If You Are Aligned With a Side ...

[A Voice from the Mountains]

Posted by loungelizard (here)
Oh, and misquoting the Talmud, or quoting sections out of context, is an age-old method used to incite anti-Semitism: you clearly
have no understanding of the text itself.

The Christian Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud all have horrifying passages in them. Most people don't realize this, but the Old Testament actually has at least one passage setting rules for human sacrifice to Yahweh. As far as I know, that means it's part of the holy scripture of all three Abrahamic religions.

Theologians of course have ways of side-stepping problems like this, but they point to a larger problem, that the Abrahamic religions as a whole have way too much influence from past societies that literally sacrificed children (proven archaeological fact) and all other kinds of nonsense that absolutely should not and would not be tolerated in society today.

[A Voice from the Mountains]

What I'm posting here would get me into hot water with a lot of conservatives, even though I consider myself conservative on most issues, so I'm "reaching across the aisle" here, so to speak (though really it's just my honest opinion, "aisles" be damned). I understand the point of religion in a society, and I have no problem with religion as a whole, to give people a common set of morals and values so that society can be cohesive. But just to follow up on what I posted above...

This is a section of Leviticus, from the Old Testament:

Leviticus 27

Redeeming Persons and Property Dedicated to God

27 Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When a man consecrates by a vow certain persons to the Lord, according to your valuation, 3 if your valuation is of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old, then your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. 4 If it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels; 5 and if from five years old up to twenty years old, then your valuation for a male shall be twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels; 6 and if from a month old up to five years old, then your valuation for a male shall be five shekels of silver, and for a female your valuation shall be three shekels of silver; 7 and if from sixty years old and above, if it is a male, then your valuation shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels.

This is a passage setting values for human beings purchased from priests.

Man, 20-60 years old: 50 shekels
Woman: 30 shekels
Boy, 5-20 years old: 20 shekels
Girl, 5-20 years old: 10 shekels
Boy, 1 month to 5 years: 5 shekels
Girl, 1 month to 5 years: 3 shekels
Man older than 60: 15 shekels
Woman older than 60: 10 shekels

While some slaves of the priesthood were sold to other Israelites, others were specifically set aside for human sacrifice to Yahweh, and this is indicated in Leviticus 27:29, here from the New Living Translation:

No person specially set apart for destruction may be bought back. Such a person must be put to death.

Here is the additional context of the surrounding verses, if needed:

However, anything specially set apart for the Lord—whether a person, an animal, or family property—must never be sold or bought back. Anything devoted in this way has been set apart as holy, and it belongs to the Lord. 29No person specially set apart for destruction may be bought back. Such a person must be put to death.

https://biblehub.com/nlt/leviticus/27.htm

One Bible commentary website online tries to side-step this issue with the following theological sleight-of-hand:

But shall surely be put to death.—Not as a sacrifice to God, but, on the contrary, to be removed out of His sight.

https://biblehub.com/commentaries/leviticus/27-29.htm

Big difference, right?

The same source quotes the Chaldee version of this scripture:

Every vow that shall be vowed of man, shall not be redeemed with money, but with burnt offerings and with hallowed victims, and with supplications for mercy before the Lord, because such are to be put to death.

The Chaldeans were polytheists. All the other Semitic Canaanite neighbors of the Israelites were polytheistic who worshipped "El," not as a generic word for "God," but as the god of lightning or storms, similar to Zeus or Jupiter. The Old Testament is filled with prophets telling the Israelites not to imitate their neighbors in sacrificing their own children in a fire to Molech, etc., so this is all pretty clear in the text for anyone who actually reads it. All theology aside, the historical evidence suggests that the Israelites simply took a polytheistic religion and turned it into monotheism by elevating one god above all the others, and eventually banning the worship of all other gods.

And this is just the Old Testament, shared by all three Abrahamic religions, without even getting into whatever the Talmud actually says, or the Koran, which are even crazier if you ask me. I've never read either of the last two in full, but because of the arguments I've seen Christian theologians make to explain away verses such as the above, I am skeptical to say the least that there is not some truth to all of the crazy passages so often cited from the Koran and Talmud.

[Didgevillage]

I misquoted the Talmud eh?
If I get to the source, you gonna say I'm off topic. I know this technique.
Unfortunately for you, I do read Hebrew and Aramaic, albeit not fluently.

[shaberon]

Posted by A Voice from the Mountains (here)

Posted by shaberon (here)
Because this process would require truth, it has little to do with politics. It perhaps could be called anarchy, as in, "absence of a ruling class", intended as no plutocracy especially by way of inheritance, but at the same time it requires law.

If you could codify or systematize what law would look like in this case, I would be interested to consider it. That's always where the rub is, and probably some other society has already tried something like it before, once you have it all written out so that society as a whole is clear on the rules.

Yes, that's completely correct.

The way I mean it is strictly personally, as in, as far as I can tell, I can dole out life or death with the same set of hands. Were I to choose the latter, I would tell a judge I did it, and I would do it again under the same circumstances. Hopefully that will never happen, but, it is the extreme version of what one may attempt to command verbally or manually.

Examples I would draw from include Iroquois Confederation, America as "a republican form of government" and not the democracy, the treaty of Westphalia, Austria-Hungary under Franz Ferdinand. Then I would go peek at Yunnan (matriarchy) and probably Bhutan (happiness index). Probably also humanists in Byzantine Empire.

I maintain that around 1776 there was a bloc of Marie Antoinette (France), Maria Teresa (Austria), Catherine (Russia), along with the rebellious American colonies, which understood and opposed the banking system that took over. However the reigns of those monarchs were fraught with all sorts of other things, and so it is pretty specifically this subject I would look for. If it needs a figurehead, pop it on Marquis de Lafayette and eventually Garibaldi.

The one we can directly access and just do it is American. Aside from that, no, I don't exactly have a book of legislation in hand.

Anarchy per se is considered to be practiced among small South American tribes who just use an elder to make an important decision once in a while, and otherwise, they just follow customs. The Tengri argument is that "mankind is not ready for civilization yet". Most of us are not in a position to join a stone age tribe, so this is atavistic or unrealistic. However I would say it has more substance then a "consumer" which seems very false, behavioralistic, London School of Economics, and if we can't find and implement all the right answers, we can still expose and disagree with what we're pretty sure is wrong. I don't know about "effecting a change" or anything like that, I doubt I've ever been able to, but, as far as I am concerned, "they" lack any jurisdiction except when they assert it.

There is a huge difference between a cloesly-knit community where everybody knows everybody, and international urban grandeur, and I'm not sure we've used much of a really good system for urbanization yet. I'm not trying to wipe it out; that may happen on its own; I sure don't know a step to take to really affect much at large.