Why Jews and Muslims consider eating pork as a grave sin

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I am a Catholic from Poland, I am glad that I am a Christian and we do not accept such strange rules.

I also objections for as for circumcision, even though I myself was circumcised at the age of 4 years, but for medical reasons, frequent urinary tract infections and phimosis,

I'm curious about the opinion of Jews and Muslims on these topics

love pork chops with potatoes with dill and pickled cucumber

The Book of Mark makes a big deal about saying nothing you eat can make you unclean. Although The Book of Matthew has Jesus explicitly saying that all of the Jewish laws are still in place.

Thus, as a Christian, consuming pork may or may not soil your eternal soul. Good luck!

I think that some of these laws are simply based on physical issues that had been noticed when people ate certain foods. For example, people possibly got sick after eating pork that wasn't cooked enough, and they assumed that pork was bad for your health, and also assumed that people getting sick was a sign from God.

According to anecdote, pork tastes very much like human flesh.

I suspect this is why primitive thinkers consider pork 'unclean'. Chickens, goats, lambs, and cows are equally (if not more so) unclean. None of these species use cutlery or toilet paper either, yet they aren't considered dirty or taboo... because they don't taste like us.

You also need to consider is that these laws were written while the tribes of Israel were wandering through hot, dusty environments in a time devoid of proper cleaning habits. Think of the immense discipline needed for a whole demographic to not get wiped out by disease while traversing distances cars and planes simplify today. Certain foods are also a lot less safe for consumption unless prepared correctly, such as chicken and pork. In a time where proper cooking habits were non-existent, makes more sense to just ban the food's consumption if it caused sickness too much. Power to the people who follow the traditions, but I believe that they aren't needed in a modern day scenario.

I guess this is also a possible reason (the thought is so repulsive tho yuck). I doubt it tho, because as far as I know there is many animals that are omnivores like us, therefore would potentially taste like human flesh (yuck yuck!), but are not considered "unclean".

But I was talking about actual diseases due to the consumption of pork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis

And it depends on what was specifically happening at the time it was declared "unclean" too, if for example, people were getting sick from eating pork, then it made sense to tell people not to eat pork. If it had been cows, they would have told people not to eat cows (this might be the reason people in India don't eat cows, eventho it is a religious matter for them as well). And so on.

Totally understand what you're saying. If an oppressed nomadic people had difficulties preparing certain meats safely, it would make perfect sense to ban or avoid certain meats, but parasitic worms are not exclusive to swine and people. If the ancient Jews had problems of this nature with pigs, all other meats would also be banned and we'd have some really creative tofu dishes as a result.
This is not the case.

I prefer my explanation

We're so similar to pigs we can have their organs for transplant. Tattooists use pigskin to practice their craft. They sweat like us, get sunburned like us, eat like us, and breed like us. The Polynesians had a word for human flesh as a culinary item, forgive my lack or a link but that word translates to 'Longpig'.

Further food for thought: why is pork so tasty?

I don't think it tastes more nor less than other meats, but I think a lot of people like especially bacon, and to answer your question: its the fat. My grandmother used to fry fat from steak/beef too, and it was really good (and probably just as bad for your health lol).

Also the poor pigs are bled to death (contrary to other animals), that's why their meat is white(ish), contrary to beef for example, which still has blood in it. I have seen people mentioning (in forums, not people I know) that they bleed other animals too tho.

Who cares if they won't eat pork? All that does is leave more pork chops, pork roasts, bacon, ham, and sausage for the rest of us.

I'm pretty sure that it's partly because of the fact that when Judaism became a religion it was due to the fact that there were other tribes of people nearby that weree cannibalistic, and part of the way of avoiding this was to avoid meat similar in taste to human flesh. Furthermore, there is also the trichinosis/ parasite issue. Even though pork nowadays (at least in modern, developed countries) is relatively safe, there is still the chance that you can get it via undercooked or even raw pork. It's treatable by modern medicine to the point where people rarely die from it. Several thousand years ago, OTOH, there was no such thing as modern medicine, and chances were quite high that you would die from trichinosis, so Jews decided to forego it altogeather, as back then it really was unclean.

Islam, as a direct descendant of Judaism kept this stricture, whereass Christianity did not.

That being said, a lot of Jews don't keep kosher, and I'm sure there are plenty of Muslims who aren't entirely halal in their dietary practices either.

And Paul gave everyone a pass on following any of the Law.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1wR4ejxi8k[/youtube]

The answer is surprising ...

"Animals that both chew their cud (ruminate) and have cloven hooves are allowed (kosher), whereas those that have only one of these two characteristics are considered unclean animals and Jews are forbidden to eat them. This rule excludes from the diet the camel because it walks on toes (camel hooves are nails coming out of toes), and the pig because it has cloven hooves but does not ruminate". [source 1]

The belief originates from the Law of Moses in the Bible of only allowing the eating of mammals that had cloven hooves (i.e. members of the order Artiodactyla) and "that chew the cud". [source 2]

sources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloven_hoo ... n_religion
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant#R ... importance

Mohammed ate bacon according to the video!

might be turkey bacon though

I made a post about this a few months ago. It's possible that this restriction dates from an earlier time when a hominid species bred with pigs to create homo sap, or when homo sap bred with some animal to create pigs.

Else, someone might have noticed that bacon smells like burned human (I read about this in Hitchens, God is not Great) and banned the eating of pork for that reason.