I’m really struggling with how to respond to this. A few thoughts I want to get out of the way:
1): There are people who are not ethnically Jewish, but join the Jewish . . . I don’t know what word to use instead of religion. The Jewish practice. There are also people who say that those people aren’t really Jewish. I maintain that the second group is, and must be, wrong.
2): Regardless of the word “religion,” many of the people I have encountered who follow pagan or traditional belief systems have a certain framework in common with Christians under which their beliefs can be discussed. Same for Hindus and Muslims. This is NOT true for Buddhists, but that’s a separate issue for now. As for Jewish people . . . Sometimes yes, sometimes no?
3): It’s fair to point out that two people who identify as Jewish can have such wildly different beliefs as to be barely comparable. But I don’t think you, personally, are off in nowhere land with the Buddhists. I mean, that “And Aaron Was Silent” post isn’t that far from something C.S. Lewis would have written. I can engage with it in the same way I would engage with a Christian post.
4): I don’t have a very high opinion of any form of philosophy, theology, or metaphysics other than ethics. Which I realize is an open challenge, given that you write about metaphysics, but I’m not sure how else to word it. The only respect in which I care about a belief system is how it intersects with ethics, either by prescription or by violation. So my attitude will always come down to things like “giving babies brain damage is not ethical”: https://www.newsweek.com/rabbi-infant-penis-herpes-1460790 (I’m cherry-picking because like I said, I don’t actually have much to criticize about Judaism.)
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Date: 2019-11-14 03:50 am (UTC)1): There are people who are not ethnically Jewish, but join the Jewish . . . I don’t know what word to use instead of religion. The Jewish practice. There are also people who say that those people aren’t really Jewish. I maintain that the second group is, and must be, wrong.
2): Regardless of the word “religion,” many of the people I have encountered who follow pagan or traditional belief systems have a certain framework in common with Christians under which their beliefs can be discussed. Same for Hindus and Muslims. This is NOT true for Buddhists, but that’s a separate issue for now. As for Jewish people . . . Sometimes yes, sometimes no?
3): It’s fair to point out that two people who identify as Jewish can have such wildly different beliefs as to be barely comparable. But I don’t think you, personally, are off in nowhere land with the Buddhists. I mean, that “And Aaron Was Silent” post isn’t that far from something C.S. Lewis would have written. I can engage with it in the same way I would engage with a Christian post.
4): I don’t have a very high opinion of any form of philosophy, theology, or metaphysics other than ethics. Which I realize is an open challenge, given that you write about metaphysics, but I’m not sure how else to word it. The only respect in which I care about a belief system is how it intersects with ethics, either by prescription or by violation. So my attitude will always come down to things like “giving babies brain damage is not ethical”: https://www.newsweek.com/rabbi-infant-penis-herpes-1460790 (I’m cherry-picking because like I said, I don’t actually have much to criticize about Judaism.)
I’m not sure where else to go from here.