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Subject:
INSIGHT 5768 - #14 "Pain"
Author:
epistemopathy@yahoo.com
Date:
1/5/2008
Interesting Insight; it helped to clarify for me one step in the process of how these kinds of religious stories lead to extremism.
If the plagues were an act of Justice, rather than an expression of some principle beyond our comprehension, then it brings the plagues into the realm of
human understanding. If we understand the plagues as an example of Justice, then we will learn from this that this is how to carry out Justice.
Calling it "justice" brings it down from the incomprehensible Divine realm into the human realm, and once this is done, gives us permission to apply
this principle, and indeed contributes to the defining of the principle of Justice for us, so that we know how to apply it ourselves.
Humans are commanded to do Justice, but how do we learn hat Justice is? By seeing it applied.
I'm belabouring the point a bit to make it clear, because the implications are terrifying.
The Chumash is telling its readers that if you have the power to commit mass terror on an entire population, and even mass murder, in order to
convince its leaders to undertake more benign policies towards a subjugated group, then you should do it because it is Just. In other words,
the Chumash is advocating terrorism as an appropriate tactic in this kind of situation.
Similarly, if the "ethnic cleansing" of the Canaanites was done as a matter of a comprehensible principle rather than an incomprehensible Divine
precept, then we learn from this that genocide is also an appropriate expression of this principle.
The problem here is that the interpretations of the text arising from conventional scholarship have created a vector that must inevitably lead to
extremism. By contrast, it is much safer for all of us to say that the actions of terror and genocide in the Chumash are not the expressions of
understandable principles that humans can learn from, adopt and apply, but rather are entirely beyond our comprehension. |
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