Monthly Archives: February 2008

Biblical Cleanliness Laws

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I’ve been thinking about the laws of the Torah. Cleanliness is the motive for many of the laws. Is the focus on cleanliness something Moses learned about in Egypt with Pharaoh? Think about it. The Egyptians were around ruling a large empire for a long time. Could they have not done it with out cleanliness and the resulting lack of disease? Moses might have learned from them and modified his knowledge for the people that God would lead out of bondage (picture Carleton Heston, “Out of bondage”).

Another alternative is that, even before the modern understanding of germs and the necessity for cleanliness to diminish their numbers was made known, God used these previously unknown facts to keep the Israelites living in the desert when they were in close quarters. God was with them on their journey to the “promised land”.

Circumcision helped the people multiply to keep their population strong. Not eating pigs kept down disease. Making sure dairy and meat were eaten separately ensured that the cooks knew were the germs (or evil things) were. Stoning let people be killed without touching them and contacting whatever disease they had. Staying away from foreigners kept their diseases from infecting them (unlike the Native Americans interacting with the European colonists which almost wiped the former out due to new disease transmission with the latter).

Again, all this is just speculation, and since we’ll never be in the past empirical domain, we’ll never really know the answer with 100% certainty.

There is a caveat of the above thought pattern. Perhaps, in Jesus’ perfect fulfillment of the law, He is able to excuse us from following some of the Mosaic laws, including the cleanliness laws (just as Jesus said that Moses made up the divorce law “due to the harness of your hearts”, but God didn’t make it so). Perhaps Jesus knew that Moses inserted some of the cleanliness laws into the laws given by God found in the Torah. I don’t know, maybe I’m just way off base.

What do you think?

Hello, I’m a Cafeteria Republican

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Why is it that for many people, they think that certain political ideas should go together by default? If one is pro-life, they must be for the Iraq war. If one is against the death penalty, they must be for (so-called) homosexual marriage. If one is pro-environment, they must be pro-choice. If someone is conservative politically, they are grouped with the conservative platform, and vice-versa. Shouldn’t we all know that this is not true?

Along the same lines recently, as far as I have noticed, Republicans (at least) have been toting the “united we stand” position. In other words, a Republican must be pro Iraq war, against any spending on health insurance, pro death penalty, pro-life, against environmental initiatives, for big business (especially the pharmaceuticals, big media, and auto manufactures), and against (so-called) homosexual marriage.

This is what is wrong with the American political party situation: one has to concede his or her personal position in order to meld into their respective party. I am not a cafeteria Catholic, but politics is too complex to blindly be led by all the fallible parties.

Why are Atheists Militant?

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My wife’s cousin visited us today. I was telling her about my new blog and that I was hoping to have people challenge my positions and beliefs.

We got on the topic of Militant Atheists led by Dawkins and Chris Hitchens. I told her that I listened to the Hitchens-D’Souza debate (and others) and thought Dinesh D’Souza did the best of any of the other Christian debaters against any of the Atheists (including against Dawkins).

I said that one of the reasons the other debaters did so poorly was that Hitchens asked a plethora of questions that required more than a bumper sticker reply and that there was not enough time in the debate to answer all of them sufficiently. D’Souza took Hitchens overall points and hammered them (I’m not getting into the details; that’s for another post on this blog).

My wife’s cousin said that she heard of the Hitchens-D’Souza debate and the Militant Atheists. She wondered why the Militant Atheists want to convince everyone that they’re right. She thought that most people don’t try to change any one else’s belief.

I said that I didn’t know why Atheists in general would want to convince others that they were right: what would be the point since nothing really matters (including the other people besides themselves)? However, I said that I respect other people’s beliefs, or faith because no one can prove their position with 100% certainty: we all need faith since our basis for belief is found outside our empirical domain. In other words, say for Christians, they can’t know with 100% certainty, without a doubt that Christ was raised from the dead. For some Atheists (they all have different beliefs), they can’t know with 100% certainty that anything was not created by God and that everything either evolved or just is (like rocks, planets, and the stars). We all need faith and we should all respect each other’s faith. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk to others about our faith, but we shouldn’t ram it down their throats (i.e., evangelization versus proselytization).

I also said that I went on Dawkins’ extensive official website and noticed that most of the commenters were of an Atheists persuasion. In general, most sites have people of the same beliefs on them. Further, the Atheists consistently put down Christians, Theists/Deists, et al. I would love to see people of other views get a point-counterpoint going. (I will get there soon. Any other Christian/Theist/Deist want to join me at Dawkins’ site?)

I would love if people visiting Wondering Zygote Emeritus (this blog) could get a point-counterpoint going about anything on this blog so that we can learn about each other.