I doubt it. Orthodox Jews use the Jewish calendar with Jewish years.
On the other hand, there are no doubt many liberal Jews who will gladly sign on to BCE and CE designations.
Posted on 08/22/2003 10:59:42 PM PDT by Destro
I think it is false to say we have to choose between Solon and Moses. Modern Western civilization is (to greatly simplify things) mostly a mixture of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman ideas. All three cultures introduced something vital -- also something that the modern hedonists, subjectivists, and collectivists hate.
The Law of Moses introduced conscience. Concience is an inner-directed, thus individualist thing. When one goes against the dictates of conscience, one feels guilt. Most other cultures enforce morality through an other-directed sense of shame (one has broken a taboo, one has discraced one's family) rather than guilt. Both a guilt-based and a shame-based morality can be subjective, of course. I think a guilt-based morality is more sophisticated, and it is a foundation of individualism. It is not for nothing that the guilt-inducing Jewish mother is famous!
The Greeks brought us philosophy and the scientific method. They also introduced a crude idea of democarcy and a sense that no person should be above the law. One problem with the Greeks was that their concept of law was vague, and Athens was periodically subject to demagogues and tyrants.
The Romans introduced the rule of law and the first modern government.
I think some people are being too harsh on the author from infidels.org. He at least recognizes some of the pillars of our civilization. He at least respects Athens. The ideal of the left today is not ancient Athens -- no, the left's ideal is totalitarian, war-like Sparta. The left is all about opposition to guilt-inducing (thus conscience-forming) religion. The radical left hates Greek logic and reason. They hate the rule of law, although some admire the bureaucratic system of government the Romans invented (the far-far-left -- the anarcho-enviro-communists reject even this).
I think there is more to the attack on the Ten Commandments than mere secularism. The Law of Moses is an easy target because it is based in religion and the establishment clause can be abused to ban from public discourse all religiously-inspired ideas that the left opposes. If you look around at our education system and popular culture, you can see that the left is also waging war against Greek rationalsim and the Roman ideal of the rule of law rather than the rule by men.
I think some of the supporters of the Ten Commandments being posted in the Alabama courthouse go too far, also. I have heard some of them say that the First Amendment only means that the Federal government cannot establish a state church, but that any state can establish an official church. This places us in the same mess that the Founding Fathers were trying to avoid.
Most of the Colonies had an official church, and people who were not members of the official church were persecuted and had to flee to another state. People thought that William Penn was an atheist because he envisioned a colony that did not have a state-sponsored church. The Founders built on Penn's idea of no state-sponsored religion. Why would there be an Establishment Clause if the Founders wanted each state to have its own official religion?
We are being given false alternatives if the only choice is between an amoral, Spartan-like totalitarianism the far left wants and a New England-style theocracy that some religious conservatives want. I support the placing of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse because the left is against it, it is part of our civilization, and because the left wants to censor all conscience-inducing ideas. However, the theocrats' idea that no religion is valid unless it is state-sanctioned is frightening, and in a way, idolatrous and irreligious. It is ironic that some atheists and some (I said some) religious conservatives have this in common -- they have made the state their god.
True. Imho, that's why God sent Jesus. To clarify things. Because we are an obstinate people. < /sermon>
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I didn't notice the source, and I wasn't aware of their mission. I thought it was interesting history, even though I felt the author stretched a bit to reach his conclusions.
I keep hearing this chant, variously phrased: "The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Western morality and the American Constitution and government." In saying this, people are essentially crediting Moses with the invention of ethics, democracy and civil rights, a claim that is of course absurd.
While certainly embracing ethical concepts, neither Western morality nor the American Constitutional system are founded on "democracy and civil rights." As Madison explained in Federalist Paper #10, preventing Democracy was one of the motivations for the Federal Union. The Founders gave us a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy--the rule of Law, not a counting of noses.
"Civil rights," on the other hand, are rights created by the Civil Authority, i.e. legislated "rights." American liberty was premised, from the first, on a Creational--not a secular, not a civil authority--basis. What are today labelled "civil rights," are a Socialistic departure from the basic premises of the traditional American free society. Claiming antiquity for the package that Lyndon Johnson rammed through a docile Congress in 1964 & 1965, is absurd.
The Ten Commandments are more directed towards the foundations of law and an ongoing Social order. In this they reflect the same concept of a Divine Foundation, as that set forth in our Declaration of Independence. The rules of Solon appear to relate more--where there is a divergence--to the problems of immediate civility. There is no conflict between the rules quoted from Solon, merely a somewhat different immediate focus; so I am not attacking the latter, merely the preconceptions of the essayist, which are 180 degrees divergent from the historic truth.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
You'd think an inerrant God would have got it right the first time.
I doubt it. Orthodox Jews use the Jewish calendar with Jewish years.
On the other hand, there are no doubt many liberal Jews who will gladly sign on to BCE and CE designations.
Were I depart from atheists is that they see all religion as unnatural. I don't. In point of fact a religious belief system it is a naturally occurring phenomenon amongst all peoples since the dawn of time. Therefore I consider religion to be a positive part of our human psyche, God or no.
I also consider the Christian religion (outside of the theocratic reasons) to be the most perfectly formed religion for the achievement of freedom and a just society. It is no accident that the Greco-Roman world merged with Christianity.
I too have found the Left's assault on or Greek and Roman roots to be a big threat. More so than the issue of the removal of the 10 commandments from the Alabama Court House.
You would think, except there's that free will thingy.
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It does not purport to be the Foundation of our Liberty. It acknowledges, as a self-evident truth, that our Liberty comes from the nature of Creation--from the Creator. That is the initial premise, before the long recital of quite specific grievances.
As for applying the grievances (see Declaration Of Independence) to the present excesses of our Federal Government, I do so all the time. The fact is that it is not just in this ongoing attack on religious symbols, that has so many stirred up, that the contrived erosion of our institutions is taking place. The traditional restraints on the arbitrary exercise of undelegated power, have also been under unrelenting attack for most of a Century--and generally from those having the same Fabian mindset or approach, as those who have supported the attack on religious symbols.
It will only make my point the more, to go back to you acceptance of the idea of a civil basis for determining rights. The so-called "Civil Rights" acts, which were premised on that idea--among others--specifically outlawed private preferences based upon religious beliefs in hiring and housing.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I also consider the Christian religion (outside of the theocratic reasons) to be the most perfectly formed religion for the achievement of freedom and a just society. It is no accident that the Greco-Roman world merged with Christianity.
Well said and worthy of a repeat.
I too have concluded the same thing, after a recent research into various philosophies. The search for religion is universal in man, it is tied to the 3 questions we want to ask: Where we came from (creation); who we are and who we should be (morality); and where are we going (purpose of life, life-after-death, etc). We are always seraching for meaning. The nihilists who deny meaning have confused a process of truth-finding (skepticism) for a result. they end up holding a philosophy that is impossible to hold in 'real life'.
There is some error in Western civilizations' realms of faith and reason, in the duality of it. Yet our synthesis of Greek-derived reason-based philosophy and Christian faith-based religion into a world view that gave us the framework (logic) to learn and the motivation (moral imperative) to do so. Without *either* faith or reason we would not be modern society; without the mind-set to consider both subject to human understanding and advance, we would not have advanced.
You need look no further than the Buddhist-run societies to see the stark constrast; Buddhist moral vision is compelling (suffering exists, so overcome it by overcoming desire) yet impaired by the inward-looking-ness of it all. I see Buddhism as the only other religion close to Christianity in its completeness of moral vision. (Confucius was more practical than idealist; Islam is flawed.) But it takes you out of the world, whereas the example of Christ is one of going *into* the world. Can modern man deny all desire? Yet a culture that encourages this is a culture that creates incredible passivity and lack of change. Which is why Tibet is not New York city.
Now this does leave aside the question 'is it true?' and yet consider the lesson of doubting Thomas, and the Greek philosophic tradition, carried on by scholastics and western philosophers: They tested faith with reason, reason and natural experience with faith, and tested and considered both in their own realms. The beginning of science is to understand that a statement can be falsifiable by the evidence, and that what we "know" is less than we assume ("All I know is I know nothing" -Socrates). Moreso than any other religion, the simple question "Is this true?" is asked in ours - with meaning. Christian theology, unlike the theologies of other religions is *also* imbued with that questioning eye; it's led to schisms and dogma, but also to *advance*. And perhaps, even to those who split off completely into agnostic and atheistic doubt.
One of the book I read on my own recent philosophic excursions was a book on the New Age "wisdom" by Tony Schwartz, a secularized Jewish reporter who went looking for meaning in his life. Lot's of interesting stuff there are Esalen, new psychotherapies, bio-feedback, theories of mind, sports trainers pushing excellence (let your mind go, learne to relax) and whacky new age spiritualism (higher modes of consciousness thanks to LSD, meditation, that take us beyond the rational - so there is subrational, rational and above-the-rational), but in the end he came to conclude the answer is the search. And I came to ask while reading "Why didnt you just ask a Rabbi or a Minister these same questions?" the answers to his questions have been given in the Torah and in the Epistles, and in meditations of St Francis, Augustine, Aquinas, etc.
It is a testament to the eternal search. Yet also a testament to Chesterton's point that: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." -- GK Chesterton. That's my one-sentence summary of the entire grab-bag of New Age spritualism. Despite trying to 'beyond' mere Christianity, the New Agers end up reverting to primitive mysticism of a type that even devout Christians would find weirdly superstitious.
The only real advance of the modern era, when you look at it, is science and the natural knoweldge of the world we have gained. No moral vision has yet to surpass what Jesus taught on the Sermon on the Mount. It is complete; yet universal ("Do unto others as you would have other do unto you" is the best formulation of a similar ethic carried in practically all major religions). It doesnt mean we should accept faith of 100AD christian blindly, but we should be humble about assuming we can 'invent' something better.
I too have found the Left's assault on or Greek and Roman roots to be a big threat. More so than the issue of the removal of the 10 commandments from the Alabama Court House. I go back to Chesterton on this. They destroy the old moral fabric because they want to install their own, not because they are hard-nosed skeptics: Worshipping animals (Peter Singer), woman-Gods (Wicca feminism), hedonism (take your pick), and other superstitions.
An appropriate response might be, not likely must be, a secular-based Conservative traditionalist moral foundation. Curiously, the best example of that would be found in (egads) the Deist Founding fathers, like Jefferson, etc., and the legacy they gave us. Which returns us to the idea that the best way to stop the depradations of the Left on common sense would be to defend the traditions of both faith and reason - and civic duty and freedom - that the founding fathers gave to our country.
So we need to ask: WWJD? What Would Jefferson Do?
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