this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 year ago (10 children)

It always amazes me people think this being that created the universe cares what meat they eat.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey there’s also hallucinations in there

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're telling me this enormous being with 6 wings surrounding flaming wheels covered with eyes that God is speaking to me through isn't real?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Hey sometimes the mushrooms in the desert hit different

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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 @[email protected]'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.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] Aurenkin 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cares about the meat you eat and the meat you beat

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Always have!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That makes even less sense.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

No, no it does not. Like, not at all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year 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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Just wait till you find their opinions on the oppsite hole.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Arguably. I think a lot of lab meat currently uses massive amounts of FBS instead of alternatives. Though I guess many vegetarians don't have a problem with renet.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)

What do these three glyphs signify in this particular sequence

[–] neokabuto 7 points 1 year ago

Fetal bovine serum. It's used as a supplement for for cell cultures.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

There isn't really a central authority for deciding if it's vegetarian or not though.

Technically is not an animal product so I guess it is vegetarian but also at the same time it's still meat so it isn't.

I guess it depends on what your objection to meat is. If your objection is based on animal cruelty then I guess it's probably vegetarian but if your objection is based on dietary restrictions (religious or otherwise) then obviously it's not.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hello, it is I the pope of vegetables. On behalf of the interests of all plants I do ordain this diet

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm glad to see lab-grown meat clear another hurdle. The better and more common this technology is, the closer we'll be to finally getting rid of the meat industry and factory farming.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Glad the OU certified this as kosher. This has been a big question in Jewish communities.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I always think that lab grown meat is a weird idea why don't they just do something interesting why don't they do lab grown velociraptor. I want to eat a velociraptor please.

Or better yet go through the fossil record and find the tastiest animal, and then grow that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah I wanna try some Dodo bird, must have been good if it was hunted to extinction.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think the Galapagos tortoise was also almost hunted to extinction for being so delicious.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There's no Jewish or Islamic pope so what a lab-grown meat producer has to do is simply find a Imam or a Rabbi that will agree to say it's halal or kosher. They can pay them nice consulting fee for that. I've seen kosher light switches and cell phones before. Other Rabbis will say it's not actually kosher but everyone can choose which rabbi to follow.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

There are a handful of organizations that will certify your product as kosher. Some people trust one organization or another, some trust any of em, some use their best judgement in general. A large organization of Rabbim agreeing on its kashrut status could hold a lot of sway, though, and be a catalyst to start a conversation over many tables of "Should we eat this?"

Now, what I'm curious of is what the meat qualifies as.

Is it milchig, fleichig or pareve?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

There was once a thought experiment about whether a hypothetical potato containing a pig gene (to make it tastily fatty) would be halal and/or kosher. IIRC, because of the different philosophical bases of the two taboos, it would have been one but not the other, though I can’t remember which.

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