Christians please explain the eating of pork

Please control your emotion...

Hello guys. This is a brilliant thread. One of the main message of every religion (specially Islam) is to control your emotion and protect others from your hand and from your mouth. So being a muslim myself, I call all my fellow brothers and sisters that no matter how hard others sear at you never swear back. If someone does a mistake you do not have to do the same mistake. I praise 786 for raising the thread but some of your messages were hot tempered, being a muslim, I wish to see more control of emotion and angers from you brother. No matter how hard people swear at Islam, they cannot still change the truth. So relax, Al Mighty God is all knowing and hearing and they would be judged according to their actions on the last day. But one thing is sure that they cannot give any excuses saying that no body tried to help them and give them the true message. I know about many Rabbis and church ministers who know the fact that Islam is true religion but they would never admit these in public, cause they would lose their job and they would create tension among communities. Unfortunately most of the people learn about Islam by hearing bad things about Islam from someone else or by reading or watching negative comments or videos from media or from evangelical people. Any person who learn about Islam by reading Quran and justify this by reading Bible can clearly see the true message. That is why Islam is still the fastest growing religion in Europe, Asia, and America.

For my fellow Christian brothers and sisters, please do not take any offence from this thread. If you read your own scripture with open mind then this would not harm you but you should be able to improve your ability to take part in any kind of inter faith debate. If you want to challenge Islam, then please read Quran and then challenge. You would not criticise any novel without reading them in full, you would not criticise a film without watching them in full, then why would you criticise Islam without reading their scripture The Holy Quran in full. It is just a book. Read it like any other book.

Take care all.
 
So being a muslim myself, I call all my fellow brothers and sisters that no matter how hard others sear at you never swear back.
Christians, Muslims and Jews are murdering each other in great numbers every day. A hundred thousand have already been killed in the Syrian civil war, and that's just one country! Look at Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, Mali, Iraq, Pakistan . . . .

I don't think the words they use (or the meat they eat) is something we need to be arguing about. Let's stop the killing first.
 
Mmmm Bacon...

The Old Testament said we needed to wear tassles on our clothes. EXPLAIN!!!!!!

Christians don't recognize the Old Testament.
 
The original laws concerning eating of pork were based on practical observation. In modern times, we now know that pork contains parasites and if it is not fully cooked it can make one sick. Good ancient observations saw this cause and effect between pork and sickness and outlawed pork to protect the group. They did not know why people got sick from pork, only that the pork was a common variable; correlation.

In modern times, we know how to prepare pork safely, so the taboo has been lifted for the Christians. God is light not blind ritual. For some poor cultures, this ancient practical guidance may still be needed, if there is lack of needed education.

What has happened in some cultures is ancient taboos which made practical sense, like pork, are still blindly followed in the dark, even though the original intent was based on the light of good judgement.
 
The correct answer is found in the New Testament, Matthew 15:



15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:


8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”

10 Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. 11 What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
 
Al Mighty God is all knowing and hearing and they would be judged according to their actions on the last day.

What's really insane about this is the assumption that the Supreme Commander of the Universe gives a damn about what humans eat, that a superstition as ancient as the ruins of Rome and Greece is still alive today in the minds of people who are posting here using the otherwise modern ideas and technology.
 
Now question: Explain to me how you justify you eating pork from the biblical texts without having Jesus break the law and cause a cascade of other problems which I just listed above.

Because it's tasty and you should never take the Bible too seriously.
 
8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”

The original rule not to eat pork was based on empirical evidence and was good in its day. But when Jesus came, he said it is not about the outward man mimicking procedures for salvation; children of the bondwomen, but rather salvation came from within; children of the promise.

It was not what entered the man that defiled the man but what comes out of his mouth; tongue. Food and drink is digested and eliminated by the body. What comes out of the man through the tongue comes out of his heart and this defiles the man. If we compare the pork eater to the self righteous who hates this, which has the angry heart?
 
The original rule not to eat pork was based on empirical evidence and was good in its day. But when Jesus came, he said it is not about the outward man mimicking procedures for salvation; children of the bondwomen, but rather salvation came from within; children of the promise.


And where is the empirical study God used as the basis for his edict against the eating of pork? Why does God, the ultimate, all knowing, the creator, the all powerful God, need an empirical study in order to make his laws for the beings he created?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+11&version=KJV

“11 And the LORD spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying unto them,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
3 Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.
4 Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
5 And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
7 And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.”
 
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Christians don't recognize the Old Testament.
They take it a lot more seriously than the Muslims. Christian preachers, particularly in the fundamentalist churches, routinely quote from it; that's why we call those guys "fire-and-brimstone preachers." Is it ever quoted in Islamic services? For that matter, do they even quote from the New Testament?

The original laws concerning eating of pork were based on practical observation. In modern times, we now know that pork contains parasites and if it is not fully cooked it can make one sick. Good ancient observations saw this cause and effect between pork and sickness and outlawed pork to protect the group. They did not know why people got sick from pork, only that the pork was a common variable; correlation. In modern times, we know how to prepare pork safely, so the taboo has been lifted for the Christians.
Pigs are scavengers. Like bears, hyenas, coyotes, raccoons and other scavengers, they will happily eat the flesh of a dead animal that's been lying around for a week. These carcasses can be infected with all kinds of parasites, most famously the trichina worm. Scavengers are very likely to have trichinosis. Every year somebody out in the boondocks goes out hunting for bear or raccoon and comes down with trichinosis. There are an average of ten cases a year in the USA. It's difficult to diagnose, harder to cure, and very unpleasant to live with. (Imagine having fibromyalgia, except you know the reason you feel so bad is that there are worms living inside you!)

Like virtually all parasites, the trichina worm can be killed by simply cooking the meat until it reaches a fairly high temperature--150F/70C if I'm not mistaken. This is easy to achieve in a modern kitchen, but on a wood stove in Arkansas or over a fire in the Stone Age, it's not so easy to make sure your coonburger or jackalburger is well-done.

But even more importantly, today's pigs are farm-raised and don't scavenge. Their flesh is as healthy as that of the cows and chickens on the same farm.

What has happened in some cultures is ancient taboos which made practical sense, like pork, are still blindly followed in the dark, even though the original intent was based on the light of good judgement.
Jews in Reform congregations happily eat pork. Many in Conservative temples do too, although many others keep the old traditions as a way of maintaining solidarity and a link to their ancestors.

I know Muslims in America who eat pork, just as I know Hindus in America who eat beef.

What's really insane about this is the assumption that the Supreme Commander of the Universe gives a damn about what humans eat, that a superstition as ancient as the ruins of Rome and Greece is still alive today in the minds of people who are posting here using the otherwise modern ideas and technology.
It almost certainly goes back beyond the Iron Age empires of Rome and Greece. If I'm not mistaken, avoiding pork has been identified as a common tradition among all the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia, Arabia and the Levant. This could place it in the Bronze Age, or even the late Neolithic Era when the first Stone Age cities were built.

And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.
The various species of swine are artiodactyls, the suborder of even-toed hoofed mammals that also includes the goat, sheep, camel, deer, giraffe, cow, hippotamus, and certain other grazing herbivores with multiple stomachs. The pigs are almost unique in their ability to eat almost anything; goats are also omnivorous, although they prefer vegetable matter. (Horses and rhinoceros are perissodactyls, odd-toed hoofed mammals, and elephants are in a completely different taxonomic group. Oddly enough the cetaceans were recently discovered to be in the same group as the artiodactyls, probably the descendants of primitive hippos who swam all the way down the river to the sea and liked it there.)

The authors of the Stone Age legends from which the Torah (Old Testament) was developed had to do some fancy twisting to convince their people that it was okay to eat the flesh of any cloven-hoofed animal... except the pig, which was large, tasty, abundant and ridiculously easy to domesticate. Just build a huge garbage dump outside your village and you'll soon have pigs! Pigs and goats domesticated themselves, just like dogs. They came for the free food.
 
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