http://cellar.org/pictures/ostrichmeat.jpg

Here is what we'll all be eating if hoof and mouth disease makes its way across the ocean. These guys have to wear plastic protectors over their beaks because otherwise, they'll peck each other and damage themselves. So they're OK to eat: mean-spirited, ugly birds who will peck your eyes out given half a chance. Not like those cute cuddly rabbits.

I wouldn't mind eating ostrich. It'd be a nice change of pace.

My question is: Why not let them damage each other? Theoretically, it'd save on costs for slaughtering, wouldn't it?

~Mike

Kosher ostrich?
 

I believe that ostrich meat can actually be Kosher, provided it is properly slaughtered (according to the laws of ritual slaughter).

It's a complicated business, Kosher meat,
Z

Kosherity
 

I never understood the concept of kosher meat in the modern day and age. As Chris Rock put it, "In those days, they didn't have nothin' to keep pig meat from killin' a man. These days, a porkchop is your friend."

Ah well, chalk one more up under the "Religious Customs that Once Made Sense" coloumn. I think we'll put this one right next to human sacrifices to the sun (hey, they made sense at the time too....either bobby dies or it gets fuckin' cold).

My $.50 (gotta account for inflation)

Steve

And I quote Bartleby (Ben Affleck) in "Dogma"

~Mike

Re: Kosherity
 

Well, while Reform Judaism takes that approach- that the Kosher laws were established by the Rabbis for reasons of health- more traditional Jews (that is Orthodox and some Conservative Jews) see it differently.

Put simply, pork is explicitly forbidden in the Torah; the Torah came from G-d; therefore G-d doesn't want us to eat pork. Simple. It's one of the class of commandments which might not seem, on its surface, to make logical sense, but there it is, and we're in no position to argue with G-d.

But, being Jews, we'll argue with <b>anyone,</b>
Z

Re: Kosherity
 

Some of it relates to health. Some of it to humaneness (is that a word), and some of it seems strange.

For example, there is a commandment against boling a kid in its mother's milk. This is thought to be one of the reasons for the prohibition against mixing milk with meat. Others claim that the prohibition was meant literally and that some other religion actually did this.

Now it could be claimed that it is possible to confuse red meats and therefore you run the risk of in some way mixing a mothers milk with the meat of its child, so this maybe means that you cannot mix lamb with cow's milk, but fowl is considered a meat also, and there is zero chance of mixing a chicken with it's mother's milk.

Our former reform rabbi was comfortable eating chicken cheese steaks.

Another issue is the humaneness of the kill. Kosher killing is intended to be as quick and painless as possible. Compare this to the methods employed by meat packers.

Kosher does generally mean cleaner. Kosher meat cannot be made from visibly unhealthy animals. Also, kosher meat is probably less susceptible to BSE (mad cow disease) becuase kosher means that more care is taken to keep out un-kosher parts (spine and brain) that pass along the disease.

Restricting red meat to animals which have cloven hooves and chew their cud might have been a way to keep from eating carrion eaters. It wasn't until the recent use of bone meal that there was even a chance that cows would eat dead animals. Cud-chewing animals were better vegetarians which was and is probably safer.

Being Kosher did partially save Jewish communities from plaques caused by trichinosis in pigs. I say partially because the surrounding non-Jewish communities got extremely ticked off when they noticed that the Jews were not affected.

All in all, Kosher might be coming back in style. There is already anecdotal evidence of non-Jews ordering Kosher meals on airlines. With BSE and foot-and-mouth, it could be on the rise.

Re: Re: Kosherity
 

Under the current administration, Rich.

On the religious book issue, I personally am not one to take religious texts word-for-word. Pour example, G-d(who am I to break precedent) creating existance as we know it in 6 days.

Now I fully, with all my heart, believe that G-d could have, and still can do such a feat. But my own personal experience with asking Him for things and such have impressed upon me a sense that G-d is the end-all, be-all, long-term planner.

My theory is that when He told the story of Creation to the Israelites, He simplified. A lot. Let's face facts, the largest number an average person there could conceive is between 10,000 - 100,000. Who back then could possibly grasp the idea of a billion? It wasn't really until the Progressive Era that the average American was introduced to the idea of a billion somethings (Ol' J.P. Morgan and his loaning America money.)

As such, instead of waving His hand and judging His handiwork, He let things develop slowly and gave life's course a nudge here and there. Not pure evolution, but not pure Creationism either.

~Mike

Re: Re: Re: Kosherity
 

I read an absolutely incredible book a few months back: <u>Genesis and the Big Bang</u>, by Gerald L. Schroeder, PhD. To summaraze its main point quite brutally, the six days of creation really <b>were</b> six literal days... in G-d's frame of reference.

To give a quick explanation of what Dr. Schroeder means, in Einsteinian physics time is <b>not</b> constant; rather, it is relative to ones velocity. This is due to the speed of light (c) being the only true constant in the universe.

I can't explain this fully, but I will give an example. If you have a number of people in a spaceship which leaves Earth at a velocity of, say, .98c (it is impossible for anything which has mass to reach c, and it is impossible for anything to exceed c) and goes on a journey for, say, 5 years, when they return they will have aged 5 years in their frame of reference, but the people who remained on Earth- within Earth's frame of reference- will have aged considerably more than that.

So, in G-d's frame of reference, 6 literal days <b>did</b> pass. Meanwhile, on Earth the billions of years suggested by science took place. The two are one and the same.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who has been torn by both religious and scientific beliefs. While Dr. Schroeder's explanations of evolution fall short of convincing me (he's a much better physicist than biologist), his method of resolving the biblical story of creation with the scientic one is quite facinating.

In a word: wow,
Z

I believe I'll check that out. I agree with the philosophy completely. In the Bible, Christ says how the end time is "near". Apparently what's near for the Almighty is 2000+ years for us.

Think about it. From New York to California is a 3-hour time difference. Roughly 1 hour for every 1000 miles. Just imagine what the time change would be from here to heaven. No wonder you have to die to get there, you'd never survive the jet lag.

And apparently this isn't Sprite I'm drinking, it's Vodka, which means I'm not witty and insightful, I'm drunk and obnoxious.

~Mike

Forever people have tried to explain away the minor incompatibilities between the bible and what we've proven to be true since it was written.

Why not just accept that it's a collection of fairy tales? That's a much more reasonable explanation than "gee, when it talks about the four corners of the Earth, that's just an expression they used at the time!"

The mistake many people- believers and skeptics alike- make is to take everything written in the Bible as literal truth. Doing so does great violence to the text, especially when put into the proper context.

Let's rewind several thousand years, to a time when hundreds of thousands of Israelites stood at the base of Mt. Sinai waiting for Moshe to return from speaking with G-d. And, return Moshe did, with the law in hand. Not only the Ten Commandments, mind you- tradition holds that G-d, in effect, dictated the entire Torah to Moshe at that time.

Now, remember that these people are products of a Bronze Age civilization. Would G-d hand Moshe a book of high energy physics and advanced biology to explain how they came to be? Don't be absurd... as Maimonides wrote: "The Torah is natural history, cloaked in metaphor."

Taking the Bible literally, yes, it's a bunch of fairy tales. But give it a little thought- and plenty of people on both extremes can't be bothered to do that- and it's far more than that.

Again, I recommend <u>Genesis and the Big Bang,</u>
Z

Metaphors
 

If we can accept fallacies in one book as metaphorically true, who's to say that anything is really false, or really true. Think about this line form 1984, by George Orwell: "2 + 2 is only four when The Party says so. If we want, we can simply change 4 and 5 so that 2 + 2 is 5, because nothing really exists outside of the mind. We have control of the minds, so we have control of everything."

Just waxing philisophical

Steve

Well I'm happy to accept fallacies as "metaphorical truths", because that's what metaphor is, maybe what art is.

But I'm sure not gonna take life-or-death directions from a book that does such a thing.

It's absurd on it's face. This "supreme being" delivers His law to Bronze-Age people because it's important for them to understand it... and fails to give updates to anyone else since then? Is it not important for anyone else to understand His words?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Kosherity
 

Actually, I first heard that argument in "Inherit the Wind", with Spencer Tracy playing Henry Drummond in a fictionalized account of the Scopes trial. He asks about the concept of a day and whether or not G-d can make a day any length he sees fit.

Great movie. Interesting concept.

Dag, how does "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not steal" etc. etc. require an update?

No slam intended, merely asking your views.

~Mike

For example? You've picked the clearest possible statement there is, the word of the supreme being is "don't kill".

However, there are numerous passages in this document that downright demand that you kill.

And who dies? Aw man, who doesn't? The whole Torah is a kill-fest! Every child that hits or curses a parent. Both parties in adultery. Homosexuals. Any daughter of a priest who becomes a whore. Rebellious or disobedient sons. Rape victims who fail to cry out loudly because they are in a city! In a lot of these cases, the word is not just that these people are to be killed, but killed by fire or stoning.

In Deuteronomy, the Lord explains that the Israelites are not only the special, chosen people, but that they should smite and utterly destroy the other nations. Why? Well these people worship other gods. So not only should the Israelites smite and utterly destroy, they must destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

Some of that, I'm sure, is against the Geneva convention.

Fist things first, I'm Christian, so I can't talk about the Torah at my current level of amateur theology.

About Deuteronomy, I'd like to see that passage for myself (not that I'm doubting you). Could you see fit to give me the chapter and verse?

Much obliged.

~Mike

Deut. Chap. 7 is pretty much entirely about how much God loves the Israelites, and describes how Israelites should treat their enemy nations: smite and utterly destroy, do not intermarry, destroy the artifacts of other religions, whiz on their fig trees, etc. God then promises to take away diseases and infertility from the Israelites and will instead lay these "upon all them that hate thee", suggesting that tw should not cancel his major medical.

In Deut. 20 He explains again that, make no mistake, the enemies are to be fully smited and their cities are to be considered an inheritance. Now, I should have said earlier, He specifies which peoples are the enemies. The following tribes are to be smited until dead: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. (Except in Deut: 20-17 he gives the Girgashites a pass.)

That includes their women. Deut 21:10-14 explains very clearly that if, while taking captives amongst these enemies, you see a woman you like in the captives, you can take her home, shave her head, cut her nails, and screw her brains out, until you don't enjoy her any longer, at which time you set her free. (But don't SELL her, because THAT would be WRONG.)

Oh and
 

...I forgot. The Israelites failed to go and smite those other peoples; I'm not sure why. I mean, part of it is His fault, because He said that He would help out.

But in Judges:1 it explains that the Lord couldn't manage to drive out some of the Canaanites. He couldn't manage it because they had chariots of iron.

This made me smile because I, too, have a chariot of iron.

Re: Oh and
 

This explains certain person's problems with automobiles.

Aha
 

Okay Dag, I read this over, and you were twisted up. Don't worry, I did the same thing until only a few months ago.

See, the trick with the Bible is you have to read a passage word-for-word. All the "thee"'s and "shalt"'s prompt a reader to skim a great deal, and you get a misinterpretation.

When Deuteronomy goes "and the LORD said, 'thou shalt...", it's not in a commanding, but a prophesizing manner. It's not "You must do this", but "When you're in this situation, you're gonna do this"

Deut. looks like: "I will deliver your enemies into your hands, and you must smite them all", but means: "When I deliver your enemies into your hands, you will forsake my commandments and indulge in sin" It's a "Though you're my chosen people, you are still people and susceptible to temptation" lesson.

~Mike

Re: Aha
 

So why does "Thou shalt" mean something different in Exodus, where it is clearly in a commanding manner?

And if you're going to read it word for word, shouldn't you do that in the original language?

That's fair, Chew, and it's highly possible that I misinterpreted, since I'm no biblical scholar. I will admit to having read a chapter here and a chapter there to try to figure out what's going on.

Tonight I will embark on reading the whole Deut. in order to see for myself what's going on. And I'll try to summarize in a new thread.

By the way, I realize that I'm being downright blasphemous. I'm sorry if I hurt people's feelings, truly I am, but on the other hand I have to A) be myself, and B) be as skeptical and honest as I can be as I evaluate entire schools of thought.

I doubt I could even participate in the thread without being blasphemous, but if I'm being ignorant, it reflects solely on me and not on anyone else here.

I guess what I'm saying is that I can't question your faith, I can only question SOME of the points IN your faith. And I can't stop from doing that.

You intend to read the entire book of Devarim (the Hebrew term for Deuteronomy- it literally means "Words") tonight- and in the original Biblical Hebrew, no less!- and summarize it in a single post.

Ladies and Gentlemen, stand in respect! We are clearly in the presence of the greatest Torah scholar of the generation!

It ain't that easy, guy,
Z

Re: Re: Aha
 

Russ, context and yes.

i'm gonna take a quote from a guy on slashdot

Creationism doesn't sound so crazy if you bend it
and twist it until it matches the best that science can currently muster.

And its true, for cryingout loud i doubt there have ever, been anotehr discussin on the length of a day except when it come sto the whole 6 days thing, its so stupid, stop trying to twist the facts to accomodate belifs, either a: have some REAL FAITH IN WHAT U BELIEVE, or give up.

Yes this is flamebait but i jsut *had* to point that out, i'm not some athiest on a crusade to shit off all the religious types i can, i have respect for thsoe who can base thier lifearound abook, it takes alot of courage to tand up topopular opinion, myself i'm agnostic.

NOT trolling..
 

I think most of this "debate" can be concluded by going to this site. (HUGE amount of work.. suggest you actually read some of it, before you flame.)


And now.. the moment you've all been waiting for.. another jpg :)

http://hammer.prohosting.com/~phclub/here2.jpg