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Judgement Day and We Can Know: What the hell?
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I was going to go with the real life example of men who are straight, say they are straight, believe they are straight, self identify as straight, possibly even hate those gay fags, and then suck off other guys in a park restroom on the way home from work every weekday. It's actually a significant minority population.
If you ask those people if they're homosexual, they'll say with 100% certainty they're straight. It's not just because they're embarrassed or lying; they actually believe they're straight. That's the same position christians/muslims/jews who don't believe God exists and reject the miracles of Jesus/Mohammad/Moses are in.
I don't think I ever said that. What I suggested is that someone insisting upon specific religious self-identification without having any logical argument as to why or is unable to demonstrate a reasonable practical employment of professed dogma/instruction/mandate is a nincompoop.
And lots of people are nincompoops.
Well If you want to be literal then yes it's specifically that Islamic and Christian practices as ascribed in the bible leave one well open to potentially dangerous or deadly actions and can lead to mental/emotional harm as they create a sense of severe codependency if practiced as advertised which can create a powerful vested interest in actively denying reality when reality and religious authority conflict.
Of course when speaking regarding religion in America or globally it's usually much easier to say in shorthand form. I write long enough posts as it is without trying to elaborate on every point that much.
While that may be true the 2012 movement is not based on a heavily entrenched, constitutionally sheilded institution that is continuously spreading itself worlwide and making every effort necessary to convert more people. That's the biggest difference. Society gives religion special privilege and exemption from meeting the same standards as any other organization.
This is not limited to government granted rights or privileges either. The mere act of bringing up religion in social discourse prompts requirements of very special social considerations lest you be labeled as horribly insensitive. Why is it horribly insensitive? Because of the same level of codependency established above. People take this VERY seriously because it has been supplanted in their mind as central to their emotional/mental well being and any capable rocking of that boat can and does often cause high levels of distress. If that's not a sign there's something wrong here then I don't know what is.
Well yes that's always the case, the problem is because of social and political institutions we cannot prosecute and put away the hucksters like Camping for obviously selling bullshit to the masses and ruining their lives. Why? Camping gets to say he believes in God, God told him the apocalypse was coming! This is all clearly about money but because we give religion special treatment camping gets to pull off massive fraud that we as taxpayers have to pay for several times over and all we can do is shake our heads and nod at the man because Heaven forbid we question his beliefs or their sincerity and hold him responsible for their repercussions!
To me that's a sad state of affairs. Look at how we treat small cults versus large organized religions and you'll see a world of difference. I can practically guarantee you that if Camping were a raelien or some other group without protected status his entire organization would be dismantled with lawsuits by now.
I think I worded that badly. What I mean is that you cannot pick and choose divine mandates you want to follow or not based on your preferences. Whether you think it's shitty or awesomesauce it's still a message from the divine. If divine authority supplants yours then you are not allowed to question the act, and because religion's authority does not derive from any real world source but rather from a type of faith that requires you do as you are told and just hope for the best you cannot rationally question the source of the other person's actions without equally undermining your own faith.
Who are you to question someone else's religion? Divine authority does not require any rational real world source/consideration because it IS DIVINE therefore any real world concerns about whether or not you should or should not do something are thrown out the window. You are questioning divinity itself by telling someone it is not right to do something their religion has instructed them to do on Divine Authrity/Faith. Anything else just comes down to a No True Scotsman argument, or as I shortened it to earlier: No u!
It does not matter that in the real world those actions are vastly different or have vastly different consequences because you both accepted the same axiom of the divine and because of that you cannot question the other person's faith, or the actions they take on behalf of their faith without saying yours is just as false as theirs.
It is, the fact we obviously don't do this shows we're starting to figure out secularism, especially in regards to the law is a grand idea. When the law believes that a religious motive never absolves someone from harming another then suddenly we can start throwing murderers and bombers in jail because we've made an equal judgement that religious motive does not excuse the harm of another, ever because we can judge it as being objectively harmful to social interaction to allow such things.
The problem however is that we still treat religion in many areas with kid gloves and that's where hucksters like Camping are allowed to flourish because their actions are still shielded around a guise that they can't be held responsible for coercing millions into ruining their lives, because hey, God told me so!
Yes, but you know what happens if you arrive at an answer the Church doesn't like? Hello excommunication!/Splinter group!
You are not allowed to remain inside the organization if you arrive at a vastly different conclusion than the establishment and voice it. You cease to be a member for as long as you do. I don't think that's actually allowing questioning because you are never allowed to actually change the status quo with your answer. You're just being told you can use this here gun, but you can only shoot fish in a barrel, anything else and they take it away.
1: Except, barring super-fundamentalist Christianity/Islam, no one takes their holy books as literal commands. And really, can you actually prove that believing in God will result in shattered sanity when those beliefs are questioned?
Because at the moment that's about the same argument as "Atheism will result in evil moral-less bastards who'd slit their own mothers for a nickel because they don't have the Christian moral framework!" which is also completely retarded.
2: Are you saying that the Constitutional protection of religion is unwarranted?
3: I'm not questioning their religion. I'm questioning their reprehensible actions. "You blew up an abortion clinic!" "IT'S MY RELIGION" "YOU BLEW UP AN ABORTION CLINIC WITH TEN PEOPLE INSIDE." "But you believe X that I find silly!" "YOU BLEW UP AN ABORTION CLINIC WITH TEN PEOPLE INSIDE."
To clarify: Actions are one thing, saying something is another.
And really, saying "This'll happen!" is not illegal, and should not be. First Amendment right. It's only the fault of those who believed his frankly idiotic predictions, not the fault of Religion. Seriously. Just as many people, if not more, are spending all of their life savings on the 2012 predictions.
It's speech that's the problem here, and the fact that he's using Religion as an appeal to authority, which is completely bogus. People are doing the same thing with "Mayan prophecy"/pseudoscience for 2012. And far more effectively, I might add. Again, multiple businesses are based on that. More than can be said for Camping's predictions.
4: What about the Franciscans? They seemed to survive questioning the Catholic Church on poverty.
St. Peter Damian worked to outlaw simony, and succeeded.
St. John of Damascus had his hand cut off as a result of a pope framing him to stop his influence, and he was made a saint!
So I guess you could say that opposing the Church, at least in the early days, either got you excommunicated, killed, or turned into a saint.
On one hand, that sucks. On the other hand, my GOD are they dumb.
Conflicted
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I would say that they had it coming.
Say what you will about the Nigerian Prince scam, Nigeria is a real place and the banks they want you to send your money to are real places.
This is like if the Nigerian Prince Banking Scam was instead the Venusian God-Emperor Money-Cave Scam.
So basically Scientology?
I still don't think Scientology is a real thing.
I mean, I think the low-level operators probably think it's real, because you'd kind of have to want to be president of the Vicksburg, MS, chapter of the Church, but the real Scientology? I think it's a fraud. I think it's a country club, disguised as church to dodge taxes, where the dues are so high only the super-rich and famous can take advantage of the "church" and it's 5-star dining facilities, fitness centers, and day spas.
The crazy just keeps out the riff-raff.
But the book itself says that's exactly what you're supposed to do. That doesn't make any sense. That's like saying that because I can use pepper spray to season my meals we should start selling it at the grocery store. You're not using it as directed, when using it as directed leads to the same thing. It's really hard for me to come up with any reason (from a philosophical standpoint) that we should allow something designed from the get-go to invite potential harm on someone unless we can remove that potential for harm.
Before anyone asks, no owning a gun or knife for self-defense is in nowhere near the same category as religion. If I buy a gun I will not be near-unilaterally coerced into joining the military (where there is a risk of severe bodily harm or even instant death.)
The difference here is we both agree fundies are universally harmful BECAUSE of their fundamentalist beliefs. Those fundamentalist beliefs are exactly how the bible literally tells you it's supposed to be read. But people categorically ignore that. Some do and come to awesome, responsible choices like yourself, and some go and bomb abortion clinics.
The problem here is that the entire institution is founded on principles designed to lead to abortion clinic bombings. The fact that those don't happen now does not excuse the fact that because of that institutional foundation things couldn't eventually change in the future in a real and possibly even sudden way as a response to sufficient socio-political pressure.
Specifically yes, I feel that religion in it of itself deserves just as much special, specific protection as my right to own plutonium. Freedom of speech, assembly, and expression already cover all things religion does that are good. What it does that's not good? spreading social harm, chaos? Absolving hucksters of their legal liabilities? That only exists because religion gets special treatment. The fact it has a specific exemption gives the government leeway to appoint sympathetic judges and other folks who will pardon charlatans like Camping of any ill doing because they're a fundie too.
I want the ability for that to happen completely removed. If you've got a better Idea I'm all ears. Obviously this'd never happen in modern America but I'm more talking about what I think should be eventually rather than what could be now with what we have.
Nobody would prevent churches from forming, or from acting as charities. It's just that they wouldn't suddenly be given a double standard like they are now with regards to how they operate. They'd be forced to work just like any other organization on the planet. Oh the humanity!
The point is, that if at any point you accept "God said so!" or "because it's a part of my religion" as a valid authority for doing literally anything that you would never have done otherwise you must accept it as a valid reason for doing everything.
When you join the military for example you don't get to question your superior's orders, you just do them and let the higher ranks worry about the rest. You don't get to choose not to follow an order you don't understand or that you don't like. So to, if you accept the divine and accept that the divine has supreme authority and can and does give instructions then who are you to question someone else's orders/instructions? It's the same as questioning your own at that point.
It doesn't matter what they did, you know why? Because if they're receiving divine orders then they have lost all of their autonomy and given it up to the divine. You wouldn't treat a soldier shooting someone in time of war on the battlefield the same as someone who shot a man on the street for his wallet in cold blood.
So if you accept the divine, accept divine authority, and accept divine instruction then the only thing you can argue over is what those instructions were. But wait, how do you know if either of you has it right? It's all subjective at that point because you're arguing over semantics and interpretation.
There is no objective metric to say one of you are more or less right than the other. The fact that he's murdering people doesn't matter because if divine authority supersedes the laws of man then if God really did want to bomb an abortion clinic then it needs to be bombed. You just think that order would never be given, but what if it were? You can't rule it out, you can't say it's impossible. You can only say the other guy is No True Scotsman for doing it because it's something you dislike. But in the chain of command what you like matters diddly squat.
What you're doing doesn't matter. Whether you're told to go preach the word of God or go bomb abortion clinics you're still being given direct, divine orders and you do them without question because of divine authority.
Institutionalized coercion is not protected after a certain level. Why do you think we have racketeering laws? I don't care if it's 2012 or not stuff like that should be taken to task if they're involved in it. Camping, in my eyes, was running a racket.
The Bible specifically tells you to abandon your earthly possessions to the church/charity at your own personal expense. 2012 does not. Marked difference in what one is saying versus the other. Not to mention Camping is backed by a very large, very influential institutions (well, he was prior to his prediction flopping.)
And would Simony or poverty be considered core tenants of the faith? I'm pretty sure that the core tenants more concern divine authority, like Jesus being the son of god, the trinity, etc and not specific practices as performed by the church.
Prove where Abrahamic religions can cause potential harm, as I asked earlier. Like, actual proof. You say it can cause psychological proof. Gimmie psychological studies showing that yes, Abrahamic religions are designed from the get go to invite harm.
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANITY IS NOT "ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS".
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANITY IS NOT "ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS".
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANITY IS NOT "ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS".
FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANITY IS NOT "ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS".
It is A, SINGULAR, INDIVIDUAL Abrahamic Religion, yes. But it is not "Abrahamic Religions."
And no, I do not believe Fundamentalist Chrisitans are harmful because of their beliefs. I believe Fundamentalist Christians are harmful because of their actions on those beliefs. If someone believed killing everyone they met would bring them eternal joy and happiness, but didn't act on it, I'd say "That's pretty kooky", and move on with my life. If they started killing everyone they met, I'd say "What the fuck" and call the police.
Also, unless you can pull out a verse from the Bible that says "Thou shalt bomb abortion clinics, for they are totally bad", your entire "Fundamentalist Christians follow the Bible literally all the time forever" argument falls apart. Because then they're making an interpretation based on that book, and acting on the interpretation.
Cite please.
Cite where Camping has any liability for saying something that happened to cause people to spend all of their money etc. He said something, they did things. He didn't hold them at gunpoint.
Like those businesses that are saying "2012's gonna happen, buy all these supplies from us so you can SURVIVE!", you mean? People are free to say what they want, even if it is blatant lies. Other people are free to believe these blatant lies, and act as they see fit. The listeners however are not protected from the consequences of those actions.
I don't even know how to approach this other than "This is completely retarded." Civilians who bomb abortion clinics are civilians who bomb abortion clinics, not Soldiers Of God immune to all criticism from people who happen to have religious beliefs. Saying "GOD TOLD ME TO DO IT" is not a defense against anything whatsoever.
So wait. You're saying actions don't matter somehow, it's all what you believe? What? And no, you don't do them without question, unless you're functionally retarded.
Institutionalized coercion? How is this coercion? He said "THE WORLD'S GONNA END ON THIS DATE" and then people for some reason believed him, then bought billboards and shit saying "THE WORLD'S GONNA END ON THIS DATE". I don't see how he was racketeering.
...so? What's so bad about asking/telling people to donate money/possessions/time to the poor ie: charity?
Let's play the quote game again.
I gave examples of the exact opposite of this happening, and suddenly your argument changes. Funny, how when you spout something that is completely insane, and are called on it, you change your argument to something else and act all smug about it.
I'm done.
It shouldn't. The concept of abiogenesis is a good example, i think (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis). Its a theory quite fundamentally to the scientific understanding of the world today. However it remains still unproven. We haven't created life in a lab. Oh, we modified it - but creating it? It seems to me the theistic assumption "god did it" requires just as much faith as the scientific method. You are right... it shouldn't require faith by its own rules.
Now, i know you don't like to hear this, but from here it looks you also need a good deal of faith in science. Interestingly in exactly the same areas where you require faith in religion. Also science can be quite dogmatic on its own. Think about the trouble Einstein went through with his new model.
What you are proposing is an ideal of science, but since nothing is perfect i think science won't ever achive a totally flawless understanding of the world. And if it should i don't think we could ever be entirely sure it is the real thing.
"Fundamental", i quite like that. What kind of construct are you going to build on an elusive foundation?
Its personal preference.
Of course, since that ain't your choosen path, arguing about it leads nowhere.
You are off running around in your head trying to invalidate it without ever considering the possibility.
Its utterly pointless trying to interfere, i just have to have confidence in your perception and judgement.
And i am perfectly fine with that. You know why? Because it isn't a problem.
Astrobiology to name one example. Evolution was mentioned, genetics and so on.
No, it doesn't. Its more a archaeological reconstruction but it doesn't answer the question "how?" and probably it can't. Even if you would be looking at the first, conserved piece of life... how can you tell?
Maye it always existed. Maybe life is something ethernal to begin with. You could also ask where all matter originated from or just assume it always was around.
Or they won't.
Faith in ANY sense. You can ommit the word "religious" totally in the above sentence. That is also applicable for the scientific method. You have to take some things as garanted or you end up nowhere. You can't figure out an equation with only unknowns as variables. You need confidence in your known variables or you end up nowhere.
I think this difference is an illusion. Perhaps you would care to give an example here.
Now whilst the above statement is true and a major step in self-awareness you have to admit there is indeed "bat-guano" inserted in the equations and empyrial reasoning. You have to or you would end up nowhere. The above statement is a constant reminder that therefore nothing can be deduced with absolte certainty. Even if the theory of Abiogenesis remains unproven, to give an example, you pretty much take it for garated. And that is one of many, many examples. There is no difference in assuming a creator being and take that for garanted. Its the same game, its just science hides its faith better.
Why? There is no "perfect" approach. Considering that you may also stick to it. Its about what works best for you.
I don't think there is such a thing as "too open". It works best for me. I don't discriminate... anymore.
Faith in religion is like eyeballing it and saying, "yeah, sure looks close enough."
Uh, commands to kill people are all over the bible. This isn't even mentioning all the people God killed personally or had killed for various reasons. Remember when he wiped out all life on earth, except for his hand chosen few because they practiced a different religion? That's not exactly a message of tolerance.
Islam has a lot of these too, which makes it Abrahamic religions, plural. They are both religions derived from abraham, making it abrahamic, and there are more than one, making it plural.
I mean, really. Saying the bible doesn't demand death for people who break it's laws is just factually untrue. And wow that's some messed up things to be killed for. Losing you virginity and lying about it? Getting burned to death for having sex because you're a preacher's daughter? Geeeeze.
When someone says "faith" in relation to evidential support endeavors such as science, what they really mean is "This has been repeatedly tested with the same outcomes and thus has a high level of trust that further attempts will continue this trend." You ask for examples. Here's one. I have "faith" that the principles of gravity will continue to hold. This is science. Some people have faith that the apocalypse will happen in October of this year. That is religious.
Astrobiology does not require abiogenesis. Physics, biology, chemistry. These are the fundamental pillars upon which astrobiology stands. Try wikipedia as a starter, you'll notice abiogenesis is never even mentioned.
In relation to the scientific community being dogmatic, and your comment "Or they won't" in relation to accepting a theory that continues to test correct. Give me an example of this happening, ever.
Also, you don't know what the term "take for granted" means. It means you don't question it or test it. Abiogenesis, as a concept, has been questioned by me. Life exists now. It didn't used to, from everything I've been able to investigate. Inference, life came from non-life at some point. I don't accept any individual theory as true, as none of them seem to have sufficient support, though several are promising avenues for exploration.
Citation please.
By that I mean crack open a bible and point to a passage that specifies how the book is to be interpreted. I will grant partial credit for one that only refers to a specific section.
Annotations do not count, as that would fall under "some douche says" and not "divine scripture".
To my amateur understanding members of the military are obligated to not follow illegal orders. That does not take into account coercion or corruption, but it is the underlying ideal.
That's the point. Arguing over over semantics and interpretation. The whole point.
Or at least it is among those religions/sects that do not demand unquestioning obedience.
You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Going back to an earlier post (just because), the Wikipedia article linked earlier in the thread places Christianity and Islam combined (excepting Judaism as proportionally insignificant) at 48 - 53% of the world population. Momentarily assuming your characterization of such as accurate, I find at most 53% does not constitute a vast majority.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/sci/fifthconf99/6211.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x60v3E-yZ8
Its pointless to continue this any further, it leads nowhere - wich perfectly elaborates my point. See, you are upset now, despite my constant assurance that I HAVE NO INTEREST TO CONVINCE YOU ABOUT ANYTHING BECAUSE ITS UTTERLY POINTLESS AND ONLY GETS YOU UPSET, lolz. I shouldn't even have said THAT. Next time i won't make the same error twice and keep my big mouth shut.
Don't forget Germany's eugenics programs wich were enforced on a totally scientific and non-religious basis. Religion is not the problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk
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ohforgreatleaping christ on a triscuit.
Religion, just like science, is not a static thing. It changes. It moves, it adapts. Are there some in this world who read those passages and follow them strictly? Of course there probably are. And they're all fundamentalists and slightly crazy and considered to be so by the others of their religions, and communities.
Religion changes as the world changes. practices change. According to the oldest texts of my faith, I should be sacrificing a kid (baby goat. easy there) at the temple next month to celebrate my birthday. Guess what. There is no temple. I have no access to a kid, and it's not expected anyways. because there is no temple. The destruction of the 2nd temple and the diaspora at the hands of the Babylonians, and others, fundamentally changed the jewish religion. We were forced to change with the situation and the times.
Science learns new details every day, things that they thought they knew are made obsolete because of new information. Genealogy is constantly developing and changing as is pretty much every theory, thought, law, and known in Science.
How is it so hard to get that religion can change as well? it's like all you guys who insist on the world following your rational lines of thought and proof and process lose all rationality when talking ot thinking about religion.
it's completely logical to expect that religious practices have changed over the years as the world has changed. My Aunt wasn't allowed to have a bat mitzvah when she turned 13, it was encouraged for me. There's something like 22 years difference between us.
Yes, the Bible hasn't changed. Guess what, I bet if I found some science text books from the 1800's, they wouldn't have changed either. Or hell, even textbooks from ten years ago, there will still be similarities, but the truth is, the books have remained the same.
Anybody who can't read the Bible and not see that it does not completely, as a whole, fit into the modern world and modern expectations, that person has a lot more problems than just being 'religious'.
It's just irrational the way you guys jump and pounce and dance trying to say "but but but the crazy people do it like this, so that's the way it is!" when anybody who brings up a scientific thing that's a bit out of the norm is shouted down because it's irrational.
sometimes you guys make no sense.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
Seriously, if you're going to spout this kinda crap, at least study it some.
Edit: I went over your video. I'm not sure where you're going with this. I asked for a case where studies were done that have been repeatedly tested correctly and yet not accepted by the scientific community, and you give me a case where the scientific consensus is "Yeah, maybe, we're doing more tests." The tests thus far have not been conclusive. This is a case of science ongoing. So, failure as an example. Try again?
And my being upset has nothing to do with you proposing an opposed viewpoint. My being upset has to do with:
1. You repeatedly misusing terms. "Faith". "Theory". "Abiogenesis". "Astrobiology".
2. Presenting false information that even a cursory study would reveal.
3. Accusing me of doing exactly what you do (accepting things unquestioningly) and yet not even noticing the behavior in yourself.
Further edit: Still marveling at the statement that a "master race" was a scientific concept. Are you just trolling now?
Sure his results are impressive, and while I for one would be quite happy to discover that there was (is?) life on Mars since one of my ambitions is to be one of the first exoarchaeologists, they are not conclusive. Dude said as much himself. See, it's difficult for anyone to accept a theory as proven beyond reasonable doubt when the guy whose theory it is says "hey, whoa, it hasn't been proven beyond reasonable doubt yet."
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If Germany's eugenics programs had been religiously motivated, would post-WWII Germans have denounced them so readily?
You see, it wasn't religion, it wasn't science. That was an excuse. The real reason was thinking to be superior to all others up to the point where they decided the others aren't good enough to be threatened as humans.
Attitude.
There's a huge difference between scientific beliefs changing through the discovery of new things, and people ignoring more and more of a holy book that was at one point considered the word of God. One has a reason to change (and it changing it pretty much the whole point), the other one doesn't have a reason for being wrong in the first place. One is starting from zero knowledge and working up, whilst the other is going from things that are supposedly 100% true and working down as the only source you've got is now untrustworthy with nothing that can really back it up (or at least nothing you can demonstrate to someone else).
None of those say anything about bombing abortion clinics. Which is what Fallout2man's argument was hinging on. Literal interpretation of the Bible.
The Bible does not specifically say anything about bombing abortion clinics. Thus, Fundamentalists are not following the Bible literally. Which was his point for people following the Bible literally and "Abrahamic Religions" causing harm.
Seriously, don't bother. Last time I brought this up I was asked, incredulously, if it was really true that Jews aren't required to believe in the literal existence of God.
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Is mainstream Judaism even actually an Abrahamic religion at this point? Everything that I hear about it reminds me of the aforementioned Catholics that don't actually ever go to church or listen to religious authorities, except applied to an entire culture.
Religions are Abrahamic when they trace their origin to Abraham. There is no other criteria. At all. Period.
Does mainstream Judaism trace its origin back to Abraham?
[x] YES [ ] NO
Then it is an Abrahamic Religion!
This is beyond hilarious. Let's talk about "Abrahamic" religions so that we can pretend our generalizations about Christianity are universal, and then when there are inconvenient differences, let's just decide that the original Abrahamic religion from which the others evolved isn't Abrahamic at all! But we'll still say Abrahamic because it sounds cooler.
I don't think mainstream Christians hide in caves, give up all their worldly goods and try to live chastely as brother and sister anymore either, but I don't see anyone trying to change that label.
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Yeah, that sort of makes it more difficult to discuss. Judaism is sort of simultaneously a religion, a culture, and an ethnicity, which makes it tricky to isolate any particular aspect, even when they really are distinct. The phrase "secular Jew" actually slightly makes sense, while "secular Catholic" or "secular Protestant" is gibberish.
It's easy to kick someone out of a religion, but it's much more difficult to kick someone out of a culture. When the two are so heavily bound together, it creates issues for the cohesiveness of the religion. From an outsider's perspective, it looks to me like Judaism developed its usual share of heretics, but had no way to actually discourage or reject that heresy. In order to remain cohesive without causing massive cultural divides, the religion ended up having to embrace heresy. It is still Abrahamic, but more a loose collection of relgious ideas than a cohesive religion.
Of course, that's just my largely ignorant conjecture. Please point and laugh, and then enlighten me.
The scripture is divine inspiration, the religion is semantics and interpretation. A lot of semantics and interpretation, which change over time. It's rather impossible to avoid the semantics and interpretation as the Bible starts with two contradictory creation stories.
Yes. That is because they are different religions. You're doing the equivalent of asking how Buddhism can possibly be a religion because they don't go to church every Sunday morning.
Well, we could start with your assumption that all religions have a rigid central faith-doctrine stemming from a central authority, a la Catholicism, and any deviation from that is "heresy". Again, if you want to be enlightened, you could do a little research that goes beyond "well it's just like Christianity without Jesus right"?
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The first five books contain creation (two different stories, one in which God speaks and things happen and one in which God actually plants the trees himself), the flood, and any other manner of stories that are used to give a sense of beginning and a sense of guidance. Exodus provides the details behind the forming and bonding of the disparate groups of Hebrews into one nation, the children of Israel. Also that whole getting out of Egypt thing. Plus the Ten Commandments. The first 5 are between man and God the next 5 between man and man (oh and let's not forget that the 10 commandments are different for jews and gentiles, we number them differently).
It's all there. every type of story that you can want. Travel, war, intrigue, porn, history, current events.
And they're all stories. The rest of the Bible gets even more stories. Samuel, Kings I &II, Ruth, Judges. They're all stories. Some of them may be factual, some may be allegories and fables and legends changed and adapted to fit in.
The Torah is holy, the Bible is holy, the Talmud... The Talmud is holy in its own way. The Mishnah (man i know i'm getting some of these wrong...)
There are books, hundreds and hundreds of books that are filled with arguments, documented arguments and discussions between rabbis centuries and longer ago about what this means or that means. When you are growing up and you have passed your Bat/bar Mitzvah, you are given the chance to Study more. And you usually start with the Talmudic teachings and the Mishnah. Books of arguments over whether or not God spoke the world into existence, planted it, or if its a metaphor.
Books of arguments over centuries of whether or not certain sacrifices can be made now that the temple is gone. Centuries of arguments and discussions written down in books. Volumes of these to cover just Genesis. I remember the one in my Rabbi's office, on the top of the page there was a small portion of the text, a passage or two, maybe three if nothing was going on. And then the rest of the page was covered with notations. well documented notations from Rabbis over the centuries. Maimonodes, Ben Yehuda, Etc.
It is trained into us from birth that you are meant to question God and the Bible. You are supposed to ask those questions, supposed to ponder and debate and argue. From the first day in Hebrew school you are taught not only about the Bible, but the language, the traditions, and to ask questions.
You can't understand your religion, your history, or yourself unless you ask. You have to ask or you're simply going along for the ride. Which for some people is true, they go along until they get Bar/Bat mitzvahed, have the party, take the money and run. Some people don't get that far and have a hard time with the religion as a whole and they can't be satisfied with the answers so they leave and never look back.
The big difference, and I am trying to stress this enough, the big difference is that you SHOULD ask questions. You should question your faith and the teachings, you SHOULD ponder what it means to be a Jew, what does God want from you. It's the way it's supposed to be. And yes, if you end up doubting your faith, if you end up not believing in God and all that you were taught, then so be it. A blessing on your house and your head and off you go.
It's hard to completely explain it better than that. It's hard for somebody, anybody, who knows only the christian way of doing things, where you don't question or you get into trouble, just how much asking is a part of the experience of being a Jew. It's one of those core concepts that's hard to figure out.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.