On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 12:01:29AM -0800, Philip Hart <philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU> wrote: > On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Matthew Hunter wrote: > > Consider one of the most ancient (known) bodies of "tradition" in > > our history, that of Judaism. There are many elements of the > > Jewish tradition that are wholly practical; I shall put forth > > kosher food as an excellent example. Nowadays, we can look at > > the traditions concerning kosher food and understand that food > > prepared in that specific way was less prone to disease or > > spoilage than foods prepared in other ways. (I don't know enough > > about kosher to give any really good examples). > I think this is arguable - most things appear (from a secular perspective) > to be considered unclean because they don't fit someone's category of > what's natural in terms of scales or foot structure - maybe pigs with > trichinosis were worth avoiding, and maybe milk has some bad chemical > reaction with beef on wooden plates, I don't know - or squeamishness about > blood. To really argue the point on these specific traditions would require someone well-versed in both food preperation science and the rules of this particular tradition. I am confident that some (but not all) of the rules do translate into behaviors that *have the effect of* reducing the incidence of certain problems with bad food suffered by other cultures. In the context of this discussion it doesn't matter why the tradition was instituted. What matters is that it has a beneficial effect. > To me the greatest advantage of these laws was that it set the > community apart from their neighbors, as did circumcision. This > separation probably brought a lot of persecution but a lot of cohesion as > well. Cultural strength and cohesion is certainly an evolutionary plus for a tradition. Remember that a tradition is only successful if it continues to be passed down to new followers. I'm not trying to argue relative merits here. > On the other hand, maybe G*d thinks it's bad to eat rabbits and scallops > and llamas, as well as golden retrievers, and maybe G*d wasn't clear about > swordfish because He hadn't thought about it. You're arguing with a strawman. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp