Posts by David

37

I will only believe in demons if...

by deegee in

jws are known to have an obsession and preoccupation with demons.. this obsession and preoccupation is not without merit given that jesus, his disciples/apostles, and the general public of 1st century ce judea and galilee are reported as believing in the existence of demonic spirits and in the possibility of demon possession of an individual.. exorcism formed a large part of jesus' ministry on earth.

the gospels and the book of acts describe many exorcisms where jesus and his disciples release people from demonic possession.. ___ .

but how do demons get inside a person's brain or body?

David_Jay

@Smiddy

While there are Jews who have a concept of demons similar to Christianity, like everything else in our crazy Jewish world, there is no definitive theology or dogma regarding them. Still you will find a ritual about exorcism in the Midrash. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered a collection of “four songs for the charming of demons with music.” (11Q5) There is some further information about the practice in rabbinical literature, and even Josephus mentioned a Jewish exorcism in his writings. (Antiquities of the Jews, viii. 2, § 5) Also The Book of Tobit (found in the Catholic deuterocanonicals) is a Jewish tale centered on an exorcism.

So you are correct in that the definition of what a demon is in Judaism can be quite different than in Christianity, and this may account for the varied approaches (and lack thereof in some instances) among Jews throughout history. It should be of interest too that both Judaism and Catholicism perform exorcisms according to a liturgical formula.

@deegee

Thank you for that information, but I hope I didn't give you the impression that I was unaware of what a seance is. What I meant is I had no information on exactly what happened in the case I was referring to regarding the aunt's seance practices.

But I did some re-checking and discovered that the "seance" activity may have been limited only to the use of a talking board as a parlor game between the woman and her nephew. Roland was an only child, and the adults in his family were his primary friends according to reports. He was notably close to his aunt, a spiritualist. A news article in the Daily Mail states that Roland was given a talking board by his aunt as a gift and then died after the boy's 13th birthday. That account adds that it was after this loss that the alleged events took place.

I cannot offer much more information on the case, however.

16

A Perfect Life Isn't Worth Living?

by Sorry in

think of your favorite tv shows.

what do they all have in common?

the answer is they revolve around some type of problem or conflict.

David_Jay

There's a Jewish parable about a woman who is blessed with entry into Olam HaBa, the World to Come.

It is paradisaic in that trees everywhere are alive with blossoms and fruits, animals are at peace with humanity, family and friends are enjoying each other's company in warm gatherings, etc.

Then she comes upon a building that looks like an old synagogue. She walks inside to discover it is filled with rabbis sitting at desks, arguing, debating, and throwing books.

"Why are these men not in paradise?" she asks God. "Are they being punished?"

"No," God replies. "The men are not in paradise. Paradise is in these men."

True paradise is not achieved by living in a perfect world, only by living in one that makes you perfectly happy.

27

Oh God(s)!

by tepidpoultry in

meant to hopefully get your mind off the craziness which we sadly refer to as the news these days,.

we'll call this one .

fun for seculars.

David_Jay

THE MANISCHEWITZ SCALE: A Jewish Take on That Whole God Thing

1. STRONG THEIST--I do not question the existence of God; the existence of my mother-in-law, now that's another story.

2. DE FACTO THEIST--I cannot know for certain, but I think that refers to the Italian Catholic family that lives down the street.

3. WEAK THEIST--I am very uncertain about the existence of God; I also cannot do even one pull-up.

4. PURE AGNOSTIC--God's existence and non-existence are non-kosher non-sequitur existentialist nomemclature...and I am sure I don't know what most of those words even mean!

5. WEAK ATHEIST--I am very uncertain, which is why I was only an atheist for seven days.

6. DE FACTO ATHEIST--See point number two, only this time it describes the Italians on the street next to ours that stopped going to church.

7. STRONG ATHEIST--I am 100% sure there is no God, I swear to God.

8. A JEW--A Jewish boy goes up to a rabbi and says: "Rabbi, my parents say I must, but I don't think I should have to go to temple or say prayers anymore since I don't believe in God." To which the rabbi replied: "What does that have to do with anything?"

210

Morality Without Deity

by cofty in

one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

David_Jay

Heaven,

Deuteronomy 32:6 is part of the Song of Moses wherein God is described using several methaphors, among them being an eagle, a rock, and a father. Just as God is not an eagle or rock, God is also not a male parent. Of interest, the eagle God is likened to in this same Scriptural poem is a mother eagle.--Deuteronomy 32:11-12.

Jewish Scripture commonly employs anthropomorphic terms in reference to God, but unlike what Christians like the Mormons might try to advance, none of these are meant to be literal, especially not in this piece of poetry you are quoting from.

As mentioned before, masculine pronouns are used in the Tanakh merely due to the absence of a neuter pronoun in Biblical Hebrew. God in Jewish Scripture is often spoken of as a mother or female as well.--Hosea 11:3-4; Isaiah 42:14; 49:15; 66:13; Psalm 131:2.

When Christians translated the Bible into other languages they used a formal equivalence formula and ascribed literal meanings to pronouns in reference to God. The female images got lost and dismissed in the process. People began to blame the resulting misogyny on the Jews since we composed the Bible, but this all came about due to mistranslation.

One of the central teachings of Judaism is that God has no gender and is not likened to humanity or the mundane realm in any way.

210

Morality Without Deity

by cofty in

one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

David_Jay

@Vidiot,

While I have heard theories like that, I cannot support their validity entirely nor deny that there may be some truth to them.

For the most part, I understand where people like Heaven are coming from. We often end up hating religion itself upon leaving the Watchtower (I know I did), and most of us when in that place have little capacity to stomach a lesson in religious fact-checking.

Therefore the most common anti-Jewish rhetoric and polemics become fuel when someone who is feeling valid pain from a religious experience engages a Jew and begins countering something they may have said. While the polemic is often composed of repetitious hoary ignorance that could have been simply corrected by a little research, we are not all in the same place in our recovery. The reason for our displeasure with religion can be more than valid, and when we don't have accurate understanding or even logic to shoot at our target when one becomes available, then we will throw whatever we have in hand.

All these points aside, we are all capable of objective morality, true justice, and good choices without subscribing to a religion, without the use of Scripture, without a belief in a deity. Anne Frank herself wrote: "In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart." She wrote that because it is what we Jews really believe, what we really know is true.

210

Morality Without Deity

by cofty in

one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

David_Jay

Post script: "Heavenly Father" is a Christian term as is referring to God as "she" the invention of Christian movements like Metropolitan Community Church. There is no such thing as "original sin" in Judaism, and the term does not appear in Scripture. And the idea that you are subject to judgment because "we are failing to convert you" cannot be applied here as Jews don't prosleytize, neither is belief in an afterlife universal (thus no judgment of punishment). It appears that one can misdirect their distaste for religion so much that it is possible to unjustly and inaccurately project and argue things that are inapplicable.

210

Morality Without Deity

by cofty in

one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

David_Jay

The idea that God is a "he" is not a Jewish invention. In Hebrew the only reason a male pronoun for God is used is that there is no neuter pronoun available in Hebrew. This has been changed in the English language now and even altered the Western world in the process.

At times the term "he" might still be used in English by a few Jews, but these days it has become less and less. The real reason? In Judaism it is forbidden to attribute a gender to God. If you haven't noticed yet, I almost never use any pronoun for God. Judaism was at the forefront of the inclusive language movement in English-speaking countries at the end of the 20th century where things from Bible translations to Siddurs and the Haggadah were revised to remove all gender references to God that had actually been caused in English by Christians and their formal-equivalence translations of Scripture.

Also neither Judaism nor the original historical Christian religions taught that the Bible was required for religion. Christianity was without a Bible until the heresy of Marcion of Sinope, and that canon was developed mainly in response to his heretical ideas that began spreading. Judaism did not originally have a canon as the concept is a Gentile one. The "official" text of Judaism became the Masoretic text developed between the 6th and 8th centuries CE. The New Testament's canon was not closed until the 4th century CE.

Thus the idea that the Scriptures are even a requisite for our religion let alone morality cannot be substantiated as we have done without the Bible for centuries, for most of our religion's history. The Second Temple was far gone for at least six hundred years before the Masoretes began their work and it would almost four hundred years after Christ that Eusebius and Athanasius would finalize the New Testament. The Bible is only the center of religious revelation in religions like the Jehovah's Witnesses promote.

Far more can be said to reply to Heaven's statements which seem molded due to exposure to the Watchtower and other anti-Jewish teachings. Judaism even helped introduced the inclusive-language movement over the last 50 years that changed such everyday terms such as "fireman" to "fire fighter" and "mailman" to "mail carrier" due to Judaism's need to alter English Jewish Bible translations to better resemble the original Hebrew. So yes, there is even more in response to those common mistakes about 'killing babies' and 'promoting slavery' that Heaven obviously also missed while English, Heaven's own language, was altered due to a movement we Jews helped inititate. If a person missed that and failed to bother how that happened to their own language, it is no wonder why they stick to such fraudulent ideas about Jewish religion.

The problem with these arguments is that they have their root in uneducated and often anti-Jewish stereotypes that some never bother to investigate but do not mind to perpetuate. In the end consider, how would any of these things change the Jewish view that I previously wrote of in my former post? If the Tanakh is 'so filled' with these horrible ideas, where did Judaism get these others? The problem is not Judaism but the failure of people to be logical in their assessments by too often defining Judaism by Christian and anti-Judaism lenses.

Regardless of what you or anyone wishes to mistakenly believe about Judaism, the fact remains that Judaism does not teach that morality is an exclusive facet of religion, belief in God, or Scripture.

19

Millions now living will never die

by stillin in

but pretty much all of them are now dead.

and so are billions of others.

so, god doesn't desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance?

David_Jay

@tepidpoultry

It may not be a fair or even logical comparison to place the Christian expectation of the Parousia, which Christendom describes as occurring at history's end, with the Jehovah's Witnesses eschatology that claims that Jesus' return is now, an event within history.

Even the most ancient traditions in Orthodoxy cite an understanding of both Pauline and Christ's eschatology as dismissive of a Parousia that occurs before the world's end. With this Roman Catholicism also agrees. Jesus has not been expected to return to the earth to establish a kingdom while human history is still unfolding. On the contrary, the view is the opposite of the Jehovah's Witness theology.

The teaching of Rutherford and Russell before him, and the Watchtower teaching in place today, is that human history will witness the Parousia before the end comes. Christendom teaches that the Parousia marks the conclusion of time, outside of history, with the event of the physical resurrection of the dead (known as Judgment Day).

While it is quite likely that Paul expected the Parousia in his time, he did not teach like the Witnesses that it was part of history, part of the mundane temporal march that could be set in time. Jehovah's Witnesses teach otherwise, that it comes within the lifetime of humans.

This is what causes the Witnesses to set dates for the end and why the historical churches of Christianity do not. This also explains why the 2000 years of time that has since passed since Jesus and Paul has not discouraged people from embracing Christianity as opposed to the far-removed teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

210

Morality Without Deity

by cofty in

one of the most persistent arguments for belief in god centres on the necessity of an ultimate law-giver and epitome of goodness.. a softer version is seen in the genuine concern that a loss of faith will result in a corresponding loss of a moral compass - a more strident argument links the existence of good and evil with proof of the reality of god.

it is often asserted that without god, moral decisions degenerate to nothing more than personal preferences and the victory of "might is right".. i want to succinctly lay out my response as an atheist, and show that a supreme being is not required for objective morality.. it is helpful to distinguish between absolute morality, objective morality and subjective morality.

christian apologists frequently conflate the first two, and secular debaters often fail to point out the difference.. theists who disagree on everything else, are unanimous that god is perfectly good.

David_Jay

According to Judaism, one can be a good Jew while doubting God’s existence, so long as one acts in accordance with Jewish law. But the converse does not hold true, for a Jew who believes in God but acts contrary to Jewish law cannot be considered a good Jew.--The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, (Simon & Shuster, New York, 1981), p. 18.

It is of great help to society when the thinking atheist asks questions to so many of us who have settled into our religions by means of unthinking reactions produced by chance, mistake, or pure emotion. Not enough people question their own motives to make their current actions mean anything significant.

But if religions like Christianity and Islam can be traced to the religion of the Hebrews, it is quite a stray that has been made if many believers in the God of Abraham see the existence of morality impossible without deity. When this happens, the opposite also occurs: people think they can also have deity without morality.

When a person demands a connection between justice and God, one can mistake belief in God for the performance of the other, even an exemption from morality. This has happened far too often in history. The mental assent to the existence of God becomes enough for some, excusing themselves from being moral and even granting one’s self absolution. "Since I believe in God," many say, "I therefore have merit that excuses my behavior where it fails."

If God is love and the epitome of what is truly good, then one can also reason that all love and good is in essence God. When one brings birth to acts of love and justice, when one cares for the poor and welcomes the disenfranchised, when one does what truly is good, then by such a definition we have God in the world. It takes no belief in deity, it requires no religion, and such a “theophany of morality” can be brought about even by the atheist. God is not exclusive to the mind of believers; God comes from acts of the heart bequeathed by any hand. A God that requires belief isn’t much of a God at all.

This is not to say that the atheist must bow to such a definition either. One does not have to agree or even cease from debating such an explanation to remain a font of objective morality. It exists in the world, whether God does or not. If God truly loves the pious, then the pious must be something external of God.

But it can be hard to argue against the fact that when those who claim a requisite connection between God and morality fail in their morals, something of God disappears. Again if God is love and all that is good, isn't God stolen from the world when those who claim belief in God fail to act with love and in goodness? While morality does not require religion to exist, religion cannot exist without it being the product of its adherents.

In Judaism it is our tradition to question God’s existence from top to bottom, and we don’t necessarily stop praying or serving our neighbor or lighting menorahs because we have doubt or even have no faith in the concept of God. It is odd to see how religion has dissolved into merely being issues of belief, and it saddens me that it has become this to so many who claim a connection to us. As one rabbi stated: “God doesn’t care whether you believe in him or not. All that he cares is that you do the right thing.”

64

Is the Bible from Men, NOT God?

by the-Question in

for those claiming that- how much thought or research have you done?.

objective or non-objective?.

ever read the other books claiming to be from god?

David_Jay

@The Question,

The Genesis account is not about HOW we got here. It is the Jewish RELIGIOUS explanation of what we believe is the place humanity plays in the fabric of the universe. There is no actual HOW included anywhere in Genesis.

There are three creation stories in Genesis, namely the Week Paradigm, the Eden Narrative, and the Deluge Paradigm. All three employ a cosmology that did not originate with my people. We borrowed them from our Mesopotamian neighbors as a tableau into which we placed our own religious lessons about the Jewish meaning of life. The cosmology, however, came from the heathens and not from Jews.

The Scriptures are not a book of history and science facts. The Scriptures are narratives that teach religious or philosophical truths. The idea that people like you who have no connection with the Jews and can't even read our Scriptures unless they are translated into your pagan tongue, yet decide that the Jewish purpose for the Scriptures should be ignored for your non-Jewish interpretation is insulting and ridiculous. You don't correctly interpret a book by ignoring the writers, their culture, and their family's explanation of what the book is about. It doesn't have to be anything more than a book of mythology if all it is doing is teaching religious lessons. Claiming it has to be historical and scientifically accurate for it to be true means you don't see a value in it as it is. That's a very insulting way to treat the culture of another people.

@Azor

I wasn't countering your post. I was explaining that the views on inspiration also include what I was adding. Your post was not incorrect, however.

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay