… i can’t imagine the guilt she must feel tho.

The sort of that would have worked with early humans/Adam&Eve but won’t cut it once they start to ask serious questions; thus the need for a New Covenant, one that acknowledges and respects Free Will. Many Christians confuse the messages of the Old and New Testament, to suit whatever biases they already have. Fundamentalist Islam is somewhat worse, since it denies the modestly more forgiving message of the New Testament and recapitulates the fearsomeness of the Old. Either way, if you look for them to make sense you’ll be disappointed; they don’t.

Of course it is possible that the claim of omnipotence is falsely made, an attempt at puffery that only appears valid from our captive point of view, and there is actually an infinite hierarchy of gods in which ours is rather minor; sort of a Spec. Charles Graner along with his tormenting angel Lynndie England, if you know what I mean.

Just my luck.

—i’ve always seen that commandment and the Baal/golden calf stuff, etc, as acknowledgement that God was just one of many, and that it was a choice to go with this one as opposed to another one—and also that he wasn’t God for the whole world anyway, and wasn’t meant to be.

even Moses worshipped Egyptian Gods growing up—i’ve never understood why it was/is so important for this God to be the only one.

But the One and Only God is current dogma for Judaism, Christianity and Islam and has been for a very long time. If you think differently you are one of a vanishingly small minority - and one that has had, I’m sure, some very interesting conversations on that topic with your fellow congregants.

The difference between OT and NT is that under NT rules you are no longer commanded to worship but invited - and all sins are forgiven in return for that worship. Your free will, to worship or not, is recognized as is the fault that is Jehovah’s for the Fall. Either way, all who do not worship are damned so that’s the same; but it is nice to be invited rather than ordered.

among us non-orthodox Jews.

And the OT never speaks of the whole world being commanded to worship or invited, and in fact over and over only and specifically commands Jews to do stuff, and act, and all laws/rules/commandments are only for Jews and not at all something that neighbors/strangers/”others” have to obey or should even want to obey—

it’s a restricted country club. ; >

Omnipotence isn’t part of it at all really and can’t be an attribute of this God, because all thruout it there are other people with other beliefs who are either killed, invaded, or tricked or brokered with or allied with us thanks to God talking to David or Solomon, etc—yet it’s almost always those other Gods/beliefs that we believe and worship and get worshipped by us (and then our God smites and punishes us for straying)- and not the other way around—from Egyptians to idols to Greeks to …

basically it’s simply an us/them thing, and the “other” has everything we have, just different—gods, rules, lands, justice, the way they treat strangers, etc…

But am I the only one who denotes a rise in the problems of man, when we went with this whole “One God” idea.

That’s all. Makes no difference. No association whatsoever between number of gods worshiped and relief of human suffering or improvement in human behavior.

i’d hate the shit all the Greek gods did to people-but they’re all killers and inciters, so it probably would be just as deadly.

Which means God is too, if you believe the Old Testament. I think I mean more in the sense of a certain amount of respect for all the qualities necessary for society and life itself, instead of the narrow qualities represented by the monotheistic deities.

Of course this respect for diversity never extended to other religions, whose pantheons differed.

I fall down laughing.

Seriously, no bounds on the range of foolishness, none at all.

“That’s the orthodox christian [sic]interpretation.” Well, yes it is. Which is what I represented it to be. So why would I need to re-read Luther? Why does rootless sound like he’s disagreeing even when what he cites supports what others have already said? Because he seeks to antagonize, first and foremost, solely to be noticed.

Go bother people who might care what you think. I do not.

—petty, vicious, contradictory… amoral even

but no way omnipotent.

Heh heh heh.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

On easter sunday every year:

The Romans were the masters when Jesus walked the land
In Judea and in Galilee they ruled with an iron hand
And the poor were sick with hunger and the rich were clothed in splendour
And the rebels whipped and crucified hung rotting as a warning
And Jesus knew the answer
Said, Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, said, Love your enemies
But Judas was a Zealot and he wanted to be free
Resist, he said, The Romans’ tyranny

Jesus was a conjuror, miracles were his game
And he fed the hungry thousands and they glorified his name
He cured the lame and the lepers, he calmed the wind and the weather
And the wretched flocked to touch him so their troubles would be taken
And Jesus knew the answer
All you who labour, all you who suffer only believe in me
But Judas sought a world where no one starved or begged for bread
The poor are always with us, Jesus said

http://www.mysongbook.de/msb/songs/s/sta…

I also seek a world where no one starves or begs for bread. And I wait for no afterlife or unity pony, either.

“That’s the orthodox christian [sic]interpretation.” Well, yes it is. Which is what I represented it to be. So why would I need to re-read Luther? Why does rootless sound like he’s disagreeing even when what he cites supports what others have already said? Because he seeks to antagonize, first and foremost, solely to be noticed.

Go bother people who might care what you think. I do not.

You like uttering pronouncements and don’t like it when anyone calls you on your bs.

You misrepresent both the OT and the NT in the classical fashion of european anti-semites.
Good work.

Judaism, whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, Reconstructionist or Kabbalist, is strictly monotheistic. This core belief is expressed by all scholars, and forms the opening statement of faith and worship in the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.

The Hebrew language is rich with nuance and translations vary somewhat, but not on the issue of God being a singular entity. Likewise, there is no one comprehensive authority on articles of faith within Judaism, nor even agreement on which of the many principles are most important. Philo of Alexandria listed five articles of faith, while Maimonides totaled 13 principles but simultaneously held that every verse of the Torah was equally as valuable and commanding as every other; other authorities made lists with items numbering from one, Hillel the Elder’s Golden Rule, to the strict enforcement of all 613 Mosaic mizvot (commandments or laws) – or as many of them as current conditions will allow.

The sole unifying fundamental thesis for all Jews is the principle of the One True God; modern variants which treat the gods of others as manifestations of YHWH do not allow that there are actually other gods – only that the One God may choose to reveal himself in different ways to different people. While Jews may tolerate worship of other gods by non-Jews it is still considered idolatry, and for a Jew it is one of the three cardinal proscriptions along with murder and forbidden sexual relations that fall in the category of yehareg ve’al ya’avor , meaning “One should let himself be killed rather than violate it”.

Christianity affirms the principle of unitary monotheism coexistent with a multiplicity of attributes – the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit – but only One True God:

Ephesians 4:6 - One God and Father of all, who [is] above all, and through all, and in you all.

James 2:19 - Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

In Islam, regardless of schism, the principle of One True God is again paramount. The Shahada is the principle statement of faith, upon which the whole of Islamic theology and dogma depend:

There is no God but God (Allah), and Mohammed is His Prophet.

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread….

For all I know, the next line after “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” could be “O, and Moloch is another.”

The principle of omnipotence is firmly rooted in Judaism, based on the teachings of the Old Testament and extending across divisional theologies until very recent times. Without wishing to descend into a battle of dueling verses, because the Bible is if nothing else a morass of contradiction and inconsistency, we can find in Isaiah 45:5-7;

“I am the LORD, and there is none else, beside Me there is no God; I have girded thee, though thou hast not known Me; that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside Me; I am the LORD; and there is none else; I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the LORD, that doeth all these things.”

In Job 42:2 we read;

“I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.”

When Maimonides declared:

“that which is impossible has a permanent and constant property, which is not the result of some agent, and cannot in any way change, and consequently we do not ascribe to God the power of doing what is impossible. No thinking man denies the truth of this maxim; none ignore it, but such as have no idea of Logic…. It is impossible that God should produce a being like Himself, or annihilate, corporify, or change himself. The power of God is not assumed to extend to any of these impossibilities”

he was not denying God’s omnipotence but affirming it as being limited only in the sense of self-contradictory absurdities. Otherwise, he held God’s power to be absolute and unbounded.

Current Orthodox teachings are unchanged. From a 1971 letter from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe:

“For, when a Jew declares daily, Hashem hu ha’elokim, ein od milvado (G-d is the Lord, there is nothing but Him), it is plainly meant that this is the whole day, not part of the day. Moreover, a scientist with such a split personality [one who tries to keep separate religion and science]is a contradiction also to the concept of Hashem ehod (G-d is one), as the Hazal (sages) interprets ‘ehod’—aleph, hes, dales—that aleph, i.e. alupho shel olom, rules not only in the seven heavens but also on earth (hes – ‘eight’), and in all the four directions (dales)2 (SeMaG, quoted in Beis Yosef, Tur Orach Haim, par. 61).

In adapting to expansion of Enlightenment thinking and especially following the Holocaust, Jewish thinking underwent a spasm of theodicity. In much but not all of Conservative and Reform Judaism today as well as some forms of Free Will Protestantism, God is said to be capable of acting in the world only through persuasion and not by coercion. Modern liberal branches of Reformed Judaism offer a religious concept rather like a smorgasbord, where consumers may pick and choose whichever portion of the theological spectrum suits their personal spiritual needs – as well as, it must be said, their own carnal predilections – and disregard the rest.

Further, Reconstructionist Jews deny that God is either omnipotent or omniscient, dispute that there is anything particularly chosen about Jews and that God has any sort of special relationship with them, hold that non-Jews are equally able to reach accord with God and achieve union with him, and for the most part deny that God exists as an entity at all. About here the bewildered outsider begins to wonder what the point of continued self-identification with Judaism might be, beyond the comfortable reassurance of a sort of communal social club with a peculiarly unrestrictive set of bylaws.

At what point along the spectrum of belief from omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence to a generalized Sense of Something any given reader might lie is beyond my capability to anticipate, and so individualized nuance will have to be sacrificed in favor of the sort of broad stroke characterizations required to facilitate a flow of conversation. To accommodate any and all variations on the theme of belief in mythical beings would demand that every comment take on the length of a bookshelf full of books, and preclude any meaningful discussion. Those like rootless who find my generalizations offensive should feel free to ignore them, as I shall ignore calls to slice the God loaf into ever finer slivers of nuance.

Finally, as always, rootless seeks to change the subject to one in which he can claim to have been victimized. Sadly for him on this attempt, however, I have said nothing whatsoever about Semites. I am, on principle, neither anti nor pro on the whole Semite Question, although I find the continued belligerence and cruelty of both Israelis and Palestinians to be unforgivable on any moral basis. If that is anti-Semitic, so be it. As to religion in general, so long as it is kept out of the public sphere and does no harm to others I could care less.

Our God is just one God and there are others (whether they’re called “false” or not—the other ones don’t belong to us).

We believe in one unitary invisible God—but the whole world didn’t, and doesn’t—and doesn’t have to. And the existence and appeal of various other Gods is seen thruout the OT.

that’s key too.

It’s not that other Gods are our God in other forms—it’s that our God is ours and other people had/have other Gods and beliefs. We have never been the majority population in any region and have always been surrounded by people who believe in other Gods—that’s part of the us/them thing—and why it’s “our” God and specified as such, and why there are strong laws saying we’re not allowed to worship other ones—if this God was the only one, there’d be no need to forbid worship of other ones, or to punish any Jews who did so.

never actually killed another God or Gods, nor made it impossible for us to turn to those other Gods, and over and over we turned to other Gods in spite of being forbidden—omnipotence can’t be the right term, i don’t think.

(seriously—other Gods are all over the place in the OT—an omnipotent God would have killed them all or cast them out of the heavens or universe or something—he’s a really bloodthirsty God in the OT—and then there’s our own invention of these conceptions of our God in the first place which automatically means other people invented other ones, etc) I love this stuff! : >

also—don’t use Hasidics as interchangable with Orthodox—they’re way different and far more cultish.