the way things work in here...

[lagilman]

y'know, you really shouldn't be enjoying that pork you had for lunch quite so much. even though it was very good.
why not?
well, you're not supposed to eat pork. technically, and not that this has ever stopped you.
hey, I don't eat ham. anyway, the pig is an enviromentally sound animal to eat. unlike, say, a cow.
still. it's not kosher.
why not? because God said so? God can tell me why, then.
isn't the whole point about faith being that you don't question? you leap because S/He Looked?
yeah, and there's that slippery line that bothers me. when you're used to God saying 'eateth not the swine' and you say 'okey-doke God' and then Gods says 'killeth the unbeliever' and you're already primed to say 'okey-doke, god?' Not working for me. God wants me to kill, God can damned well say why. God wants me to pack off a nutritionally and enviromentally solid food source? again, tell me why.
goes for governors, too, so long as we're back in biblical/roman terms. a thinking faith's a loverly thing, if not so scary-strong as the unthinking kind. hrmm. food. faith. politics.
there's a story in there.
I'm sure there is. you go find it, I'm already working on the whole "love forever, live forever' thing we came up with on our way to lunch.

Comments

[karenmiller.livejournal.com]

I might save this conversation for November ... *g*

[equesgal.livejournal.com]

my brain hurts now too....;-( But I do agree on the "okey-doke" bits. I've started going to a Science of Mind church after I decided I needed a bit of religion in my life but was dismayed after picking up my old Bible. God sure seems angry in that Old Testament and I find it hard to agree with everything.

[debg.livejournal.com]

loving suri

Not to mention that whole "you HAVE to do this and you HAVE to believe this, because your ancestors made a pact with God."

To paraphrase Bill Cosby, on the subject of cocaine use: "Yeah, but what if my ancestors were a**holes...?"

Also, someone doesn't want me eating this stuff, they can do something about all these allergies I was born with. Being able to eat soy and tree nuts would be a good start...

[lagilman]

yeah. as I said to myself, in the connection between food and faith, there's a story somewhere....

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

Some on-line forum or other someone mentioned that some very nasty diseases can go to people via transmission through pigs (one of the best known, but not apparently the only disease that goes from pigs to people, is one of the flu distribution methods, getting into pigs from duck excrement, and into people from the pigs as one transmission mode that happen a lot in Asia. "Swine flu" got from pigs to people. Bird flu apparently happened to skip going through pigs on its way to making people sick.

On the other hand, for my case, my mother said the only time she ever got nausea when pregnant with me, was when she smelled pigmeat such as bacon being cooked....

[lagilman]

the pork = illness link to the rules of kashruth has (far as I know) been shot down by a number of rabbis. Besides, the mental argument in my head has more to do with faith than pig, specifically (beyond the no-blood rule [vampires are unclean in more ways than one!] there's also the whole not-mixing-dairy-and-meat rule that doesn't have any health implications at all, although "not seething the meat in the milk of its mother' does have a vague emotional eeek-weight to it)

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

3000+ years, the reasons for some of the prohitions seem to have gotten lost. One theory I saw somewhere are that pigs are anathema to herding societies which have flocks that move from place to place. The Bible has some schizophrenic attitudes towards people who settle down and dig in the dirt for farming, as opposed to herding sheep and goats and cattle.

I thought that the pork = illness views that were in vogue for a while, involved things like pigs being opportunist eaters of offal if that's what was available to eat (as opposed to necessarily prefernece for eating it) and trichinosis. I hadn't heard of discussion regarding pigs as e.g. flu vectors and vectors of other communicable to humans viruses, etc., while still alive (as opposed to considering pigmeat unclear for what the pigs are eating... what chickens and ducks and such eat isn't restricted to vegetation).

As I understand the original prohibition for "not seeth meat in the milk of its mother" was quite specific. The more general restrictions were added over time to serve as more general barrier to prevent inadvertent transgression of the ban. (In modern times, which milk comes out of big processing facilities, the calf that was gestated to freshen the cow,can randomly be on store shelves in parts, and the milk of the cow that birthed it's mixed in with the milk from humdreds of other cows.) And once the prohibitons start getting extending, they sometimes keep getting extended. 3000+ years of encrustation ontop of encrustation, commentary on the commentary on the commentary, and the conditions that gave raise to various rules, long lost in the past.

[(Anonymous)]

The most interesting explanation I've seen for the prohibition (which applies to Muslims as well as Jews) is environmental. The prohibition originated in Palestine. Palestine is a semi-arid area, with water the scarce resource. Pigs are an attractive proposition, because "You can use every part of the pig but the squeal." The problem is, they need too much water.

How do you prevent folks from doing things that are attractive in the short term, but damaging in the long term? One way is "Because God said not to!"
______
Dennis

[kalligraphy.livejournal.com]

Time: A Friday in late September
Place: City Crab, NYC

Sarah: OMG, I am eating shellfish
Me: Yeah?
S: It's Yom Kippur
M: So?
S: I'm not being kosher.
M: Sarah, you don't keep kosher the other 364 days a year. Now either you are going to hell for not keeping kosher through out your life. Or you are ignoring a rule that was set down to protect a people living in a hot climate during an age without refrigeration from eating a food that was prone to spoilage. A rule that no longer makes sense in the modern age. Somehow, I doubt that you will die and God will go. Sarah, sorry, you have to go to hell because you had lobster on Yom Kippur. I don't care about all the other times you had pork, crab, shimp, lobster, etc. I only care about that one time on Yom Kippur. Nope, don't buy that one at all.

For the record I also feel the same way about people who only go to church on Christmas day. You either believe in this stuff or don't. Drop the half measures. :)

[lagilman]

Technically speaking, eating at ALL on Yum Kippur, before sundown, was the mistake, not specifically eating shellfish...

(if she didn't realize it was Yom Kippur, all bets are off. Even I remember that one! *wry grin*)

Anyway, if you have relatives from New England, lobster's exempt. Really. Would my parents lie?

[vincam.livejournal.com]

Amen. As they say.

Not to speak for any Jewish folk, but I would point out that one of the things Jesus said was that the Ten Commandments can pretty much be boiled down to the first two, because if one practices them then it's extremely difficult to break the other eight. He certainly didn't think scripture was forever. There are an awful lot of things demanded by scripture that nobody practices any more, and language being what it is I can't imagine God expecting us to take every word as...well, Gospel. Better to listen to the voice in prayer without the book than to listen to mortals interpreting the book.