As children it's just an imaginary friend

[Sweet~T]

And he isn't very friendly.

So what is the cause for our global mental illness?

[cnorman18]

We're having two separate discussions about two different topics, so lets make sure not to conflate the two. First, we are discussing your belief in a God that manifests itself. Second we are discussing the moral value of the Bible irrespective of the fact it wasn't wasn't actually written by God.

Let's tackle the question of your belief in God first. I reject your analogy of belief vs non-belief in God to a preference for a mattress over a waterbed. This is not an issue of preference, this is a truth-statement. Your social security number either ends with the number 5 or it doesn't. God either manifests itself or it doesn't. If you believe it does, you're a theist, otherwise you're not.

There are countless numbers of worldviews and approaches to spirituality, probably as many as the total number of people who ever lived. But whatever your belief system is, if it does not involve the belief that a deity manifests itself, THEN YOU'RE NOT A THEIST.

If you believe that a deity manifests itself, you're a theist. Since the belief in a manifest deity is unwarranted, then the belief is wrong, or crazy, or deluded. Whatever word you want to use for it.

Okay. I'm not sure why you think I have to share your demand that "theism" requires belief in a god that "manifests itself," but let's go with that.

I do. Okay? I believe that God has "manifested himself" (you'll forgive me for using the theistically conventional pronoun) and does "manifest himself" in events in my own life. My incredibly happy late marriage; my escape from a dreadful first marriage; and various other close calls and strange and beneficial coincidences. Now, none of those are useful for proving anything about "the nature of God," and so don't help at all with any kind of "coherent" definition; and none of those are useful for proving anything to anyone else, either, of course -- but I don't have any interest in doing that anyway, and I also don't think that is or should be a requirement of "belief," either.

Okay?

I really don't see why I should have to jump through the hoops you hold up to define myself as a theist and my beliefs as theism, anyway. Who made YOU the "theism police"? I shall call myself what I want. If you don't agree, tough.

Now, about the teachings and value of the Torah as a morally inspiring work of literature. I COMPLETELY understand that you and most rational Jews don't believe that an actual entity called Moses spoke to an actual entity called God who said these words. Of course. But completely separate from the authorship, let's discuss the content.

No, let's not. If you can't be bothered to FIND OUT what the Jewish view of those passages is, and why it is what it is, and take a look at the centuries of debate and discussion that gave rise to them, I don't have any interest in pursuing that discussion at all. That is PRECISELY the same as taking stereotypes of "Darwinism" as described by fundamentalist science-haters and asking me to justify my belief in them.

For example: You pretty clearly don't even understand the concept of "commandment" in Jewish belief. The Hebrew word is mitzvah, which translated loosely as "a good thing to do." We don't speak in terms of "prohibitions" and "SINS" and punishments and all that so much, as in terms of what is GOOD to do. Even eating pork is not a "sin" in the Christian sense, something forbidden and for which act there will be condemnation and punishment; on the contrary, NOT eating pork is a "good thing to do." That's all.

So the literal sense of the text is troubling to you? That's too bad. It doesn't bother us at all. Something my converting rabbi said in a Torah study a long time ago has stayed with me: "If you see something in the Torah that you KNOW to be immoral, unethical or factually untrue, there are two possibilities: Either you are not reading the Torah properly, or the Torah is wrong."

Notice that the third possibility -- overruling our own rational and moral sense in favor of religious dogmatism -- is not available to us. We are not ALLOWED to stop thinking and obey some set of dogmas like good little automatons. Sorry about that.

So the primitives thought that disobedient children should be stoned to death? Yeah, we know that, and we joke about it a lot; but it's not taken seriously as a "COMMANDMENT," and as far as the history and heritage that has been passed down to us tells, it never was. Here's another saying; "God has a vote, but not a veto." WE have to decide the meaning of the Torah and change the laws as necessary. That's been true from the beginning. So you think parts of the Bible are brutal and wrong? So do we -- so we ignore them. Something wrong with that?

Wait, wait, don't tell me -- we shouldn't be allowed to do that, right? Louses up your whole argument. Too bad. That's what we do.

Others want to insist that since there are evil things and immoral "laws" in the Bible, we must accept them as good and binding, or are otherwise ipso facto contemptible hypocrites, because "theists" HAVE TO BE dogmatic literalists or we're "not REALLY religious."

We greet that sort of pontification with a shrug.

Learn something about this tradition, and then perhaps we can talk. I stand by my observation that you have not, so far, demonstrated any interest in doing that.

[no evidence no belief]

We're having two separate discussions about two different topics, so lets make sure not to conflate the two. First, we are discussing your belief in a God that manifests itself. Second we are discussing the moral value of the Bible irrespective of the fact it wasn't wasn't actually written by God.

Let's tackle the question of your belief in God first. I reject your analogy of belief vs non-belief in God to a preference for a mattress over a waterbed. This is not an issue of preference, this is a truth-statement. Your social security number either ends with the number 5 or it doesn't. God either manifests itself or it doesn't. If you believe it does, you're a theist, otherwise you're not.

There are countless numbers of worldviews and approaches to spirituality, probably as many as the total number of people who ever lived. But whatever your belief system is, if it does not involve the belief that a deity manifests itself, THEN YOU'RE NOT A THEIST.

If you believe that a deity manifests itself, you're a theist. Since the belief in a manifest deity is unwarranted, then the belief is wrong, or crazy, or deluded. Whatever word you want to use for it.

Okay. I'm not sure why you think I have to share your demand that "theism" requires belief in a god that "manifests itself," but let's go with that.

I do. Okay? I believe that God has "manifested himself" (you'll forgive me for using the theistically conventional pronoun) and does "manifest himself" in events in my own life. My incredibly happy late marriage; my escape from a dreadful first marriage; and various other close calls and strange and beneficial coincidences. Now, none of those are useful for proving anything about "the nature of God," and so don't help at all with any kind of "coherent" definition; and none of those are useful for proving anything to anyone else, either, of course -- but I don't have any interest in doing that anyway, and I also don't think that is or should be a requirement of "belief," either.

Okay?

I really don't see why I should have to jump through the hoops you hold up to define myself as a theist and my beliefs as theism, anyway. Who made YOU the "theism police"? I shall call myself what I want. If you don't agree, tough.

Absolutely. You can call yourself whatever you want. It's just that if you deviate too much from the definitions of words that the rest of humanity has agreed on, it will be hard for you to communicate with the rest of us.

For example, you have every right to use the word "sandwich" when what you mean is that which most of us call "bus", and you can use totally the word "gigantic" when you mean that which most of us call "downtown". Of course if you do that, if you ask somebody "Where can I catch the gigantic sandwich", don't expect us to understand that you're trying to catch the downtown bus.

So, in your head, feel free to label yourself however you wish, but please understand that if you believe in a manifest deity, then the rest of humanity will refer to you as a theist.

That having been cleared up, let's discuss your belief. You believe in a manifest deity because you, just like billions of others, got married, got divorced, got remarried.

The observable universe has a radius of 46 billion light years. We know that, taking dark matter and dark energy into account, that 46 billion light year radius accounts for 5% of the actual universe. All the hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars, with the statistically inevitable countless life forms and civilizations in them, are 5% of that which exists. To believe that the entity which created this, also meddles with the mundane and banal social and romantic interactions of homo sapiens, which only showed up in the last few moments on a cosmic timescale and will become extinct in a few moments more, is ABSURD. It's laughable. To believe that, without the slightest shred of evidence, is madness. To believe in the existence and manifest interactivity of a deity, when such a proposition is utterly and completely indistinguishable from the non-existence and non-manifest non-interactivity, is the definition of insanity. Please give me an example of anything at all that it is more absurd to believe than that!

Now, about the teachings and value of the Torah as a morally inspiring work of literature. I COMPLETELY understand that you and most rational Jews don't believe that an actual entity called Moses spoke to an actual entity called God who said these words. Of course. But completely separate from the authorship, let's discuss the content.

No, let's not. If you can't be bothered to FIND OUT what the Jewish view of those passages is, and why it is what it is, and take a look at the centuries of debate and discussion that gave rise to them, I don't have any interest in pursuing that discussion at all. That is PRECISELY the same as taking stereotypes of "Darwinism" as described by fundamentalist science-haters and asking me to justify my belief in them.

That's not even remotely the same. There isn't a scientist in the world who would fail to unequivocally state that Darwin was wrong in some things. There isn't a single scientist in the world, albeit Newton is every scientist's idol, who will give Newton a free pass for his beliefs in alchemy, for example. Every single scientist in the world will say Newton is great for calculus and Philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and whatnot, BUT WAS WRONG ABOUT ALCHEMY!

So why can't you say "I love the fairy tales about the talking snake and whatnot, but the Torah is WRONG ABOUT KILLING GAYS. Why can't you just go ahead and say that?

For example: You pretty clearly don't even understand the concept of "commandment" in Jewish belief. The Hebrew word is mitzvah, which translated loosely as "a good thing to do." We don't speak in terms of "prohibitions" and "SINS" and punishments and all that so much, as in terms of what is GOOD to do. Even eating pork is not a "sin" in the Christian sense, something forbidden and for which act there will be condemnation and punishment; on the contrary, NOT eating pork is a "good thing to do." That's all.

I see, so killing a gay person, or beating your slaves, or stoning a woman to death for getting raped, is just a "good thing to do"?

So the literal sense of the text is troubling to you? That's too bad. It doesn't bother us at all. Something my converting rabbi said in a Torah study a long time ago has stayed with me: "If you see something in the Torah that you KNOW to be immoral, unethical or factually untrue, there are two possibilities: Either you are not reading the Torah properly, or the Torah is wrong."

Perfect. Can you agree that the Torah is wrong in a LOT of ways?

Notice that the third possibility -- overruling our own rational and moral sense in favor of religious dogmatism -- is not available to us. We are not ALLOWED to stop thinking and obey some set of dogmas like good little automatons. Sorry about that.

Great. That's not all jews, by the way. Right?

I've seen Jews here in New York give up on a $400,000 deal because they couldn't pick up the phone on a saturday. Seems to me like overruling rationality in favor of religious dogmatism. Not to mention that whole "slicing a piece of your children's penis off without their consent. That seems rather dogmatic to me.

So the primitives thought that disobedient children should be stoned to death? Yeah, we know that, and we joke about it a lot; but it's not taken seriously as a "COMMANDMENT," and as far as the history and heritage that has been passed down to us tells, it never was. Here's another saying; "God has a vote, but not a veto." WE have to decide the meaning of the Torah and change the laws as necessary. That's been true from the beginning. So you think parts of the Bible are brutal and wrong? So do we -- so we ignore them. Something wrong with that?

No, nothing wrong with that. That's great. You absolutely HAVE TO ignore the parts that are brutal and wrong. Don't just ignore them, though, publicly denounce and reject them. It's the moral imperative of all human beings to denounce and reject immorality and evil.

Could you do me a favor? There must be thousands of hours of recorded speeches, sermons, ramblings by rabbis and jewish thinkers on youtube. Could you find me one in which a person in authority within judaism says "the Torah is wrong in many ways, I denounce it, I reject it, I am not ashamed of it because we all have violent, amoral and savage ancestors, but i certainly am not proud of it either."

Wait, wait, don't tell me -- we shouldn't be allowed to do that, right? Louses up your whole argument. Too bad. That's what we do.

Others want to insist that since there are evil things and immoral "laws" in the Bible, we must accept them as good and binding, or are otherwise ipso facto contemptible hypocrites, because "theists" HAVE TO BE dogmatic literalists or we're "not REALLY religious."

We greet that sort of pontification with a shrug.

Dude, you completely misunderstand me. I agree with you 100% that you are only bound by the principle of consistency to accept and abide by all the teachings of the Bible, if you claim it's the inerrant word of God. If you don't make that claim, and you clearly don't, then clearly you are free to ignore whichever segments you want.

I just have two points to make. First, how many evil and perverted portions of a book must you ignore, before you realize that the whole book might be an interesting historical novelty, but is not really worth making a significant part of your life?

By analogy, imagine you're taking your kids to the movies, and you know it's a nice movie, but there is a violent and sexually explicit scene, and you plan on covering up your kids eyes. That's fine if it's only one scene. What if 30% of the movie is violent, scary, explicit or otherwise unsuitable for kids? What if 50% is? 80%? At what point do you say "forget it, this movie is too violent/scary/explicit, let's just go see Toy Story 3"?

At what point do you say "forget it, the Torah is too immoral, too evil, too twisted, too perverted, too savage, too barbaric, let's just read about Socrates"?

It's just a horrible book, isn't it?

If I asked you to open a page of the Torah at random and read forward until you find some kind of commandment or Mitzvah, a direct instruction to do something, and once you read it... DO IT, would you be willing to play that game? How much of a minefield of horrible immorality can a book be, before you just chuck it all out and move on to Lao-Tzu?


Second point: Why don't moderate theists (Jews and otherwise) do MORE to publicize their opinion that the majority of the directives, teachings and commandments in the Bible are evil? Is ignoring them enough? I say it isn't. Not while 800 women a year are killed in Pakistan in honor killings which are rooted in the Abrahamic tradition you embrace. Draw a line in the sand. Yell it from the rooftops. "We, the Jews, renounce and reject the immoral and evil teachings of the Torah. The incitations to genocide, homophobia, sexism and slavery of the Torah, are no more a part of a modern Jew's life, than the incitations to antisemitism and hatred of Mein Kampf are a part of a modern German's life."

[cnorman18]

This is really getting tiresome. Just a few points:

We're having two separate discussions about two different topics, so lets make sure not to conflate the two. First, we are discussing your belief in a God that manifests itself. Second we are discussing the moral value of the Bible irrespective of the fact it wasn't wasn't actually written by God.

Let's tackle the question of your belief in God first. I reject your analogy of belief vs non-belief in God to a preference for a mattress over a waterbed. This is not an issue of preference, this is a truth-statement. Your social security number either ends with the number 5 or it doesn't. God either manifests itself or it doesn't. If you believe it does, you're a theist, otherwise you're not.

There are countless numbers of worldviews and approaches to spirituality, probably as many as the total number of people who ever lived. But whatever your belief system is, if it does not involve the belief that a deity manifests itself, THEN YOU'RE NOT A THEIST.

If you believe that a deity manifests itself, you're a theist. Since the belief in a manifest deity is unwarranted, then the belief is wrong, or crazy, or deluded. Whatever word you want to use for it.

Okay. I'm not sure why you think I have to share your demand that "theism" requires belief in a god that "manifests itself," but let's go with that.

I do. Okay? I believe that God has "manifested himself" (you'll forgive me for using the theistically conventional pronoun) and does "manifest himself" in events in my own life. My incredibly happy late marriage; my escape from a dreadful first marriage; and various other close calls and strange and beneficial coincidences. Now, none of those are useful for proving anything about "the nature of God," and so don't help at all with any kind of "coherent" definition; and none of those are useful for proving anything to anyone else, either, of course -- but I don't have any interest in doing that anyway, and I also don't think that is or should be a requirement of "belief," either.

Okay?

I really don't see why I should have to jump through the hoops you hold up to define myself as a theist and my beliefs as theism, anyway. Who made YOU the "theism police"? I shall call myself what I want. If you don't agree, tough.

Absolutely. You can call yourself whatever you want. It's just that if you deviate too much from the definitions of words that the rest of humanity has agreed on, it will be hard for you to communicate with the rest of us.

For example, you have every right to use the word "sandwich" when what you mean is that which most of us call "bus", and you can use totally the word "gigantic" when you mean that which most of us call "downtown". Of course if you do that, if you ask somebody "Where can I catch the gigantic sandwich", don't expect us to understand that you're trying to catch the downtown bus.

Thats ridiculous. You are STILL maintaining that RELIGION must be all about BELIEF IN GOD and that BELIEF IN GOD must be the CENTER and FOCUS of everything called a religion. Tossing ludicrous examples like using sandwich for bus is just an attempted distraction from the stereotype you insist on using. Ive already shown how the term theism is neither as rigid nor as limited as you tried to show " and now youre going back to that same claim. Sorry, but pretending that calling a bus a sandwich isnt making your point.

Once again, in other words, you refuse to even begin to take these ideas seriously; you only DENY them and paint them as ludicrous.

So, in your head, feel free to label yourself however you wish, but please understand that if you believe in a manifest deity, then the rest of humanity will refer to you as a theist.

That having been cleared up, let's discuss your belief. You believe in a manifest deity because you, just like billions of others, got married, got divorced, got remarried.

No, not at all. I believed long before any of those things happened; its just that my belief, in an admittedly subjective manner, was " for me and no one else " validated in those ways, and in a likewise subjective manner, for me and no one else, God manifested himself as far as my own belief is concerned.

Now, if you want to amend your requirements for theism to include manifest in a way objectively provable to others, then do so; but you have then defined theism completely out of existence. Thats not a debate. Thats just polemic and propaganda.

The observable universe has a radius of 46 billion light years. We know that, taking dark matter and dark energy into account, that 46 billion light year radius accounts for 5% of the actual universe. All the hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars, with the statistically inevitable countless life forms and civilizations in them, are 5% of that which exists. To believe that the entity which created this, also meddles with the mundane and banal social and romantic interactions of homo sapiens, which only showed up in the last few moments on a cosmic timescale and will become extinct in a few moments more, is ABSURD. It's laughable. To believe that, without the slightest shred of evidence, is madness. To believe in the existence and manifest interactivity of a deity, when such a proposition is utterly and completely indistinguishable from the non-existence and non-manifest non-interactivity, is the definition of insanity. Please give me an example of anything at all that it is more absurd to believe than that!

All of which comes down to nothing more than belief in God is absurd.

Thats an opinion and an assertion, not an argument.

Now, about the teachings and value of the Torah as a morally inspiring work of literature. I COMPLETELY understand that you and most rational Jews don't believe that an actual entity called Moses spoke to an actual entity called God who said these words. Of course. But completely separate from the authorship, let's discuss the content.

No, let's not. If you can't be bothered to FIND OUT what the Jewish view of those passages is, and why it is what it is, and take a look at the centuries of debate and discussion that gave rise to them, I don't have any interest in pursuing that discussion at all. That is PRECISELY the same as taking stereotypes of "Darwinism" as described by fundamentalist science-haters and asking me to justify my belief in them.

That's not even remotely the same. There isn't a scientist in the world who would fail to unequivocally state that Darwin was wrong in some things.

And theres not a rabbi in the world who would advocate stoning gays to death, or killing disobedient children, or slavery.

Like I said; its precisely the same. Insisting on going back to the source and challenging your opponent to prove its validity.

So why can't you say "I love the fairy tales about the talking snake and whatnot, but the Torah is WRONG ABOUT KILLING GAYS. Why can't you just go ahead and say that?

I just did, did I not?

For example: You pretty clearly don't even understand the concept of "commandment" in Jewish belief. The Hebrew word is mitzvah, which translated loosely as "a good thing to do." We don't speak in terms of "prohibitions" and "SINS" and punishments and all that so much, as in terms of what is GOOD to do. Even eating pork is not a "sin" in the Christian sense, something forbidden and for which act there will be condemnation and punishment; on the contrary, NOT eating pork is a "good thing to do." That's all.

I see, so killing a gay person, or beating your slaves, or stoning a woman to death for getting raped, is just a "good thing to do?

Nice try, but those are among the parts that we discount and ignore.

Killing gays was never among the 613 traditional mitzvot anyway; there are a number of lists (none definitive), and that isnt on any of them. You might say that NOT sleeping with another man (3,500 years ago) and NOT committing adultery (as opposed to being raped) might be considered good things to do " the former of which isnt taught by modern Jews any more, as I said.

In any case, prescribed punishments are not commandments " another principle with which you seem to be unfamiliar. (Theres no such thing as getting stoned for being raped in the book "thats just your polemic distortion of those passages, which, again, no one ever enforced anyway, even in the way that they WERE understood.)

Does it matter to you at all that Jews are more supportive of LGBT rights than any other religious group? Or are you too obsessed with overstating and grossly exaggerating the evils of an old book to acknowledge that? Ill give 5 to 1 that youll either not acknowledge this point at all, or youll claim that its somehow irrelevant to your argument " which is isnt.

Hows this? If a belief isnt MANIFEST in some sort of actual concrete behavior, then its NOT AN ACTUAL BELIEF. Explain to me why THAT standard is wrong.

So the literal sense of the text is troubling to you? That's too bad. It doesn't bother us at all. Something my converting rabbi said in a Torah study a long time ago has stayed with me: "If you see something in the Torah that you KNOW to be immoral, unethical or factually untrue, there are two possibilities: Either you are not reading the Torah properly, or the Torah is wrong.

Perfect. Can you agree that the Torah is wrong in a LOT of ways?

Surely, and I implicitly already have; but I doubt very much if the longest list I could compose would satisfy you. You want me to condemn ALL OF IT. See below.

Notice that the third possibility -- overruling our own rational and moral sense in favor of religious dogmatism -- is not available to us. We are not ALLOWED to stop thinking and obey some set of dogmas like good little automatons. Sorry about that.

Great. That's not all jews, by the way. Right?

I've seen Jews here in New York give up on a $400,000 deal because they couldn't pick up the phone on a saturday. Seems to me like overruling rationality in favor of religious dogmatism.

I would think its just a matter of deciding which was more important in that particular case. Heres a counterexample; Jews are also forbidden to drive on the Sabbath, but its also an ancient principle that one may violate ANY commandment to save a life, or even prevent risk to health or life. If any person, Jew or not, were seriously ill, any Jew would drive him to the hospital without a second thought.

Saving a life, or preventing risk to a life, trumps the tradition and the commandment, even for the Orthodox.

Making money? Thats not of quite the same priority, now is it? (And your story rather gives the lie to the stereotypes about Jewish greed, too, doesnt it?)

Sorry, but you dont get to pronounce things irrational merely because you dont agree with them.

Not to mention that whole "slicing a piece of your children's penis off without their consent. That seems rather dogmatic to me.

Dealt with elsewhere, and at length, and with no response to my last post on the subject.

In any case: There it is again. If you have nothing but hatred and contempt for religious ideas and traditions, you wont even begin to consider that there might be another point of view on that subject, too " and you demonstrate your total hatred and contempt for religion with every post.

So the primitives thought that disobedient children should be stoned to death? Yeah, we know that, and we joke about it a lot; but it's not taken seriously as a "COMMANDMENT," and as far as the history and heritage that has been passed down to us tells, it never was. Here's another saying; "God has a vote, but not a veto." WE have to decide the meaning of the Torah and change the laws as necessary. That's been true from the beginning. So you think parts of the Bible are brutal and wrong? So do we -- so we ignore them. Something wrong with that?

No, nothing wrong with that. That's great. You absolutely HAVE TO ignore the parts that are brutal and wrong. Don't just ignore them, though, publicly denounce and reject them. It's the moral imperative of all human beings to denounce and reject immorality and evil.

We do " but you wouldnt know that, since you dont read Jewish magazines or newspapers or look at Jewish websites for any reason other than seeking ammunition for your arguments; and of course you dont consider working against the attitudes such passages advocate, in both private conversations and public policy, as counting for anything in that regard. But that " renouncing the evil passages " is not your real concern anyway, as we shall see.

Could you do me a favor? There must be thousands of hours of recorded speeches, sermons, ramblings by rabbis and jewish thinkers on youtube. Could you find me one in which a person in authority within judaism says the Torah is wrong in many ways, I denounce it, I reject it, I am not ashamed of it because we all have violent, amoral and savage ancestors, but i certainly am not proud of it either."

And now it comes out. Not just the evil parts of the Torah " but the whole thing, as highlighted by the bolding above. Lets skip down and see that again, made even clearer:

First, how many evil and perverted portions of a book must you ignore, before you realize that the whole book might be an interesting historical novelty, but is not really worth making a significant part of your life?

At what point do you say "forget it, the Torah is too immoral, too evil, too twisted, too perverted, too savage, too barbaric, let's just read about Socrates"?

Its just a horrible book, isn't it?

If I asked you to open a page of the Torah at random and read forward until you find some kind of commandment or Mitzvah, a direct instruction to do something, and once you read it... DO IT, would you be willing to play that game? How much of a minefield of horrible immorality can a book be, before you just chuck it all out and move on to Lao-Tzu?

Clear enough. You want Jews to do FAR more than just reject the parts of the Torah that you object to; you want us to abandon it entirely and express the same hatred and contempt for it that YOU feel.

Not bloody likely. We dont look at it in the obsessively twisted way that you do.

Second point: Why don't moderate theists (Jews and otherwise) do MORE to publicize their opinion that the majority of the directives, teachings and commandments in the Bible are evil?

NONE, because NONE of us believe that to be true.

The MAJORITY of the directives, teachings and commandments in the Bible are evil?

Really?

Up to now, youve merely been expressing your opinion " as contemptuous and extreme and filled with hatred and revulsion as it is. But you have now made a factual claim, and I challenge you to PROVE IT.

Since youve never read the Hebrew Bible (not the same as the Torah, by the way, which is yet another fact that you dont seem to be aware of) except to seek out the parts you find horrible and disgusting, I dont think you can " unless, of course, you work very hard at twisting the GOOD teachings, directives and commandments and trying to make them LOOK evil. More on that later.

Now lets consider the astonishing depth of your extreme hatred and your determination to savage and misrepresent Jewish teachings and traditions:

Is ignoring them enough? I say it isn't. Not while 800 women a year are killed in Pakistan in honor killings which are rooted in the Abrahamic tradition you embrace.

This is astonishing and incredibly repellent, by ANY standard.

You blame JEWS for the excesses and atrocities of MUSLIMS? You actually claim that I, and other Jews, embrace the tradition of HONOR KILLINGS?

I think that makes your attitude clear. The puzzle is why that kind of bizarre and absolutely indefensible smear doesnt make it clear to YOU.

Draw a line in the sand. Yell it from the rooftops. We, the Jews, renounce and reject the immoral and evil teachings of the Torah. The incitations to genocide, homophobia, sexism and slavery of the Torah, are no more a part of a modern Jew's life, than the incitations to antisemitism and hatred of Mein Kampf are a part of a modern German's life.

Never gonna happen " because neither the WHOLE TORAH nor the WHOLE HEBREW BIBLE is wholly, or even MOSTLY, evil, in spite of your contempt-fueled certainty that they are; and they will ALWAYS remain a part of Jewish life.

We dont renounce and reject the Torah because we are too busy teaching and proving by example the GOOD teachings and traditions of the Torah and Judaism. You wish that there werent any; but claiming that there ARE NONE, or even that those are a MINORITY, no matter how much you wish that were so, is IRRATIONAL.

I COULD give a list of the GOOD things taught in the Hebrew Bible " a list MUCH LONGER than any list you can compile of its horrors " but I wont bother; as I say, you would work as hard as you could to find a way to twist ALL of them into something evil, or just dismiss them with some kind of counter, no doubt using the same ones over and over and over again.

In any case, you made the claim that the MAJORITY of the teachings, traditions and commandments in the Hebrew Bible " or the Torah, if you like " are EVIL.

Lets see what youve got to SUPPORT that outrageous falsehood.

Now, to conclude: Barring an attempt to prove your slanderous and objectively false claim, I dont intend to reply to your posts again, for several reasons: (1) your position is too extreme to merit with replies, since that tends to give them credence: (2) you either ignore or distort everything I say; and (3) you still refuse to even acknowledge my repeated requests, nay, demands, that you LEARN SOMETHING about the teachings and traditions of Judaism, most likely because you are NOT open to learning ANYTHING that might challenge your pre-judgment (sometimes call prejudice) of all things religious and your blatantly hateful and shockingly slanderous ideas about both the Jewish religion and the Jewish Bible.

Be well. If you post an attempt to prove the hateful baloney you posted above as a factual, quantitative claim, Ill respond. Otherwise, I have nothing further to say. Deal with THAT first; prove it or retract it. If you try to go on without doing one of those two things first, youll get no response from me.

[no evidence no belief]

This is really getting tiresome. Just a few points:

We're having two separate discussions about two different topics, so lets make sure not to conflate the two. First, we are discussing your belief in a God that manifests itself. Second we are discussing the moral value of the Bible irrespective of the fact it wasn't wasn't actually written by God.

Let's tackle the question of your belief in God first. I reject your analogy of belief vs non-belief in God to a preference for a mattress over a waterbed. This is not an issue of preference, this is a truth-statement. Your social security number either ends with the number 5 or it doesn't. God either manifests itself or it doesn't. If you believe it does, you're a theist, otherwise you're not.

There are countless numbers of worldviews and approaches to spirituality, probably as many as the total number of people who ever lived. But whatever your belief system is, if it does not involve the belief that a deity manifests itself, THEN YOU'RE NOT A THEIST.

If you believe that a deity manifests itself, you're a theist. Since the belief in a manifest deity is unwarranted, then the belief is wrong, or crazy, or deluded. Whatever word you want to use for it.

Okay. I'm not sure why you think I have to share your demand that "theism" requires belief in a god that "manifests itself," but let's go with that.

I do. Okay? I believe that God has "manifested himself" (you'll forgive me for using the theistically conventional pronoun) and does "manifest himself" in events in my own life. My incredibly happy late marriage; my escape from a dreadful first marriage; and various other close calls and strange and beneficial coincidences. Now, none of those are useful for proving anything about "the nature of God," and so don't help at all with any kind of "coherent" definition; and none of those are useful for proving anything to anyone else, either, of course -- but I don't have any interest in doing that anyway, and I also don't think that is or should be a requirement of "belief," either.

Okay?

I really don't see why I should have to jump through the hoops you hold up to define myself as a theist and my beliefs as theism, anyway. Who made YOU the "theism police"? I shall call myself what I want. If you don't agree, tough.

Absolutely. You can call yourself whatever you want. It's just that if you deviate too much from the definitions of words that the rest of humanity has agreed on, it will be hard for you to communicate with the rest of us.

For example, you have every right to use the word "sandwich" when what you mean is that which most of us call "bus", and you can use totally the word "gigantic" when you mean that which most of us call "downtown". Of course if you do that, if you ask somebody "Where can I catch the gigantic sandwich", don't expect us to understand that you're trying to catch the downtown bus.

Thats ridiculous. You are STILL maintaining that RELIGION must be all about BELIEF IN GOD and that BELIEF IN GOD must be the CENTER and FOCUS of everything called a religion. Tossing ludicrous examples like using sandwich for bus is just an attempted distraction from the stereotype you insist on using. Ive already shown how the term theism is neither as rigid nor as limited as you tried to show " and now youre going back to that same claim. Sorry, but pretending that calling a bus a sandwich isnt making your point.

Once again, in other words, you refuse to even begin to take these ideas seriously; you only DENY them and paint them as ludicrous.

I'm not attempting to draw an equivalency between belief in god and RELIGION. I'm trying to draw an equivalency between belief in God and "theism", that which is defined on every dictionary on the planet as "belief in God".

If you have a problem with that, take it up with.... the entire human race.

So, in your head, feel free to label yourself however you wish, but please understand that if you believe in a manifest deity, then the rest of humanity will refer to you as a theist.

That having been cleared up, let's discuss your belief. You believe in a manifest deity because you, just like billions of others, got married, got divorced, got remarried.

No, not at all. I believed long before any of those things happened; its just that my belief, in an admittedly subjective manner, was " for me and no one else " validated in those ways, and in a likewise subjective manner, for me and no one else, God manifested himself as far as my own belief is concerned.

Now, if you want to amend your requirements for theism to include manifest in a way objectively provable to others, then do so; but you have then defined theism completely out of existence. Thats not a debate. Thats just polemic and propaganda.

No, that's fine. Believe what you will. Can you blame me for taking that no more seriously than someone who claims he was abducted by aliens, or saw bigfoot, or a kid who says he saw Santa?

The observable universe has a radius of 46 billion light years. We know that, taking dark matter and dark energy into account, that 46 billion light year radius accounts for 5% of the actual universe. All the hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars, with the statistically inevitable countless life forms and civilizations in them, are 5% of that which exists. To believe that the entity which created this, also meddles with the mundane and banal social and romantic interactions of homo sapiens, which only showed up in the last few moments on a cosmic timescale and will become extinct in a few moments more, is ABSURD. It's laughable. To believe that, without the slightest shred of evidence, is madness. To believe in the existence and manifest interactivity of a deity, when such a proposition is utterly and completely indistinguishable from the non-existence and non-manifest non-interactivity, is the definition of insanity. Please give me an example of anything at all that it is more absurd to believe than that!

All of which comes down to nothing more than belief in God is absurd.

Thats an opinion and an assertion, not an argument.

Sure. Belief in "that for which there is no good evidence, and against which there is overwhelming evidence" is absurd. That is my opinion. Do you disagree?

If you disagree, there's only two ways for you to do so. Either you disagree with my characterization that there is no good evidence for the theistic God and plenty of evidence against it, or you disagree with me that believing in something without evidence and in spite of strong evidence against that claim, is absurd. which one is it?

So why can't you say "I love the fairy tales about the talking snake and whatnot, but the Torah is WRONG ABOUT KILLING GAYS. Why can't you just go ahead and say that?

I just did, did I not?

Yes you did. That's great.
I'm sure you also agree that, as well as being wrong about killing gays, the Torah is wrong about killing children who misbehave, killing women who got raped in the village, forcing women who got raped outside the village to marry their rapist, killing anybody who worships a different god, owning slaves, selling your daughter as a sex slave, etc etc etc.

So my question is this: How many horrible, immoral, twisted, perverted, evil commandments, ideas and propositions must a book contain, before you say to yourself "Meh, you know what, I'll read Socrates instead"?

For example: You pretty clearly don't even understand the concept of "commandment" in Jewish belief. The Hebrew word is mitzvah, which translated loosely as "a good thing to do." We don't speak in terms of "prohibitions" and "SINS" and punishments and all that so much, as in terms of what is GOOD to do. Even eating pork is not a "sin" in the Christian sense, something forbidden and for which act there will be condemnation and punishment; on the contrary, NOT eating pork is a "good thing to do." That's all.

I see, so killing a gay person, or beating your slaves, or stoning a woman to death for getting raped, is just a "good thing to do?

Nice try, but those are among the parts that we discount and ignore.

Very good. I'm glad you do. Two questions. 1) Is it enough to just ignore evil? Shouldn't it be denounced? 2) How polluted by evil must a book be before you stop making it a part of your life?

Killing gays was never among the 613 traditional mitzvot anyway; there are a number of lists (none definitive), and that isnt on any of them.

Leviticus 1 "The Lord colled to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting". Ok? so this is GOD talking directly to the patriarch of your religion.

This is what he says a few pages later: "If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives."

That's God speaking to Moses.

I am happy you agree that none of this ever actually happened, and I am glad you agree that this is morally evil. I'm glad you agree that this passage of the Torah, much like many other passages of the Torah, is wrong historically and, most importantly, is wrong morally - indeed it's a moral abomination.

In any case, prescribed punishments are not commandments " another principle with which you seem to be unfamiliar.

Right. Prescribed punishments are not commandments. Prescribed punishments are prescribed punishments. And to prescribe the punishment of death for the "crimes" of being gay, or having been raped, or of being a "witch" or of worshiping a different God, or of being an unruly child, is morally evil.

(Theres no such thing as getting stoned for being raped in the book

"If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he raped his neighbors wife."

Does it matter to you at all that Jews are more supportive of LGBT rights than any other religious group? Or are you too obsessed with overstating and grossly exaggerating the evils of an old book to acknowledge that? Ill give 5 to 1 that youll either not acknowledge this point at all, or youll claim that its somehow irrelevant to your argument " which is isnt.

Of course it matters that you are supportive of LGBT rights! It matters and it's commendable.

Of all the people who think the Torah is somewhat important and relevant, you guys are the best at acting as though it's not important and relevant.

The only possible way for you to improve the situation would be to actually acknowledge the Torah is not important and relevant.

Hows this? If a belief isnt MANIFEST in some sort of actual concrete behavior, then its NOT AN ACTUAL BELIEF. Explain to me why THAT standard is wrong.

Two answers. First, beliefs typically inform your actions, but if any given case it does NOT manifest in any kind of way, like for example it doesn't manifest in the form of you trying to defend a belief system associated with a book filled with evil, then it's ok.

Second answer: I would say that genital mutilation of unconsenting infants is a rather manifest concrete behavior.




Hey Cnorman, sorry, I got tired of responding to every point made. Here's my general argument.

Imagine the Torah was like a loaf of bread you were considering eating.

Now, imagine this loaf of bread had some molding/rot on it. A corner of it, say 5% of it, is moldy and disgusting. The rest is edible. Not particularly delicious, but edible. You have two options. Either ignore the moldy part, and just eat the ok parts that are near it, or throw out the entire loaf and instead eat one with NO molding at all.

Which would you do?

Now imagine it wasn't 5% moldy, but 20% moldy, and there is a perfectly fresh loaf of bread right next to it with ZERO molding. What would you do?

What if it was 50% moldy, and there were 100 perfectly fresh loafs of bread right next to it, all of them without a single spec of mold in it. What would you do?

My point is this: Why make the Torah a part of your life in any way whatsoever, when a significant portion of it, by your admission, is extremely evil and perverted, and the alternative to it are multiple other books on morality which are free of the evil and perverted parts, and which are better at describing the good parts?

Why not go with a better tradition than Judaism?

[cnorman18]

[Replying to post 33 by cnorman18]

Perhaps you didn't understand my expectation -- nay, demand -- of you in your response.

You said:

... the majority of the directives, teachings and commandments in the Bible are evil...

To which I responded:

Up to now, youve merely been expressing your opinion " as contemptuous and extreme and filled with hatred and revulsion as it is. But you have now made a factual claim, and I challenge you to PROVE IT.

...If you post an attempt to prove the hateful baloney you posted above as a factual, quantitative claim, Ill respond. Otherwise, I have nothing further to say. Deal with THAT first; prove it or retract it. If you try to go on without doing one of those two things first, youll get no response from me.

You have also rather obviously ducked replying to several other points I made in my last; but those are irrelevant till you back down on the above referenced blatantly, hatefully, and objectively false factual and quantitative claim, or retract it.

Retract your statement or prove it. We don't go on till then.

[no evidence no belief]

[Replying to post 33 by cnorman18]

Perhaps you didn't understand my expectation -- nay, demand -- of you in your response.

You said:

... the majority of the directives, teachings and commandments in the Bible are evil...

To which I responded:

Up to now, youve merely been expressing your opinion " as contemptuous and extreme and filled with hatred and revulsion as it is. But you have now made a factual claim, and I challenge you to PROVE IT.

...If you post an attempt to prove the hateful baloney you posted above as a factual, quantitative claim, Ill respond. Otherwise, I have nothing further to say. Deal with THAT first; prove it or retract it. If you try to go on without doing one of those two things first, youll get no response from me.

You have also rather obviously ducked replying to several other points I made in my last; but those are irrelevant till you back down on the above referenced blatantly, hatefully, and objectively false factual and quantitative claim, or retract it.

Retract your statement or prove it. We don't go on till then.

Hi Cnorman. I retract that claim. I've never actually counted and tabulated all the commandments, incitements, ideas of the Bible, so I can't say yet that the majority of them is evil.

What I can say is that all commandments, punishments, reported activities of the deity, incitements, endorsements, ideas, etc in the Bible fall into three categories:

1) Evil

2) Irrelevant

3) Good but obvious and unnecessary.


1) Evil ones are self explanatory. Evil commandments, punishments, endorsements, incitements, are ones which "the world would be a better place if everybody did the exact opposite". For example "Kill gay people". If everybody made it a point in their life to do the exact opposite of that, the world would be a better place.

2) Irrelevant. These are things that relate specifically to bronze age stuff or to campestrian living. Like "don't pee in a river upstream of your village". I'm glad that the bronze age barbarians were able to figure this out for themselves, but it doesn't relate to us. In the irrelevant categories I would also place ritualistic laws such as "dont create graven images" or "boil the blood of a goat", which are just the result of superstition and nonsense. Lastly, in this category I would place commandments and ideas that are not evil per se, but which are technically wrong.

3) "Don't kill", "don't steal", etc. There isn't a single society of primates (gorillas, chimps, orangutans, neanderthals, humans, etc) that wasn't able to figure this out for themselves. Innuit eskimos, native americans, chinese, japanese, australian natives, the Greekes, Hindus, all of these civilizations which were in no way influenced by Israelites and the Torah, were all able to figure out for themselves and verbalize these most basic of innate instincts of primate solidarity. The Israelites don't get a cookie for figuring out that murder is wrong, and then proceeding to murdering all their neighbors.

So, I can't go through the whole book, but why don't I go through the first few pages of commandments, and see how that works out.

You shall have no other gods before[a] me." Irrelevant. superstitious nonsense.

"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below". Irrelevant. Superstitious nonsense.

"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God" Irrelevant superstitious nonsense.

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" Irrelevant superstitious nonsense.

"Honor your father and your mother". Category 2. Honor and respect should be earned, not automatic. Just because some violent alcoholic knocked your mother up doesn't mean he is deserving of any respect. Besides, EVERYBODY loves their parents. This commandment is totally unnecessary.

"You shall not murder". Obvious and unnecessary. Category 3. Remarkable that this is the 6th most important commandment according to "God".

"You shall not commit adultery". I don't know that having sex with as many people as you want is immoral. Is an "open marriage" intrinsically immoral, for example? What is immoral is lying about it, but that's already represented later. Sexual promiscuity is not immoral. In my opinion. I'm open to talking about it.

"You shall not steal". Well, duh! Category 3. Obvious.

"You shall not give false testimony". Well, duh! Category 3. Obvious.

"You shall not covet your neighbors house. You shall not covet your neighbors wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." Immoral. Category 1. Evil. thought crime. There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeing your neighbors success, and being inspired by that to seek a better life for yourself. NOTHING wrong with saying "I hope I'll get married soon just like my best friend Ashley". Thought crime. Bad.

"Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold". Irrelevant and repetitious.

"Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. 25 If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it. " Irrelevant and repetitious

"And do not go up to my altar on steps, or your private parts may be exposed" Seriously? On the same page where "God" admonishes against murder, theft and perjury, he finds it necessary to tell people not to go up steps otherwise others might see your junk? Really?

"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free" Slavery. Implicit and explicit endorsement of the concept of ownership of fellow humans. Evil. If everybody in the world strove to do the exact opposite of this, the world would be a better place.

"But if the servant declares, I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, 6 then his master must take him before the judges.[a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life." More twisted, perverted abominations about the institutionalized degradation of the human spirit. Evil.

"If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do". Slavery + female intrinsic inferiority. Two forms of ultimate immorality for the price of one.

"Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death" Legitimate defense? Hello?

"Anyone who attacks[c] their father or mother is to be put to death." Murder of unruly children. Evil.

"Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death". If slavery is ok, why is kidnapping wrong? Is it because it implies the theft of somebody else's slave? Or because it implies profiteering by the slave trade, without government authorization?

"Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death" Murder of unruly children. Evil.

"If people quarrel and one person hits another with a stone or with their fist[d] and the victim does not die but is confined to bed, 19 the one who struck the blow will not be held liable if the other can get up and walk around outside with a staff; however, the guilty party must pay the injured person for any loss of time and see that the victim is completely healed." Obvious. Innate human compassion. If you do something and to somebody you must make amends. WHO NEEDS THIS TO BE WRITTEN DOWN?

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property". Evil. Pure and simple.

"If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[e] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the womans husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." Seems pretty stupid to me. Who would say that? DON'T HIT PREGNANT WOMEN. DUH! What's this nonsense about eye for an eye?

"An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. 27 And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth." Evil. Slavery is wrong. If any person hurts another he must be held responsible for it. To say that a slave's only recourse in the case of maiming, is the restoration of the freedom he should have never been deprived of in the first place, is evil and immoral.

"If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten". Are you kidding me? You're living in the desert, on the edge of starvation, a famine or plague or drought away from extinction, and you let an entire bull go to waste? Plus, what's up with STONING a bull to death? Inhumane and absurd. How many stones does it take to kill a bull? Stupid.

Anyway, there is a bunch of boring stuff about bulls and chicken for a while, but it does get interesting after Exodus 22:16

"If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. 17 If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins." What? If the father absolutely refuses? what if the woman refuses? What's this about buying wives? EVIL. Objectification of women.

Do not allow a sorceress to live." Yey. Kill women for imaginary crimes. Way to go Israelites!

"Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal is to be put to death." Death penalty seems a little harsh to me, especially when having sex with a woman against her will seems to be punishable with just a fine. Is the violation of the will of an animal worse than that of a woman? Absurd.

"Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed". Open incitement to genocide. Evil beyond anything else. Nothing could precipitate the total extinction of the human race more efficiently than obedience to this commandment. Evil.

"Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt" Riiiiight. Don't mistreat foreigners. Except if they worship a different God, in which case, DESTROY THEM.


So it looks like out of this sample of 30 commandments, only 14 are completely and utterly evil and monstrous. Only 14 out of 30 are beyond redemption, inexcusable, perverted and immoral in ANY context. Slightly less than 50% of the commandments are perverted, twisted, horrible, mind boggling in their perversion, unsalvageable in the depth of their immorality. You are right. It's not the majority. I take that back.

The rest is irrelevant stuff about chicken and bulls, and obvious stuff that everybody with a higher brain has known for the last few million years and does not need to be written down.

so I ask you again: Why bother with this stupid book in the first place?

[cnorman18]

[Replying to post 36 by no evidence no belief]

"Samples," my hind foot. After the Ten, those are carefully cherrypicked to prove your "point." How about these? Just off the top of my head, without bothering to look them up:

"Do not oppress the stranger among you, for you were strangers in Egypt." Unheard of in the ancient world, where "stranger" meant either "enemy" or "prey," and surrounding tribes were invariably regarded with suspicion. Such an attitude was forbidden to the Hebrews; the above quote appears no less than four times in the Torah. Obvious in OUR day, maybe, but not in the Bronze Age.

"Do not slaughter a lamb in the presence of its mother." First recorded instance of concern for animals' pain and "feelings" -- and indeed, the Hebrews were the first to consider "animal cruelty" as an actual subject of concern.

The daughters of Zelophehad, in Numbers -- women have the right to inherit as heirs in their own right: first recorded instance of "legal personhood" for females.

By modern standards (again), the Bible is not particularly egalitarian -- but in the Bronze Age, it was a radical departure from the norm. Wives had rights, husbands had responsibilities; in other societies of the time, it only worked the other way.

Equality under the law: murder is murder and the penalty remains the same, whatever the class of the victim or the perpetrator. Other legal codes of the time, e.g. that of Hammurabi, specified punishments according to class -- death for the murder of noble, a small fine for the murder of a slave (or nothing, if the slave was one's own).

Indeed, even the authority of the King was limited; his will was NOT law, as in other societies. Again, not obvious in the ancient world, and not even obvious as late as 1215 in the West, before the signing of the Magna Carta which limited the "divine right of kings."

The Sabbath, a day of rest, was to be extended to one's slaves and even one's animals -- and let's not get all wrapped around the axle about slavery being condoned in the Bible; grinding poverty and inequality are condoned in our own day. Further, we're not talking about these being commandments of God, remember?

For the matter of that, the treatment of slaves was restricted, and a slave that was injured was allowed to go free. Also unheard of in the ancient world, where slaves were mere livestock, not humans.

Widows and orphans are to be cared for by the society in general; obvious in OUR day, perhaps, but not in the Bronze Age, where such people were regularly allowed to starve or die of exposure (and in some places, still are).

Even the property of one's enemies was to be respected; if you see your enemy's ox fallen into a ditch, you are to help free it -- even on the Sabbath day. You are not to burn the fruit trees surrounding a town you are besieging. Indeed, the first "rules of war" appear in the Hebrew Bible.

Standards of evidence for criminal trials were introduced in the Torah; a person could be convicted of murder only on the testimony of two witnesses. Extension of that principle eventually led to a system where the standards were so strict that virtually no one was ever executed for murder -- or anything else.

Fair standards for trade were among the laws; one was not to use two sets of weights (in trade, for the scales that weighed out payment) -- one for one's kinsmen, and one for those outside the tribe. Another application of the prohibition of "oppressing the stranger," and again, unheard of in the ancient world, where "strangers" were to be cheated whenever possible.

(Re "honor thy parents": For the record, if a parent was so despicable that the child could NOT honor him -- the PARENT was adjudged to be in violation of the Commandment, not the child, because he prevented its being kept. Apparently you didn't even know that rather basic fact. Your knowledge of the meaning of the rest of the Ten -- even discounting your knee-jerk contempt of all things "religious" as displayed in your comments on the first few -- is similarly lacking.)

Enough of this. Your complaint that even the GOOD laws of the Bible are "obvious and irrelevant" is rather silly, since that judgment comes out of the context of the morality of the present day -- much of which was FOUNDED on the teachings of the Bible and Judaism as well as Christianity.

It is very plain to me, and I suspect to all, that your vehement criticism of the Bible has more to do with your general hostility and hatred of religion than with anything remotely resambling the Bible's actual literary nature. The Bible isn't only made uo of "laws," you know; it contains lyric poetry, hero tales (some of which are truly inspiring), love stories, teaching tales (Ruth, Joseph, Esther, many more), discourses on justice and morality from the prophets, ecstatic visions, and even philosophical speculation and debate.

One of the earliest of that last -- in its sources, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible -- can be found in the book of Job, which is essentially a debate with God -- which Job won The "comforters" insisted that Job must somehow be at fault for his suffering; Job refused to concede that -- and God finally had to admit that it was HIS fault, even while thundering that Job was not God and could not possibly understand his reasons. Job was perfectly willing to concede that -- because God had admitted that the cause of the suffering of the righteous -- the "Problem of Evil" -- was with God, not with humans.

Worthless? I think not. Nor are the myriad other examples of human thought and learning that are displayed in this ancient collection. But more than that, I'd like to take a look at a few bizarre ideas that you seem to have, beyond the blatant fallacy of composition to which you are falling victim when you say that because a few -- yes, I said a FEW -- verses in the Bible are evil, and some of those by modern standards only and not those of the time it was written, the whole book must be evil. "If it is true of a part, it must be true of the whole" was one of Aristotle's original 13 fallacies, and it's just as fallacious now as it was then.

Beyond even that -- we have this, from your last post before this one:

Why not go with a better tradition than Judaism?

And HERE we see your real agenda. Not even abandoning the Bible -- you advocate abandoning the Jewish religion itself.

Well, here are a few things to consider:

First, the "bad parts" of the Bible are not the whole Bible, and have no authority or relevance to the present day (to Jews, at least; that some Christians still cite the "clobber passages" to show that God opposes LGBT rights -- while ignoring the many, many other passages condemning things that they LIKE -- isn't either the Jews' or the Bible's fault).

Second, as I've posted many, MANY times: The teachings of the Jewish religion cannot be found through an unaided surface reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Third, and perhaps most important in the present context -- The Bible is not Judaism, and Judaism is not the Bible.

Just last night, I attended a concert at my synagogue, where our cantor and her twin sister sang songs from the Jewish heritage -- some from the liturgy, some from Ashkenazic tradition, some from the Sephardic (Spanish) tradition, and some from modern Jewish songwriters like George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin ("Sisters," from that fine Jewish motion picture, White Christmas). It was a celebration of Jewish history and culture, and the audience was clapping and sometimes singing along, filled with joy and appreciation for the whole experience -- the Jewish heritage, the astonishing skill and artistry of the two women, the pleasure of being part of it all -- and how deeply ingrained in that experience were the passages that obsess YOU?

Not. At. All.

Yes, those are a part of our history; one reason we study those passages today (which we occasionally still do; we haven't forgotten them) is to learn from our ancestors' mistakes. The idea that their very EXISTENCE is a good reason to toss out the whole Bible, never mind Judaism itself -- well, that makes about as much sense as abandoning the Constitution and dismantling the American Republic because SLAVERY is not only MENTIONED in our founding document, but its very SYSTEM is set up to take it into account! A slave counts as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of determining representation, and so on.

Oh, so slavery was abolished and is no longer of any account in American law? So were all the passages you hate, in Jewish law. We don't DELETE them any more than those passages in the Constitution were deleted. That makes no sense; you can't erase history -- if you do, how can you learn from it?

I'll leave aside the other points of mine which you ignored -- your claim was that you "got tired of responding" to them, I believe -- including the FACT that you EXPLICITLY BLAMED Jews, and by implication ME, for the Muslim "tradition" of "HONOR KILLINGS" by your claim that we "EMBRACE" them as a part of the "Abrahamic tradition." That is a GROSS insult and a BLATANTLY FALSE and INDEFENSIBLE accusation; but then, that sort of take-no-prisoners, you-are-100%-wrong-on-every-point tone is more or less your general approach to "debate" here.

And, for me, that puts this entire conversation to an end. You have no conception, nor any understanding whatever, of what an actual "religion" IS or CAN BE; it's NOT all about "belief," nor about a flawlessly perfect tradition of ethics and morals (find me one of those, please -- even Buddhists have committed mass murders in the name of their religion). Especially Judaism, which is much more than a "belief system" and always has been. You are so obviously focused on the EVILS of ALL religion, and so consumed by your virulent hatred of it, that your perceptions and ideas are influenced by nothing else. Therefore, I don't see any point in continuing this conversation.

There is, though, one way; if you would do what I said at the very beginning, and READ something about the basics of Judaism, perhaps we can resume this. I have recommended many books over the years, from Milton Steinberg's Basic Judaism to Judaism for Dummies, and those books are so EASY and CHEAP to obtain at any used bookstore or online, that there's really no excuse for willfully continuing to remain ignorant of something that you implicitly claim to understand, and which you so clearly DESPISE, without any actual knowledge of it.

LEARN something about Judaism, and if you're still interested, we can talk again. Otherwise, I'm done here. It's not my job to educate you; I've tried to teach things to people who were absolutely DETERMINED to learn nothing -- 7th grade summer school math students (and Holocaust deniers) come to mind -- and I don't care to attempt it again.

Your conception of Judaism is somewhere between a Julius Streicher cartoon and a fundamentalist's nightmare. Correct that, and we might have something to say to each other again. Till then -- be well, and no hard feelings.

[no evidence no belief]

[Replying to post 36 by no evidence no belief]

"Samples," my hind foot. After the Ten, those are carefully cherrypicked to prove your "point."

Ah! So you're saying that the commandments I selected PROVE MY POINT, but it doesn't count because I didn't select the commandments impartially, but instead I cherrypicked them for the purpose of proving my point.

In other words, you're saying that if those commandments had been selected totally randomly or if, say, they were just the first 30, then my point would have been successfully made, but because they were cherrypicked, then my point is not made.

Right? Is that what you're saying?

Well, I got news for you buddy. Those commandments were not cherrypicked with any kind of agenda in mind. THEY ARE THE FIRST THIRTY COMMANDMENTS. PERIOD.

They are just presented in order, from Exodus 20, up to Exodus 22.

Game over, buddy.

You have implicitly conceded, because you admitted that it's the cherrypicking (which didn't happen) which would make my point invalid, and that therefore my point IS valid, given the absence of cherrypicking.

Not only that, but you have betrayed an astounding ignorance of your own holy book. How could you possibly not know about this? This is one of the central passages of your religion, where God speaks to your patriarch and tells him how Jews are supposed to live their lives. And you've clearly never read past the first page! Moreover, how could you possibly have the nerve to tell me that I have to learn about your own culture, when you don't even know the first 30 commandments? Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Those commandments are not cherrypicked. THEY ARE THE FIRST THIRTY THINGS GOD SAYS TO THE JEWS. AND THEY ARE HORRIBLE.

How about these? Just off the top of my head, without bothering to look them up:

"Do not oppress the stranger among you, for you were strangers in Egypt."

I included that in my list, man! It appears back to back with the commandment to destroy any person who worships a different God from you.

Look, I really appreciate the second half of your post, so please see my final response below, which hopefully will redeem me a little bit in your eyes. But honestly, can you blame me for being put off by a book which contradicts itself so blatantly? A book which says "be nice to strangers" and "kill strangers" back to back? And it's not even the only portion. It says "don't murder" in exodus 20 and "murder your children" in Exodus 21! How can you expect me to study this as anything other than a historical example of humanity's intellectual and moral failures?

Listen, you have me half convinced that there is some value in a Jew familiarizing himself with his heritage, learning of the details of his ancestors' mistakes, learning from them, etc. But put yourself in my shoes. Imagine you are seeing the Book, not embedded in your tradition, not through the lens of your heritage, but with fresh eyes. Imagine yourself, without any preparation or setup, looking at those first 30 commandments for the very first time as an adult. Almost half of them are irredeemably and unforgivably, objectively and eternally, evil. Of the other half, a good chunk are hogwash, and the few good ones are often directly contradicted by the evil ones on the same or the next page.

Am I really to blame for looking at this book and saying "Meh, Socrates, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, or Buddha are better"?

Enough of this. Your complaint that even the GOOD laws of the Bible are "obvious and irrelevant" is rather silly, since that judgment comes out of the context of the morality of the present day -- much of which was FOUNDED on the teachings of the Bible and Judaism as well as Christianity.

Patently false. I respect the conviction and dignity that comes across in your words, but I cannot let you get away with this.

Countless civilizations that had NOTHING to do with Judaism or Christianity (Chinese, native Americans, Eskimos, Australian natives, and many more) arrived to the same moral conclusions that we did. My morality, and the morality of the present day, is NOT founded in Judaism. Modern morality is the inevitable result of any civilization that gets as far as we have. If the Torah had never been written, if the Amalekites had exterminated the Israelites instead of the other way around, WE WOULD STILL KNOW MURDER IS WRONG.

You don't get to pat yourself on the back for eventually figuring out that which we all already knew.

It is very plain to me, and I suspect to all, that your vehement criticism of the Bible has more to do with your general hostility and hatred of religion than with anything remotely resambling the Bible's actual literary nature. The Bible isn't only made uo of "laws," you know; it contains lyric poetry, hero tales (some of which are truly inspiring), love stories, teaching tales (Ruth, Joseph, Esther, many more), discourses on justice and morality from the prophets, ecstatic visions, and even philosophical speculation and debate.

That's fine.

One of the earliest of that last -- in its sources, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible -- can be found in the book of Job, which is essentially a debate with God -- which Job won The "comforters" insisted that Job must somehow be at fault for his suffering; Job refused to concede that -- and God finally had to admit that it was HIS fault, even while thundering that Job was not God and could not possibly understand his reasons. Job was perfectly willing to concede that -- because God had admitted that the cause of the suffering of the righteous -- the "Problem of Evil" -- was with God, not with humans.

Right. God is horrible. He tortures an innocent guy on a dare from the Devil. Aren't you glad it's fiction? Aren't you glad that you don't live in a world where you could be next? I understand it's all metaphor, and all that. But what a horrible metaphor!

Worthless? I think not. Nor are the myriad other examples of human thought and learning that are displayed in this ancient collection. But more than that, I'd like to take a look at a few bizarre ideas that you seem to have, beyond the blatant fallacy of composition to which you are falling victim when you say that because a few -- yes, I said a FEW -- verses in the Bible are evil, and some of those by modern standards only and not those of the time it was written, the whole book must be evil. "If it is true of a part, it must be true of the whole" was one of Aristotle's original 13 fallacies, and it's just as fallacious now as it was then.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that "because a portion of the Bible is evil, therefore the whole of it is evil". That would be as absurd as saying that because a portion of Hitler's actions were evil, then all of Hitler's actions were evil. I'm sure some of Hitler's actions were not evil.

My point is that a sufficient portion of the Bible is evil, to make me lose interest in it, and to make it difficult for me to draw any kind of spiritual inspiration from it.

Hey, a girl may be extremely attractive, may not have herpes, may not have Chlamydia, may not have HPV, may not have Syphylis, may not have Gonorrhea. But if she has HIV, I'm not going to sleep with her. I'm going to sleep with a girl who as well as being attractive and not having all those other STDs, ALSO DOESN'T HAVE HIV!

Hey, the Bible may be very interesting and poetic, it might not advocate evil things such as... (dang, I can't think of any evil thing the Bible doesn't advocate).... I can't complete my analogy. Anyway, the Bible may be very interesting and poetic, and may have some good things (I can't think of any, but respect the fact that you can), but if it advocates the murder of homosexuals, the murder of unruly children, the murder of non-virgin wives, etc, then I'm not going to waste too much time seeking inspiration from it. I'm going to read socrates instead.

Why not go with a better tradition than Judaism?

And HERE we see your real agenda. Not even abandoning the Bible -- you advocate abandoning the Jewish religion itself.

Well, here are a few things to consider:

First, the "bad parts" of the Bible are not the whole Bible, and have no authority or relevance to the present day (to Jews, at least; that some Christians still cite the "clobber passages" to show that God opposes LGBT rights -- while ignoring the many, many other passages condemning things that they LIKE -- isn't either the Jews' or the Bible's fault).

Second, as I've posted many, MANY times: The teachings of the Jewish religion cannot be found through an unaided surface reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Third, and perhaps most important in the present context -- The Bible is not Judaism, and Judaism is not the Bible.

I understand that. That's fine.

I'm from Rome. My ancestors were ancient Romans. But you don't see me studying the speeches of Julius Caesar, and wearing togas and eating from one of those sideways sofa-beds rather than sitting normally. I don't celebrate the day in which the romans invaded England or whatever.

Why do you have to carry this baggage?

Just last night, I attended a concert at my synagogue, where our cantor and her twin sister sang songs from the Jewish heritage -- some from the liturgy, some from Ashkenazic tradition, some from the Sephardic (Spanish) tradition, and some from modern Jewish songwriters like George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin ("Sisters," from that fine Jewish motion picture, White Christmas). It was a celebration of Jewish history and culture, and the audience was clapping and sometimes singing along, filled with joy and appreciation for the whole experience -- the Jewish heritage, the astonishing skill and artistry of the two women, the pleasure of being part of it all -- and how deeply ingrained in that experience were the passages that obsess YOU?

Not. At. All.

Fine. Explain to me how seeing some other concert with a bunch of friends at a concert hall, is less valuable of an experience than seeing a Jewish concert with a bunch of Jewish friends, at a synagogue.

Yes, those are a part of our history; one reason we study those passages today (which we occasionally still do; we haven't forgotten them) is to learn from our ancestors' mistakes. The idea that their very EXISTENCE is a good reason to toss out the whole Bible, never mind Judaism itself -- well, that makes about as much sense as abandoning the Constitution and dismantling the American Republic because SLAVERY is not only MENTIONED in our founding document, but its very SYSTEM is set up to take it into account! A slave counts as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of determining representation, and so on.

Oh, so slavery was abolished and is no longer of any account in American law? So were all the passages you hate, in Jewish law. We don't DELETE them any more than those passages in the Constitution were deleted. That makes no sense; you can't erase history -- if you do, how can you learn from it?

I am 100% in favor of studying history for the purpose of studying our mistakes. Implicit in that, is the admission that those early documents which advocate slavery, genocide, subjugation of women, rape, etc WERE WRONG IN ADVOCATING THOSE THINGS.

Now, can you link me a speech by a Rabbi admitting that of the first 30 commandments, at least half are evil?

I'll leave aside the other points of mine which you ignored -- your claim was that you "got tired of responding" to them, I believe -- including the FACT that you EXPLICITLY BLAMED Jews, and by implication ME, for the Muslim "tradition" of "HONOR KILLINGS" by your claim that we "EMBRACE" them as a part of the "Abrahamic tradition." That is a GROSS insult and a BLATANTLY FALSE and INDEFENSIBLE accusation; but then, that sort of take-no-prisoners, you-are-100%-wrong-on-every-point tone is more or less your general approach to "debate" here.

I strongly believe that religious moderates create shelter and credibility to the extremists. Because they value the same books as you, worship the same God as you, have the same rituals as you, the extremists can say you belong to the same class.

The belief that those ancient books which incite those horrible immoral actions are somehow special, worthy of veneration and attentive study to a greater degree than any ancient historic text, slows down the emancipation of people from the immorality of those books.

I am absolutely in favor of studying any and all ancient books and tradition for the purpose of learning from their mistakes. But the belief that a few of those books are somehow more special than any other, is dangerous in my opinion.

I'm not saying that Judaism causes muslim honor killings. I'm just saying that judaism is a mild and harmless manifestation of the same phenomenon as extremist islam, extremist stalinism, extremist hinduism.

And that remains true in my mind until you show me a reputable Rabbi unequivocally and clearly condemning at least half of the first 30 commandments as fundamentally and irredeemably evil.

And, for me, that puts this entire conversation to an end. You have no conception, nor any understanding whatever, of what an actual "religion" IS or CAN BE; it's NOT all about "belief," nor about a flawlessly perfect tradition of ethics and morals (find me one of those, please -- even Buddhists have committed mass murders in the name of their religion). Especially Judaism, which is much more than a "belief system" and always has been. You are so obviously focused on the EVILS of ALL religion, and so consumed by your virulent hatred of it, that your perceptions and ideas are influenced by nothing else. Therefore, I don't see any point in continuing this conversation.

There is, though, one way; if you would do what I said at the very beginning, and READ something about the basics of Judaism, perhaps we can resume this. I have recommended many books over the years, from Milton Steinberg's Basic Judaism to Judaism for Dummies, and those books are so EASY and CHEAP to obtain at any used bookstore or online, that there's really no excuse for willfully continuing to remain ignorant of something that you implicitly claim to understand, and which you so clearly DESPISE, without any actual knowledge of it.

LEARN something about Judaism, and if you're still interested, we can talk again. Otherwise, I'm done here. It's not my job to educate you; I've tried to teach things to people who were absolutely DETERMINED to learn nothing -- 7th grade summer school math students (and Holocaust deniers) come to mind -- and I don't care to attempt it again.

Your conception of Judaism is somewhere between a Julius Streicher cartoon and a fundamentalist's nightmare. Correct that, and we might have something to say to each other again. Till then -- be well, and no hard feelings.

Same here. And I'll agree to read Milton Steinberg's book, if you agree to read Exodus 21 and 22. Deal?

[cnorman18]

[Replying to post 38 by no evidence no belief]
Ive read Exodus many times, but Ive never claimed to have MEMORIZED it. I admit I gave your list only a cursory reading, and when I saw the same tired, old, anachronistic arguments, I didnt bother to look more closely.

So lets do that now, shall we?

Before we do, though, hear this:

Ill stand by my last post. One reason I didnt recognize those laws as among the first in the Bible is because those passages ABSOLUTELY WERE CHERRY-PICKED.

Allow me to demonstrate:

You quoted 21:7: If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. But then you SKIPPED the following:

8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

More limitations on the practice of slavery; again, unheard of in the ancient world. Well get back to that shortly.

Then, you quoted 21:12: Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. Your objection, Legitimate defense? Hello? is clearly a phony one, because you SKIPPED the following:

13 However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate.

These were the cities of refuge, listed elsewhere in the Bible. This was to prevent blood feuds following accidental deaths, which were common in the ancient world. But thats not all that you omitted:

14 But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.

Were clearly talking about premeditated murder here " and the laws of the courtroom and what does and does not constitute justifiable homicide are found elsewhere.

Oh, there is much more: You quoted this:

28 If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten.

You complain about hungry people and stoning the animal to death.

Uh-huh. Bet you didnt know that cattle can carry rabies, did you? Back then, there was no cure for the disease. Even today, when you suspect that a dog is rabid, you shoot it from a distance " you dont go near it. The same would logically and sensibly be applied to an out-of-control bull, which behavior might also be accounted for by many other diseases deadly to humans " anthrax, brucellosis, and so on. You wouldnt want anyone to eat the meat, either.

And then, you mysteriously SKIPPED a number of perfectly reasonable and inarguably GOOD laws which you characterized as a bunch of boring stuff about bulls and chicken without even finishing the last of the verse you DID quote. Here is the material you cherry-picked OUT:

But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. 29 If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull is to be stoned and its owner also is to be put to death. 30 However, if payment is demanded, the owner may redeem his life by the payment of whatever is demanded. 31 This law also applies if the bull gores a son or daughter. 32 If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels[f] of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.

33 If anyone uncovers a pit or digs one and fails to cover it and an ox or a donkey falls into it, 34 the one who opened the pit must pay the owner for the loss and take the dead animal in exchange.

35 If anyones bull injures someone elses bull and it dies, the two parties are to sell the live one and divide both the money and the dead animal equally. 36 However, if it was known that the bull had the habit of goring, yet the owner did not keep it penned up, the owner must pay, animal for animal, and take the dead animal in exchange.

22:1 Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.

2 If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; 3 but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed.

Anyone who steals must certainly make restitution, but if they have nothing, they must be sold to pay for their theft. 4 If the stolen animal is found alive in their possession"whether ox or donkey or sheep"they must pay back double.

5 If anyone grazes their livestock in a field or vineyard and lets them stray and they graze in someone elses field, the offender must make restitution from the best of their own field or vineyard.

6 If a fire breaks out and spreads into thornbushes so that it burns shocks of grain or standing grain or the whole field, the one who started the fire must make restitution.

7 If anyone gives a neighbor silver or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbors house, the thief, if caught, must pay back double. 8 But if the thief is not found, the owner of the house must appear before the judges, and they must determine whether the owner of the house has laid hands on the other persons property. 9 In all cases of illegal possession of an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any other lost property about which somebody says, This is mine, both parties are to bring their cases before the judges.[c] The one whom the judges declare[d] guilty must pay back double to the other.

10 If anyone gives a donkey, an ox, a sheep or any other animal to their neighbor for safekeeping and it dies or is injured or is taken away while no one is looking, 11 the issue between them will be settled by the taking of an oath before the Lord that the neighbor did not lay hands on the other persons property. The owner is to accept this, and no restitution is required. 12 But if the animal was stolen from the neighbor, restitution must be made to the owner. 13 If it was torn to pieces by a wild animal, the neighbor shall bring in the remains as evidence and shall not be required to pay for the torn animal.

14 If anyone borrows an animal from their neighbor and it is injured or dies while the owner is not present, they must make restitution. 15 But if the owner is with the animal, the borrower will not have to pay. If the animal was hired, the money paid for the hire covers the loss.

Hmmm. Nothing in there about chicken. Guess you made that up while you were deciding how to ridicule and dismiss all that as boring trivia.

And that is not the end of your cherry-picking. After SKIPPING all of the above, you chose to quote a few more laws that you thought were good ammunition " and then, for some strange reason, you chose to STOP QUOTING just before the following:

22 Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. 24 My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.

25 If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest. 26 If you take your neighbors cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, 27 because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

I suppose those werent evil or obvious or irrelevant enough to make your carefully selected list. There is much more, of course, in chapter 23 "

23 Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness.

2 Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, 3 and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.

4 If you come across your enemys ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.

6 Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. 7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

8 Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.

9 Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.

10 For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

12 Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.

All those sound pretty good and humane and sensible to me " yes, even about the Sabbath.

So much for your CLAIM that those were THE FIRST THIRTY COMMANDMENTS, PERIOD and therefore a fair sample.

That claim has now been proven unambiguously FALSE. Care to retract that one, too? Your omissions were very clearly NOT accidental, but deliberate; the same goes for the place where you decided to STOP quoting.

My argument was never based nor dependent on the FACT (now firmly established) that your examples were cherry-picked anyway; my argument is, among other things (like the Bible not being the final authority on Jewish belief or practice, e.g.) based on the FACT that you dont judge the Bible either fairly or consistently, but only in the ways that serve your vehemently anti-religion agenda.

Lets start with your claim that many of the commandments are obvious and unnecessary. Thats pretty clearly ridiculous, if youre reading the Bible as what it is; the first attempts of these people to formulate a legal code. You keep saying things like Thats God speaking to Moses, when youve already agreed " and more than once " that thats not what was happening here. This was the law book of an ancient people, and in lawbooks, you write down the obvious stuff, too. Look in the penal code of your own state or province: Ill bet youll find murder listed as being illegal there. Gee, Ill bet youll find laws about the care of property and livestock, too, and restitution of lost or damaged property, and all the rest. Commands of God or not, these were their LAWS " and you write down the LAWS even if theyre obvious.

Many of your other objections are simply anachronistic. Ive already said that slavery was an accepted fact in the ancient world, and was not considered immoral. It never occurred to even the slaves that there shouldnt be any such thing; they just didnt want to be slaves themselves. Even poor people today dont often think that there ought not be such a thing as poverty; they just dont want to be POOR. Some ARE beginning to wake up to the fact that caring for the poor is a moral obligation for the whole society " which was the point of one of the laws you omitted " but for the most part, we take it for granted.

Do you really get that? Your objection only works if youre reading the Bible as the real, literal, eternal commands of a real God who actually spoke to Moses. If you read it, once again, as what it actually is " the first efforts of a people at writing down laws for human behavior in the Bronze Age " those laws about slavery were a dramatic leap forward for human rights! The same goes for the laws about the treatment of women, which are arguments Ive given before, and which youve ignored before. I fully expect you to mock all these ideas as obviously ridiculous and immoral, without bothering to explain why they are wrong beyond mere mockery from a 21st century viewpoint, while protesting that God should have known better.

As for the various crimes that carried the death penalty " that was pretty common in the ancient world, too; but unlike other ancient societies, where executions were common, public, incredibly brutal (skinning alive, burning, slowly boiling or roasting to death, being torn apart by teams of animals, devoured alive by carnivores, etc.) and considered popular entertainment, even in relatively civilized Rome " the Hebrews, outside the (literary) stories in the Bible, virtually never executed anybody. It was said as a proverb that a Sanhedrin (the only court in Israel with the power to impose the death penalty) which put someone to death more than once in a generation was to be considered a bloody-handed court. None ever was. Its more likely that those admonitions were more in the spirit of establishing that these were VERY BAD things to do, and not doing them was a HIGH priority for a civilized society.

Of course, your objection to the adultery laws is pretty 21st-century too; it wasnt so much about faithfulness, it was about inheritance. Those laws were common EVERYWHERE; there were no DNA tests then to make sure a mans son was actually his son (not much doubt about who the MOTHER was) and could therefore rightfully inherit not only his property, but his place in the ancient society. And once again, maybe that doesnt look like a serious issue to YOU, but it certainly was to the ancient people who WROTE these laws.

You dont get to read this book as if it were written last week. It wasnt. It began taking shape as early as three thousand years ago, and if you want to read it FAIRLY, you have to take that into account. Pretending it should have the same moral and social sensitivities as Western society in the 21st century is not rational " UNLESS you want to claim that it is something that NEITHER of us believe it to be, namely the actual word of God.

Irrelevant? Not to the ancient people who composed them, and DID believe in their gods.

Obvious and unnecessary? No more than our OWN laws against murder, theft and perjury.

Evil? Not by the standards of the time in which they were written " only to YOU, judging by the standards of OUR time and place.

One more point:

Explain to me how seeing some other concert with a bunch of friends at a concert hall, is less valuable of an experience than seeing a Jewish concert with a bunch of Jewish friends, at a synagogue.

When Ive been to concerts with friends at concert halls, I wasn't conscious of sharing in traditions that date back thousands of years with people who share them as a common heritage. Less valuable? I didnt say that. But it IS qualitatively different. Of course, if you have no regard for tradition and no understanding of its value to those who do, that would be meaningless to you as well.

Actually, that observation applies to virtually ALL of your arguments and diatribes. And thats why I dont intend to pursue this any farther, even though theres more I could dispute " for instance, your blaming religious extremism on religious moderates, who oppose them more emphatically than you do. But, as I observed earlier, you wouldn't know that, because dont read Jewish (or liberal Christian) newspapers, magazines, or books, do you? I'd bet the only contact you have with actual religious people is here on this forum, and maybe on television or radio. Neither are particularly representative of religion as it actually exists in the world.

One more -- I'll try again -- Im done. This debate isnt worth my time, for two reasons: (1) NO argument will ever convince you that you even MIGHT be wrong about your riveted-steel conclusions about the total pernicious EVIL of religion: and, more importantly, (2) I have more important things to do than continue to bang my head against a brick wall.

I see NO good reason to continue responding to your twisted, unfair, irrational, and astonishingly prejudiced and Judaically ignorant attacks and arguments.

Unless, of course, you choose to actually READ Steinberg or Judaism for Dummies. Since Ive already read Exodus 21 and 22 " in fact, the whole book, and many more times than once, and with rather more respect and accuracy than you have " I would think that youre obligated to do that now, by your own words.

I wont be holding my breath. Ive seen how reliable your claim of quoting the first thirty commandments and your arguments for their evil and irrelevance were -- and I dont expect any improvement on that performance.

[no evidence no belief]

[Replying to post 38 by no evidence no belief]
Ive read Exodus many times, but Ive never claimed to have MEMORIZED it. I admit I gave your list only a cursory reading, and when I saw the same tired, old, anachronistic arguments, I didnt bother to look more closely.

So lets do that now, shall we?

Before we do, though, hear this:

Ill stand by my last post. One reason I didnt recognize those laws as among the first in the Bible is because those passages ABSOLUTELY WERE CHERRY-PICKED.

Allow me to demonstrate:

You quoted 21:7: If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. But then you SKIPPED the following:

8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

More limitations on the practice of slavery; again, unheard of in the ancient world. Well get back to that shortly.

Oh wow! "Limitations on slavery". That's "great". So they weren't evil in an ultimate, unlimited sort of way, they were evil in a limited slave-owning, sell-your-daughter-as-a-sex-slave kind of way.

It's kinda of how Hitler's concentration camps weren't completely evil. They had some self-imposed restrictions on what kind of Jews and how many Jews they'd gas. How humane.

You know how they say Gray is the new Black? Apparently "Advocating unforgivable evil but with some restrictions", is the new "good".

Anything short of an outright and complete repudiation of the concept of ownership of fellow humans is signal of a grave moral shortcoming.

I'm absolutely ok with studying the mistakes of our barbaric ancestors, and striving to do the exact opposite of what they did. That's fine. I'm also ok with pointing out that they weren't the only ones practicing slavery at the time.

But make no mistake: I classified this commandment as as morally evil because it implicitly condones slavery. You can either agree with my condemnation of slavery, or disagree. Which one is it?

Then, you quoted 21:12: Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. Your objection, Legitimate defense? Hello? is clearly a phony one, because you SKIPPED the following:

13 However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate.

These were the cities of refuge, listed elsewhere in the Bible. This was to prevent blood feuds following accidental deaths, which were common in the ancient world. But thats not all that you omitted:

14 But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.

Were clearly talking about premeditated murder here " and the laws of the courtroom and what does and does not constitute justifiable homicide are found elsewhere.

My condemnation of this commandment is in its failure to differentiate between killing intentionally in self defense and killing intentionally without provocation. It only differentiates between killing intentionally and unintentionally. My critique that it does not allow for intentional killing in legitimate defense still stands.

The part of the commandment I cited basically says this "don't kill people on purpose". The part I left out basically says "It's ok if you kill someone by accident, but definitely not on purpose". It's just a reiteration of the same concept. I am not skipping anything relevant. My critique remains valid. this commandment does not account for legitimate self defense.

Besides, don't get too worked up. I'm not counting this as an EVIL commandment. It's a good one. "Don't kill people". It's not a bad commandment. I'm just saying it could have been worded better.

Oh, there is much more: You quoted this:

28 If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten.

You complain about hungry people and stoning the animal to death.

Uh-huh. Bet you didnt know that cattle can carry rabies, did you? Back then, there was no cure for the disease. Even today, when you suspect that a dog is rabid, you shoot it from a distance " you dont go near it. The same would logically and sensibly be applied to an out-of-control bull, which behavior might also be accounted for by many other diseases deadly to humans " anthrax, brucellosis, and so on. You wouldnt want anyone to eat the meat, either.

Ok, you have a point there. Kinda. This commandment, which remains firmly in the category of the totally irrelevant to modern life, does paint the ancient barbarians as slightly less idiotic.

It does NOT change the fact that this is absolutely irrelevant to modern life.

And then, you mysteriously SKIPPED a number of perfectly reasonable and inarguably GOOD laws which you characterized as a bunch of boring stuff about bulls and chicken without even finishing the last of the verse you DID quote. Here is the material you cherry-picked OUT:

But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. 29 If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull is to be stoned and its owner also is to be put to death. 30 However, if payment is demanded, the owner may redeem his life by the payment of whatever is demanded. 31 This law also applies if the bull gores a son or daughter. 32 If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels[f] of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.

33 If anyone uncovers a pit or digs one and fails to cover it and an ox or a donkey falls into it, 34 the one who opened the pit must pay the owner for the loss and take the dead animal in exchange.

35 If anyones bull injures someone elses bull and it dies, the two parties are to sell the live one and divide both the money and the dead animal equally. 36 However, if it was known that the bull had the habit of goring, yet the owner did not keep it penned up, the owner must pay, animal for animal, and take the dead animal in exchange.

22:1 Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.

2 If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; 3 but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed.

Anyone who steals must certainly make restitution, but if they have nothing, they must be sold to pay for their theft. 4 If the stolen animal is found alive in their possession"whether ox or donkey or sheep"they must pay back double.

5 If anyone grazes their livestock in a field or vineyard and lets them stray and they graze in someone elses field, the offender must make restitution from the best of their own field or vineyard.

6 If a fire breaks out and spreads into thornbushes so that it burns shocks of grain or standing grain or the whole field, the one who started the fire must make restitution.

7 If anyone gives a neighbor silver or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbors house, the thief, if caught, must pay back double. 8 But if the thief is not found, the owner of the house must appear before the judges, and they must determine whether the owner of the house has laid hands on the other persons property. 9 In all cases of illegal possession of an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any other lost property about which somebody says, This is mine, both parties are to bring their cases before the judges.[c] The one whom the judges declare[d] guilty must pay back double to the other.

10 If anyone gives a donkey, an ox, a sheep or any other animal to their neighbor for safekeeping and it dies or is injured or is taken away while no one is looking, 11 the issue between them will be settled by the taking of an oath before the Lord that the neighbor did not lay hands on the other persons property. The owner is to accept this, and no restitution is required. 12 But if the animal was stolen from the neighbor, restitution must be made to the owner. 13 If it was torn to pieces by a wild animal, the neighbor shall bring in the remains as evidence and shall not be required to pay for the torn animal.

14 If anyone borrows an animal from their neighbor and it is injured or dies while the owner is not present, they must make restitution. 15 But if the owner is with the animal, the borrower will not have to pay. If the animal was hired, the money paid for the hire covers the loss.

Hmmm. Nothing in there about chicken. Guess you made that up while you were deciding how to ridicule and dismiss all that as boring trivia.

All of the above IS boring trivia.

And that is not the end of your cherry-picking. After SKIPPING all of the above, you chose to quote a few more laws that you thought were good ammunition " and then, for some strange reason, you chose to STOP QUOTING just before the following:

22 Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. 24 My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.

Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless, except if they are your slaves of course. Because if they are your slaves you can beat them with a rod, as long as they don't die within a few days.

Thank you for further emphasizing the absurd contradictions just within the first few pages of the commandments.

25 If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest. 26 If you take your neighbors cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, 27 because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

You are right, I forgot to mention this egregious case of racist tribalism. It says do not charge interest "when you lend money to one of my people", which implies that you should charge interest when lending money to someone who isn't one of God's people. Racist.

But wait, what am I talking about? If anybody is not a "member of God's people" you're supposed to murder them. Ah, what a lovely book.

I suppose those werent evil or obvious or irrelevant enough to make your carefully selected list. There is much more, of course, in chapter 23 "

No, I just didn't get round to them. But thanks for pointing out how self-contradictory the commandments are by quoting the part about not disrespecting orphans, and for pointing out the racism of the Bible with the passage in differentiating in your business ethics when dealing with your own people as opposed to others.

23 Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness.

This is just a repetition of a previous commandment. You don't get a cookie for saying something obvious, and you don't get two cookies for saying something obvious twice.

2 Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, 3 and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.

Ok, this is a good one, no problem.

4 If you come across your enemys ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.

That's crazy. An enemy is someone who has raped your daughter, or killed your son, or something. I will NOT return his donkey to him. What kind of perverted sadomasochistic absurdity is this?

6 Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. 7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.

Right, except if this innocent or honest person cursed at his dad, or had sex before marriage, or believes in a different God from you, in which case, totally kill them. Thanks for continuing to point out the autrageous self-contradictions in the Torah.

8 Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.

This is a good one. No problem.

9 Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.

This is another repetition of the exact same language that appeared previously - BACK TO BACK WITH THE COMMANDMENT TO MURDER ALL FOREIGNERS. Thank you for continuing to point out the absurd contradictions of the Torah.

10 For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

This is clearly useless and irrelevant to modern man.

12 Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.

Let me guess, you're going to say that they were so nice for letting the slaves rest on the 7th day. What are you going to say next, that the Nazis were nice to the jews for letting them rest on the Sabbath in Auschwitz?

All those sound pretty good and humane and sensible to me " yes, even about the Sabbath.

Yup very sensible, let slaves rest sometimes. Totally humane.

"Here are my two rules for how you should live your life.

rule 1: Murder children

rule 2: Don't murder children"

Can you agree that you don't get to pat yourself on the back for coming up with rule number 1? first, IT'S OBVIOUS THAT YOU SHOULDN'T MURDER CHILDREN. Second, your first commandment is directly contradicted by your second one.

So much for your CLAIM that those were THE FIRST THIRTY COMMANDMENTS, PERIOD and therefore a fair sample.

That claim has now been proven unambiguously FALSE. Care to retract that one, too? Your omissions were very clearly NOT accidental, but deliberate; the same goes for the place where you decided to STOP quoting.

Look, I stand by my characterization of the commandments, and I stand by my procedure for arriving to it. I started from commandment 1 and analyzed the first few pages. I just skipped a few of the more boring ones.

None of your critiques have any traction and have been strongly refuted above.

But let's say I'm completely wrong and biased, and grossly overestimate the amount of evil in the commandments.

Let's say that it's not 14 out of 30 commandments that are irredeemably and excruciatingly evil. Let's say it's just 10 out of 40.

Let's say that only 25% of the things in the Torah, or Mein Kampf, or Charles Manson's autobiography are irrefutably and unforgivably evil, and that the world would indisputably be a better place if the whole planet strove to do the EXACT OPPOSITE of 25% of what is recommended in those books.

Would that make those books good?

I'm just arguing that there is a lot of irredeemable and unforgivable evil in the Torah. I'm 100% ok with Jews studying it in great detail as a case study in the failures of humanity, just like I'm ok with Germans studying Hitler.

But if either Jews, or Germans, or anybody else, starts saying that they draw inspiration or feel they have something to learn from books advocating genocide, slavery, rape, infanticide, etc, then that's when all my alarm bells go off.

My argument was never based nor dependent on the FACT (now firmly established)

It's not firmly established. I just started from commandment 1 and kept going for a couple pages. I only skipped repetitions and irrelevancies. Please stop disobeying the commandment to not bear false witness.

that your examples were cherry-picked anyway; my argument is, among other things (like the Bible not being the final authority on Jewish belief or practice, e.g.) based on the FACT that you dont judge the Bible either fairly or consistently, but only in the ways that serve your vehemently anti-religion agenda.

Lets start with your claim that many of the commandments are obvious and unnecessary. Thats pretty clearly ridiculous, if youre reading the Bible as what it is; the first attempts of these people to formulate a legal code. You keep saying things like Thats God speaking to Moses, when youve already agreed " and more than once " that thats not what was happening here. This was the law book of an ancient people, and in lawbooks, you write down the obvious stuff, too. Look in the penal code of your own state or province: Ill bet youll find murder listed as being illegal there. Gee, Ill bet youll find laws about the care of property and livestock, too, and restitution of lost or damaged property, and all the rest. Commands of God or not, these were their LAWS " and you write down the LAWS even if theyre obvious.

That's fine. I am not referring to them as obvious and unnecessary as they relate to the daily lives of the people who wrote and lived by them. I'm referring to them as obvious and unnecessary when read today as a source of philosophical inspiration. The notion that "murdering is wrong" was obvious to humanity since the dawn of time. Dozens of authors put it to paper before the Jews did. I'm just saying that it's absolutely fine to make the historical observation that this wretched barbarians did realize that murder was wrong to some degree even as they were advocating murdering their children for misbehaving. Most Nazi soldiers would agree that murder is wrong too, if you asked them.

If you look at the Torah as a historical documentation of ancient laws, then it's fine that it states the obvious. That's what law books do.

If you look at it as a source of philosophical inspiration I can't help but notice that there is nothing philosophically novel or interesting about marauding barbarians having a vague inkling of an idea that murder is wrong.

Many of your other objections are simply anachronistic. Ive already said that slavery was an accepted fact in the ancient world, and was not considered immoral. It never occurred to even the slaves that there shouldnt be any such thing; they just didnt want to be slaves themselves.

Lovely. The "but mom, everybody else was doing it too" excuse. Look, I don't care that in those times it wasn't considered immoral to own slaves. In Nazi Germany it wasn't considered immoral to hold Jews in concentration camps. that doesn't matter. Slavery and genocide are evil. Stop making excuses for your ancestors. They messed up.

Do you really get that? Your objection only works if youre reading the Bible as the real, literal, eternal commands of a real God who actually spoke to Moses. If you read it, once again, as what it actually is " the first efforts of a people at writing down laws for human behavior in the Bronze Age " those laws about slavery were a dramatic leap forward for human rights! The same goes for the laws about the treatment of women, which are arguments Ive given before, and which youve ignored before. I fully expect you to mock all these ideas as obviously ridiculous and immoral, without bothering to explain why they are wrong beyond mere mockery from a 21st century viewpoint, while protesting that God should have known better.

No man. I totally understand that you don't think of these as eternal commandments from an inerrant God. I get that. If you held that position you would be a much easier target, but I completely understand that you don't.

You see the laws as a historical document, much like Mein Kampf.

I understand that ancient Jews, and Germans during world war 2, lived in very violent and brutal times. It's to be expected that if an ancient israelite or a Nazi soldier where to write their ideas on morality, they would of necessity be filtered by the context they lived in, and while understandable within their lives, they would look appalling to an external observer who hadn't been subject from birth to the ignorance and superstition of the bronze age, or to the hatred and antisemitism of the NAZI party.

I know that it's wrong for me to judge an israelite who would stone his wife to death on their wedding night if she wasn't a virgin, or for me to judge a nazi soldier who would pull the lever on a gas chamber. OF COURSE through my eyes as a 21st century observer both those things are appalling, but you have to make allowances for the fact that the authors of these texts and acts lived in a context where everybody was doing it. "But mom, all the other boys are doing it as well".

That's your position, right?

As for the various crimes that carried the death penalty " that was pretty common in the ancient world, too; but unlike other ancient societies, where executions were common, public, incredibly brutal (skinning alive, burning, slowly boiling or roasting to death, being torn apart by teams of animals, devoured alive by carnivores, etc.) and considered popular entertainment, even in relatively civilized Rome " the Hebrews, outside the (literary) stories in the Bible, virtually never executed anybody. It was said as a proverb that a Sanhedrin (the only court in Israel with the power to impose the death penalty) which put someone to death more than once in a generation was to be considered a bloody-handed court. None ever was. Its more likely that those admonitions were more in the spirit of establishing that these were VERY BAD things to do, and not doing them was a HIGH priority for a civilized society.

Right, "not being a witch" and "not worshiping any other god" were high priorities for "civilized" society.

By the way, can you please source your claim that ancient israelites, although they had texts advocating extreme violence, ACTUALLY WEREN'T VIOLENT, and that, quote, "NO COURT EVER WAS CONSIDERED A BLOODY-HANDED-COURT, BECAUSE NO COURT HA DA DEATH PENALTY MORE THAN ONCE IN A GENERATION.

Please source your claim that the death penalty was less common in ancient israel than it is in modern Texas. Anything short of linking a reputable source will be considered a concession that you bore false witness.

Of course, your objection to the adultery laws is pretty 21st-century too; it wasnt so much about faithfulness, it was about inheritance. Those laws were common EVERYWHERE; there were no DNA tests then to make sure a mans son was actually his son (not much doubt about who the MOTHER was) and could therefore rightfully inherit not only his property, but his place in the ancient society. And once again, maybe that doesnt look like a serious issue to YOU, but it certainly was to the ancient people who WROTE these laws.

I see. Well, that totally makes raping and murdering women ok. I didn't realize it was an issue of inheritance.

You are right that inheritance seems like less of an issue to me than rape and murder of women.

You dont get to read this book as if it were written last week. It wasnt. It began taking shape as early as three thousand years ago, and if you want to read it FAIRLY, you have to take that into account. Pretending it should have the same moral and social sensitivities as Western society in the 21st century is not rational

I totally get that. To judge the Torah or Nazi propaganda with the moral and social sensitivities of modern western society is nonsensical. You have to look at them in context.

Still, if my ancestors were the authors of either the Torah or the Nazi propaganda, I would NOT make that a topic for dinner conversation, I would NOT get together and sing songs with other people who also had ancestors who were authors of the Torah or Nazi propaganda, I would NOT celebrate that.

I would either ignore the unfortunate coincidence of my heritage, or make it my goal in life to publicly repudiate the evil of my ancestors.

Irrelevant? Not to the ancient people who composed them, and DID believe in their gods.

Right, relevant to them, irrelevant to us. Are you a bronze age nomad? If not, then you fall in the category of people for whom those commandments are irrelevant.

Obvious and unnecessary? No more than our OWN laws against murder, theft and perjury.

Seen as a historical document on law, not unnecessary. seen as a source of philosophical inspiration, unnecessary.

Evil? Not by the standards of the time in which they were written " only to YOU, judging by the standards of OUR time and place.

Neither was the holocaust evil by the standards of the time and place in which Nazi propaganda was written. If you're going to adopt moral relativism, please be consistent and adopt it across the board.

One more point:

Explain to me how seeing some other concert with a bunch of friends at a concert hall, is less valuable of an experience than seeing a Jewish concert with a bunch of Jewish friends, at a synagogue.

When Ive been to concerts with friends at concert halls, I wasn't conscious of sharing in traditions that date back thousands of years with people who share them as a common heritage. Less valuable? I didnt say that. But it IS qualitatively different. Of course, if you have no regard for tradition and no understanding of its value to those who do, that would be meaningless to you as well.

Ok. Fair point. I do NOT understand the value of tradition. Please explain that to me.

Actually, that observation applies to virtually ALL of your arguments and diatribes. And thats why I dont intend to pursue this any farther, even though theres more I could dispute " for instance, your blaming religious extremism on religious moderates, who oppose them more emphatically than you do. But, as I observed earlier, you wouldn't know that, because dont read Jewish (or liberal Christian) newspapers, magazines, or books, do you? I'd bet the only contact you have with actual religious people is here on this forum, and maybe on television or radio. Neither are particularly representative of religion as it actually exists in the world.

You have no reason to believe me, although I could probably retrieve some photographic evidence if need be, but just yesterday I played guitar at the wedding ceremony of my friends John and William. A gay wedding at a lutheran church on Lexington and 54th st in Manhattan. I even did the communion. Ate the stale bread and drank the wine, administered by the lutheran pastor, who is himself in a committed gay relationship. Sure, in my mind, I rolled my eyes when the guy rambled on about Jesus's love and sacrifice and blah blah blah, but it's an irrefutable fact that I'm surrounded by religious moderates and liberals. And I'm friends with some evangelicals as well. Months ago I stumbled into a girl called Amynah, a former muslim turned evangelical christian, who was preaching in Union Square. We started debating of course, neither of us convinced the other of course, but we became friends. I recently invited her to my birthday party, and tried (and failed) to set her up with Matt, my friend and colleague who is a Jew for Jesus.