re: #502 Iron Fist

How can you really be Jewish and not believe in God?

Very easily

No “God”

I do not say there is no God - I’m an atheist - not Richard Dawkins. I simply believe that there is no God, just like I believe that the tribes of Israel are merely a split along classes rather than any distinct racial/ethnic profiles.

What would distinguish European Jews as Jewish per se from simply being another white ethnic minority?

Genetics. Because being Jewish was such a “responsibility” most of the European Jews bred between themselves with few additions to the gene pool - this led to problems such as Tae-Sachs which disease is very common in Ashkenazi Jews. However it ensured that Jewish genes passed themselves on almost uninterrupted.

This is why Judaism is an ethnicity, rather than just a religion. Furthermore, since being Jewish at one stage meant being Israeli, the cultural traditions carried on - even in Europe. Traditions that had no standing in religious dogma.

So anyone claiming to be a Christian is a Christian, no matter what their definition might be? How is that particularly different than what I am saying about Mohammedanism.

Read what I said very carefully - I said that these groups were doing abd things in the name of Christianity. I’m not about to get into an argument on what constitutes a Christian.

The same goes for Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims will never do anything wrong to you. I wore my Star of David in prominent view in Cairo, Luxor, Alexandria, Petra, Amman and Akkaba and was not touched by anyone despite not having any protection. Nobody harassed me, nobody spit on me. Yes there were curious stares, but nothing I hadn’t experienced before when being a white guy in the middle of Asia.

Osama Bin Laden may kill in the name of Islam but that doesn’t mean that good Muslims - the vast majority - think highly of him.

Mohammedanism claims on sixth of the world population. I’m sure that some of them aren’t malevolent, but I also suspect that you’ll go a far piece before you will find one that will condemn unreservidely Mohammedan terrorism.

I am friends with half a dozen Arabian Muslims who have no interest in being malevolent.

I’ve had dinner at their place with their parents. I’ve been to a mosque. Yes, radicalism is a cancer, but the majority of people will never get it.

you have to know that he is the rarest of the rare.

No they aren’t. If you take off your rose-coloured glasses you’ll see that the majority of Muslims aren’t publicly speaking out simply because they don’t want to deal with this shit - it’s beyond their interest.

It is not the responsibility of the innocent to stand up for their innocence.