Race and Religion

[bananabrain]

Interesting how "righteous" devolves into negative expressions of righteous indignation.

that's right, nick, never let comprehension of a sentence stand in the way of a clumsy soundbite.

If I ever had any attraction to secularism, you've successfully postponed it for who knows how long.

and what a terrible shame that is. if i found myself in philosophical company with you, i would start wondering if i had been behind the door when the critical faculties were handed out. so what does "secularism" mean this particular fine winter afternoon, then? hypocrisy? materialism? or, perhaps "not agreeing with nick"?

Yes secularism judges by its subjective standards of "good person" and lies its way around judgments to heighten prestige.

for those readers who might not understand what nick is on about, he appears to be objecting to judaism's criteria for being a "good person", the seven "noahide laws":

Judaism 101: Jewish Attitudes Toward Non-Jews

so what judgements am i "lying my way around", then, nick? i think that's a fairly aggressive statement, don't you?

From the transcendent perspective, these two passages indicate the possibility of awakening to our potential. How to judge a reactive creature in Plato's Cave? Is there any sense in judgments concerning people in Plato's Cave other than by subjective cave standards?

for this set of statements to make any kind of coherent sense whatsoever, you'd have to show how the Torah is in fact paying any kind of attention to plato or his cave, which it isn't - and if you continue to maintain that it is, i will expect some kind of evidence, which on previous occasions, hasn't exactly been your strong suit.

now "holy", here, has a sense of separateness - a better word might be "consecrated", ie for a special purpose. however, i note that you erroneously use the translation in both cases of "above all people". this is utterly wrong. in both cases, the hebrew is "MiKoL", meaning "from all" or "out of all". you can see, presumably, how the poor rendering of the hebrew could be misinterpreted chauvinistically. but then again, that doesn't exactly surprise me.

"Special people unto himself" doesn't mean being proud of either following some rules or pretending to for the sake of BSing others especially the young.

nick - it means what it says. we were chosen to receive the Torah, whether you like it or not and we continue to do so, again, whether you like it or not. i object in the strongest possible terms for you to describe this as "bull****ting others especially the young" - where the hell do you get off describing my religion, about which you have consistently proved to be entirely pig-ignorant, as "bull****ting"? i think you're in breach of the CoC right there.

As a secularist you cannot see the value of how people like Simone understand this.

i am now explicitly telling you not to keep on calling me a "secularist". you cannot remould the meaning of the english language simply to suit your twisted little categories. the statement by your idol is nonsensical, because there is no contradiction here and certainly no lie. again, if you are calling me and my tradition a lie, then there's really going to be trouble.

I can appreciate what is meant by chosen people in the context of paths leading towards human transcendent potential while you devolve it into a secular societal value of following rules.

that just shows what a sorry little egomaniac you are. why don't you stop telling me what i mean and start listening to what i say i mean? or are you simply incapable of engaging in discussion without misrepresenting whatever anyone says to you so you can continue maintaining a ludicrous set of positions?

My children and I are not of a Jewish genetic lineage.

and i've already told you twice that that doesn't matter if you want to convert. for that matter, there is a growing community of people who try to live according to the Torah who aren't even jewish - they're called "noahides" or "bnei noach" - look them up.

Can someone please tell me where it is written and under what authority the law of the Torah that requires a person to have a genetic maternal Jewish lineage in order to be considered Jewish has been rejected and abolished?

it hasn't - and, moreover, genetics has nothing to do with it; according to halakhah, as far as i know you could be born to a jewish surrogate mother and be considered jewish. am i not saying this right? there are two ways to become jewish - get born in or convert. what is your problem, exactly?

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

Can someone please tell me where it is written and under what authority the law of the Torah that requires a person to have a genetic maternal Jewish lineage in order to be considered Jewish has been rejected and abolished?

There's nothing in the Torah about having to be born to a Jewish mother in order to be Jewish.

 

[TealLeaf]

There's nothing in the Torah about having to be born to a Jewish mother in order to be Jewish.
[/b][/color]

Alright the Talmud then.

"This doctrine of matrilineal descent has been part of Judaism since at least the second century C.E. (common era), when it was codified into the Talmud, the body of religious writings that supplement the Jewish holy book of the Torah. The Talmud expands on the Torah passages of Deuteronomy 7, which oppose intermarriage by Jews. This verse states that the child of a Jewish woman and a non-Jewish man will be Jewish. Other Torah verses admonish Jewish men from taking non-Jewish wives because their children will not be Jewish."

Please tell me where it is written and under what authority this has been rejected and abolished?

PS - By the way your blatant lack of forthrightness in this argument comes across as manipulative and undermines your credibility. That's a tip.

 

[dauer]

PS - By the way your blatant lack of forthrightness in this argument comes across as manipulative and undermines your credibility. That's a tip.

What lack of forthrightness? You claimed the Torah says something that it doesn't. I called you on it. The Talmud doesn't claim that only someone born of matrilineal descent is Jewish either. Matrilineal descent came to be the standard because it's easy to identify the mother of a child, but not always the father. In biblical times conversion was most likely a matter of naturalization into Jewish society. David is supposed to have been descended from Ruth, a convert. Later the practice of conversion became standardized, a period of study and practice followed by bris, mikveh, and appearing before a beit din. As has been said to you repeatedly, both someone born of matrilineal descent and a convert is Jewish. I don't know how you got it into your head that Judaism doesn't accept converts.
-- Dauer

 

[TealLeaf]

What lack of forthrightness? You claimed the Torah says something that it doesn't. I called you on it. The Talmud doesn't claim that only someone born of matrilineal descent is Jewish either. Matrilineal descent came to be the standard because it's easy to identify the mother of a child, but not the father. In biblical times conversion was mostl likely a matter of naturalization into Jewish society. David is supposed to have been descended from Ruth, a convert. Later the practice of conversion became standardized, a period of study and practice followed by bris, mikveh, and appearing before a beit din. As has been said to you repeatedly, either someone born of matrilineal descent or a convert is Jewish. I don't know how you got it into your head that Judaism doesn't accept converts.
-- Dauer

You are right. I apologize that it has taken me so long to get this straight. I stand corrected.

 

[Nick_A]

that's right, nick, never let comprehension of a sentence stand in the way of a clumsy soundbite.

and what a terrible shame that is. if i found myself in philosophical company with you, i would start wondering if i had been behind the door when the critical faculties were handed out. so what does "secularism" mean this particular fine winter afternoon, then? hypocrisy? materialism? or, perhaps "not agreeing with nick"?


for those readers who might not understand what nick is on about, he appears to be objecting to judaism's criteria for being a "good person", the seven "noahide laws":

Judaism 101: Jewish Attitudes Toward Non-Jews

so what judgements am i "lying my way around", then, nick? i think that's a fairly aggressive statement, don't you?


for this set of statements to make any kind of coherent sense whatsoever, you'd have to show how the Torah is in fact paying any kind of attention to plato or his cave, which it isn't - and if you continue to maintain that it is, i will expect some kind of evidence, which on previous occasions, hasn't exactly been your strong suit.

now "holy", here, has a sense of separateness - a better word might be "consecrated", ie for a special purpose. however, i note that you erroneously use the translation in both cases of "above all people". this is utterly wrong. in both cases, the hebrew is "MiKoL", meaning "from all" or "out of all". you can see, presumably, how the poor rendering of the hebrew could be misinterpreted chauvinistically. but then again, that doesn't exactly surprise me.


nick - it means what it says. we were chosen to receive the Torah, whether you like it or not and we continue to do so, again, whether you like it or not. i object in the strongest possible terms for you to describe this as "bull****ting others especially the young" - where the hell do you get off describing my religion, about which you have consistently proved to be entirely pig-ignorant, as "bull****ting"? i think you're in breach of the CoC right there.


i am now explicitly telling you not to keep on calling me a "secularist". you cannot remould the meaning of the english language simply to suit your twisted little categories. the statement by your idol is nonsensical, because there is no contradiction here and certainly no lie. again, if you are calling me and my tradition a lie, then there's really going to be trouble.


that just shows what a sorry little egomaniac you are. why don't you stop telling me what i mean and start listening to what i say i mean? or are you simply incapable of engaging in discussion without misrepresenting whatever anyone says to you so you can continue maintaining a ludicrous set of positions?



and i've already told you twice that that doesn't matter if you want to convert. for that matter, there is a growing community of people who try to live according to the Torah who aren't even jewish - they're called "noahides" or "bnei noach" - look them up.


it hasn't - and, moreover, genetics has nothing to do with it; according to halakhah, as far as i know you could be born to a jewish surrogate mother and be considered jewish. am i not saying this right? there are two ways to become jewish - get born in or convert. what is your problem, exactly?

b'shalom

bananabrain

BB

so what does "secularism" mean this particular fine winter afternoon, then? hypocrisy? materialism? or, perhaps "not agreeing with nick"?

I don't think you'll ever get this since it requires being open to two different essential human perspectives but what the hey, I'll give it a shot.

Secularism values the worldly over the spiritual. It is guided by worldly values and its spirituality is tied to worldly values. It brings God down to earth and creates an imaginary concept of God that becomes used as a tool for societal power. The danger of secularism is that it creates an idol out of society which is called social idolatry and gives the "Great Beast" its dominance. The secular person sacrifices their potential transcendent individuality to the Beast. It denies the normal societal purpose which is the creation of individuality or the growth of the Inner man.

Secularism is concerned with how we "ACT," the OUTER man. The balanced person in contrast capable of putting societal concerns within a conscious human perspective, is concerned with what we ARE. the Inner Man.

for those readers who might not understand what nick is on about, he appears to be objecting to judaism's criteria for being a "good person", the seven "noahide laws":

You are referring to laws telling one how to ACT. This is your fixation so it is natural that you would think it mine as well. Nothing I've written has anything to do with these laws and to be honest It is not a concern of mine.

so what judgements am i "lying my way around", then, nick? i think that's a fairly aggressive statement, don't you?

It only appears aggressive since you deny the human condition. We all lie. Society is built on it. If we didn't society could not function as it does.

The concern for the Inner Man is to become able to discriminate between the lie and the truth in ourselves. It is part of "awakening." As we are, we cannot do it. It takes a long time to be able to witness these things in ourselves.

Peter is the classic example in the NT. He said he could never deny Christ and Jesus told him he would three times. Peter couldn't see this in himself yet and when he witnessed his own hypocrisy he was brought to tears. It was a necessary part of his learning process.

This psychological reality is insulting to many who say they don't lie. A person has to be courageous enough to look inside their own being to learn the truth of it. Most are unwilling and prefer being insulted.

for this set of statements to make any kind of coherent sense whatsoever, you'd have to show how the Torah is in fact paying any kind of attention to plato or his cave, which it isn't - and if you continue to maintain that it is, i will expect some kind of evidence, which on previous occasions, hasn't exactly been your strong suit.

Plato's Cave and the Buddhist parable of the Burning House are ancient expressions of an idea that is poison to secularism since they describe the condition of "sleeping humanity." If I read Rabbi Cooper rightly, it does exist in non secularized Judaism:

West Michigan News Company

What happens when thought is annihilated? In Tibetan and other Eastern teachings it is taught that the relaxed natural mind is like a perfect mirror, reflecting precisely what is happening, without comment, judgment, or additions of any type. This mind of clarity, empty of grasping thoughts, reveals the limitlessness of Ein Sof as a unique inner light. Jewish mystics call this clarity Ohr Ein Sof, or Boundless Light. It is not light as we know it, not the light of the sun; rather it is the light of realization, which can be called pure Primordial Awareness, or simply non-dual Awareness with a capital A, once again to distinguish it from normal dualistic awareness in which there is a subject and object.
In essence, we can learn how to rest the mind in a way that becomes totally receptive. When this happens, we are capable of momentarily experiencing the pureness of non-duality in which every distinction drops away. All apparent opposites disappear. A transcendent consciousness beyond all thought and distinction spontaneously arises in this arena of pure Awareness.
It is taught in Kabbalah that our normative reality is ten degrees removed from the absolute reality of the origination of Primordial Light. What we know as the light of consciousness in our mundane world compared with the next higher level of consciousness is like a candle compared with the sun. We can barely imagine what would make our sun a tiny candle in relation to the Primordial Light of pure Awareness—a brilliance of such magnitude that all apparent differences dissolve into an ultimate Oneness that is not a number but a unity.
Just as we might speak and symbolize infinity, without having the slightest sense of its implications, so we can attempt to describe Ohr Ein Sof, the light of Boundlessness, without having any recognition whatsoever of its inconceivable dimensionless dimension. Yet, the contemplative practice of sitting quietly, mindfully, allowing each moment to arise in its own purity, brings us into momentary Awareness, like a brilliant flash, that can be repeated over and over again in a way that shifts our normative consciousness. In this potential shift, we can recognize a mysterious connection between our own inner light and the ultimate flash of Awareness.

Rabbi cooper seems to be aware of the value of putting our "dual awareness" within a higher conscious perspective rather than glorifying the results of our normal "dualistic awareness" that is conditioned by the "Great Beast" and keeps Man a prisoner in the collective societal "being."

nick - it means what it says. we were chosen to receive the Torah, whether you like it or not and we continue to do so, again, whether you like it or not. i object in the strongest possible terms for you to describe this as "bull****ting others especially the young" - where the hell do you get off describing my religion, about which you have consistently proved to be entirely pig-ignorant, as "bull****ting"? i think you're in breach of the CoC right there.

Think what you like but the Torah was given because the Jews had the ability to come to understand it beyond normal secular concerns and the psychological restrictions of the human condition described in many ways including Plato's Cave.
People are people. I am willing to admit how much Christianity has been abused in producing so much Christendom. You are not yet willing to admit how much Judaism has been abused to produce secular Judaism.

i am now explicitly telling you not to keep on calling me a "secularist". you cannot remould the meaning of the english language simply to suit your twisted little categories. the statement by your idol is nonsensical, because there is no contradiction here and certainly no lie. again, if you are calling me and my tradition a lie, then there's really going to be trouble.

But it is your one-sided secularism that doesn't allow you to experience the difference between what one IS and what one DOES. Judaism is no more a lie then Christianity. What happens is that "experts" that cannot appreciate its depth but instead have acquired charisma and "credentials" are believed by many and the battles between these experts further devolves the respective teachings of various sects.

that just shows what a sorry little egomaniac you are. why don't you stop telling me what i mean and start listening to what i say i mean? or are you simply incapable of engaging in discussion without misrepresenting whatever anyone says to you so you can continue maintaining a ludicrous set of positions?

What you are saying is classic secularism. It is the process of bringing the sacred down to the secular as opposed to having the secular serve the sacred which IMO is man's natural psychology before adopting the psychological condition described in so many ways including Plato's Cave which created the "Great Beast."

 

[TheKhan]

Racism is everywhere, its natural and sometimes educated in some heterogeneous societies.

Sometimes homogeneous societies feel so comfortable about their environment, or are kind of bored with their own kind that they look into other peoples backyards. Some feel that it is important to preserve one`s own backyard the way it was handed down to them.

Religion is a social group of people, so it is subject to all the things I just wrote.

A good example I think in order to understand the root of racism is to look at what animals do.

For example a dog pen where many dogs are put into one space. What do they do? They group up into similar breeds, size doesn`t matter btw. And they literally rip up dogs that they think don`t belong to their group. Its interesting to note that mini-dobermans will team up with dobermans, so you see tiny dogs having huge pals etc..

A second example is what chimps do, when they find an outsider roaming around in their territory maybe to find girlfriends. They go as far as patrol the neighborhood regularly in groups, and when they find trespassers, they hunt them down beat(lynch) the poor chimp to death every time and sometimes rip off his testicles as well. They patrol slowly in silent mode, stop after a couple paces and listen. Reminds me of the military.

Some parents want their grand children to be a certain breed of people. Whole societies may be conditioned to be that way. Some people want to preserve their certain kind of breed, as they are on the extinction list.

Anyways my point is its only natural to be racist. But often displayed in the behavior of children, we are not born racists. We are sometimes conditioned to be one.

TK

p.s. when you look at the historic migration roots of people, although there are specific breeds of people like dogs, if one is not pitch black, or maybe a small skinny caucasian who instantly gets sun burnt, the chances are one is of mixed racial origin. Thats roughly most of the population on this planet, including Europe. Meaning when one is being racist making claims about the purity of a race, that pure race doesn`t exist 99.9% of the time.

p.s. with regards to Krishna being blue, I thought he was a mixed race with Afro-roots like the Scicilian look. I heard that the racial slur towards Scicilians were calling them eggplants, meaning someone must have thought of them as looking purple.

 

[TheKhan]

Breeding has a lot to do with racism and closed social groups.

I myself was a certain kind of breed until my parent`s generation where people started choosing their own spouses. Even then we still breed because we all have sexual preferences.

Can and will we stop, thats a good question.

 

[TheKhan]

I am not sure that having no racial bias whatsoever is accurate or even a good idea.

If we weren`t racists we`d all look like people in India, probably.

If there weren`t nazi-like people today, it is likely that there will be no caucasians in like 50 years from now, which officially puts caucasians on my "endangered people" list.

TK

 

[wil]

You are right. I apologize that it has taken me so long to get this straight. I stand corrected.

Namaste TL,

Awesome!! When we get stuck on a thought it is often hard to move off of it.

Anyways my point is its only natural to be racist. But often displayed in the behavior of children, we are not born racists. We are sometimes conditioned to be one.

Breeding has a lot to do with racism and closed social groups.

I myself was a certain kind of breed until my parent`s generation where people started choosing their own spouses. Even then we still breed because we all have sexual preferences.

Can and will we stop, thats a good question.

It is hard to break the attitudes you were raised with.

My extended family for the most part are quite racist. My grandparents were from their upbringing and they raised their children similarly. My parents were raised in that society yet when my Dad was in the service in the south and saw 'Whites only' this and 'Colored only' that it appalled him. Blacks walking off the sidewalk and into the street, eyes on the ground as they'd been conditioned by beatings. He was in the service and saw racism multiplied in there as well.

It made he and my mom intentionally move away to raise a family away from their parents, brothers and sisters. I never realized al this until I was in my teens, and as I age it is more apparent. Some of my cousins broke the mold living amongst it, but they are in the minority.