h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As with all Jewish stories, this one can be taken in many ways. The way I always like to take it is the pragmatic view. In Judaism any other laws can be ignored in order to preserve life (well, you have to keep worshipping God, though you are free to say you don't), and IMHO this is another example of a hierarchical approach to the laws. Whilst there was only one small jug of consecrated oil, there were of course rolling in enormous amounts of other oil. Don't you think it has a really nice message if the priests just figured what was more important, mixed the oil, and kept the lamp alight?

Nothing controversial here at all.

Indeed, there was plenty of oil around, and it was even permissable to use contaminated oil if no other was available.

So why didn't they?

Chanukah means "dedication". It is was the time to re-consecrate and re-initialise the service to God. But everything follows the beginning. How you start something defines the genes for its future. Starting the service to God again in anything but the purest method would have been to corrupt it for all future generations.

So there.

So this was even more of a specific instance where pragmaticism was over-ruling what you would do in the ideal situation?

Chanuka means dedication? Not literally I hope. I'm sorry but I'm fed up of analysis. Any story and poem can be interpreted to have "significance". I just wrote up this entry to give the story of the festival traditional Jews are told - I don't believe it, I think it is tripe .

Well, you just go on living your life sneering at everything and assuming it is all meaningless.

Meanwhile, you may wish to ponder on why the people in this "story" (and in countless more "stories" in the last 2000 years) thought their Judaism was "significant" enough to risk their lives for while the tide of society was pushing towards superficiality.

Religions are brainwashing. From an early age children are taught what their parents believe is the truth. This is embedded in the child's mind and even though they might think it out it is very unusual that it will break away from this belief. With certain people this belief is so strong due to authodox teaching or threats of eternal damnation that they would risk anything not to give it up.

Besides this, the persecution of Jews was not due to their belief system. The Nazis did not persecute according to beliefs, they persecuted according to inheritance (i.e. blood). Obviously this is totally vile and there is nothing to justify such a massacre. But anyway, the main reason for the persecution over the past two millenia is the way the Roman-Catholic church shifted the blame for the death of christ onto the Jews. Just because the fellow they deemed the messiah was born in a mainly Jewish land, instead of church taking the blame for the killing (for it was in fact the Romans that crusified Jesus), the Jews were blamed. So this got bundled in with Christian teachings. And in the same way people get taught their beliefs, people get taught who they are to hate. I have learnt that the human mind is much more rigid then people think and I believe that it unfair to educate a child with one belief system as it does not give them freedom to totally leave it once it has become in-built.

And by the way, Chanuka means inauguration (as in the inauguration of the Temple) - not dedication.

Dedication is a synonim for inauguration.

I wasn't talking about the Nazi holocaust. I was talking about Jews being given the option to live if they convert or cease practicing or die in various yukky ways.

You believe yourself to be free from ideology and such nonsense, whereas you are simply the product of another enforced rules system, which is modern wester secularism. Don't be under any misapprehension about how hard it is to break out of that as you have been absorbing it hook, line and sinker from every angle almost every second of your life.

All I can recommend is that you actually learn about the true depth and meaning of a system before dissing it as being a mere control method.

However, I realise this is hard for you to grapple with because you are a teenager and know everything.

No. Just because I am a teenager does not mean I am ignorant, arogant and think I know all. I may be some of those things , but it would be ageist generalisation to assume that it is so because of my age.

Now, I do not find it "hard..to grapple with". I see how being immersed in secularism has similar effects to being emmersed in a religion. But... the key difference is total freedom of choice. Freedom of questioning, freedom to change religion. Most religions are so dogmatic and controlling that their members are unlikely to leave. Now, of course violent threat is wrong. And of course it should be the individuals choice what to believe. But I think the child should have a diverse education in order to be able to freely chose its belief. NOT be taught that God is the creator of the universe as fact. NOT be told that by cutting a piece of toilet paper on a Saturday he will be punished. NOT be dragged through fear into a belief.

Hmmm... Firstly, the depth of meaning does not matter if the system drags people into it in an unfair way. To me, intention and method matter more than result. I would not support going to heaven if people were prodded with spikes up the heavenly steps. People should be free to judge for themselves, no matter what consequence they might meet. I'd prefer eternal hell to heaven if I had made my own choice, rather than being 'guided' to it.
But, I have also studied the Jewish system. I was brought up a semi-secular Jew. I was taught all the festivals. I was even told their meanings and the symbolisms in the story; the reasons behind them. However, I have a fundamental disagreement with allegorical teaching. I see it as blindly leading people, as sheep. Even if it leads them the right way, I disagree with it. Secondly, there is A LOT of crap in the bible, stuff likely to have led to many wars, racism, sexism and other such discriminations. The Bible is a handbook for the typical male euroasian. It guides the man what to eat, what to do with his women, how to kill the animals, who are slaves etc.. This is what wraps around 'the meaning'.
I also am very sceptical of the meaning. If it is so right, why is it stuffed so deep within a racist book? To give us a quest to find it? Then what's the point of the book? I am fed up with metaphorical interpretations - any piece of text can be analysed to death and the meaning of liff squeazed out of it in the process.

> I'd prefer eternal hell to heaven if I had made
> my own choice, rather than being
> 'guided' to it.

There's really not anything you can say to someone like that.

It misunderstands so many things on so many different levels that I am lost for words.

Good luck with your life.

Well thank G.O.D. for that! I'm a lost case! No hope for me - not even worth conversion. I've never heard that before.

So I'm misunderstanding everything. It's not that I take a pragmatic look at things and try to understand a story without turning it into an allegorical nightmare. It's that I'm superficial and not insightful. Nice to here that you're lost for words though .

Mr Cynic,

1) Just because a religious system (in your case: Secularism) doesn't have an orginize stracture it doesn't change the fact that it is a religion of sorts. It's just as difficult to leave YOUR religion as it is to leave any other one.

2) You're both arrogant AND ignorant if you let yourself so brazenly
insult billions of people, call them all 'brain-washed' and decide that you're smarter than they are or that you make choices more freely than they do. YOU were just as "brain-washed" as the rest of us and are not better just because you were "brain-washed" into something else rather than the classical verity of religion.

3) Moreover, unless you're prepare to say that you know EVERYTHING there is to know in this life and in this world, you shouldn't make such decision about relgion and accept the possibilty of your being wrong alongside everyone else.

In regard to the "rightness of the meaning":

Read the ten commandment and tell me what's not right about THEM.
They're more or less The Meaning.

In regards to the "racism":

The reason is pragmatic- If they don't belong to our religion they don't practice our kind of morality- or in other words the won't be very nice to us -so why should we be nice to them?. You're looking at the bible's attitude towards other nations through the eyes of someone who was born in the 20th century and you're not considering the possibilty that at that time such attitudes were necessary because other nations WEREN'T very nice or very kind (e.g. Sadom and Gamora). The idea of "Don't stoop to his\her\thier level" couldn't work back then so it was necessary to treat other nations as they would treat us. Besides the "racism", as you call it, in the bible is toward NATIONS, not individuals. It is a Mitzvah to treat foreigners who live or pass among us with dignaty and it is ponishable by God not to heed this commandment. Furthermore, if by "racism" you don't mean misstreating and you just mean that we consider people of other religions to be wrong... well... SO DO YOU.

In regard to the "sexism":

The bible has a very good attitude towards women. Granted, it could be better but at the time it was the best there was. In fact, it still is quite liberal by modern standards. It's more the later interpretations that caused the bible to SEEM sexist however, and here's the clincher, the various interpreters of the bible rarely agree about anything and there isn't ONE path that all orthodox jews must tread upon, there's only a general direction and you can choose the interpreter you like best. Some of them can be very liberal at times.


In any case, regardless of all your claims about sexism, it doesn't matter if the women don't mind it. People don't float around in a vacum, we are all constantly "brain-washed" by everybody else. As a result we don't make ANY informed, freely conceived choices, because of that, a woman who doesn't mind sexism and or even doesn't notice what you call sexism in her life because she was "brain-washed" into believing that that is simply the way things ought to be is actually free from sexism. YOU were "brain-washed" into thinking that women should do certain things (everything actually) but THEY were "brain washed" into thinking that they should do other things. YOU think something is sexism because you've seen other things but THEY haven't and choose not to and so they don't know about sexism and don't care about it.
Besides, it isn't sexism unless women are considered inferior- which they aren't- or if women want something and are denied simlpy beacuse they are women however, they don't want something more than they are alowed anyway so there isn't any problem for them and as a result there is no sexism in their life.
Because there is no way not to be "brain-washed", they aren't wrong and you're not wrong either, you're both just looking at things differently and as a result you see sexism and they don't, BUT they are what matters here and so there is no Sexism among jews who are "brain-washed" (i.e. choose) to practice Judaism in a devout fashion.

you are quite right of course einstien quotes (roughly)it is almost impossible for a person to think outside the box (the preduceis of their social enviroment) as he describes it.I think a lot of hogwash is talked about religion,it is organized religion that causes the problems in hotspots like ireland and the middle east not faith in your chosen god,its nice to have a god.It must be great to have a catholic god who forgives any transgretions u might inaddvertantly commit,adultery,murder,bigotry to name but a few