3/19: Other white meat

[Undertoad]

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.

[Chewbaccus]

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

[adamzion]

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

[alphageek31337]

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

[Chewbaccus]

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

"Who can say what constitutes a sin these days? I remember a time when eating meat on a Friday was considered a Hell-worthy tresspass."

~Mike

[adamzion]

Originally posted by alphageek31337
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."

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

[richlevy]

Originally posted by alphageek31337
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

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.

[Chewbaccus]

Originally posted by richlevy
Some of it relates to health. Some of it to humaneness (is that a word)...

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

[adamzion]

Originally posted by Chewbaccus
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.

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

[Chewbaccus]

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

[Dagnabit]

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!"

[adamzion]

Originally posted by Dagnabit
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

[alphageek31337]

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

[Dagnabit]

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?

[richlevy]

Originally posted by adamzion
[QUOTE
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.

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.