Taken from here
Rabbi Avi ‘I have overwhelming proof that Judaism is true’ Shafran is at it again, bashing the skeptics and praising the believers. In this article he goes after Hitchens for attacking Falwell.
Now, its definitely true that Hitchens likes to use nasty rhetoric. No argument there. And Hitchens was particularly nasty about Falwell. I’m not even going to get into the discussion of whether Falwell was good for the Jews or not (not). But Shafran then goes and makes the same bogus point he has made multiple times in the past. He writes:
While religion can, and often is, misused, there is much to be said for a society pledged, however imperfectly, to the Divine, over one that regards human beings as nothing more than quickened carcasses.
Really? What about Islamic Jihad? Is there much to be said for them too? Would we rather have a bunch of Islamic Jihadists living down the street, with their ‘imperfect pledges’ to the Divine? Or would we rather have a bunch of skeptical atheists?
Sometimes I think that Cross Currents, in their zeal to defend the Christian Far Right, completely lose touch of reality. Belief in the Divine has been the signature call of almost all of our persecutors for the last 2,000 years. (DB: almost?) The Romans believed in multiple Gods, the Christians believed in God, and Moslems have a very definite concept of the one true God. (DB: And Hitler's willing executioners were themselves believing Christians, or the product of strict Christian upbringings)
Why on earth is Shafran under the delusion that belief in God is helpful? True, Hitler was maybe an agnostic, (DB: Hitler was a baptized Catholic and a former alter boy, who tapped into centuries of Catholic anti-Semitism, and used the rhetoric of Catholic anti-Semites and their techniques of persecution, including the ghetto and the yellow star) but the Nazis drewheavily almost entirely on centuries of European Christian Anti-Semitism to achieve their evil goals.
Rabbi Avi ‘I have overwhelming proof that Judaism is true’ Shafran is at it again, bashing the skeptics and praising the believers. In this article he goes after Hitchens for attacking Falwell.
Now, its definitely true that Hitchens likes to use nasty rhetoric. No argument there. And Hitchens was particularly nasty about Falwell. I’m not even going to get into the discussion of whether Falwell was good for the Jews or not (not). But Shafran then goes and makes the same bogus point he has made multiple times in the past. He writes:
While religion can, and often is, misused, there is much to be said for a society pledged, however imperfectly, to the Divine, over one that regards human beings as nothing more than quickened carcasses.
Really? What about Islamic Jihad? Is there much to be said for them too? Would we rather have a bunch of Islamic Jihadists living down the street, with their ‘imperfect pledges’ to the Divine? Or would we rather have a bunch of skeptical atheists?
Sometimes I think that Cross Currents, in their zeal to defend the Christian Far Right, completely lose touch of reality. Belief in the Divine has been the signature call of almost all of our persecutors for the last 2,000 years. (DB: almost?) The Romans believed in multiple Gods, the Christians believed in God, and Moslems have a very definite concept of the one true God. (DB: And Hitler's willing executioners were themselves believing Christians, or the product of strict Christian upbringings)
Why on earth is Shafran under the delusion that belief in God is helpful? True, Hitler was maybe an agnostic, (DB: Hitler was a baptized Catholic and a former alter boy, who tapped into centuries of Catholic anti-Semitism, and used the rhetoric of Catholic anti-Semites and their techniques of persecution, including the ghetto and the yellow star) but the Nazis drew
(DB:Safran also speaks about atheist/communist killing fields, nd suggest that religionand disbelief lead equally to murder. When he does this he is comparing two things that are not alike. Like the Catholics of yesteryear, our Jihadists kill in the name of their religion. No one has ever been thrown in a ghetto or a pit of corpses for the greater glory of atheisim.)
The bottom line is that some societies are evil (from our POV), and some are good, and it doesn’t seem to make much difference whether they believe in God or not. If anything, more of our persecutors have been God believers than not. Cross-Currents
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