Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand attacked Zohran Mamdani this week with Islamophobic falsehoods, later partially walking back the comments. It’s of a piece with Gillibrand’s indifference to the genocidal Israeli war that is increasingly outraging New Yorkers.
Yep. I’ve had both xtians and Jews take issue with me saying that xtianity started out as basically a sect of Jewish heretics. How else could it possibly even exist? It’s much the same with Islam.
Besides all the whatabouts and circular reasoning they employ, it’s not something you can really contest when both Islam and xtianity claim the “old” testament as the source that confirm their beliefs. Muslims claim that Muhammad is the final prophet in a lineage of, ahem, Jewish prophets…
It’s objectively true that neither Islam or xtianity would even exist without Judaism. I don’t understand xtians that contest this (I’m sure Muslims do, too, I’ve just never debated with any on this) - it must only come from a place of emotional attachment to their chosen lifestyle. The Jews that have argued with me over this seem to be taking issue with doctrine and where the forks are currently at.
But that’s how heresies work. Heresy literally means “choice”. At some point, things fork and drift. Languages fork. Beliefs, doctrines and traditions fork. In the world of software, things like UNIX fork (multiple times, and many adherents to one form of UNIX or another often joke about “heretics” that are using some fork of UNIX vs. another fork - but I’ve never seen anyone deny that, say, FreeBSD, wouldn’t exist without the original AT&T project).
It’s really hard to have a monopoly on ideas, even with massive amounts of violence behind those that don’t want anyone committing the heresy (choice) of going their own way…at some point, xtianity went through a reset, probably caused by the printing press, because some xtians claimed they were reading the original text themselves and disagreed with the Catholic take on that text. Those two groups - Catholics and Protestants - often accuse each other of not being “true” xtians, lol. Even more hilariously, many sects within the group called “Protestants” often accuse other Protestant sects of not being “true” xtians…
Buzzkills like me come along and remind all of these people that they started out as Jewish heretics and they don’t want to hear it…
I don’t know if you’ve seen this guy, but in case you haven’t, I think you’d enjoy it. He’s a religion historian:
https://www.youtube.com/@ReligionForBreakfast/videos
Thanks; I had not see him before, watching this after searching a bit on his channel…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDG5U0inNlE
I wonder how much this guy and Robert M. Price (“the Bible Geek”) have in common with one another.
Anyway, this idea of when one religion (or languages, etc.) really parted ways with another reminds me of thought experiments regarding things like transhumanism and the idea of “uploading” your brain into another substrate - if you hypothetically find a way to link your brain to some other substrate, say, silicon, and you copy one of your neurons over to it, preserving all connections it had with your current set of neurons, and then remove the old neuron of the flesh? Most people would still consider you “you”. But if you then proceed, neuron by neuron…when do you become not “you”? Does that ever happen?
It’s interesting to watch people with very rigid mindsets try to grapple with these kinds of questions, especially if it’s for something they hold very dear, usually their own religion. I don’t tend to run across dogmatic religious people that really think or even know about early xtianity for instance…I think there is a reason for that. If you start to realize how much of an amorphous blob belief, religion and doctrine really and truly is, it becomes a little more difficult to adhere to notions of what a “true” xtian is.
What a great catch on that particular video. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t seen that one. I’m checking out the bible geek now, thanks.
On your edits: Absolutely, I strongly suggest staying away from Jehovah’s Witness conversations.