Suppose one of the commandments was to sacrifice your firstborn by tearing out his living heart, Aztec-style, on his eighteenth birthday. Would that be moral? Would you obey?
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quote:To be religious isn't to rely on moral intuition, it is to TOTALLY submit yourself to a power that you know to be greater than you.
Just as a side note: it is precisely for this reason that religious fundamentalism scares the crap out of me, as I suspect it would scare anyone who doesn't believe such a power actually exists. The idea that someone would subjugate their own moral intuition in this manner is something I find absolutely horrific.
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Well, we have quantity. We also lack an Indian place, which is a real shame. We have Taboun, which is an excellent Israeli steakhouse (though if the place were a person, it probably wouldn't be allowed into Shiloh's). Very, very loud, but the food is good. We have pitzi little places like Tel Aviv Pizza and Great Chicago Food and Beverage. And there's Ken's Diner, which has to give us some points. Burger Buddies rock my world.
But yeah, even the quantity is down, and the quality has never been mi yodeah ma.
I used to daydream about starting a kosher restaurant here that'd be different nationalities on different days of the week. Dennys style (pancakes and eggs and waffles in the morning, burgers in the afternoon, and evenings) on Sundays, Mexican on Mondays, Indian on Tuesdays, Italian on Wednesdays (because Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day, natch), Chinese on Thursdays, and Deli on Fridays. Of course, there's the issue of how to do parve burgers that are worth the energy needed to chew and swallow, but I thought it'd be nice. It'll never happen, of course.
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Speaking of Indian, I went to Madras Mahal with a friend and it was delicious! I never had Indian before and I was blown away. I spoke to a Rebbe of mine afterward and he told me the hechsher wasn't so reliable. Do you or Lisa know of a reliable Indian place in NYC?
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Suppose one of the commandments was to sacrifice your firstborn by tearing out his living heart, Aztec-style, on his eighteenth birthday. Would that be moral? Would you obey?
Yes. I hope I would.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: That seems so strange to me. I don't know what the Jewish population of Chicago is, but it has to be large enough that there would be money to be made catering to it with good, high end kosher restaurants. Am I wrong in thinking that, or is there some reason why this void hasn't been filled handily by now?
Kosher meat is really expensive to begin with. And we have a bunch of low and medium end places, so there isn't much call for high end ones. I mean, there's Shallots if you really want to splurge.
But I don't really know. Chicago is weird.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: NY. I've heard L.A. wasn't as good as N.Y.
Speaking of Indian, I went to Madras Mahal with a friend and it was delicious! I never had Indian before and I was blown away. I spoke to a Rebbe of mine afterward and he told me the hechsher wasn't so reliable. Do you or Lisa know of a reliable Indian place in NYC?
The only kosher Indian place I've ever run across was Mekom HaSheva in Beit Agron in Jerusalem.
Also, when I lived in NY, I was more of a Kosher Delight, Kosher Star kind of person. Mendys sometimes, because I worked at Stern and it was so close, but that was unusual.
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quote:To be religious isn't to rely on moral intuition, it is to TOTALLY submit yourself to a power that you know to be greater than you.
Just as a side note: it is precisely for this reason that religious fundamentalism scares the crap out of me, as I suspect it would scare anyone who doesn't believe such a power actually exists. The idea that someone would subjugate their own moral intuition in this manner is something I find absolutely horrific.
I agree with you. It's gotta be scary if you don't believe. The best I can tell you is that the God I believe in did NOT tell me to sacrifice my kid on his 18th birthday, nor did He bid me proselytize, nor try and conquer the world with the sword.
The best I can do to ease your mind is to let you know me. The reason people are afraid of religious fundamentalists is that often times they do not know them. There are religious fundamentalists without any judgment and there are religious fundamentalists with judgment and heart. Get to know me and make a decision based on that. I know a lot of my coreligionists who I think are idiot jerks.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Ah-ha. I think I now understand both Kwea's and katharina's (essentially same) objection.
Sorry, I was mixing the results seen and corrections made by people back then with the explanations that presentday people see for those results and corrections without pointing out that I was doing so. eg Negative result seen by the people of the past: People who eat bottom-feeders and filter-feeders get ill more often, and/or are weaker more often, and/or become weak-minded more often, and/or etc than those who do not. Corrective action: Put a ban on eating bottom-feeders and filter-feeders. Presentday Explanation: Waters near those centers of civilization got strongly contaminated by heavy metal from smelting. (Anytime you separate gold, silver, or copper from their ores, you get lead and/or mercury and/or several other toxic contaminants in the leftover slag. Which goes into the nearest apparently "self-cleaning" dump, the river. Even if it didn't, the next set of heavy rains would wash some of those contaminants into the river, eventually. Unfortunately, rivers are not as self-cleaning as they appear to be. And much of those contaminants would settle&mix into the soil at the river bottom where they would continue to bleed small amounts into the water for many years after the original dumping). Bottom-feeders (because they're the closest and thus live&feed in the most strongly contaminated volume) and filter-feeders (because they siphon through LOTS of water to obtain their food needs) concentrate those heavy metals and other toxins. People who eat those bottom-feeders and filter-feeders also end up eating (more)concentrated heavy metals and other toxins. Which causes them to become less healthy (Heavy metals poison the body's organs, lowers the brains processing capabilities, and causes insanity at the strongest non-fatal dosages), more susceptable to other illnesses (Heavy metals also suppress the immune system), and shortens lifespan (with a sufficiently high dose, very quickly). Presentday conclusion: The ban totally makes sense even at the purely physical level alone.
There are similar unstated breakdowns into negative result seen by the people of the past, their corrective action, presentday explanation, and presentday conclusion for the other examples that I mentioned.
(I'm staying away from the psychological, cultural, and spiritual levels in this particular posting. I'll leave that for my response to Minerva; IF I can figure out how to phrase it in a manner that won't anger everyone, and I mean that quite literally.)
So do any of you still want a fuller explanation about pigs and the flu and bans?
Sort of, but not really. Since the average person back there had no training in the scientific method, I doubt this happened. I am not saying people back then were stupid, but that tehy lacked a modern perspective.
Even people who choose to not use it know what the scientific method is, and take it's existence for granted. In a time where not only record keeping was not used, and most people were not literate, people were FAR more likely to find a supernatural reason for things than to accidently stumble across an actual scientific reason.
Bottom feeding fish only collect metals these days because of our widespread smelting and our heavy use of metals. In the time frame you are talking about the amount lost to ground water would have been so low as to be unmeasurable even with todays equipment.
And as even domesticated animals were not kept in the same conditions as they are kept these days (nor were they kept in the same numbers, confined) they were far less likely to have these issues.
I think it is more likely that you are using a modern context superimposed on ancient history. We lack the perspective doing that to even come close to seeing the world the same way our ancestors did.
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Suppose one of the commandments was to sacrifice your firstborn by tearing out his living heart, Aztec-style, on his eighteenth birthday. Would that be moral? Would you obey?
Yes. I hope I would.
Yes and no. See, my obedience to God follows my conviction that God is God and is entitled to my obedience, and that my obedience is good for me and the world. If one of the commandments was like that, I strongly suspect that I'd never have gotten there.
And yes, I know that sounds like I'm subjecting God to my morals, but it's not so. There are things in Judaism that taken in a vacuum might bug me on a moral basis. But the fact that it is so overwhelmingly pro-life (not in the abortion sense, but in the sense of furthering life as a value) and so fundamentally good in every rational way I can see... these lead me to conclude that the few areas where I might have had qualms are reasonably considered as things where I just don't have sufficient data to understand why they're right.
Pirkei Avot 2:4 says "Do His will as if it was your will so that He may do your will as if it was His will. Nullify your will before His will so that He may nullify will of others before your will." But Judaism understands that we have brains and a basic moral sense. I remember being taught that during the conquest of Canaan, God actually performed a miracle by preventing the men doing the conquering from becoming cold and coarsened by the violence. Because it's simple nature that committing that kind of violence, even on God's orders, can warp one as a person.
Remember Abraham and the cities of the plain. He didn't say, "You're gonna nuke those cities? Awesome!" He said, "Will the Judge of all the earth not do justice?"
With all due respect, Armoth, I think you answered too quickly. And I understand why you answered that way; I've done so myself. But I don't think it's quite that simple.
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quote:There are religious fundamentalists without any judgment and there are religious fundamentalists with judgment and heart.
But what you just said was this: that to a truly fundamental fundamentalist, judgment and heart should not matter. In other words, the more fundamental they are, the less I should care about their personal judgment and heart.
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quote:To be religious isn't to rely on moral intuition, it is to TOTALLY submit yourself to a power that you know to be greater than you.
Just as a side note: it is precisely for this reason that religious fundamentalism scares the crap out of me, as I suspect it would scare anyone who doesn't believe such a power actually exists. The idea that someone would subjugate their own moral intuition in this manner is something I find absolutely horrific.
I agree with you. It's gotta be scary if you don't believe. The best I can tell you is that the God I believe in did NOT tell me to sacrifice my kid on his 18th birthday, nor did He bid me proselytize, nor try and conquer the world with the sword.
The best I can do to ease your mind is to let you know me. The reason people are afraid of religious fundamentalists is that often times they do not know them. There are religious fundamentalists without any judgment and there are religious fundamentalists with judgment and heart. Get to know me and make a decision based on that. I know a lot of my coreligionists who I think are idiot jerks.
Also, it isn't arbitrary. God's laws are what they are. You don't have to worry that some prophet will come along and say, "Well, that was great for 33 centuries, but now God wants you to go out and slaughter the infidels." If that happens, the only person who's going to get slaughtered is the false prophet. Judaism is so locked down that God Himself can't change it.
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Lisa - Yes. You are right. I responded too quickly. I'll echo your sentiments. It is difficult to discuss the hypothetical - but yea. I believe that in Judaism you have a relationship with God. It is overwhelmingly good and strikes one as good. But I think that our relationship is tested to prove that we do indeed serve God and subjugate our wills to Him as opposed to God merely being an expression of our wills.
[Edit - I meant to put this paragraph in: When i said tested, I didn't mean I am waiting for God to tell me to sacrifice anyone. I was just saying that sometimes it is valuable when a relationship is tested. I know who my real friends are because they stuck by me through troubled times. And I know my faith in God has been tested because it is a lot easier to worship God when you can see the goodness in life, but a lot harder when you are asked to accept the death of loved ones.]
If God did not demonstrate that He is a good God and simply wreaked havoc on humanity, I wouldn't want to exist and thus, I would not fulfill that command. But if the God I know commanded me that, I would hope I would comply. (Especially with Abrahamic precedent).
Tom:
It is not as simple as you are making it. There are a lot of religious fundamentalists who are humble in their subservience. They are fundamentalists because it is easy. But Judaism and the service of God is difficult. There is AMPLE room for judgment and heart in the execution of God's will. God Himself commands that one should do what is "right and good in your eyes." Also, much of the Jewish curriculum is centered around teaching good judgment, wisdom and discernment so that a person can make a complex decision when facing a complex world.
Fundamentalists who see the world as black and white are scary - that's what I am saying.
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: That seems so strange to me. I don't know what the Jewish population of Chicago is, but it has to be large enough that there would be money to be made catering to it with good, high end kosher restaurants. Am I wrong in thinking that, or is there some reason why this void hasn't been filled handily by now?
As far as I've been able to tell, it's a question of expectations. The kosher restaurants in Chicago cater almost exclusively to people who keep kosher, and who are grateful for what they can get. (And sneak off to NYC every so often for better. ) In L.A., there are many many non-strictly-kosher people eating in the kosher places (for a variety of reasons), and if they are lousy, they don't stay open. (Sadly, many not-lousy places have short lives as well.)
Indian restaurants may or may not require much in the way of a hechser. CYLOR, of course, but they: don't use wine or rennet-based cheese, are stricter about bugs than we are, and are strictly vegetarian. (The non-vegetarian ones are never kosher.) I wouldn't eat in one with no hechsher, but I would rely on hecherim I wouldn't accept at any other type of restaurant.
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Rivka is probably right. I think there's really only one kosher restaurant in the Chicago area that people who don't keep kosher go to (and are probably the bulk of the clientele), and that's Mizrahi Grill in Highland Park. The best mizrachi food outside of Israel, and around meal times, it's completely filled. And just using the kippah test, I'd say that people who keep kosher are definitely a minority there.
Whereas most other kosher restaurants here are places you probably wouldn't bother with if you didn't keep kosher.
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quote:If God did not demonstrate that He is a good God and simply wreaked havoc on humanity, I wouldn't want to exist...
See, that's the difference between you and me. I wouldn't want God to exist.
See - that's what I've been trying to say. I will not deny reality in either situation. I believe that there is a God. That means i KNOW i won't be escaping Him. He's God! That's why in this reality, I try and subjugate my will to His. In the reality of an evil God. I don't even think in terms of HIM not existing because that is not reality. (I know you probably meant it as a joke, but I wanted to shed the whole fundamentalist suicide implication).
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Given my understanding of what God is, saying that God doesn't exist would be like saying that existence doesn't exist, which is irrational.
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Heck of a lot easier to just stop believing, since there's no evidence of His existence.
Oh come on. Do we have to do this on every thread? We think that there is evidence of His existence. We didn't just "pray on it."
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No, you don't think there's evidence. Nothing you can point to. You have the promises of people long-dead.
You can simply conclude that all those people were wrong and go on with your life instead of believing that God is evil and you should die.
I'm just saying that we know people can change what they believe with a little effort. Given the alternative, it seems like the obvious choice in that scenario.
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quote:Judaism is so locked down that God Himself can't change it.
This is clearly wrong. Your god cannot change its religion by the means it has used in the past. Nothing prevents it from just editing every Torah (including the parts stored in human memories) in the world. Indeed, for all you know, the prohibition on pork dates only from yesterday, and you were having a delicious pork barbecue last week. Or, less drastically, it might just appear simultaneously to every Jew in a new mass revelation; no prophets required.
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And you, KoM, might have been Ron Lambert last week and had just gained consciousness this morning complete with the body, memories and quick-wit of KoM.
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Heck of a lot easier to just stop believing, since there's no evidence of His existence.
Well, see, that's where I disagree with you. I think there's ample evidence of His existence. None of it "proof", but so what?
I could no more start thinking, given what I know right now, that there isn't a God than I could start thinking that George Bush is an alien lizard creature disguised as a human. Both are nutty, and neither one is something that I'm in any position to prove one way or the other.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: And you, KoM, might have been Ron Lambert last week and had just gained consciousness this morning complete with the body, memories and quick-wit of KoM.
Yes. This is precisely the problem with postulating omnipotent beings.
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quote:Judaism is so locked down that God Himself can't change it.
This is clearly wrong. Your god cannot change its religion by the means it has used in the past. Nothing prevents it from just editing every Torah (including the parts stored in human memories) in the world. Indeed, for all you know, the prohibition on pork dates only from yesterday, and you were having a delicious pork barbecue last week. Or, less drastically, it might just appear simultaneously to every Jew in a new mass revelation; no prophets required.
A difference which makes no difference is no difference. God isn't bound by time. If God wants to change the Torah, He can do so ab initio. But to us, that's transparent, since we are bound by time.
It's amazing to me that someone like you can consider the possibility of what you just suggested to be more plausible than the simple existence of God. I guess when some people chafe against the idea of God, Occam's Razor turns out to be a little dull.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: No, you don't think there's evidence. Nothing you can point to. You have the promises of people long-dead.
Oh, Tom. You're like a broken record. There's no plausible way that all of those people lied about what they experienced. And there's plenty of evidence. Look around you. There's a story in the Talmud of a Roman (possibly named Tomus Davidsonus) who said the same thing to Rabbi Meir during an argument. On his way out, the Roman noticed a beautiful and complex line drawing on Rabbi Meir's wall, and asked who the artist was. Rabbi Meir said, "That? No, I just spilled my ink on the parchment, and it happened to come out like that." The Roman snorted and said, "Yeah, right. What are the odds of that?"
And see, you'd have told Rabbi Meir that the odds were actually calculable. Which they probably are. But I have a hard time even comprehending the kind of blinders that would let someone think that the one in gazillion chance of the world working out like it is today is more likely than it having been created by design. That's just seriously kooky, Tom.
Sure, it's "possible" that the world just happened. But I lack the ability to suspend my disbelieve far enough to buy it.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You can simply conclude that all those people were wrong and go on with your life instead of believing that God is evil and you should die.
Except that God isn't evil. Maybe if He did command us all to rip the hearts out of living children, He would be. But that's lame. He didn't, and now He can't. It's a ridiculous "what if".
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I'm just saying that we know people can change what they believe with a little effort. Given the alternative, it seems like the obvious choice in that scenario.
People who change what they think to be true because it's convenient for them are pretty much worthless as human beings. In my opinion. Of course, that may be most people, but there you are.
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quote:It's amazing to me that someone like you can consider the possibility of what you just suggested to be more plausible than the simple existence of God.
I didn't say it was more plausible than your god existing; for one thing it requires that existence, so it is less probable for any value of the probability that your god exists. I merely said that it contradicted your claim that Judaism was unchangeable.
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quote:There's no plausible way that all of those people lied about what they experienced.
Ridiculous. In the first place, the lie does not have to be placed on the "two million" at Sinai; the lie could just as easily be the guy writing down the story of the two million, and - lo and behold - now you require only a single liar. In the second place, all the witnesses to miracles of other religions must presumably be lying, their gods being false; what makes your witnesses so remarkably truthful, in a world full of people reporting unlikely things?
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quote:There's no plausible way that all of those people lied about what they experienced.
Ridiculous. In the first place, the lie does not have to be placed on the "two million" at Sinai; the lie could just as easily be the guy writing down the story of the two million, and - lo and behold - now you require only a single liar. In the second place, all the witnesses to miracles of other religions must presumably be lying, their gods being false; what makes your witnesses so remarkably truthful, in a world full of people reporting unlikely things?
Now you have to explain how a single guy with a book about mass revelation to 2 million people got people to accept his book. Especially considering that the author claims their parents are one of the 2 million people (and they never heard this from their parents), AND that the commandments in the books are REALLY annoying and some of them are nonsensical.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I agree with you. It's gotta be scary if you don't believe. The best I can tell you is that the God I believe in did NOT tell me to sacrifice my kid on his 18th birthday, nor did He bid me proselytize, nor try and conquer the world with the sword.
The best I can do to ease your mind is to let you know me. The reason people are afraid of religious fundamentalists is that often times they do not know them. There are religious fundamentalists without any judgment and there are religious fundamentalists with judgment and heart.
And yet you just admitted that if, for whatever reason you believed God wanted you to, you would kill your own child.
I can understand why you say that, because all you're doing is using your own sense of morality and expressing it through a filter of religious belief. You would never have a god command you to do anything you didn't want to do or didn't think was right because then it would never be the "true" voice of god. God only convinces you to do the things you would do anyway- that's why religions split according to the practical needs of the believers.
I'll take living with the knowledge that I am not the center of the universe, rather than the elaborate fantasy that what I do, for the good of myself and my species, is somehow cosmically vital and significant. It's only important to me that what I do *feels* significant, and that there exists an imperative I do not fully understand that drives me to act as I do- "god" is a name for that, with a lot of shiny window dressing to help sell the image.
I read novels and listen to music, and you go to church. It's all part of the same desire.
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quote:Originally posted by adenam: There are no kosher restaurants where I live. *whimper*
If someone wanted to drive me 45 minutes I could get to a pizza place...
It was like that for me when I lived near Santa Cruz. I had to go up to San Jose or San Francisco to find a kosher restaurant. I had to drive an hour and a quarter each way up to Palo Alto to get so much as a slice of kosher cheese.
Other than family, that's one of the reasons I'm living in Chicago now.
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quote:There's no plausible way that all of those people lied about what they experienced.
Ridiculous. In the first place, the lie does not have to be placed on the "two million" at Sinai; the lie could just as easily be the guy writing down the story of the two million, and - lo and behold - now you require only a single liar.
Nope. Then you have to find a way for that single person to convince an entire nation of stubborn people that not only is it true, but that they've always known it was true. That their parents, and their parents before them, knew it as well. It's ridiculous.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: In the second place, all the witnesses to miracles of other religions must presumably be lying, their gods being false; what makes your witnesses so remarkably truthful, in a world full of people reporting unlikely things?
Yeah, all one witness to the Muslim revelation? All... what, twelve? thirteen? witnesses to the Christian one?
Not to mention the obvious fact that credo quia absurdum isn't anything you'd hear a Jew saying. And what's so unlikely about these things, other than the fact that they'd disturb you personally?
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quote:Now you have to explain how a single guy with a book about mass revelation to 2 million people got people to accept his book.
Dude, have you seen what Joseph Smith got people to believe in? And that's in an age of science and progress, when most people were literate! Not to mention that even more audacious scammer, Ron Hubbard. The sad fact is that people will believe (or profess to believe) practically anything, if a confident male with a loud voice repeats it a few times. Especially if it makes them look good.
I would also draw your attention to a parallel which might surprise you a bit: String theory. You know the general thrust of it; all matter is made up of little vibrating thingummybobs; the patterns of their vibrations are the quantum numbers of the Standard Model; there are 11 dimensions of which 7 are rolled up too small to see. Now this is not stuff for which any evidence can be procured at the moment, which is why most particle physicists of my acquaintance tend to either shrug and go "yeah, whatever, come back when you have a test" or else "Pff, ridiculous." (I don't speak to a lot of theorists, it's true.) But some considerable percentage of the reading public believes this stuff, and consider Brian Greene to be the leading scientist of his day. (No diss on Dr Greene, he can't help it if people exaggerate his reputation.) And why? Because fundamentally, this doesn't matter to them. The difference between having 4 dimensions and 11 dimensions is completely irrelevant for anyone but a particle theorist. And therefore people will take anything that comes out of a respected physicist's mouth for good fish. And if there's a bit of controversy attached - "Dr X claims that there are not in fact 11, but only 10, dimensions") then so much the better. Conflict, drama! Apart from the mere humdrum march of actual technology, this is what people want from scientists.
So now back to origin stories, the cosmology of the ancient world. It is precisely the same: It does not matter for daily life whether your great-great-grandparents really actually heard the voice of God at Sinai. It sure makes a great story, though! (Notice I say nothing about parents; any liar knows better than to claim "X did Y" with an X who can actually be interrogated about it. And since the earliest scrolls we have are nowhere near parent-range of the claimed Sinai event, well then.) So people will shrug and say "Ok", much as they do for string theory - or they could even become enthusiastic about it, as my father-in-law does for string theory. And there's all kinds of good conflict to the story, golden calves and slitting the throats of the priests of Baal and whatnot.
Now, I admit it does matter for daily life whether you can eat pork or not. But it doesn't take much for plain irrational prejudice to get entrenched in human custom; consider those tribes outside of Judaism which circumsize (male or female, take your pick). You can't tell me they have a good reason for doing so; they do it "because we always have". Same for eating pork. Then, if you can weave that custom into your origin story, why, Robert is your mother's male sibling.
Any account of why Judaism is true based on the 'witness' accounts of Sinai has to account for why all the other religions, based on similar 'witness' accounts, are false. There's a Catholic story of a mass revelation/miracle/something in fairly modern times; 70000 people are supposed to have seen the Sun move around the sky in distinctly non-orbital ways. Do you believe this? No? Then why believe some single person's account of '2 million' (logistically ridiculous anyway) people hearing something?
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: I agree with you. It's gotta be scary if you don't believe. The best I can tell you is that the God I believe in did NOT tell me to sacrifice my kid on his 18th birthday, nor did He bid me proselytize, nor try and conquer the world with the sword.
The best I can do to ease your mind is to let you know me. The reason people are afraid of religious fundamentalists is that often times they do not know them. There are religious fundamentalists without any judgment and there are religious fundamentalists with judgment and heart.
And yet you just admitted that if, for whatever reason you believed God wanted you to, you would kill your own child.
Actually, what he "admitted" was that he answered your silly hypothetical too quickly.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I read novels and listen to music, and you go to church. It's all part of the same desire.
Yeah, you know, not a lot of Jews go to church. That's a Christian thing.
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quote:Now you have to explain how a single guy with a book about mass revelation to 2 million people got people to accept his book.
Dude, have you seen what Joseph Smith got people to believe in? And that's in an age of science and progress, when most people were literate! Not to mention that even more audacious scammer, Ron Hubbard.
But again, neither of those were audacious enough to claim that said revelation was witnessed by millions, and that it was passed down uninterrupted from that point until now.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: So now back to origin stories, the cosmology of the ancient world. It is precisely the same: It does not matter for daily life whether your great-great-grandparents really actually heard the voice of God at Sinai.
And that's what you utterly misunderstand about us. Because Judaism stands or falls on that fact. If they didn't hear the voice of God at Sinai, then all of Judaism is a crock. It isn't just a philosophical question for us. "Moses received the Torah at Sinai and passed it on to Joshua. And Joshua to the Elders and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly." That's how we know it's true. It's how we've always known it. Check Jewish literature of thousands of years ago, and you'll see that we looked at this exactly the same way. It isn't just historical trivia.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Now, I admit it does matter for daily life whether you can eat pork or not. But it doesn't take much for plain irrational prejudice to get entrenched in human custom; consider those tribes outside of Judaism which circumsize (male or female, take your pick). You can't tell me they have a good reason for doing so; they do it "because we always have". Same for eating pork. Then, if you can weave that custom into your origin story, why, Robert is your mother's male sibling.
The Muslim thing about pork came from us. Muhammed took quite a few things from us when he was trying to get us to join him. And Abraham circumcized Ishmael, too. Not to mention all of the sons he had with Keturah after Sarah died. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to see circumcision outside of the Jews.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Any account of why Judaism is true based on the 'witness' accounts of Sinai has to account for why all the other religions, based on similar 'witness' accounts, are false. There's a Catholic story of a mass revelation/miracle/something in fairly modern times; 70000 people are supposed to have seen the Sun move around the sky in distinctly non-orbital ways.
<sigh> Source, please.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Do you believe this? No? Then why believe some single person's account of '2 million' (logistically ridiculous anyway) people hearing something?
quote:And that's what you utterly misunderstand about us. Because Judaism stands or falls on that fact. If they didn't hear the voice of God at Sinai, then all of Judaism is a crock. It isn't just a philosophical question for us.
And do you really intend to claim that this was a life-changingly important point for the average goat-herder of 1000 BC? I remind you that the Old Testament is one long account of the Hebrew people taking up other customs, and this, that or the next prophet coming down from the hills to chide them for it. (And this is well after the purported events at Sinai, at that, when they are settled in modern Israel.) It does not seem, then, that the median Hebrew thought his religion was a huge part of his identity, since he was apparently quite ready to abandon it, or at least its purest forms, if that seemed convenient. I also remind you that there is a strong tendency to assume other humans are like ourselves; you, for example, clearly do have a lot of your identity bound up with being Jewish, but there are many Jews even in the modern world of whom that is not true.
quote:Why logistically ridiculous?
:blink: Seriously? The Roman Empire at its height didn't keep 2 million men under arms, much less concentrated in one place with enough grass to feed two goats. Imperial Germany kept something like 2 million men with rifles on the Western front at all times, and they were running trains flat-out (granted they had to transport ammunition as well) and had their civilian population (not to mention large tracts of the Ukraine, after Brest-Litovsk) on starvation rations to do it.
quote:The Muslim thing about pork came from us. Muhammed took quite a few things from us when he was trying to get us to join him. And Abraham circumcized Ishmael, too. Not to mention all of the sons he had with Keturah after Sarah died. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to see circumcision outside of the Jews.
I don't quite see what the Moslems have to do with it; I was addressing the beginnings of the custom. As for circumcision, female as well? If not, you're going to have to explain what idiot thought up that piece of shit, and then managed to convince his people it was ritually necessary. And when you've done that, you can explain why this procedure would not work for the 2-million and pork-eating bits.
quote:And that's what you utterly misunderstand about us. Because Judaism stands or falls on that fact. If they didn't hear the voice of God at Sinai, then all of Judaism is a crock. It isn't just a philosophical question for us.
And do you really intend to claim that this was a life-changingly important point for the average goat-herder of 1000 BC?
The average Jewish goat herder? Absolutely. And it's BCE, btw.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I remind you that the Old Testament is one long account of the Hebrew people taking up other customs,
With vast stretches of time going completely undescribed, precisely because we were doing what we were supposed to be doing. It's only the exceptions that made it into the book. Because those were the ones we needed to learn from.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: and this, that or the next prophet coming down from the hills to chide them for it. (And this is well after the purported events at Sinai, at that, when they are settled in modern Israel.)
And...?
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: It does not seem, then, that the median Hebrew thought his religion was a huge part of his identity, since he was apparently quite ready to abandon it, or at least its purest forms, if that seemed convenient.
That's like saying the US Constitution is meaningless to Americans because of the way in which it's abused by some people. The average Jew was not at all ready to abandon it. Even those Jews who mistakenly worshipped Baal generally worshipped God and Baal. It was a really hard custom to stamp out.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I also remind you that there is a strong tendency to assume other humans are like ourselves; you, for example, clearly do have a lot of your identity bound up with being Jewish, but there are many Jews even in the modern world of whom that is not true.
Your point being...?
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Why logistically ridiculous?
:blink: Seriously? The Roman Empire at its height didn't keep 2 million men under arms,
Who said anything about 2 million men at arms? There were only a little more than 600,000. The 2 million includes men under 20 or over 60, women, servants, converts, etc.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: much less concentrated in one place with enough grass to feed two goats. Imperial Germany kept something like 2 million men with rifles on the Western front at all times, and they were running trains flat-out
Well, see, we were lucky. No trains.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:The Muslim thing about pork came from us. Muhammed took quite a few things from us when he was trying to get us to join him. And Abraham circumcized Ishmael, too. Not to mention all of the sons he had with Keturah after Sarah died. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to see circumcision outside of the Jews.
I don't quite see what the Moslems have to do with it; I was addressing the beginnings of the custom. As for circumcision, female as well? If not, you're going to have to explain what idiot thought up that piece of shit, and then managed to convince his people it was ritually necessary.
The same kind of idiots who were debating only 200 years ago whether women had souls or not. The same kind of idiots who denied women the vote. The same kind of idiots who had a hard time imagining such a thing as a female orgasm.
Do they really consider it "ritually necessary", or is it a custom, even according to those who do it?
Cool. And maybe something did happen that they took as a miracle. But it was contentless, even according to the witnesses. Just a lightshow. It's a little different.
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:blink: Seriously? The Roman Empire at its height didn't keep 2 million men under arms, much less concentrated in one place with enough grass to feed two goats. Imperial Germany kept something like 2 million men with rifles on the Western front at all times, and they were running trains flat-out (granted they had to transport ammunition as well) and had their civilian population (not to mention large tracts of the Ukraine, after Brest-Litovsk) on starvation rations to do it.
Haven't you ever heard of the manna?
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Lisa: It's interesting how readily you dismiss a supposed large scale miracle, especially with the reports of visions of Jesus et al blessing people.
I mean, I don't actually disagree with your point, and don't find that particular miracle any more convincing than you do. I mean, among other things, it IS kind of a weak miracle, especially compared to the one at Sinai.
It's one thing that makes me wonder. I mean, why is it that wherever newspapers and, more recently, video cameras are available, the kinds of miracles that supposedly occurred throughout ancient history no longer happen?
But it's still interesting, from the perspective of one who fairly doubts the less well-documented miracles you profess occurred, it's interesting.
Still, though of course your particular miracle is different than Joseph Smith's stories of a continent's worth of events, or Hubbard's stories of Thetans, alien nukes, etc, the point remains that they prove that it's fairly easy for a single person to get large numbers of people believing something that we both agree is most likely not true. (Well, not easy meaning anyone could pull it off, but that it's both possible, even in the modern day, and has multiple highly popular examples of it succeeding swimmingly.)
Now, I won't say the miracle you believe in didn't happen, however, considering that in the modern era people have begun agreeing with Scientology's... erm, weird things, does it seem that hard to get a rural culture with no writing and an oral history to believe that some centuries previously, their ancestors received a vision from God, which coincidentally confirms their current beliefs are correct, and adds to the narratives already growing about the eras before?
To me, it doesn't seem impossible, in light of many things people believe today. (flat earthers, for example?)
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posted
Well Megabyte, it's fairly clear to anyone who is a student of human nature how "miracles" become miracles. Douglas Adams had an interesting thought on this- I forget now where I read it, but he came up with a proposed mathematical formula for judging the likleyhood of miraculous events spread out over a person's lifetime.
For instance, the sudden call from the friend you had just been thinking about, but had not spoken to in 20 years. If you take as a given that you have perhaps 100 people in your life that you have known and are likely to think about, and you think about 10 of them each week, and you assume that the likleyhood of any of them calling you in any given week is perhaps one in a hundred (assuming they call once every 2 years), then the likelyhood of you thinking of each one of those hundred people and having that same person call you in the same week would be one in a thousand- pretty random and seldom.
Still, that means that in 20 years, you are likely to receive at least one call from each person on the week that you have been thinking about them. The power of the mind to recognize patterns, even where they do not exists, is powerful. And aside from that, the chances of your thinking about and being called by a distant friend is not governed by random chance. A mutual friend is likely to die in that time, an event on TV may remind both people of each other, and spark communication, a holiday may increase the likelihood of contact, if both people are the same age, a milestone birthday may increase their thoughts of old friends and increase the likelihood of contact.
In short, though these events may appear to the casual observer to be random, they are in fact not- miracles and exceptional events happen precisely at the moments in which we are most watchful for them- when it really matters that they happen. 50,000 people a year die in car crashes, but of those, there are inevitably the cases in which the person is thrown completely clear of the car, over a fence, and into a hay-bale uninjured, where he meets his future wife milking the cows. If you flip a coin enough times, it lands on its side. Then people with far too little sense are far too much energy start talking about miracles, but there has never been a miracle I have read of that did not fit in with the governing principles of the universe as I know them. Unlikely, yes, but never impossible.
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Lisa: It's interesting how readily you dismiss a supposed large scale miracle, especially with the reports of visions of Jesus et al blessing people.
But I didn't dismiss it. I suspect they did see something. That doesn't make it a miracle, and like I said, it had no content. None that the people there all agreed on, at any rate.
Back in the early 90s, I was living in a town called Maalei Adumim, in Israel. One day, it must have been a Friday, because it was about 4 in the afternoon and I'd just gotten off the van from work (we got out early on Fridays, but we worked Sundays, which is normal for Israel), I was walking up the street from where the van had let me out. And up in the sky...
I'm totally not kidding about this. The clouds in the sky, which were bright pastels of pink and purple, looked like something out of a Greek mythology book. There was an enormous guy sitting on a throne. There was what looked like a massive stalactite (not the thin kind but almost like an upsidedown cone) with what looked like someone chained to its front. There were other figures that looked like giant people.
And I stood there, gobsmacked. And amused. And as I watched over the next 10 minutes or so, the edges softened and the shapes distorted, until it was all just clouds again.
Now, this wasn't something that a ton of people saw. It was just me. But for me, that's worth more than a ton of people, obviously. And all I could think was, if a big crowd of people had seen this 3000 years ago, it could have started a religion.
But it had no content. Just like the thing in KoM's wikilink. It didn't come with the necessary miraculous add-ons that would allow an enormous group of a couple million people to live in a desert for 40 years. It didn't come with an extensive corpus of law and lore. It was just pretty lights.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: I mean, I don't actually disagree with your point, and don't find that particular miracle any more convincing than you do. I mean, among other things, it IS kind of a weak miracle, especially compared to the one at Sinai.
Exactly.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: It's one thing that makes me wonder. I mean, why is it that wherever newspapers and, more recently, video cameras are available, the kinds of miracles that supposedly occurred throughout ancient history no longer happen?
They've no longer happened for a lot longer than modern media has been around. In Deuteronomy 31:18, God says "I will surely hide My face on that day." That state of "the hiding of God's face (presence)" is a situation that's pertained for many centuries. There were miracles that happened on a daily basis in the First Temple that didn't happen in the Second Temple. Skeptics might say that means they never really happened in the First Temple, either. But then, the Ark of the Covenant was in the Holy of Holies in the First Temple, and was missing from the Second Temple. That doesn't lead people to assume that it never existed in the first place.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: But it's still interesting, from the perspective of one who fairly doubts the less well-documented miracles you profess occurred, it's interesting.
Still, though of course your particular miracle is different than Joseph Smith's stories of a continent's worth of events,
Right, but again, that was one person. There were no people who perked up their ears and said, "That's right! My parents told me that their parents told me, etc, that that happened to them!"
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: or Hubbard's stories of Thetans, alien nukes, etc,
Which is kind of a cool story, no? You can tell he was a science fiction writer.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: the point remains that they prove that it's fairly easy for a single person to get large numbers of people believing something that we both agree is most likely not true. (Well, not easy meaning anyone could pull it off, but that it's both possible, even in the modern day, and has multiple highly popular examples of it succeeding swimmingly.)
Still, getting people to believe that something happened is one thing. Getting people to believe that their entire nation has known about it ever since it happened is another.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Now, I won't say the miracle you believe in didn't happen, however, considering that in the modern era people have begun agreeing with Scientology's... erm, weird things, does it seem that hard to get a rural culture with no writing and an oral history to believe that some centuries previously, their ancestors received a vision from God, which coincidentally confirms their current beliefs are correct, and adds to the narratives already growing about the eras before?
When it comes with a vast number of laws that really affect your life substantially every time you eat, or any time you do just about anything else, yes, I think it'd be pretty hard to get people to buy it.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: To me, it doesn't seem impossible, in light of many things people believe today. (flat earthers, for example?)
Different, for the reasons I've already explained.
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I knew this thread wasn't going to be about renaming Swine Flu to something more appropriate! Religion explains why it's three pages long.
For the record, given the crazy response that Egypt had to the name, I think it's actually warranted.
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