I would like to welcome you to episode 18 of the Symbolic World podcast.

In this episode, I will be playing for you a thought that I had about a year ago

trying to explain some of the more difficult aspects of the Bible.

I noticed that when I heard some atheists criticize the Bible, they would often go to certain key examples.

And one of the examples they used to criticize how silly it was was certain laws in the Old Testament,

specifically the law which forbids the mixing of wool and linen.

And so I thought that it would be an interesting way to deal with this would

be to explain this law and explain how coherent it is and how symbolically coherent and

how it can lead to a certain shape of the world. And so enjoy. This is Jonathan Peuge.

Welcome to the symbolic world.

One of the things that gets people riled up when discussing the Bible is purity laws. It seems you can't listen to someone criticizing religion for two minutes

before they start saying how stupid it is that you can't weave linen and wool together.

Then they'll go on to say that the laws in the Bible, which are about washing and about latrines,

not having latrines in camp camp are just misunderstood and primitive hygiene.

But honestly, myself, I find those laws to be some of the most interesting

and the most important in terms of understanding how the world works and how we interact with what is around us.

And so I'm going to explain them as much as possible. When we look at the creation story in the Bible, we notice that the world is mostly made

by two processes, calling forth into being, let there be, and then separating beings into

clear opposites. Heaven and earth, light and dark, water and dry land, and then separating beings into clear opposites. Heaven and earth, light and dark, water and dry land.

And then the plants, they're separated into species,

which are meant to reproduce themselves according to their seed.

And then animals are separated into categories,

...