After having pork last night, I started wondering about the whole clean/unclean animal thing. Pigs, in particular.
When I was a JW, I remember being told that pigs contain some sort of bacteria or germ that didn't get killed unless they were cooked properly. I also remember hearing that that showed God's wisdom. He knew that ancient people didn't know about germs, so he made pigs unclean to protect them. He could have given them proper cooking techniques like "cook it longer", but no. They were off-limits. I'm not sure if that thought came from 'official' doctrine like a Watchtower or if it was just some zealous JW speculating.
But, seems like there's a few flaws here. First of all, weren't Adam and Eve given ALL the creatures of the earth as food? I don't recall any clean/unclean standards. Surely if this dangerous bacteria existed in pigs, it existed back then - or at least after Adam and Eve got kicked out of paradise. Why wasn't it until centuries later that God told them it wasn't good for them?
Furthermore, what changed when Jesus ended the law? People still didn't know enough about germs then. They might have known safer cooking techniques by then.
Was the whole thing about germs being the reason an official JW doctrine? God arbitrarily saying "pigs are unclean because I say so" seems like a much more cohesive explaination that doesn't interfere with what he told Adam and Eve.