Likewise, if I give you a grocery list with both categories of things and specific things, the more specific things I put under a category, the less likely it is I want something not listed that is in that category. If I wrote on the list “Many kinds of bread, white bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, bagels, whole wheat bread, and pumpernickel,” it sounds more plausible that I want a bialy than if I only wrote “Many kinds of bread,” which only has four bread related words. Someone with the latter list will have to take some initiative, while with the former it is possible to simply buy the breads on the list and pretend inaction is not a type of action, and that one has not made an independent decision.
It is at least true that given the first list it’s highly unlikely the bread product I want most is a bialy. We might still expect that someone who wrote the first list might like bialys more than someone who wrote the second list, simply because the author of the first list has indicated enthusiasm for bread products by writing so much about them. This is because we are used to normal human authors who emphasize by repetition, but if we know the author to be strictly logical, we will understand that the request on the second list is broader and more open-ended than that on the first.
The barbarity and tedium of the Old Testament are both partially caused by enumerations of who to kill, and how, and when, in great detail (doubly so for bringing sacrifices and matters of purity [which includes lineages]). A normal human author, like those who actually wrote the texts, expressed their shortcomings thereby.
Pretending the texts were written by a logical, autistic, single person turns this on its head. The more detail appended to when to kill, the less its a reinforcing admonishment against our innate humanity and the more it is restrictive detail circumscribing the conditions where violence is permitted.
What’s that, God? Kill the Amalekites, you say? Every man woman and child? Um...and ox sheep, camel and donkey? Reminds me of the Order of the Stick from the exact day in the future when lessdazed will write about this online, but OK. And the Midianites? Kill the males, but keep the female virgins for ourselves? Got it! Who else do we kill? The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites? OK. A man gathering wood on the Sabbath day? Kill. And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore? Why, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire. And if a man take a wife and her mother? It is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire! Tax evasion regarding rebuilding the temple? A beam is to be pulled from his house and he is to be lifted up and impaled on it. And for this crime his house is to be made a pile of rubble. The Philistines and Kerethites? “I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.” Glad you got that one covered, LORD. (It goes on like this.)
What we have today is an Orthodoxy that sees killing and genocide as things God is more than happy to command for circumstances in which he wants them done. Atheists often view the bible as reflecting upon the character of a fictional god, and worry believers will do the same (minus the recognition that it is fiction) and ask themselves what it seems plausible that god would want them to do. People are fundamentalist to the extent that they instead ask what they are ordered to do, under the belief that everything worthwhile is commanded. Not only the Chareidim, but also the Religious Zionists, are fundamentalist enough that there is no danger of a mainstream religious perspective conflating Arabs with Canaanites. Even for Religious Zionists, the conflict with Arabs is secular.
Belief in a less interactive god, even an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent one, is logically possible and what many imagine to be the case. Under such a theology, the gap in biblical instruction regarding what to do about Arabs would be filled in with the most plausible analogous case, and killing Arabs would have them same ersatz biblical sanction that settling and possessing the land actually does for the Religious Zionists. Instead, it is pretended that there is no instructional gap, so resorting to analogy has nothing like the force of divine command at all.
I’m having a bit of trouble with my point here, which may indicate a flaw in my thinking rather than articulation. But the tl;dr is that the Religious Zionists see themselves as commanded to reoccupy the land and kill the Canaanites again, under such circumstances that the presence of Arabs in the stead of Canaanites is perplexing rather than soluble, as it is also unsolvable for a dumb enough AI, (which includes otherwise smart ones). The “obvious” solution is correctly seen as not obvious at all, and only seems obvious because of human intelligence. In this sense there is not a religious war.
In general, taking seriously a text that reinforces evil by repetitious emphasis and instead reading it as if its writer were logical and had realized that “detail is burdensome” emasculates the evil. Non-fundamentalists who correctly find the original meaning of the text as author intended, namely that which seems plausible upon reading it, are directly dangerous.
Even Religious Zionists are sufficiently fundamentalist Orthodox Jews that such a reading is not at all common. (Chareidim are solidly so, which doesn’t matter much as they don’t see the state as legally a continuation of ancient Israel anyway.)
Fundamentalism is less prone to certain pitfalls than centrism.
The more details one adds to an account, the more plausible it sounds but the less probable it is.
Likewise, if I give you a grocery list with both categories of things and specific things, the more specific things I put under a category, the less likely it is I want something not listed that is in that category. If I wrote on the list “Many kinds of bread, white bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, bagels, whole wheat bread, and pumpernickel,” it sounds more plausible that I want a bialy than if I only wrote “Many kinds of bread,” which only has four bread related words. Someone with the latter list will have to take some initiative, while with the former it is possible to simply buy the breads on the list and pretend inaction is not a type of action, and that one has not made an independent decision.
It is at least true that given the first list it’s highly unlikely the bread product I want most is a bialy. We might still expect that someone who wrote the first list might like bialys more than someone who wrote the second list, simply because the author of the first list has indicated enthusiasm for bread products by writing so much about them. This is because we are used to normal human authors who emphasize by repetition, but if we know the author to be strictly logical, we will understand that the request on the second list is broader and more open-ended than that on the first.
The barbarity and tedium of the Old Testament are both partially caused by enumerations of who to kill, and how, and when, in great detail (doubly so for bringing sacrifices and matters of purity [which includes lineages]). A normal human author, like those who actually wrote the texts, expressed their shortcomings thereby.
Pretending the texts were written by a logical, autistic, single person turns this on its head. The more detail appended to when to kill, the less its a reinforcing admonishment against our innate humanity and the more it is restrictive detail circumscribing the conditions where violence is permitted.
What’s that, God? Kill the Amalekites, you say? Every man woman and child? Um...and ox sheep, camel and donkey? Reminds me of the Order of the Stick from the exact day in the future when lessdazed will write about this online, but OK. And the Midianites? Kill the males, but keep the female virgins for ourselves? Got it! Who else do we kill? The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites? OK. A man gathering wood on the Sabbath day? Kill. And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore? Why, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire. And if a man take a wife and her mother? It is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire! Tax evasion regarding rebuilding the temple? A beam is to be pulled from his house and he is to be lifted up and impaled on it. And for this crime his house is to be made a pile of rubble. The Philistines and Kerethites? “I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.” Glad you got that one covered, LORD. (It goes on like this.)
What we have today is an Orthodoxy that sees killing and genocide as things God is more than happy to command for circumstances in which he wants them done. Atheists often view the bible as reflecting upon the character of a fictional god, and worry believers will do the same (minus the recognition that it is fiction) and ask themselves what it seems plausible that god would want them to do. People are fundamentalist to the extent that they instead ask what they are ordered to do, under the belief that everything worthwhile is commanded. Not only the Chareidim, but also the Religious Zionists, are fundamentalist enough that there is no danger of a mainstream religious perspective conflating Arabs with Canaanites. Even for Religious Zionists, the conflict with Arabs is secular.
Belief in a less interactive god, even an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent one, is logically possible and what many imagine to be the case. Under such a theology, the gap in biblical instruction regarding what to do about Arabs would be filled in with the most plausible analogous case, and killing Arabs would have them same ersatz biblical sanction that settling and possessing the land actually does for the Religious Zionists. Instead, it is pretended that there is no instructional gap, so resorting to analogy has nothing like the force of divine command at all.
I’m having a bit of trouble with my point here, which may indicate a flaw in my thinking rather than articulation. But the tl;dr is that the Religious Zionists see themselves as commanded to reoccupy the land and kill the Canaanites again, under such circumstances that the presence of Arabs in the stead of Canaanites is perplexing rather than soluble, as it is also unsolvable for a dumb enough AI, (which includes otherwise smart ones). The “obvious” solution is correctly seen as not obvious at all, and only seems obvious because of human intelligence. In this sense there is not a religious war.
In general, taking seriously a text that reinforces evil by repetitious emphasis and instead reading it as if its writer were logical and had realized that “detail is burdensome” emasculates the evil. Non-fundamentalists who correctly find the original meaning of the text as author intended, namely that which seems plausible upon reading it, are directly dangerous.
Even Religious Zionists are sufficiently fundamentalist Orthodox Jews that such a reading is not at all common. (Chareidim are solidly so, which doesn’t matter much as they don’t see the state as legally a continuation of ancient Israel anyway.)