----- Original Message ----- From: "The Fool" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 6:42 PM Subject: Re: humour etc > > For every useful concept they teach, they teach ten that are really bad. > Frex "if you don't believe in god/jesus/whatever you will go to hell", or > that genocide/murder are OK if god commands you to do it, or does it > himself. They also teach, that your descendants are guilty of crimes > _you_ commit in perpetuity. God can essentially commit acts of > murder/genocide for what amounts to thought crimes, and can then forever > after torture that person.
I'm guessing that you are relying on early Hebrew Scriptures for your understanding of Judaism/Christianity. FWIW, the early Hebrews were polytheistic/ they believed that Yahweh was their God, but that there were other, less powerful gods for other people. The development of the idea of one God who created all people in his likeness was a gradual one. (Yes, it is in Genesis, but much of Genesis was written later than the original stories that underlay the stories of Moses and Joshua in Exodus and Joshua). IMHO, you cannot get an understanding of the Christianity and Judaism of today by cherry picking verses from the start of the Jews relationship with Yahweh. Indeed, if you take the morality expressed in the New Testament and compare it to the morality prevalent in the Greek and Roman cultures, you will find that there is a lot more care expressed for others in scripture than in the prevailing culture of the time. I think you would be hard pressed to find other systems that came anywhere close to the humanistic ideals we hold today. Since you dissed the ethics of Christianity, let me ask you a couple of questions. What is the source of your ethics? Are the lives of other humans intrinsically valuable? Is the whole idea of caring for others nonsense? Dan M.
