Eh, the fact that we were nobility in the 1700s is what allows me to keep tracing my family back to prehistory. Problem is that in the 1500s-1700s, there was a lot of… adjustment… of history to make it look better.
And I know it’s a slur, but it’s still accurate. The princess phone, the shopping, the accent, everything fit. (I’d never use the word to describe anyone I didn’t know that well, but the specific picture it paints of the 60s is accurate.)
Mom’s the only person I know who actually went to Woodstock… then turned around because the traffic was too heavy and she got bored.
lol at FinnAgain’s hystrionic rant about Jews for Jesus. It’s funny, if anyone of any other religion on this board ranted like that, they’d be denounced as religious fanatics.
Jews for Jesus an evil conspiracy to destroy Judaism. lol
The irony of all this is that with all the accusations of anti-semitism levelled against leftists, they are actually less hateful of Judaism than pretty much every other religion.
Half correct. They’re an evil cult designed to destroy Judaism. Whether or not they qualify as a conspiracy is up for discussion. Their leadership certainly knows what they’re doing. Whether or not their membership does is up for debate. Friar, though, certainly does which is why he was reduced to dodging questions, slinging strawmen, etc… when caught in his lies.
Are you even going to attempt a factual rebuttal or just this absurdity of denying the truth? JfJ verifiably traffic in lies and admit that their goal is to convert all Jews to Christians, thereby eliminating Judaism. It’s totally beyond the pale for me to mention that fact, eh?
No, if other “religion” (I’m a person, dude, not a religion) ranted like that, we’d probably check to see if they had their facts straight, not simply get our panties in a bunch because they were upset about something.
Strangely, you seem not to care about the facts, some of which were linked to at JfJ’s own website, in the posts of mine I cited. Why is that?
As for what you think JfJ has to do with political leftism, that’s anybody’s guess. Demographically Evangelicals tend to be on the religious right in any case.
Care to address the actual facts, or just avoid them and pretend that I’ve somehow made some sort of mistake?
How about starting small and addressing a single factual claim I’ve made, and then working your way up to addressing the larger logical chain I’ve presented?
Eliminating Judaism as a unique strain is the natural progression of Christianity. So you hate Christianity shrugs. If Christianity is true then this is right and in line with the will of God, if not then its not, and if God is really the Magical Sky Pixie of the atheists then it just doesn’t matter. You’re just engaging in more hyperbole, more fanatically religious rhetoric. Christianity wants complete and total conversion of everyone and that includes Jews. Jews for Jesus want to maintain a Jewish identity within Christianity. The entire point of Christianity is to make it so that the entire world share in the covenant with God, so that ALL people are the people of God. If everyone is the people of God then that eliminates the special relationship that Judaism has and constitutes a destruction of Judaism. Getting all hysterical about it is silly. No one is out to kill your family, they just want them to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Getting this angry about Jews for Jesus is like hating Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And of course the atheist posse would talk about how it’s impossible for Christians to have their facts straight, that it doesn’t matter because it’s about the magical sky pixie anyway, so there are no facts to get straight. Of course when a Jew rants like this about Judaism no one says a word. Jews for Jesus has nothing to do with political leftism. You ranting like this about a religious matter getting a pass does.
Address the facts? What for? It’s all more hate-filled religious rhetoric. So some Christian converts with an ethnic tie to Judaism want to synthesize both. So what? A Baptist minister named, “Rosen”, has no legitimate claim on ethnic Judaism? What facts should I address? I don’t think what you’re saying is wrong that Jews for Jesus are Christians, but your hysterical ranting about it is a bit overwrought. It’s just about where you draw your line. Haredim in Israel would rant the same way about Reform Jews. Hell Orthodox in America rant the same way. “Self-Hating Jew”, is a common epithet against such types, and generally refers to any Jew that doesn’t completely buy into the Zionist agenda or believe in a holistic continuity of conservative political leanings. Of course there is a lot of debate about what authentic Judaism is. Everyone has their line, and they always interestingly enough draw the line somewhere on the other side of themselves, so that whatever flavor of Judaism THEY practice is the authentic one.
Haven’t you yourself claimed that you are a secular atheist? Please correct me if I am mistaken. But if so then Orthodox Jews wouldn’t even consider you to be actually a Jew, they would consider you a threat to authentic Judaism just like you consider Jews for Jesus as such. It’s all about where you choose to draw the line.
I’m not going to fall into the trap of trying to factually dispute what you are saying because I am certain you have meticulously researched this and am willing to buy that you are citing your sources well because you always do, whether it’s internet pew pew or matters of Judaism. It’s just the level of vitriole and its hokeyness as it spills forth from your mouth.
People believe that Christ was a Jew and that he was the Messiah, so if you think that people wanting Jews to accept Christ is a threat to Judaism then you need to recognize that all Christians want to destroy Judaism because they want EVERYONE to embrace Jesus. There is a special relationship to Judaism because it’s viewed as the progenitor of Christianity. So some people with a tenuous relationship to Judaism want to combine the two. Whatever.
Also, kittens!
(You could’ve just asked me why I hate America)
But we’ve gone through this before in GD, so drop this tripe about me hating Christianity. I have no problem with Christianity. If Christians want to convert everybody on the planet, fine. If Christians want to specifically send missionaries all over the globe and argue for why Christianity is awesome, fine. If Christians specifically want to target Judaism for annihilation through conversion, especially after centuries of such behavior in the most abhorrent form, then no, not fine. If they do that and specifically go out of their war to use lies? Definitely not fine. If they specifically go out of their way to use lies and also to target young Jewish children away from home for the first time and looking for a social group to fit into? Very, very not fine.
Surely you can see the difference between “tell everybody you meet about how nifty Jesus is” and “specifically seek our Jews so we can eliminate their entire religion, and use deception and fraud to get them to convert. Oh yah, and focus on their kids.”
100% false. They use this as a deliberate fraud. In fact, they advise their members to prohibit their children from marrying Jews since Jews are “unbelievers.”
As an a-theist gnostic agnostic Jew, I will simply say :smack:
You’re missing the point, neo bullet-dodge style.
What?
Because if it’s true, then it’s not “hate filled” or “histrionic” or whatever.
Truth is the age old defense against slander, irrationality, error, etc… after all.
Oh, any number of facts. Like how it’s bullshit that they’re aiming at “ethnic” Judaism but deliberately aim to subvert modern religious Judaism, about how they use lies and malicious fraud to target Jewish children, about how there can be no “synthesis” of Judaism and Christianity since it inevitably results in something that A) isn’t Judaism and B) is Christianity?
It’s like saying that you can have a “synthesis” between Islam and Christianity by denying that Jesus was the messiah and saying that there is only one God and Mohammed is his last and one true prophet whose words are unchanging and 100% correct… but you can still put up colored lights in winter. It’s not a “synthesis”, that’s simply Islam. Likewise saying that Jewish theology is totally wrong and Jesus is the messiah and the Bible is the Word of God, it’s not a “synthesis”, it’s Christianity.
That’s one of the fundamental problems and the nature of their dishonesty. They don’t say “Christianity is awesome and much better than other religions, you should convert.” They say “Gee, why don’t you adopt all of my religious beliefs, abandon all of yours, admit that your religion was wrong on all of its major and minor theological points, and we’ll call that a good blend between our two faiths.”
I’m pretty sure that “renouncing Judaism and becoming a Christian, complete with worshiping Jesus as the messiah and believing that Jewish theology is entirely wrong and Christian theology is entirely correct” is a pretty objective line. We’re not talking “conducts services in Hebrew or English” we’re talking renouncing Judaism and becoming a Christian.
If my facts are in order, it’s not “hokey”. It’s true.
It’s deserved vitriol. Again, if Christians want to hand out pamphlets on the street or go door to door on a Saturday morning or have radios/TV shows or gigantic billboards or project holograms into the sky? No problem. If they specifically target Jews with the aim of wiping the entire religion from the face of the Earth, it’s offensive for clear historical reasons. If they do this via deliberate and methodical trickery and fraud, it’s even more offensive/unacceptable. If they, then, specifically use their deliberate campaign of trickery and fraud to go after Jewish children when they’re most emotionally vulnerable? Nuh unh.
There’s a difference between wanting everybody to think Jesus is the messiah, and *specifically targeting a religion which Christians have oppressed, for centuries, often specifically in order to force conversion. *
Lucky us.
P.S. By the way, seriously, think about this for a moment. If it’s “hateful” to say that Christianity can have whatever beliefs they want but they shouldn’t specifically seek to eliminate Judaism, and especially not through deception, and especially not preying on Jewish children… then why isn’t it hateful for Christians to believe that Judaism should not exist at all? That the belief that some but not all Christians have that Judaism is fatally flawed and must be removed as an historical curiosity is ‘just what they believe’, but that we’d really rather not be targeted for elimination by the very same religion that persecuted us for hundreds of years is awful, just awful!
You’ve got a huge mental blindspot here.
There is, of course, a specific distinction that you are oh so carefully ignoring.
While it might be true that “Christianity” seeks the conversion of the entiure world to following Jesus, (the Great Commission and all that), it is not true that “Christianity” embraces telling specific lies for the purpose of attacking and converting the children of observant Jews to rip the children from the beliefs and culture of their parents.
Most Christians with whom I associate hold the Jews for Jesus in utter contempt for their dishonesty. I can sort of see why that does not bother ypou, of course.
FinnA, if you don’t believe in God, the God of Israel, the God of the Covenant, then you have no reason to defend Judaism other than ethnic pride. Ethnic pride is nothing to base religious ferver on. Jews who become Christians & then want to either keep or discard the historic, ethnic & cultural trapping of Judaism are just trading one delusion for another.
Dennis Prager is right. He doesn’t care for “Jews for Jesus”* but he’s more concerned by “Jews for Nothing”. I would add “Jews for Anything EXCEPT Jesus”.
*Unless Prager has changed his mind, he believes Messianic Jews should answer to a Beth Din as to if they believe Jesus is God and if they evangelize other Jews. If they believe in Jesus’ Deity & evangelizing fellow Jews, he believes they should not be recognized as proper Jews, but if they renounce Jesus’ Deity and leave their fellow Jews alone about accepting him as Messiah, they should be accepted. Of course, this would rule out the vast majority of MJs as proper Jews.
Incidentally, I do believe most MJ’s do err in accepting the “Eternal Hell as the consequence of disbelief in Jesus” doctrine. I believe most conservative Christians err in accepting that doctrine also, but that it’s particularly grievous when MJ’s use that with regular Jews.
And this right here is all that is relevant in your posts. So you’re not ok with Christians trying to convert everyone. You see the act of conversion as annihilation. You said it right there. You went and said one thing, “It’s ok if Christian want to convert everyone on the planet.”, and then went and nullified it when it comes to the Jews. So you are not ok with the central tenet of Christianity. It’s as simple as that. Why try to pretend a tolerance that doesn’t exist? Why speak in absolutes with caveats? Why not be straight up about your intolerance for Christianity?
Why is conversion for others ok, but it’s annihilation for Jews?
As for the truly bizarre idea that truth and hate are incompatible, I don’t really know how to respond to that other than to say that I think the idea is complete bullshit. You can be correct about someone and hate them for it, or think the same thing about someone and not hate them for it.
You synthesize Judaism and Atheism. What’s the difference? If you don’t believe in God then theology is a pointless endeavor, so what do you care about which theology wins out when God doesn’t even exist? Why can you be culturally Jewish and reject the central thing that makes a Jew a Jew, but one cannot embrace the central thing that makes a Jew a Jew and also believe that Christ was the messiah?
The points that Finn made to which you responded were specific to the Jews for Jesus bunch.
I have known a few messianic Jews who were not associated with the Jews ofr Jesus, but they have their own brand of (Christian) religion that attempts to re-create the Christianity of the period between the Crucifixion and the fall of Jerusalem, (generally based on some rather historically unsupportable assumptions.). However, they tended to be small groups with no strong evangelical outlook, who had arisen among a tiny groups of urban or college clustered kids seeking to “find their own way.” I think Finn overstates his case when he includes all “messianic Jews” with the Jews for Jesus crowd, (although he is correct that messianic Jews are Christian and no longer religiously Jewish), but the numbers and the power of the cash from the various Baptist congregations funding the Jews for Jesus makes that group a legitimate target and the rest of the groups called messianic Jews are too small and scattered to warrant much attention.
Except that this tenet of Christianity - that the whole world must convert - is inherently intolerant, pretty much by the very definition of the word “tolerance”. I feel no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.
I happen to disagree with Finn here - I don’t think proselytizing is legitimate. I think it’s evil, no matter how its done or to whom its addressed.
Fine it’s a legitimate target, but it’s pretty hypocritical of an atheist to favor one theology over another.
Also his arguments that Jews have been singled out throughout history are patently false. Jews have NEVER been singled out. A special recognition has been set aside for them as the progenitor faith of Christianity, but they have not been singled out for conversion.
His argument is just not logically consistent. If one can be an atheist and a Jew, why can’t one be a Christian and a Jew? If Christians have been trying to convert everyone throughout history how can he claim special pleading against it being ok to convert Jews? Is it similarly not ok to try to convert Muslims or Native Americans because they were, “singled out like everyone else”, and there is a history of trying to destroy their culture and supplant it with Christianity?
Tolerance itself is not a value. Trying to treat it as one leads to laughably absurd phrases like, “I feel no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.”
It’s double-speak. You talk about not tolerating the intolerant as though you are tolerant and they are not. No, you are just mutually intolerant of one another.
Ok, as long as you are honest about your intolerance of Christianity I have no problem with that. It’s less hypocritical.
He needs to decide whether Judaism is a religion and an ethnicity or an ethnicity, because if it’s just an ethnicity then there is no reason why someone can’t be Jewish AND Christian just as one can be Irish AND Christian.
He is not favoring one theology; he is condemning one group that lies.
This is just silly.
First, you are misreading what he actually posted.
He said he had no problem with Christianity attempting to convert the whole world. It is a comment about Christinity in general, spoken with a certain awareness that, whatever Christianity in general might wish, it ain’t gonna happen.
He then said that it was wrong and hateful for a specific group of Christians to attempt to annihilate Judaism through conversion when Christianity, in general, had persecuted Jews for so long.
As to your claim that Jews have not been targeted, you can take that up with the many Jews throughout Europe over hundreds of years who were told, in one country after another, (most famously in Spain), to either convert of leave the country. The idea that Jews have NEVER been singled out are so patently absurd as to dismiss any other argument you present. That ignorance of history is simply astonishing.
For you to play games of equivocation does nothing to harm his point. Certainly a person who is ethnically Jewish can be a Christian, but pretending that he was arguing against that point is just silly.
Just to clarify, I was responding specifically to Friar on that point, as he and I have specifically argued about JfJ in the past and I knew exactly what his reference to “Messianic Jews” was meant to bring up.
I do wish that the other groups would simply call themselves Temple-Period Christians or what have you, and I do think that the “Messianic Jews” label is silly, but it’s not dishonest and slimy in the way that JfJ uses it.
So now you’re going to try to tell me what my religion’s proper view on God should be?
Nice.
You are either honestly confused or have some sort of axe to grind, I’m not sure which. I “nullified” nothing. There is an objective difference to seeking to spread the Gospel by talking to everybody about it, and specifically focusing on Jews with the aim of eliminating Judaism.
If the doctrine was “Buddhists need to abandon their faith and become Christians. Let’s specifically try to convert Buddhists now until there are none left”, that’d be aiming at the destruction of Buddhism.
My beliefs are 100% compatible with religious Judaism, and I’ll trust all the rabbis I’ve spoken to about it over gentiles’ views of what my Judaism should be.
“There’s a difference between Scientologists believing that everybody should be ‘clear’ and offering silly tests on the sidewalk and them deciding that your children’s high school should all be made ‘clear’ and aggressively trying to convert every single student there.”
“No there isn’t.”
Or, ya know, the Alhambra Decree. So we’ve got about a millennium of history just in Spain. Really want to see about the rest of Europe?
Because Jewish theology has no creed or “principles of faith” and is consistent with any number of beliefs on God including but not limited the view that God is somethign like the “unified field” theory of physics and that Kether is in Malkuth as Malkuth is in Kether. It does not, however, contain the possibility that God is triune and one ‘facet’ of God specifically said that Judaism is over and everybody should convert away from it.
Well, I’d wager that an, ahem, crusade to convert Muslims would be seen as rather offensive.
Likewise, I’d wager that after the Indian Schools that an attempt to destroy what little remains of their religious traditions by aggressively trying to convert them all to Christianity might raise a few hackles.
Actually he broadened his target to Christianity in general.
Actually he said he has a problem with Christians trying to convert Jews. It’s ok that they try to convert EVERYONE ELSE. The word, ‘annihilation’ is mere hyperbole. Conversos are not annihilated.
I didn’t say they weren’t targetted. I said they weren’t SINGLED OUT. Which they weren’t. Go to the Black Hills in the Dakotas and explain to them how the Jews were singled out for having their culture destroyed by Christianity. They have never been singled out, because Christians did the same thing to other groups, including in Spain where they kicked the Muslims out at the same time as the expulsion of the Jews. That ignorance of history is simply astonishing. :rolleyes:
Singled out. I am not sure that term means what you think it means.
