Islamic scholars consulted by a leading producer of cultivated meat say that the newfangled protein — which is grown from animal cells and doesn’t require animals to be slaughtered — can be halal, or permissible under Muslim law.

And the Jewish Orthodox Union this month certified a strain of lab-grown chicken as kosher for the first time, “marking a significant step forward for the food technology’s acceptance under Jewish dietary law,” as the Times of Israel put it.

    • @SheeEttin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      6810 months ago

      A lot of food handling instructions in religion are rudimentary sanitation practices. For example, food must be consumed same day, not left out. Don’t eat raw shellfish. Don’t drink blood. Wash your hands.

      • Capt. Wolf
        link
        fedilink
        5910 months ago

        Pretty much all religious texts at their core are “how to not die,” “how to make more of you,” and “how not to be an asshole,” with an overarching guilt system to enforce it.

        Everything else is either people misconstruing things because they can’t make sense of their own existence, either through mental illness, misguidedness, or plain old ignorance.

        • XIN
          link
          fedilink
          510 months ago

          I’d never thought of religion as a form of Darwinism before.

          • Spzi
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1310 months ago

            Is is, in many interesting ways. In the sense of Dawkins (“the selfish gene”), who coined the term ‘meme’, religions are complex memes. Ideas which need hosts to survive and spread. This puts evolutionary pressure on these ideas to become good at convincing brains that:

            “This idea is worth listening to. This idea is worth remembering. This idea is worth spreading.”

            Naturally, religions became good at these things or went extinct. In many cases, their evolution converged to extremes. A powerful god is obviously beaten by the all-powerful God. A stronger incentive than living a decent life on Earth is obviously receiving eternal bliss in heaven.

            Religions take great efforts to emphasize they are very important - sorry: the most important - ideas. And some which emphasize how important it is to spread them happened to spread, driving others extinct in the process.

            To this day, religions evolve in the attempt to adapt to their changing environment of culture, politics and technology, lest they go extinct. New denominations form and rise in the process.

            I agree to @capt_wolf@lemmy.world’s observation. Does the frequent inclusion of these very existential ideas (“how to not die”) hint at how early in the human evolution religions started playing a role? If so, if religions helped early humans survive, that would make being susceptible to religious ideas an evolutionary advantage for early humans. So maybe there was a synergy between genetic evolution and memetic evolution. And maybe that’s also why conspiracy theories are such a pest, piggybacking on the same mechanics.

            • XIN
              link
              fedilink
              310 months ago

              I absolutely love your brain. What are you up to for the next 20-30 years?

              • Spzi
                link
                fedilink
                English
                410 months ago

                Heh, thanks! I plan to eat loads of delicious food, and get laid at least twice. Maybe I’ll die. Also many other goals, projects and ideas.

                Why did you ask? The question was oddly specific. What are your plans?

        • @TheMadnessKing@lemdro.id
          link
          fedilink
          English
          110 months ago

          Let’s not forget all the absurd shit religions have. Like Killing non-believers, treating women as object, pedophilia and more.

        • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          110 months ago

          I would maintain that there’s a statistical sprinkling of that stuff mixed in with other arbitrary rules like not mixing textiles and not giving loans.

    • @AdmiralShat@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      6010 months ago

      The reason these practices are in place are historical

      Think about a time before modern sanitation. You eat THIS meat, you fucking die. So obviously God doesn’t want us to eat it because otherwise he wouldn’t have made it a dirty, deadly meat. Even today, these meats kill people occasionally.

      I’m an atheist, but I think it’s still worthwhile to understand the perspectives.

      • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        3
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Bad chicken will kill you dead too. Apologists of these religions advance these hypotheses but they’re not really supported by anything scientific or in the historical records.

        Food taboos of all kinds are a common cultural feature (for example, modern Westerners don’t like insects), and the Judaism-derived religions incorporated the food taboos of the Jews sometimes.

      • @Aux@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        -1910 months ago

        People didn’t have modern sanitation elsewhere as well. That’s not the reason, the reason is that these religions were followed by people who lived “like pigs”. And since the pigs live like their owners, they were dirty and nasty as well. This religious ban is a mirror of people who followed these religions.

    • DarkGamer
      link
      fedilink
      12
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      And isn’t it funny how the gods are always concerned with the same things their worshippers are? It would be odd to care deeply about regulating the sexual and dietary habits of the ants in our backyards. If god(s) were real I’d expect their interests to be wild and beyond our understanding, and not about what hats humans can wear and what meat is acceptable.

      • @SheeEttin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        610 months ago

        The in-lore explanation is that we are created by the god(s) in their own image. Much like if you made a toy to play with other toys, you’d probably make something humanoid, or at least anthropomorphic.

        Unless you want to talk about Lovecraftian horror gods, but in that lore, humans weren’t created by the gods (as far as I know).

        • DarkGamer
          link
          fedilink
          3
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Created in their image perhaps, but generally not in their own capability, understanding, and therefore one would assume, interests. Gods are like us because we imagine them like us, because humans draw from what we know and what we are concerned with when we imagine and dream and hallucinate. Religious writers cannot accurately fathom the interests of those with superhuman knowledge and capability, and so the gods typically want what the people who claim to speak for them also want, and offer solutions to whatever the worshippers are concerned with. Lovecraft was brilliant for acknowledging this limitation in his own way, he was known for not describing the horror because it is far too horrible and beyond our comprehension.

      • Spzi
        link
        fedilink
        English
        410 months ago

        Yes, but when communicating to these minions, it makes sense to translate your intentions into what they can relate to.

        If I want a way to control my ants so that they stay away from some places but go to others, I might teach them to avoid soap and seek sugar.

        They might not understand what my bed is because it’s too big and alien for them, but if I put some soap around it, they will avoid going there. They might not understand what I mean by “go to my neighbor’s garden”, but they will be able to follow a trail of sugar to that place.

        So especially if the interests of the gods are wild and beyond our understanding, I’d expect them to give us some relatable proxies instead.

        • DarkGamer
          link
          fedilink
          1
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          While I see your point, I’ve never met nor heard of someone training ants in such a way, it would take a very odd and unusual person to hold and act on such an interest. If this is an analog for gods I suspect they are not entirely right, provided they exist at all.

          I’m also at a loss as to how rules about sex and dietary restrictions would lead to some greater goal beyond our understanding. Religious rules aren’t typically physical boundaries to exploration like the soap line. It’s more often rules about things like sacrificing animals, what hats to wear when, how to treat people inside and outside the religion, when to fast, when to feast, when to pray, what to eat, and who needs to be obeyed, (spoiler: it’s always the men who claim to speak for gods.)

    • kae
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1110 months ago

      If you read through the stories that define them, it makes a lot more sense. Blood and sacrifice are intertwined with life and righteousness. God is holy and set apart, and can’t be in the presence of less – so their lives and habits are built around remaining in relationship to their God.

      So the careful handling of death, food, and blood makes perfect sense from that worldview, whether you personally agree with it or not.

    • Uranium3006
      link
      fedilink
      710 months ago

      organized religion is and always has been about using laws to control people and take their money through brainwashing backed with death threats where and whenever they can get away with it

    • @rar
      link
      410 months ago

      Opinions on religion aside, more acceptance of lab grown meat is better for energy efficiency and reducing unneeded animal cruelty.

    • @OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      310 months ago

      I once asked a Muslim neighbor over for dinner.

      They explained they could never eat anything I have prepared in my kitchen, because I eat pork.

      Way to go religion, keep making sure your arbitrary rules keep people apart.

      • @Lmaydev@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        3
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Religion was (and often still is) a way to keep poor people in check.

        The whole idea of heaven/hell, reincarnation, karma etc. is so people accept their shitty roles in life.

        Don’t worry that the king is living in luxury and you are suffering as it’ll all even out eventually.

        As you say preventing them mixing with other groups is also a great way to keep your cult going.