<p>No but they use other means by which to control their constituencies. For example, the celebration of Passover involves a whole scale diet change. Kosher eating, practiced by almost all Jews at some level, is an incredibly intrusive way of control. Then, as evidenced by ari himself, a strong conviction of ethnic solidarity is breed into Jewish children. When Jews don’t celebrate religious holidays, it’s seen as a repudiation of not only religion, but their culture and their people. This fear of abandonment is equal to the fear of hellfire and damnation.</p>
<p>Is Judiasm responsible for far less violence than Islam and Christianity? Is Judiasm responsible for less evangelizing, less instrusion on public policy? Of course to all of them, but it’s not the enlightened idealoogy that many Jews depict it as. It’s still religion and that’s always very very bad.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it’s funademantally equivalent to Christianity. The only difference is the name of the Messiah. for Christinans, his name is Jesus. For Jews, his name is “To Be Determined”.</p>
<p>can you pray to God in judaism the way you can with other religions? like, say stuff like dear god, i love you and i hope you can fix this problem one day for me, i love you and know you’ll make a way. can you talk like that, before you go to bed for example, or in judaism when you pray are you only and only allowed to do so at temple and speak perfect hebrew and never utter english? lol</p>
<p>i don’t understand how religion is any different than anything else parents force children to do. Is it abuse to take kids to the museum if they don’t like art? Coerce them into playing soccer? reading? sharing? not throwing temper tantrums? visiting relatives? Obviously way out there extremism is pretty bad, but christian kids going to church every sunday or jewish kids partaking in the holidays or muslim kids celebrating ramadan doesn’t really seem like such a big deal to me.</p>
<p>I personally hate religion, resented every moment of my childhood that it was thrust on me, and probably will not follow in my parents’ footsteps, but I don’t think they didn’t have the right to do what they did.</p>
<p>@Dotno:
Judaism and Christianity fundamentally equal? One small HUGE difference between them. Judaism emphasizes action while Christianity emphasizes belief/thought. I could come up with more, but you wouldn’t bother listening anyways.
Also @i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown:
Good point about child abuse.
And finally @baller4lyfe:
Yeah you can. Organized prayer is just in Hebrew.</p>
<p>@dontno
You make some good points, but I have to agree with ari. While Judaism might look similar to Christianity on paper, they differ wildly in how they are practiced. Judaism mainly deals with ritual and tradition, so there are many Jews like ari who don’t follow Judaism as a religion, but Judaism as a way of life. As baller pointed out, Christianity takes religion to a more personal, emotional level. I find Christianity to be generally more harmful, at least to children, because of its capacity for emotional manipulation. The Jews’ “fear of abandonment” you spoke of is more of a cultural issue. I was taught to fear abandonment if I didn’t learn to make eye contact and keep my elbows off the table, and it had nothing to do with religion.</p>
<p>judaism isn’t very intimate. i don’t know why but i always felt like its some sort of marketing-trend and not really a religion. do they even talk about God in intimate levels in temples? if not that is such exploitation of the Abrahamic god maybe he never wanted judaism to be like it is today</p>
<p>I could argue over and over about some of the points here. I do agree that the religions are not as equivalent as I depicted them as. The practices differ in some crucial ways. But many Jews, like ari, wildly distort Judiasm. Ari states that Judiasm isn’t about belief. Well then why do they pray and worship God? (ari won’t write the actual word even though he claims he doesn’t believe BTW) Why do the first 4 commandments all deal with worship and God-belief? Judiasm does put a stronger emphasis on action and not belief, but Christianity (I’m actually going to defend Christianity, holy shizit!) isn’t entirely based on salvation through Christ. (Which by the way is ridicolous, but at least internally consistent in the context of Adam and Eve, part of the JEWISH bible) Ever seen a Christian charity? I’ll stop here. I could go on and on. Hopefully I made a somewhat coherent point.</p>
<p>But in regards to your quote. I think the traditional nature of Judaism makes it more intrusive to a child. Christianity is about personal belief, not merging each individual into a collective. Defining a child as not a person by himself but as a drone required to uphold traiditions they don’t understand is not conducive to childhood growth or welfare. IMHO, they both s_ck equally though. </p>
<p>Oh and to ari:</p>
<p>So you think Judaism is a better religion than Christianity right? Come on admit it.</p>
<p>@baller4lyfe
maybe the Abrahamic god doesn’t exist? and even if in some weird phenomena he did exists, god would “want” anything
@dotno</p>
<h1>1 You are right Judaism does emphasize belief, but no where close to the emphasis it places on practice (you don’t get put to death in the bible for actions not beliefs)</h1>
<h1>2 You have not read a “Jewish Bible” you have just read bad Christian translations</h1>
<h1>3 According to you Jewish traditions(making people hold them up) is “not conductive to childhood growth or welfare.” Jews have done fine in the academic world.</h1>
<h1>4 Worship is not based on belief but rather is practice (not worshiping an idol, going to synagogue on yom kippur)</h1>
<h1>5 god god god. happy now?</h1>
<h1>6 Yes. I think Judaism is a better religion than Christianity. Though that is not to say Christianity has some very good aspects to it.</h1>
<p>Your prodigious use of ambigious grammar and double negative often make it hard to understand what you’re saying but I’ll try.</p>
<h1>1: The Torah is full of stories about God getting angry and punshing the Israelites b/c they didn’t believe or worship him (i.e. golden calf, Moses taking credit for God’s shizit, Lot’s wife, etc…). Belief seems pretty important. Futhermore, are Jewish services almost entirely built upon prayer? I think so, right? Prayer is all about worship and belief.</h1>
<h1>2: Adam and Eve is from Genesis, the first of five books in the Torah or Jewish bible. I don’t need a degree in divinity to know that. i honestly don’t even understand this remark.</h1>
<h1>3: This is a weak argument. I’m not equating religious or cultural mandates with growing up dirt poor or something like that. I simply believe it’s wrong and does affect people in a very strong way, some more than others. Read this blog if you want proof: abandoningeden.blogspot.com (she’s marrying a non-Jew, oh the horror!!)</h1>
<h1>4: Worship isn’t based on belief?!?!?! Great logic. Worship, praying to God, has nothing to do with belief. Oh ye athat makes sense.</h1>
<h1>5: Capitalize it and then I’ll be impressed and maybe put a curse word in front of it and then spell it in Hebrew text. Then **** on a Torah scroll.</h1>
<p>6: Thank you for admitting it. I admire your denial of religious relativism all too present with religious moderates.</p>
<p>@dotno
You made some good points, and I admit making a huge gaff about worship. My apoligizes.</p>
<h1>1 The torah has some crazy **** in it.</h1>
<h1>1(cont) I would argue that prayer (the public prayer that you get in synagogues) in Judaism is more of a ritual than belief. I know people that treat it as nothing but a ritual and those who equate it with an opportunity to communicate to god through some ritual.</h1>
<p>Also, fyi, prayer was mandated by the rabbis and is not to be considered a “big thing” (there is no punishment for not going to synagogue) </p>
<h1>2 When I said this I was referring to the awful english (christian) translations of the torah</h1>
<h1>3 I agree with you extreme religion (yes, even including judaism) can have awful effects on people (synonymous with child abuse)</h1>
<h1>4 (explained above)</h1>
<p>Also I looked at the blog. Wish her the best of luck of beginning to communicate with her dad and getting her mom to turn around.
Also @baller4lyfe
Are you serious?</p>
<p>I started it because i have interesting ideas. </p>
<p>in any event, God is or needs to be separated from religion stella because it tends to erode the meaning of the Lord with unnecessary metaphors or messages that convey something other than God alone. for instance, personal aggrandizement, getting one to convert, power, fame, glory, selfishness, you saw it all with the inquisition crusades 9/11 iraq war palestinian israeli suffrage what have you.
for a while religion might have been necessary but once the concept can walk on its own it no longer needs a babysitter</p>
<p>The idea of god cannot “walk on its own.” More educated people are recognizing that you cannot logically show that god exists (European countries?).</p>
<p>^you got my point and now you’re t skirting the issue. of course it can walk on its own! you only choose to confabulate it when attempting to veer around the subject of religion and tying it to God’s proof. that is not the issue. rather, it is just belief over religion. stop veering.</p>