This is a great piece (it convinced me to upgrade to paid). I had read Freddie DeBoer's post and as a religious Jew felt somewhat put off by it, but only somewhat. It certainly wasn't as reductive as the average atheist take on religious belief. The fact is I don't think he would take exception to your point of view at all. He'd disagree with it, but would consider it valid, not to be mocked or dismissed. At any rate I identify with it, though I can't describe my Yom Kippur experience as either oceanic or ecstatic -- more like somberly meaningful.
Your rabbi's and your interpretations of the akedah have got me thinking. Thanks for that.
Agreed, I love this take on the aqedah. The best I'd previously seen on it came from Ethan Tucker of Hadar, who contextualizes human sacrifice in Avraham's era as something more akin to sending your son off to war--a tragedy, but not a priori the sort of monstruousness G-d's move makes it. But not gonna lie, I feel a certain relief in thinking that perhaps Avraham's reasoned himself into udnerstanding that the ram HAD to be forthcoming.
May I ask (well, I am asking; would you be so kind as to answer?) what aspects of Freddie's post you *did* find offputting? I can hypothesize, but I strongly suspect that my best attempt to model what a religious Jew would find offputting is still very poorly correlated with your response(s) to FDB's post.
n.b. FWIW I agree that _my_ model of Freddie is that he would not, in the least, take Noah's POV as one to be mocked or dismissed.
I'm very much a naturalist materialist: the line that jumped out at me from Freddie's post was "I also understand the desire for the community and fraternity that religion can engender, but surely these are possible without religion"; the "surely" was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Religious faith as a concept and experience is hard to pin down. It waxes and wanes. Because of this your commitment to the way of life born from this faith roots you during the turbulence of faith itself. It's what's most important, and it too can seem sublime one day and absurd the next.
I'm sure some people have a simpler and more setlled experience of religious life, but many do not, and I don't think this simply a modern phenomenon. Though I haven't heard anyone speak of filling a G-d shaped hole, I certainly know some who lead a religiously observant life for seemingly external, non-spititual reasons -- out of habit, to hold a family together etc. But I'm not sure that they don't slide in and and out of what you could call faith. There's a concept in Judaism that one who cannot follow the commandments out of pure faith, may well, in the process of taking them on, come to observe them out of pure faith.
So I have a hard time categorizing strict levels of belief/non-belief, or dismissing those who claim to be using religion for utlitarian purposes -- i.e. to fill a hole.
Tomorrow they may find themselves doing much more than that.
This is a great piece (it convinced me to upgrade to paid). I had read Freddie DeBoer's post and as a religious Jew felt somewhat put off by it, but only somewhat. It certainly wasn't as reductive as the average atheist take on religious belief. The fact is I don't think he would take exception to your point of view at all. He'd disagree with it, but would consider it valid, not to be mocked or dismissed. At any rate I identify with it, though I can't describe my Yom Kippur experience as either oceanic or ecstatic -- more like somberly meaningful.
Your rabbi's and your interpretations of the akedah have got me thinking. Thanks for that.
Agreed, I love this take on the aqedah. The best I'd previously seen on it came from Ethan Tucker of Hadar, who contextualizes human sacrifice in Avraham's era as something more akin to sending your son off to war--a tragedy, but not a priori the sort of monstruousness G-d's move makes it. But not gonna lie, I feel a certain relief in thinking that perhaps Avraham's reasoned himself into udnerstanding that the ram HAD to be forthcoming.
May I ask (well, I am asking; would you be so kind as to answer?) what aspects of Freddie's post you *did* find offputting? I can hypothesize, but I strongly suspect that my best attempt to model what a religious Jew would find offputting is still very poorly correlated with your response(s) to FDB's post.
n.b. FWIW I agree that _my_ model of Freddie is that he would not, in the least, take Noah's POV as one to be mocked or dismissed.
I'm very much a naturalist materialist: the line that jumped out at me from Freddie's post was "I also understand the desire for the community and fraternity that religion can engender, but surely these are possible without religion"; the "surely" was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Religious faith as a concept and experience is hard to pin down. It waxes and wanes. Because of this your commitment to the way of life born from this faith roots you during the turbulence of faith itself. It's what's most important, and it too can seem sublime one day and absurd the next.
I'm sure some people have a simpler and more setlled experience of religious life, but many do not, and I don't think this simply a modern phenomenon. Though I haven't heard anyone speak of filling a G-d shaped hole, I certainly know some who lead a religiously observant life for seemingly external, non-spititual reasons -- out of habit, to hold a family together etc. But I'm not sure that they don't slide in and and out of what you could call faith. There's a concept in Judaism that one who cannot follow the commandments out of pure faith, may well, in the process of taking them on, come to observe them out of pure faith.
So I have a hard time categorizing strict levels of belief/non-belief, or dismissing those who claim to be using religion for utlitarian purposes -- i.e. to fill a hole.
Tomorrow they may find themselves doing much more than that.