It’s interesting because halal and kosher requirements overlap quite a bit (when talking about raw materials, rather than prepared foods, at least), but there’s apparently a real dearth of “interfaith meats.”
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Perhaps analogous to the gut reactions to artificial flavouring. Synthesised orange flavouring is chemically identical to natural orange flavouring. The synthesised flavouring can be argued as being superior since it is pure, while anything that uses natural oranges for flavouring introduces other chemicals too, some good, some bad. Yet when synthetic flavourings were new, many people had an “eeewwww” reaction to the concept. Given time, most people adjust to the concept, and some never will.
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There’s a lot more “temporarily hidden” comments on this thread than I would expect.
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We wandered off topic.
If it’s less sustainable than conventionally grown meat, then I’d say there are ethical questions.
Lab-Grown Meat’s Carbon Footprint Potentially Worse Than Retail Beef.
As the tech develops, there may be a way to make it less environmentally damaging.
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That’s what I find interesting about this situation- religions trying to apply reason to adapt beliefs that are not reason-based to begin with (or perhaps once had valid reasons, but are now carried on only because it’s tradition). If the only reason for a rule is “because God says so”, then the people trying to decide how to interpret the rule in a new situation that has never existed before are essentially forced into the position of speaking on behalf of God. It all seems incredibly silly to me looking from the outside, but to a true believer, that’s got to be a pretty high-pressure responsibility.
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Yeah.
I’m not a religious scholar, but in my amateur readings it seems some of the dietary rules did have reason behind them, like health and safety or even economic, when they first came about, some had spiritual beliefs behind them, like that the blood of an animal contains parts of its soul, and some were possibly about differentiating the different groups through customs.
I’d love to hear if the conversations about this topic looked at the different bases for the different restrictions and addressed them separately, or just looked at the whole set as one set of restrictions and came at them all the same way.
But like you, to me it’s just an intellectual curiosity really. I don’t have any religious dietary restrictions.
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Oh, this, absolutely. Looking past the more metaphysical aspects and, instead, as you say, at the context of time, place, climate, technology, economics, and so on, and suddenly it all makes sense.
And the metaphysical aspects are basically marketing sprinkled on top of it all because apparently that’s how you achieve a much broader mass appeal than by explaining to people what’s in their own interest with facts and logic.
No need to look down on our ancestors, though - collectively as a species we still do this all the time.
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Absolutely. Look at the very common Western view of eating insects, the until-recently disgust with eating raw fish, organ meats, and many more. Not exactly “religious,” of course, but in the past (historians, correct me if I am wrong here) there wasn’t much of a difference between “cultural” and “religious” compunctions.
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I have no problem with them bending themselves in to pretzel shapes to suit themselves.
It’s when they start saying “I don’t like this thing as it doesn’t meet MY religious rules so you can’t have it either” that I get worked up.
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