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play_therapist comments on Reason as memetic immune disorder - Less Wrong
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You said, "The history of religions sometimes resembles the history of viruses. Judaism and Islam were both highly virulent when they first broke out, driving the first generations of their people to conquer (Islam) or just slaughter (Judaism) everyone around them for the sin of not being them. "
I am not familiar with that history of early Judaism. Can you cite any references I can read about it? (I do admit I have not read the entire old testament, perhaps it's in there?) By the way, I have heard that Roman Catholics are actively discouraged from reading either testament directly.
Have you read even the early books? The constant warfare and near-genocides engaged in until they built up an empire? Then you have, even much later, all the rebellions which prompted the Romans to raze the Temple and exile most of the Jews.
(An oddity I always found to be an example is that one of the lost books of the bible is titled 'The Book of the Wars of the Lord'.)
Thanks. Whatever reading I did of the old testament was back when I was a teenager- which was long ago.I don't remember how far I got, not very. I was reading the commentary along with it, and it was tedious. Perhaps I'll get back to it when I get a chance. That's certainly not the spin that was put on the history we were taught in Hebrew school.
In order for the Old Testament to be evidence of Jews acting genocidal, the Old Testament would have to be true to a sufficient extent. If it's not, you don't have Jews being genocidal, you have Jews telling stories about their ancestors being genocidal.
It was my impression that non-religious historians do not believe that the genocides described in the Old Testament as being done by Jews actually happened.
It was my impression that non-religious historians do not believe all the little stories and miracles, but I had not noticed that they entirely disbelieved accounts like conquering Canaan and believed that there was evidence indicating they were pacifists and did not exterminate any local populations or engage in warfare, and the archaeological evidence, to the extent that it can speak on the matter (since it's going to be very difficult to investigate genocides from millennia ago when you are excluding all available written evidence as possibly untrue), supported it (the example that comes to mind is the burning of Jericho, although it's disputed how well the observed destruction layer fits into the chronology).
Those stories most likely didn't happen. Still, the fact that their religion is entirely dependent on those bloody stories says a lot about the ancient Hebrews' priorities.
It seems fundamentally unfair to compare cases of religions whose people actually committed genocide to religions whose people tell stories about committing genocide.
This is especially so considering the original post here, which points out that people don't actually follow all the commands of their religions and have blind spots about the religions not saying what they say. That applies to stories about genocide just as much as it applies to direct commands--you can reason all you want that someone who believes that fictional genocides were real and justified is as vicious as someone who actually commits genocide, but people's minds don't work that way. It's entirely possible to think Biblical genocides are justified and have blind spots which would lead you not to commit genocide in any real-life situation.
(In fact, I'm not erven sure I could call all the possibilities blind spots. If you believe genocide is only justified when commanded in person by God, is it really a blind spot to say "God doesn't directly speak to anyone nowadays, so I won't commit any genocide"?)