6 ms·

I mean its in deuteronomy 22:11 explicitly. Orthodox jews are the ones who live by it, but you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright re

I mean its in deuteronomy 22:11 explicitly. Orthodox jews are the ones who live by it, but you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. This in contrast to not mixing milk and meat, which is an expansion of "do not cook a kid in its mother's milk" from deuteronomy 14:21. If you look at the two it would seem wearing linen and wool together is much worse than mixing milk and meat. why is baffling, but thats religion.

riffic 4y ago
it's certainly a fashion crime
antibasilisk 4y ago
>why is baffling, but thats religion. For any given moral position you can keep asking why forever and never come to a satisfying conclusion unless you actually define what a moral is. Is it just an aesthetic judgement on behavior? Is it a product of the ability to evoke pleasure & pain? Is it simply whatever you desire? Does the term even have any meaning at all?
- codersfocus 4y ago
  > define what a moral is Morality is a composite of several concepts. (A) You start with pain and pleasure -- the definitions I use for those words cover every living thing that tries to achieve homeostasis, with pleasure being moving towards and pain as moving against. This covers pretty much every living thing, including microbes, plants etc. (B) Sufficiently social creatures create a meta organism (the society.) Virtue and vice are the pleasure and pain of this meta organism, respectively. As an aside, this can clash with (A). Consider the soldier jumping on a grenade to protect comrades (painful-virtuous), or the sexual deviant (pleasurable-vice.) As virtue and vice are a function of a given society at a given time, that is why many say morality is relativistic. (C) Sufficiently intelligent creatures have the ability to mirror neurons; empathy in other words. Apply this ability to (A) to create the rules for the nodes that represent (B.)
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I'm not sure I would describe mixing linen and wool as a moral position.
  - antibasilisk 4y ago
    Religious edicts are inherently an expressions of morality
    - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
      > Religious edicts are inherently an expressions of morality That seems to misconstrue the nature of law, and we're talking about religious law here (though the distinction between religious and secular law is made first by Christ in Matthew 22:21). There is nothing inherently wrong about eating a cheeseburger per se. The combination of meat and cheese isn't intrinsically evil. So you have to ask what the purpose of these various restrictions are. Naturally, all law has a moral good in mind. That's what law does: it determines the moral or natural law within the given circumstances for a certain end, so a prudential element is involved (and still further in its application). One answer is that these dietary and clothing restrictions exist as a discipline that perfects its practitioners spiritually. For example, Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays not because it is intrinsically immoral to eat meat on Fridays, but because canon law includes this restriction as an act of penance that is binding on all Catholics. Same with fasting required by canonical law. The discipline of self-denial, of the care shown to meet the law's requirements, its sacrificial nature, point to a higher end for which something is sacrificed. I mentioned penance, which is very important here, but the development of temperance is another, where temperance is the virtue of moderation and spiritual order, which is to say true freedom from the irrational, destructive, and slavish indulgence of the appetites that human beings easily fall into. There is also the cultivation of right obedience that conforming oneself to such practices facilitates. Willfulness is opposed to reason and reasonable faith and trust in divine providence, and human beings are well-versed in acting willfully and even against what they know is right (which is the definition of sin). Another function of, e.g., Jewish dietary law was to set the Jews apart from other people in preparation for some divinely chosen end. In any case, the point is that these prohibitions and restrictions are not necessarily condemnations of some behavior or practice as such, considered in itself. They can involve restricting practices that in themselves are morally good as an instrument for some other end. Sacrifice works that way. We sacrifice lower goods for higher goods.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wahern 4y ago
> Orthodox jews are the ones who live by it, but you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. Both Christianity and Islam preserve a place for Jews as Jews in their theology. Only Jews are expected to be required to obey all the rules in the received scripture. Which components of the Jewish law are considered to apply to non-Jews, or carried forward as part of the newer revelation, depends on their interpretation, including the function or purpose they're understood to serve. Conversely, Judaism itself has both concepts and literal rules for determining and justifying which rules (or derivatives) are supposed to be applied to non-Jews. Also, though I'm not sure about Islam's perspective, both Judaism and Christianity understand Jews to have (present tense) a unique relationship to God, and part of that relationship demands Jewish obeyance, at least part, purely for the sake of manifesting that relationship. So if God commanded Jews to stand on their head, it doesn't matter whether that rule served some efficacious esoteric purpose; the pertinent function of the rule from an earthly perspective is defining and distinguishing who is a Jew, and especially an observant Jew. If you're commanded to stand on your head, you stand on your hand without asking questions; subservience--faithfulness--is the point.
tpm 4y ago
> but you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. Many churches and certainly the big catholic one interpret the word of god for their believers (this is called magisterium), so if you are catholic, you don't believe in the bible but in the particular interpretation. And the differences are huge.
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  > so if you are catholic, you don't believe in the bible but in the particular interpretation. Any reading of the Bible is an interpretation. It makes no sense to speak of ANY text, or any spoken word, apart from interpretation. All of them are interpreted. So the question really is: do you have the correct, or at least a licit, interpretation? The Catholic Church interprets Scripture through the lens of unbroken tradition. Compare this with the 40,000 Protestant sects in the US alone, most of which interpret things however they want. That doesn't even touch on the question of translation, as well as how one translation may render something more accurately than another. And, of course, there's the other bit, namely, that the Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church, again, through the lens of tradition. How else are you going to determine which gospels are reliable and worthy of being made canonical, which books are apocryphal, which are fabrications, and so on, if you don't rely on something parallel to and 'outside' the text? (Luther did somehow manage to convince himself that he was qualified to 'tweak' the Bible, but I'll leave it at that.)
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    There's the added wrinkle that sola scriptura is, ah, kinda difficult to support using only the Bible. It's easier to argue against it, using the Bible as your only source, than to argue for it. Which is a bit awkward.
  - tpm 4y ago
    > The Catholic Church interprets Scripture through the lens of unbroken tradition. Yeah and also always promoting its own power. So when the Bible explicitly says the bishops should be married men, the Church says actually no we don't like that because it would lessen our power over the bishops so let's make them celibate. Thus making lots of people very unhappy and some commit horrible crimes. How can anyone believe the Church's interpretation is correct is completely beyond me.
HuwFulcher 4y ago
> you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. I wish people would not make blanket assumptions. A portion of the New Testament is committed to explaining that certain parts of the Old Testament laws were for the Israelites only.
- markdown 4y ago
  Bit silly if you ask me. Why even keep the old Testament. Should be culled.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Matthew 5:18 incorporates it by immutable reference.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

riffic 4y ago

it's certainly a fashion crime

antibasilisk 4y ago

>why is baffling, but thats religion. For any given moral position you can keep asking why forever and never come to a satisfying conclusion unless you actually define what a moral is. Is it just an aesthetic judgement on behavior? Is it a product of the ability to evoke pleasure & pain? Is it simply whatever you desire? Does the term even have any meaning at all?

codersfocus 4y ago
> define what a moral is Morality is a composite of several concepts. (A) You start with pain and pleasure -- the definitions I use for those words cover every living thing that tries to achieve homeostasis, with pleasure being moving towards and pain as moving against. This covers pretty much every living thing, including microbes, plants etc. (B) Sufficiently social creatures create a meta organism (the society.) Virtue and vice are the pleasure and pain of this meta organism, respectively. As an aside, this can clash with (A). Consider the soldier jumping on a grenade to protect comrades (painful-virtuous), or the sexual deviant (pleasurable-vice.) As virtue and vice are a function of a given society at a given time, that is why many say morality is relativistic. (C) Sufficiently intelligent creatures have the ability to mirror neurons; empathy in other words. Apply this ability to (A) to create the rules for the nodes that represent (B.)
LegitShady 4y ago
I'm not sure I would describe mixing linen and wool as a moral position.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  Religious edicts are inherently an expressions of morality
  - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
    > Religious edicts are inherently an expressions of morality That seems to misconstrue the nature of law, and we're talking about religious law here (though the distinction between religious and secular law is made first by Christ in Matthew 22:21). There is nothing inherently wrong about eating a cheeseburger per se. The combination of meat and cheese isn't intrinsically evil. So you have to ask what the purpose of these various restrictions are. Naturally, all law has a moral good in mind. That's what law does: it determines the moral or natural law within the given circumstances for a certain end, so a prudential element is involved (and still further in its application). One answer is that these dietary and clothing restrictions exist as a discipline that perfects its practitioners spiritually. For example, Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays not because it is intrinsically immoral to eat meat on Fridays, but because canon law includes this restriction as an act of penance that is binding on all Catholics. Same with fasting required by canonical law. The discipline of self-denial, of the care shown to meet the law's requirements, its sacrificial nature, point to a higher end for which something is sacrificed. I mentioned penance, which is very important here, but the development of temperance is another, where temperance is the virtue of moderation and spiritual order, which is to say true freedom from the irrational, destructive, and slavish indulgence of the appetites that human beings easily fall into. There is also the cultivation of right obedience that conforming oneself to such practices facilitates. Willfulness is opposed to reason and reasonable faith and trust in divine providence, and human beings are well-versed in acting willfully and even against what they know is right (which is the definition of sin). Another function of, e.g., Jewish dietary law was to set the Jews apart from other people in preparation for some divinely chosen end. In any case, the point is that these prohibitions and restrictions are not necessarily condemnations of some behavior or practice as such, considered in itself. They can involve restricting practices that in themselves are morally good as an instrument for some other end. Sacrifice works that way. We sacrifice lower goods for higher goods.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wahern 4y ago

> Orthodox jews are the ones who live by it, but you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. Both Christianity and Islam preserve a place for Jews as Jews in their theology. Only Jews are expected to be required to obey all the rules in the received scripture. Which components of the Jewish law are considered to apply to non-Jews, or carried forward as part of the newer revelation, depends on their interpretation, including the function or purpose they're understood to serve. Conversely, Judaism itself has both concepts and literal rules for determining and justifying which rules (or derivatives) are supposed to be applied to non-Jews. Also, though I'm not sure about Islam's perspective, both Judaism and Christianity understand Jews to have (present tense) a unique relationship to God, and part of that relationship demands Jewish obeyance, at least part, purely for the sake of manifesting that relationship. So if God commanded Jews to stand on their head, it doesn't matter whether that rule served some efficacious esoteric purpose; the pertinent function of the rule from an earthly perspective is defining and distinguishing who is a Jew, and especially an observant Jew. If you're commanded to stand on your head, you stand on your hand without asking questions; subservience--faithfulness--is the point.

tpm 4y ago

> but you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. Many churches and certainly the big catholic one interpret the word of god for their believers (this is called magisterium), so if you are catholic, you don't believe in the bible but in the particular interpretation. And the differences are huge.

lo_zamoyski 4y ago
> so if you are catholic, you don't believe in the bible but in the particular interpretation. Any reading of the Bible is an interpretation. It makes no sense to speak of ANY text, or any spoken word, apart from interpretation. All of them are interpreted. So the question really is: do you have the correct, or at least a licit, interpretation? The Catholic Church interprets Scripture through the lens of unbroken tradition. Compare this with the 40,000 Protestant sects in the US alone, most of which interpret things however they want. That doesn't even touch on the question of translation, as well as how one translation may render something more accurately than another. And, of course, there's the other bit, namely, that the Bible was compiled by the Catholic Church, again, through the lens of tradition. How else are you going to determine which gospels are reliable and worthy of being made canonical, which books are apocryphal, which are fabrications, and so on, if you don't rely on something parallel to and 'outside' the text? (Luther did somehow manage to convince himself that he was qualified to 'tweak' the Bible, but I'll leave it at that.)
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  There's the added wrinkle that sola scriptura is, ah, kinda difficult to support using only the Bible. It's easier to argue against it, using the Bible as your only source, than to argue for it. Which is a bit awkward.
- tpm 4y ago
  > The Catholic Church interprets Scripture through the lens of unbroken tradition. Yeah and also always promoting its own power. So when the Bible explicitly says the bishops should be married men, the Church says actually no we don't like that because it would lessen our power over the bishops so let's make them celibate. Thus making lots of people very unhappy and some commit horrible crimes. How can anyone believe the Church's interpretation is correct is completely beyond me.

HuwFulcher 4y ago

> you'd think anyone who believed in the bible would follow outright restrictions like that. I wish people would not make blanket assumptions. A portion of the New Testament is committed to explaining that certain parts of the Old Testament laws were for the Israelites only.

markdown 4y ago
Bit silly if you ask me. Why even keep the old Testament. Should be culled.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Matthew 5:18 incorporates it by immutable reference.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]