Originally Posted by
crimzy
http:///forum/post/2833747
I agree with you to an extent but I am very skeptical that the rules that we have been taught are actually g-d's word. I don't know that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were ever actual people and I don't know if I believe that Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son for g-d. What I do know is what makes sense to me.
Morality, conscience, generosity, virtue... these are all gifts that have been given to man (though some choose to ignore them). It makes more sense to me to believe thatg g-d gives us his words. People devote their entire lives to blind faith that their "faith" is the only accurate one. Logic tends to go out the window. This idea is only reinforced because I believe that religion causes intolerance, bigotry, violence, etc. that I truly believe are violative of g-d's wishes. It doesn't make sense to me that so many ignore morality in favor of blind faith.
I was raised in a conservative synagogue, and none of it made any sense to me. I do not speak fluent hebrew and merely learned to memorize the prayers by repetition, not out of genuine belief. At some point as I grew into adulthood, I decided that the Jewish religion is important more because of its history, and because of what people have had to sacrifice to be a part of the community, rather than because the story of Noah has so much personal meaning in my life.
My kids will be raised with a Jewish identity. It is crucial that the identity of Judaism continue because of what our people have been through to preserve the religion. But I personally don't believe that the things that we are taught are accurate, divine prophecy. I may be an enigma, because I am highly skeptical of religion, but I do believe in g-d. Weird, huh?
Not so very weird after all, this is where my Husband and I are basically at this point; except we're doubting the G-d thing a little bit too.
And for having grown up in the Conservative movement your views are very much in line with a lot of Conservatives (Conservative JEWS not conservative politics, big difference not the same thing, just to clarify for people who are reading; Conservative Judaism has nothing to do with American politics, LoL), that I grew up with.
My parents were Conservative in their youth and grew to be more religious. They sent me and my younger brothers to religious schools so we'd be able to make well-educated decisions as we grew up as to how religious we wanted to be. My middle brother is now in Yeshiva University studying to be an Orthodox Rabbi, my youngest brother is Orthodox but studying to be a geologist, and here I am, living in the mountains with a tattoo and eating bacon whenever I can get it. I was educated. Well educated. And I have made my decision.
There is no inexorable proof that G-d exists. There is also no proof that He does not. I don't know if He's out there, and neither does anyone else. Anyone who says they KNOW is lying, they are also trampling on the concept of "faith." KNOWING is not having FAITH. And I don't really want faith; I want to KNOW. And since I CAN'T know, I simply do not know. Militant Agnostic, you see?
In the meantime I will continue to cover my knees and elbows and hair and abide by all the rules when I go to visit my brothers and my parents, and I will keep a Kosher house so that they can come visit me... because I do not like to stir the pot, because my family is more important to me than how I feel about religion. They will never know about my tattoo or how much I absolutely ADORE cheese on my turkey burgers.
And if children ever enter the picture.... oh lordy. That's going to be a looooooooooooooooooooong discussion. I will probably do for them what my parents did for me; give them the opportunity to make an educated decision. But then again I don't know how I feel about putting someone else through what I went through; it was an incredibly painful thing to go through being the "irreligious one" in all the religious schools. Children are horrendously cruel. They pick on the fat ones, the slow ones, the ones with the big glasses and the ones with the parents who drive on the Sabbath. No mercy. My brothers had a different experience; my folks had become religious by the time they entered school, so they didn't have the same obstacles I did; merely different ones.
...and yet.... all children will have obstacles in any school they go to for any reason whatsoever. Children are cruel no matter where you go.
...which is why I don't have children right now.....
...I could go on in loops like this for hours. LoL.
And it's more than just that.... simply b/c people died for something, does that then mean that I am now OBLIGATED to uphold it? b/c generations of pple sacrificed themselves b/c they believed in something, does that make it RIGHT? ...or is that just Jewish guilt?
....talk about blasphemy
