There is only one prophet and his name is Henry Jr. for lo, we named the dog Indiana

BMFPitt: How is this any less stupid than anything else a fundie pastor says?

It's not, but it's on tape, so we can rewind it more.

Chariset: bgddy24601: Chariset: I could defend this nutjob -- but I won't.

I would love to hear a defense, even if it is just someone playing Devil's advocate with a position that they do not actually hold.

What he's alluding to is the argument that dietary prohibitions (against pork or shellfish) were health measures and not eternal divine commands.  With the advent of better cooking and food handling measures, a lot of the danger of contamination or parasites is gone, so those injunctions can be waived.

Commands against homosexuality, he thinks, don't fall under a health mandate (because...um... God), though you could argue that they most definitely do and should also be set aside with the advent of condoms and better management for sexually transmitted diseases

Doubly hilarious--there's actually a very good argument that the whole Levitican "Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman" bit is now technically useless--because (according to a number of Biblical scholars):

a) The ancient Near East tended to have a different concept of sexuality that doesn't mesh up entirely neatly with modern heteronormative viewpoints (among other things, there does seem to have been a concept of a "third sex" or "between sexes" that has analogues in Indian (naan and frybread) and Thai cultures that seems to have been common in the ancient Near East but not in the modern West).

b) More to the point, there's some evidence to suggest this may have been a prohibition on pre-Abrahamic religious practices (some of which involved sex with what amounted to temple prostitutes and gigolos)--the evidence is even better on this re Paul's prohibition on same-sex relations in the New Testament, but there is evidence that ritual temple sex relations did occur in the pre-Abrahamic faith that eventually spawned Judaism. (In fact, there's a rather famous example of where an Israeli male and his Midianite wife (who came from a territory that still worshipped the "Old Religion") were speared to death by Phinehas for "desecrating the temple" with what was essentially a pre-Abrahamic fertility rite of having sex in temple. Of course, this example of zealotry has since been misused by Christian Identity idiots (in calling for "racial holy war") and their sister movement in the New Apostolic Reformation (in particular, the NAR-linked Army of God domestic terrorist movement regularly declares terrorist acts as "Phineas (sic) actions")...)

Also, as others have noted, there IS the possibility that it could have been instituted as a public health measure of sorts--more as a method of population increase, but possibly as an anti-STD measure (though I have my doubts on that, for reasons I'll note below). In this case, it was probably meant as an explicit measure of preventing "remission" into the old polytheistic practices combined with population control (in increasing it, rather than decreasing it).

(As for STD control--probably not all that likely. The two STDs around that tend to kill people either hadn't jumped species yet (HIV, wouldn't speciate from SIV till around 1700 CE) or hadn't arrived yet from elsewhere (syphilis, which didn't arrive in the Old World until around the mid-1500s CE and was initially a far worse and more fulminant illness than it is now--"1500s Syphilis" in the Old World tended to behave a lot more like an especially nasty variant of yaws in that it was transmissible by touch and would go into tertiary syphilis in a matter of months)--even HepB has only been documented since the late 1800s (it's actually an even newer virus than HIV is--probably again speciated from similar chimp viruses). Hell, measles had not yet speciated from rinderpest at the point Leviticus was written (and wouldn't do so until shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire); it's possible that even herpes hadn't yet leapt into the human population (and that's about the only one that's plausible--if only because herpesviruses tend to be rather species-specific, and tend to either be non-infective in a foreign species or causative of fulminant encephalitis (cref. Herpes B virus for an example of the latter--and yes, our herpes viruses can kill macaques too). It's not entirely out of the question that a now-extinct STD could have been the cause of the "no male same-sex sexual contact"--there's still some active debate on what caused the Great Plague of Athens calling up everything from haemorrhagic smallpox to the first widescale human measles epidemic (with high lethality) to filoviral haemorrhagic fevers like Marburg or Ebola--but it's far more likely it was a social restriction.)

Another thing pointing to this, of note--the same sections in Leviticus do NOT prohibit same-sex contact between women, only between men--which seems to point more to a prohibition on a ritual "third sex" role. (I haven't even gotten into some of the more interesting interpretations of passages of the Book of David where the phrasings of the relations between David and Jonathan often sound more like the Bronze Age equivalent of a same-sex marriage than a close friendship. :D)

MrHappyRotter: So eating shrimp out of my boyfriend's ass -- will this condemn me to Hell or not. I need to know, like RIGHT NOW.

Let's see the hierarchy:

a) If you are either Orthodox (and especially ultra-Orthodox) Jewish or a "Messianic Jew" from one of those groups that are essentially neopentecostals who keep kosher (i.e. you aren't a Maronite)...you get to go to the Extra Special Hell (now with more Hell).

b) If you are of an Abrahamic faith that is anti-LGBT but allows shellfish consumption, well, probably still going to Hell according to their religious claims. Unless you repent, of course, or are Ted Haggard.

c) Whether you follow an Abrahamic faith at all or are heathen or atheist, you probably WILL get some lovely foodborne illness like rotavirus that will have you positively wishing, nay, praying for Hell because it cannot POSSIBLY be worse than what you're experiencing with the hurting and squirting. (Doubly so if poison oak tea is involved at any stage of the process.)

Great Porn Dragon:  Of course, this example of zealotry has since been misused by Christian Identity idiots (in calling for "racial holy war") and their sister movement in the New Apostolic Reformation (in particular, the NAR-linked Army of God domestic terrorist movement regularly declares terrorist acts as "Phineas (sic) actions")...)

I think you're the first person I've ever come across who's heard of the Army of God. When I started reading in more detail about them, it suddenly dawned on me that back in my teen years I'd had more than a few contacts with people connected to Army of God. And when I dug up the parts of the Army of God Manual that are available on the Internet, I started realizing that I'd heard pieces of it before from family friends--family friends who'd always insisted they believed in non-violence, something I have to wonder about now given that they had to have had a copy of the Army of God Manual. They're a bunch of nutcases.

Aquapope: If eating pork in the Mid-East, circa 1000 BCE, was so damned dangerous that they incorporated a prohibition against it into their religion, why did just about every other culture not do the same. North Americans, Northern Europeans, Asians... they all ate pork. What was it about pigs in the Mid-East?

And eating shellfish today is OK because of refrigeration... well, what about eating shellfish just after you catch it, before it needs to be refrigerated? Why wouldn't that be OK with god? And just how long does shellfish stay sin-free in a fridge? Somehow, I think 2 month old clams in a fridge would be chock-full of sin. Wouldn't the sinitudenousness depend on the particular shellfish? Oysters: no sin until day 4. Shrimp turns sinny on day 5. How does canning figure into all of this? Is an unrefrigerated can of clams sinful if you haven't opened it? What if you ate a lobster that had just eaten an unrefrigerated oyster? Are you going to hell, or is the lobster? What about that fake Krab stuff? Is that fake sin? Personally, I think Krab is a crime, but I don't know about sin. What if you don't have a refrigerator? What if your refrigerator breaks? Shouldn't refrigerator repairmen be held in as high a regard as clergy, given that they are so important in keeping your shrimp-eating ass out of hell?

I am the Aquapope and i should have answers to these questions. Take, eat, this oyster po-boy is my flesh. Take, drink, this clamata beer is my blood.

In all seriousness:

a) Trichinosis has been cited re pigs, but more probable (and also cited) are diseases like rinderpest and Rift Valley fever and West Nile virus--basically diseases that historically have been restricted to the Middle East until (at least) the Middle Ages, and which tend to be transmissible to humans. (For that matter, influenza could well have been linked as well.)

It also doesn't hurt that pigs (generally speaking) aren't native to the Middle East and most animal agriculture in the Middle East has typically centered around ruminants (which, of note to Leviticus, also tend to chew cud and have cloven hooves). It could have been a bit of "disease" and a bit of "weird creatures from Greece that really don't do well in the typical climate of the Levant and Saudi Arabia and require a hell of a lot more water than even cows and sheep do". (And yes, pre-modern-irrigation, the Middle East would not have been a healthy place for piggies to live.)

(Interestingly, this would also explain how Christianity was the one Abrahamic faith to do away with an equivalent to kosher or halal food, save for some groups like Dewahedo Orthodox and Maronites; the "kashrut no longer required" bit seems to have come about after the time of Jesus at the point the religion was starting to become Hellenicised.)

Also, as a minor correctional note--pork isn't native to the Americas, and actual wild pigs (as opposed to peccaries or javelinas, which are native to the Americas and are about as related to domestic pigs as, say, tigers are to pumas) did not have a major history until recently of being bred as food animals--they are too cantankerous to be easily domesticated (quite frankly, even before the Clovis people entered the Americas there weren't too many critters in the Americas larger than turkey-sized that were capable of domestication--the one exception being horses, and the Clovis people tended to like their Belmont steaks). "Wild hogs" outside of the Southwestern US are in fact feral domesticated pigs or feral crossbreeds between domesticated pigs and European wild boars (who escaped game farms in the late 1800s and early 1900s where early "canned hunts" took place) and are actually a pretty damned serious environmental threat as well as a source for trichinosis and other pig diseases largely eliminated in US swine herds.

b) Re the "shellfish" prohibition--most folks who have noted it was a public health concern (rather than as an attempt at either cultural uniqueness or as a method of cultural separation from pre-Abrahamic parent faiths) actually don't claim it was because seafood couldn't be preserved (the AFTAH talking-head is wrong on this one, but AFTAH is pretty much a walking talking cancer of dominionist hatespeech wrongness so this isn't surprising).

Rather, it's theorised that these cultures had a prohibition on consuming shellfish due to severe foodborne illnesses linked to shellfish consumption that couldn't even be eliminated by cooking--stuff like red tide poisoning and shellfish not getting sick themselves but poisoning people who ate them. (Doesn't have to be specifically red tide either--there's a fair number of toxic algal blooms capable of causing severe or even fatal poisoning in humans if they eat shellfish who've consumed those algae.) It would also explain why there's a general prohibition on non-scaled fish in Leviticus (which would also eliminate eels, which in some cases can be toxic if prepared incorrectly, and also rule out consumption of fish species most likely to accumulate biotoxins like shark).

Aquapope: Great Porn Dragon: In all seriousness:

[snip lots of learned interesting stuff]

Well, damn! You actually make it sound like it all makes sense. I just thought dietary proscriptions were mostly capricious, handed down generation to generation due to social inertia. You know, one big-time rabbi was allergic to shrimp, so he said: "No shrimp, ever, for anybody" and the injunction stuck. Still, wrap a piece of bacon around a large prawn and deep fry until the bacon is done. You'll go to hell, but you will LOVE it. With horseradish sauce.

Oh, I'm a friggin' apatheist and that sounds friggin' YUMMY (would probably have to figure out where to get proper prawn, but could work nicely for some tiger shrimp :D...kind of like Filet Decidedly Anti-Kosher :D

Then again, I'm also the sort of person whom (although I don't exactly follow any religious text in a RELIGIOUS sense) do like sussing out the ancient sociology of groups--and IMHO it's kind of a shame that the very folks who DO treat the Bible as a religious guide seem to not get a "jot or a tittle" of the context behind that (and yes, there's context behind Jesus' commentary on that, as any observant Jew will tell you--specifically regarding the VERY specific conditions where a Torah scroll in Temple must be written (by hand, with every jot and tittle and cantillation mark absolutely PERFECT or they have to destroy it and start over)).

Hell, the stuff about people getting smited over and over again for Golden Calf Incidents throughout the Old Testament makes a hell of a lot more sense if you realise the "golden calf" was in fact a religious icon/idol of Ba'al Hadad (the god of sky and storms and mountains in the Old Religion before Judaism forked off, and pretty much the main symbol of the old parent faith they were trying to abandon). Apparently they had a LOT of cases of people going back to the Old Time Religion Of Marduk Et Al...

(We won't even get into Revelation, which is basically a massive political cartoon slagging off Nero Domitian with the general message of "This too will pass and the Roman Empire will collapse on itself just like the Babylonian Empire did", or Job (which, seriously, is basically "Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney" with God as the Judge and Satan as Miles Edgeworth--it's a story of what happens when all of humanity is put on trial for being bastard-flavoured bastards filled with bastard pudding and Job basically has to simultaneously be the evidence AND the defendant in what amounts to a parody of an Israeli courtroom of the period). I find it more ENTERTAINING when knowing the "colour text" which few people seem to pay attention to...unless they're apatheists like me or heathens or whatnot :D)

MrHappyRotter: Great Porn Dragon: MrHappyRotter: So eating shrimp out of my boyfriend's ass -- will this condemn me to Hell or not. I need to know, like RIGHT NOW.

Let's see the hierarchy:

a) If you are either Orthodox (and especially ultra-Orthodox) Jewish or a "Messianic Jew" from one of those groups that are essentially neopentecostals who keep kosher (i.e. you aren't a Maronite)...you get to go to the Extra Special Hell (now with more Hell).

b) If you are of an Abrahamic faith that is anti-LGBT but allows shellfish consumption, well, probably still going to Hell according to their religious claims. Unless you repent, of course, or are Ted Haggard.

c) Whether you follow an Abrahamic faith at all or are heathen or atheist, you probably WILL get some lovely foodborne illness like rotavirus that will have you positively wishing, nay, praying for Hell because it cannot POSSIBLY be worse than what you're experiencing with the hurting and squirting. (Doubly so if poison oak tea is involved at any stage of the process.)

Clear as mustard.

My personal suggestion (being an apatheist who frankly doesn't believe in Extraplanar Superjails, and would go on to say that the fact religionationalists have not been smited en masse is proof that if Deity exists they have bigger things to worry about than humanity) would be not to worry about the eternal damnation and worry more on the (actual, existing-very-much-in-the-physical) risks of analingus-via-crustacean :D

(Seriously, ass-to-mouth without something like a dental dam is something that squicks the hell out of anyone who is a microbiology geek--just because it's a very easy way to get some of the nastier foodborne illnesses. And I've heard quite enough from Farkers who were unlucky enough to contract norovirus via the more CONVENTIONAL routes of fomites and contaminated food that I wouldn't wish it on ANYONE.

(OK, I'd wish it on the Army of God and Al Qaeda and NARasite, dominionist, and religionationalist asshats. But nobody else. :D)

El Dudereno: Aquapope: Great Porn Dragon: Oh, I'm a friggin' apatheist and that sounds friggin' YUMMY (would probably have to figure out where to get proper prawn, but could work nicely for some tiger shrimp :D...kind of like Filet Decidedly Anti-Kosher :D

I had it as an appetizer at a restaurant here in KC (J.Js on the Plaza). The "vein" of the giant shrimp (prawn?) was filled with horseradish, and the whole baconny/shrimpy thing was deep fried. 3 shrimps per order. I didn't order an entree, just ordered 2 more of the shrimpy mana appetizers. Time spent eating shrimp is not deducted from your lifespan.

Great Porn Dragon: (by hand, with every jot and tittle and cantillation mark absolutely PERFECT or they have to destroy it and start over)).

And I'll bet the destruction process is meticulously described and ritualistically performed.

Great Porn Dragon: (We won't even get into Revelation, which is basically a massive political cartoon slagging off Nero Domitian

I saw a thing on the Discovery Channel way back before they became the Fat People and Midget Hoarding Channel that described the Council of Nicaea or Trent (whichever one finalized the contents of what we call the bible). One guy wanted to put the book of Revelations into the bible, but everybody thought he was a nutjob. It took him over a year of politicking and promises and whatnot to get enough people on board to include Revelations. If you read Rev in context with the preceding books, it does kind of stick out as not belonging.

The rantings of a dehydrated, starving hermit. Somehow, there are people who take this story literally.

No, the Discovery Channel is pretty reliable.

nucular bum: Oh, freeze a jolly good fellow, freeze a jolly good fellow...

I see what you did there. :-)

yarllib: bgddy24601: Chariset: I could defend this nutjob -- but I won't.

I would love to hear a defense, even if it is just someone playing Devil's advocate with a position that they do not actually hold.

Here is where he gets it from the New Testament:

Romans 1:24-27
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

New International Version (NIV)

So because they were wicked and foolish, God made them more wicked and foolish, then punished them for their wickedness and foolishness. According to Paul, anyway.

Well, that settles it.  God created homosexuality, so it must be good.