I have been noting this more recently and it seems to be a trend, at least with people I converse with on the regular. The really religious types aren’t animal people or downright dont like them. The more chill or agnostic types seem to be more apt to love animals.
I could go on my theory of this but I’m interested to see if anyone thinks this is a trend.
It depends on what religion you look at you have religions with literal sacred animals, religions where all life is sacred, religions where the prophet didn’t like dogs so dogs are explicitly shunned, religions where just cloven hooves animals are forbidden etc. it’s kind of all over the place, my church is dog friendly and I’ve brought him with me before.
I do think there is a subset of Christianity that believes that 1) animals exist to serve man 2) animals don’t have souls so that would mean animal welfare isn’t really a priority. It’s also important to maintain that animals don’t have souls explicitly to justify caring less about them, if they had eternal souls it would be a lot harder to feel ok exploiting them.
So yes, I do think some religions do have an undercurrent of denying animal welfare for the benefit of animal exploitation because they believe that is the god given purpose of animals, to be exploited by man.
But “Sacred animals” AFAIK doesn’t mean all animals, but very specific one. Like you shouldn’t eat cows, but eating pigs is fine. So it isn’t against religious people general morales to avoid killing animals.
But maybe you know of a religion where all animals are sacred.