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Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians all draw from the same general population and none of them has the moral high ground. But watch this thread devolve into endless, ignorant sniping among the groups. I have a car, ride a bike and walk to work and I see members of each group act incredibly stupidly and selfishly. It's just a fact of life that people are generally terrible and their actions frequently endanger and even kill one another, bu they'd rather withdraw into their little cultural groups to claim the high ground. And nothing ever changes.

http://www.aish.com/j/j/166678...

"Aladeen changes the dictionary in his country so that “yes” and “no” are represented by the same word – Aladeen – so he never has to hear the word “no.”"

Why do they let Israel do what the lovely American Jewish activist
(Anna Baltzer) helps document, eg, on YouTube:

"Life in occupied Palestine" (about 1 hour in length)

+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrOdCG7RrvE

(She says most of the road-blocks are -within- the occupied territories,
not on the boundaries with Israel. Seems like harassment to me, for 1.)

I, for one, was -appalled- to see the way people are treated - within
Israel's borders - behind the tall, metal "Palestine wall" of separation.

I see/hear -nothing- about any of this on our media... nor even, eg:

+ http://jewish.tv/ -or-

+ http://aish.com/ -nor-

+ http://613.org/

which I consider otherwise -excellent- sites!

(OK, last time I checked, 613.org was just
a bit -amateur- but only in web site styling,
not in its content.)

I'll bite...and I'm not a strong Christian, but I also believe in God. I think most of your questions stem from the ignorance and fear that many people of high faith and low intelligence bring to the table. I find that people that follow that logic and call themselves Christians are little more than bigots. My understanding of Jesus was that his disdain was only for those that sought to take advantage of or for those who were intolerant of others (enter current US-centric Christian conservatism).

God created the world 6000 years ago (well really about 5800): Many theological scholars, both Jewish and Christian, have rectified this statement by referring to Psalm 90:4 and 2Peter 3:8. Paraphrasing, to god a day is like a thousand years and a day a thousand years. Accepting that science is proven observation, that the timeline is not literal, and taking into account the cooling of the universe and relativistic effect on gravity and the perception of time, theological scholars actually put the biblical age of the universe at 15.3 billion years. I believe our (science's) best guess is currently 13.8 billion years, pretty damn close if you ask me.

Immutable types: God created man in his image. Well, God really created everything in his image. If you reduce every living thing (or even non-living collection) down to its basic form, you come up with a shape not dissimilar to that of an atom...whether it is a galaxy, a star-system, or a living-cell. Everything seems to organize itself in that basic shape. And from different organizations of those cells comes the various species. Nowhere in the bible, that I am aware of, says that God made these immutable. From what I know of the bible, the stories outline dynamic people who go through cycles of change and rebirth...evolution if you will...it seems to me that all of the universe, and all its creatures, would follow this formula. I think it is hard for people to understand how anything could think so far ahead as to account for the dynamic processes which may have caused one trait or another to be naturally selected in an animal or plant, but isn't this exactly what a God could do?

God punishes Gays: Really? Just closed minded people would think this. People often point to Leviticus..."to lay with another man is an abomination." Unfortunately, the entire book was specifically a guide for those who wished to serve as God's priests. To me, the book is not meant to be a doctrine for common man. And then there is translation accuracy...does the usage of the word "man" refer to the sex of a person, or the common grouping of both men and women (which it is commonly used as). In which case, for a priest to lay with any man or woman could be considered a violation of the power bestowed upon the priest...which is an abomination. I'm not saying that a priest must remain celibate, just that power corrupts and a degree of caution should be taken by the priest.

God will cure your cancer: Personally, I find praying for yourself self-serving. It is my belief that God setup the universe in such a way as to favor those people that live in the service of others...karma. It is my personal experience that being a "good" person has provided for me. I often do not seem to get what I want, but I always seem to get what I need. That being said, life is only a ride, one that you were allowed to endure on borrowed time...when the ride is over, its time to get off. God already knows you want to stay...hell, its a pretty cool fucking ride...instead pray for the ones that must remain on the ride.

. . . King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural.
Pascal answered: "Why, the Jews, your Majesty the Jews." - - - The Miracle of Jewish History

It's not like there are not opportunities, or that there is anything that is structurally preventing it.

That's the question: are there opportunities? Is there something structurally preventing it?

In the case of baseball, it may (I do not say that it is, I only speculate) be the case that youth baseball programs are less available to black kids. If so it would be entirely appropriate for MLB to say, "hey, let's support inner city Little League teams." Or if it was found that there was (again, just speculating) some unconscious bias in college baseball, it would be reasonable to correct that.

On the other hand, if fewer African Americans are going into pro sports because they have better opportunities in the professional and business worlds, then let's not worry about it. Basketball used to be dominated by Jewish players, but nobody thinks that decline is due to anti-Semitism, rather the opposite.

Tell me, is there any oral tradition that can tell us the truth of a historical event?

Wha? Jason didn't... do... that?

I have to admin that that's a good challenge. I hadn't really thought about the content oral traditions seem to deal with. I don't think the veracity of the content changes the model's potential (or known record) for consistency.

It has to be said that Biblical Archeology has been working very hard at finding the factual history of the Bible - which has portions that began as oral traditions.

Take Noah's flood: all oral traditions has a story about a(n important) flood. There is global geological evidence that is attributed to the flood (by those who believe it is historical).

Take the story of Abraham: his story was first passed on orally. Factual? Depends on what you believe. Did Sodom and Gomorrah exist? Inquiring archaeologists want to know.

If one believes the Bible, then yes, there are oral traditions of historical facts.

iPhone? Who cares about the iPhone, already? I want a jPhone, if only for the Schnapps!

the Crusades aren't a clear-cut situation of "Christian aggresion" on traditionally Muslim territories.

It might not be a clear-cut case of aggression against Muslim territories, but it was clear, that there was "Christian Aggression" against non-Christians. And what about the peaceful Jews in their countries? The crusaders had a policy of removing heretics, including Jews who had nothing to do with the territorial conflicts.

The Crusades turned into campaigns of slaughter, rape, and pillage, and woe to the poor Jews in the way. Indeed, the Crusades mark the first large-scale mob violence directed against Jews which is going to become, unfortunately, the pattern for the next hundreds of years. The later pogroms are just going to be a repeat of this idea.

The Jews were not the only -- and in fact, not the primary -- victims of the Crusaders. Muslims were. If you're a student of Islamic history, you know that a large part of the reason why the Arab world is today the way it is has to do with the Crusades. All the brutality directed toward them devastated the Arab peoples economically, made the Arab world very closed, and contributed to Arab hatred of the West.

The Crusades turned into campaigns of slaughter, rape, and pillage, and woe to the poor Jews in the way. Indeed, the Crusades mark the first large-scale mob violence directed against Jews which is going to become, unfortunately, the pattern for the next hundreds of years. The later pogroms are just going to be a repeat of this idea. The Jews were not the only -- and in fact, not the primary -- victims of the Crusaders. Muslims were. If you're a student of Islamic history, you know that a large part of the reason why the Arab world is today the way it is has to do with the Crusades. All the brutality directed toward them devastated the Arab peoples economically, made the Arab world very closed, and contributed to Arab hatred of the West.

The conflicts arise from Christian interpritations of the Jewish Bible, largely because they do not accept the teachings of the Talmud. The Jewish understanding does not have these issues, such as the one that you mention, simply because it was always taught that the Torah should not be taken literally in the strictest sense. I recomend you read the books by Dr. Gerald Schroeder, who has been able to show that traditional Jewish teachings and modern science don't conflict (nor require a new interpritation of the texts). (Example article: Age of the Universe)

Clearly my message is not getting through to you so at this time I will refer you to http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Ant i-Semitism_in_3D.asp Tell me by the way... in this theoretical "one world" of yours, is anyone allowed to hold different views than your own? Where do all the Christians, Jews and Muslims go? It is one thing to hold views which differ from others. It is a completely different thing to force your views on others as you are doing. Jews have a right to have their own country as much as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc do. Holding Israel to different standards than the rest of the world is nothing short of racism. You say "Israel" yet you mean to say "the Jews". You make broad-stroke baseless accusations about Israel without any factual basis and there is simply no way one can refute such things, or need to.

Found it. Read it all if you have time, or scroll down to the last paragraph for the crux of it.

What exactly is being preserved by making sure at least the mother is real?

What does the mother being "real" have to do with it? For that matter, what is "real"? A real what? Lemme ask you this: how else (other than lineage) would you establish tribal descent? It looks like you're asking a different question about what makes maintaining Judaism as an identity, culture, and religion so important.

The line's genetics are already so diluted from thousands of years of non-Jewish fathers

This is categorically false; see here and here.

that it's probably only 1/1000th original Israeli genes.

Where did you get the 1/1000th figure from? Did you pull it out of thin air? Have you heard it before? Did you compute this number? If so, what were the initial conditions you used in your calculation?
Also, "Israeli" is a nationality a little over fifty years old. "Israelite" or "Ben Israel" (plural, "Bney Israel") is the term used to refer to historical Jews.

So would you consider a baby orphaned from Jewish parents, but raised by atheists, a Jew? yes; the concept of membership in a religion being predicated on the level of belief constitutes an entirely non-Jewish view (evangelical Christian, perhaps but not Jewish).

He is neither practicing nor aware of any of these common cultural values you speak of.

I didn't say membership was predicated on practice. You're mixing these issues again. I said that Judaism is more than just a religion; it encompasses cultural values, too. Inclusion into the Jewish religion is through either matrilineal descent *or* converstion, period.

If you can fuck each other and have babies, you are human, and these divisions are bullshit and are meant to keep money and power in various families and tribes

Again, you're mixing issues. How does "you are human" have anything to do with the rest of your tirade?

these divisions are bullshit and are meant to keep money and power in various families and tribes.

This is a totally different argument than anything you've said so far; you don't offer any sort of proof for this statement, nor are you stating how it applies to the Jewish identity, religion and culture specifically.

- Roey

Someone who does not live this lifestyle cannot be expected to understand this based on a few comments on Slashdot. Faith is obviously more complicated than that.

I appreciate your openness and sincere attempts to understand. I can direct you to a couple of places where those much more knowledgeable than I can explain this. http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/Sanctity_of_ Torah_Scrolls.asp http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/Writing_the_ Torah.asp

Someone who does not live this lifestyle cannot be expected to understand this based on a few comments on Slashdot. Faith is obviously more complicated than that.

I appreciate your openness and sincere attempts to understand. I can direct you to a couple of places where those much more knowledgeable than I can explain this. http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/Sanctity_of_ Torah_Scrolls.asp http://www.aish.com/literacy/concepts/Writing_the_ Torah.asp

Pride is the fall of any civilization. Once we think we know everything we know nothing. For example, how old is our earth really? Billions or thousands of years old? Could it be both? Some Jewish scholars/scientists have a very interesting article on just this one fact. http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Age_ of_the_Universe.asp There's so much we just don't know yet to be close minded to new ways of approaching science.

what's next? the FCC says a Christian radio show isn't indecent, but a Jewish one is?

Nah, the gov't will declare both the Christian and Jewish shows indecent. After all, the gov't is run by the Freemason/Illuminati/Satanist cabal. :)

Your casualty estimate of "millions of Japanese and millions of Americans" needs a bit of refinement.

Let's look at the possible justifications for dropping nuclear devices on mainland Japan:

To win the war? The war was already won strategically, the peace process having already been begun at the time.

To prevent millions of casualties on both sides? Projected casualties for Operation Olympic, as predicted by senior military staff, ranged from 25 000 to 45 000. Subsequent, increased casualty predictions were made by politicians, not Generals.

To show off their shiny new toy to the Reds? Hrm.....

After all, if they hadn't nuked Japan and gotten a 10-minute surrender, Russia might have had time to get its commie paws on Japan, as it had Germany.

Note the phrasing: negotiated peace, not surrender. The Japanese were not offering surrender, just an end to hostilities.

So it's unreasonable to expect the leaders of the Japanese empire to have sought out the best solution for themselves? I don't understand your point here.

Do we have responsibility for what happened to Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Yes. Does Japan have more responsibility? Yes.

You make some good points, and yes, Japan was responsible for its own defeat in WWII because it made a conscious decision to start a fight. But the assertion that the Japanese Empire was responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki is diametrically false. There were numerous, non-criminal ways in which the U.S.A. could have easily won against the Japanese. In fact, the Japanese had already conceded military defeat and were actively negociating for peace when they were nuked. [1]

World War Two was a horrible period of human history, one in which even good nations did terrible things in order to prevent terrible nations from doing things even more atrocious. [...] And note: these were the good guys.

While Germany, Russia and Japan were certainly in the grips of terrible and atrocious regimes during WWII, calling the allies "the good, guys is a bit of a stretch -- even for the more 'virtuous' among them. [2] War is war, and the winners win. As Mae West said, "Goodness had nothing to do with it".

EOF

[1] While the supposed dilemma of "should we bomb or not" is a classic and controversial one as popularly presented, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is/was unambiguously and incontrovertably a war crime according to the terms of the Geneva Convention.

[2] Of course, my metric for judging a nation 'good' is probably overly harsh. I cannot think of a single nation since Magellan's circumnavigation of the Earth that I would qualify as consistently good (except perhaps for the tiny ones like Monaco, Andorra, Biafra, Tibet, East Timor et al, which may only be good because they don't have the longevity/independance required to 'do bad'). The Benelux nations and New Zealand come the closest in recent times, IMHO.

...that imp3.gif looks distressingly similar to certain famous Holocaust photo featuring Night author Elie Wiesel?

We cant even get biospheres working on earth yet./a> You cant walk outside into the fresh air when they fail in space.

I don't know how Matrix Revolutions is supposed to end, but I hope it's not a damn luddite ending where the Matrix is shutdown after the people inside are forced to take the blue pill and wake up to a more "real" reality, where most learn that truth is shit, and ignorance is bliss.

Um, the blue pill keeps you inside. Remember Cypher's quote from the first movie, "Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill?"

I like the similar and parallel story which got a link here a few months ago, The Metamorphasis of Prime Intellect. Without giving too much away, the story has a computer which gains god-like powers and, being programmed with Asimov's Laws, actively prevents humans from dying. So they evolve "contracts" in which they can turn off Prime Intellect's watchful eye and experience pain and almost "die" but the contract ends upon death and Prime Intellect revives them.

Very well written story. The humans can create whatever worlds or vistas they can imagine, and can change their bodies to be animals or zombies or anything, really. As you said, "A universe for every mind."

The Judaic holy script is the Torah, not the Talmud. Talmud is merely a hebrew word that means "student."

Please see this page.

According to the page, the Talmud is the 'encyclopedia of Jewish existence.'

Doesn't seem morbid, one of the few surviving buildings in Hiroshima became a big part of their memorial to the atomic bombing victims.

Perhaps they could do something like that at the WTC, like a Wailing Wall of sorts... maybe polish the still-standing steel and then engrave the names of the dead on it....

You can be certain of one thing-- there are already people working on designs for the memorial.

~Philly

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Source Aish haTorah's Crash Course in Jewish History part 9: Moses

Actualy there is, here is an article that highlights it. Archaeology and the Bible

And it is fairly certain that the Torah was written down within a generation or two after the arival in Israel.