Posts by David

5

This is a great video! Must watch..... "Intelligent people beleive in God"

by stuckinarut2 in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y201qzddzbg&app=desktop.

David_Jay

While this video does cover very useful and important points, it needs to be pointed out that "belief" and "faith" in God are concepts based on Christianity and the religion of Islam. That is how God is reacted to in those groups, but it is not true about all, especially the religion that started the concept of the God of Abraham that many non-Jewish people claim to "believe" in.

Religions like Judaism (upon which Christianity and Islam claim their religions are based), Jainism, Buddhism, Taosim and some other religions are "practice" based. They do not require a "belief" or "faith" in any particular deity. Jews, as a matter of fact, don't actually "believe" in God (which is the specific reason for us being named after Israel--"one who wrestles with God"--and not Abraham).

With the claim of Christians and Muslims that their particular brand of monotheism was merely transferred intact from Judaism, I find too many people apply arguments against "belief in God" as presented here toward Jews as well. This in effect is just like what is warned about in the video, believing in another incredible but false story.

Judaism is a religion that is practiced, like Buddhism. It doesn't require a belief in religious concepts as a requisite to membership or for "salvation," especially since there is no salvation concept in Judaism. While of course there is a "God" at the center of Jewish religion, the response to this concept is definitely not one of "belief" or "faith." In fact when the rare occasion of a Christian converting to Judaism occurs, it is this type of mental assent in credulity that must be rooted out of them. One can totally accept the reality of the Jewish God-concept while being agnostic or atheist and still practice Judaism. The idea that the Jewish concept of and response to God is the same as Christian and Islamic views is actually the same type of ridiculous claim spoken of in the video that people learn from birth, family, community, etc. and that is almost impossible to convince others otherwise because of this lifetime of indoctrination.

Don't get me wrong. I AGREE with this video. The argument that "intelligent people believe in God" to me is a contradiction in terms. If something is supposed to be real, what is intelligent about merely offering it mental assent? If the God of Abraham exists, it is actually demonstrating a lack of intelligence to merely "believe." A true intellectual response to this concept would be just that, an intellectual "response" or physical reaction, not merely a mental one.

People measure how serious another is about reality based on their actions, not on their claim to mental agreement in a concept. An intelligent person for instance, doesn't merely believe in a healthy diet because just "believing" in a diet will not help you. It is the person who follows the practice of daily eating a healthy diet that we can call intelligent.

Just having faith that a certain healthy diet will do something beneficial for you but never eating it is not intelligence. Singing, praising, and preaching about the diet to others, testifying to its beneficence and passing out tracts to passersby telling others to also believe in the diet but themselves never daily living and eating the healthy diet is never, ever intelligence. Yet, this is how too many so-called "intelligent" people "believe" in God.

Otherwise, good video.

19

Jehovah has Evil Spirit ?

by EverApostate in

last weekend i was watching darkmatter2525 on youtube and came across this new thing in the bible.

jehovah has evil spirit!!

was just wondering how i didn’t come across this absurdity when i was a jw for 11 years.

David_Jay

The Exodus narrative was composed during the Babylonian exile and likely finalized shortly after the exile ended. Jews view the narrative as reflective of the diaspora Jews who were attempting to preserve their culture now that they had no land nor Temple in Babylon. Thus the Jewish practices and history were combined with folklore that was heavily slanted to give the customs of the Jews a religious connection.

With that in mind, the answer is no. The 40-year trek of millions of people crossing the Sinai peninsula as found in Exodus is not viewed as literal in Judaism. If it were literal, a crowd that size would still be crossing the Sea of Reeds while the first Hebrews were approaching the traditional site of Mt. Sinai.

While historically there is evidence that some of our ancestors likely lived in Egypt under the Hyskos dynasty, the following dynasty did endure a series of slave escapes, perhaps three or more, in which those welcomed under Hyskos rule left for the Fertile Crescent area and beyond.

While there are some Jews who might give this a literal reading, the idea that his took 40 years is taught to teach a religious lesson more than report on history. It teaches the lesson that a new nation arose from the slaves that left their previous life behind, like one generation bringing forth a new, totally free one. 40 gets used a lot like this in Scripture, with one situation being renewed into something totally different.

As for the snake used by Moses to cure in the wilderness, it appears to be a recurring symbol of rebellion. When Adam and Eve rebel, the narrative has a snake in it. When Pharaoh rebels against God, Moses' staff becomes a snake that devours the snakes of Pharoah's magicians. When the people rebel during the Exodus, they are punished by snakes and healed by seeing a symbol of a snake on a rod, as if reminding them of the rebellion of Adam and Eve.

Recall that the Torah is one book, and that it originally ended with Numbers. Deuteronomy is one of the final redactions to the Torah, added sometime after Numbers was completed. While definite certainty doesn't exist about this, it is not unlikely that the snake is a purposefully employed narrative device. Torah begins with a rebellion (symbolized with a snake) and originally ended in Numbers with a snake image reminiscent of the Genesis story.

It may be that this was a commentary on the destruction of a snake idol by King Hezekiah, an idol that was worshipped by some Israelites as mentioned in 2 Kings. These Israelites may have tried to legitimize their cult by claiming this was the very image forged by Moses, but it is quite likely that this was a popular myth about the idol's origin. The use of the symbol in Genesis through Numbers may be based on that image, given the fact that the snake does seemed to be used as a device in Torah each time disobedience or rebellion arises.

19

Jehovah has Evil Spirit ?

by EverApostate in

last weekend i was watching darkmatter2525 on youtube and came across this new thing in the bible.

jehovah has evil spirit!!

was just wondering how i didn’t come across this absurdity when i was a jw for 11 years.

David_Jay

James Mixon,

If it helps, Jews don't believe in evil spirits, otherwise known as "demons." While there is mention of them in Jewish religious thought, it is mostly in folklore and a facet of comical implications.

The texts in the OP do not imply a "spirit" or demon in the Christian sense, but that God gave a "spirit of evil" to Saul. That expression is an ancient idiom for what we now know is clinical depression or some similar mental state in which one's "spirit" became aggravated.

In reality, it is only Christians and other Gentile religions in which people are said to be "possessed by evil spirits," wherein the word "spirit" refers to an entity. The word spirit in the texts of the OP refers to a "frame of mind" or disposition.

19

Jehovah has Evil Spirit ?

by EverApostate in

last weekend i was watching darkmatter2525 on youtube and came across this new thing in the bible.

jehovah has evil spirit!!

was just wondering how i didn’t come across this absurdity when i was a jw for 11 years.

David_Jay

Correction, I WASN'T trying to defend the Bible or God.

19

Jehovah has Evil Spirit ?

by EverApostate in

last weekend i was watching darkmatter2525 on youtube and came across this new thing in the bible.

jehovah has evil spirit!!

was just wondering how i didn’t come across this absurdity when i was a jw for 11 years.

David_Jay

EverApostate,

Actually, being Jewish I don't have a need or desire to "paint" the Bible in a favorable light or "defend" how God is portrayed in Scripture.

Jews don't use the Bible as the basis for our religion. It is a product of our religion and culture, but it holds a very different place and use in Judaism than it does in Christianity.

My post was to point out that you wouldn't have this view to begin with if you weren't exposed to Watchtower teachings. Jews don't have it because we have different ideas about "evil" and the entire God concept by comparison.

The Scriptures are a very dated, ancient view of how Jews of the past understood the world around them. While it still plays a significant part in Judaism, we aren't locked to view it's static concepts as Fundamentalist Christians do.

And as for "defending" God, that demonstrates that the Marie Antoinette Effect might be playing a part here. Many practicing Jews are agnostic or even atheist. Even theist Jews will often claim that God acts unjust, unlovingly, unfair, and imperfectly in Scripture. We don't defend God. We wrestle with the concept, which is why were are called the children of "Israel." We don't accept God blindly as other religious people do.

Even the idea that the Scriptures are the "Word of God," as you put it, I am sure is based on your limited exposure to Christianity. The critical Jewish view, for instance, views Scripture as coming from humanity.

The "Marie Antoinette Effect" merely refers to dealing with things based on a limited scope. This is why even atheists who were never religious often refer to ex-JWs and ex-Mormons who become atheist as "narrow atheists." The term "narrow" means having a limited or narrow view upon which to come to their conclusion.

I actually support the atheist choice of many ex-JWs, and was merely referring to how exposure to the Watchtower religion can cause this effect. I was trying to defend the Bible.

19

Jehovah has Evil Spirit ?

by EverApostate in

last weekend i was watching darkmatter2525 on youtube and came across this new thing in the bible.

jehovah has evil spirit!!

was just wondering how i didn’t come across this absurdity when i was a jw for 11 years.

David_Jay

Since at present there is no way to correct the auto-correct feature left by my iPad on posts, the sentence in my last post:

"If there was no bread, why not just use came instead?"

...should read: "...why not just use CAKE instead?"

I have been fighting my iPad for 3 years now, and it keeps wanting to use the word "came" for "cake" (which can create very vulgar sentences when it sometimes insists on using the word "come" for "cake" too). Apparently the people at Apple know nothing of "CAKE." It almost always changes that word.

19

Jehovah has Evil Spirit ?

by EverApostate in

last weekend i was watching darkmatter2525 on youtube and came across this new thing in the bible.

jehovah has evil spirit!!

was just wondering how i didn’t come across this absurdity when i was a jw for 11 years.

David_Jay

EverApostate,

You are experiencing what I often call "The Marie Antoinette Effect."

As the legend goes, the last queen of France before the French Revolution was so far removed from the poverty and suffering of her subjects that when mothers begged the queen for help, saying: "Our children our dying from starvation. They have no bread to eat." Marie Antoinette replied: "Let them eat cake." In other words, the queen had never experienced a life where the term "bread" meant basic food. If there was no bread, why not just use came instead? the queen reasoned. Cake is like bread and could be used as a substitute, she thought. She couldn't relate to the actual meaning of the words "they have no bread to eat." She always had food available, and thus she misunderstood the real plight of her people.

When individuals leave cults like the Mormons and the JWs, some can tend to see all religion and the Sacred Scriptures based on their limited exposure to life in those cult religion. Like Marie Antoinette, the only way to see passages in the Bible are often read by such ex-members in the manner once taught in these cults even years after leaving their respective groups.

Now I am not recommending that you rejoin a religion. You are probably just fine as you are. However, the texts you mentioned have never been viewed the way the Jehovah's Witnesses teach by the Jews who wrote them. Most mainstream religions like Catholicism and Protstants like Lutherans, Methodists, and the like also hold to the Jewish view. It is quite different.

In Judaism there is no such thing as "Satan the Devil." There is no "Original Sin." Death is not a punishment. "God" is the central Origin and Cause of all in the universe. In ancient language among the Jews, God caused both good and evil, just as God created the Day as well as the Night. When something bad happened to someone, the "Universe" or God was the "cause" of the effect being mentioned.

The "bad" or "evil spirit" mentioned in these texts is a euphemism for a mental disorder. What is now called "clinical depression" or uni-polar disorder was referred to this way for generations among the Hebrews, even outside of the Bible. In very ancient Jewish theology all effects were blamed on the one central cause, namely God.

The idea that the God of Abraham cannot be blamed for "evil" is a Christian concept. Because God can "only produce good" in Christianity theology, and since Christians claim that evil "can only originate with Satan," you hear excuses that God was merely "allowing" evil to occur in such instances. The theological paradigm of most cult Christianity rejects the possibility of both good and bad coming from their particular concept of a "benevolent" God.

But the problem is not with the culture that produced the texts. The problem comes from a foreign culture that reinterpreted the texts along different lines. Being exposed only to these types of explanations has left you with the Marie Antoinette Effect, misunderstanding the terms of a people who have a different experience of life and a different meaning to the words they used to describe it.

While I still don't recommend that you suddenly change your current convictions because of this, I do hope it helps you to understand that the misunderstanding your are having is another reason the cult of the Watchtower needs to be avoided by all who find themselves attracted to it. It can give people only a very limited view on things that can stay with them even after they leave it behind.

6

Jehovah's Witnesses get support from .... the Catholic Church?

by EdenOne in

in this article on newsweek:.

http://www.newsweek.com/jehovahs-witnesses-ban-russia-catholic-593082.

catholics are concerned about their religion being discriminated as well in russia.

David_Jay

Actually the reason for this is because of a new doctrine developed in the Catholic Church since Vatican II: freedom of conscience.

According to this new theological concept, all human beings should be free to exercise their conscience as they see fit in all things religious, even when this means the freedom to reject religion.

The doctrine was developed partially due to the errors caused by the previous view. The previous doctrine (that all humans should not be free to choose religion outside the Church) contributed to the crimes of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and (though admittedly indirectly) contributed to the anti-Semitism that led to the Shoah. It also worked directly against the teachings of the canonized saints who were later recognized as doctors of the Church. Some of these were persecuted and even killed by the Church (i.e., St. Joan of Arc) when it turns out that their criticism of the Church was correct.

Therefore the Catholic Church now actively fights for freedom of religious and non-religious expression. Along with the JWs in Russia, the Catholic Church is working with several governments that are persecuting atheists, to find ways to stop the persecution. Pope Francis especially has been outspoken on not only assenting to this doctrine but practicing it and going one step further by forbidding proselytizing by any member of the Catholic Church. Under Francis, one may evangelize by example, but one may not proselytize to convince another that they are required to change and accept the Gospel.

4

Redating the bible-Song of deborah (Shamgar)

by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

the hebrew language in biblical form did not exit until after 800 bce (likely 722).

the presents ex 15 and judges 5 as early but not contemporary.. well wake up... i'm a minimalist however i know the song of deborah fits somewhere.... like before omri.. (established as the first israelite ruler of israel..).

so where does that leave deborah or the song of the sea... both early hebrew but not canaanite.... the answer laid in shamngar...note:.

David_Jay

Careful,

"We Jews" does not mean to imply anything more than that the data I am providing comes forth from Jewry.

Since Judaism is practiced, there are no requisites for belief or faith in a common creed. In fact, "we Jews" have a strong tendency to relish in our differences of opinion and approach. The fact that we are named after Jacob and not Abraham, the nation of "Israel," demonstrates that we are a people encouraged to "wrestle with God" and not settle on any particular answer or singular way.

Unlike some Christians and groups like the JWs and Mormons, uniformity is not something we strive for.

The information I provided covers the two main views, but there are a plethora in between that space does not permit me to include. Unlike some religions, Jews are often a little less concerned with knowing precisely the actual origins of the material and a bit more concerned on how to apply the material in practical ways in today's world. Again, this is because Judaism is not a religion of faith or belief but of doing and accomplishing.

4

Redating the bible-Song of deborah (Shamgar)

by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

the hebrew language in biblical form did not exit until after 800 bce (likely 722).

the presents ex 15 and judges 5 as early but not contemporary.. well wake up... i'm a minimalist however i know the song of deborah fits somewhere.... like before omri.. (established as the first israelite ruler of israel..).

so where does that leave deborah or the song of the sea... both early hebrew but not canaanite.... the answer laid in shamngar...note:.

David_Jay

Jewish scholarship comes to a conclusion that is somewhat similar to yours.

While sages of the Second Temple era held the book to be a product of the prophet Samuel, today we Jews employ critical methodology that lends to a different view. The book appears to be a patchwork of folklore, legendary tales based likely on historical figures but with little of the history kept intact. Composed likely after the northern kingdom of Israel fell (the late 8th or 7th century B.C.E.), it has a very pro-Davidic stance. It may have originally been a composition or a collection of stories devised to promote the worship of YHVH when the Davidic dynasty adopted it as the state religion and enforced this requisite via a political initiative.

However what we have today has been assembled via heavy and complex redaction, and the later editors have left even less of the history than the original once did, focusing on the religious significance of the folktales instead of offering journalistic reports on a historical tableau.

The Song of Deborah does appear to be older than the rest of the work. It employs an archaic form of Hebrew, and our modern Jewish scholars suggest that the song existed before the narrative that is said to have inspired the song. It may be older even than the song of Exodus 15, used as a template by the Jews of the Babylonian diaspora to flesh out the narrative of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds.

The only real difference from your take is that we Jews hold to the view that YHVH was probably introduced via the Moabite tribes of Sinai instead of the Edomites.

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay