> Really? Because the bible has all sorts of weird rules in it that seem kind of arbitrary and certainly not self-obvious.

Nobody said it was perfect, as they say.

> The principle is reasonable because otherwise everyone would just claim they didn't know regardless of if they did

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25830167

> Nobody said it was perfect, as they say

Not saying it is perfect or imperfect. Just saying the imagined time when all rules were self-obvious natural laws that could be logically deduced a priori, never existed.

The laws that were both actually enforced and reasonable basically were. I don't think we need to emulate things people historically said they would do even though they didn't, or did do but were unreasonable.

That seems circular to me. Surely most people follow the laws that seem reasonable to them. If everyone agreed on what was reasonable behaviour, we wouldn't need laws.

Basically everybody knows that murder is wrong but some people still do it.

People do try and argue its justified in specific circumstances. Sometimes people have an over-active imagination for what constitutes self-defense.

Hell, trump pardoned someone convicted of murder (which is disgusting, but i guess he thought it was reasonable).

But my main point is there was never a time or society where the only crime was murder.

A Lot of people claim their bible is perfect, dontcha know...

In ancient times, the clergy were the scientists, but they had to communicate with people who had no scientific literacy. So instead of saying “We’ve autopsied some people who died and it looks like eating undercooked pork might destroy your heart” they say “Sky Guy says no pork” and achieve the public health outcome.

You have a source on this? I’m much more inclined to think it’s just religions imposing order on people as a litmus test for conformity and followership. Mormons have the Word of Wisdom, Islam has haram and halal, Catholics have Lent, Good Friday, Ash Wednesday, etc... They don’t seem to follow any prescriptive health benefit. It’s restriction for the sake of conformity.

There was a chapter in a game theory book I read that talked about this.

It said that rituals and rules can serve as a way to raise the cost of being in the religion, which can help keep people who don't really believe in the religion out. The book had a cartoon showing a man standing in front of a "Church Picnic" sign and he had a thought balloon that said "I'll pretend to love Jesus for a free hamburger!".

The tangible benefits of being accepted as being a member of a church can be considerable, far beyond the occasional free hamburger at a church picnic. Members of a church will often when they need services or need to buy things look first to providers that are in their church.

If all it takes to convince them you are one of them is showing up at services occasionally and giving a small donation now and then, that is a price many non-believers would pay.

Annoying rituals and rules raise that price. For the true believers who are in the church because they believe that it is the only way to not spend an eternity being tortured in hell, church is worth it even with the onerous rituals and rules.

For the person who is only there because he thinks it will get him a few more customers for his landscaping business, the rules and rituals can make it not worth it.

> The tangible benefits of being accepted as being a member of a church can be considerable

My step father is quite conservative and he and I don’t see eye to eye on much, but one time he pointed out how the declining religiosity of my generation meant an increased reliance on the state for social programs that the church once filled the need for, and I’ve never been able to stop seeing that function of religion since.

When thinking about religion, i think its important to keep in mind that way back in the day it was basically the state

Even today. It's still pretty much the state where I live. Utah's legislature is more or less at the whim of the LDS church. I get what you're saying, though. Church and state both have a shared goal of social welfare, to some degree.

Religion is complicated and built up over thousands of years. I am sure some rules are to designate an in-group/unity, some are based on the best belief at the time for the public good, some are probably arbitrary dictates from whomever happened to be in charge at the time. I think it would be a mistake to lump all the rules together (just as it would be a mistake to lump all of our modern laws together). Some are also self obvious, for example, i believe one of the kosher rules is dont eat animals that have been poisioned.

As far as pork specificly - i imagine nobody really knows, but there's some speculation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_restrictions_on_the_...

I’m not saying all restrictions are for public health benefit... but a lot of them are. Specifically, the kosher dietary rules (no pork, no shellfish which could have red tide, no rabbits, complicated guidelines on how to sever an animal’s neck without hitting the spinal cord, no animals that died of natural causes, separate utensils for meat and dairy) make a lot of sense in the environment of 2000 years ago.

Or maybe its because pork allegedly tastes similar to human and canibalism is taboo (for good reason). Or any other theory that's out there. Hard to say at the remove of thousands of years. Either way, its definitely not something that can be deduced a priori from logic by a lay person.

If you treat Leviticus as guidelines when stuck in a primitive area, it makes a bit more sense. One of the old (1890ish) US Army survival manuals is basically Leviticus rewritten in modern terms. Technology and modern health and cleanliness standards pretty much make that section ignorable.