Funny but for Christians, in the old testament it is forbidden to eat pork and also until the canon law of 1983 women were required to cover their heads before entering a church or cathedrale...  Just goes to show that we keep what we want of our religions and beliefs.  

May explain why some either stop practicing their religion or stop believing in it.

It is true that pork possibly has more dangerous bacteria than beef. (You can eat beef raw, whereas pork you really can´t.) BUT, chicken is even MORE dangerous than pork, and nobody says chicken is "dirty" in Turkey.

  Personally, I try to eat as little meat as possible and when I do it´s organic.  Now what scares me is the fact that even our fruits/vegetables and grains are being genetically manipulated and so many chemicals are used on them...it´s making natural bacteria seem far less scary!!! 

The explination for this is that the maximum weight of a chiken is rather less than a pig.  The chicken can be slaughtered prior to being cooked, takes about 15-20 minutes to kill, gut and clean a chicken, versus a pig which takes a little longer to go through the slaughter process and is rather large to throw in a pot right after, unless you plan to feed a whole village in one shot.

Also, pigs roll about in mud(to protect it´s skin from the sun) are rummagers, in some countries they are used to controle organic refuse(vegetable and fruits and peelings thrown out), so in general they look unclean.

I saw this cool thing on tv, that showed most pigs actually hate dirt... But because we humans only offer them dirty water they usually walk around covered in that dirt just to keep cool. If we would provide them clean water, they would walk around freshly washed all the time Anyway, the moment I realised that chickens eat their own poop, I didn´t eat chicken for a while... I totally understand people who limit their meat-intake, not only for a vegetarian point of view, but also because a piece of meat increases your carbon-footprint. But I just can´t live without my meat So I just have a vegi-day once in a while.

What can be said to someone who enjoys his chicken meat or pork? If you like it and if it is OK for you  then just eat it. I don´t eat lamb or pork nor do I eat say rabbit meat. I enjoy eating the kind of food my mother cooked me in childhood. She was a Muslim woman and I had no chance to get used to eating pork. I don´t feel I am losing anything, you substitute one food with another.

True there are economic consequences, if we Turks ate pork, we could use this abundant and economic food and probably there would be fewer hungry people. Alas we don´t like it regardless of what we believe in. I have no problem eating it occasionally in a friends house but I would never buy it since I said I am not dying for it.

As for chickens, I suppose you are not expecting them to follow the same rules of hygiene as we humans do. Chicken meat has been consumend for thousands of years and it doesn´t do much harm at all. (Though I don´t prefer chicken all that much either).

Vegetables grow on animal carcasses and most of them are either GDO or hormone treated (thanks Israel for destroying natural seeds), meat from domestic animals is full of antibiotics and other drugs and the meat is further treated with preservatives to extend its shelf life. These are the natural results of having to live in an overly polluted world.

Meanwhile, thanks Lucy Lawless for risking her freedom while trying to stop shell from launching oil platforms in the North Pole.

I fail to see how Israel comes into this discussion. I know people like to blame Israel for a lot, and some of the things this state is blamed for is true... but general distruction of seeds? Really? And no, please don´t explain it to me... I already had enough angry discussion threads lately

Barba, there are certainly somethings going on in the world and you know whom to hold responsible for them. In one occasion you asked me to remember that Israel and the Jewry are not synonymous and I accepted that despite I feel what you are saying is only technically correct.

I have enormous respect for the Jews for the wonderful things they have done but I also protest them for the evil things committed in their name and the body that represent them happens to be the Israeli government.

I have nothing against you. You have my love and my respect as a person but I do listen to speeches made by the Israeli government and I find them overly patriotic if not racist at times.

Check out the seed, GDO and Israel link, all the Internet is at your disposal. If you learn about the game Israel plays in this, I expect you to condemn it as much as I do.

I am not seeking to flame you. If you wish we could carry this to the PM´s and stop being offtopic.

And I would venture to say that these changes were only for the better. There are fierce debates right now in the Church about contraception, abortion (women´s issues), as the Church is obsessed with controlling women and with other people´s sexuality. All that while the child abuse done by the Church members and bishops is very low on their agenda, and they have done a lot to cover it up and not much to eradicate the problem and punish the perpetrators. Recently in the US the bishops and the Vatican have criticized a group of American nuns who support gay rights and women´s right to have accessible contraception (a basic human right), and who do not pursue the men´s crazy social conservative agenda, but instead these nuns focus on poverty and social injustice!!! This is what the Church is basically boiling down to these days. They don´t give a damn about the poor, they are just obsessed with controlling women and other people´s sexuality (not their own). This is why a religious structure should be subject to change and should have to change.

That is why I am a non practecing catholic for 30 years now andI only consider myself a catholic because I was born into it and my parents christened me into the faith.  Contrary to the trend that I see, I did not and will not convert to another religion because I am disinchanted with my own.  I think that any human being can make his own decisions and have his own beleifs without having another of pseudo higher power dictate to them what is best in the matter of faith.

If I go by what I have read and learned over the years, Jesus, Mohamad, Moses, Abraham and the whole of the prophets did not need to have a place to worship, their faiths were in their hearts and soul, why should I get all dressed up and go prosternate myself in front of a man made represantation of a pseudo god or representative of his in a building constructed by man and to be considered holy, with men who preach the virtue of god and probably have less moral integrity then the people he is preaching too, that would be hypocritical of me.

That would be an explination of why we see a trend of more non practecing or atheists people.  But if we go into the psycology of the human, at the first sign of a massive hardship that will shake man he will return to his religious ways, it is a known fact, in the face of hardship and strong adversety man returns to his faith for solice.