From: Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin (warrl@blarg.net)
Date: Fri Jun 26 1998 - 02:23:17 MDT
From: "Bryan Moss" <bryan.moss@dial.pipex.com>
> Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> "Can it be that the roots of religious and ritual
> come from a scientific basis, but that those
> receivers of the knowledge couldn't understand it,
> so they reduced it down to religious rituals and
> trappings?"
>
> I've often thought this to be the case.
It definitely appears to be true in at least some cases.
For one thing, the more I learn about the kosher laws, the culture and
technology surrounding their formulation, and various health and economic
aspects of the situation, the more sense they make.
One specific example: the prohibition on eating pork. If you can't eat pork, pigs
are vermin to be exterminated. There is a health aspect here, that they didn't
have the technology to reliably thoroughly cook pork, and their general
sanitation was not up to modern industrial standards either, so trichinosis
would probably be a serious problem. But there is also an economic factor:
essentially anything a pig can eat, a human can eat, and the human will get
energy from it more efficiently if it isn't filtered through a pig first.
Another example: the draining of blood from slaughtered animals. They didn't
have refrigeration. Blood goes bad *much* faster than meat does.
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