From: michael@dime.cs.umass.edu (Michael Kieras)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Date: 1 Sep 92 00:58:23 GMT
Reply-To: michael@dime.cs.umass.edu (Michael Kieras)
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <715120866.AA00000@csource.oz.au> joe@csource.oz.au (Joe Slater) writes:
>No, Michael, you're the one asserting that millions of people could eat insects
>for hundreds of years, and that they would limit themselves to a few carefully
>defined species using characteristics that didn't exist. Now, *that* is
>implausible.
>
>You've done nothing more than quote a passage and claim that these insects don't
>exist. Surely you can see that that's no basis for an argument?

What I have done is to quote a passage that lists grasshoppers, locusts,
and beetles as examples of bugs that go on all four, and concluded that
since those insects do not in fact go on all four, the passage is in
error.  After you claimed that there must be some insect species somewhere
that fit the bill, I asked (clumsily, as I later admitted and rephrased) for
examples of grasshoppers, locusts, and beetles that did, since neither I nor
the two entomologists I live with are aware of any (the closest we could
come was that there are species of beetles which will mimic other insects
and might, for instance, wave their front legs around if they saw another
insect with long, wavy antennae; I think it would be extremely disingenuous
to claim that this is specifically what was written about, and it still
doesn't cover grasshoppers and locusts).

What you are now doing is assuming that since "millions of people could
eat insects for hundreds of years" while attempting to adhere to Biblical
criteria, that therefore the criteria must be correct and that there must
in fact exist grasshoppers, locusts, and beetles that fit the criteria.
_That_ is a big assumption; one you apparently can't back up.

When you are writing your response, please remember that printing presses
are a fairly recent invention, and back in the days that those rules were
supposed to have applied, the Hebrews would not each have a handy-dandy
copy of the texts to check everytime they wanted to snack on a handful of
locusts.  That means there were a lot of rules that they mostly had to
rely on memory to follow, and they might have simply remembered that
locusts were ok to eat without even thinking about the "goeth upon all
four" part.

Even if someone _did_ notice that grasshoppers et al didn't go upon all
four, would they have said anything, with the penalty for heresy being
stoning or other unpleasantness?

By pointing out the error in Leviticus 11:21-23 I am not implying anything
about the intelligence of people that the text was aimed at; merely that
the original writers of the text were incorrect about the numbers of legs
that the specified insects have or use to walk (I say "have or use to walk"
because while I think it's pretty clear that 11:21-11:22 are talking about
bugs that _have_ four legs, someone could (disingenuously, IMHO) say that
11:21-11:22 are only talking about bugs that _walk_ on all four, and that
only 11:23 is concerned with bugs that actually have four legs).

Actually, if you want to continue to defend this passage, your strongest
alternative at this point is to try to reduce it to another translational
error (like "oif" to "bird", which I have conceded _is_ merely an error in
translation), and show that the original text did not actually specify four
legs/all four.  Not having read the original Hebrew (nor even being able
to), I can't say with 100% certainty that the Bible actually talks about
bugs with four legs.  If, however, this does turn out to be another
translational error, I think it pretty much wraps it up for the accuracy
of current English Bible translations.

Good luck.


michael@cs.umass.edu