(blink)
No no no no no, very much no.

Controlling the birth rate is far, far from the desire of such religious rules. It's only in this slightly more enlightneed time now we've suddenly realised that "man" and "nature" are not two seperate entities that overpopulation is seen as a bad thing.
Check back in the past and you'll find every tribe working as hard as possible to outbreed its neighbour and thus beat the kacky out of them by superior numbers when the inevitable war over limited resources kicked off.
If you'd like a modern day example, ask the Pope.

As for the debate, the rules about who is allowed to sleep with whom and whether you need a church sanctioned license to do so.
Not a shred of biology there just the usual woe betide you if the priest hasn't been paid his ninepence...


The other bits, I agree entriely, the Old Testament does contain a pretty handy manual for desert living. Unfortuantely instead of setting out the reasons for the prohibitions they are left entirely unexplained as the creatures are simply named as "unclean" and then the reader is distracted by made up horror stories of what happens when you don't do exactly as your local shaman tells you.
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 13:03, Reply)