(June 28, 2017 at 5:15 pm)KerimF Wrote:(June 28, 2017 at 12:43 pm)Aliza Wrote: [1] Jews do believe that the universe was created by G-d, but we don't believe that G-d must be glorified. While we do believe that understanding what G-d is a benefit to the person, this is in no way a requirement. Glorifying G-d just sounds very goyish to me. I suppose a Jew's way of glorifying G-d would just be not to fuck people over in business and not to steal things from others, etc.
[2] .... Eh, not exactly. The word "fear" doesn't quite translate the same here. Jews believe that we have a contract with G-d (this is why we're all lawyers. We love contracts.) If we do certain things, good things will happen. If we do other things, bad things will happen. We don't fear that G-d will act outside of the parameters of the contract. We more or less respect G-d and respect that G-d will act within the agreed upon terms.
[3] Most definitely not. Judaism teaches that as new facts come in, we must reexamine our understanding of Torah. We do have a few nutcases who hold onto an antiquated view, but they're in the extreme minority. (I have met one in my personal life, and I've heard one talking about this view on YouTube, so I know that they exist.) Judaism largely holds to evolution and the big-bang, and I'm including many religious, black-hat sects in this generalization. Some Rabbis began writing about 900 years ago that the universe could be as old as 15B years, and Maimonides said in the late 1100's that as new facts come in, we have to take a closer look at how we translated Torah if those facts don't jive with our previous understanding.
First, I like to thank you for the valuable details.
And you did summarise them all in a simple clear statement:
"Judaism is not a book about science or the origins of the universe. It's a book about how Jews should live their lives."
On my side, I see the evolution stages of the human race much like the evolution stages of my own being (hence, of any other human).
My existence started from two living tiny cells. When they combined, they became no more two living cells but just one, me (or what will end up to be me). During about 9 months, this cell had to be evolved rather quickly by following well defined instructions which are inherited gradually since many millions, if not billions, of years (and not necessarily on earth only). And when I was born, this cell became finally the complex being known as human. But I needed a few years too before I started perceiving the various parts of my body. During this time, my parents took care of me without expecting I can help myself in any way. But after that, they felt the need to teach me what is good to my body and what could hurt it as well. But being just a kid, they had to present me simple versions of whatever I liked to ask about. And while I was growing they needed to have sort of mutual contracts with me concerning how to live properly, based on their knowledge and experience. They did it to give me a chance to become a healthy adult with enough knowledge and expertise to depend on myself for the rest of my life and to live, therefore, my own priorities (which are closely related to the nature I was made of).
So to me in the least, from Moses to Jesus is much like the period of time when I was a conscious kid who needed the guidance of my parents and learning the basics of science in a simple way even if these basics will be found being wrong later. Here is a quick example:
I know now that "Two parallels intersect at infinity" which is important in perspective geometry. But at school, they had to tell me first a simpler definition: "Two straights are said parallels if they don't intersect". Of course, this simple definition ceased to be valid when I started learning space geometry, unless "and are on the same plane" is added to it. Did my school teachers lie? Should the first two incomplete definitions be of any importance to me now? But, these two elementary definitions are always important to teach kids.
This is why I used on my first post the expressions "kids of humanity" then "adults of humanity". But this is just how I personally see things.
For instance, Islam is just a social political system created by a clever man in the name of a god (who knows Arabic only, actually its ancient version) in order to take over the power that was in the hands of the elders of his tribe "Kuraish". He replaced the holy statues with holy words (Arabic words of course), claimed being inspired by Allah (this reminds me how Pharaohs were also inspired by certain gods about how to rule their people).
You may well find a lot of agreement with such a statement here on an atheist site, but not from me. I think it would be naive to impute the rationale a modern person might have for launching a religion to a group of people born long ago. Now Islam was apparently begun by just one person. But not so with either Christianity or Judaism. It is an interesting question to inquire about but I'd caution against that approach.
