Religion?

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Jesus was a Jew.

Also, Hinduism is pantheist and Judaism is monotheist.

Last edited by slowmutant on 14 Aug 2008, 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Firstly Hinduism is not a single religion and cannot be compared to Judaism in that way.
Secondly Hinduism is a very varied mixed bag of philosophies and practices.
Thirdly most of the paths generally considered to be part of Hinduism are panentheist and certainly not pantheist.
In Panentheism God is single and not many and behind and part of all of creation but He may be worshipped in different forms according to the inclinations of the devotee.
God is considered by most Hindus to be formless and endless but since you cannot have a personal relationship with something formless, they allow mediation by a so-called Ista.
Hindus see Jesus as just another Ista, another form or expression or mediator of a single God.

I'd rather worship the monkey with a gun

I am a Process Theologian. Process theology offends a lot of people: theists call us atheists in disguise, and atheists call us theists in disguise. We create definitions to suite the models of reality that we create.
To me, God is just a name for the mystery that binds everything together. Since God is inseparable from the fabric of reality, belief in God us irrelevant. "Believing God" is more important.
God can only be subjective, perhaps just the accumulated effect of all subjectivity. Objectively, there can be no one in charge. The desire to have someone in charge is a human bias. I am working on the philosophical argument of why all reality would collapse if someone were to be in charge of everything. The difference between objectivity and subjectivity is that objectivity is coercive, while subjectivity is only persuasive.
One should not forget that people who believe in God feel very strongly about their beliefs. I do not deny that their beliefs are without merit, I just take issue with their interpretation. Our society has been conditioned to believe in an omnipotent, controlling God. This kind of a God is not possible.
Also, there is the false notion that God requires our spoken allegiance. This idea would make God a strange kind of parent. If our earthly parents behaved this way (some do,) we would not stand for it!
It is my current belief that the force or principle that we call God is just all the available knowledge accumulated from countless lifeforms in this universe and prior universes. There really are no miracles, so long as we understand that our lives work because those who are now dead came before us.
Evolution is a key component of Process Theology. Everything, including all reality, is constantly evolving. I am working on the philosophical mechanism that might cause reality to evolve. It is almost certain that prior universes preceded our universe. How this all works is still a mystery. There is no indication of a master designer; instead, everything looks like it was designed by a committee.
DNA and RNA are interesting molecules that bridge objective reality and subjective reality. These molecules are a combination of current and ancestral components. These molecules are delicately balanced, so they are fairly stable, but they are fragile at the same time, which allows mutations.
This all has the look of “design,” and Process Theologians call it design. We are not enough advanced to figure our how root processes or universes begin. However, it is far more likely that we, the totality of evolving lifeforms, are somehow driving the system, rather than some impossible omnipotent being.
People believe in God because there is some kind of feedback going on, and this feedback makes people think that they are smart. Now, If I do stupd things, it is often because I have Asperger's Syndrome. However, just how smart are "normal" people who continue to do stupid things?

Last edited by romanax on 15 Aug 2008, 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

and i saw a giant 3 foot spider crawling on my door last night. both aren't real.

i'd call it a "new age" take on deism with a little pantheism thrown in and, like with any religion, a large helping of arrogance and self-importance.


just wait till we find out that we're just "strings" on quarks on a giant helium atom.

i'd call it a "new age" take on deism with a little pantheism thrown in and, like with any religion, a large helping of arrogance and self-importance.

Process Theology is philosophy, not religion. "New age" is about the occult, reincarnation, crystals, and the like. I do not believe in any of that stuff. I do not even believe there is any such thing as a soul. Process Theology promotes panentheism, not pantheism. Pantheism is a notion that God is All, which is impossible. Panentheism just says that anything we call God is subject to revision. Deism is also impossible, since it depends on an omipotent being who decided to go away after creation. Omnipotent beings are impossible, since they do not evolve, but are just there. Everything we see in reality evolved to be that way and did not appear by magic.

Process Theology also embraces the latest findings in theoretical physics, including quantum mechanics, string theory, and M-theory, string theory's multi-dimensional child.

Theists have rightly said that Process Theology is not religion, since it gives no hope or meaning to life. As the Buddha said, religion is all about dealing with life problems such as death and suffering; any discussion of God is philosophy. The Buddha refused to answer any questions about God.

As far as as arrogance goes, I fail to see how a discipline that proclaims that all our preconceptions are wrong, including those of Process Theologians, is arrogant. There is only a latest theory or treatise, never a final conclusion.

Last edited by romanax on 15 Aug 2008, 1:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

care to explain this part farther. theology is the study of god which implies the presence of a deity to study. so how is it not a religion? because there's no worship?

at least you got one point right

"God is just a name for the mystery that binds everything together. "


except remove "that binds everything together".


god of the gaps is everyone's god in the end. it's humans' blue screen of death.

Einstein was a Jew too. That doesn't mean relativity is Jewish. Shabtai Tzvi was a Jew. That doesn't mean Sabbatianism is Jewish either. And we cannot establish without a doubt that Jesus actually existed. The only sources we have are Christian ones (Josephus it has been established was modified by the Church as another text was found that the Church had not handled with no mention of Jesus whatsoever) and the Christian sources conflict historically with other texts. The NT additionally applies the contemporary Roman myth of the dying god to Jesus which makes it even more suspect. Both religions maintain very different ethical perspectives as well as very different theologies. It's hard to say they really share the same text when one text is in Hebrew and the other, depending on the form of Christianity, is in Latin or Greek or English, or a combination are relied upon, as most central. Jewish roots can maintain very different meanings than those of Romance languages. This along with the reading in of Roman myth and a very different approach to exegesis has led Christianity to go in a very different direction. Christianity also tends to be much more literalist and takes the text at fewer levels. Judaism takes the text at multiple levels of meaning and there is no level of interpretation that's associated with a "literal" meaning. The closest is pshat which looks at plain meaning. This takes into account quite a bit of other ideas including that "The Torah speaks in the language of man."

The way that Judaism applies the term monotheism is flexible enough that there is a lot of overlap with Hinduism, more than there is with Christianity theologically. You have to remember, Judaism uses multiple names for G!d which refer to different attributes and archetypal relationships with the Divine including both masculine and feminine G!d language while maintaining that the language does not actually define G!d who is beyond all G!d language. Christianity sometimes interprets Jewish texts to mean the opposite of how Judaism understands them. Its interpretations are often in direct conflict which basic Jewish ideas. Another issue arises because Judaism offers the possibility for different answers to questions of ethics and ritual practice. It's designed in such a way that it can respond to changes in situation and to scientific discovery without much of a problem.

Ethically it is far more flexible and far more liberal. The hot-button issues in Christianity like homosexuality, abortion, birth control and such yield far different answers in Judaism. Even the most conservative of Jewish perspectives see no issue with homosexuals, only with homosexual acts while the majority of Judaism holds a much more liberal perspective. Judaism holds that abortion is acceptable in some situations and, depending on the direction it goes, may go as far as to say that it's okay if the child will be too much of a financial burden on the parent. More strictly it might say that it is only acceptable if the life of the mother is at risk, but both perspectives are to be found in the Talmud. In terms of birth control, the Talmud itself allows for a substance that would sterilize a woman, if she wanted to sterilize herself so that she would no longer have children. More conservative authorities today may allow for forms of contraception other than the barrier method while much of Judaism maintains a more liberal perspective.

Christianity's view of sin is that it's something that stains, only removable through faith in Jesus. Judaism sees sin as a missing of the mark, a mistake. It sees it as a normal part of being human from which a person can make good, learn and grow.

Christianity's eschatology maintains a place of eternal damnation. Judaism's does not.

Christianity has been known for its aggressive proselytization. Judaism does not proselytize nor does it hold that a person needs to be Jewish to be in good with G!d.

Christianity maintains a belief in a devil which it calls Satan. Judaism does not have a devil and HaSatan refers to an entity in the service of G!d who plays a very different role. In some cases HaSatan is identified with the yetzer hara which in an early rabbinic psychological model was identified with the base drives, similar in many ways to Freud's id.

Views on the messiah are also at odds with each other where the Christian view of the messiah contradicts basic Jewish thought on the nature of the Divine.

Judaism places more emphasis on this life that we're living right now and its eschatology is only considered inspired conjecture. Christianity often relies on the afterlife or the 2nd coming of Jesus as its motivation.

[quote=Daran]Firstly Hinduism is not a single religion and cannot be compared to Judaism in that way. [/quote]

In that way, not exactly, however Judaism isn't monolithic either (it contains a great diversity of philosophies, while the diversity in practices is less but still present connected primarily with different localities (ashkenazi, sefardi, mizrahi, yemeni, beta israel as well as some others) and with different schools of thought (hasidism, mussar, lurianic kabbalah, abulafia's ecstatic kabbalah) which introduced different types of practices mostly particular to them) and both religion's theologies overlap quite a bit, as do areas of practice that they have in common which Christianity does not. Panentheism is an acceptable perspective within Judaism. As I stated before, there are many names that represent different ways of relating to G!d, both male and female as well as names that speak to G!d in non-dual terminology. The actual definition of panentheism is that everything is a part of G!d but G!d is greater than everything. This is a valid Jewish perspective.

We can look at other similarities too. Both maintain a spiritual dietary practice. Both believe that there are other paths to G!d outside of their own. Both maintain on one level that G!d is formless and endless while on another level it is possible to relate to G!d personally. They both tend to contain quite a bit of ritual. Both contain very cyclical elements in their holidays. Both have reincarnation as a possibility when one dies. Neither sees active proselytization as terribly important. Hinduism had the caste system. Judaism has tribal affiliation from the father, including a familial priesthood. The kohanim or priests no longer play a significant role in the religion. There are some things unique to the kohanim but few. However the tradition is still maintained. The only people who maintain their traditions of famiial ancestry today are the kohanim and the leviim.

Let me guess, you think that Western languages exist, too? The Orthodox Christian view of sin is best expressed by the Greek word "amartia", which means "missing the mark". Sound familiar? Not all Christians adhere to the heresies of Western Christianity.




1: It does not prosetylize ANYMORE.
2: "While we can say with some certainty who is in the Church, we cannot say with any certainty who is not." --Fr. Alexander Schmemann



And for the Orthodox, God is within all things, even things that are thought of as "evil", because nothing can exist without God, and God will not withdraw existence from any one thing.

Dog,

That question doesn't make sense to me. And to your word heresy, I still see the majority Christian approach as a valid path to G!d. I object to the false association of it with Judaism as if the two bare a special connection and even further I object to the term Judeo-Christian which only perpetuates the false idea of such a relationship. If Eastern Orthodoxy had won out, due to the differences in the issue of authority between it and the Catholic Church, there may not have been a need for a Martin Luther. However, that ship has sailed and Christianity at large has gone in a much different direction.



I am aware that there is diversity in Christianity. I am speaking to the majority view. Most Christians would assert that your perspective is not Christian. If you go back to my OP in this thread my issue is that "The only time people ever give me crap is when they make false assumptions by lumping Judaism in with Christianity." That does not mean that there are no similarities between the two religions at all, in fact I could provide a link to a book on google books that shows clear similarities between many of Jesus' ethical teaching and parables to teachings within rabbinic texts in an attempt to show that he is in many ways in line with the teachings of Beit Hillel while in opposition to the teachings of Beit Shammai. It does not mean that all forms of Christianity are as at odds with Judaism as the majority is. It means that many people form their perspective of Judaism based on Christianity as it is usually found today (either because they have been taught that these are similarities by the Church or they assume these similarities exist because of the perpetuation of the Judeo-Christian myth) which leads to false projections onto Judaism and assumptions that just aren't true. Certainly there are Christian communities where some of what I've said is inaccurate including Eastern Orthodoxy, LDS and Quakers.



There were a couple of brief periods in time where it did, but largely it did not. One of those periods was under the hasmoneans, a pretty awful time in Jewish history due in part to the centralization of the priesthood and the monarchy under one family. Later the perspectives of the sages of the mishna were mixed, with some more open and some less. Arguably the origins of Israelite religion in the syncretism of a nomadic religion and an agrarian one could be seen as proselytization by the nomads, but I would argue it is much more clearly a syncretism due to the degree to which the two beliefs intermingled in creating a shared ahistorical story of peoplehood. Don't get me wrong. Judaism accepts converts. It just doesn't see a need to seek them out. The tradition that exists today of actively discouraging converts to test their sincerity however (which is connected back to the book of Ruth), that is due to the harsh penalties placed by host societies on conversion to Judaism.



Panentheism refers to an inclusion of the whole material world as a part of G!d and is found predominately in hasidism. While the perspective you refer to is also a Jewish perspective, it is not panentheism, nor is it considered an acceptable perspective in much of the Christian world. The fact that Judaism can maintain that perspective, panentheism, as well as others among members of the same synagogue speaks strongly to differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Judaism if your statement that this is "for the Orthodox" means "for all of the Orthodox."

I know you are aware that, despite the similarities you have pointed out, there are still more major differences than similarities including original sin, the role of the messiah, eschatology, satan/hasatan, those who are not members of the religion, and other issues of theology and ethics not mentioned. I understand why you would be frustrated by generalizations of Christianity in the same way I am frustrated by generalizations of Abrahamic religion and in that sense, we are in the same boat. I have nothing against Christianity. I am only against the false assertion of special relationship. Not only does it cause the problems I mentioned previously in this post (false attribution), but it also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, minimizes the relationship between Judaism and other Abrahamic religions. I don't take issue with the word Abrahamic which I think is much more inclusive.

And they would still be wrong. Consensus Gentium is not a measure of truth.

Why?

Dogbrain,

According to your epistemology, I'm sure of it.

Probably a really modified form of Christianity. I believe in the big bang, evolution, an old Erath, that there is just as much chance of aliens as us, that we are not the end product or purpose of evolution, yet I do believe in a being that started it.