Dutch Muslims & Jews united together

[Valmy]

But making a phonecall is? WTF?

I am not sure why that is weird.  You can hardly expect an ancient tribal society to spend 1/7th of the week not defending itself and expect it to still be around thousands of years later.

[Razgovory]

Oh God, this isn't going to be one these damn libertarian spiels is it?

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that I find your hostility to libertarianism as puzzling as most Europeans find American hostility to socialism.

I'm an American.  We've had more of our share of libertarianism on this board, or as it's commonly know here, Librarytarianism.

[grumbler]

But making a phonecall is? WTF?

I am not sure why that is weird.  You can hardly expect an ancient tribal society to spend 1/7th of the week not defending itself and expect it to still be around thousands of years later.

[dps]

Why should the law treat animals as anything other than chattel property?  Is not all "animals rights" legislation necessarily religious (including secular religions) in intent?

I don't agree with the proposition that animals have any natural rights.  However, that doesn't mean that either treating them as having right analogous to those of human beings or treating them merely as chattel property are the only alternatives (especially as that formulation, while working for domesticated animals, would leave us in a quandary as to how to treat wild animals).  And frankly, even if animals are treated simply as chattel property, well, even I'm not as much a property rights absolutist as you appear to be.

[dps]

If you do it for the purpose of harming the fish then I think it is unacceptable.

If that's your standard, then you shouldn't have any problem with the methods of slaughter used to satify the requirements of kosher and halal.  The purpose of those isn't to inflict harm on the animals.  Well, except to the extent that killing them is the purpose, but then that's true for any method of slaughter.

[Berkut]

While reading about this on wiki and such as part of this thread, I think I sort of understand the theological justification for not stunning. Basically, if I understand it correctly, for meat to be kosher, it must be pure. And for it to be "pure", the animal must be healthy, which means that prior to it being killed by the knife, it must not be injured or sick in a manner that would result in its death if the knife is not used.

So the basic idea behind NOT stunning the animal is that stunning it the instant before its throat is cut makes the animal injured prior to its killing by cutting its throat.

Note that halal actually does not have this problem, because the Mulsims I guess decreed that electrical stunning (which the animal will recover from with no adverse effects) is not injurous, hence fulfills this common stipulation of a healthy animal.

This stuff is all so freaking silly. Like God is up there giving a shit whether some cow is stunned or not before you cut its throat. Most religious food rules have some basis in practical fact, and I don't doubt that the basics of kosher and halal preparation do as well. But the idea that the form has so thoroughly trumped the function that fundies are going to insist on something as trivial as this is pretty ridiculous. Of course, that is why they call them Orthodox I guess. Fundies are fundies are fundies are fundies.

Kind of amusing that the Muslim fundies, in this case, are more rational than the Jewish ones though.

I am still convinced that if this became law, some handy Rabbi would find that stunning really is ok, and some butcher would start stunning prior to their magic painless ninja cut, and the people who consume kosher food would shrug and not change a thing.

[Valmy]

This stuff is all so freaking silly.

Yes it is just a bad idea to make cultural folkways permanent religious rituals and doctrines.

[Slargos]

I think property rights is a reasonable argument. Animals have no rights, and probably shouldn't. I also believe that we may risk a bigger problem by taking this too far, which is weakening our society by spending unnecessary resources caring for the well being of our food stuffs. If it is more expedient to let cows stand in their own filth and to cut the tails off pigs (which, IIRC, is actually very useful given that it reduces for some reason the amount of fighting between the pigs), then perhaps it is necessary to do so despite calls to empathy.

That said, I am still left thinking that treatment of creatures that quite obviously feel pain and distress, when it is possible, should be as "humane" (for the lack of a better term) as possible/realistic since anything else shames us as a species. I would argue the same for slaves, servants or menial workers. Sure, the system may require that people do thankless jobs for subsistence pay (or none at all), but it is unacceptable to also treat them with no dignity or outright hostility.

We may not need to treat chattel - be it livestock or servants - with respect and dignity, but we should.

For this reason, while I can understand the motivation behind slavery and apartheid, they will always be disgusting phenomenons to me since they will inevitably be misused.

[DGuller]

While reading about this on wiki and such as part of this thread, I think I sort of understand the theological justification for not stunning. Basically, if I understand it correctly, for meat to be kosher, it must be pure. And for it to be "pure", the animal must be healthy, which means that prior to it being killed by the knife, it must not be injured or sick in a manner that would result in its death if the knife is not used.

So the basic idea behind NOT stunning the animal is that stunning it the instant before its throat is cut makes the animal injured prior to its killing by cutting its throat.

Note that halal actually does not have this problem, because the Mulsims I guess decreed that electrical stunning (which the animal will recover from with no adverse effects) is not injurous, hence fulfills this common stipulation of a healthy animal.

This stuff is all so freaking silly. Like God is up there giving a shit whether some cow is stunned or not before you cut its throat. Most religious food rules have some basis in practical fact, and I don't doubt that the basics of kosher and halal preparation do as well. But the idea that the form has so thoroughly trumped the function that fundies are going to insist on something as trivial as this is pretty ridiculous. Of course, that is why they call them Orthodox I guess. Fundies are fundies are fundies are fundies.

Kind of amusing that the Muslim fundies, in this case, are more rational than the Jewish ones though.

I am still convinced that if this became law, some handy Rabbi would find that stunning really is ok, and some butcher would start stunning prior to their magic painless ninja cut, and the people who consume kosher food would shrug and not change a thing.

I find it amusing as well that with religion being about the spirit and all, the letter of whatever you treat as law is deemed more important than the spirit.  It's like those fundies treat God as if he were an extremely pedantic lawyer with no common sense or discretion.  If I were God, I would be quite annoyed at having my intelligence insulted like that.

Of course, there is a very real purpose to all these silly laws for Orthodox Jews.  As an Orthodox rabbi, you want to keep the Jews in your flock segregated from the community at large, to avoid assimilation, and thus mutual alienation and incompatibility of lifestyles is in your interests.  If you start interpreting the religious rules with common sense, you pretty much open the floodgates to full blown secularism, since that's where common sense leads to on most issues.

[Neil]

I don't think you're qualified to determine the spirit in which the law was made, since you're not a god.

[Berkut]

This stuff is all so freaking silly.

Yes it is just a bad idea to make cultural folkways permanent religious rituals and doctrines.

Indeed. The weird thing about it is that most of the people who care, don't really - they are mostly told to care by those invested in the current system.

Does anyone really doubt that 99% of the people who observe eating kosher would not bat an eye if their local Rabbi said "Yeah, turns out that using electroshock stunning does not make the meat impure! So we are in fact able to meet the government standards for humane slaughter while still being kosher! Praise Yahweh!"?

Sure, they may very well be that last 1% that pitches a fit and become extra-extra-orthodox-orhtodox. They can prove their faith by becoming vegetarians.

[Berkut]

While reading about this on wiki and such as part of this thread, I think I sort of understand the theological justification for not stunning. Basically, if I understand it correctly, for meat to be kosher, it must be pure. And for it to be "pure", the animal must be healthy, which means that prior to it being killed by the knife, it must not be injured or sick in a manner that would result in its death if the knife is not used.

So the basic idea behind NOT stunning the animal is that stunning it the instant before its throat is cut makes the animal injured prior to its killing by cutting its throat.

Note that halal actually does not have this problem, because the Mulsims I guess decreed that electrical stunning (which the animal will recover from with no adverse effects) is not injurous, hence fulfills this common stipulation of a healthy animal.

This stuff is all so freaking silly. Like God is up there giving a shit whether some cow is stunned or not before you cut its throat. Most religious food rules have some basis in practical fact, and I don't doubt that the basics of kosher and halal preparation do as well. But the idea that the form has so thoroughly trumped the function that fundies are going to insist on something as trivial as this is pretty ridiculous. Of course, that is why they call them Orthodox I guess. Fundies are fundies are fundies are fundies.

Kind of amusing that the Muslim fundies, in this case, are more rational than the Jewish ones though.

I am still convinced that if this became law, some handy Rabbi would find that stunning really is ok, and some butcher would start stunning prior to their magic painless ninja cut, and the people who consume kosher food would shrug and not change a thing.

I find it amusing as well that with religion being about the spirit and all, the letter of whatever you treat as law is deemed more important than the spirit.  It's like those fundies treat God as if he were an extremely pedantic lawyer with no common sense or discretion.  If I were God, I would be quite annoyed at having my intelligence insulted like that.

Of course, there is a very real purpose to all these silly laws for Orthodox Jews.  As an Orthodox rabbi, you want to keep the Jews in your flock segregated from the community at large, to avoid assimilation, and thus mutual alienation and incompatibility of lifestyles is in your interests.  If you start interpreting the religious rules with common sense, you pretty much open the floodgates to full blown secularism, since that's where common sense leads to on most issues.

barrister? Is that you?

So...sane. So...rational...

[DGuller]

barrister? Is that you?

God, no.   This is DGuller.

[Berkut]

barrister? Is that you?

God, no.   This is DGuller.

Oh crap. I am really off today.

I should ahve known it could not be BB, what with him making comments about extremely pedantic lawyers as if it were a bad thing...

[Neil]

Sure, they may very well be that last 1% that pitches a fit and become extra-extra-orthodox-orhtodox. They can prove their faith by becoming vegetarians.

Or they could just move to a country where religious freedom isn't tempered by bigotry.