Anonymous asked Staff ago I personally think that there is no G-d, and therefore I never understood why people like me, who do not observe the Torah, remain moral, caring, and worry about others. Any normal secular person who knows that there is no G-d and believes that everything has happened as the result of a specific evolutionary process should know that there is no obligation to do any specific thing. There are no demands on a person, no obligations, for there is no judge and no jury. Each person should do whatever he finds best!!! So all the empty talk about a secular ideology is just hypocrisy. Who are we kidding? Religious people have their acts and we have our pleasures! So they claim we live like animals. Let them. What do we care? If there’s no purpose to the world and no life after death, then let’s make the most of the physical pleasures we have here!!! Wake up!!!
Adiel
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Dear Adiel,
The reality of the world is nonsense to both secular and religious. We are not capable of understanding the start of the world nor its end, and as mortals we can only deal with our nonsensical lives in this world.
There are people who are not capable of being moral without some external force (G-d, the laws of the land, etc.). So to live in a civilized society and not descend into chaos like Sodom and Gemmorah they invent an external entity and attribute laws to it. These are the religious people whose values and morals can only exist if they invent a G-d who gives them reward, like infants who learn in school only because they have to. On the other hand, there are people who from their very essence are obligated to morality and values and the laws which stem from them. They don’t need any external obligatory force, do not need to invent a terrifying and fearsome G-d. Their very essence is morality.
Now see what the difference is between those who invent laws for an external G-d and those who derive laws from their internal essence. According to the laws of the external obligatory force (G-d) one is permitted to kill a gentile, is forbidden to return lost items to them, and does not assist a non-Jewish woman who is in childbirth on the Sabbath. On the other hand, the values and laws that come from within a person are meant to preserve and protect the rights of man and his freedom, with no distinction between religions, races, and sexes.
Sincerely,
Daat Emet
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Dear David,
In the laws of the Torah it is written that one who kills accidentally may be killed by the family of his victim. Would you behave so? Would you agree that the law courts gave out judgments of “an eye for an eye”? Human morality “in G-d’s name” changes from time to time and is revamped based on changes in the human spirit.
In my answer I meant that even religious people and the faithful act according to their human morality, but to implement it they need an external obligatory entity which they call G-d.
You are correct in your assumption that values have no rational arguments, and each person behaves based on his own understanding of his obligation to his world. All we mean to do is bring the religious Jewish view of morality contrasted with the secular.
The religious Jewish morality champions and supports discrimination between people, between Jews and gentiles, between male and female, between believer and apostate, while the secular morality forbids discrimination between people and sexes.
Each person can choose the values he finds more lofty and just.
N.B. Which values do you find more lofty?
Sincerely,
Daat Emet