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“The entire world view espoused by her church elders was the idea that you could choose to sin or you could do what God told you to do. That was it. You couldn’t choose the right thing to do on your own; it was always God’s voice telling you the right thing to do. All good came from God and mankind’s only actions were to obey God’s directives or choosing to sin. Mankind could never be credited with choosing to do the right thing themselves because man’s choices were obey or sin.”

WhenI was not finishingmy thesis I readthe letters of Bernard of Clarvaux, who was an abbot. He wrote letters to nobles who decided to become monks. He always said that they don’t deserve the credit — god does. But it was obvious he was actually flattering them. It’s a little like that guy I argued with at PAD’s . Some people need to have God ruber stamp what they do and their life in general for it to have any real value. Itall amounts o the same thing really. It’s kind of vane.

I just swung in to say Merry Christmas to everyone here. Hope the holiday is treating you well and you’re enjoying the day with your friends and family.

Cheers.

Jerry, I think you are neglecing the role of society (and social instituions like religion) in shaping the ideas of individuals. I’m not saying that individuals are slaves to sociatal forces , but the individuals are not alone. For centuries racist and antisemtic ideas, including the ide that the Jews were collectively guilty of killing Christs were accepted by most Chritians, promoted by Christian clerics and justified by accepted interpretation of scripture. Recently this view Was rejected by most if not all Christians. We can’t simply say that the majority of individual Christians were bad people in the past and now most of them are good. Society changed, Christianity changed (my religion has shown less willingness to change). I’m not saying that individualsd not matter. The change was started by individuals, embraced by individuls, and apprently stil rejected by some. But you have to take into account society too.

“Did they, if they even bother with going to church or owning a Bible, learn that in church? Hell, lets say that, yes, they did indeed find a church in New York that taught these “facts” every Sunday morning. Since these “facts” are easily disproved by the information and teachings that abundantly available everywhere else, including in other churches, there’s a justifiable argument to be made that these twits wanted to hate and chose their minority held “facts” despite the far more available facts that contradicted their’s. ”

People usually tend t have loyalty to certain ideological teachings despite the availability of other ideologies. What causes people to prefer one ideology over another is a hard question. But it isn’t as if people shop around and find just the ideology that fits with some basic pre-ideological personality. Personality is shaped by many forces. It’s a chicken an egg kind of thing.

“But what if the individuals haxe already separated themselves from the religion? I’ve never read a bible that said that the mark of Kane was black skin.”

Scripture contains statements that might justify racism and anisemtism. They probably reflect he racism and antisemtism of the pople who wrote the texts. But the decisionto highlight these segments or other reflects the circumstances of different societies at a given moment. Obviously Christian slave owning societies sought justification in scripture for their social institutions.

In Genesis there is a reference to the Children of Ham (spl?) being slaves to oher natios in punishment for Ham’s crime. Ham’s children include africans. It seems safe to assume that this story was put in to justify certain attitudes or policies toward the nations associated with Ham.

I think the scriptural jusification of the Jews killing Jesus is when Pilate says “I wash my hands of this blood, it is on you and your decendants” (or something t that effect). Early Christians certainly had reasons to prtray Jews negatively, just as arly protestants had a reason to badmouth catholics. I think future generations built and epanded on that early hostility, adding to it new layers and details. I suspect the thugs came up with the Hanuka part on their own, or maybe heard it from someone. But that’s how traditions are built — somebody who has autority says one thing , and then somebody adds something else.

“And had they not drawn on the religious traditions, there are more then enough traditions that mankind has creates as an excuse to hate the other that these clowns could have found and used. And they most likely would have as well.”

I don’t thin these guys went around looking for the tradition that will justify their antisemitism. The grew in a place where that tradition still was accepted and it combind with other aspects of their prsonality, like being hugs, so that they focused their bully personality on /Jews at that day. It’s possible that another person who received the sameupbringing might share their beliefs but is als less inclined to be a tug, while a third might have something inhis personality that might cause him to reject anti-semiticism despite the ay he was brought up.

Religion, if you remove the idea of a supreme being from the equation, can be argued to be a 100% creation of mankind. Fine; so is Freedom. I would not blame freedom or seek to condemn freedom because some of its practitioners act either irresponsibility or downright dangerously. A gun (and the gun culture that permeates the American sub-culture in a number of regions) is 100% a manmade construct. I own a number of firearms and I am definitely a part of the gun culture. When some hair brained idiot walks into a mall, a church, a restaurant or a school and opens fire on a crowd, I don’t question my gun ownership or seek remove guns from the hands of all. I question the nature of the human animal that could do something like that.

Bill: ”… many religious organizations are always quick to take credit for the good done by their adherents but equally quick to duck the blame for hatred and violence inspired by their faith.”

Oh, I agree with some of that. I worked with a young lady who went to a church where their Sunday school taught the kids that your conscience, that wonderful little voice telling you to do the right thing, was actually God speaking to you. You could do what God told you to do or you could ignore God’s directive and choose to sin. After being stuck in a room with her for four hours of this, I told her that I thought that the idea was kinda dumb. The entire world view espoused by her church elders was the idea that you could choose to sin or you could do what God told you to do. That was it. You couldn’t choose the right thing to do on your own; it was always God’s voice telling you the right thing to do. All good came from God and mankind’s only actions were to obey God’s directives or choosing to sin. Mankind could never be credited with choosing to do the right thing themselves because man’s choices were obey or sin.

I was actually being pretty nice by telling her that I thought that idea was kinda dumb. I actually found it F’N stupid as hell. But I do see lots of people out there with her mindset and I see lots of churches out there that expand that mindset to everything. Everything good has help from the hand of God and anything bad is either not talked about or is described as divine judgment. But you know what? I know a whole lot of devoted church goers who think people like that are thick in the head.

I have a lot of friends who are deeply religious, church going Christians who never push it on others or preach it where it’s not welcome. If you’re doing something that they don’t believe is morally or spiritually proper by their church teaching, that’s going to be between you and God later down the road. Their faith is their faith and they feel no need to ram it down others throats. There are lots of people out there like that. They just don’t make the news or stick out in a crowd because they’re not constantly showing their asses to the world.

Take religion out of it for a moment. I know a couple of guys, really great, liberally minded guys, who were brought up in Klan households. Both of these guys had parents in the KKK. They can’t even begin to understand their own parents’ (and for one, his sister’s) hatred of non-whites and non-Christians. On the flip side, I’ve grown up with a lot of guys who had very open minded and tolerant parents yet still grew up to be bigoted idiots themselves. In each case, it wasn’t what they were brought up being taught, where they grew up or how they grew up in general terms as much as it was who they were.

How about patriotism? I’ll certainly raise Ian to love his country and what it stands for, but my idea, and thus my teachings, of patriotism do not include the small minded, jingoistic attitudes of some that I’ve encountered. And I’ve met more then a few people who use “patriotism” as an excuse to justify hatred, prejudice and violence. Would you condemn the teachings and ideas of patriotism or would you choose to recognize these people’s defect as of their own making and ignorance?

I’m religious even if I no longer fit under any denomination. I walked away from the organized church for numerous other reasons, but even so, I find it difficult to blame a religion, a, as you described it, tool, for the actions of the holder of that tool. I use my hammer around the house to fix things and do pet projects. It’s not the hammer’s fault if the guy down the street from me runs out his front door and starts to wail away with his hammer on a group of people out for their morning walk.

It ain’t the tool; it’s the person holding it.

”To put it more simply: it is unfair to claim that religion is solely good or solely bad.”

That’s quite true. And I ultimately see it as neither. It is what the individual makes it. The individual can make it beautiful or the individual can make it repulsively ugly. But it is, more often then not, the actions of the individuals that either elevates or taints what we see of almost any religion. You can even say that about the more… questionable… religions. I’m loath to call Scientology a religion, but let’s just pretend that it is for a minute. If I yell “Scientology” in a crowded theater, almost everyone there will think, “It’s that nutty Tom Cruise parking his U.F.O. in the lobby again.” Not many people are likely to think of people like John Travolta, Kirstie Alley or Jason Lee. Why? Well, it might have something to do with them not using their faith to make asses of themselves on TV and in the press at every opportunity. Had Scientology had a few less members like Tom Cruise, it might not be as big of a joke to many as it is now.

”To separate out the individual from religion is to imply that one exists without the other, and that is untrue.”

But what if the individuals haxe already separated themselves from the religion? I’ve never read a bible that said that the mark of Kane was black skin. I’ve seen “Christian” bigots claim that for their justification of hating blacks and claiming that blacks are, because of their bloodline, genetically criminally disposed. I’ve certainly never read a Bible passage setting the date for the crucifixion of Jesus on Chanukah or stating that the Jewish people celebrated this deed on Chanukah. Near as I can tell, those were completely non-church sanctioned add-ons to theses guys’ belief system.

Did they, if they even bother with going to church or owning a Bible, learn that in church? Hell, lets say that, yes, they did indeed find a church in New York that taught these “facts” every Sunday morning. Since these “facts” are easily disproved by the information and teachings that abundantly available everywhere else, including in other churches, there’s a justifiable argument to be made that these twits wanted to hate and chose their minority held “facts” despite the far more available facts that contradicted their’s. Had they not been able to obtain their “justification” through the excuse of religion, then they would have gotten it elsewhere.

Micha: ”Yes, but they drew on certain traditions of hatred.”

And had they not drawn on the religious traditions, there are more then enough traditions that mankind has creates as an excuse to hate the other that these clowns could have found and used. And they most likely would have as well.

Let me try to come at this from another angle: many religious organizations are always quick to take credit for the good done by their adherents but equally quick to duck the blame for hatred and violence inspired by their faith. This is despite the fact that the justifications for hatefulness are codified in their scriptures alongside the exhortations to love one another.

To put it more simply: it is unfair to claim that religion is solely good or solely bad. It can be a positive or negative influence, or something in between. Religion is a complex interplay between religious scriptures, socioeconomic forces, and individuals. To separate out the individual from religion is to imply that one exists without the other, and that is untrue.

I’ve no real argument with that. I just wasn’t all that surprised to see a Republican Presidential hopeful pandering in such a way (and, lets face it, he wasn’t going to tell his target base that, while religion is nice, religion really isn’t THAT big a deal compared to the quality of the person who holds it) or that a group of uneducated monkeys assaulted those guys on the subway while displaying an unbelievable massive ignorance of the faith the claim to posses. They were petty thugs. Had they not had “their religion” to lean on, they would just as likely attacked those guys because Jews are greedy, stealing money from the hard working people of the community who really deserve it, etc. They wanted to hate and they wanted to harm and they would have found a reason no matter what.

That’s part of the problem. Generally, religious beliefs are fairly stable, immobile things. Morality changes as you get more and more different kinds of people making up the whole. What I say is moral could be different from what Bill says which could be different from Micha etc. etc. etc. Now, generally, when I hear a person of influence speaking of morality or religion, I always get the feeling that they’re speaking of THEIR religion, THEIR morality, and everyone else is excluded. That’s the way religion is set up, THIS is what we believe, THIS is the Holy Word, Believe or you aren’t ONE OF US. This country isn’t like that. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Atheists(in no particular order, there) are all included as citizens of this country. When someone is trying to get him or herself elected, divisive statements are troubling BECAUSE there shouldn’t be any seperation between us. We’re all Americans in this country. Having a leader that too often quotes scripture or speaks of God or whatever is exclusionary.

We should admit to ourselves that religions were created a long time ago by people whose beliefs and customs would seem to us to be racist, chauvinist, and violent. So religions should learn to adapt, remember the past, but also remember that some traditions need to be ignored. That’s the thing with extreme conservatives and fundamentalists: they are unwilling to give up or they want to return to the bad traditions without any critical thoughts.

On the other hand recognizing that most religions reflect the customs of different times should make us more forgiving to those religions if they have shown a willingness to adapt. There is good in them too. There was good in the past too, despite the racism etc. We shouldn’t apply present day morality to the past, but we also shouldn’t accept ancient morality from people in the present.

Judaism is a little different than Christianity an Islam, but not because it is immune to bigotry, but because of various circumstances.

1) Christianity in Islam wish to convert everybody, Judaism does not, it is limited to the members of a certain nation. However, it is quite possible that given certain historical circumstances Judaism would have gone in a different direction. i believe Jews in helenistic times forcibly converted one or two local tribes, although it was never in the position to spread the way Christianity and Islam did.

2) Historical circumstances prevented Jews from acting on their own chauvinistic impulses for a long stretch of the history, but this did not say they are immune of the same impulses that have afflicted other people.

3) Jews tend to look inward more often than outward.

4) The old testament is less prescriptive than the New Testament (except for Leviticus and Deuteronomy — the more prescriptive aspects of Judaism (and there are many) ate part of other texts. between Deuteronomy and the prophets you have mostly stories, and the prophets are mostly focused on internal criticism.

5) All of the people who were subject for hatred by the old testament are long gone.