Christianity and the Strong Arm of the Law: Do the religious not trust themselves?
This was from the former Pink Agendist Blog posted in January of 2014, but happens to unfortunately be relevant yet again.
Council of Nicea
“Christianity has had, since its inception, an obsession with moulding the law to subjugate entire populations to the tenets of the faith. By the year 321 Constantine had criminalized work on Sundays, prohibited Jews from stoning those who left the Jewish religion for Christianity and required all soldiers to gather on Sundays to recite a prayer to the ‘almighty God’. In 323 the emperor imposed a law against idol-worship, statues, divination, and against pagan sacrifices. In 332 Constantine forbade heretical groups to assemble. Their buildings were to be surrendered to the Catholic Church*. From then to now a barrage of prohibitions and restrictions have been thrust upon the public- and it is here we must ask: Why? Legalizations force no one to behave in any particular way. They leave each individual the choice to look at issues and arrive at their own conclusions. The need to involve the law in matters of faith can only be evidence that either Christians don’t trust themselves or they do not trust each other. Further, it is evidence Christians wish to interfere with the freedom of religion of others by obstructing the rights of free citizens to choose their own faith or no faith at all.
(*For a complete list of 4th Century Imperial Laws regarding religion click here)
Over the centuries that followed early Christianity, the church was involved in all manner of arbitrary prohibitions, including on issues such as abortion. In the 5th century St. Augustine wrote of the “delayed soul” (originally an Aristotelian concept), this meant males were “given a soul” 40 days after conception, females only received theirs on the 90th day. In practical terms it meant abortion within the first 3 months of pregnancy was permitted. St. Geronimus on the other hand stated that an abortion was only wrong once the foetus retained a clearly human appearance (4th month). In the 12th century the church introduced new terminology to define the theories of both St. Geronimus and Augustine, fetus animatus and fetus inanimatus.
Pope Sixtus V was the first pope to entirely prohibit abortion (in canon law), but his successor Pope Gregory XIV went back to the animatus/inanimatus theory, and prolonged the period of abortion to 116 days. It was actually only in 1869 when the church turned its back on its history and omitted the animatus/inanimatus concept from canon law hence taking an absolutist and generalized stance against abortion (with the short exception of Sixtus V’ths 3 years of power). I’d make a joke on Papal Infallibility here, except the Papl Infallibility doctrine was also only defined at that same point in time: 1869.
The example above is merely an illustration of the erratic nature of religious belief. One that on the grounds of erraticism alone should not be used as a parameter of morality or ethics.
Today we continue to see various factions of Christianity still involved in attempting to coerce society into following the tenets of their faith through the proposal of blanket prohibitions- rather than following the tenets of their faith themselves. The New Statesman’s exchange involving Cristina Odone and Robin Ince is a prime example. Under the guise of defending something that has never been under attack, Ms. Odone wants to celebrate a conference designed exclusively to attack the lgbt community and gay unions. Her right to marry heterosexually is alive and well- but as history has shown, that’s not enough for a certain sector of Christians. They feel the need to bring down the strong arm of the law because their belief system, obviously, can’t withstand scrutiny or reason. It cannot stand alone. To this end, we have seen a steady decline in Christian belief and practices in countries like Spain and France where they can no longer dangle the sword of Damocles over the heads of those who who refuse to subject themselves to archaic and ignorant Christian mythology.”
I see the current defence of Alito’s position is to say this is being thrown back to state legislatures, which is a fascinating eschewing of responsibility. The place of high courts in democracies around the world has been to balance the rights of minorities and majorities therefor avoiding tyranny. Imagine sending slavery or female voting rights back to states so they could decide?
My Mazamet 
Brilliant post (then and now). I must apologize for my people being so backward and bringing up issues that should have been settled long, long ago.
When people make claims such as “In the 5th century St. Augustine wrote of the “delayed soul” (originally an Aristotelian concept), this meant males were “given a soul” 40 days after conception, females only received theirs on the 90th day.” we must ask, loudly and persistently, how the heck would he know? Clearly these “church fathers” were making shit up right and left. And we haven’t called them on all o fit, so it keeps popping up.
Call Bullshit! Call Bullshit! loudly and persistently.
Ask “how do you know this”?
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Thank you! So are you implying women don’t have souls at all? 😀
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With the dawn of real scientific enlightenment here, it’s seems the Christian fanatics will stop at nothing to drive us back into the dark ages.
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The legal gymnastics are extraordinary. Imagine handing self-avowed fanatics the right to impose their will on everyone else.
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It’s insane but I guess insanity is in vogue again.
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In my life it’s always been in vogue! 🤪
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Tour last question is the perfect framing of this “debate,” and yeah, these are idiots more preposterously dug-in in their stupidity than any social critic ever foresaw after the alleged enlightenment of the 60s.
But what happened to secular humanism in France? Why did Melanchon suffer another ignominious defeat against the Blairite Macron and the KKKer Le Pen?
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France has been fractured for all of its history. Just consider the groups during the revolution, nobles, bourgeoisie, workers. The same forces are still at work today. Melenchon is more popular than ever before but Le Pen has decades of (successful) tactics behind her.
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I’m soooooooo glad I live in America where religion is a separate thing from the law and freedom reigns. I…..wait……never mind.☹️
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At least you’re in one of the more civilised states, murder rates aside 😀
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I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Everybody knows only transwomen are women and they don’t need abortion services. Women are now ‘persons’ just like everyone else and so only half of them might ever need such services so it makes sense that only half of the states in the US need to provide it. Besides, even the newest supreme, Ketanji Brown Jackson, doesn’t know what this ‘woman’ word means because she’s not a biologist so I’m sure all this hoopla is really over nothing at all.
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Personally, I think abortion is important enough a topic it’s best to avoid tangents 😊
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Constantine was based.
Alito’s decision is correct: in the U.S. the legislators should make laws and judges apply them. The law which SCOTUS applies is the Constitution, but that doesn’t make them super-legislators.
If the legislators have to decide through ordinary political processes we will probably get abortion laws that more resemble those of France rather than China.
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Based?
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Per Urban dictionary:
“A word used when you agree with something; or when you want to recognize someone for being themselves, i.e. courageous and unique or not caring what others think. Especially common in online political slang.
The opposite of cringe, some times the opposite of biased.”
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Sorry, I’m 44 and not very in touch with slang terms 😬
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I’m 43 and spend way too much time scrolling twitter when I am supposed to be working.
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Shouldn’t legislators, working in good faith, try to find actual solutions? I’m not saying there should be abortion after 15 or even 12 weeks — but it makes sense that if there’s a rape, incest, a terrible mistake, that there’s some amount of time or window to fix it. Right?
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There should be no forced births. If other lunatics want women have to take their zygotes to full term, then they should have that child themselves, with all the potential injuries and deaths and tuition bills and therapy sessions that childbearing brings on this blessed rock.
Women need full and constant access to contraception, men needs condoms, children need to be wanted and supported, anti-humanist legislators need to be made to run for the hills, and anti-trans commenters need to shipped to some Stone Age desert to live out the rest of their lives in monotheistic comfort. Fair enough?
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The floor is yours. Certainly no forced births, but there is a line that should be clearly taught that if precautions aren’t taken, decisions need to be made quickly.
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I don’t think abortion is ever morally licit (except for ectopic pregnancies – you can argue if that is really the intentional killing of the fetus or an unintentional side effect) however politicis is about prudence. So I think the proper solution is the most restriction that is politically possible.
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So rape babies are a good thing?
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The baby is a very good thing, the rape no. As for legality, whatever is practical.
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I’d love to know how. How is the baby a good thing? In America today there are 2.5 million homeless children. Homelessness being a precursor to a whole range of horrors including drug use, sexual exploitation and the like. Good thing?
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I like babies. Never had kids myself so I can always hand them off to their moms when they get stinky, maybe that biases me.
The homeless issue is awful, a sign of something sick with our society, but that doesn’t mean the homeless have no dignity. I’ve been guilty of shitting on the homeless but the reality is I get along pretty well with them when I meet them. Pre Covid I was the guy they could always bum cigarettes off. But the solution to homelessness can’t be aborting them in anticipation. It is probably a lot of tough love and some kind of national employment / industrial policy that the Democrats used to promote.
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My question isn’t about aborting the homeless but rather how does a society that enforces birth protect those who will be born? It cannot be that a situation is forced upon beings and then they are left to perish. That would be the ultimate in cruelty.
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Enforcing birth is a weird concept. Reproduction is normal and natural, that is why there are 7 billion of us. I think abortion is a sign of sickness, like homelessness, but that doesn’t mean every social problem has to be solved before addressing the effects. There will always be unwanted children and homeless people, but I think a more stable and traditional society will reduce that.
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Traditional like in Victorian times? Abortion is a sign something went wrong. The higher the levels of sex education and access to birth control, the lower the rates of abortion. I
That formula where people were forced to marry because of an accidental pregnancy was not ideal. It led to a whole lot of unhappiness, dysfunction and even violence.
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That would be great idea to be “clearly taught,” but there is this one problem in the US: theocratic murder chimps have insured that only Christian precepts of kill and hate can now be taught in America’s prisons/schools. Where to turn, where to turn?
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My theory is they could care less about abortion. It’s simply a tool to exercise control and create in/out groups. Not unlike how they use sexual orientation.
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People, of the gibbering chimp variety, can end up wholly deformed and disfigured by their defining culture, with “belief” not mattering so much inside their demyelinated brains as much as fervid incoherent repetition of received propaganda. but then you a genial, well-adjusted host who is very kind to the flotsam who comment here.
Anti-abortionism is pure forced-birthism, and it is a sign of idiocy, immorality, and a lack of debating skills. Who in their right mind thinks it important to force a stranger to have a child, when they themselves are such wanton killers of “life”?
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Establishment of a Constitutional Torah Republic: such an institution promises to heal the current Secular/Religious divide which has conflicted Jews, prior to Israeli Independence in the wars fought in 1948 & 1967.
Wisdom the ability to discern like from like. For example: מלאכה from עבודה. What’s the difference between these two similar verbs? Shabbat observance not to do forbidden מלאכה on the day of Shabbat as opposed to the negative commandments not to do forbidden עבודה on the 6 days of Chol; another term which also means shabbat. A person who lacks the ability to discern, not wise – just that simple. Therefore, wisdom exists as the ability to discern like from like. Another example: the distinction which separates a Republic from a Democracy.
Establishment of a Constitutional Torah Republic: such an institution promises to heal the current Secular/Religious divide which has conflicted Jews, prior to Israeli Independence in the wars fought in 1948 & 1967. The Jerusalem Post reports:
“The most widely accepted proposal for amending the Law of Return is the annulment of the “grandchild clause,” such that the non-Jewish grandchild of a Jewish grandfather would not be able to immigrate to Israel, or at least would not be able to do so without his parents or the Jewish grandfather.”
One “secular” critic is Ruth Gavison, a professor of law at Hebrew University and a former candidate for the Israel Supreme Court. In an 86-page paper, The Law of Return at Sixty Years: History, Ideology, Justification she recommends revisiting the Grandparent Clause as “too broad.” She also suggests amending the Law of Return to not grant automatic citizenship to olim (immigrants).”
The chief cornerstone upon which a Jewish Constitutional Republic stands: A) The Written Torah ie first 4 Books of the Torah, to function as the Written Constitution of the Israeli Republic of economically autonomous States of the Union, based upon the oath alliance by which first Commonwealth Israel forges a Republic among the 12 Tribes. B) The establishment of lateral Common Law Courtrooms based upon the mandate of these Sanhedrin Courts to conduct ‘Legislative Review’ or משנה תורה over laws passed by the Knesset or any other type of Jewish government across all States of the Republic.
Oral Torah common law rejects the Statute Law assimilation as a perversion of the Torah in both substance and form. Whereas statute law as embodied in the Rambam, Asher & Karo statute halachic codifications emphasizes the importance of forms of ritual, expressed through their assimilated and therefore skewed idea of the halachic definition, as the substance of Law.
Oral Torah common law courts learn Aggaditah as the basis to glean the k’vanna of Prophetic T’NaCH mussar. And employ this Prophetic mussar as the k’vanna of all ritual halachic observances. Oral Torah makes distinction between substance from form. The substance of Common Law Courts prioritizes the authority of the T’NaCH prophetic mussar and the Mishna over the authority of the halachot learned from the Amoraim Gemara sources.
Statute halachah endeavours to impose a restricted definition of halacha upon all Jews as “the” Torah inheritance of the Jewish People. This foreign assimilation fails to recognize the primary authority of any Mishna source over any later Gemara source. All the later commentaries made on the assimilated Statute halachic codifications fail to study the code precedent halacha back to understand the k’vanna its Mishnaic Primary Source.
Furthermore, Oral Torah Common Law rejects any such artificial Orthodox monopoly over the Torah inheritance to all Israel. Based upon the Mishna which teaches that all Israel have a portion in the World to Come; the oath brit faith of Avram cut upon the souls of his future born generation chosen Cohen seed. The Talmud learns that the mitzva of tifillah exist as the נמשל of the Torah korbanot משל. Just as the Cohen inheritance: not restricted soley to the House of Aaron, so too and how much more so: the Torah not restricted to Orthodox Jews who follow assimilated Roman Law halachic codifications – – a direct violation of the Torah negative commandment not to worship other Jesus/Allah Gods. This most basic discernment separates the wisdom of distinguishing between Like from Like; the Universal false faiths declare Monotheism. But Monotheism violates the 2nd Sinai Commandment.
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Religion is soft power, pure and simple. As such, it’s not at all surprising that rulers would use it in conjunction with hard power [the military/police] to keep their populations in line. The surprise, for me, is that a country supposedly founded by Puritans came up with a constitution that specifically separated Church and State.
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Some states were founded by Puritans, others by more liberal religious groups, including Quakers. There is a very practical reason why religious groups might want to separate Church and state: not wanting a different religious group from their own being in cahoots with the state.
That played out in Aotearoa New Zealand in the mid 19th century when the public education system was established. Originally there was not going to be a ban on religious teaching in schools, but all the churches were so afraid of a different church getting the nod to do the tuition, that all the churches pressed for no religion to be taught. So when the legislation enabling the public school system was passed, education became free and secular by law. To this day religion can not be taught in public schools. School premises are permitted to be used to teach up to 20 hours of religion per year, but they must be officially closed during that time.
I do disagree with your statement that religion is soft power, pure and simple. It may often be that it’s true but it doesn’t have to be, and isn’t always true. Ultimately, religion is a total mode of the interpreting and living of life. It’s human institutions, or more specifically those who exercise control of such institutions who manifest power, and in this respect religious institutions are no different from any other type of institution created by humankind.
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Thanks Barry, what you say about competition between different religions does make sense. I knew there were Quakers in the US, but I didn’t know they were powerful enough to exert that kind of pressure.
I wish Australia had followed New Zealand’s lead with regard to religious education in public schools. We got that wrong. 😦
Re soft power…I should have said ‘organised religion’. I was raised a Catholic and have first hand knowledge of the exercise of that soft power at all levels. But the origins of Christianity were not like that. As Pinky pointed out in his article, it was not until the Emperor converted to Christianity that the rot set in and beliefs were /enforced/.
If by institution you mean structures such as the legal system or banking etc, then I have to disagree. Only organised religion enforces its power by damning people in the afterlife. For relatively primitive people, that’s a degree of power above and beyond anything wielded by mere secular institutions. Think religious cults instead of the relatively mild religious institutions we see these days.
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Are NZ and AU partners now?
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Partners? We’re more like kissing cousins. Sovereign but affectionate. 😀
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Australia acts as our older and somewhat bullying sibling, but we get along fine when we share a common foe. Aussies have a different perspective – see acflory’s comment 🙂
We hate each other with a passion when we’re competing against each other in sporting events, but when either of us is knocked out, all is forgotten and we transfer that passion to the other nation.
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Yup. 😀 😀
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Pennsylvania was founded on Quaker principles and and was governed using Quaker practices until well after they became a minority in their own state. A number of other states were also founded on principles that had much in common with Quaker thought of the time. But you are wrong in assuming Quakers were powerful as Quakers have a belief in the absolute equality of everyone. They were influential by way of example, not because of power (Quakers believe in “right action” more so than “right belief”). The concept of a civil constitution founded on a permanent constitution originated within Quaker thought and theology of the time, much of which was manifested in the US constitution.
The problem with any human institution is that it can be abused by those seeking power, and while perhaps organised religion is the most often abused institution, I observe the Capitalist system has been abused on many an occasion, not by damning people in an afterlife but by damning them in this life. While we might debate which is the most powerful, both can have had a devastating effect on individuals, communities and even whole nations. For example, America’s interference in the affairs of many nations: is the primary motivation, political power, economic power, military power, or religious power? As I see it, religion is the least significant motivator, although it might be used to gain domestic support for questionable foreign policy.
If I recall correctly, it was under Constantine, that Christianity become the official religion of Rome but he himself did not “convert” to the religion until nearing the end of his life (possibly as a “get out of jail” card just in case Christianity turned out to be true). He used and abused religion to consolidate his power. Nothing much has changed in the following millenia.
My experience is the opposite of yours. I grew up in a secular household. My father was either an atheist or an agnostic (religious belief was a topic he refused to discuss), but more than anything else he opposed organised religion with a passion. So it created an internal conflict when my mother came out as Christian when she was in her 50s and joined a liberal/progressive baptist congregation. I’m not sure that he ever fully resolved that internal conflict, as he was supportive of my mother’s membership of that congregation while still expressing an opposition to organised religion in general and expressed intense dislike of one or two of the congregation leaders who had, shall we say, a more conservative Christian perspective.
I became involved in an “organised religion” some time in my thirties or forties. The timing is vague as I didn’t “convert” to the religion. I happened upon a religion that was consistent with beliefs I had held since my early teens, felt “at home” in it, and I remain part of it to this day.
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I’m Australian, hence the ignorance of US history. So, Quaker thought influenced the creation and form of the constitution? That’s power in my book. A good form of power but power nonetheless. 🙂
My mother was a Catholic, my father wasn’t, but when they married, he agreed to have any children they might produce raised as Catholics. That led to a curious situation where Mum would go to Church for Xmas and Easter, but Dad would walk /me/ to church every Sunday because he was a man of his word.
Dad was a gymnast/engineer/violinist/philosopher, and he taught me to think and question. But I didn’t find out that /he/ was an atheist until I came out as one at the tender age of 16.
So my experience has been almost the exact reverse of yours.
I’m still an atheist, but I have no problem with people who do believe so long as that belief is ‘real’. By real I mean that it was reached after deep questioning. Imho, a real belief is one that informs your whole life and everything you do in that life. It sounds as if you’ve found that belief. 🙂
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“a real belief is one that informs your whole life and everything you do in that life” That’s very similar to the definition of religion as defined by perhaps NZ’s greatest theologian, Sir Lloyd Geering: “Religion is a total mode of the interpreting and living of life.”.
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lol – I most definitely do not equate belief with religion. The exact reverse in most cases because every religion I have ever studied demands faith and acceptance from its followers, not questioning. You arrived at your faith via questions, questions that your chosen religion answered to your satisfaction, so your beliefs are in sync with who you are and how you live your life. You are fortunate. 🙂
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“[E]very religion I have ever studied demands faith and acceptance from its followers, not questioning.” In that case you haven’t studied every religion. If it demands anything, my faith tradition demands one to be open to new sources of inspiration and knowledge no matter where it comes from. A faith not open to new ideas is dead. We have no creed(s) or declaration of faith. That’s why within our faith tradition (there’s around 1200 of us in NZ), you’ll find theists, non-theists (which I am), deists, agnostics, atheists, pantheists, panentheists, humanists, animists and more. While the faith tradition I belong to may be universally “liberal” in NZ, most other major traditions here also have liberal, progressive, postmodern or post-theist branches as well. I suspect the situation in Australia may be somewhat similar, but perhaps to a lesser degree.
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hah! You’re right, I’ve barely scraped the surface of the organised religions available world wide. That said, I’ve never ever heard of one that encompassed so diverse a congregation. Are you sure it’s not a philosophical society???
Sorry. I shouldn’t be flippant. May I ask what beliefs you do share, apart from being open to new ‘sources of inspiration’?
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Well the word “religious society” are the first and second word in the English version of our name. In Te Reo (the Māori language) we’ve been given a name that loosely translates as “the faith community that stands shaking in the wind of the Spirit”. The movement originated out of Christianity and through almost 400 years of evolving tradition we continue to use many Christian terms although our understanding of what they might mean has changed. For example, we strongly believe there is “that of God in every person”, but if you were to ask four of us what that actually means, you’ll likely get five very different answers, although all of them will likely preface their response with words along the line of “I cannot speak for other members of the society, but this is my understanding…”
God can be a supernatural entity in the manner of traditional Christianity (although I’m not aware of any in our local community who hold this view. They might, but theology is considered to be a personal matter and should not be subject to scrutiny), an energy, the cosmos, a collective human yearning, a spirit (as in supernatural or in terms similar to “human spirit”), a metaphor for something that feels greater than the self, a set of values – all very different and yet we can find a commonality in our understanding of those representations. I’m a non-theist, but I find religious metaphors (from both Christianity and Māori spirituality) describes my personal experience/reality better than other forms of language. So what unifies us? God only knows 🙂
Actually we all have similar values that can be summarised by the acronym SPICES (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship). We also practice a unique method of decision making somewhat akin to consensus, yet different. I’m trying not to proselytise, as it’s not something we practice. As to it being a philosophical society, perhaps for some members it might be approaching that, but for most there’s a spirituality that they find meaningful, and to use another of our commonly used expressions, “speaks to their condition”.
Mainstream Christian denominations still view us as being within the wider Christian fellowship although a majority don’t consider themselves Christian. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals consider us a very dangerous and heretical cult.
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Wow…a broad ‘church’ indeed. I’m uncomfortable with spirituality per se, but I do like your SPICE values. For me, my beliefs are closest to the old Greek concept of Eudaimon – basically attempting to be/become the best I am capable of being.
Thank you for a very interesting discussion. I’m thrilled that Fundamentalists and Evangelicals worry about you. 😀
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If spirituality per se makes you uncomfortable, would you be more comfortable to think of spirituality in terms such as “the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things” or perhaps “a search for meaning, for purpose and direction in life – to fulfil our need to have a foundation for living, a path or way of life in the light of a larger context”.
Spirituality, religion, worship can take many forms. What’s right for one person might be very wrong for another. What’s right for me today, might not be right for me in the future. Does it really matter whether one experiences spirituality in terms of the supernatural, metaphysical, as an abstract idea, a metaphor or simply as a human emotion? Surely it’s what one does with the experience that matters.
I had to refer to Wikipedia and Britannica to discover the concept of Eudaimon, and it’s not one that appeals to me personally, but hey, whatever floats your boat 🙂
“I’m thrilled that Fundamentalists and Evangelicals worry about you” I think they’re past worrying. When we’re described as a demonic cult, the work of Satan, and that “True Christians” must not associate with us, as some fundamentalist literature has stated, you know they are not concerned for our souls 🙂
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I guess it’s the ‘greater context’ bit that makes me uncomfortable. I see my beliefs – and I do have them – as 100% personal. My definition of being a ‘good’ person/the best I can be, is also personal, but it does intersect with the outside world in that not causing harm is very high on my list of things a good person must do. That’s basically my empathy at work.
On a purely pragmatic level though, reason tells me that no society can survive for long if the strong are allowed to prey on the weak. So simple survival dictates that an egalitarian society is likely to be the strongest.
Hmm…got a bit carried away there. Anyway, I consider Fundamentalists and Evangelicals to be evil. Not because of what they believe, necessarily, but because of the harm they do, both on an individual level and at a societal level.
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Really? Didn’t European society survive for nearly 2000 years on aristocratic inequality?
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I know you’re tweaking me Pinky because we both know that the history of Europe is one of almost constant war with some societies collapsing while others rose. The emergence of a middle class paved the way for more stable societies. Now we’re going backwards again.
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Monotheism violates the 2nd Sinai commandment. Many Jews have erred on this concept of faith. The Koran failed to understand the concept of ברית. A fundamental term contained as a רמז within the first word of the Torah בראשית.
Mohammad too failed to discern that the Torah defines a prophet, as a person who commands mussar. Another fundamental mistake on par with Arabs eating camel meat and milk; or their customs of ritual slaughter. The Koran like the New Testament, both alien texts failed to grasp the essential concept of tohor/tumah which defines the chosen Cohen nation – the Jewish people – our avodat השם; the 1st Sinai commandment defines the k’vanna of all Torah commandments: doing these commandments לשמה.
G’lut Jewry, as taught in the opening Mishna of Gittin, the דיוק (logical inference/opposite [Ying/Yang]) of Kiddushin, that G’lut Jewry lost the wisdom just how to keep Torah commandments לשמה – hence the din of g’lut. Antisemitism, a term originally coined in the late 19th Century expressed Goyim opposition to Jews receiving citizenship into the host countries of their exile. Hitler’s Nazism redefined the term antisemitism into a totally different butterfly.
Throughout the Judean g’lut, Jews existed as stateless refugee populations, scattered across the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe. We as a people had no political or social rights, and experience G-d damned horrific nightmares of oppression. Liberal, Reform and Conservative, the latter also referred to as Historical Judaism, both movements, express the post Napoleonic liberation from the Ghettoes, attempts by Jews to receive citizenship within Goyim countries. Something like a dog who whines and wags its tail when a person eats meat that smells absolutely delicious to the nose of the dog. A replacement theology which “converts” the worship of Self-Interests as the new-God of the Jews.
This ideal, it worships the God of Jewish self-interests, acceptance and integration into non-Jewish societies. Israeli Jews understand the k’vanna of the 2nd Sinai Commandment, not to worship other Gods: A) Proof that the Torah rejects Monotheism B) Not to assimilate, meaning a negative commandment that prohibits the pursuit of alien non-brit cultures, customs, and practices of Goyim civilizations who reject the revelation of the Name of השם @ Sinai & Horev. The YouTube below, the narrator clearly does not qualify as a Torah observant Israeli Jew.
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Don’t confuse ‘larger context’ with ‘greater context’ or ‘greater good’. There’s a very big difference. I understand ‘larger context’ to mean the environment within which I live – socially, environmentally, politically, and economically, etc. These contexts I perceive as being larger than myself but not greater than myself. I am part of them and they are part of me. But remember this understanding of spirituality is my understanding of spirituality. They apply to me, not necessarily to anyone else, but I think it is a theme that would align with the majority of those within my faith tradition.
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I agree with your definition 100%, Barry. In all honesty, your position and mine are almost identical. I need to ask though: why the ‘faith tradition’ at all? Genuine question.
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(a) because from the moment I first encountered them I felt, for want of a better description, ‘at home’ with them.
(b) because the metaphoric use of religious language ‘speaks to my condition’
(c) because I’m in the company of people who share the same values and embrace and make adjustments for individual differences, be they LGBTQIA+, or as in my case being autistic.
(d) because I know of nowhere else where theists, deists, non-theists, agnostics, atheists, animists, Wiccans, Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims have a shared “spiritual” experience, even though each group’s/individual’s experience of what that entails is different, and yet understand that each and every experience is just as valid as another
For us it’s what we seek/desire. For others it may be meaningless. Each to their own.
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I can understand the desire to find community, especially about something as fundamental to life as what one believes. I guess I don’t share that desire because my early experiences biased me against anything that even hints at communal pressure. I know you say there is none, but I know myself – I like to please people. Not saying that would happen in this case, but making sure it didn’t happen would cause a degree of stress I do not want.
Individual differences. Gotta love ’em. 🙂
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It was the very absence of pressure to conform that made me feel at home unlike anywhere else. You refer to communal pressure as a reason for your bias. I can appreciate that. All my life I have had to pretend to be somebody I’m not: a neurotypical person. And it is exhausting. Outside my whānuā, my faith community is the only place where I don’t experience constant pressure to conform and where I don’t receive criticism or worse for “failing” to make eye contact, read body language or immediately comprehend non-literal language, or for being “too honest” in what I say, speaking in a monotone or having an aversion to crowds, bright lights or loud noises.
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I was an outsider growing up so I can relate to how you feel. Apart from a few very close friends, I didn’t find real acceptance until I became a writer/blogger. Feeling ‘at home’ is so important. I’m glad you’ve found a safe haven, Barry. -hugs-
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What a person personally believes does not change or alter the facts on the ground.
Torah Commandments as opposed by Torah Common Law.
What fundamentally separates and distinguishes Torah commandments from Torah as law/halachot? A similar question separates קידושין from Civil marriages. A Torah commandment does not qualify as law. Law learns by way of bringing comparative precedents, משנה תורה. This comparison by way of similar precedents defines Torah Law: המשפט המקובל – otherwise known as Common law. המשפט המקובל stands separate and apart from simple Torah commandments.
Torah law and Torah commandments, two completely distinct and separate types of mitzvot. The Torah, for example, commands the negative commandment not to do work on shabbot. Halachah defines this simple negative commandment through המשפט המקובל and learns the labors required to build the Mishkan as the avot work actions which define this simple negative commandment. The brush required to paint on canvass, human facial expressions — completely and totally different than the brush used to white-wash a picket fence. The prophet ישעיה cursed persons who called day night and night day.
The term Kabbalah most essentially learns from common law. To study the Torah oblivious of common law precedent learning, most essentially separates the Torah from the fraudulent counterfeit books: new testament and koran. These latter tumah replacement theologies base themselves upon a sham supposition premise which announces the false claim, that they base themselves upon the T’NaCH prophets.
All Torah commandments stand upon a mussar יסוד. This יסוד defines all T’NaCH prophecy. Neither JeZeus or Mohammad understood — their followers how much more so — this most basic fundamental. The apostle Paul for example: proclaimed that Goyim have no obligation to obey the law. Common law or Roman Statute-law he failed to differentiate; a day and night distinction separates the two. Consequently this failure to discern the basic fundamentals of Torah faith, relegates all his letters to gross religious rants, nothing more than rhetoric propaganda.
None of the new testament writers, nor the koran “dictation by an Angel”, teaches Torah faith – המשפט המקובל\משנה תורה. Consequently both this and that define the worship of avodah zarah, the belief in foreign alien Gods. Gods totally unknown by the Avot and Moshe.
The Torah commands a negative commandment: do no recognize faces in judgment. Do not show pity to the poor or deference to the rich. The Roman statute law “assimilation” practiced by the Rambam’s code, by the Tur’s code, and by the Shulkan Aruch code places them all upon the bar of judgment. Did their actions ie writing these assimilated Roman law codes of law violate the negative commandment not to pursue the manners and customs practiced by foreign peoples who never accepted the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev?
Torah Law rejects cults of personality. Because these authorities the vast majority of Observant Jews learn and respect, like my mother used to say to me as a child … “If Joe jumps off the roof and breaks his leg, does that mean that you too should jump of the roof and break your leg?” The negative commandment not to pursue or follow the customs of people who reject the Torah revelation – this Case – has a rule: the 2nd Commandment of the Torah revelation @ Sinai. Torah common law/משנה תורה\המשפט המקובל — Torah law/RULE judges all the 613 commandments/CASES.
Herein separates and distinguishes Torah commandments: CASES from Torah law: משנה תורה/המשפט המקובל – RULE. All Torah law bases itself upon a common law system of reaching a din/conclusion by means of similar precedents. Roman Statute Law, the law practiced by the 3 famous Codifications of Halachah questioned, these latter codes base their legal rulings NOT upon common law Jewish logic but rather Roman statute law Greek logic. Therefore these codes of Halachah exist, in my opinion, on the exact same plane of tumah as an idol that people bow down and worship as JeZeus. The latter foreign God, too worshiped as a Cult of Personality – a direct violation of Torah Law.
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Fascinating.
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Hi Meeka read your article on storing hydrogen stored as a powder. I shared it with my neighbor friend Sonya, who lives here in Beer Sheva and she’s working in this exact same field. If your interested: moshekerr@gmail.com
Write me and permit me to hook you two up. Am interested in combining hydrogen/helium together with solar panels for private homes.
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The 17th פרק of Parshat במדבר
As an introduction: to this the 17th פרק of Parshat במדבר, in honor of Yom Kippur. The yearly reading cycle of the Torah begins to renew itself, just as do the 13 middot logic system format, also known as Rabbi Akiva פרדס Divine Chariot mysticism.
והארץ היתה תהו ובהו וחשך על פני תהום ורוח אלהים מרחפת על פני המים … ויקדש אתו כי כו שבת מכל מלאכתו אשר ברא אלהים לעשות.
Adam formed from clay or stone? רוח אלהים מרחפת: HaShem lives as Spirit not words. This Spirit commands Order from chaos and anarchy, known as מלאכתו. Therefore, the concept of ‘forbidden work’ which defines the mitzva of Shabbat, means something altogether different than the ‘forbidden work’ which Par’o enslaved Israel in Egypt. Like the difference between Clay and stone, the classic building elements used in construction-work.
The Torah directly commands whole stones, to build an altar. Base and precious metals mined directly from the earth. משל\נמשל Torah commandments first formally introduced at Sinai, ‘carved in stone’. Giving Order to chaos and anarchy, Torah commandments serve as precedents to define Torah Law. Imposing Torah Law as the Order of a Society of Man, Divine מלאכתו, which transforms Olam Ha’Bah to this World today.
The famous codes of the Books of the Commandments written during the Dark Ages, tend to organize around a binary set, positive and negative commandments, something like basic Yes/No, On\Off computer code languages today. They ignored Positive time-oriented commandments and the positive/negative ‘Partnership complex commandments. Complex protein molecules למשל serve as the building blocks of all life on this earth. משנה תורה Common Law compares these complex protein molecules found in both chemistry and biology. They based themselves upon the simple elements. The organization of these basic elements, they serve as the basis which form complex protein structures.
Building a Jewish state ex nihilo, most essentially defines Zionism. Sanctification of a defined utterly new organization/Order לשמה, which exists solely within a ‘world to come’ civilization. That prior to this מלאכתו such a societal Order did not ever exist in this world. This מלאכתו in essence requires separation of the “chosen Cohen” Order of civilization, over all other competitive societal Goyim Orders of civilization. Zionism, למשל, stands upon the dedication of Yitzak, placed upon an altar of stone, by Avraham.
The Koran by contrast, challenges this Order, its replacement theology argues that Avraham dedicated Ishmael and not Yitzak upon that stone altar. Yet בראשית holds the רמז (words within words) of ברית אש, while never once does the Koran stand upon the ברית יסוד. Brit no more refers to “covenant” than words can communicate רוח אלהים. The Koran never once obeys the 1st Sinai commandment. Hence the Torah negative commandment never to pronounce the the Name of HaShem, based upon the Reshon grammar constructs.
The Name השם, a רוח and not a word. The name אלהים, linked to the Nefesh חי, dedicated on Yom Kippur. The dedication of the Chayya Nefesh, Jews as clay, we cement our personal lives together with the destiny of our people as the מלאכתו of our faith. Hatred without cause, together with assimilation continuously threatens to return an Ordered Cohen society into chaos and anarchy … revolution, Civil War, foreign intervention, loss of National sovereignty, and g’lut.
Zionism does not stand, nor does it even invite Athenian ‘Democracy’, to supplant the rule of Torah law. Meaning: lateral common law courtrooms. The political notion/ (political science) philosophy\, developed in the 16th and 17th Centuries by Western European philosophers, how much more so! Zionism today in like and equal measure rejects Marx and others’ Anarchist socialist ideas, as a foreign competition to the chosen Cohen civilization’s vision which sees lateral courtroom imposed judicial justice: fair compensations for damages. The primary duty of the Courts, to resolve conflicts and disputes among and between our People.
The vision of Zionism to build and establish ex nihilo, stands upon the Torah base, that HaShem created the world from nothing. To create from עולם הבא,,, a Torah Constitutional Republic in עולם הזה. The chosen Order of the civilization known as Zionism. Based upon the stone altar by which Avraham dedicated Yitzak holy to HaShem.
Just as Avraham did not physically slaughter Yitzak, the Torah never commands sacrifices in some Catholic-like Cathedral. No imaginary messiah can replace the Primary מלאכה to establlish fair justice, through lateral Sanhedrin, Federal courtrooms, which have a Torah obligation to impose the stamp of tohor justice upon the Cohen society. The Torah does not harp upon the sins of Man and worship a Man God who takes away the sins of the world. Only Israel accepted the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev. Lateral Sanhedrin commonlaw courtrooms have a Torah obligation to reconcile disputes between brothers, through just judicial rulings, having fair and equal access to all Classes of our alliance together as a People.
The Torah speaks in the language of Man. God/Justice defines the משל\נמשל logic of how the Torah speaks and organizes these complex, abstract concepts & relationships of Common Law. In all matters relating to knowledge of HaShem, the Talmud instructs: “train your tongue to say I do not know’. The Talmud categorically rejects all Creeds or theologies which presumption with tumah arrogance to know the nature of the G-d of Israel. Debates or discussions about God merits total derision!
Lower animal-minds limit their grasp of reality to the physical environment wherein they live, sights, smells, sounds etc. The chosen Cohen People, by stark contrast, we create from the World to Come the realities which shape the world today; life in the world come, resembles the created work of an artist. Like art painted onto a canvas, so too life in this world today, bases itself upon ‘growing’ the mussar תוכחה visions of the prophets into how we dedicate how we socially interact with our People in behaviors which yet prevail only in the future social interactions. Something like establishing goals one wants to achieve.
President Kennedy set a goal-vision for the American nation, to put a Man on the Moon in the decade of the 60’s. Hertzl, in his turn, created the goal-vision for the establishment of the Jewish State, accomplished within 50 years! Despite the tumah barbarism of Hitlers’ Nazism counter vision, and his dream of a 1000-year Reich. An abomination, a total disgrace of extermination, violently slaughtered in less than 30 years. Rabbinic Judaism never planted these Olam Ha’Bah seeds into the hearts of g’lut Jewry. It confused Olam Ha’Bah with death rather than life of Jews living now in this world.
European barbarity proved once again the New Testament vision, as nothing other than a lie. A religion which preaches love but throughout history continually produced the fruits of violent hate and injustice. Matthew 7:16 – 20: 16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Zionism rejects Xtian European society; its theology of avoda zarah how much more so! Jews who assimilate and embrace the culture, customs, manners and ways practiced by these foreign alien barbarians, how they organize their society, such tumah Jews worship avoda zarah. Just as oil does not mix with water, so too and how much more so, Zionism rejects peace with all European civilizations. Peace requires trust, and the latter simply out of the question.
Zionism rejects the imperialism known as the ‘2 State solution’, where specifically France, and the UN African Non-Aligned Movement/alliance in general, attempts to dictate – through their ventriloquist dummy UN Resolutions. Their repeated attempts to treat the Jewish state as a protectorate territory of the UN. Their denial that Israel won its Independence in both 1948 and again in 1967. The pretence that nations which refer to Israel as the “Zionist Entity”, who have no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state; can miraculously dictate the strategic interests of this Israeli government, which they do not even recognize.
This laughable absurdity, completely unnoticed by the unhinged, and completely skewed MSM propaganda Press. Rabbi Yechuda, the Head of the Great Sanhedrin, organized his משנה based upon the Oral Torah of Moshe, the Book of דברים, also known as the משנה תורה. Confusion and error raised the head of chaos and anarchy, when rabbinic instruction declared the משנה of Rabbi Yechuda as the Oral Torah. Oblivious to the משנה תורה Book of דברים.
Church fathers, by comparison, based upon their primitive, barbaric, & utterly tumah spiritual avoda zarah, their arrogant presumption that the Oral Torah, if it even exists, exists only as laws of men. But even this semi-positive presumption the church later denied. The very idea that the משנה of Rabbi Yechuda qualifies as the Oral Torah revealed simultaneously together with Written Torah, stretched their imaginations to the limit of endurance.
Church fathers rejected with a vigour; the Mishna Oral Torah written by Rabbi Yechuda. Comparable to how Israel today rejects the EU 2 State Solution, as the petrification dictate; to artificially impose the 1948 Armistice lines as the permanent borders of the Jewish state. After WWI the League of Nations determined the mandate territories of Palestine. This mandate territory included all the lands of Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Israel! Britain redefined the mandate territory of Palestine, it separated Palestine from Trans-Jordan at the Jordan river, a natural border.
But once Israel fought and won our National Independence in 1948 and again in 1967, the Jewish state permanently ceased being in the category of a protectorate territory under the rule of the United Nations. These pompous, presumptuous, arrogant priests, they denied and totally invalidated the משנה תורה\Oral Torah of Moshe the prophet. Because they deduced that Rabbi Yechuda’s משנה obviously came after the revelation of the Written Torah.
It never occurred to these corrupt fools that the common denominator which links the משנה תורה to Rabbi Yechuda’s משנה: Case/Rule Common Law. Church avoda zarah loves the rhetoric propaganda made by the agent provocateur, the Apostle Paul, (1 Corinthians 9:20-21) “not being under law myself … though not being without the law of God, but under the law of avoda zara.” The organization of the alien New Testament assemilates Roman statute law, sprinkled with Arabic numerology; the Xtian codifiers, who translated the Hebrew T’NaCH, introduced these Greco-Roman-Muslim concepts (which the Rambam statute code of halacha duplicated) of numbered Chapters and verses.
All alien translations of the Hebrew T’NaCH, they dismantled and cast away the Order of פרקים וסוגיות, in favor of Chapters and verses. These bloated priests of anal gas avoda zarah did not know that all T’NaCH prophets command mussar. Prophets do not foresee the future, as do tumah witches who worship a female God. Mussar applies equally to all generations of Israel.
The prophets through the משל\נמשל format compare the ‘hearts’ of Israel to both stone and flesh. Based upon the Torah aggaditah, the story of the ‘hardened heart of Par’o. Mussar instructs through applied תוכחות. Approximately 1/4th of the Sha’s Bavli – Aggadic. Comparable to the Book of בראשית, its relationship to the other 3 Books of the Written Torah.
The ‘shape’ of the Talmud models and duplicates the ‘shape’ of the 5 Books of the Torah. Both teach Common Law, and both teach mussar through Aggadah.
Matthew 13:3-9; Mark 4:1-9; Luke 8:4-8 speak the language of a משל, a parable of the Sower of seeds: seeds cast upon rocks and soil. The basis of Oral Torah common law, a fundamental distinction which Church avoda zarah has never searched out, much less discerned. All Torah instruction learns by way of the משל\נמשל logical parameters. Sonnets, by comparison, hold as a hard rule 14 lines of poetry. The mussar “seed” נמשל either falls upon hearts of stone or hearts of flesh.
The study of Torah requires making the required logical דיוקים known as משל\נמשל. The Ramban made a רמז to this fact, his kabbalistic introduction to his Chumash commentary. There he compared משל\נמשל with the poetic licence of white fire on black fire דיוקים. The corpulent Priest gas bags never questioned, nor made any effort in the least, to clarify ‘the law’ which the agent provocateur Paul declared the Goyim liberated therefrom; the distinction between משנה תורה common law as opposed by Greco-Roman statute law. Never once did these flatulent babbling theologians ever discern the fundamental contrast between the two different (day & night) systems of law.
Post the Rambam Civil War, most rabbinic authorities, other than the Rosh and the Baali Tosafot survivors, they too failed to make the fundamental distinction between Law & Law. Consequently, Talmudic learning degenerated and degraded. The days of learning the Talmud as common law have long since past in the Yeshiva. This key sh’itta of learning the Talmud as common law have ceased within Yeshiva walls, even in Israel today.
Virtually no “Rabbinic authority, other than Rav Aaron Nemuraskii, instructs the sh’itta of learning the B’hag, Rif, & Rosh codes, wherein their posok halacha, derived from Gemara sources on a specific Mishna, serves as precedents by which the Gemara interprets the k’vanna & language of the Mishna! None of the classic super commentaries on any of the Great Halachic codes learns Gemara halacha as precedents by which to interpret the k’vanna of Rabbi Yechuda’s Mishna.
Hence this catastrophic rabbinic error, centuries of T’NaCH and Talmudic scholarship, specifically the pilpul school, they all failed miserably to discern diametrically opposed natures; Common law halachot “heaven”, from Rambam, Tur, Shulkan Aruch assimilated Roman statute tumah law avoda zarah “Hell”.
Modern rabbinic Judaism venerates the Codes of assimilated statute law trash, comparable to how post WWII Catholics seek to declare Poop Pius XII a saint. Small wonder rabbinic Judaism failed to inspire Jews to reconquer our homelands, not in almost 2000 years! Not a single Geon or Reshon Torah commentary learned the 4 Books of the Written Torah based upon משנה תורה\Oral Torah Mitzvot precedents! These rabbis blindly followed the, so to speak, ירידות הדורות “socialist Party Line”! Saying Rabbi Yechuda wrote down the Mishna, due to the dire times, totally misses the boat. Israelis today do not know that משנה תורה, translates as ‘Common Law’. Hence, they likewise fail to discern the Rambam code as Roman statute law, as opposed by Torah Common law.
Another flagrant error of instruction, the rabbis limit and restrict the Mishna to meaning -repetition. The Gemara of ערובין and פרקי אבות teaches, that Moshe instructed and repeated the Torah no less than four times. Four lines of Rashi and Tosafot precede the opening line of every Gemara, based upon this simplistic rote idea of learning. Rote learning, good for young children, it permits the Talmud to flow like the tune of a song.
But children of Torah instruction must mature and grow-up, in order to develop a depth by which they study and learn throughout their lifetimes. The משנה תורה compares סוגיות from the Book of דברים with the סוגיות of the Written Torah, based upon a shared common denominator set of like tohor middot. Obviously, a man cannot sanctify tohor middot to HaShem during tefillah, if that man cannot discern the distinction between רחום from חנון etc. Lacking a clarity of tohor middot a man cannot turn away and reject tumah middot.
The Books of the NaCH Prophets likewise interpret the mussar of Written Torah prophecy through an analysis of similar middot. This learning defines the פרדס logic system of Rabbi Akiva’s common law scholarship. The Siddur, specifically the Shemone Esrei, addresses a huge dispute among the Sages within the Talmud. Whether סמוכים exists between פרקים Yes or No? The Shemone Esrei, for example, stands upon the principle that סמוכים, which joins together all the blessings within tefilla within the context of the first opening blessing.
Only the first blessing, through אלהי אברהם, holds the required שם ומלכות, according to the Baali Tosafot learning on the Gemara of ברכות; which separates blessing/oaths from praise/Psalms. None of the other “blessings” of the Shemone Esrei contain שם ומלכות. Hence, the Gemara of ברכות instructs a mussar which requires k’vanna during tefillah. K’vanna not only elevate low priority ‘praise’ of the first Blessing, to the grave responsibility of swearing a sworn oath blessing while standing before a Sefer Torah. But the k’vanna of סמוכים, which elevates each of the non-oath praises thereafter, into Torah oath blessings.
The Gemara of Sanhedrin interprets the cause for the floods of Noach, to swearing false oaths. Therefore, the dispute of יש סמוכים או אין סמוכים בין הפרקים, it radically changes the Order of the middot found within any given סוגיה within the Written Torah! Therefore, no less than two different sh’ittot exist between how a person brings משנה תורה precedents by which to interpret the k’vanna of the Written Torah. But in point of fact, many more than these two most obvious sh’ittot exist. A person with a creative mind can easily mature and logically derive 4 different sh’ittot to compare משנה תורה precedents to interpret Written Torah Common Law.
The 17th פרק of Parshat במדבר: ג: ה – י. What does this commandment entail?
הקרב את מטה לוי והעמדת אתו לפני אהרן הכהן ושרתו אתו
Shall we say the brightest, most talented people of all Israel have the destiny to sing in choirs? Simply No. What an utterly obtuse question. The Cities of Levi have the designation as “the schools of the prophets”. Using the Talmud as a precedent for these schools, prophets command mussar. Therefore the primary curriculum of these schools centers upon Aggadic research that delves into the subject of mussar.
The Reshon scholarship on the Aggadita of the Talmud, utterly pathetic. The failure of the classic commentaries on the Midrash Rabbah to weave prophetic mussar as the פשט of Midrashic stories testifies, at least to me, that the Reshon grasp of how the editors of the Sha’s Bavli stitched Aggaditah into Halachic ritualism never really understood by that Era of g’lut rabbis struggling with assimilation to foreign avoda zarah practicing civilizations.
The conditions under which the Reshonim learned could hardly qualify as ideal. The place of Jews in virtually all g’lut conditions – at best harsh and very insecure. These environmental conditions explain the reactionary manner of Reshonim scholarship, its failure to integrate Midrash as the most important secondary source commentary to Sha’s Aggadita. The collapse of learning T’NaCH mussar as the פשט of Midrashic stories really says it all.
G’lut Jewry had long since earlier lost the wisdom of how to learn the Torah and Talmud לשמה. A person trapped in quicksand lacks the ability to pull himself out of that death trap. G’lut directly compares to the La Brea Tar Pits. The Goyim respected the talents and capabilities of g’lut Jewry about on par with the absurd assumption that the primary responsibility of the Tribe of Levi, to sing songs in a choir. Or the משל of the Mishkan, limited to a טיפש פשט literal understanding. Ignorant that Torah prophets command mussar; an avoda zarah stupidity on par with the New Testament God and the prophet Mohammad.
The Mishkan, the Capital seat of the Sanhedrin Courtrooms. All Tribes relied upon lateral Torts courts to resolve disputes and cases of damages among our People. The Torah, jammed packed full of stories of conflicts which involved Moshe and Aaron. Local domestic conflicts lower Torts courts judged. The Torah limited its mussar to the National Yatzir Ha’Rah. But this exclusion of local tumah spirits most definitely does not make them hocus pocus simply disappear.
Disrespect of the Sanhedrin Torts courts Federal system qualifies as a Capital Crime. והזר הקרב יומת. Israel came out of Egypt with the purpose to conquer Canaan. But the wars of invasion lasted less than 10 years. Once a people have conquered a homeland, now the main problem arises, how shall they rule and govern that land?
The primary reason the Reshonim failed to inspire Jews to make aliyah to our homeland in mass, they failed to teach, the Torah stands as the Constitution of the Republic. This critical error places the Reshonim scholars on par with all the kings of Israel. Those רשעים kings, one and all, likewise did not respect the Torah as the Constitution of their Republic.
Torah prophets command mussar, they do not play little Goody two-shoes which forbids later generations to criticize earlier generations errors and mistakes. Post state Zionism too has made horrific errors in judgment. The Yemenite Children Affair remains a permanent disgrace to early Israeli government & leadership.
The kabbalah of the prophet הושע includes only one distant precedent: יד: ב – י. Yom Kippur applies equally to all generations; we all have worshipped our own versions of the golden calf. Mussar does not apply to the squeaky clean; it quickly falls away like water on the back of a duck.
The notion that our Era of Jewry makes no errors and mistakes, laughing absurd. Yet rabbinic Judaism makes criticism of the Reshonim a taboo subject?! Facts do not lie. The First and Second Republics fell into social anarchy Civil War Foreign intervention and g’lut. If we seek a blessing from HaShem, then we must turn within our hearts and strive to grow the seeds of תוכחה within our hearts. No one can do this vital avodat HaShem other than this generation of Israeli Jews.
Let the chips fall where they might. Later generations heartily invited to review and denounce the passions which arouse the Yatzir Ha’Rah of this generation of Israeli Jewry, and our struggles to establish the Torah as the Constitution of our Republic, based upon the Primary need to establish a Federal lateral Common Law Sanhedrin court system by which this Era of Jewry hopes to conduct intra-bnai brit diplomacy among ourselves aimed to building a strong alliance among the Jews of our civilization.
Employing a 2nd sh’itta of Mishnaic learning, shall compare this פרק using a different measurement system of middot, as mentioned above. This sh’itta too, only locates a slightly distant precedent. ז: יג – ח: יד.G’lut Jewry has appointed assimilated rabbis as their leaders. These rabbis kiss the Greek and Roman Gods. Such rabbis merit nothing other than curses from HaShem and Man. Fortified Cities and Great Cathedral Palace like synagogues do not plant the seeds of prophetic mussar into the hearts of children who grow up to despise religious Judaism in all its multi-colored Yosef jealousy coat.
Building a People alliance most essentially requires a shared bond that our people guard our backs like Levi guarded the Mishkan. Torah has nothing to do with ‘holier than thou’ arrogance. Guarding the backs of our People means that Jews of all stripes share an equal inheritance in the Torah faith.
Jews who ritually and religiously keep commandments and halachot do not enjoy a higher elevation than secular assimilated Jewry, myself being a classic example, whom my Jewish girlfriend @ Texas A&M wished me ‘Happy Hanukkah’! To which my response – ‘What’s That?’.
Development of awareness, a realization, that our destiny as an individual Jew, lies bound (like tefillen) to the blessing/curse decreed upon our generation and Era. Moshe the prophet could not enter the land, because his generation died in the Wilderness g’lut.
Attempted and failed to convince my rabbinic peers of the priority to establish the Small Sanhedrin city of refuge Federal courts of the Republic. Now alone, my final recourse, to pen the vision of lateral common law courtrooms in the hope that some Jews, far more talented than myself, will succeed where I have failed.
A slightly distant משנה תורה precedent טז: יח – כ. How does Levi guard the Mishkan other than instilling respect among the people, like a band’s #1 hit song on the charts, for Torah Constitutional common law courts. The reputation of a Good Name compares to a balloon. Once that balloon pops no one regards it anymore.
An exact precise precedent: כד: יד – טז. A huge yatzir, after a person reigns at the top of the heap, stepping on those underneath us in order to push them down. Guarding the backs of our people means giving them heart when others walk upon and over them.
A distant precedent: כט: א – ח. Moshe makes a summation of the experiences of the Wilderness generation which died, and the younger generation destined to conquer the homeland. The generation gap always a huge tumah Yatzir! The younger generation does not relate with the struggles experienced by the earlier generation. Hence the strong tendency of the latter to abandon the obligation to guard the backs of the weaker former generation in charge.
As an Israeli living in my homeland, very difficult for me to place g’lut Reshonim Torah scholarship on a perch. Nonetheless, Jews today stand upon the shoulders of giants, despite their body odor and farts. The תוכחה of מנשה to Rav Ashi :סנהדרין קב, his name contains the same exact letters as משנה.
The issue, the stakes of the wager, not that previous generations made tremendous mistakes – they did. Rather do the later generations behave like a dog which returns and eats its own vomit – ירידות הדורות/domino effect. My mother once described me: “He might be a son of a bitch, but he’s my son of a bitch!” At that moment, my mother, to whom I greatly despised, guarded my back.
A precise exact משנה תורה precedent: לג: א – ו. Moshe guarded the backs of Israel. Despite the tumah ערוה of ראובן, Moshe’s blessings set him first and aside from all his brethren.
The second sh’itta of comparing משנה תורה precedents by which to learn and interpret the k’vanna of the Written Torah, a distant precedent: ו: ו – ט — the opening סוגיה of the mitzva to accept the Yoke of Heaven, kre’a shma.
An exact precise משנה תורה precedent by this second sh’itta of learning: יג: ז – יב. Assimilated Jewish rabbis, whose Roman statute law avoda zarah has cause countless generations to turn off the משנה תורה common law path; a perversion which prioritized God theologies of monotheism as the religion of Judaism over the most essential priority: the establishment of righteous courts which boldly conduct diplomacy to maintain the delicate alliance among our People locked in crisis. Our most bitter disputes and conflicts, and damages inflicted among and by our own People.
A slightly distant precedent: טז: כא,כב. Avoda zarah involves much more that a טיפש פשט literal translation of idols. The first face of avoda zara: assimilation to Goyim cultures customs practices and manners. Another slightly distant משנה תורה precedent: יח: א,ב. The wisdom which discerns tohor middot from tumah middot defines the inheritance of the Heads of the Cohen nation. The mitzvah of tefillah most essentially involves the dedication of defined tohor middot. Defined tohor middot they take the vision of עולם הבא and dedicate how a man socially interacts with family and peers in future social interactions.
Refining, developing, maturing personal conduct behavior, especially around other Jews, most essentially involves guarding their backs. An exact precise משנה תורה precedent: יט: יד. Respect for the property rights of others. Another exact precise משנה תורה precedent: כג: י – יז. The Yatzir of ערות דבר applies equally to the sins of both the father and the son. The דיוק on that commandment that the domino effect of the sins of the father, does not inspire the son to duplicate. Like as did all the kings of Israel, who embraced the avoda zarah established by king Yarov’am. All the kings of Yechuda too kissed king Shlomo’s Temple golden calf!
Another precise exact precedent: כד: יט – כה: יב. Do not despise the people beneath you on the social ladder. Herein defines the k’vanna of giving tzedakah. The din which restricts the number of lashes. Attack and condemn the avodah zara of the Rambam’s Roman statute law avoda zara. But do not abuse this רשע unto total mutilation.
Born kin do not have to get along and see eye to eye. But nonetheless family hatred and contempt compare to
וחלצה את בית אחיו נעלו מעל רגלו וירקה בפניו וענה ככה יעשה לאיש
אשר לא יבנה אחיו
Herein concludes the common law learning on this פרק of Parshat במדבר. May the Yom Kippur fast cause our people to mature our emotional minds, controlled by our internal organs which produce the basic emotions which we all feel. The brain-stem converts simple commandments (משל)/elements into complex proteins/emotions. (נמשל) Mishna Torah common law.
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It’s 2022, my man. No one cares about the goatherders of thousands of years ago. Let it go. There is absolutely nothing of significance to come from those benighted, pre-scientific times. Repeat this, mosckeer: no one cares. It’s ancient, and it doesn’t matter anymore. Thank you, and have a wonderful secular evening with us here in the modern age.
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The idea of Justice, no European society ever achieved throughout human history including the modern era. The American legal system utterly corrupt.
Torah has nothing to do with history of way back when. This prejudiced notion otherwise blinds you to the Torah vision to establish just lateral common law courtrooms. Do you even know the difference between lateral vs. vertical courtrooms?
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The scientific method ie empirical evidence, limits reality to 3 physical dimensions. This places the scientific method on par with ancient Euclid’s 5th axiom of plain geometry! LOL
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No one cares to smell God farts. Attempts by pius idiots to tell people about the Gods! What a total waste of time!
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Now that’s funny, mosckerr- “pius idiots.” As in Pope Pius, I presume? What a great, cutting phrase for today’s believers of the Catholic Church! And the climate thanks you for cutting down your ripostes to a manageable paragraph – well done! Welcome to the 21st century, now go fly with us and leave the Torah alone!
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Poop Pius xii directly compares to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao – all mass murdering psychos.
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Sorry no can do. You remind me of the Roman who said the same thing to Rabbi Akiva, some 2000 years ago. LOL Personally have seen graffiti engraved on the stones at the 2nd Temple site which remain to this day.
About 2000 years ago a God nut wrote: “the Days of the Moshiach approach”. LOL This messiah bull shit stinks both then and today.
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Its a humorous story touching Rabbi Akiva, he gave a cutting response to that idiot Roman! A fox saw fish fleeing from the fisherman’s net, he said to the fishes come out of the water and save youselves from those nets! The fishes response: silly fool fox, your reputation as wise, clearly over rated! If we fear for our lives in our own natural environment, how much more so do we stand in peril hiding in a foreign alien environment!!!! Jewish culture and customs come directly from the Torah. Torah defines Jewish identity to this day. Assimilation to foreign cultures and customs most essentially defines the worship of other Gods.
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Great things came out of the enlightenment period. If only those messages kept being spread at the same rate.
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I guess the truly surprising thing is that the effects of the enlightment lasted as long as they did. These days it feels as if we’re headed into a repeat of the Dark Ages.
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Have you heard of the Antikythera mechanism? That was designed in the second century BC. Guess how many years after that people were claiming the earth was flat?!?
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There you go: patterns. There’s a reason clerics specialized in celestial motions and this dates back to the Babylonians (with star charts of some 5K bodies in motion).
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Yes!!!!! It’s one of the great wonders of the ancient world. I read up on it some time ago when I was trying to work out if primitive [sic] people could come up with a mechanical timepiece [not just a sundial].
If I had to guess I’d say 2.. 2.5 thousand years???
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Your comment regarding sundials, brings to mind an acquaintance who complained that the sundial he bought was faulty. No matter how carefully he followed the instructions to set it up, it was wrong the next time he looked at it. Turned out he’d bought it on line from somewhere like Amazon or ebay and they delivered a perfectly good working one…
…for the northern hemisphere!
He’d ordered it for the correct latitude (40°) but apparently there wasn’t an option for choosing which hemisphere. It never occurred to him nor the supplier that 3% of the world’s population live south of the Tropic of Capricorn.
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lmao – our toilets spiral the opposite way as well. 😀 But..only 3%? I thought there were more of us combined than that. No wonder we’re usually ignored.
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Yep 3%. About 9% of the human population live south of the equator, but most of them live north of the Tropic of Capricorn, so some Aussies are excluded from that 3%.
A bit of useless information (I have made a lifetime practice of collecting it): only 4 nations lie entirely south of the Tropic of Capricorn: Eswatini, Lesotho, Uruguay, and New Zealand.
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Those figures are mind boggling. Given that a good part of Africa lies below the equator, a goodly percent of that 9% must live there. That means South America, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua and most of the Pacific Island nations are very sparsely populated, at least in comparison to the northern hemisphere. As for the Tropic of Capricorn – congratulations! As a Victorian I believe I qualify too. 😉
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We’ve got China and India which go a long way!
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Mmm…I forgot about those two mega nations. Still, doesn’t it seem odd that most of the humans on the planet huddle up there, north of the equator? It’s much nicer down here. 😀
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Barry did say the very few countries entirely south of the Tropic of Capricorn, so the comparison would be with countries entirely north of the Tropic of Cancer, which are many and account for a significantly higher percentage of population. But then… that’s where there’s land!
Land masses mostly above the equator give the appearance that the global distribution appears to be lopsided with most of the it north of the equator. But this is not a coincidence. The majority of land is perpendicular to the axis of rotation while Antarctica lies along the axis. (For the land in between, I’m pretty sure this might be why the world’s weirdest creatures end up there… going against the flow, so to speak. The people? Well, let’s just say they’re rather an unusual batch. Look at what they did to the English language!)
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The crowded nature probably also contributes to our propensity to war.
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I can’t speak for the South Africans and Aussies, but I reckon we Kiwis have improved the English language significantly – perfected it even 🙂
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LOL!
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You’ve added fush ‘n chups to the vernacular, but I’d say both our countries are still trying to convince the rest of the world about our value. 😉
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And don’t forget that one of our favourite pastimes is six 🙂
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Silly me! -cough- Yes, six is very popular over here as well. 😉
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Fair dinkum.
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Oi! lmao We’re unusual and proud of it. 😉
Re the landmasses though, not sure I understand the axis of rotation bit. Are you saying that rotation pushed/pulled those landmasses north? Apologies. Geography was my worst subject. 😦
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I think he’s saying the criminality kept your toilets going in an odd direction. Apparently Scott Morrison’s toilet is like a reverse tornado as it sucks away any sense of morality and decency from an entire continent 🙂
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-giggles- Oh well said! But not from the /whole/ continent. We have a federal election coming up in May and I’m praying that those he hoodwinked the last time have finally seen through his ‘daggy Dad’ personna. He’s a menace.
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Acflory, the land mass is (almost entirely) spread out but mostly perpendicular to the axis of the planet’s rotation rather than perpendicular to the sun. We are so used to thinking of this planetary ball as ‘centered’ where the day equals night that we forget that relative to that line (the equator) we divide the planet into ‘north’ and ‘south’ of it. This is useful but arbitrary. This gives the appearance that the majority of the land is ‘north’ of that line… and it is. But, in fact, the center line should be relative to the spin of the planet – the ‘axis of rotation’ – in which case the center line should be ~30 degrees north latitude, which (if my rough math is correct), is about perpendicular to the wobbly axis. Does that help at all?
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This picture should help
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-frowns- I see what you mean about the earth’s axis, and the equator. I guess this is just one more example of the ignorance that saw everything from the perspective of human beings – flat earth, sun circles the planet etc.
I must admit though, it’s hard to get my head around the idea. Highlights just how arbitrary much of our perception of the world really is. Ok, that was stupid. Of course it’s arbitrary… 😦
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Well, the criteria may be arbitrary (in this case the angle of the sun), but any and all measurement is relative to that selection which allows us to accurately compare and contrast. So because the angle of the sun is of such importance to us wee little beasties and has such a dramatic affect on how we manage, it’s a pretty good ‘arbitrary’ selection. Very useful.
But it’s also an essential aspect of understanding not just climate and weather but how the planet itself – independent of people – works by energy exchange. That can be extrapolated to other planets, and so on. Thought of this way, the criteria people use for this stable positioning of sunlight on the planet is actually not really humancentric but a fruitful insight into how reality operates.
So the key observation about more land north than south and asking, “Why?” is not just the right question to gain insight but a means to see something from a different perspective (the tilt of the planet’s axis) and then enjoy the ‘Oh!” moment when a new understanding is gained. I think that’s cool.
Like a spinning top that is wet, it’s interesting to see the water fling away perpendicular to the axis of rotation and gain an understanding of what we call centrifugal force looks like. The world’s landmass is really no different in undergoing the same effect and lining up by centrifugal force around the perpendicular axis. Keep the spin the same, but tilt the top (and pretend there’s no gravity forcing it perpendicular to the world!) and imagine that is the earth spinning through space. We would expect to find the the land perpendicular to this axis and, lo and behold, that’s what we find. Throw in some plate tectonics also trying to align, and, lo and behold, we get a good grasp of how the various plates generally move.
All that (and so much more) by observing something, being puzzled, and then asking a question. It’s great.
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-grin- I definitely experienced that “Oh!” moment. And yes, it is very cool. Makes the brain feel as if it’s suddenly expanding. I did not expect to experience such a moment during a discussion about religion!
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Life is easier where we’ve “domesticated” the planet. I don’t know about Australia but I’ve always had the impression in South America and Africa that nature is always trying to invade and take over. A constant battle with the elements.
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Most of Australia is like that too. Our cities are tamed, but even there, floods and bushfires can sweep in and destroy what we’ve built. The irony is that the very domestication of the planet is going to end up killing us if we can’t curb our greed. In the last two years we’ve had an inferno of fire that raged across three states on the east coast, and just recently we’ve had devastating floods in much the same areas. A few decades back, these events would have been called 1:100 year events. These days they’re happening at ridiculously short intervals. The planet is flexing its muscles and we’re learning, slowly, that all our tech is powerless in the face of such might.
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Your people seem very untamed to me!
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Why thank you. 😀
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p.s. our arrogance is at least partly due to a conditioned belief that man is connected to the ‘divine’ and so has a right to despoil the planet. Organised religion again.
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Adding to tildeb’s contribution, approximately 33% of the Earth’s land is south of the equator, and that includes Antarctica – not really conducive to high density living (unless you’re a penguin). And according to Wikipedia, 95% of the world’s population is concentrated on just 10% of the world’s land. Although it doesn’t say so, most of that 10% must lie in the northern hemisphere.
Knowing that 9% of the world’s population lives on 33% of the world’s land, it’s quite obvious that the northern hemisphere is much more densely populated than the southern hemisphere.
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You’re both right in what you say, but it’s not something I’ve ever consciously thought about before so…it’s kind of a shock.
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The 3% toilet issue?
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Erm…yes. ^.0
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Only 3% of your toilets spiral the wrong way? 😀
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No,. All our toilets spiral the correct way. 97% of the world’s toilets spiral the wrong way 😁
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I’m not sure that’s how one should read statistics!
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Being in the majority doesn’t make one right. It just means you in the majority.
Besides, being upside down we have a different perspective 😁
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Tsk, tsk, Pinky. You’re not being biased are you? -winks and runs away-
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-cough- No! All our toilets do. :p
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To answer the question you pose in the title of this post, I say it’s not religions that distrust each other but human beings exercising what seems to be a common human trait – distrusting those who are in some way different from themselves. Every minority that has ever existed has been only too well of that fact. Religion is but one example. Race is another, as are cultural differences. So too are minority expressions of sexuality, of gender, and of neurology. All of these differences have been restricted/banned/criminalised at various times. Some of these differences have been considered so different that they’ve been categorised as disorders. In my lifetime expression of anything other than being straight and cis were both illegal and considered a medical disorder. Being neurodivergent is still considered a medical disorder and being somewhat less human. Perhaps in the early stages of human evolution, being suspicious of those who were different might have been a survival advantage, but now it does more harm than good.
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There’s a compounding problem in America which is that there’s an actual industrial religious complex which exploits wedge issues for profit.
Where they can fabricate discord and fear, they can fundraise.
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Reluctantly, I think I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Discord makes money for a few, fear for the ill informed and exasperation for the informed.
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Religion’s purpose as social glue metastasized into a whimsical, ever malleable power grab as those controlling the reins grew comfortable in their station. It continues to this day. Religion is a societal cancer.
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Well, I think organized religion is cancerous… sometimes benign, sometimes malignant, sometimes toxic…. and not just to the host. But religious belief itself can also be not only a source of life affirming myth but an ordered and principled companion. Sometimes its effects are like the very best fiction that moves us in various ways to be better versions of ourselves even though we are perfectly aware of suspending our disbelief to enter the narrative and extract the good bits. The same problems then arise when some try to insist it’s the religious fiction is true, factual, historical, and a blueprint on how everyone should live in the name of god-sanctioned virtue… especially when the organs of state are then used to impose elements of this fiction on everyone as if it were The One True Virtuous Belief. That’s when you know it’s metastasized into the worst kind of malignancy. And that’s what the majority of Supreme Court is doing: imposing their belief on the precedented law of the land because they know better.
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Well said.
It’s rather too bad the spiritual aspect of religion, largely its original purpose, is now lost entirely in the factional segregation it now represents. There’s too much money on the line these days.
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Was spirituality its original purpose?
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As in animating spirit/breath, I suspect, of all things in motion… so it MUST have some kind agency.
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I’ve always suspected it was a con from the beginning. Spirituality, like Hygge, is just a means to selling candles.
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Motion caused by agency – whether we can sense it or not – is pretty well the standard explanation for millennia around the world. Because agency implies motive, we get people trying to understand the world through our own motives and so the gods and hidden agencies we don’t understand take on human attributes and characteristics.
We are very good at finding and identifying and labelling patterns and so we can create entire pantheons of such ‘spirits’ in a world filled with motions while attributing our own feelings – also hidden… perhaps in the spleen or heart or gut – as the ‘spiritual’ conduit. By assigning images as if terms – each of which is like a box of attributes and motives – we can use images that represent this box inside narratives to describe larger patterns. I’m thinking of how myths to describe pretty important stuff in life, stuff that helps teach generations of people how to find great meaning doing mundane stuff, are a universal language and I think this imagery to describe agencies of ‘spirit’ screwing with us in life aligns very well with the imagery we experience during sleep. So I suspect imagery, meaning, spirits of motive and agency, all lead us to what we call ‘religion’ in the sense of being a small part of something much larger and with only so much influence. The various ‘religions’ have particular imagery with particular meaning we take on board because our biology comes equipped to speak this natural language. Hence, each kind of religious belief is very much geographical, but the notion of possible hidden agencies global. I think this is just as tapped by the entertainment industry (everything from superheroes, swords and sorcery, to vampires and muggles) as it is by the clerics. And I think we find all this stuff somewhat appealing because it fits so easily with our ‘natural’ language that assumes motion means agency.
It’s really quite remarkable given this head start in our biology that more of us aren’t completely drawn in to the hidden agency and the motivated oogity boogity model. Even Plato tried to convince everyone that whatever was real was just the shadow and it was the philosopher’s job (not the clerics) to describe the metaphysical forms that were real. (That’s what the western Churches took on board wholesale and still use this model to defend its metaphysics and oogity boogity as if real and reality the testing ground for the real afterlife! Too bad we know language – including imagery – follows reality (or it would be gibberish) and not the other way around as the agency advocates – religious or philosophical or political – would have us believe organizes and manipulates the reality we inhabit.
I don’t think spirituality is going anywhere any time soon. It’s too appealing to – and stimulating of – our ganglia.
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My Dad thought religion was the opiate of the masses. I tend more towards your description. The pre-frontal cortex that controls logic and reason is kind of new in our biological development. So yes, we see patterns in clouds and create gods and demons in our own image.
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Marx – a well know anti-semite and unquestionable racist (why hasn’t he, the father of wokism, been cancelled yet, I wonder?) – was describing the social (group-based) role of organized religion in industrial societies:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”
This sentence precedes the ‘opiate of the masses’ quote, not because religious belief addles the brain like an opiate but because it is used to alleviate terrible conditions in the here and now (with magical thinking).
So my comment was aimed at the biological roots for the religious impulse – to assign causal agency to the ‘breath of life’ (spiritus) we assume causes motion. It’s as ancient as we are but, like many ‘natural’ impulses we have, needs reason and respect for what’s true and knowable to corral.
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Oh. My. God. I cannot thank you enough. I always thought my Dad made up that saying. And yes, he used it in the way you describe – to alleviate terrible conditions in the /now/. We disagreed on that point, which is perhaps why I remember it. At 16, I believed that everyone would be better off if only they forgot about religion and used their heads.
Ahem.
I had no idea Dad was quoting Marx because Dad was as anti communist as you could get. He fought in the 1956 Hungarian revolution against the communist regime, and when it failed, he had to get out or face Siberia, or worse. Taking us with him was a last minute decision by my mother.
You have literally illuminated a piece of my past. Thank you. 🙂
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I think you and I were fortunate to hear from those who were able to get out of the iron curtain countries. (I travelled inside the old Soviet Union and was in Prague when the Russians occupied it so I know what a thousand tanks looks, sounds, and smells like.) Some of the most earnest voices warning against the political extremes unfolding throughout the self-immolating West today busy attacking our liberal foundations to the cheering of the ‘virtuous’ are from those who have also experienced what groupthink looks, sounds, and smells like. I wish more of us would listen.
I spent time on a huge Australian sheep farm and was in awe of how the dogs would run around the edges of the selected group of sheep very low to the ground, busy nipping and angling those sheep closest to the edge back into the obedient herd and how quickly the rest of the sheep would flow in the way least directed by the dogs. (I was also impressed how the farmers could whistle… something I’ve never been able to do well.) I can’t help but feel we in the West are experiencing exactly this by the ideologues from the political extremes biting and tearing at those few people who try to stand against the manipulation while the rest of us close our mouths, see nothing, and move away from those who would tear a chunk out of us for daring to disagree with the ideology.
In this sense, belief Marx’s dogged groupthink of Us and Them and acting accordingly as if true is just another kind of religious belief so effective against the independence of the sheep (only flocks are real, I guess). Replace the SCOTUS leak overturning abortion rights with identical reasoning for, say, voting rights, and one should be able to grasp the scope of the judicial betrayal.
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How about whistleblowing? What if it turns out the conservatives were testing the waters with the leak?
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There’s a reason for the repeated leaks and we know it’s coming from the Republican side of the appointees. As to the ‘why’ I can only guess.
But it’s ironic that the same court that overturned a buffer zone around abortion clinics in the name of not disrupting the public’s right to demonstrate puts a non-scalable fence and cement dividers around the Supreme Court to keep those pesky demonstrators far away. I guess there’s a right kind and wrong kind of demonstrator when it comes to this issue and the Supreme Court knows the difference. Maybe that’s why it’s losing the public’s trust and has support and confidence of only a minority of the public. That’s not good.
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I’ve read some interesting theories. I suppose now we have to wait to connect the dots. Roberts would just have to convince a single one of the conservatives to change sides if he can come up with a better option.
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I was only three and a bit when my parents escaped from Hungary, so I didn’t experience the reality of the communist regime until I returned to Hungary as a young adult. The fear of the blue-coated Avos was palpable, and despite having an Australian passport, I quickly learned to surreptitiously cross the street, duck into a shop, head in a different direction when I saw those blue coats heading towards me.
Culturally, the Hungary of 1973-74 was the worst of both the capitalist and communist regimes. People had so little, they would do just about anything to get /something/. I was told of young girls selling themselves to foreigners for a pair of pantyhose. Everyone had somewhere to live and a job so no-one starved, but very few were ‘happy’.
I believed then, and still believe now, that Marx had no idea what human beings were actually like. We are capable of being socially responsible, but we’re also capable of extreme greed and selfishness.
For me, the bottomline is that any political system that ignores the reality of human nature and takes ideology to an extreme, will eventually fail. And that includes the soulless version of neo-liberal capitalism rife in most of the Western world.
Totally agree about these ideologies being akin to a religion. And yes, the implications of overturning Roe v Wade are absolutely chilling. How on earth can something like this happen in a country that values individual freedoms above all else?
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In our case, it was the dark coat thugs that always traveled in pairs following us all the time in Russia and Poland and East Germany. And we were always asked by every young person we met about trading for 1) blue jeans, and 2) toilet paper. The essentials, I guess.
You ask, “How on earth can something like this happen in a country that values individual freedoms above all else?”
And the answer I think is one step at a time replacing (or forgetting) principle with some version of ‘virtue’… whether religious or ideological… where some pigs are more equal than other pigs.
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-shiver- Your thugs sound even more sinister than mine. If they were KGB or is it GRU? for the internals? Either way, their reputation is grim.
By the time I visited Hungary, the regime had loosened up just enough to give the populous something to lose should they rise up again. Sounds as if the Russians were even worse off than the Hungarians.
-sigh- Yes, I guess some pigs are more equal than others. We have pigs here in Australia too.
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The Great Spirit? Why the sun rises? Why the wind blows? Why the rain falls? Spiritualism morphed into Gods because, of course there were entities like us wielding their powers, right? And then it all went downhill from there.
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Or, did we just want to find a way to control the rest of the group?
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The shaman was the powerful one. I’ve often wondered about the first imagineer who dreamed up a god. Who thought “Zeus”? Or Gaea? Or Chronos or Chaos? What was the purpose? Did they take than and make story around a campfire? And it just evolved? And if you could control the narrative… Well… You could control your tribe, your village, your city.
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I’m convinced that they were/are narratives that have evolved over generations and it’s unlikely to have been the invention of one person. Stories are passed down from generation, and kids being kids, will ask questions the narrator hadn’t thought about so adds enough information created from his own imagination or experience to satisfy the listener. That gets incorporated into the story telling of the next generation. Of course there’s always the possibility that that a narrator may deliberately modify a story for their own ends, but how often, I wouldn’t like to speculate.
When I was a child, my mother would read us stories but my father would tell us stories. I had no idea where they came from but on one occasion when my grandfather stayed, he told us a story that was similar but not identical to one my father told. A younger brother constantly interrupted Granddad to “correct” him.
I told those stories I learnt from my father to my children and my daughter has carried on the tradition with her children. Recently one of the my grandchildren decided to tell me a story he assumed I wouldn’t know. I did of course, but I was quite surprised how different it was. Most minor players had been given names instead of being known by their role, some events were in a different order, and the protagonist was a different gender. However the “moral of the story” remained the same as when I first heard it but slightly different from how my grandfather told it.
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Cool!
I wholeheartedly agree with the evolution of mystic and religious narrative. But ‘somebody’ has to start, right? It /probably/ wasn’t a committee who said, we’re going to call the god of drinking and partying, Dionysus. It was some dude, I suspect. And of course, some Roman thief rejected that name and picked Bacchus instead. Did Odysseys even exist before Homer? (If Homer was even real?)
Wouldn’t it be a cruel joke to learn that all of today’s religions were the byproduct of some archaic game of telephone.
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How dare you question Homer!!! The Simpsons were part of my formative years.
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He arrived well after my formative years – unless one cares to define one’s early 40s as formative years – so homer’s influence on me has been negligible 🙂
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“Wouldn’t it be a cruel joke to learn that all of today’s religions were the byproduct of some archaic game of telephone.” Well, isn’t that what it is – an intergenerational game of Telephone? However I don’t see that as a cruel joke. I acknowledge that is exactly what my religion is. The narrative changes from generation, and so our religious texts are revised every 1o to 15 years to accommodate changes in belief.
But stories can remain unaltered and yet the narrative can change. The US constitution is a good example. Fifty years ago SCOTUS interpreted the constitution in a way that opened the way to the autonomy of women’s bodies, and now it appears that the very same institution is about to reverse that decision. Same words, different interpretation. How much more common would that happen when the “law” was not in written form?
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Spirituality and pragmatism. If the Shaman is a clever person he/she could figure out the patterns and start to predict events. But who’s going to listen to a nerd? A nerd connected to the all powerful Sun, or Lightning, or Fire etc etc, is a different matter, especially when they’re proved to be right. Listening to the Shaman then becomes a survival mechanism.
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“The need to involve the law in matters of faith can only be evidence that either Christians don’t trust themselves or they do not trust each other. ” BAM.
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It’s nearly pathological, isn’t it?
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Yup.
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Pingback: Christianity and the Strong Arm of the Law: Do the religious not trust themselves? – Nelsapy
And now we have a bunch of ‘victimized’ Republicans in positions of public authority in the US wanting a federal ban on all reproductive healthcare for women and punishments for companies that support out of state access to it if everyone and everything doesn’t go along in all ways with forced birth.
I know some people will go along with the language of ‘pro life’ to describe a contrary position to allowing legal abortion (for whatever reasons) but in truth these laws are aimed at forcing pregnant WOMEN (not this generic ‘person bullshit) to complete a pregnancy. End of story. That IS forced birth. So I think people should challenge the bullshit language when someone tries to use it regardless of political leanings. If we can’t at least respect what’s true, at least we can respect what words really mean. That’s the first battle.
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And so we can see the life of the pregnant woman doesn’t matter a rat’s ass to ‘pro life’ supporters. That’s why they are forced birthers all gussied up to look caring and concerned when they are not.
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Absolutely agree, pro-life is a ridiculous term that should be scrapped. As bad as pro-family when they actually mean homophobic.
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I used to write opinion letters to the local newspaper back in the late 80s, early 90s for carrying a “Focus on the Family” weekly piece without balancing this evangelical homophobic screed with something a little more liberal and enlightened. I have to say, I always got published, as if what I said was actually controversial! Even then, criticisms aimed at my commentary were always about my tone! (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose)
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Clearly to me an abortion destroys a life. Yet according to Christ we’re all guilty of “murdering” others by words and thoughts and actions. So yeah, in general life is a personal choice made free from religion and politics.
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Interesting position. I think it’s also good to remember that an astounding 50% of fertilised eggs end up being naturally aborted/miscarried by the body. That makes it a much more “normal” thing than we imagine. I like your use of murdering in reference to words and thoughts.
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According to the Bible Jesus wasn’t a social reformer- it took a cross to solve the problem of sin and death. Hard pill to swallow. We choose life amidst what unfolds; I had a near-death and chose Christ a few days later.
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I hope you don’t mind if I ask a delicate question, but the way you phrased that makes it sound like you chose Christianity out of fear?
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I think fear was involved, yes. I was indoctrinated from infancy so knew what I was doing; wasn’t an emotional decision.
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Do you think those are good reasons? I was born in a profoundly Catholic world but decided fairly early on I wasn’t buying into the stories.
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Look, most of us agree there’s nothing reasonable about Christianity and I’m not buying into it either. I’m in with Christ alone- I live in the moment based on his life in me. Then and only then can I relationship with others.
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I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or serious 😊 If you’re serious, then how do you choose which parts to follow?
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I’m serious. For me it began with the many parts of Christianity’s creeds etc, and is now narrowing down to only Christ. Takes time and patience.
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Does that mean you believe the bible stories entirely, selectively or just in the idea of a Christ-like figure as god?
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Yeah-right! Therefore personal relationship with Christ. “He that has seen me has seen the Father.”
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I don’t remember how I responded to this in 2014, but I wrote an entry on religious insecurity and ethics this morning. I hope you’re feeling well, which sort of implies not looking too closely at the nauseating state of American politics.
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The 7th פרק of Parshat אמור holds two סוגיות. This פרק, כג: כג – כה; and כג: כו – לב.
The opening סוגיה addresses the Yom Tov Rosh HaShanna. Only Israel accepted the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai because what do Goyim care concerning justice? Avodah zarah belief systems universally tends to prioritize theologies by which societies demand their peoples’ uniformly believe and obey the established Creeds. Israel came out of the oppressive slavery of Egypt, the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai, the top priority of that Devine revelation לשמה: justice. Hence the dread and fear of Israel, that at any moment the entire nation would die. The 9th of Av learns directly to Yom Kippur, there too the entire generation thought that they would die.
King Shlomo’s rebellion wherein he prioritized building a grand Cathedral. Shlomo clearly assimilated to alien and totally foreign cultures and customs, practiced by nations and societies which rejected the revelation of the Sinai oath brit. The 10 Tribes would continue down the path trod by Shlomo, they simply changed the Chag season from the 7th to the 8th month. Justice during the reign of Shlomo and all the kings of Israel shared no common ground with Moshe, who established 3 small Sanhedrin Courts in the g’lut Cities of Refuge before he passed.
European avodah zarah, its universal religious theologies, they emphasize the original sin of mankind, and consequent need for an imaginary mythical messiah to remove the stain of original sin, from the Soul of mankind, confronted by eternal death. The Yom Tov of Rosh HaShanah judges the commitment of post Shevuot bnai brit Israel, the chosen Cohen nation who alone accepted the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev; to sanctify the most holy pursuit, the justice walk before HaShem, לשמה. The difficulty/answer style of the Talmud reflects the prosecutor/defense function of any lateral common law Torah mandated courtrooms. The pursuit of tohor righteous justice, aimed at fair compensation for damages, shares no common ground with tumah theological belief in any God or Gods.
Belief in theological creed-God constructs, directly compares to the corruption of judges through bribery – a Torah abomination. Torah blessings do not hinge upon the theology of what a person believes. In point of fact, theological belief systems encapsulate a Torah curse. The month of Elul, made famous by Chassidic mystics, who refer to this period event as: “the king in the field”. The assimilated Yom Kippur machzor includes repeated personal confessions of sins. Congregations say Selichot throughout Elul and the 10 days. Over and again pleading the 13 middot before a Sefer Torah.
Yet assimilated rabbis virtually never address the failure of g’lut Jews, the insufficiency of our Will to pursue judicial justice, as the top priority of our lives. As the essence of what defines us as the chosen Cohen people, who accept the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev לשמה. Israel cannot accomplish t’shuvah without mussar. Mussar sets the vision of all generations of our peoples’ walk before HaShem. This mussar, singular rather than plural, defines the k’vanna of all T’NaCH prophetic literature.
All generations struggle with metastatic passion, cancer insanity, to pursue and perform the impassioned Will of the tumah, within all of us, our Yatzir Ha’Rah. Generations of assimilated ירידות הדורות rabbis never caught, much less addressed, the domino effect of king Shlomo’s avodah zarah curse: its affect upon the ensuing later generations of both Israel and Esau. This avodah zarah very much compares to the huge national debt of the US Federal government; whose government leaders take pride in how they lie to their people without feeling the least shame. Something like the fact that FDR concealed being a cripple or Lincoln a practicing homosexual.
Lincoln transformed the experiment of a “loose” US Republic of States, into a Centrally controlled “democracy”, and affixed as essential the pursuit of foreign imperialist interventions and empire. Whereas FDR transformed a relatively small Federal government into the Big Brother Socialist bureaucratic, Corporate lobby controlled monster monopoly, Government within the government, that defines modern Washington DC politics. King’s Shlomo’s construction of a grand Cathedral accomplished much the same effect.
The brit faith turned away from pursuit of judicial lateral Sanhedrin common law justice, in-favor of the vain frivolity of sacrificing barbeques to heaven. Wasting the National treasury to build a Cathedral pyramid that worships the dead. King Shlomo prioritized avodah zarah practices as his new chief mode of faith, within the walls of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah; which barbaric churches across the countries of Europe and Russia, would later so completely emulate. Herein explains: יהיה לכם שבתון זכרון תרועה מקרא קדש
Let’s Learn.
An exact precise precedent: משנה תורה ה: ו – י. The opening first two commandments: לשמה which stands upon the justice delivered to Par’o and Egypt. What avodah zarah does the 2nd commandment imply? Answer: Any other strategic or tactical interest other than to do justice לשמה. Another exact precise precedent: יא: כו – כח. Blessing or curse. Either we pursue justice or run upon the highways of g’lut. King Shlomo inherited tremendous wealth, power, and prestige. Yet none of these pursuits of the Yatzir Ha’Rah achieved stability, nor prevented the fall of the kingdom into chaos, anarchy, and Civil War.
A distant precedent: טו: א – ו. The 7th year shemitah release, the test which testifies to the oath brit נעשה ונשמע dedication. When justice defines the essential nation within the borders of our land, then the Goyim cannot forge any weapon that prevails or can subjugate the Cohen nation into g’lut slaves ever again.
A precise exact precedent: יז: ב – ז. Competing strategic or tactical interests defines the behavior of the רשע who seeks to entice or seduce our people to pursue Gods other than justice among our people. King Shlomo serves as the Prime Example of tumah; his avodah zarah corrupted all generations thereafter to fall into the slimy pit of ירידות הדורות. The Cohen nation altogether ceased thereafter to ובערת הרע מקרבך.
A slightly distant precedent: יח: ו – ח. The chief role and purpose of the dedication of the Tribe of Levi to the sh’ittot of common law precedent learning aimed to make fair judicial rulings. King Shlomo trivialized the schools of the prophets, located within the 42 Levitical cities, to a glorified choir within the walls of Jerusalem.
A distant precedent: כ: י – כ. The subject of this סוגיה the establishment of additional Cities of Refuge/small Sanhedrin courts. All the survivors of a captured foreign Capital City outside of the borders of Israel, all must stand before a Small Sanhedrin Capital Crimes Courtroom. Only small Sanhedrin courts can rule upon Capital Crimes cases, outside the borders of the Cohen Republic of Tribes. In this particular case, because women and children do not generally fight wars alongside male warriors, only the Goyim warriors – condemned to death.
Wars fought to conquer the homeland, absolutely no mercy show to these Goyim, lest they seduce the tumah Yatzir Ha’rah within each of us. A slightly distant precedent: כג: ב, ג. The Torah rejects the Turkish custom of eunuch slaves on par with the abomination: validating social status of children born from criminal adultery.
Another slightly distant precedent: כג: כב – כד. Such tumah people directly compare to making a false vow in the Name of HaShem. The Torah commands a distance from such disgraced people lest we too become a disgraced people and abandon the yoke of the kingdom of heaven: to forever and always pursue justice within the borders of our homeland.
A precise exact precedent: לג: כב – כט. This closing סוגיה of blessings, Moshe addresses the tribes who pronounce the eleven curses, unto which all generations thereafter have the opportunity to publicly answer אמן to each of these 11 curses prior to Yom HaDin upon the Brit. What switches a blessing to a curse or a curse to a blessing? The priority we place toward justice, contrasted by all other strategic and tactical interests. Yom Tov Rosh Hashanah, if we prioritize justice above all and anything else, blessing. If we prioritize other interests above justice, curse. Yom Kippur seals this Divine decree, as measured through the din decreed upon our generation.
The kabbalah of יחזקאל ג: כב – כד, teaches an exact precise precedent. Justice: the Glory and Honor of HaShem. A slightly distant precedent: טו: א – ח. The comparison of Jerusalem to a wild grape vines which grow on trees. Of what value does the metaphor of vines have, when compared to great Goyim trees? When the fruit of the grape vine produces only bitter oppression and injustice, just as do the great Goyim trees. Better to sanctify shabbat over a glass of beer!
The second סוגיה of אמור now addresses Yom Kippur: כל מלאכה לא תעשו, just like the commandment regarding shabbat. As shabbat stands separate and apart from chol so too justice rejects the cruel slavery imposed by Par’o. The decision to withhold straw from Israel, yet enforce the quota of bricks previously produced, when Par’o supplied the necessary straw, this oppression required Egyptians to work, to enforce that evil decree.
Let’s Learn:
A slightly distant precedent: ג: כג – כט. The tefillah of Moshe pleading for מחילה to cross over and enter the land sworn unto the offspring of the Avot. The Yom Kippur dav’vening bases itself upon this model. Had Moshe crossed over, would it have made any difference? Would it have somehow changed the Yatzir Ha’Rah of our people, something Moshe could not change in the past 40 years?
A distant precedent: ה: יא – טו. Swearing an oath compares to not doing melacha on shabbat. An exact precise precedent: יד: א – י. The chosen Cohen nation set totally apart from the Goyim. Hence the customs, manners, and ways practiced by the Goyim – the Torah commands a negative commandment not to duplicate their cultures or customs. Adjacent to this specific negative commandment: the general rules which define kashrut.
A distant precedent: טז: א – ח. The korban Pesach, the Goyim – like their dogs who did not bark when Israel left Egypt, the Egyptians did not attack Israel when Pesach night, Israel denigrated ‘Amun and Khnum’, the Egyptian rams-head Gods. Once more the סוגיה concludes with the commandment: לא תעשה מלאכה. Which as previously suggested commands a negative commandment not to oppress our people through injustice like as did Par’o who worshiped ram heads.
An exact precise precedent: יז: ח – יג. The place where HaShem chooses as the Capital of the Name of HaShem; there too sits the Great Sanhedrin lateral common law Court. The Court instructs mussar through the medium of common law. Hence the Talmud duplicates this work through the warp weft relationship between Halakhah and Aggadah, as explained through the kabbalah of פרדס.
Rabbi Akiva, דרוש ופשט learns T’NaCH mussar affixed to Aggadah. And רמז וסוד affixed to Halakhah ritual observances, as the definition of the revelation of the 13 tohor middot Oral Torah revelation of logic . Torah and Talmudic common law stand totally separate and apart from Roman statute law. Comparable to, so to speak, HaShem remembers and despises ‘Amun and Khnum’ on the night of Chag Pesach. The avodah zarah worship of other Gods most essentially prioritizes anything else above the holy dedication to rule the oath sworn lands with justice. The sanctification of justice as most holy to HaShem לשמה defines the whole of the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev.
A distant precedent: יט: א – י. Establishment of the Federal small Sanhedrin courts in the cities of refuge. If Israel makes foreign wars abroad. The first commandment after conquering the Capital of an uprooted and totally defeated nation, to establish another city of refuge, Small Sanhedrin Federal Court. ולא ישפך דם נקי בקרב ארצך. Only Sanhedrin courts have a Torah mandate to judge Capital Crimes cases. On par with the House of Aaron, who has a Torah mandate to dedicate korbanot to HaShem, wherever the Great Sanhedrin justices rule and preside.
Another distant precedent: כו: יב – יט. Giving the tithe to Levi and tithe to the poor, a person declares the confession of fidelity, the priority to walk with justice before HaShem. This confession of fidelity, made on the first fruits, dedicated on Chag Sukkot.
An exact precise precedent of the k’vanna of the Yom Kippur da’avening, כז: ט – כו. The Torah curses which all generations have the merit to answer together with the בעל קורא reader of the Torah on Shabbat, and answer אמן after each of the 11 curses. Acceptance of responsibility for the 11 curses goes hand in glove with the blessing of justice. The acceptance of the 11 curses learns from the precedent of Moshe da’avening to enter the land, the יסוד of the k’vanna of the Yom Kippur tefillot: it judges our relationship together with our generation.
The kabbalah of the prophet יחזקאל, a slightly distant precedent: טז: נא – סג. The kingdom of Yechudah bears greater disgrace than the kingdom of Israel. Religion accomplishes about as much as tits on a boar hog. Religion does not cause a man to feel remorse, shame, or disgrace. Avodah Zarah preaches that the God(s) forgive humiliation, sin and abominations! Goyim who deny the Shoah, they have no shame. They say that their God(s) have made atonement for their disgrace, as if they stand alone and not together with their evil generation(s).
Another slightly distant precedent: כא: יג – כח. Yom Kippur judges the individual in the midst of his generation. The individual follows together with the din decreed upon that generation. The Nazis together with Stalin culminated the generations of the criminal church in Europe and Russia. The same din equally applies to Mao Zedong’s terrible genocide within China or Pol Pot within Cambodia.
A slightly distant precedent: כג: מו – כד: ה. The משל to lewd loose prostitute women whose larger society accepts them, like as does barbaric Europe today. The vision of utter complete and total contempt for that vile worthless generation. Another slightly distant precedent: כה: א – ה. The Goyim who rejoice over the Shoah. They together with their generations shall die reviled.
A slightly distant precedent: כו: א – ו. This precedent too concerns the Yom Tov judgment of Yom Kippur, it seals the generation in judgment for the coming year. Another slightly distant precedent: כח: ו – יט. The wisdom of no single individual surpasses the din decreed upon his generation. A strong mussar learned from Moshe who died in g’lut together with his generation. The brightness and glory of an individual stands בטל\cast off/null and void, when measured against the backdrop of his generation.
An exact precise kabbalah precedent: לב: א – י. An identical mussar rebuke given unto Par’o. The mussar which the prophets command: seek and pursue justice for the profit of the folk of your generation. If a lone crocodile spoils and muddies the waters of his generation and exalts himself in his pride, such fool(s), always judged – part and parcel together with their generation. Herein divines the k’vanna of Chag Yom Kippur.
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