Does being a Vegan have to do with religion?

[Trilly&Truly]

I was having a discussion with some friends the other night over dinner, and veganism came up. All my friends are Christian, so our conversation was partly biased. I remember a while back, probably 2 years ago, in my one my classes, we had a guess speaker. Now I don't remember his name, but it's funny how he was on the Penn & Teller BS episode of veganism. He said something about God putting the animals on our planet so we can have something to feast upon, but ironically, he was against animal cruelty. He said the usual arguments a vegan would say, ya know; animals have rights, they feel pain, they are living organisms that deserve life just like every other living thing, including humans.

My friends and I both agree on 1 thing; meat is delicious. One even said that animals were purely created by God so we can eat, so there is nothing wrong with killing and eating animals. Whatever God does is always correct, so don't question his decisions because he's simply, "almighty." From my perspective, I love meat. Not all, but some. I do sometimes feel bad for what animals go through, but it is in our nature to destroy things. If I could, I would probably be a vegetarian. Or more probably, just consume less meat. It's hard though; simply because I'm Chinese and about 95% of our dishes contain some sort of animal product, so it is tough changing my diet because of culture. And not just my culture and religion, (I'm an atheist btw) I know there are countless religions who won't eat a specific meat like pork or beef on a certain day because of it's symbolic value. I know I'm starting to drag, but my point isn't necessarily why Muslims won't eat pork or Catholics eating chicken on Fridays, but more of, "does being a vegan correlate to religious views and whether it is a sin or not to eat an animal." I mean, the guest speaker I was talking about earlier was a devout Christian, but is spending his life trying to preach animal rights. I'm kind of rusty, but does it say anywhere that God created animals for us to eat?

[SSY]

Apparently god gave us dominion over the animals

let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

which seem to be a thumbs up for eating them. Your Christian friend needs help with logic, if animals were made purely for our feating on, it would mean all animals are delicious, which is not the case, what the point of an animal be if it was not tasty? The tasty animals he eats were in fact, largely a product a man, over successive generations of selective breeding.

[Whitney]

Does your Christian friend happy to be Seventh Day Adventist?  I forgot why, but their denomination views veganism as god's ideal.  I think it might have something to do with them thinking humans didn't eat meat till after the fall of man...but I could be wrong; it's been a long time since I attended that church and I only went for a year while dating a member.