nature prepares for his sustenance but what his grocer, his butcher, and his baker find it most to their pecuniary interest to purvey to him. The average man himself no longer plants and tills and harvests the foods which enter into his bill of fare, that is, "earns his bread by the sweat of his brow," but accepts whatever is passed on to him by a long line of producers and purveyors who do his sweating for him, depriving him of the opportunity of earning both appetite and good digestion by honest toil. So he resorts to condiments and ragouts, palate-tickling and tongue-blistering sauces and nerve-rousing stimulants, as a means of securing the unearned felicity of gustatory enjoyment.

Animal Dietaries

Comparative anatomy and natural history give definite and positive information. It is easy to determine the natural diet of an animal by studying its eating habits when in a wild or natural state, because animals are guided by unerring instincts which instruct them to eat and lead them to avoid those things which are not naturally adapted for their sustenance, and which are hence unwholesome for them. 

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Lessons from the Monkey

Even savage man finds it necessary to appeal to his humble forest companions for indformation regarding foods with which he is not acquainted. Dr. Geil, a famous African explorer who visited the pigmies, told the writer some years ago that when he asked the chief of the pigmies, "How do you know what to eat when you visit a new forest?" the quaint little chieftan replied: "When I find a new nut, I put it where a monkey can see it; then I hide and watch the monkey. Pretty soon he picks up the nut, smells it, tastes it, and then if he eats it, I eat it. Yet if he drops it on the ground, I know it is poisonous and don't eat it."

The pigmy has made an important dietetic discovery which the average civilized man has not yet attained. He has found that the safe way in diet is to follow the monkey. He submits his bill of fare to his forest relative, whose knowledge of dietetics he knows to be more reliable than his own, and accepts his guidance.Much more valuable information could be obtained by sitting at the feet of some wise old chimpanzee and watching him eat than by reading many books on dietetics. 

Price increasingly gained attention outside Adventist groups, and in the creation–evolution controversy other leading Christian fundamentalists praised his opposition to evolution – though none of them followed his young Earth arguments, retaining their belief in the gap or in the day-age interpretation of Genesis. Price corresponded with William Jennings Bryan and was invited to be a witness in the Scopes Trial of 1925, but declined as he was teaching in England and opposed to teaching Genesis in public schools as "it would be an infringement on the cardinal American principle of separation of church and state". Price returned from England in 1929 to rising popularity among fundamentalists as a scientific author.[48] In the same year his former student Harold W. Clark self-published the short book Back to Creationism, which recommended Price's flood geology as the new "science of creationism", introducing the label "creationism" as a replacement for "anti-evolution" of "Christian Fundamentals".[49]

Biography

Clark was born in 1891[2] and raised as a Seventh-day Adventist on a farm in New England. His interest in science and religion was first evoked by George McCready Price's Back to the Bible (1916). After years of church-school teaching, he enrolled at Pacific Union College in 1920, where he studied under (the newly arrived) Price. He graduated two years later and replaced Price (who had accepted a position at Union College, Nebraska) on the faculty. In 1929, he had dedicated his work Back to Creationism to Price.[3] Historian Ronald L. Numbers credits this book with the introduction of the name "Creationism" to the movement, which had previously been known as "Anti-Evolution".[4]

That summer, and a number of vacations thereafter, he spent studying glaciation, coming (in the 1930s) to the conclusion that large proportions of North America had been covered in ice for as long as one and a half millennia after the flood — a view that was anathema to Price. In 1932 he earned an MA in biology from the University of California, and on his return updated and enlarged his book, introducing his views on glaciation, and rejecting the common Adventist view, associated with Price, that species were fixed, in favour of one that allowed considerable hybridization. The revised book drew effusive praise from Price.

In 1938, Clark visited the oil fields of Oklahoma and Northern Texas, where his observation of deep drilling confirmed long-standing suspicions that there existed a meaningful geological column, a position adamantly denied by Price. Clark attributed this column to antediluvian ecologies ranging from ocean depths to mountaintops, rather than the successive layers through deep time of mainstream geology.[5] Despite continuing to point out that he still believed in six-day creation, Clark was pelted with criticisms from Price, who accused Clark of having contracted "the modern mental disease of universityitis" and curried favor with "tobacco-smoking, Sabbath-breaking, God-defying" evolutionists.[6] This led Price to vitriolically and implacably break with Clark,[6][5] who Price would continue to criticize strongly in his 1947 pamphlet Theories of Satanic Origin.[7]

Clark died in St. Helena Hospital on 12 May 1986, aged 94.[8]

Publications

• Back to Creationism, 1929[9]

• Genes and Genesis, 1940

• The New Diluvialism, 1946[9]

• Creation Speaks: A Study of the Scientific Aspects of the Genesis Record of Creation and the Flood., 1949 (2017 Reprint, CrossReach Publications)

• Crusader for Creation: The Life and Works of George McCready Price, 1966

• Fossils, Flood and Fire. Outdoor Pictures. 1968. ISBN 0-911080-16-3.

• The Battle Over Genesis[10]

• New creationism. Nashville: Southern Pub. Association. 1980. ISBN 0-8127-0247-6.

In 1935, Price and Dudley Joseph Whitney (a rancher who had co-founded the Lindcove Community Bible Church, and now followed Price) founded the Religion and Science Association (RSA). They aimed to resolve disagreements among fundamentalists with "a harmonious solution" which would convert them all to flood geology. Most of the organising group were Adventists, others included conservative Lutherans with similarly literalist beliefs. Bryon C. Nelson of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America had included Price's geological views in a 1927 book, and in 1931 published The Deluge Story in Stone: A History of the Flood Theory of Geology, which described Price as the "one very outstanding advocate of the Flood" of the century. The first public RSA conference in March 1936 invited various fundamentalist views, but opened up differences between the organisers on the antiquity of creation and on life before Adam. The RSA went defunct in 1937, and a dispute continued between Price and Nelson, who now viewed Creation as occurring over 100,000 years previously.[50]

NOW YOU CAN READ the complete 20,000 word-for-word stenographic report of the Timely Informative Stimulating DEBATE ON 

"Is MEAT Essential for HEALTH"

 Two VEGETARIANS say NO! 

DR. JOHN MAXWELL, of Chicago, III. noted octogenarian nutritionist 

DR. CHRISTOPHER GIAN-CURSIO. D.C. of Rochester. N. Y. well-known natural hygienist 

versus Two MEAT EATERS say YES! 

THOMAS GAINES. of Los Angeles, Calif. nationally-known health lecturer 

PROF. FRANK SAUCHELLI. M.C. renowned writer and health crusader 

Foreword by BERNARR MACFADDEN pre-eminent physical culturist Held in New York City, October 13, 1946 PRICE S1.3S POSTPAID 

LEAGUE FOR PUBLIC DISCUSSION 

117 West 48th St. New York

Preparation for Christ’s Coming—God’s Design in Food Reform 

Again and again I have been shown that God is trying to lead us back, step by step, to His original design—that man should subsist upon the natural products of the earth. Among those who are waiting for the coming of the Lord, meat eating will eventually be done away; flesh will cease to form a part of their diet. We should ever keep this end in view, and endeavor to work steadily toward it.

—Counsels on Health, 450. 

Flesh Foods and Clear Thinking 

God wants the perceptive faculties of His people to be clear and capable of hard work. But if you are living on a flesh diet, you need not expect that your mind will be fruitful. The thoughts must be cleansed; then the blessing of God will rest upon his people.... We want them to understand that the flesh of animals is not the proper food for them to eat. Such a diet cultivates the animal passions in them and in their children. God wants us to educate our children in right habits of eating, dressing, and working.

—Counsels on Dint and Foods, pp. 339, 390-391.

Choose the Best Foods 

In order to know what are the best foods, we must study God’s original plan for man’s diet. He who created man and who understands his needs appointed Adam his food.... Grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables constitute the diet chosen for us by our Creator.

—The Ministry of Healing, 295, 296. 

Meat is not essential for health or strength, else the Lord made a mistake when He provided food for Adam and Eve before their fall. All the elements of nutrition are contained in the fruits, vegetables, and grains.

—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 395.

Why Use Secondhand Food? 

Those who eat flesh are but eating grains and vegetables at second hand; for the animal receives from these things the nutrition that produces growth. The life that was in the grains and vegetables passes into the eater. We receive it by eating the flesh of the animal. How much better to get it direct, by eating the food that God provided for our use!—The Ministry of Healing, 313.

Few Animals Free From Disease 

The meat diet is the serious question. Shall human beings live on the flesh of dead animals? The answer, from the light that God has given is, No, decidedly No. Health reform institutions should educate on this question. Physicians who claim to understand the [3] human organism ought not to encourage their patients to subsist on the flesh of dead animals. They should point out the increase of disease in the animal kingdom. The testimony of examiners is that very few animals are free from disease.

—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 388. 

Entire System Corrupted 

I have felt urged by the Spirit of God to set before several the fact that their suffering and ill health was caused by a disregard of the light given them upon health reform. I have shown them that their meat diet, which was supposed to be essential, was not necessary, and that, as they were composed of what they ate, brain, bone, and muscle were in an unwholesome condition, because they lived on the flesh of dead animals; that their blood was being corrupted by this improper diet; that the flesh which they ate was diseased, and their entire system was becoming gross and corrupted.

—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 387.

God is Bringing His People Back 

Again and again I have been shown that God is bringing His people back to His original design, that is, not to subsist on the flesh of dead animals. He would have us teach people a better way.... If meat is discarded, if the taste is not educated in that direction, if a liking for fruits and grains is encouraged, it will soon be as God in the beginning designed it should be. No meat will be used by His people.

—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 82. 

Compiled by Request 

By Ellen G. White Estate 

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists 

Washington, D. C. 

October 5, 1960