Do you stone people for not observing the sabbath?
No, but as I said above, it's not because of any moral problem against it. The law that says that people who break the Sabbath are to be stoned is still 100% in effect. The reason it's not used is because there is no Sanhedrin, so no one in this time has the power to impose a death penalty. Once the Sanhedrin is re-established, the death penalty will come back into practice.
And therein lies the problem with religion. Don't believe what I believe? I'm going to kill you! and they say us atheists have no morals or ethics at least we don't kill people for having different opinions To bad for all the christians/non-religious people in Israel then. I'm sure Israel would be violating multiple things on the decleration of human rights if the Sahedrin is re-established.
When the Sanhedrin is re-established that won't be a problem, because there will be no Christians, no non-religious Jews, and no declaration of human rights. If you don't believe me just wait and see.
NB: In this post where I say "man" I also mean "woman"
That's very, very disturbing... I really hope that's not what they're teaching you at Yeshiva... And if it is, I am saddened but ultimately not surprised that they could fuel such a terrible xenophobia.
It is precisely this disconnect with reality on the part of the orthodox that is tearing apart the Jewish community in Australia, and indeed the world. It's little known, but there's a virtual civil cold war being waged in Israel between the religious right and the secular left. It is precisely due to this vitriol and dogma that it happens. That is when you get things like
http://ajnwatch.blogspot.com, in Australia, committing hatespeech "in the name of their religion". The situation is far worse in Israel. If you drive a car through the religious neighbourhood streets of Jerusalem on a Friday night, your car will be stoned. In fact, literally hundreds of orthodox Jews will congregate at street intersections in their neighbourhood and just hurl rocks at any cars that dare to pass by. They are, to use a very apt term "meshugganah" ('crazy' in yiddish/hebrew). Indeed, many tourists get turned around in the holy city each year and wind up worse for wear.
It seems strange that these men with such strong personal beliefs would make such a fuss about what others are doing, doesn't it? This can be explained.
When the stridency of a religious man is threatened, that is when the dangers of religion and man mixing come to the fore. Religion is exploited in unspeakable ways to keep the status quo. Consider how the Catholic church lives in constant fear that a scandal might rock its foundations causing hundreds of thousands of its adherents to leave, and so it protects paedophiles.
And in doing so, they commit heinous crimes themselves that are even more sinful than what they fear. But they don't see that, because all they see is a power struggle for their beliefs. Man is generally not responsible enough to appropriately deal with this conflict. Sure, there have been some amazing theologians in their time who traversed this path magnificently, but they are the rarity. There are also many adherents (who do not publish brilliant literary works like the aforementioned) who traverse this path well, and epitomise what religion ought to be. Of the self. Pertaining only to those who believe in it. They apply those values to their lives, and not to others. Unfortunately, whilst there are many of these people, they are not the norm. But I digress, back to defensive reactions...
And so, while the catholic church bustles to sweep the "problem" under the rug, there are hundreds of children who have their lives ruined, are never served justice and are spat on for trying to get it. All because they are demonised by an exploitative religion. How is it even fair to turn around and say "you're destroying our religion by demanding justice for an unspeakable crime!" It isn't. It's vile to even think about what they're doing. These poor children who put their trust in their priests and pastors... and for what? To have the people they trusted the most abuse that trust so badly that they can never trust anybody again.
Therefore, it is not religion inherently that is bad, but rather, man dealing with religion. To be perfectly honest, most men are not responsible enough to deal with religion properly. All too often, they will abuse it, in order to protect their beliefs and deal with their inferiority complex. Because that's ultimately what it is. If you were so sure of your beliefs, you would not need to kill others because of them. You would be perfectly contented applying those beliefs to yourself, and wouldn't care a jot what others are doing with their lives (so long as they're not infringing on your rights). But instead, the 'perceived threat' is too large. For some reason, the idea that others are thinking different things necessitates "dealing" with them (i.e. killing them or changing their ways), or otherwise their values might somehow bleed over and corrupt yours. But if your values were so strong, why would it matter what some apparently misguided fool thinks? But there is the contradiction, you know in your heart of hearts that it is a fragile faith, not a rock solid evidence based knowledge set, and it is for that reason that you have to fight to protect it, because you can't logically reason it.
It's maddening! Humanity is so insecure in the first place that it needs a blind faith to fill in the knowledge gaps. But it is precisely this stridency without fact that then leads them to dogmatically protect it or their entire world caves in. And because there is no logic, the only way to force the issue is with passion. And, due to the human condition, this passion leads to violence and these disgusting crimes. It is so sad, really, but that is the reason for thousands years of conflict past, but hopefully not too many more to come...
Hooray for agnosticism. We don't know the answers, and we know that nobody currently does, and that it might turn out that nobody will ever know, the answers, but that doesn't really bother us anyway because we're just happy to be along for the ride and make of life what we can
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