"Can't we all just get along?"

So I'm not suppose to take offence to this?



No, I'm sorry, when people I barley know think they can psychoanalyze who I am and what my motives are, using their pretend therapist powers to cast me as some worthless boob, then I will retaliate.

AZ: NLTAG is also Jewish.

But that said, I do think that it is really unnecessary and unhelpful for people to make assumptions about AZ's reasons for his faith. It doesn't help discussion, and that should end as well.

I have an actual question for AZ. I don't mean it in an offensive way, I'm just asking cuz the same situation applies to me.

If I'm reading some of your earlier posts correctly (and if I'm not this is moot, forgive me) you are Jewish only on your father's side. As am I.

Now, culturally, genetically, and memetically, that makes us Jewish. I myself have an affinity for Jewish culture and pride in my heritage.

However, religiously speaking, Judisem can only be passed maternally. So according to the Jewish faith we are not even Jews.

How do you address the contradiction? To believe in the Jewish faith and consider your self a Jew seems impossible.

SOMER SHABBAS!!!

sorry, all I could think about was The Big Lebowski

I DONT FUKKING ROLL ON SHABBAS

"Walter, this is an emergency!"

"I know, Dude, that's why I picked up the phone."

P-C raises an interesting point - and educates me on something I didn't know about the Jewish faith. How does one reconcile that apparent contradiction?

Cherry Pick'D
God's LAW applies to ALL of his PEOPLE - except when there is an exception.

So...wait...you can't just be Jewish if you decide to follow that particular faith? That's kind of retarded.

Not that Christians are any less exclusionary. That's one of the reasons I quit going to church.

You can practice Judisem, You can even "convert". But you're not REALLY a Jew then. Remember, these are the chosen people of god, you can't just say, "Hey, God! Um... I'm with them." after the fact.

No you can't.
Thats one of the important distinctions the Jews have made for a long time.

However, you do have to respect a religion that doesn't pride itself on the mantra of: "Conversion by the sword".
(not that their book tells them anything different - they just dont act on it like the christians or the muslims, but the torah still tells them to kill heathens every bit as much as the other two books)




"choo-choo-chooose ME!"

But isn't adherence to that maternal line rule more of an Orthodox (read: Hardcore) thing?

Not where I grew up.

*shrug* not like I'd know anyway, I'm all northwest European Gentile

Oh right, I forgot that Christians are going around killing heathens left and right...

Nope, just on the left.

History Lesson'D

ZING!


You'd think the fact that Christians haven't been "converting people by the sword" for some 600 years might buy them just a little bit of a break...

Just sayin' is all.

Unless you're holding the majority accountable for the 4 or 5 nutjobs that go around shooting abortion doctors. In which case, I don't think you're a douche just because Larry Craig goes around trolling for man love in a public restroom.

Not recently they aren't. It's a pretty ugly history, if you're honest about it.

I think that Douglas Adams (as usual) said it best: "And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..."


It happened in this country too, you know.

*preps measles blankets*

Recently? Because that's what Hunter Rose was implying...

"...they just don't act on it (Conversion by the Sword - S53) like the Christians or the Muslims..."

As far as "history" goes, do we still hold Germans accountable for the Holocaust? I mean that JUST happened, relatively speaking.

(For the record, I do NOT have a beef with Hunter and think the involved party is a pretty stand-up person.)

No, but we do hold Nazism -- the belief system that led to the Holocaust -- responsible.

EDIT - nevermind

Sorry to loop back to an old point, but with regard to the whole "40 years" bit, I recall reading somewhere that (aside from whatever numerology point Pete was making) the number "40" is basically Bible-ese for "a lot" so 40 years is just supposed to just mean "a long time" and not to be taken literally.

Correction, we HELD Nazis responsible.

Can you, in all honesty, still hold a "belief system" responsible for a way of thinking IF that way of thinking has since been purged from said system?

(Talking about Christianity, here, not Nazis. I have no idea what THOSE retards think.)

No worries.
My mom was raised Anglican, but if you meet my maternal grandparents you'd see they're two of the most nonreligious people around, I think they might be closest Atheists actually. So my mom wasn't raised in a religious home. On top of that she never got the concept of Jesus both being the son of G-d and G-d Himself. So when she got engaged to my dad she agreed to give Judaism a shot, and she liked the faith. So she converted.

My mom was a practising Jew when I was born, thus I was raised Jewish.

You are Right.

The Christians are all about peace and love now.

Any other parts of the word of GOD we need to take with a grain of salt?

Geez, it's not "a grain of salt" when something literally had a different meaning 2000+ years ago.

Because those Fred Phelps morons are totally a representative sampling of current Christianity.

Sorry I guess "Bible-ese" (not my term) means whatever is convenient.

Who spoke "Bible-ese" 2000 years ago?

its a pillar of salt FYI.

Just to expand on a point P-C made that fell under my radar, the concept of conversion in Judaism is an interesting one....

You see G-d only expects Jews (His chosen people) to keep His faith. Thus, a non Jew who does not practise Judaism is just as "saved" as a practising Jew (the rule for non-Jews is that the have to follow "The Seven Laws of Noah", basically the 10 Commandments with the religious points removed).

So with that in mind, Conversion's never been a big thing, our next door neighbour isn't going to hell for not believing what we believe, so why press it on them?
Furthermore, Jewish scripture tells us to except converts to Judaism as full-fledged Jews because they're not joining out of a "I'm playing my cards" mentality, they are actually doing so out of a love for G-d's faith, they're doing something that don't have to do out of love for the Lord. Moses' wife was a convert, and the Torah even has a complex system of deciding which tribe a convert and their offspring will belong to.

The notion that converts aren't really Jewish within the Jewish community dates back to the middle ages, and is secular in nature. Jews were an oppressed people, with the Christians suspecting them of dark powers, poisoning water supplies, kidnapping Christian babies, etc....
So Christians would "convert" to Judaism, gain acceptance into Jewish communities, and then use their insider status to further the oppression. Hence Jews became suspicious of converts, even if that suspicion isn't supported by the scripture.

Since none of these texts were written in English, all I see is the translation. I'm just sayin' there's a distinction between the translation and the "Bible-ese" you're talking about.

PC - you are about 30 pages late to this game. We discussed "Cherry-Picking" earlier in the thread.
Unless you are just picking fights I know that sounds funny coming from me
Maybe you should go and read the thread so you can at least be on the same page as the rest of us.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43957

If the Bible is so fallible, perhaps this fairy tale is doing more damage to society then you think.

And I just want to point - again - that if a loving God existed, He would make sure we weren't just playing guessing games with translations, but had an accurate account of what He wanted/needed us to know.

What immediately sticks out to me from this pasage is that the Jews are so much CHOSEN to be "saved" so much as CHOSEN to fail.
THEY have a whole bunch of hurdles and ridiculous rules to follow, meanwhile non-jews (the ones who aren't being murdered and castrated at the hands of the GOOD Semites) basically have a free pass?

How is that a good deal for anyone?








Yes. Apparently 63%

If you believed in free will, I would argue no.

Personally, I wouldn't trust any bit of info coming from that website...it serves their purposes to make people think more people agree with them than actually do.

Cuz we get to Kvetch!

Then you would be wrong. I covered this earlier - freewill does not equate to uninformed. You can still choose to reject God, even if He provides you with a current set of expectations and rules.

I have a thought on the free will of god. Maybe he can't change things. I mean If you're Omniscient and Omnipotent, then your omniscience has already told you what you're going to do. So your not really omnipotent at all.

That's if the current set of rules were provided by some sort of determinism that resulted from the act of translating the text. Why would there be an on/off switch for free will just because the text is "holy"?

*Looks back at Bible.....Looks up.....looks back at Bible again....looks up.....*

Hey! WTF G-d?

You bring up a good point, and that ties into the Jewish concept of being the chosen people. It's not like having a backstage pass to G-d's big show....it's both a burden and a blessing. We're the ones G-d chose to keep his faith, come hell or high water. It's a batch, but it's a belief that's allowed us to see light at the end of the tunnel while the pogroms are in full force.

If almighty god handed down instructions to defuse an atomic bomb, and it had gone through the kind of translation the Bible has, I bet we'd be a little more skeptical about putting it into practice.

Yes. Of course, it's us atheists who would think that, but yes. Ignoring theology, the functional purpose of, not only Christianity but most religion, is to preserve and perpetuate one's culture, values, and social rituals against an opposing one, even if your tribe dies out or gets hopelessly intermarried with other ethnicities.

The majority of the world follows some offshoot of the culture/values of one tiny bunch of Judaic tribes (comparatively) and not that of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Akkadians, or any of the other tribes and peoples who were arguably more successful back then. I mean, that's pretty huge in my mind. Even if it was given up, it's a major factor in the spread of it today. Sure, nobody alive today was personally responsible for driving Native Americans off their land or enslaving blacks, yet whites still casually enjoy the benefit of generally starting out in life without the disadvantages of either of those groups. There isn't exactly any sense that you'll ever be culturally outnumbered.

Majorities, no matter how empathetic they may feel towards others, have a strong tendency to take their positions for granted. Whites do it. I know Chinese do it. Christians do it. To a broader extent, Christians/Jews/Muslims altogether do it (I mean really, the only groups you even can bother to compete with are each other). So, not that I'm saying any Christian today is really responsible for "conversion by the sword" tactics, but it's kinda easy to say, "Well that's ancient history and we've washed out hands of it," when you aren't going anywhere.

This is my point. Do you lose freewill to drive like a moron after you take a driver's ed class?

If a loving God existed, He would, as an expression of his love, actively work to clear up translation issues in any text/rules/stories or other things He thought was relevant to our lives. Since that has not happened, we can conclude one of two things:

1. A loving God does not exist.
2. None of the translated text or rules or etc. are relevant to our lives.

Either way, I'm not going to church.

Oh for fuck's sake! The point was about Hebrew numerology! It's just a fucking symbol! You don't need to be so uptight about every little thing! Trust me, there are larger issues more worthy of debate.

edit: sorry for the VEHEMENCE, it's just that I when people expect the meaning of a text from the ancient world to be completely apparent to a modern audience. Because our cultures are so totally the same and there wouldn't be anything they would have understood that we might not.

well we do have THE HOLY HAND GRENADE.