this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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It always amazes me people think this being that created the universe cares what meat they eat.
A lot of food handling instructions in religion are rudimentary sanitation practices. For example, food must be consumed same day, not left out. Don't eat raw shellfish. Don't drink blood. Wash your hands.
Pretty much all religious texts at their core are "how to not die," "how to make more of you," and "how not to be an asshole," with an overarching guilt system to enforce it.
Everything else is either people misconstruing things because they can't make sense of their own existence, either through mental illness, misguidedness, or plain old ignorance.
Hey there’s also hallucinations in there
You're telling me this enormous being with 6 wings surrounding flaming wheels covered with eyes that God is speaking to me through isn't real?
Hey sometimes the mushrooms in the desert hit different
I'd never thought of religion as a form of Darwinism before.
Is is, in many interesting ways. In the sense of Dawkins ("the selfish gene"), who coined the term 'meme', religions are complex memes. Ideas which need hosts to survive and spread. This puts evolutionary pressure on these ideas to become good at convincing brains that:
"This idea is worth listening to. This idea is worth remembering. This idea is worth spreading."
Naturally, religions became good at these things or went extinct. In many cases, their evolution converged to extremes. A powerful god is obviously beaten by the all-powerful God. A stronger incentive than living a decent life on Earth is obviously receiving eternal bliss in heaven.
Religions take great efforts to emphasize they are very important - sorry: the most important - ideas. And some which emphasize how important it is to spread them happened to spread, driving others extinct in the process.
To this day, religions evolve in the attempt to adapt to their changing environment of culture, politics and technology, lest they go extinct. New denominations form and rise in the process.
I agree to @[email protected]'s observation. Does the frequent inclusion of these very existential ideas ("how to not die") hint at how early in the human evolution religions started playing a role? If so, if religions helped early humans survive, that would make being susceptible to religious ideas an evolutionary advantage for early humans. So maybe there was a synergy between genetic evolution and memetic evolution. And maybe that's also why conspiracy theories are such a pest, piggybacking on the same mechanics.
I absolutely love your brain. What are you up to for the next 20-30 years?
Heh, thanks! I plan to eat loads of delicious food, and get laid at least twice. Maybe I'll die. Also many other goals, projects and ideas.
Why did you ask? The question was oddly specific. What are your plans?
I'm on the lookout for a long-term, platonic adjacent relationship with a contemplative person!
Lurve
Let's not forget all the absurd shit religions have. Like Killing non-believers, treating women as object, pedophilia and more.
I would maintain that there's a statistical sprinkling of that stuff mixed in with other arbitrary rules like not mixing textiles and not giving loans.
Then drinking milk should be a sin, the unholy comes out of my butt.
The reason these practices are in place are historical
Think about a time before modern sanitation. You eat THIS meat, you fucking die. So obviously God doesn't want us to eat it because otherwise he wouldn't have made it a dirty, deadly meat. Even today, these meats kill people occasionally.
I'm an atheist, but I think it's still worthwhile to understand the perspectives.
Bad chicken will kill you dead too. Apologists of these religions advance these hypotheses but they're not really supported by anything scientific or in the historical records.
Food taboos of all kinds are a common cultural feature (for example, modern Westerners don't like insects), and the Judaism-derived religions incorporated the food taboos of the Jews sometimes.
Have you tried killing the chicken with e scimitar?
People didn't have modern sanitation elsewhere as well. That's not the reason, the reason is that these religions were followed by people who lived "like pigs". And since the pigs live like their owners, they were dirty and nasty as well. This religious ban is a mirror of people who followed these religions.
Lmao what
This is dumb as fuck
And highly antisemitic.
…huh?
Pigs in no way live like their owners. They live in big pile of mud and eat anything to this day lol
Cares about the meat you eat and the meat you beat
Always have!
And isn't it funny how the gods are always concerned with the same things their worshippers are? It would be odd to care deeply about regulating the sexual and dietary habits of the ants in our backyards. If god(s) were real I'd expect their interests to be wild and beyond our understanding, and not about what hats humans can wear and what meat is acceptable.
The in-lore explanation is that we are created by the god(s) in their own image. Much like if you made a toy to play with other toys, you'd probably make something humanoid, or at least anthropomorphic.
Unless you want to talk about Lovecraftian horror gods, but in that lore, humans weren't created by the gods (as far as I know).
Created in their image perhaps, but generally not in their own capability, understanding, and therefore one would assume, interests. Gods are like us because we imagine them like us, because humans draw from what we know and what we are concerned with when we imagine and dream and hallucinate. Religious writers cannot accurately fathom the interests of those with superhuman knowledge and capability, and so the gods typically want what the people who claim to speak for them also want, and offer solutions to whatever the worshippers are concerned with. Lovecraft was brilliant for acknowledging this limitation in his own way, he was known for not describing the horror because it is far too horrible and beyond our comprehension.
Yes, but when communicating to these minions, it makes sense to translate your intentions into what they can relate to.
If I want a way to control my ants so that they stay away from some places but go to others, I might teach them to avoid soap and seek sugar.
They might not understand what my bed is because it's too big and alien for them, but if I put some soap around it, they will avoid going there. They might not understand what I mean by "go to my neighbor's garden", but they will be able to follow a trail of sugar to that place.
So especially if the interests of the gods are wild and beyond our understanding, I'd expect them to give us some relatable proxies instead.
While I see your point, I've never met nor heard of someone training ants in such a way, it would take a very odd and unusual person to hold and act on such an interest. If this is an analog for gods I suspect they are not entirely right, provided they exist at all.
I'm also at a loss as to how rules about sex and dietary restrictions would lead to some greater goal beyond our understanding. Religious rules aren't typically physical boundaries to exploration like the soap line. It's more often rules about things like sacrificing animals, what hats to wear when, how to treat people inside and outside the religion, when to fast, when to feast, when to pray, what to eat, and who needs to be obeyed, (spoiler: it's always the men who claim to speak for gods.)
If you read through the stories that define them, it makes a lot more sense. Blood and sacrifice are intertwined with life and righteousness. God is holy and set apart, and can't be in the presence of less -- so their lives and habits are built around remaining in relationship to their God.
So the careful handling of death, food, and blood makes perfect sense from that worldview, whether you personally agree with it or not.
That makes even less sense.
No, no it does not. Like, not at all.
organized religion is and always has been about using laws to control people and take their money through brainwashing backed with death threats where and whenever they can get away with it
Just wait till you find their opinions on the oppsite hole.
Opinions on religion aside, more acceptance of lab grown meat is better for energy efficiency and reducing unneeded animal cruelty.
I once asked a Muslim neighbor over for dinner.
They explained they could never eat anything I have prepared in my kitchen, because I eat pork.
Way to go religion, keep making sure your arbitrary rules keep people apart.
Religion was (and often still is) a way to keep poor people in check.
The whole idea of heaven/hell, reincarnation, karma etc. is so people accept their shitty roles in life.
Don't worry that the king is living in luxury and you are suffering as it'll all even out eventually.
As you say preventing them mixing with other groups is also a great way to keep your cult going.