@TRiG Excellent. My favorite meme on the issue:

@fredsbend Is there a way to know that that is actually a tattoo and not a sticker? Or a paste on?

@Zoe It doesn't look like a sticker/paste-on, but the picture isn't very clear.

Of course, one could argue over whether the Bible verse should be interpreted to forbid stickers or paste-ons as well as tattoos :-)

@MattGutting I'm probably killing the fun but the "Judge not lest ye be judged" rings in my head so I would rather not take the tattoo as it is, unless the person has a post boasting about his new tattoo :P

@MattGutting It's pretty clear the picture takes the verse as real as the maker assuming the tattoo is a tattoo

@Zoe Yeah, I agree.

So it doesn't matter the interpretation, since the maker of the meme is quite clear what interpretation they are taking :)

My Bible's commentary on the verse says: "This prohibition probably refers only to the common ancient Near Eastern practice of branding a slave with its owner’s name as well as branding the devotees of a god with its name."

Branding a person. Yuck.

@MattGutting ikr

@Zoe Searching for sources hasn't got me very far yet, but I have discovered that there's a "tattoo and body piercing studio" in Minneapolis called "Leviticus".

@Zoe Okay. Real tattoo. Real person. Name of Marcel Gelmi.

@TRiG How did you get that so fast? Ultra Google-fu?

I need to read the Bible now, I will leave a riddle here and check tmr for the answers, winners get a kiss (no cheating!): What did the Cheetah say in response to being accused of lying?

@MattGutting Trig is an atheist! He only pretended to Google it ... He knows all the religious mockery memes by heart :)

@MattGutting Reverse image search. Then switched to web view (it gave me a search for "leviticus tattoo"). Then looked at some suggested related searches at the bottom of the page (which included "leviticus tattoo fail" and "leviticus tattoo meme").

@svidgen I know - but he doesn't know all their sources by heart :-)

@TRiG Nice going! well done.

From those two, I tried the results on Reddit and The Advocate, thinking they might be good sources. The Advocate worked for me. (I've not looked closely at the Reddit results yet).

?The Advocate?

@svidgen Heh. I'd certainly seen it before, and read about it.

@MattGutting That's the one I linked to.

@TRiG Duh. I just read straight through the link. Didn't even notice it.

@waxeagle Anecdote: Clonakilty black pudding is actually really good.

@fredsbend That's weird.

@svidgen This question's on-topicness is under fire. I made that to try to make my point.

At least the gradients look nice.

@fredsbend Find and tag it with a denomination that holds the "not inspired" view for which you want a doctrinal statement (don't call it evidence). Then I'd say it's on-topic.

Else ... I think the criticisms are accurate. As an open question to "Christians", it's sort of unanswerable from a Christian-authoritative perspective.

As the question currently stands, I'm tempted to add my own VTC.

@fredsbend Without looking at the title, the red-blue spectrum looks like the acid-base spectrum.

@fredsbend There are Protestants, Catholics, and atheists in the spectrum. There are no Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Jews. It seems to me that those groups are often overlooked by Westerners.