xkatz
Well-Known Member
Religion is (and should be) more than a popularity contest, ya know.
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Judaism, Christianity, and the Jewish Faith
- Thread starter ZenMonkey
- Start date
Why have the Jews prospered in every country except their own homeland Israel? They are constantly at war and forced to steal from their neighbours land to build more settlements when they can easily afford to buy land elsewhere and relocate. Did they not get the hint when their temple was destroyed in 70AD, not to come back.
Sleeppy
Fatalist. Christian. Pacifist.
I accept scripture, when it makes itself evident. But neither do I believe everything written in the New Testament.
It is crazy. If you can't observe God's acceptance of an act, but instead rely only on something written by men thousands of years ago-- it makes things crazy.
I really don't have any disrespect for you, or anyone else. It may seem like I'm being harsh or condescending, but i'm not intending to harm you in any way. I like to debate, mostly to better understand the strength of my own position. I like Judaism-- and I do believe many of Judaism's laws are from God-- but when we aren't actually identifying purposes and benefits, I have a problem. When billions of people are expecting a person, whether it be a Messiah who hasn't arrived yet, or Jesus' second coming, or Muhammed-- so that one person can right the wrongs of the world, I have a problem. And the whole world has these problems. We're depending on outside sources, when we have the resources we need already available to us.
gsa
Well-Known Member
Ugh, I am not a strong supporter of Israeli policy wrt the Occupied Territories but come on:
1. A genocidal onslaught in Europe preceded Israel's creation, to say nothing of pogroms and persecutions that preceded the Holocaust and are also documented in other countries in the Middle East and beyond.
2. The idea that there is a continuous ethnic national identity over that period of time is problematic, to say the least. I also don't know what kind of "hint" you are supposed to take from destruction by an occupying force.
I mean really?
ZenMonkey
St. James VII
They shouldn't and I wouldn't suggest that they do. Then again, I'm not sure the mindset that follows when those who practice Judaism remain obedient to the written law. NOT that I know if the laws are all that difficult to observe, but is Jewish obedience to the written law willful or is it more of a second nature thing, taking little to no willful effort? How is it done? I'm just curious if some view their obedience as a pat on the back when it would perhaps be better to credit one's obedience to God? Does God enable those who practice Judaism to observe the written law? Is it possible to obey and not pride one's self on obedience? I'm not certain how observance of the written law works, nor the mindset a person might develop by doing so. I guess my concern is more about piousness and self righteous attitudes developing is all. I dunno.
CMike
Well-Known Member
1) Jews are prospering in Israel. In fact, even arabs prosper in Israel. The arabs in Israel have the highest standard of living compared to arabs in any other arab country.
Israel has one of the highest economic growths of any country.
Israel Economy: Population, GDP, Inflation, Business, Trade, FDI, Corruption
It leads technology.
2) Israel has never stolen from it's neigbhors. It's neighbors have decided to destroy Israel and has in the process lost land.
3) Israel doesn't build "settlements" within it's land, it builds homes.
4) Israel will forever be the eternal homeland of the Jews. G-D promised it to the Jews, and so it will remain the Jewish homeland
5) Their is a reason so many Jews in countries across the world immigrate to Israel. It's a place where a Jew can truely be a Jew.
We now have even higher widespread anti-semitism, and as a result there was a tremendous amount of Jewish immigration to Israel last year.
Israel will never take the so called "hint".
Israel's neighbors can learn to play nice and would be able to truely prosper living next to Israel or they can continue to try and destroy the country and they will be crushed.
It's really their choice. In any case, Israel ain't going anywhere.
There are more Jewish billionaires living outside Israel. The Jews never had it so good living in Israel surrounded by their enemies.
Flankerl
Well-Known Member
Akivah
Well-Known Member
It has never occurred to me to base my beliefs on the numbers. So your criterion to determine the success of your beliefs is by the numbers? How many adherents, how much land, how much money, the religion has. If your church goes bankrupt, do you change your beliefs? If Islam passes Christianity in the number of adherents, will you switch?
I think the measure of a religion's success is the influence that it has had on humanity. Judaism is the clear winner there. In any case, what someone else believes doesn't matter to me. I choose my religion because it makes the most sense to me.
Akivah
Well-Known Member
To me, the Christian way is impossible to follow. You've got multiple versions of a bible, thousands of denominations, and each one is damning the other to hell. Everyone says their own way is the right way and you've got these horrendous punishments for not doing things the one right way. Every time a new popular leader comes around, then you've got to switch up and do things a new right way or be damned to hell all over again. I have no clue how Christians remain sane.
Sleeppy
Fatalist. Christian. Pacifist.
What is the punishment for Jews disregarding the Covenant, in the World to come? Exclusivism is something Christianity learned from Judaism.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
The Covenant is the Covenant and not a Law per se. As far as "the world to come", Jews are all over the spectrum on that and long have been. Didn't you ever read the "N.T." and what one of the differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees was?
Your claim that "exclusivity" is a Jewish paradigm is bogus, and apparently you never heard the expression of "two Jews having three opinions on everything", which also applies to our religious approach. Nor did you apparently hear of anything dealing with the commentary system that we've been using going way back when.
Akivah
Well-Known Member
You didn't get it from us. Since most Christian beliefs came from pagan beliefs, that probably came from pagans as well.
Akivah
Well-Known Member
As metis said, we don't have a singular belief in Judaism for that. I've heard rabbis even within the same denomination have different things to say about the afterlife. The long and short of it, no person knows for sure. G-d barely mentioned the afterlife in the Hebrew bible. It obviously isn't very important.
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2 billion Christians, 1.4 billion Muslims.......14 million Jews. Surely numbers must mean something to the Jews. Even the Arabs are numbered totalling 450 million. Your religion appears to make the least sense to the most number of people.
gsa
Well-Known Member
It really varies. In practice, a large number of Christians don't believe in eternal damnation, and you only get to thousands of denominations when you wade into Protestantism, which is highly schismatic. And any new leader who departs too much from either a common creed or an institutionalized environment is risking departure from the Christian mainstream altogether.
Just take a look at the Pew Forum to get a sense of how Christianity is experienced in America. Even among Evangelical Christians, a majority (about 57%) believe that many religions can lead to eternal life; among the mainline, that number jumps to over eighty percent for "mainline" churches and the number is 79% for American Catholics. Their combined numbers are about 68.3% of the adult US population, and this leaves out historically black churches, Mormons, Orthodox traditions and Jehova's Witnesses. In addition to these numbers, significant minorities believe in reincarnation and other Eastern/New Age beliefs. So what does this mean? Whether you judge it by practice or belief, the Christian population in the United States, which is by far one of the largest Protestant population centers and is also one of the larger Catholic population centers, is extremely heterodox.
That being said, there are enough rough commonalities in liturgy and belief that they have a common frame of reference. The vast majority of Christians know the basic gospel story and are familiar with the practices of baptism and communion. So in practice it isn't terribly difficult to follow for most people. Whether it is sensible or not is another matter.
gsa
Well-Known Member
Well some six million were killed in the space of a decade, but even setting aside that loss, it is also true that there are over a billion Hindus and close to half a billion Buddhists. Hinduism doesn't actively seek converts either, so it isn't a question of making the most sense to large numbers of people. They're born into it by and large. And that of course doesn't include the large numbers of people who have partially adopted Hindu or Buddhist beliefs.
Let's face it, conversion in Christianity and Islam is easy, and those numbers also reflect cultural identification as opposed to actual beliefs. Conversion to Orthodox Judaism is arduous, and even conversion in the more liberal traditions is more involved than Christianity or Islam. People are averse to difficulty; the Jains aren't exactly racking up the numbers either.
The fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is 50 percent of your problem.
Proverbs 9:10. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Levite
Higher and Higher
Of course, Christianity and Islam both actively proselytize from non-members, and hold universalist theologies that indicate that ideally, everyone should belong to their religion. Both have had centuries-long cycles of aggressive proselytization, where thousands were converted forcibly at the point of the sword.
Judaism, on the other hand, does not actively proselytize from non-members-- in fact, active proselytization is prohibited. With one or two regrettable instances thousands of years ago, we have never tried forced proselytization. And our theology is non-universalist: we do not believe that everyone should be Jewish.
So I think it is less that Christianity and Islam "make sense" to millions upon millions of people, but that they were mostly either born and raised into religions which aggressively proselytized their ancestors, or they were actively proselytized themselves into converting.
And less that Judaism "doesn't make sense" to most people, but that we do not try to convince non-Jews abandon their own beliefs for our own, because we see no need to do so.