99% of the time "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic. And yes, I will absolutely elaborate on this if asked.
Credit: @Rabbit Cohen
Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
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This is a long article, but the theory hits *hard* with me and connects really well.
The basic gist is that autistics almost always define our identities by what we do and our personal traits, while non-autistics almost always define their identities by their relationships (in particular to social groups)
If you don't have it in you to read all of it, definitely read the section: "How does having an experientially-constructed identity impact relationships?".
The Identity Theory of Autism: How Autistic Identity Is Experienced Differently » NeuroClastic
Terra Vance posits that Autistic people experience empathy and emotions differently because the way autistic identity is structured differs from non-autistic people’s identity constructs.Terra Vance (NeuroClastic)
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@bike I suspect it isn't that much different. Collectivist societies can be awful in their own ways.
They're still better imo, but they have a tendency to focus too hard on traditions and conformity on top of the ideals of communal responsibility.
But in all cases it's a mesh of peer pressure and group identity vs our value identity.
Why You Must Keep The Monsters Human
*(Reposting because my node crashed and lost all my posts and I want to keep this one pinned)*
I've been mulling over making this post for a little bit, but I think it's really **really** important.
It's critically important that you remember and acknowledge the humanity of monsters. Not for their benefit, but for *everyone else's* benefit.
When someone commits a monstrous act or shares a monstrous belief, we want to think of them as an inherently vile and non-human thing.
But doing so shields and protects other monsters.
When you make a Nazi, or any kind of abuser, into a one-dimensional monster. When you make their whole existence *center* on this monstrous act or belief... you make it hard to see their humanity. And that's the point, you don't *want* to see their humanity.
*** You Don't Want To Believe That Someone You Know And Trust (Maybe Even Love) Is Capable Of Such Atrocity. ***
And that's the problem. Because when you reject their humanity, that humanity becomes their shield. Your friend Bob can't possibly be a Nazi or a child-abuser, he's such a loving father and he helped you move!
Because you see their humanity, you can't possibly imagine them as monsters because the monsters have no humanity in your eyes.
There's a reason that when serial killers get caught their neighbors say they couldn't imagine them doing such things.
So don't ignore their humanity, keep it in your mind... so the next one can't use it as a shield.
I'm so incredibly done with people being on a high-horse shitting on advances in AI for no other reason than to feel better about themselves.
Like if your issue is things like copyright and training data? Sure, go off, it's a philosophical argument there about rights, economy, etc. Likewise for arguments about ecological impact (it can be made reasonable there, the companies just don't want to).
But if you're just posting bullshit like "Hahaha, the language model can't do math" or "Look at how it was baited into saying something stupid" as proof that it's worthless: go fuck yourself.
Let alone the people who try to relate AI development to "NFT Bros"... NFTs literally don't do shit, AI actually has multiple proven and valid uses cases but if you think it's the same thing that just shows you have your head up your ass and refuse to look at the world around you.
All of that before getting to the fact that they have shown incredible usefulness for disability accommodations, but I guess it doesn't count if you prefer to be ableist and think we don't need or deserve accommodations?
So tired of people in general right now...
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> "Hahaha, the language model can't do math"
People don't say that, they say haha the **AI** can't do math.
This problem stems from the LLM owners/developers themselves, by calling their product "AI" -- Artificial *Intelligence* -- instead of just LLM, or "Language generator" or something similar, thus creating the expectation that it actually can think, reason, or compute things instead of just generating plausible-sounding text responses to prompts.
And that choice was apparently deliberate on their part, to hype up the product. IOW, don't advertise or imply with misleading buzzwords that your product can do things it can't and then get upset when people mock it for not being able to do what you wanted them to believe it can do.
@Lea or maybe just people always had a wrong idea of what early AI would look like?
People just expected it to jump out fully formed as a super-genius rather than baby steps of abilities...
Maybe, but only because they were taught to by its creators.
Before "generative AI" (creation of new images and text) came out, AI was associated more with things like detecting possible cancer in medical scans, exoplanets in telescope images, recognizing/describing objects in images, finding the structure of proteins, searching for possible new medicines, etc. (not to mention military applications 
).
So as I recall it was looked upon as something to help humans solve problems, having great potential in spite of some negative early experiences with things like automatic stock trading.
So IMO these new generative applications should never have been called "AI" because they are not. Even using terms like saying they were "trained" or "learned" from existing art and texts implies intelligent reasoning which is misleading.
Rather, it was the developers who learned how to make their statistical algorithms better able to extract, recombine, and generate similar, plausible-looking (but not true or accurate) output from the mass of data they collected.
IOW, it's those pre-existing AI applications that can at least on some level be said to have been "trained" and to have "learned" to recognize specific kinds of patterns in visual/spatial/textual data and mark it for *humans* to then interpret and judge for accuracy. And certainly not to make up new stuff.
Making up new stuff should be for entertainment purposes only.
@Lea yeah, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how these came to be... your examples of non-generative AI are all the same basic technology. In crude terms it's an image enhancement/recognition ai run in reverse. (Then LLMs were cutting out the image part)
Their training process is nearly identical in fact.
My point is that it's the generative aspect that is the most fundamental and important difference, and that, along with allowing decision-making (as in the stock market example) is where the harm arises.
I haven't seen anything beneficial from generative models, other than as I said before, entertainment, or perhaps some strictly personal use that is not ever disseminated to others.
Generating anything with it for any serious purpose is harmful and with no positive benefit (unless you consider deep fake propaganda a "benefit").
Using it for research papers, legal briefs, class assignments, fake photos, etc. is harmful for so many reasons I don't have room to state them all here.
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@Lea I've seen a whole bunch of practical beneficial uses:
- I use it personally as a coding assistant (great for repetitive code entry where it'll automatically fill in variable names in repetitive blocks of code, or help with debugging)
- I've used it time to time as a search aid (when used properly with a good system it can drastically cut down on complex searches, taking something that would have taken me anywhere from a half hour to 2 hours into something that takes 5-10 minutes)
- Once or twice I've made use of it as a sort of thesaurus to figure out terms when i didn't have enough to search off of (as in, with a normal thesaurus I would give similar words... but I didn't have similar words in these cases)
- As a disability aid for executive dysfunction (see https://goblin.tools that "magic to-do list" and "compiler" aren't just gimmicks, they're for people with executive dysfunction who struggle breaking down, separating, and sorting tasks)
- I've used it personally as an aid for communication. Being an autistic, when communicating with allistics, especially in a professional environment, it can help edit my message/email to maintain the correct tone as well as make sure I'm getting my point across (again see https://goblin.tools "Formalizer")
- I've also seen in the wild Amazon's got a great use now where it summarizes user reviews for a product (and this has been practically helpful, I saw some issues with products before buying them there and it gave me cause to look deeper into the reviews to figure out whether that issue mattered to me)
Yes, there are plenty of harmful uses, but if you don't see positive uses you're not looking at all.
There's also the upcoming uses that are still being ironed out but inevitable (as in these aren't just hypotheticals, it's just down to predictable progress):
* Dynamic dialogue in games: tech demos of this have been pretty cool, it's not there to replace writers but to allow NPCs to fluidly talk back to anything rather than purely scripted responses)
* Virtual assistants: you may or may not like them, but many people do like them and being able to handle fluid natural language is a huge step compared to before.
I'm not going to pretend that image generators have much use at the moment, there's technologies that come later that they lead to that can be useful (like dynamic generation of 3d models and environments, which can be good progress towards the goal of "holodecks" in the sense of being able to dynamically call up desired environments then tweaking them to be what you need).
Voice generators right now mostly are just good for nice computer voices and maybe in the future being used to splice in dynamic content (such as player character name) into games (right now games either avoid saying your name entirely, use a stand-in name, and/or have a handful of pre-recorded names that are really cool if they happen to be on the list)
I do admit there may be some beneficial uses of generative not-AI that I haven't been able to think of, or might be someday. Meanwhile the internet is being flooded with generated false or meaningless "content" that is in turn being re-ingested as fodder for even more of the same.
Other than coding assistant, most of your examples sound more like analysis (which is fine) than generation of new content (not fine):
- analyzing human-written prose and flagging possible tone or phrasing problems = analytical. Suggesting replacement text is generative but untrustworthy. You have to check that it isn't saying something you didn't mean to say, then trust that it's an improvement.
- summarizing reviews = analyzing: compiling stats in categories of what the reviews say. Not generating reviews or anything new.
- coding assistant: This *is* generating something: garbage. I've played with it and never gotten anything useful. It can only handle coding problems that have already been solved and included in the training data. Anything requiring it to actually solve a problem not already in its store of code fails. There's no logic or reasoning (as you've already pointed out), which would be required to do that. The main problem I found was it would call functions that don't even exist in the language--I assume it finds people's custom functions scraped from somewhere and just uses those function names as if they were built-in functions in the language.
@Lea I think you're quibbling over the term "generative" there, a non-generative version would be outputting just variables rather than raw text. Ie. non-generative analysis is just going to be "x% confident, x% aggressive, x% sympathetic..."
- analyzing prose and flagging tone or phrasing problems = like so many anti-ai people you just assume the person using it is somehow unable to read and understand the text. And frankly as I've already said this is a disability accommodation I'm a little bit pissed off at this response. We can understand these things when pointed out, we can understand whether the text it gives is trash, we're not idiots. What it does is consistently give us text that fixes our tonal issues, and we can recognize those fixes after the fact but can't reasonably do them on our own. So maybe get your head out of your ass when talking about a disability accommodation that someone has first hand experience on and has said so up front.
- summarizing reviews - again, you're just trying to throw away a point because you don't understand what "generative" or "large language model" means.
- coding assistant - and again clearly you made one half-assed attempt to make it do more than it's capable of, considered it trash, and then threw the whole thing away. I've used it plenty, I've used it to speed through refactoring a whole project to change database engines out, I've used it to speed through building UIs with a bunch of buttons. Does it create good code when I just ask it to write a whole application for me? Hell no. But it sure as hell can see me writing a list of buttons and go, "Oh, I recognize the pattern of the names I'm going to fill this in 20 more times with all variables names changed to meet the pattern".
@Lea like I said, you're attacking the definition of generative by ignoring the actual definition.
And I'm done with this conversation since all you're doing is looping back on points I've already called out. You've been an ass, just accept it and move on.
just adrienne
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in reply to just adrienne • •@just adrienne @Rabbit Cohen And followed now!
This was from Facebook memories way back, and I like to when it fits, share those things over to the fediverse.
Adding an edit to explicitly credit because they deserve it.
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in reply to Scott Matter • •@Scott Matter things like:
Judeo-Christian Potluck - A potluck hosted by both Jews and Christians
Judeo-Christian Househould - A family in which one parent is Jewish and the other is Christian
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in reply to wendinoakland has moved… • •@wboucek @Scott Matter yeah, false inclusivity is a huge pain in my ass...
It's why now is the time of year for me to greet people with Happy Holidays and Season's Greetings!
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Charlie Stross
in reply to Scott Matter • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross @Scott Matter antisemitism from ignorance is still antisemitism, it's accidental bigotry vs willful bigotry.
But also the EEE is a perfect reference point for what it's all about!
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Thanks for asking!
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
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foo
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in reply to foo • •(A) when it's a person is a philosophical/religious argument, Judaism says at birth
(B) Pikuach Nefesh is specifically what permits it, abortion is permitted when it would cause harm to carry to term. It explicitly includes mental and economic health in that (if it would cause mental distress, if it would interfere with your ability to care for yourself or your family)
@A13cui :perl: :opensuse:
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Unknown parent • •@𐪅𐪀𐪈 𐪑𐪁𐪉
Not remotely a counter argument. For one equating Israel with Judaism is an anti-semitic (blood and soil, or just thinking a regional government is authoritative of a worldwide culture) or Zionist take (despised by non-zionists like myself as they are colonizers who think Israel can do no wrong).
Also, it's in the blog section talking about America. It's also precisely the wrong usage (it's calling America Judeo-Christian... it's just christian if anything). On top of that, internalized bigotry is a thing in minority groups.
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A. Lynn
Unknown parent • • •Sidenote: I understand why the combination would be complete trash in the topic of abortion. Anyone trying that might deserve a kick to the shin.
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fraggle
Unknown parent • • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Judaism is both a religion and a cultural/"ethnic" group, "Judeo-Christian" is almost always used to refer to the religion of which my statements are representative of the vast vast majority of Judaism.
Also one of the distinct differences is that Atheism and the faith of Judaism are not incompatible. There are many atheist-jews because God actually isn't the center point of Judaism, the main point is the time tested rules (see the argue with everything/everyone) about becoming a better person.
We will always be used by minority groups referring to themselves, mostly because "the vast vast vast majority of us" is clumsy to say and people get the point that exceptions exist. Also, because it doesn't change the fact of the statement being made.
It's also why I mad the example points I did because they're central points that are agreed upon by all major sects as opposed to the many many points which are argued over (once again see the argue with everything/everyone... arguments are a past-time in Jewish culture)
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •Content warning: religious history
@A.L. Blacklyn @Scott Matter I think it's problematic because all of that is almost always presented from the filter of Christianity looking backwards. Jesus was absolutely a Jew and the vast vast majority of what he preached was in line with Jewish beliefs (if they hadn't shed Judaism as part of their faith and hadn't been co-assimilated with the entirety of Rome, it would be a very very different relationship).
The problem mostly comes from the fact that saying Judeo-Christian about those elements and times really should only be applied when you are intimately familiar with both faiths and are doing the hard work of removing the Christian filter from it.
Highlights on the Jewish view of Jesus:
* He fulfilled no significant prophecies regarding the Messiah (the whole point is the thousand years of peace), the vast vast majority of prophecies he's claimed to have fulfilled are mistranslations and/or completely out of context (ie. "virgin birth" came from "young woman of marriageable age" and a prophecy that had nothing to do with the messiah but was fulfilled in the following chapter)
* Trinitarianism isn't even universal among Christians, among Jews it's deeply deeply heretical as one of our long defining statements has been "God is One"
* Human sacrifice is abhorrent in Judaism, so the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice is abhorrent
* In Judaism we already have forgiveness, the biggest distinction is that God will only forgive how you've wronged God. For forgiveness over how you wronged another person you have to ask them. Imagine how you'd feel if I forgave my friend for stealing from you and then they looked you dead in the eye and said they were forgiven for stealing from you... I'd be an asshole, right?
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Unknown parent • •@0x506978656C526F626F74🦾🤖 in probably 50% of the cases absolutely!
They often use it as a stand-in for Abrahamic (which is often problematic, but has far far more legitimate uses) and I mention in my elaboration comment, though I go more narrow a mention the most obscure Abrahamic faith I know of (Baháʼí) to highlight both facts just because their obscurity I feel makes the point better (though I feel a little guilty for using them as a token, it is also in the effort of getting them and other groups recognition).
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@ScepticalScot1 Correct on Judaism, it's an explicit thing.
To be clear, our faith doesn't blanket allow it either... but it's a tiny distinction with how broad our allowance is:
We don't consider it a person until it's birth, until then it's just a potential person (Jewish law only treats it as a person in cases of forced abortion or similar, ie. if you murder a pregnant person who wanted their child, then it's a double-homicide).
Judaism specifically says that abortion is permitted when the well-being of the person carrying it is threatened. But that sounds far more restrictive than it is because we have a broad view of well-being laid out, which includes mental health (being forced to carry a pregnancy you do not want and birth a child against your will is traumatic, therefore abortion is permitted because your mental health would be threatened by denying an abortion... which basically means abortion is permitted in the vast vast vast majority of cases)
(An example of times when it might not be permitted would be things like if they were in the middle of a psychotic episode)
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 Oooooof, true but oooof.
I will forewarn against the usage there because many anti-theists (atheists with a grudge against all faiths) have picked up Judeo-Christian as well and would interpret that as accusing Judaism of also committing similar atrocities (though the government of Israel continually makes that a challenging topic...)
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •"Major Sects" - the large divisions of Judaism representing the vast vast majority of us
"Agreed upon" - Explicitly in our agreed mutual holy texts, considered major defining elements of our faith, or in the case of the afterlife not mentioned anywhere in our texts
Keep in mind that we have more religious texts than are included in the Christian "Old Testament", most significantly the Talmud which is accepted by all Jewish sects I know of and is where many of these elements are established.
How about this follow up: do you have more familiarity with Jewish cultures than a Jew? Do you know what I'm leaving off of the lists that differs between Jewish groups?
@M_U @A13cui :perl: :opensuse:
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DressToKILT
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Tammy Garrison
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tammy Garrison • •@Tammy Garrison Here's a link to my previous elaboration: https://foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095f-1864-c4b5-e122-cfb887278714
Feel free to ask follow up questions!
Shiri Bailem
2023-07-29 06:46:57
Tammy Garrison
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I have no ability to delete your post without you being on my server, though I'm not seeing it anymore either. I'd check with your admins to see if they maybe flagged it and didn't understand?
And the exact kinds of people I mentioned in my comment are the people who'd not understand because they're indoctrinated by christo-fascism and rejecting it without rejecting what they've learned from it.
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Feygele Ⓐ Ⓥ🏳️⚧️
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Chadee 🦨🐋, Dream Witch 🌕 🌊
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •e. hashman 🇵🇸
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the written Torah alone as its supreme authority in Jewish religious law and theology.
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Anthony Sorace
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Anthony Sorace • •@Anthony Sorace @Erika Ensign that falls under "No True Scotsman", they are Christian regardless of being a subset much the same as I won't claim that Zionists aren't jews despite holding objectionable views.
It's a logical fallacy used very often to avoid looking at issues in one's own social groups.
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Anthony Sorace
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
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in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Zach Fine
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Zach Fine
in reply to Zach Fine • • •Glyph
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •My Jewish Faith Makes Me Pro-abortion
Danya Ruttenberg (The Atlantic)Shiri Bailem likes this.
Zach Fine
in reply to Zach Fine • • •fluffy 💜
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •like this
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Zorin =^o.o^=
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@a13cui It often feels like the Jewish faith has things figured out better than most belief systems.
Especially the "don't try to force others to follow your religion" part. That's a big awesome one.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to e. hashman 🇵🇸 • •@e. hashman :flag_bisexual: Again I said major sects and didn't say there are no exceptions.
I'm not going to entertain this line of arguments any further because I can't see a version of this being in good faith at this point.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •like this
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ראַף 🟣
Unknown parent • • •It's not really a tribute if it mostly gets used to mean Christian. It often implies the speaker doesn't understand or value the important differences between Jewish and Christian values. Also low-key islamaphobic
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Zach Fine • •@Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: it's purpose is to prevent dilution of the faith.
The rejection is just the first step, there's also studying and being approved by a Bet Din (rabbinic court).
We want to insure people don't join the community and the immediately start screwing with our traditions and practices.
Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Zach Fine • •just adrienne likes this.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to fluffy 💜 • •@fluffy 💜 @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: It has slightly more legitimate usage, but only slightly.
Mostly just because it is the actual family name.
But yeah, it's too often used for faux-inclusivity.
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Pedestriansfirst
Unknown parent • • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@crows call me breadlady sure, I need to update the original to link this because it got way more traction than I expected!
Happy to answer follow ups!
https://foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095f-1864-c4b5-e122-cfb887278714
Shiri Bailem
2023-07-29 06:46:57
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Robrab
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Robrab • •@Robrab That's really a combination of anti-semitism and "No True Scotsman"
Most of the "old testament angry bits" are Christian interpretations or mistranslations.
Prime example is the verse they translate as "A man should not lie with another man as he would a woman" (anti-homosexuality) which is far more accurately translated as "A man should not lie with a boy as he would a woman" (anti-pedophilia). One of those two makes a hell of a lot more sense for stoning...
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e. hashman 🇵🇸
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CaptMorgan
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Content warning: religion
CaptMorgan
in reply to CaptMorgan • • •Content warning: religion
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fluffy 💜
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to CaptMorgan • •Content warning: religion
@CaptMorgan @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: This is a very flawed take and discounts the many interpretations and approaches different groups have to addressing these things.
For reference, I'm a Reform Jew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Judaism#Reform_Judaism
I will openly say that what you're saying absolutely applies to Orthodox Judaism and can somewhat apply to Conservative Judaism... there's a reason I'm a Reform Jew and not Orthodox lol
Also of note the "Old Testament" is not synonymous with all our texts or the Torah (the Torah is only the first five books). We have many texts that are not included in the Christian Bible.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Zorin =^o.o^= • •@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Also noting that a lot of the "have things figured out" comes from the outlook of arguing as a pastime. Since nothing is above debate, everything gets challenged constantly.
These days, it's not as visible because the vast majority of topics have been challenged to the point that there's little to argue... but there are absolutely topics being fought over (like for instance circumcision which is a very very touchy ongoing argument, mostly due to it's adjacency to the history of antisemitism)
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DemocritusDiscoBall
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
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in reply to DemocritusDiscoBall • •DemocritusDiscoBall likes this.
DemocritusDiscoBall
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
DemocritusDiscoBall
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Like forfend popped out just now?
Why? Couldn’t tell ya, but it’s why I’m a much better writer than talker lol.
My best one of late was intransigent intelligence. Think the asd helps with popping the right sounds n meaning out at the right time.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to DemocritusDiscoBall • •@DemocritusDiscoBall ooh, such delightful words. I enjoy linguistics, so many fun quirks.
And isn't Intransigent Intelligence just all of us? It sounds to me like "Intelligence suffering from the backfire effect"
DemocritusDiscoBall
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •You would hope, but many people don’t continue to do research when they get disapproval, hate for it. In that case it was in reference to D Elisabeth Glassco who posts here as @Deglassco, about Black history, specifically all teh bs book banning etc GOP is pulling out to cover up the history of slavery.
People like her have the fortitude and intelligence to fight through the bs, read the hard hateful truth, and share with us. We need more brave, smart people to fight the good fight.
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DemocritusDiscoBall
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Intransigent unwilling to change one’s point of views, even under pressure
Intelligence, smart enough to see the truth.
So you need them both in how I mean the phrase. Because when you start talking about how life really is, you often get a LOT of hate from small minded authoritarians.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to DemocritusDiscoBall • •@DemocritusDiscoBall Yeah, it's basically the backfire effect and whether or not the person takes effort to combat it. It has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with pure psychology.
The backfire effect is rooted in the fact that when we take a stance on an issue it incorporates into our identity, the stronger the stance the more it incorporates.
When faced with evidence that the position may be wrong, we experience cognitive dissonance and our brain reacts to that information as a threat. Our natural default response is to double down on whatever it is, both increasing the strength of your connection to it and even less critical of the details you're relying on to support your argument.
It's basically the reason you "can't win arguments on the internet", because if someone is to the point of arguing about it, then they're invested enough that they'll be highly susceptible to the backfire effect. (Instead it's better to make your arguments for the sake of unconvinced bystanders)
It takes effort and mindfulness to push back against the backfire effect, and a conscious effort to allow yourself to be wrong.
Jared Forsyth
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Marge Wu 吴静玫 likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Jared Forsyth • •@Jared Forsyth wouldn't surprise me, a lot of terms get formed in a positive place and corrupted over time.
The broader term is Abrahamic Faith. It has more valid use cases, but does suffer from the same problem of people using it to talk just about Christianity.
As beloved author Charles Stross (The Laundry Files) commented above, it's the Embrace Extend Eradicate practice, applied to religion.
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Naomi
in reply to Zach Fine • • •@zachnfine @a13cui Which sums up pretty succinctly why Christianity is the way it is: It could really have done with some of that, instead of being so open and welcoming to all, that it is now very obviously the product of 2000 years of infiltration, appropriation, and bastardization, by every example of exactly the worst kind of self-serving people with power and privilege, Jesus warned about.
Thanks to that difference, try as they might to appropriate and bastardize Judaism - like they have so many other cultures - Christians have time and again, failed.
Where Christians go out of their way to eradicate basic critical thinking in those they indoctrinate, Judaism encourages it, and that provides a basic defense against the kind of corruption, that Christianity has utterly succumbed to.
'Those who have eyes shall see', and Jews see Christianity's leaders very clearly, for the wolves in sheep's clothing they always have been.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Naomi • •@Naomi @Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: So there's definitely some distinct history to what happened with Christianity.
It starts with the Apostles and namely with Luke arguing that Christians did not have to first be Jews. It's obvious why that argument won out (lower standards and dropping circumcision).
And then it was kicked into high-gear with Emperor Constantine who converted the whole Roman Empire to Christianity.
As an important bit of context, the Roman empire/faith was essentially the borg of religions. As it conquered cultures it declared that their faiths were all subsets of their own, assimilating them into their faith.
The issue between the Jews of Israel and Rome was rooted in the fact that Rome wanted to call our God just another manifestation of Zeus and we wholeheartedly rejected that (the story of Hannukah starts with the Romans trying to put up a statue of Zeus in front of the Temple).
So, when the emperor declared that Rome was now Christian, they immediately assimilated their own faith into Christianity. This is why the popular Christian afterlife mirrors the afterlife of the roman faith (seriously compare Heaven/Hell depictions with the Elysian Fields and Pits of Tartarus; and then contrast to the fact that Judaism has no established afterlife).
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Hilary
in reply to Glyph • • •@glyph @foo @a13cui
This is worth reading in full, but one point to take away is that in Judaism abortion is not merely permitted (in certain circumstances). It is obligatory/required (in certain, more limited, circumstances). If continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, abortion is obligatory.
This is complicated by another halachic principle, which is the obligation to abide by the (secular) laws of the place where one lives.
There can be direct conflict here.
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Zorin =^o.o^=
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@a13cui This is great. I went to a catholic high school, and I remember contesting anything religious was a huge no-no. The word was the word, and arguing about it wasn't allowed.
Allowing even long-standing ideas to be challenged is one of the most important requirements for a society to progress.
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crows call me breadlady
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
korin
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: they are in fact Jews and you won't find me pulling a "No True Scotsman" on that.
I will however always note that they're Zionists and that non-Zionists don't approve of Zionists.
For a Christian example, it's the difference between saying WBC isn't Christian vs saying WBC is condemned by most other Christians.
Making the Palestine argument applies specifically to the Zionist take that Israel (the political entity) and Judaism are inseparable, and it implies from that that all Jews support the actions of Israel as opposed to the majority (at least as I've seen) condemning it.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Zorin =^o.o^= • •@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Agreed, I'm a fan of Mark Twain's (yes, the Mark Twain) commentary on the topic:
We persist and have great impact because knowledge and understanding are cherished, and all things old and new are challenged constantly. We don't claim perfection, being Jewish is all about the act of continually striving to do and be better.
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Naomi
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@zachnfine @a13cui And this is why I'd much rather listen to Jews than Christians. You keep the parts of history that Christians have gone out of their way to bury, so your explanations actually make sense of the glaring disparities between what Jesus (a Jew) said, and what Christians, from the apostles onwards (Paul in particular), /say/ he said.
I mean, I can't even google anything related to the Bible, without getting endless pages of 'Good Christian Bible study' takes, twisting every word he said into its opposite.
Questioning that is why I got kicked out of Sunday school when I was still an infant, and it wasn't much longer before I realized Christianity was a very Roman creation, even with the poor, Christian education I was given.
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Eugene
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Eugene
in reply to Eugene • • •Shiri Bailem
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: 80? that honestly is a lot lower than what I would have expected at this point
I won't say "bad Jews" because that's far too close to "No True Scotsman", they are Zionists and Zionism is Jewish Colonialism, which is a very bad take imo.
And no, you're not blocked. It wasn't a great take to start with, but it was understandable given the propensity for Christians to take the "No True Scotsman" fallacy against arguments such as that.
I believe in giving someone a chance first when there's any grey area on potential hate, plus it was a good excuse to outline the differences on a very common and hot topic that gentiles often know little about. And I think you learned something about Jewish society from it.
For more background, part of the problem with Zionists is that they're supported by White Supremacists and Nazis.
It sounds weird on the surface that Nazis would support Zionists, but it comes from a common White Supremacist principle of "Blood and Soil" in which they believe that different "races" have dominion over different lands (ie. white people over europe, Jews over Israel, Asians over Asia, etc). It's why you'll occasionally see someone spouting antisemitic bullshit, but then pivot to supporting Israel.
(Also "fun" trivia: this is why so many white people claim some vague distant "Cherokee Princess" in their background, it came from an effort to expand their blood and soil claim to the Americas)
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I saw in your about you're from Germany and yeah, it's bad everywhere (the honeymoon post-holocaust period is ending and anti-semitism is returning to the "norm"), just from what I understand there's still drastically more taught about the Holocaust and Naziism in Germany than in the US.
Here, we get little more than "Nazis hate Jews", "Nazis bad", and "Bad things happened at Auschwitz". If anything else is covered, it's merely glossed over.
Of course, we're also the country that throws hissy fits at the idea of taking down monuments to people who actively fought to keep slavery (not that it's over with in the US, we just made it state slavery)
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: praying for peace is a constant for us, but we also believe in Tikkun Olam, it's our responsibility to continually work toward it as well.
I figured you were not Christian, when mentioning Palestine you were calm about it and responded reasonably... Christians tend to only really go that route if they're going to be frothing antisemites, so it'd be really surprising to me if you were. (Not impossible, just unlikely)
Part of the trouble is that in the west Christianity overshadows all other religions to the point that many atheists only known and understand Christianity when they're rejecting religion as a whole. And that's something I'm deeply conscious of.
... I also love getting into arguments with anti-theists because they get so incredibly confused at (a) rational arguments and (b) the fact that I'll context switch right along them when they're not even paying attention to their context. (I jokingly call these people theo-phobes after the idea of homophobes being self-hating homosexuals and I believe many of them have an indoctrinated belief in god and are repulsed by the thought that the things they were taught would be true)
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Dean L. Surkin
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 oof, for some reason I thought Germany was notable in taking them all down... but I really shouldn't be surprised.
I think it's both (a) and (b), after the war anti-semitism became shameful so it moved out of the public view... but also being out of the public limited it's spread.
But every year the holocaust gets more distant and the reaction to it becomes more and more muted as people try to claim that it's done and gone and not worth talking about anymore and with that Naziism becomes more and more a cartoon instead of a real threat... so of course it starts spreading again.
Shiri Bailem
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Emily K 🪬 @Jared Forsyth Agreed, I cite it as better only because it's actually used in broader valid cases (as an accurate classification of the faiths), but whenever they talk about individual beliefs... it turns to total crap real fast.
Majority of the time they're talking about Christianity, every once in a while they hit a valid chord between the big three... but it's a miracle if it's actually accurate to all Abrahamic Faiths.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shaterri (he/him) • •@Shaterri (he/him) Honestly I think this has been mostly good faith arguments given how people have responded to my replies. There's one where I drew the line feeling it was making it's way to bad faith pedantry... and the one worse than that you'll note their posts have disappeared or will soon because their server banned them (credit to Venera.social for responding quickly and decisively)
But I can see what people think of as bad faith. There's a lot of common anti-theist counter arguments that I'm familiar with, but I don't think any of them have gone beyond one post and in most cases took my reply graciously and learned something.
For instance calling out Palestine that one time, which while tiresome is understandable since Christians typically pull a "No True Scotsman" fallacy in response to things like that, which clearly marks them as not worth talking to. As tiresome as it is, it's a good barometer question for Jews imo.
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assertchris
in reply to Zach Fine • • •assertchris
in reply to CaptMorgan • • •Content warning: religion
Shiri Bailem
in reply to assertchris • •@assertchris @Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: it's established well after that, that's prior to the Torah even being written and I believe it was established somewhere in the commentaries (like a millennia later) I think, but as I said no idea where.
It's not as hard to maintain your culture prior to being conquered by Rome and prior to Diaspora, but after it becomes vitally important to preserve your practices if you don't want them to dissolve into assimilation.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to assertchris • •Content warning: religion
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Schafstelze
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Not only did he use the term to promote anti-islamism by claiming they are NOT part of our tradition and shouldn't be, but he also seems to have 'forgotten' the nasty details of that 'judao-christian tradition'...
He definitely belongs in that 99%-bracket.
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Philip N Cohen
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@More Cowbell @raf I had to sit on this one for a while, but... you know that arguing with Jews over what is antisemitic is itself antisemitic?
And do you really think bigots are saying "Oh yeah, I'm absolutely a proud bigot!"? And that if they actually believe their bigotry that somehow frees them of being a bigot?
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •Thank you so much to everyone who's shared this and asked questions!
From the comment section it seems to me a lot of people have learned some things about Judaism and how it differs from Christianity. We even exposed one raging antisemite troll who's been banned from their server (shoutout venera.social for having over a thousand users and taking care of it in around an hour).
There certainly was a lot of mild antisemitism throughout the comments, but as far as I can tell in most cases it was ignorance that has been relieved by this!
(Remember kids, pulling a "what about israel?" is rude to do out of nowhere, but if someone supports the occupation they're bad for being a Zionist and that still doesn't permit you to denigrate their faith because it's the same faith as those who reject the occupation)
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heather gold
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •heather gold
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to heather gold • •heather gold
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to heather gold • •@heather gold Zionism, in it's current form is Jewish colonialism of the area of Israel/Palestine. It wasn't so bad initially when it was just a push for a Jewish state, but became awful between that state enacting colonialist policies against Palestine. Topped off by the fact that modern Zionists believe that the Israeli government represents the Jewish faith and not just the people of Israel. (ie. Zionists generally believe criticism of Israel to be antisemitic)
The occupation of Palestine is the fact that Israel has forced them out of more and more land, and keeps encroaching on their territory. There's a constant expansion effort by Israel that constantly disregards the impact on Palestine, and is more than happy to push Palestinians out of their homes then declare them the "bad guys" for fighting to keep their land and homes. (They often paint it as antisemitic attacks rather than attacking a nation that keeps trying to steal your home)
Raroun
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •können wir Dinge wie eine Abtreibung auch ohne Religionsbezug betrachten?
Es ist ein Eingriff, welcher von Ärzten vorgenommern wird mit Zustimmung des Patienten.
Meiner Meinung nach hat Religion in dieser Entscheidung nichts zu suchen, egal welcher man angehört.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Raroun • •@Raroun @Rabbit Cohen
Agreed, but unfortunately it's often centered around Christianity and fascism, and both for and against throw around Judeo-Christian when talking about how it's being forced by religious groups.
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Raroun
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •If people were more human and less religious, the problem would probably not exist.
I'm not religious and I don't have much to contribute to this discussion, except my opinion, unfortunately :)
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Raroun • •@Raroun Critiques of religion and it's impact on people not of their faith (and sometimes of their faith) are valid!
A lot of the time I see the problem being that people's only experience is imperialistic religions (Christianity) and little experience with the variety of experiences and lessons.
Like for instance, in Judaism we couldn't care less if you worshiped our god, let alone any other god. Our primary focus is on the wellbeing of ourselves and our communities (which includes the non-jews). (We don't even care that much if other Jews worship our god, atheistic religious jews are an actual accepted thing!)
Where many Christians take the stance of "let Jesus into your heart and you will become a good person!", Judaism takes the stance of "You must do the right thing whether you like it or not, and if you keep doing it maybe you'll become a better person for it" (do the right thing being things like being charitable and kind as well as not tolerating bigotry even if it's not directed at you).
And most importantly in Judaism: if it can't stand up to scrutiny than it shouldn't be respected (ie. nothing is off limits to argue, and if it falters under argument then it has no right to be respected)
Feel free to ask me questions if you like about my experiences, I just ask that you content warning for others any questions that are potentially sensitive. I won't try to convert you (we have a tradition of rejecting potential converts), we just emphasize sharing knowledge and understanding as one of our primary goals.
JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •I sincerely didn't know how drastically different Judaism was until years out from leaving fundamentalist Christianity, I was in a 4 year relationship with a Jewish woman.
There is so much outright bullshit about Judaism taught in those circles.
I still only know enough to know that there is a vast ocean of information I need to learn.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 • •@JamieGC I mean, I think any honest rabbi will say the same thing? lol
It's a constant learning experience, especially for someone not raised in it.
And Christianity loves to paint such a horrific picture of Judaism and pretend it's an authority on the matter... and then people believe them.
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JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •🙂
I love how much Judaism is about learning, from what I have heard, and find it fascinating that debating more minor details is practically a friendly sport.
My life would have been so much better had I grew up in that kind of environment instead.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 • •JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 likes this.
✨mo✨
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •undead enby of the apocalypse
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to undead enby of the apocalypse • •@undead enby of the apocalypse My pleasure, thank you for reading and taking it earnestly!
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this or Judaism in general! (I just ask you content warning for others any potentially sensitive topics)
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Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH • •@Don Hawkins - W7DAH fun fact, atheist observant Jews are a thing because Judaism is not dependent on belief in God.
Feel free to fire your arguments away, I enjoy debating antitheists. I'll even give you a courtesy and forewarning you: I will match the context of your arguments (ie. if your argument is from the assumption of my god existing, my response will follow that assumption; but if your argument is from the assumption that my god doesn't exist, I will respond likewise... a lot of people get confused because they don't pay attention to context switches)
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Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH • •Dweebish likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •@Don Hawkins - W7DAH Also, for arguing in favor of reason there seems to be an absence of it here? And a lot of assumption.
Your response is nonsense if your response to "atheist jews" is "there is no god"? So what?
Are you just trolling persecuted minorities because you think none of us will ever debate you? You think a handful of memes shitting on a post about antisemitism will make you appear enlightened?
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Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •“also”, I couldn’t care less what others might think. This appears in my profile:
“Better to write for yourself & have no public, than to write for the public & have no self." --Cyril Connolly
Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH • •@Don Hawkins - W7DAH
When did I call for government censorship of you?
Judaism does not proselytize, and the fact that you make that claim shows an ignorance of both the conversation and our faith. Our tradition is to reject converts by default, and when accepted we have an extensive vetting process. Accusing me of proselytization just exposes your ignorance of religion in general and makes you look like a tool who's only here to shit on people to make yourself feel better.
Well, if you're posting it publicly then you're on some level writing for the public, and even if you're writing for yourself you're getting something out of it and I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what you get out of shitting on an oppressed minority talking about their oppression? My best guess is a sense of smug superiority in which you claim enlightenment, but what's so enlightened about attacking an oppressed minority asking to not be oppressed? Or misrepresenting an oppressed minority on a post asking people to stop misrepresenting us?
Ah yes, the "I'm being an asshole, but obviously better than you because I can throw around psych terms completely out of context to claim your inferiority and dismiss your responses". Triggered is referring to PTSD, do you think it's amusing to mock people with PTSD? Quite an enlightened take. I'm engaging a bigot because it's fun and presents a complete picture of their bigotry to others (especially to moderators). If I refuse to engage I get nothing, but by engaging I stand to protect vulnerable people from you and the likes of you.
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A. Lynn
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Niedliche Nacktschnecke
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •I feel there's a special evil in talking about germanies "judeo-christian" history (often done!), as uf that history wasnt mostly pogroms, exclusion, antisemitism, the shoa.
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@More Cowbell @raf To quote Avenue Q: "Everyone is a little bit racist sometimes"
The defining question is whether it's rooted in ignorance or willful, which is part of this whole conversation with you.
You can be antisemitic without being willful about it, the question of character is how you respond when called on it. Telling us you know better than us about what is or isn't bigotry that we deal with is itself a form of bigotry.
The judgement of you as a person comes now, in how you respond to this?
If you learn and grow, addressing what we called out, then all the praise for you because that's hard to do. If you back away, well at least you were polite. If you become hostile, then we just write you off as a bigot.
And of course, further polite inquiries in good faith are valid too and fall under learning and growing.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@More Cowbell @raf There isn't a shared culture between Judaism and Christianity, they are very very distinctly different cultures and one has spent a very long time trying to kill the other.
Christianity is a member of the Abrahamic family of faiths and probably has more cultural similarity to Islam than it does Judaism, despite being an offshoot of Judaism. (And Abrahamic can be equally problematic if you're not well familiar with the cultural differences between Christianity and say Rastafarianism, but at least it's an accurate name for the relationship)
Much of the usage of "Judeo-Christian" comes from the belief that there's far more similarity than there is.
It's much like talking about the "Western Culture in which healthcare is a privilege, not a right" despite the fact that that's an american cultural element that's not shared by the vast majority of western nations.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •@Ulrich_the_Elder 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 😷 Realized that my tone may not have come across in context, I genuinely want to know because that's a fascinating bit of trivia to have!
I otherwise agree, especially since in the Jewish Bible (parts not included in the Christian Bible) it is talked about, and explicitly permitted.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U @e. hashman :flag_bisexual: I appreciate the apology.
Sects do have a cultural element because they are groupings based on shared beliefs and values.
Ethnic distinctions are a mess in general, especially when talking about ethno-religious groups like Judaism as someone can be of the ethnicity and not the faith, or of the faith group and not the ethnicity. In those cases though we'd typically differentiate by their specific groupings.
Most I know are Ashkenazi Jews, being the most represented group of Judaism in the west (for comparison, you also find Sephardic Jews as prominent in the west, but with drastically less representation).
Because of intersectionality, one can be a member of many many cultures at the same time and the definitions are going to depend on which topics and elements are being referenced. When talking about religious beliefs, a sect/denomination is more meaningful than a region. And there are some elements that are derived from those beliefs that make it applicable as well.
I won't pretend that a New York Jew is the same as a Florida Jew, as a Texas Jew, let alone a Polish Jew, Indian Jew, or Japanese Jew. Just that we're going to share a lot of the same cultural elements where they're rooted specifically in our faith, especially when in the same sects.
Also, fyi, "IQ" is mostly rooted in classism and racism. here's an entertaining video from the show Adam Ruins Everything talking about it: https://youtu.be/W3oUqKUx2o0
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U "smart" and "intelligent" are all vague, undefined terms that are pretty much always problematic.
We have a multitude of different cognitive abilities, and they're basically trying to say someone who's "smart" is cognitively superior... when they're often just well versed on a topic.
It also causes a lot of trauma for people like myself who go through life oscillating between being called "smart" or "stupid" depending on which cognitive abilities are factored into a task. (For instance, I have Executive Dysfunction, but also have pattern thinking and great pattern recognition)
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •@M_U to elaborate further, saying a particular group has "higher intelligence" in any fashion is still racist and falls under the "Model Minority" bigotry (used to pigeonhole people in those groups and leveraging one group against another).
Jews aren't "smarter", we just have a culture that encourages education, and very importantly critical thinking (our pastime of arguing everything, and nothing being above challenge means that we are encouraged to actually analyze topics rather than just memorize)
Dweebish
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U ... okay, that's just straight up eugenics bullshit and will not be tolerated.
It's proven blatantly untrue, and is deeply disrespectful of our cultures. On top of that it's a purely racist talking point.
We have long established that we do not have significant mental or physical differences between "races", especially given that no one is "pure blooded", and especially going back thousands of years.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U tendency towards sickle-cell anemia, tendency for cancer, tendency for blue eyes, tendency for baldness... sure.
No tendency for traits that don't exist (ie. "IQ"), no genetic tendency for education, or open-mindedness.
I've already reported you for racism and eugenics talk.
Maybe step back and look at your arguments vs the counter: that a culture that encourages challenging and arguing everything might be more conducive to understanding and challenging ideas in the world than a culture that emphasizes rote memorization and penalizes asking questions?
Do you assume that magically all groups of Judaism preserved genes for "superior intelligence" (despite being a non-sense idea rooted entirely in racism to begin with) despite varying every other genetic trait throughout? Or are you making assumptions about the genetic makeup of Jews worldwide, just assuming that all Jews are descended from Ashkenazi? Perhaps divine intervention? (I may be religious, but I'll take "easily provable" over "God did it")
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U I didn't report you for being antisocial, I reported you for racism. "Positive" stereotypes still cause harm and are still racist.
And I have no tolerance for for talk of eugenics, you are now blocked server wide regardless of whether your admins take action.
miawgogo :KirbyVerified:
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to miawgogo :KirbyVerified: • •@miawgogo :KirbyVerified: it's because they believe Judaism is just Christianity minus Jesus.
Like, they think our beliefs are that you behave perfectly or go to hell because they see "judged by our acts" under their belief of "any sin = hell". (FYI, we do believe in being judged by our acts, but judged means judgement, it's not some automatic punishment thing but an actual decision... and on top of that, we don't believe in hell)
Non-Christians use it because many of them are convinced that all religions are basically Christianity with slight differences.
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Shannon (she/her) @Pedestriansfirst I suppose you're technically correct, I guess I usually never think about it because there's always more apt descriptions (ie. Nazis are often Zionists because "Blood And Soil").
And yes on the antisemitism of it, I just chose not to say anything about that in favor of a chance at education. (Also a love for getting into arguments with aggressive militant atheists because it's so fun to see their talking points shatter and the confusion that comes from it)
And I didn't bring it up later because I felt from the conversation that it wasn't going to be a problem again from them because they learned some things about Judaism, Jewish Culture, and that religions people can in fact own and acknowledge bad behaviors in their own communities.
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Shannon (she/her) I don't think believing all zionists are jews isn't that messy of a idea because it impacts so little, especially since the zionist behavior of non-jews is already easily discernible on it's own as awful anyways.
And keep in mind that the comparison is that this started from assuming that all Jews condoned the atrocities committed by the Israeli government and has walked away knowing that it's not uniform.
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