Pilgrims, Indians, Thanksgiving and Beer??

[MeMyself]

A lot of posts disappeared in today's outage, so I'll just say this short and quick--Pilgrims and Puritans are not the same thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agreed.

[MeMyself]

Just Imagine how arrogant Caiaphas must of thought of Jesus ..

Oy. 

The truth Jesus brought was life and eternity changing...this drivel about beer does nothing for anybody.

To quote a slightly popular song, "Let it go, Let it go...."

[Jd34]

To quote a slightly popular song, "Let it go, Let it go...."

I can do that..lol, it has become a little ridiculous. I am just a stickler for details. Who cares you ask?? Nobody really - just fun facts is all..

[JohnDB]

Louise Pasteur didn't get around to discovering what made stuff go bad till around the 1850's.
Up to that time people used wine and beer (even the Egyptians had beer that was Israeli made) to sanitize the water that they consumed. Beer was usually a lot cheaper than wine and could be made fairly alcoholic. (meaning that you didn't have to use a lot) But wine, sherry, and liquor was fairly expensive. (better flavored too)


Most people used springs or creeks or rivers to get water from. These sources of water are extremely susceptible to contamination from sewage upstream and septic tanks/cesspools/latrines that are needed in any village. No city can exist without some kind of handling of body waste. Even urination in public places can cause cholera. So it has been mandated for centuries to use latrines.  Today we have sewage treatment facilities in every city. No one wants to admit to working in them but the pay is rather good actually. We also have garbage handlers that haul away the tons and tons of waste that we create every day. So did they...but on a much smaller scale and usually as a punishment...we still do that somewhat today.


So the use of alcoholic beverages to sanitize water has been used for centuries...Even when Jesus was about it was used. Paul admonished Timothy for not using it when he was trying to appear to be exceptionally sober.


Tolerance for these beverages becomes quite high when accustomed to consuming alcohol. I would dare say that Paul or any one of the apostles and of course the Pilgrims could likely easily drink anyone of us under the table due to their consistent consumption. A person usually develops an ability to more easily produce an enzyme in the blood stream that metabolizes the alcohol and keeps a person from being drunk on small amounts of alcohol....and only slightly buzzed on large quantities.


But the insinuation that the Pilgrims/Missionaries were drunks who were desperate to get more beer and begged the local indian population for beer and the means to produce more is really going too far. Sure, the Pilgrims had no idea as to why they needed to drink short beers (water/beer mixture)...how the microbial contamination of water in Europe was what made them sick when they drank it nor how all that fecal material from latrines had yet to exist in this "new world" and that all of the springs and streams were completely safe...


They only thanked God that when all the options they had were gone that they could drink the water...and thrived doing so.

[Jd34]

Tolerance for these beverages becomes quite high when accustomed to consuming alcohol

Bingo!!

Years of consuming alcohol and building a high tolerance to it is a pretty good indicator of acquiring a dependence and addiction to it.  I don't think it would be too far fetched to say that some may have even been or became alcoholics.

Their bodies would have craved the alcohol and later on, its pretty clear why they refined the brewing process to obtain high test..lol

A person usually develops an ability to more easily produce an enzyme in the blood stream that metabolizes the alcohol and keeps a person from being drunk on small amounts of alcohol....and only slightly buzzed on large quantities.

I am a biochemist and in the context that you are speaking,I am assuming that you are referring to the enzyme Alcohol Dehydrogenase- much much more complicated than that... In the hospital setting its the liver enzymes alt, ast that we look for.  Many more mechanisms involved with alcohol consumption, tolerance and dependence.

There is also an alcohol gene. It all ties in but to most, biochemistry is a boring subject and Im sure no one here wants to hear about it.. I did a lot of undergrad research on it back in the day.. Maybe thats why the beer/pilgrim thingie caught my attention so much 

But the insinuation that the Pilgrims/Missionaries were drunks

I have never said they were drunks . I know many alcoholics that are not drunks. I insinuated that they had a great need for beer and was one of the reasons for stopping. I think it was you that made that assumption.

They only thanked God that when all the options they had were gone that they could drink the water...and thrived doing so.

Now you know as well as I that not everyone is as strong in God as some.  We are talking about a population of people here.. Pilgrims with some Puritan beliefs since we have established them as being separate...will that work? Lol