| Paleo Versus Christianity? Posted: 15 Jan 2011 02:08 PM PST Many moons ago, Jimmy Moore e-mailed me to ask me my opinion on whether a Christian could follow a paleo low-carb diet. Jimmy is a Christian, but his post included the opinions of many heathens, including me. (That was posted in November, and I'm just really late in posting about it here.) Here's what I wrote in response: I suppose that I'd say two things:
First, I don't think that the Bible should be looked to — even by Christians — for dietary advice. That's clearly not its purpose. It's not a divine cookbook (except in some few laws). Its claims and metaphors about food reflect the habits of the primitive agricultural societies in and for which it was written.
Second, the Bible contains much worse things than bread-eating, such as stoning blasphemers, demands of death for gays, near-sacrifice of children, drunken incest, genocide, slavery, etc. Those things -- not to mention its basic morality -- strike me as far more important.
Personally, as an Objectivist, I don't regard the Bible as anything more than canonical ancient literature: it has no moral weight for me. So if the Bible commands bread-eating, so much worse for the Bible.
However, I do understand that Christians have a different perspective. Yet ultimately, they need to decide what will have more weight with them: the hard facts about what makes their lives here on Earth better, and the claims of Scripture. I hope they choose the hard facts. If not, they'll self-destruct in far more important ways than diet. And that's a terrible shame. You can read the other responses, as well as the comments, here: Can A Christian Follow A Paleo Low-Carb Diet? |
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