Posts by David

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.

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

People don't need a degree or perform a "background" study in Scripture to either embrace or reject what it entails. It's contents and background have never been secret, as the JWs often teach it is.

A person who makes an honest conscientious decision to reject the Scriptures are not viewed as morally flawed or evil by Jews or Catholics unlike Jehovah's Witnesses do. Freedom of conscience is even fought for and advocated by these religious groups, including not merely the right to reject religion but the right to being treated justly, with more than mere tolerance, and ensuring the dignity and fair treatment of all regardless of creed or rejection thereof. If a Catholic or Jew does not judge a person by their view of the Bible, of what significance can such judgment be from lesser, insignificant religious groups and their adherents?

The problem with some of these questions is that they mistake rejection of the Bible with disrespect or failure to act with wisdom and insight. The important matter at hand is not the varied views among ex-JWs, whether some accept or reject Scripture now, but that despite these current views all are united in the stand that the Jehovah's Witnesses are not the teachers of religious truth that they claim to be. The Watchtower view of Scripture is so flawed that even when the Bible is merely viewed from a secular non-inspired point of view, the Jehovah's Witness interpretation of this Book can honestly be labeled as an axiom of disrespect and a poor excuse for scholarship.

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

Don't forget, Azor, that neither Jews nor mainstream Christians think the Bible was written directly by God, and the majority accept the interpolation and editing process up to the time of canonization as part of the inspiration process.

Unlike Jehovah's Witnesses who believe the Bible was somewhat dictated from God to humans, critical hermeneutics dismissed this view centuries ago for a far more complex definition of what the inspiration process entails. In some fields of Jewish and Christian thought divine inspiration is not synonymous with divine revelation. The work of scientists, doctors, artists, etc., even if their work excludes support in the concept of God often falls under the more critical interpretation of inspiration advanced by modern exegetes.

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 critical method does not allow opinions to be employed for the validation procedure.

A party disinterested in your field must perform the same steps you do in your research and verify the steps you make, checking your conclusions. And then the work of the disinterested party needs to undergo the same. When two of more disinterested parties do the same research and independently come to the same conclusions, your conclusions are validated.

Opinion is never used in critical methodologies. A methodology requires the use of a method, something opinions cannot offer.

33

The Triune Polytheism; the 'Trinity'

by the-Question in

the most ridiculous of all dogmas anywhere in the universe is the very foundation of churchianity.....thus, all their other claims are just blah, blah!.

.

David_Jay

@The Question

It is not true that the plural used in Hebrew often suggested by Trinitarians as support for their beliefs refers only to power and authrority (more precisely "majesty").

We who are Jews often see these expressions as referring to God sharing his authority with angelic beings God has assigned to perform certain duties in unison with God. The "majesty" argument is not universally accepted among Jews and is often advanced by Christians who don't read and speak Hebrew like we do.

Thus your claim itself shows your lack of understanding of Hebrew. I speak, read, and pray in it daily and have done so for most of my life. Do you?

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 answer to these questions: yes, I've done all the above type of research you suggest.

However it is never enough to do research for yourself. Like all proper critical methodologies, a person needs to take what they learn and have their conclusions verified by independent, disinterested parties.

Jehovah's Witnesses often create people who like to claim things like: "I know these things are true because I did research and now I know from my own experience that what I believe is true."

That is always sign number one that the person has not come to correct conclusions. We have to rely on the work of others, especially those with contrasting views, to ensure we do not make mistakes due to personal bias. We have to have fail-safes in place that will prevent us from believing what we prefer.

It's not the quantity of study you do but the quality. If you don't listen to voices that prevent you from trusting your own conclusions without validation, it doesn't matter how much study you do.

6

Question (and answer): What does it mean to believe in someone?

by schnell in

"do you believe in jesus?".

yes.. "do you believe in jehovah?".

yes.. "do you believe in the grand man of the universe?".

David_Jay

Oh yeah, I got that. I ran into a few of them myself and had similar feelings.

I was just using your OP as a launching post to again highlight where JW teaching does not match up.

P.S.--My favorite literary work on "belief" is the song "I Believe" from the musical "The Book of Mormon." With lines like "I believe God lives on a planet called Kolob...I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America...I believe the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri...I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people...I am a Mormon, and a Mormon just believes."

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay