Biblical Hygiene

[LogicIsYourFriend]

Originally Posted by BergenCountyJohnny

Your criticism of the Bible for not having instructions on using/making soap is a non sequitur based on the false premise that the Bible ought to include such instruction in hygiene. It does not follow (non sequitur) that a book focused on spiritual instruction would contain any particular instruction in hygiene, as hygiene is not primarily a spiritual matter but rather a physical one.

It's not just a "book focused on spiritual instruction", as many people have pointed out in this thread, it does talk about quarantining and washing with running water (a little). But I'm not referring to it as merely a book on spiritual instruction, but as THE FINAL "WORD OF GOD": God's entirety of "useful" information he gave to us. There's a whole lot more stuff than hygiene that would have been useful to people of history that we only recently discovered, as well, obviously. So if it is the final "word of God", then it is obvious that he didn't care to tell people about any of these useful things, even though using soap is so simple that a caveman could understand it™.

My argument was NOT:
A spiritual book would have information about hygiene
The bible does not have information about hygiene
Therefore it's not a spiritual book

It was:
Information about using soap regularly is very useful to civilization
The bible does not contain this information
Therefore the bible would have been more useful if it did.

So your criticism of the Bible for lacking instruction in hygiene is a non sequitur. My guess is that it's based on a faulty premise, i.e. that the Bible is supposed to contain such information.

Thank you for explaining your [non-sequitur] premise in more detail, that being that the Bible ought to include more instruction in science such as physical hygiene as opposed to instruction in spirituality. Basically, you want to argue that since you believe hand-washing and antibacterial soap would have saved countless lives (another unbacked, faulty premise that serves as a straw man, so there's another logical fallacy on your end) that the Bible, despite being a spiritual book, should have included this much about physical hygiene. Irrational.

OK so now you want to question the whole idea that soap is useful and even saves lives? And how is it a straw man when it relates directly to the OP?

That statement is a great logical fallacy itself, so thanks for providing another one. Let's look at it:

- A caring God would teach people what's good for them
- Hand washing with bacterial soap is good for people
- The Bible which is supposed to be God's Word never taught people to wash hands with bacterial soap

Therefore, the Bible is not really written by God
OR
Therefore, God doesn't really care about people

LOGICAL FALLACY: Inverse error set up by the non sequitur that hand-washing hygiene ought to be in the Bible.

To suggest, imply, or state that God must not care about people because a god who cares about people would teach handwashing with antibacterial soap (non sequitur) but the God of the Bible did not is denying the antecedent.

You misunderstood my statement. Let's look at it.
"But, as a side note, the fact that the final "word from God" doesn't say anything about the simple but indispensable concept of washing your hands with soap regularly, at the very least, means that it wasn't written by a god that cared for people to know this information."

He doesn't care for people to know this information, meaning he didn't want people to know about it until millennia after the bible was written; Not that he didn't care for people period.

Here, so you can see it clearly:
God does what he wants
God gave the bible to humans to use for information
There is no other source of "God's word" than the bible
God avoided putting information about soap etc. in the bible
Therefore he did not want to tell humans about soap etc.

____
However, do you think it is caring to withhold such information? I don't. But I admit that this much is an opinion, not a logical proof.

Logic is not your friend this time around, I'm afraid.

Nice try. It might help for you to lay out the logical proofs you are accusing me of postulating first. Oh and if you read and understood my posts better, that would help too.

[Tantalust]

Matthew 15:20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

[Asheville Native]

So much nonsense, and non-points here to deal with more than one at at time.

Originally Posted by Starlady01

This is why you can have instantaneous wireless communication with someone on the other side of the earth.

But we can't, there is a noticeable lag, even to the human senses when an interviewer is asking a question to someone half a world away.

[LogicIsYourFriend]

Originally Posted by Tantalust

Matthew 15:20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

Ah.. So not only does the bible leaves us hanging in terms of washing hands with soap before eating, but Jesus actually teaches that washing your hands before eating is pointless.

Matthew 15:
1Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"
3Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

10Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' "

17"Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?

It is tradition to wash hands, but Jesus thinks that it is a useless tradition. He clearly believes that food in its entirety leaves your body, and he does not realize that many nutrients and toxins stay in the body and have an enormous affect on the body.

His advice here is that it doesn't matter how dirty your hands are when you eat, or how dirty your food is, because food simply leaves the body; all you have to do to stay clean is follow commandments like honoring your mother and father, and "evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander" (15:19).

[Tantalust]

Originally Posted by Campbell34

(IF YOU HAD TAKEN THE TIME TO READ THE BIBLE,)