A lot of kosher dietary laws were started way back when food preparation and storage was not sanitary, or so I've heard. Over time it became doctrine. Hey, I was raised Jewish and I still don't get it. Not when one of our staple cuisines was Chinese take-out, which contains considerable amounts of [drum roll]: pork and shelfish.

Yes! let's get real. amen (just reclaiming language ).

Sorry guys, it is my warped way of thinking, the reference was to Francis Bacon, it is his quote I posted. and it is the comments re contradictions that finally freed me from my Christian upbringing, there are too many contradictions with the Bible and between it and the reality I experience. His idea that reality must be free of contradiction means the bible and therefore my religion were what was flawed.

The torah does not specifically ban the eating of pigs as such. Just says that animals should have cloven hooves and chew the cud. It is possible to breed a Kosher pig (a la that great film " Leon the pig farmer " ) but I doubt it would make it to any rabbis dinner table. Many have made the point about pork in hot climates as a reason for the ban. I would also look at a pigs diet. Like us they are omnivorous and are quite sentient animals. Most of us would baulk at the thought of eating dog. As Churchill said " Cats look down on us, dogs look up to us. only pigs treat us as equals ".

They really just want to save it all for their Hawaiian pizzas.

Your thinking sounds like it's lifted at least partly from Objectivism. While I agree that most seeming contradictions reflect limits of our cognition, I do think some of those limits are inherent. The real problem is that there's no such thing as 100% certainty on any topic (though many things are 99.999% certain, and others certain enough to be of practical utility). People of good conscience are going to disagree on priorities and have different perspectives about many topics, so it's a fool's errand to try to demonstrate you're objectively "right" about most anything. You can accomplish a great deal by confining your arguments to obvious benefits and harms and facts and figures but that doesn't change that many people fear change and oppose it as a matter of course.

I agree with the other commenters, there's a basis in reality for the prohibition on pork, and at that point in history I'm willing to bet the only way to get widespread conformance to this rule was to make it a divine edict.

So true, a rock is more in touch with reality than any human.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but the provision against pork IS rooted in fact. If you think about the nomadic tribes that wrote the talmud , which is the basis of our Bible, they were Nomadic Desert dwellers. If you've ever heard of trichinosis, you know eating pork in a desert is a really bad idea! Also, pigs are omnivores. They are not grazers and cannot sustain themselves on browse. So, they are actually taking food from the tribe dwellers. Sorry, but this one prohibition is very much rooted in fact.