Islamic scholars consulted by a leading producer of cultivated meat say that the newfangled protein — which is grown from animal cells and doesn’t require animals to be slaughtered — can be halal, or permissible under Muslim law.
And the Jewish Orthodox Union this month certified a strain of lab-grown chicken as kosher for the first time, “marking a significant step forward for the food technology’s acceptance under Jewish dietary law,” as the Times of Israel put it.
And isn’t it funny how the gods are always concerned with the same things their worshippers are? It would be odd to care deeply about regulating the sexual and dietary habits of the ants in our backyards. If god(s) were real I’d expect their interests to be wild and beyond our understanding, and not about what hats humans can wear and what meat is acceptable.
The in-lore explanation is that we are created by the god(s) in their own image. Much like if you made a toy to play with other toys, you’d probably make something humanoid, or at least anthropomorphic.
Unless you want to talk about Lovecraftian horror gods, but in that lore, humans weren’t created by the gods (as far as I know).
Created in their image perhaps, but generally not in their own capability, understanding, and therefore one would assume, interests. Gods are like us because we imagine them like us, because humans draw from what we know and what we are concerned with when we imagine and dream and hallucinate. Religious writers cannot accurately fathom the interests of those with superhuman knowledge and capability, and so the gods typically want what the people who claim to speak for them also want, and offer solutions to whatever the worshippers are concerned with. Lovecraft was brilliant for acknowledging this limitation in his own way, he was known for not describing the horror because it is far too horrible and beyond our comprehension.
Yes, but when communicating to these minions, it makes sense to translate your intentions into what they can relate to.
If I want a way to control my ants so that they stay away from some places but go to others, I might teach them to avoid soap and seek sugar.
They might not understand what my bed is because it’s too big and alien for them, but if I put some soap around it, they will avoid going there. They might not understand what I mean by “go to my neighbor’s garden”, but they will be able to follow a trail of sugar to that place.
So especially if the interests of the gods are wild and beyond our understanding, I’d expect them to give us some relatable proxies instead.
While I see your point, I’ve never met nor heard of someone training ants in such a way, it would take a very odd and unusual person to hold and act on such an interest. If this is an analog for gods I suspect they are not entirely right, provided they exist at all.
I’m also at a loss as to how rules about sex and dietary restrictions would lead to some greater goal beyond our understanding. Religious rules aren’t typically physical boundaries to exploration like the soap line. It’s more often rules about things like sacrificing animals, what hats to wear when, how to treat people inside and outside the religion, when to fast, when to feast, when to pray, what to eat, and who needs to be obeyed, (spoiler: it’s always the men who claim to speak for gods.)