I responded to you last night, I completely agree with you, so you are not being ignored by everyone.

A stupid law is a stupid law?

^^^ Right. Just like Hindus? But why does no one bitch about Hindus? Because they are not trying to convert people... which coincidentally is the same as Judaism.

If we are here to gripe about stupidity in every religion, than this thread will never end.

I thought the point of the discussion was griping about those people who try to force their opinions/religion on other people?

The same reason I don't gripe about most religions is the same reason I don't gripe about gay people and their sexuality... they are happy being who they are and don't expect me to be the same way.

If any group, politically, sexual orientation, religion, culture, or whatever tries to make me like them, then I have a problem with it. But if that group does what they do without harming another human being, or throwing their belief in other people's face, why would I complain?

I mentioned Hindu's as well.

But no.  The point was to debate the historical accuracy of Jesus and i commented how most "holy laws" were likely public service announcements made in the name of god so they would stick.

No gripe.

Simple fact.

Still, this is an apple to oranges comparison.  The laws of the so-called old testament have nothing to do with Jesus (and this is according to Christianity) so I fail to see the connection here.  You were complaining about the laws concerning shatnez, which isn't a Christian belief.  The laws conerning shatnez is a Jewish law that only applies to Jews (just ask any religious Jew, if you told them you followed this law, they'd think you were crazy, because it doesn't apply to non-Jews).

That's why I am confussed as to what we are talking about. 

What I mean is, if a Jew comes in this thread and tries "convert" people, I will be the first to jump on that person... this is a subject that I can crush most people on.  But no Jew expects a non-Jew to follow such mitzvos, so what is the debate?  You say it's a dumb law, which lucky for you, doesn't apply to you anyway, and no Jew expects you to follow (and would think you were a little nuts if you did too). 

So I am asking, where is the debate?  You think it is pointless, and you don't follow it... good for you, you shouldn't.  I'm not here to debate people who believe different than myself.  I only debate people whom will stop at nothing short of my conversion.  No Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, Taoist, Wiccan, etc want to convert you or I... so we shall never have a debate.  If they did, that would change everything.

that's debatable.  I'm a Christian and I don't believe in that.

I actually thought about changing my religion to Judaism, but decided not to.  I don't see much difference in Christianity and Judaism at all.  Christianity also teaches that you don't have to Christian to be righteous.  Though many Christians will disagree with me, but many will agree.

@ Comrade Toyva: Your post sounds like you think my post was disagreeing with you, when in fact it was mostly agreeing with you including all of the part you responded to.

@ Kasz216: You might as well stop because I don't think Comrade Toyva is ever going to understand what you are getting at. Unless of course you are entertained by that.

(Just for fun, though, I'll try it once: Comrade Toyva: Kasz is just talking about religious laws in general and that they seem to him to be more about lifestyle tips than spiritualism. He's not saying anything about Jewish law mattering to others or being forced on others; he's only making an observation or an argument about the nature of such religious laws.

(I'm not sure exactly what you think he's arguing against, but you're mistaken. He's just saying that many of those religious laws are simply tips for improving people's lives that got put in holy books and given the authority of God's voice to make people more likely to do them.)

Tips for improving ones life are precisely the sort of thing that should go in religious books. Now I'm not a religious person in the slightest however the reality is many many people are, so tips to self-improvement seem like the perfect thing for a religious text for obvious reasons stated in above posts. The issue is more one of malleability. If a law ceases to be relevant to modern society how does one get around the laws in said religious text or change them? But thats a question for another day.

C) When did I say anything about my support of the removal of Israel? I specifically only mentioned backing up to the green line. Which is all that the world recognizes as legal Israeli land. Nor did I claim there weren't those that wanted to push them into the sea, all I said was that not recognizing its existance in maps, etc, is not the same thing as calling for its destruction via the education system in Palestine.

I fully support a two-state solution. Problem is too many 'racists-pigs' on both sides of the fence won't allow it to happen. You've got Hamas and others killing civilians whenever they can because they've diluted their morality to consider all of Jewish people punishable for the crimes of their leaders and settlers. Then you have the hardline religious zealots jews who want to continue the illegal settlement expansion to push out the arabs so they can regain all of ancient Israel plus the daily aparthied actions against the palestinian populace from settlers and soldiers alike. Top that off with the completely genocidal idea that its ok to bomb an entire apartment building because you want to kill one military leader. Its exactly the same on both sides. Unfortunately niave Americans refuse to actually read about the history for themselves and instead trust CNN/Fox and so on to give them a 'fair and balanced' protrayal of the situation.

D) I provided a couple nonArab links to Final-Fan regarding the settler terrorist actions. You just choose to ignore them. Hell, just read Israeli newspapers for enough evidence to prove yourself wrong. It happens. Sure not 100% of settlers are like this, but the greater majority are the same as Hamas' mentality.

Just hit up Google news and search. Face it, US media doesn't show you everything. Hell it doesn't even show you even half of the murders, rapes, etc in our own country, why would you think it would show the the countless actions of settlers? That's just being niave.

As I said, a rocket launch or the rare killing of an Israeli is reported. BUt, the daily mistreatment and attacks on Palestinians is almost completely ignored by US media.

Just today when I was watching CNN. It talked in great detail about the 4 Israeli civilians who have lost their lives due to rockets. Yet, it only had one statement in passing to the over 400 Gaza civilians who have died from Israeli bombings on apartment buildings. However, it did show right after that a partial briefing of the Israeli foriegn minister talking about how hard they try to not killing innocent bystanders. yeah, right.

Same mentality. Both sides are largly pushed by terrorists, who are actually the minority.

1. Don't be naive, they teach that it doesn't exist because they WANT it to not exist, and it's not going to disappear in a cloud of magic fairy dust.

2. But Israel is dismantling a lot of the settlements. Who is stopping the rocket attacks? This sort of thing is why Israel is not quite as culpable in the continuing violence. The violence of the settlers is recent and may be temporary and is local/unauthorized/spontaneous, whereas Hamas is anything but.

3. That is not genocide. If you seriously think it is, tell me your definition. I'm not saying it's OK but it's not inherently genocidal at all.