Hmm, Beard2. Beard too? Is this continuation to earlier comic where Muhammed justifies his deeds with circular logic? As in, another reason why his deeds are good is that he has beard? Well, it certainly is better than the first one.
It’s no longer necessary to just ridicule sincerely held beliefs of others, including secular/atheist ones, when you can bring them all crashing down! For they may all be in for a serious bashing if material on the web proves itself and there appears to be a concerted effort to authenticate and confirm the efficacy of what may be the most important, new moral teaching ever revealed. This is what I’m TESTING out at this very moment.
The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ has been published. Radically different from anything else we know of from theology or history, this new teaching is predicated upon the ‘promise’ of a precise, predefined, predictable and repeatable experience of transcendent omnipotence and called ‘the first Resurrection’ in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate ods’ willingness to reveal Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His Command, paving the way for access to the power of divine Will and ultimate proof as the justification of faith.
Thus ‘faith’ becomes an act of trust in action, the search along a defined path of strict self discipline, [a test of the human heart] to discover His ‘Word’ of a direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our mortal moral compass with the Divine, “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries.”
So like it or no, and many won’t, a new religious teaching, a wisdom not of human intellectual origin, empirical, transcendent, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of an intellectual, moral and religious/spiritual revolution is getting under way. To test or not to test, that is the question? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk
what does Landbeck’s
‘a wisdom not of human intellectual origin’
mean?
wisdom of extraterrestrial aliens?
dolphin wisdom ?
chimp wisdom?
dog/ cat wisdom ?
ameoba wisdom?
following Landbeck’s suggested weblink will only make sense to those who can understand what its on about
it seems to be based on the book of revelation but lacks sufficient coherence for certainty on this issue
I was involved in a bad accident some years ago and have scars on my cheek and chin. My beard does an excellent job of hiding the scars. I’m never shaving it off because I know what I’ll look like without it.
RA Landbeck, run with it, lad. Hopefully someplace else.
Author, I’ve always wondered where the various injunctions for dress and diet come from, and it’s delightful to have an explanation, or at least an interesting speculation. Thanks.
For tens of thousands of years, humans have been cooking – that is, not just making food more nutritious and yummy, but often detoxifying it.
Recipes for detoxifying food can be quite intricate. Food toxins can be quite subtle. And for 99+% of that time, we didn’t have science or lab tests.
All we had was religion. If you followed the cooking rules religiously, your family would prosper. If you didn’t, your family would wither from the earth.
It seems plausible that we actually selected ourselves for people who would religiously follow seemingly nonsensical food taboos.
You can’t make a pic of the prophet because that would be idolatry — but you’re expected to make yourself into a picture of the prophet by growing a beard. Hum.
Chris+Phoenix, not aware of any recipes in the “holy” books. Cooking long pre-dated organised religions, it is entirely possible that food taboos are purely religion based. Never seen a recipe for detoxifying food…everything is a toxin it is the dose you need to be aware of.
The world would be relieved of a great deal of suffering and hatred if religion just would stay out of bathroom codes… Or fashion norms, eating habits, and sexual preference for that matter !
Also, RA Landbeck : drop dead (and if you resurrect, I’ll visit that website, I promise !)
Ajya hijab- even if RA Landbeck did resurrect then it would still not be worth visiting the web link they cite-unless you are into text induced drug trips
@pink+unseen+horny+thing
Well I guess we should admit that he (if he existed) wouldn’t technically be lying, we could eat them, we would simply die after that. However, it’s beyond me that religious people think that makes him somehow benevolent?
“Benevolent”, Dysania?
Toothache, backache and priests with myopia?
Daddy has a strange sense of benevolence. It far too often looks like sociopathic violence and sadism.
Chances are Mo’ just stopped shaving because he had soft skin, his razor got so blunt it started cutting him and all of his women were too young to buy another one.
Fashion then dictated everyone followed his lead, as fashion has a tendency to do.
After fourteen centuries, what was a case of merely copying the latest Lady Gaga outfits becomes a deity-driven compulsion but by then everyone has forgotten why.
The food thing: many foods spoil rapidly in desert heat. Some foods can be curried or roasted even when a bit whiffy but seafood can be terribly dangerous. Combine this with some breeds of cattle only being raised and owned by enemy tribes, some breeds of cattle being so similar to human flesh chemically that diseases transfer easily unless their meat is smoked and well-cooked (pig) and other experimental evidence of certain things being inimical to human existence and a set of dietary restrictions can easily become the “Wisdom Of The Ancients”, which then becomes the word of Big Daddy.
All it takes is a couple of deaths caused by rotten pig-meat and the entire tribe could take a rather strong dislike to it.
Dietary restrictions, given fly-covered meats hanging around for days in filthy markets and other bad habits, are not too difficult to understand.
What is a strain to grasp is why a divinity would bother to set the exchange rate between shekels and obols to five?
When the bocher said so, they were immortal. Mortality came after the famous eating of the apple. And they learned how to blame each other and be clever.
The stupid never ate from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is why stupidity is eternal, as RA Landbeck proves.
All it takes is a couple of deaths caused by rotten pig-meat and the entire tribe could take a rather strong dislike to it.
yes
But
the same would be true of all forms of rotten meat- so why do we not see universal vegetarianism in hot climate regions
also if it were a result of bad pork – why just some tribes not all tribes
the explanation may lie in the fact that
in Ancient Egypt the evil god Seth/Sutekh has been identified as a pig deity
I assume i am one of the old names you mentioned, omg. Great to hear your voice again. Have a virtual pint on me, mate.
Chris+Phoenix, The dietary restrictions being based on health and survival is a common excuse presented by the religious who are always trying to claim rationality for their nonsense. I don’t buy it. If it were true, the rules would be more consistent and make more sense. Seems to me more likely there was an economic incentive, with the brother of the prophet raising cattle and his competition heavily invested in raising pigs. Apparently something similar was in play with the Catholic injunction to not eat meat on Fridays, now repealed. http://hubpages.com/food/The-Roman-Catholic-Tradition-of-Eating-Fish-on-Fridays
While pigs can carry trichinosis, which is the reason pork should always be well cooked and never eaten rare, the pig is in fact the cleanest animal on the farm, far cleaner than a chicken, which doesn’t give a crap where or when it craps, or a cow which will happily foul its own bed. A pig may wallow in mud to prevent sunburn, but it won’t crap where it wallows unless given no other choice, and you’ll never see shit in a pigs bedding. Calling a pig unclean is an ancient slur on a noble and intelligent animal.
Watching a pig eat gives the impression of feeding frenzy gluttony. It’s a false impression. The pig we owned, years ago, Sally Squink, was fed mash with our vegetable trimmings mixed in. We included the tails and greens from our radishes. Sally would go at her dinner with great gusto, but when she was finished I would find the tails of the radishes, and a little circle of red trimmed off the radish greens, sucked clean and neatly piled in the corner of her trough. Pigs taste and judge every bite.
I had heard the the pig specific issue could also have of a practical economic one, in that they could be more resource-intensive in marginal conditions. So, perhaps it was a dietary sumptuary rule, with “dirty” rationales? And/or that pigs didn’t have a problem eating man-flesh, an icky detail. I agree that the parasite angle is a weak after-the-fact addition.
RA Landbeck:
370 pages of contrived drivel, like every other blueprint for the future of humanity based on the Bible. I am reminded of Mark Twain’s reaction to the Book of Mormon; “Chloroform in print”.
The failure of Landbeck is that he? is unable to understand that ALL laws and moral codes are human in origin whether they pretend to have divine origin or not
there is no other source
and EVEN IF a deity did happen to exist then the bible [ and newer books based on it] is the last thing to base a moral code on as it indorses rape, murder, genocide and slavery
re
“370 pages of contrived drivel, like every other blueprint for the future of humanity based on the Bible.”
4 words too long Hotrats
as ANY blueprint for the future of humanity forgets that blueprints are for machines not people
there will always be those who refuse to conform
the only option is the qurano/Nazi
re beards
there must have been a time between Mo’s death and his childhood when he had no facial hair – so it could be argued that Muslims who shave cleanly are only copying Mo in his youth
All in all and from my personal perspective that may be one the viler rules of Islam… While i don’t mind snogging the one or other mustachioed or fully bearded bloke, i have to admit, after the better part of a decade i am developing an increasing hankering for clean shaved man cheeks and lips. *sighs* If Allah really would have wanted all men to be bearded, He wouldn’t have given us Gilette, now, would He?
@Christ Phoenix and Darwin Harmless, i know the pseudo scientific hygiene explanation of food taboos, but seriously, they make no sense. There is no more danger in shellfish than in fish, and no more danger in shellfish in Mediterranean regions than in others. People on the southern border of the Mediterranean would wither from pork, but not on the northern border, while fowl posits no health risk? Have you ever been on a meat market down here, mate? Believe me, prohibiting pork doesn’t help very much. India has not so different a climate, and there cows posit a health risk and pigs are fine, while here cows are great and pigs deadly? Come on, that makes no sense whatsoever. You can always construct some arbitrary circumstance to make some religious rule seem rational, but if You take them together and in context that construct falls apart.
I prefer to go with Hitchens’ explanation from “God Is Not Great”, Chapter Three: A Short Digression On The Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham. Makes much more sense, especially if You consider the apparent taste of all monotheistic priesthoods for “young and tender flesh”… It may be a rational prohibition, but only as metaphor, and definitely not dietary in nature.
I read something somewhere–I think it was in one of Martin Seligman’s books–about how one of the functions of our brains is to protect us from poisoning ourselves. He told a story about the time he became very sick after eating filet mignon with bernaise sauce. It was unclear whether or not what he ate caused him to be sick, but he could never bring himself to eat filet mignon with bernaise sauce again. I suspect that some early religious leaders had similar experiences, and that among the things they taught their followers was to shun the foods that (may or may not have) made them ill.
I’m mocking you. I couldn’t care less if you’re male, female, or a robot. I used to be a regular here, until you started littering the site with every inconsequential thought that occurs to you, and dominating every page with your mawkish pink icon. Check the archive, this used to be a very entertaining site where a large group of regulars took trouble over their posts, wrote in coherent sentences with some pretence of reasonable grammar and punctuation, and tried to amuse and entertain, and not to waste each other’s time. I can hardly bear to read it any more. You have turned it into a personal rubbish dump for your boring, unfunny and barely literate drivel. I hate you.
I too lost a dear friend to a combination of cancer, prayers and alternatives to medicine.
Years ago I wondered if there might be a way to test the effectiveness of prayers. I started with the assumption that theists would be likely to pray for the recovery from an illness – either for themselves, or a member of their congregation.
Obviously, not all prayers are answered, but assuming some are answered the survival rates for a specific condition ought to be higher amongst theists. To test the hypothesis, I selected the United States and Breast Cancer.
Using the percentage of people who attend a weekly religious service, by state and correlating this with the breast cancer survival rate by state, I discovered… Not only was the survival rate not better in religious states, but it was statistically, worse!
Though of course, correlation never equates to causation.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
June 10, 2008
There’s no cartoon showing up there Author 🙁
The one at the bottom works:
http://www.jm-unbound.com/index.php/comic/beard2/
I’m not seeing a cartoo either. Author.
Superb depiction of god/allah/wotsisname, Author! 😀
Perhaps this one?
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/05/16/beard/
I found it, and it is a cracker:
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/05/16/beard/
Used the ‘other’ link. Not bad.
Hmm, Beard2. Beard too? Is this continuation to earlier comic where Muhammed justifies his deeds with circular logic? As in, another reason why his deeds are good is that he has beard? Well, it certainly is better than the first one.
The other day, while having a shave
I saw a beard that wouldn’t behave
It wasn’t there again today
I wish that beard would grow, Oy Vey
It’s no longer necessary to just ridicule sincerely held beliefs of others, including secular/atheist ones, when you can bring them all crashing down! For they may all be in for a serious bashing if material on the web proves itself and there appears to be a concerted effort to authenticate and confirm the efficacy of what may be the most important, new moral teaching ever revealed. This is what I’m TESTING out at this very moment.
The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ has been published. Radically different from anything else we know of from theology or history, this new teaching is predicated upon the ‘promise’ of a precise, predefined, predictable and repeatable experience of transcendent omnipotence and called ‘the first Resurrection’ in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate ods’ willingness to reveal Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His Command, paving the way for access to the power of divine Will and ultimate proof as the justification of faith.
Thus ‘faith’ becomes an act of trust in action, the search along a defined path of strict self discipline, [a test of the human heart] to discover His ‘Word’ of a direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our mortal moral compass with the Divine, “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries.”
So like it or no, and many won’t, a new religious teaching, a wisdom not of human intellectual origin, empirical, transcendent, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of an intellectual, moral and religious/spiritual revolution is getting under way. To test or not to test, that is the question? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk
By the beard of the profit
The website has lost it
The cartoon, ismallah
is missing, there, fellah
Or did the imam just toss it?
Obviously you all lack the faith required to see the comic.
I just prayed for a while and the strip appeared, RA Landbeck what have you been smoking ?
Cartoons this funny should carry a health warning.
Not smoking, just forgot his meds.
To save the rest of you I spent 60 seconds looking at RA Landbeck’s link. I can confirm that it is indeed prime wank.
I refute him thus: fuck off!
What the hell does “testable by faith” mean? If you can bring yourself to believe it, it must be true?
RA Landbeck, fess up. Did you get that rant from a Deepak Chopra speech generator?
What Landbeck seems to be saying is that if you have faith in the existence of ‘god’ then your consciousness will shift to find/see evidence of ‘god’
what does Landbeck’s
‘a wisdom not of human intellectual origin’
mean?
wisdom of extraterrestrial aliens?
dolphin wisdom ?
chimp wisdom?
dog/ cat wisdom ?
ameoba wisdom?
following Landbeck’s suggested weblink will only make sense to those who can understand what its on about
it seems to be based on the book of revelation but lacks sufficient coherence for certainty on this issue
Be careful RA or the Decepticons will raid your stores of energon!
I was involved in a bad accident some years ago and have scars on my cheek and chin. My beard does an excellent job of hiding the scars. I’m never shaving it off because I know what I’ll look like without it.
RA Landbeck, run with it, lad. Hopefully someplace else.
Author, I’ve always wondered where the various injunctions for dress and diet come from, and it’s delightful to have an explanation, or at least an interesting speculation. Thanks.
The link in the email took me to one from October. Just fyi.
I would like to crate a new organisation : The atheist man with a beard
DarwinHarmless asks where food taboos come from.
For tens of thousands of years, humans have been cooking – that is, not just making food more nutritious and yummy, but often detoxifying it.
Recipes for detoxifying food can be quite intricate. Food toxins can be quite subtle. And for 99+% of that time, we didn’t have science or lab tests.
All we had was religion. If you followed the cooking rules religiously, your family would prosper. If you didn’t, your family would wither from the earth.
It seems plausible that we actually selected ourselves for people who would religiously follow seemingly nonsensical food taboos.
You can’t make a pic of the prophet because that would be idolatry — but you’re expected to make yourself into a picture of the prophet by growing a beard. Hum.
Chris+Phoenix, not aware of any recipes in the “holy” books. Cooking long pre-dated organised religions, it is entirely possible that food taboos are purely religion based. Never seen a recipe for detoxifying food…everything is a toxin it is the dose you need to be aware of.
Ezekiel 4:9-12 for a recipe.
This is followed by a little bargaining with JHWH; the sort that never happens
The world would be relieved of a great deal of suffering and hatred if religion just would stay out of bathroom codes… Or fashion norms, eating habits, and sexual preference for that matter !
Also, RA Landbeck : drop dead (and if you resurrect, I’ll visit that website, I promise !)
Hi, I just stopped by to say hello. It has been years since I last visited this site. I’m happy to see some old names here.
Please take care of all of you. I will try to visit more often.
Ajya hijab- even if RA Landbeck did resurrect then it would still not be worth visiting the web link they cite-unless you are into text induced drug trips
all this islamic fuss just because Mo was too bone idle to shave
so the bible proves ‘god’ to be a liar yet agian=
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying , Of EVERY TREE of the garden thou mayest FREELY EAT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants
@pink+unseen+horny+thing
Well I guess we should admit that he (if he existed) wouldn’t technically be lying, we could eat them, we would simply die after that. However, it’s beyond me that religious people think that makes him somehow benevolent?
“Benevolent”, Dysania?
Toothache, backache and priests with myopia?
Daddy has a strange sense of benevolence. It far too often looks like sociopathic violence and sadism.
Chances are Mo’ just stopped shaving because he had soft skin, his razor got so blunt it started cutting him and all of his women were too young to buy another one.
Fashion then dictated everyone followed his lead, as fashion has a tendency to do.
After fourteen centuries, what was a case of merely copying the latest Lady Gaga outfits becomes a deity-driven compulsion but by then everyone has forgotten why.
The food thing: many foods spoil rapidly in desert heat. Some foods can be curried or roasted even when a bit whiffy but seafood can be terribly dangerous. Combine this with some breeds of cattle only being raised and owned by enemy tribes, some breeds of cattle being so similar to human flesh chemically that diseases transfer easily unless their meat is smoked and well-cooked (pig) and other experimental evidence of certain things being inimical to human existence and a set of dietary restrictions can easily become the “Wisdom Of The Ancients”, which then becomes the word of Big Daddy.
All it takes is a couple of deaths caused by rotten pig-meat and the entire tribe could take a rather strong dislike to it.
Dietary restrictions, given fly-covered meats hanging around for days in filthy markets and other bad habits, are not too difficult to understand.
What is a strain to grasp is why a divinity would bother to set the exchange rate between shekels and obols to five?
Dear RA Landbeck, thanks for the spam. Maybe you’ll even get some traffic to your bullshit website.
@pink+unseen+horny+thing & dysiana
When the bocher said so, they were immortal. Mortality came after the famous eating of the apple. And they learned how to blame each other and be clever.
The stupid never ate from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is why stupidity is eternal, as RA Landbeck proves.
All it takes is a couple of deaths caused by rotten pig-meat and the entire tribe could take a rather strong dislike to it.
yes
But
the same would be true of all forms of rotten meat- so why do we not see universal vegetarianism in hot climate regions
also if it were a result of bad pork – why just some tribes not all tribes
the explanation may lie in the fact that
in Ancient Egypt the evil god Seth/Sutekh has been identified as a pig deity
Welcome back, omg! Here’s to your health!
I assume i am one of the old names you mentioned, omg. Great to hear your voice again. Have a virtual pint on me, mate.
Chris+Phoenix, The dietary restrictions being based on health and survival is a common excuse presented by the religious who are always trying to claim rationality for their nonsense. I don’t buy it. If it were true, the rules would be more consistent and make more sense. Seems to me more likely there was an economic incentive, with the brother of the prophet raising cattle and his competition heavily invested in raising pigs. Apparently something similar was in play with the Catholic injunction to not eat meat on Fridays, now repealed.
http://hubpages.com/food/The-Roman-Catholic-Tradition-of-Eating-Fish-on-Fridays
While pigs can carry trichinosis, which is the reason pork should always be well cooked and never eaten rare, the pig is in fact the cleanest animal on the farm, far cleaner than a chicken, which doesn’t give a crap where or when it craps, or a cow which will happily foul its own bed. A pig may wallow in mud to prevent sunburn, but it won’t crap where it wallows unless given no other choice, and you’ll never see shit in a pigs bedding. Calling a pig unclean is an ancient slur on a noble and intelligent animal.
Watching a pig eat gives the impression of feeding frenzy gluttony. It’s a false impression. The pig we owned, years ago, Sally Squink, was fed mash with our vegetable trimmings mixed in. We included the tails and greens from our radishes. Sally would go at her dinner with great gusto, but when she was finished I would find the tails of the radishes, and a little circle of red trimmed off the radish greens, sucked clean and neatly piled in the corner of her trough. Pigs taste and judge every bite.
I had heard the the pig specific issue could also have of a practical economic one, in that they could be more resource-intensive in marginal conditions. So, perhaps it was a dietary sumptuary rule, with “dirty” rationales? And/or that pigs didn’t have a problem eating man-flesh, an icky detail. I agree that the parasite angle is a weak after-the-fact addition.
RA Landbeck:
370 pages of contrived drivel, like every other blueprint for the future of humanity based on the Bible. I am reminded of Mark Twain’s reaction to the Book of Mormon; “Chloroform in print”.
The failure of Landbeck is that he? is unable to understand that ALL laws and moral codes are human in origin whether they pretend to have divine origin or not
there is no other source
and EVEN IF a deity did happen to exist then the bible [ and newer books based on it] is the last thing to base a moral code on as it indorses rape, murder, genocide and slavery
If the book of Mormon is chloroform in print and the bible is opium in print
is the veda LSD in Print? and the quran rohypnol in print?
re
“370 pages of contrived drivel, like every other blueprint for the future of humanity based on the Bible.”
4 words too long Hotrats
as ANY blueprint for the future of humanity forgets that blueprints are for machines not people
there will always be those who refuse to conform
the only option is the qurano/Nazi
edit last to= the only other way to make blueprints work is the quran/Nazi way of eliminating opposition
re beards
there must have been a time between Mo’s death and his childhood when he had no facial hair – so it could be argued that Muslims who shave cleanly are only copying Mo in his youth
All in all and from my personal perspective that may be one the viler rules of Islam… While i don’t mind snogging the one or other mustachioed or fully bearded bloke, i have to admit, after the better part of a decade i am developing an increasing hankering for clean shaved man cheeks and lips. *sighs* If Allah really would have wanted all men to be bearded, He wouldn’t have given us Gilette, now, would He?
@Christ Phoenix and Darwin Harmless, i know the pseudo scientific hygiene explanation of food taboos, but seriously, they make no sense. There is no more danger in shellfish than in fish, and no more danger in shellfish in Mediterranean regions than in others. People on the southern border of the Mediterranean would wither from pork, but not on the northern border, while fowl posits no health risk? Have you ever been on a meat market down here, mate? Believe me, prohibiting pork doesn’t help very much. India has not so different a climate, and there cows posit a health risk and pigs are fine, while here cows are great and pigs deadly? Come on, that makes no sense whatsoever. You can always construct some arbitrary circumstance to make some religious rule seem rational, but if You take them together and in context that construct falls apart.
I prefer to go with Hitchens’ explanation from “God Is Not Great”, Chapter Three: A Short Digression On The Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham. Makes much more sense, especially if You consider the apparent taste of all monotheistic priesthoods for “young and tender flesh”… It may be a rational prohibition, but only as metaphor, and definitely not dietary in nature.
well all the pictures I have seen of Adam and Eve suggests that ‘god’ made man clean shaven
I read something somewhere–I think it was in one of Martin Seligman’s books–about how one of the functions of our brains is to protect us from poisoning ourselves. He told a story about the time he became very sick after eating filet mignon with bernaise sauce. It was unclear whether or not what he ate caused him to be sick, but he could never bring himself to eat filet mignon with bernaise sauce again. I suspect that some early religious leaders had similar experiences, and that among the things they taught their followers was to shun the foods that (may or may not have) made them ill.
pink squirrel:
4 words too long Hotrats
This from the master of concision, 20 open ended posts (apparently from 3 aliases?)
Master of concision?
that would be Mistress of concision Hotrats
or did you mean Mistress of brevity?
pink squirrel:
I’m mocking you. I couldn’t care less if you’re male, female, or a robot. I used to be a regular here, until you started littering the site with every inconsequential thought that occurs to you, and dominating every page with your mawkish pink icon. Check the archive, this used to be a very entertaining site where a large group of regulars took trouble over their posts, wrote in coherent sentences with some pretence of reasonable grammar and punctuation, and tried to amuse and entertain, and not to waste each other’s time. I can hardly bear to read it any more. You have turned it into a personal rubbish dump for your boring, unfunny and barely literate drivel. I hate you.
I too lost a dear friend to a combination of cancer, prayers and alternatives to medicine.
Years ago I wondered if there might be a way to test the effectiveness of prayers. I started with the assumption that theists would be likely to pray for the recovery from an illness – either for themselves, or a member of their congregation.
Obviously, not all prayers are answered, but assuming some are answered the survival rates for a specific condition ought to be higher amongst theists. To test the hypothesis, I selected the United States and Breast Cancer.
Using the percentage of people who attend a weekly religious service, by state and correlating this with the breast cancer survival rate by state, I discovered… Not only was the survival rate not better in religious states, but it was statistically, worse!
Though of course, correlation never equates to causation.