You are prone to ignoring the first exile when there also wasn't a Temple. Did Judaism "not exist" then either?

Heck, Judaism didn't even have a Temple when it started. Solomon built the Temple hundreds of years after the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan.

There are facts in religion and there are beliefs.

I am not religious. I am what is considered "traditional" or "conservative" in Judaism. I go to a Reform synagogue. But I do believe in G-d and certain things about Him.

It is an undeniable fact that the Jewish people exist and have a law called the Torah (first of the three books of the Hebrew Bible) and a holy book called the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) that records Jewish history as seen by Jewish authorities at the time. It is a fact that Jewish law commands Jews to observe the Shabbat, to keep kosher (i.e. not eat pork etc.), and to love the country of Israel.

But it is faith or belief that those things are G-d's will. In truth they could just be laws made up by secular Jewish leaders.

That's one problem. I believe G-d inspired Jewish leaders to write the Torah and the Tanakh but I don't know that this is indeed so. I can live with that.

The other problem is that some religions, especially Christianity, claim universal truth for themselves. In Judaism it doesn't matter what other (non-Jewish) people believe. For all Judaism cares G-d might have sent other prophets to other people (some such are recorded in the Bible). I personally regard Zoroastrianism as true because it is mentioned in the Bible as such. For all I care G-d could also have sent a prophet named Muhammed to the Arabs. It doesn't matter to me whether He did with regards to my own faith.

And I can also accept that Christians have a Messiah named Jesus who was a Jew.

What I cannot accept is that my G-d has a literal "son" with a virgin. I don't care if other people believe it though.

But I have a problem with those same people telling me what my beliefs are, have to be, or that I have to accept their Messiah as mine (even though my beliefs are my Messiah are quite different from their beliefs about everybody's Messiah).

The point is that I can live with the fact that there are Hindus, Muslims, and Christians out there without worrying about them being "wrong". The son of G-d thing is a bit worrying (because they took my G-d for that). But maybe G-d wanted Indians to see Him in the form of Hindu gods or whatever. It doesn't matter to me. I find the history fascinating but it doesn't affect my beliefs.

And then there are the different Jewish tribes and their different versions of Jewish history.

The Jews (tribes of Juda, Benjamin, and Simeon) believe that the Temple is supposed to be in Jerusalem and that holy scripture consists of Torah (Instruction), Nevi'im (Prohets), and Ketuvim (Writings).

The Samaritans (tribes of Menasseh and Ephraim) believe that the Temple is supposed to be further north, in Samaria and that's where their Temple stood after the one kingdom split up. Their holy scripture is just the Torah with somewhat different text.

Ethiopian Jews (tribe of Dan) accept as holy the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) plus a few texts missing in the text non-Ethiopian Jews use.

It's not easy.

Plus the hole thing is written in ancient languages few Christians understand. So they often take the English translations as the literal word of G-d. Grand...

The Samaritan Torah is written in Samaritan Hebrew. The Tanakh is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Ethiopian Tanakh is written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ge'ez (the liturgical language of Ethiopian Jews). I think it's utterly fascinating and the more I learn the more I find there is to learn. That's why I am suspicious of anyone who claims to have arrived at the truth. It seems to me that those people are still at the very early stages of learning scripture, in the early stages it still looks like it could all be understood.

So my friend just saw Atheist on my Facebook profile and we had a huge conversation about it on AIM and I think she doesn't want to be my friend anymore....

That's low...and quite pathetic...on her part...

-Phal

Haha thanks....yeah I'm gonna give her time....I won't see her for three months....SUMMER 09!!!!! so she'll have plenty of time to think...

Oh and +1!!

Man achieves sentience. Man cannot explain his surroundings or circumstance. So Man creates God to explain away all the things he doesn't understand.

So, God is not the creator of Man - Man is the creator of God.

An intelligent/knowledgeable Man would simply state he is not intelligent/knowledgeable enough to know why things are the way they are. Once Man accepts his own knowledge is limited, the search for further knowledge can begin.

@Leauki:

This kind of approach to "God", religion, history n stuff that you have is the way I would very much like ALL people to have.

Because I could not more wholeheartedly agree to this statement:

*get's a bowl of popcorn*

From my own point of view (which is more or less the current scientific one), it didn't come from anything.  If you had a video tape of the history of the universe, and you were watching it on high speed reverse, when you got to the very beginning of the big bang, the tape just stops: you've hit the beginning of the tape.  You wouldn't be able to keep rewinding before that point, and you wouldn't see a scene where someone or something is standing somewhere and creating the big bang.  There is no time to create anything before the beginning of time, and there is no space to create it in before the beginning of space.  Everything that exists started in that first instant of time in that first point of space.

There's also a similar theory in science that also sounds reasonable to me, though it's a little harder to explain if you haven't studied relativity.  Some scientists instead think of it in terms of time dilation, which would mean if you were watching the tape in high speed reverse, as you got closer and closer to the very beginning of the Big Bang, where everything is just starting to explode outward from the center, the video would keep getting slower and slower, and you'd just end up watching the tape forever as it became slower and slower, without ever reaching the beginning of the tape, or ever seeing the exact beginning of the Big Bang... you'd only keep getting closer and closer to the beginning of the explosion by tinier and tinier fractions of time.

And there you go again, telling me what my beliefs must be.

Why on earth would it be an impossibility? There is a House of David. Why do you think that family would have ended? Heck, there are thousands of Jews who track their ancestry back to King David. And while that is not proof that they are indeed from David's family, neither is your belief that they are not. Their word is as good as yours; better, actually, since at least they COULD have the correct information whereas everything you say about Judaism including the House of David is just made up completely.

And now there is no tribe of Judah either? Now isn't that surprising... I am of that tribe. My tribe doesn't exist? Really? What do you even know about the tribes of Israel? (And I mean _know_, not _capable of making up_.)

Again, since your ignorance on this subject still won't stop you from making stuff up and since truth is so important to you and hence I don't want others to live with the untruths you tell them about Judaism.

Rabbis have the same authority to speak about Torah as priests, or as anybody. You are confusing Israelite priests with Catholic priests. Jewish priests do not and did not interpret Torah.

I see you are also fairly resistant to learning about the divisions of Judaism as you still list Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist as "divisions" of Judaism despite the fact that for the purpose of the validity of scripture, those are quite irrelevant as the correct divisions are, as I said, Rabbinical, Karaite, Samaritan, and Ethiopian. But I don't think I will ever see you even mention those since you seem never to learn and instead simply keep repeating what you already "know" or what you can make up as you go along.

Rabbis are not replacements for priests. They have different jobs. I don't expect you to understand their relation to each other. But I do expect you not to tell others about them when you clearly have no idea what either status entails.

Meet the Samaritan High Priest, Mr Elazar ben Tsedaka ben Yitzaq:

http://shomron0.tripod.com/2004/feb26.html

He became High Priest in 2004. I think you can reach him by mail in either Nablus or Holon (near Tel Aviv) in case you are interested in informing him that he doesn't exist or that the Israelite priesthood has been "replaced" by rabbis or something like that.

I usually say that "I believe in the Big Bang, I just believe that it was God that said Bang!" or something along those lines, but there was someone else that came up with that particular quote... KFC maybe....

On the contrary, the theory holds up so far and correctly predicted several phenomena now confirmed.

Again and again I find that you know little about religion or physics.

As for "common sense", is it really common sense to assume that if G-d created the world, the act of creation would not have looked like an awesome gigantic explosion in which the world comes into existence from nothing?

No, the Big Bang is scientific fact.  We can see the echoes of it still in the universe; we can measure when it happened; we can observe the effects of it in the expanding space around us.  No one in physics today denies the Big Bang, so saying it violates physical law is a little ridiculous.  Whose physical laws are you referring to?

The only matter of contention is how and why it happened.  No one thinks that it DIDN'T happen.  If you want to find a place to stick God into the mix, then the only place it really makes sense is as mommie4life said, that God made the Big Bang happen.

Even then you'd run into some trouble scientifically speaking, since there wasn't actually a space for god to be in or a time for him to be at, but you'd have an easier time being taken seriously by just saying God can sidestep those problems because he's a god, than you would by claiming the Big Bang didn't happen.

And as a side note... if you think the Big Bang violates common sense, just wait until you start reading about general relativity and quantum physics.  That's when most people's common sense gets torn to shreds