A new religion!!! (This is toooo funny...)

[Perd Hapley]

THIS IS A LAME JOKE!  On religious or comedic grounds, there's just nothing original or especially funny about it.*  I can take a joke on my own beliefs as much as the next guy, but this just doesn't really give me the urge to laugh.  Henderson's in a long line of people who have ridiculed Christianity, Christians and various religious groups and beliefs, and he just fails to stand out.  And the whole joke fails because ID is not a religion, so it doesn't make sense to ridicule ID by comparing it to a religion, no matter how bizarre.



*OK, the pirate thing is funny, until you realize that there are still plenty of pirates in certain parts of the world, so the joke doesn't even work.  Then there's the fact that this amateur hack of a comedian just put it in the middle of a letter where it didn't belong, so it just doesn't flow.  Unless he wanted to point out that it is a more viable theory than evolution, but it doesn't seem likely he would realize that.

So, what are you all so tickled about?

[280plus]

I've seen worse...

[grampster]

Maybe some things ought to be above satire.  Then again, the purpose of satire is to ground folks in reality along with producing a grin or a chuckle, even if same may produce a wince at the same time.

As a believer (Christian) one ought not mock God.  He allows that choice.  But, as a sentient being, it ought to be choice refused.  We all have the ability to not participate in a thing.   But to poke fun of how humans tend to twist things to suit selfish agendas or narrow mindedness, I say have at it.

My dad told me back in the late 60's that it appeared to him that Americans were losing their sense of humor.  This was the beginning of the political correct phase we are going through.  His words were prophetic judging from the society of victims that we have become, casting about daily to find fault.

[Brad Johnson]

God gave us a sense of humor and satire for a reason. If you can't laugh at yourself, well...

Brad

[Iapetus]

telewinz

In ancient times no meat was safe.  Pork was banned because pigs eat the same foods as people, they would be in direct competition for a limited resource and would foster increased starvation on the poor.  A wise custom based on simple economics and survival of our species.

I hadn't heard that explanation before.

One I had thought might be the fact that pig biology is more similar to human biology (why I don't know) than most other animals, with the result that humans are more likely to catch certain diseases from pigs than from other food animals.  (For example, cattle tapeworms live in the flesh of the animal, but if we eat them they just end up in our guts, where they don't do much harm.  Pig tapeworms live in the pig's flesh, and if we eat infected pig meat, they end up in our flesh, where they do a lot of harm).

It also seems to often be a bad idea to eat carnivorous animals (some have toxic quantities of vitamin A in the liver; pollutants can also be concentrated up the food chain, but I don't know how much that would be relevent in 1500BC), and I expect scavengers could be unhealthy, so the prohibitions on eating them could make sense too, from a health perspective.  Shelfish can also accumulate toxins produced by certain plankton.