No sense – Laws which no longer apply

Religion and Secularism
1

In the Old Testament there are laws and commandments which some believe no longer apply to us today. One of the big ones is eating pork and some other animals. The Jews of the Old Testament could not eat pork and other animals (going forward I’ll just use pork as the most common example), but today that does not apply to us any more. Does this make sense? Let’s find out.

First we have to ask, why was that a law? What reason did God have for making this law? Was there even a reason? The Bible actually tells us that these things were banned for a very good reason, they were “unclean”. While it’s kind of ambiguous what that means, unclean is obviously bad. When a woman had a baby she had to go into the woods to be by herself for a number of days because she was unclean. If she had a boy she was unclean for 7 days. If it was a girl she was unclean for 14 days. And during her period she was unclean. But that went away after a time. These animals were simply all unclean and that never went away.

So what changed? There was a good reason not to eat the animals. They were unclean. Is that no longer the case? Did Jesus wash all the little piggies in the world? Did the blood of Jesus clean, not just our souls, but the uncleanliness from all the animals? There is no mention of this in the Bible or any other religious text that I have ever heard of. As far as I can tell those animals are as unclean today as they were then. If the reason for the law forbidding eating them was that they were unclean than, and if they are still unclean today, why does that law not apply today? The problem still exists, the reason still exists, why does the law not still exist?

In Mark 7:15-19 Jesus specifically says that nothing you eat can defile you because it enters your stomach, not your heart. This is why many Christians say it is now okay to eat piggies. But again, what changed? Did Jesus declare that these animals were now clean? That is what some Christians contend, but that’s not what it says. He doesn’t say, “These animals are no longer unclean”, he says that it can’t defile you because it doesn’t go through your heart. He is clearly saying that yes, it is unclean, but that can’t hurt you. So the animals are still unclean.

Paul does go a littler further in 1 Timothy 1:1-5 to say that everything God created is good, that it is made holy by the power of God and prayer. But that’s not what God said. God created these animals. Did he specifically make them unholy so he would then have to do more work to make them holy? God said that they were unclean. No exceptions, no way to fix it, so just don’t eat them. Jesus, who was also God, didn’t say that they were clean, just that being unclean wouldn’t hurt you. And did God not have the power to make them holy before Jesus was born? He hadn’t actually died yet when he said it was okay to eat them, so this law changed before the sacrifice. But when?

So WHAT CHANGED? Absolutely nothing but attitude. There was no change between God forbidding it and Jesus okaying it. NOTHING changed. This very important law to prevent people from eating unclean things just stopped being important.

This is pretty potent evidence that God is a fiction. Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and forever. Many times Jesus says that he is God. Yet here is a very big change. God thought it was so important not to eat unclean things that he made a law forbidding it. Then Jesus says it’s no big deal, completely meaningless. So did God make a meaningless law? Did Jesus use his magical powers to do a thing? Of course not. The people who made up the God who made up the law died. They were replaced by new people, who then also died, being replaced by new people on down the line until the generation that wrote about Jesus decided that God didn’t care any more and never should have. The new generation had a whole different set of sticks up their butts about a whole different set of issues and they liked surf n turf and pork sausage. And then bacon was invented and this law had to go!

2

Traditional Jews still can only eat “kosher” foods, even though there is no compelling reason why a lot of perfectly good food (meat) should be burnt and wasted.

Otherwise, humans, being omnivorous eat everything that’s edible. Of course they have learned to cook certain foods which may be contaminated foods to kill the harmful phatogens.

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I read somewhere that cooking our foods may have contributed to the development of our brains. I don’t remember why.

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Widdershins said; I read somewhere that cooking our foods may have contributed to the development of our brains. I don’t remember why.
One fact is undisputedly true, that Homo sapiens emerged with the fusion of two hominid chromosomes into one larger chromosome, creating a clear historical record of DNA mutation and the divergence of "homo sapiens" from our common hominid ancestor .
All great apes apart from man have 24 pairs of chromosomes. There is therefore a hypothesis that the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor's chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. The evidence for this hypothesis is very strong.

The Evidence…more

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Oh yes. Big fan of Nova’s Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. They go into some of the science, this one in particular. They just touch on it briefly, but it’s very well delivered to be very understandable. Even though it’s just a quick mention, it sticks with you.

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widdershins said; Oh yes. Big fan of Nova’s Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. They go into some of the science, this one in particular. They just touch on it briefly, but it’s very well delivered to be very understandable. Even though it’s just a quick mention, it sticks with you.
One of the main arguments of the Theists was "irreducible complexity" , the assumption that certain systems were so complex, they could not have naturally evolved, but had to be a product of creation. They specifically cited the "flagellum" as an irreducibly complex system.

The scientist destroyed that argument by showing in detail the evolutionary process of each component that led to the emergence of the flagellum as a functional chemical motor.

 
7

It has been a busy week and I haven’t been in the forums at all. And it’s just about the end of the week for me, when I’m not on the forums anyway. But I did have one amusingly interesting notion that I just had to share.

The argument I always here for why it is now okay to eat “unclean” animals is that this law was for the Jews. It doesn’t apply to us today. And where is this law, intended exclusively for the Jew of the day laid down? In the book of Leviticus. Guess what other oft-quoted rules come from Leviticus? The ONLY place in the Bible where homosexuality is specifically condemned. So by their own arguments it is fair to assume that those laws were also specific to the Jews and do not apply to people today.

If you do a search of course you’ll find a whole lot more Bible quotes which supposedly support an anti-gay position, but most of those are total bullshit. It’s quotes about a man having a wife and whatnot. But they don’t specifically condemn homosexuality and it could be argued that these Bible quotes are not laying down “How it should be”, but rather the writer is just making assumptions. I have a bisexual daughter and it’s still my default to say, “You need to get a boyfriend” because that’s just the way I think. (I used to hastily add “or girlfriend” until she said that it was assumed and I didn’t need to clarify every time. We have always let our kids know that it makes no difference to us so long as they’re happy, even years before they were even old enough to have a sexuality.)

So if your religious beliefs say that it’s okay to eat pork now then you really have no argument that it’s not okay to enjoy other types of sausage as well.

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You will have to talk to a rabbi to get the full story on what is kosher and why. Kashrut - Wikipedia

I think you will find that trichinosis was more of a problem prior to the widespread use of refrigeration for keeping meat.

Trichinosis is mainly spread when undercooked meat containing Trichinella cysts is eaten. Most often this is pork, but infection can also occur from bear and dog meat.
Also, they didn't have pasteurization in biblical times. Brucellosis is a problem even today. Look up "raw milk".
9

I don’t think that really applies since the laws against eating pork and shellfish went away with Jesus, who did not own a refrigerator. Well, we can’t definitively show, historically, that he did, anyway.

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Moral laws handed out are meant to be kept forever by everyone because God’s idea of right and wrong never changes because HE never changes and the laws arise from his character as he is holy and wholly other.

But the ceremonial and governmental laws were meant only for the nation of Israel. And when you take a close look at them, it’s noticeable that they had to do with staying healthy and surviving in a harsh environment. For example, pork in a hot climate would be deadly. Trichinella, a parasite found in pigs, wasn’t discovered until 1835. So God told them not to eat pork so they wouldn’t get sick.

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overcome said; Trichinella, a parasite found in pigs, wasn’t discovered until 1835. So God told them not to eat pork so they wouldn’t get sick.
That is not true. Experience told people not to eat pork, before they knew that bacteria existed. In those days illness was equated with demon posession.

How did any animal learn to distinguish between healthy and poisonous foods? Does God tell Chimpanzees and Gorillas which foods are good to eat or is this “learned” diet by all species in the course of millions of years of evolution? The naivite of “God told them” is almost comical.

But that all stems from the assumption that the earth is 6 thousand years old and all inate knowledge was acquired from divine revelation instead of evolutionary processes.

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widdershins said: I read somewhere that cooking our foods may have contributed to the development of our brains. I don’t remember why.
It made food softer to chew and over time evolved smaller jaw bones and muscles allowing for more room in the cranium to evolve a larger brain.