By all means....

Submitted by Moshe (Israel), Jul 17, 2011 at 08:36

Dear Janus,

You summary of our string is indeed remarkable. However it is just a repetition of your previous skewed statements. I have no intention to enter a theological debate with you, but since you insist, I must address some of your most prominent misinterpretations of ancient (and also modern) Jewish history.

How could you make such a distorted and invalid collection of claims like "the ancient Jewish theocracy that was involved in a constant antagonism and war on all those who contested its validity inside or outside. And with its quite wild Messianic promises it brought the society it absolutely dominated to ruin and expulsion." and trying to support them with cherry picked quotations from the Bible which are unrelated to the subject?

To the best of my limited knowledge, no "Messianic promises" (either "wild" or "tame") are to be found in The Old Testament/Bible. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And regarding the "absolutely dominated" Jewish society by the prophets and priests, your propositions are absolutely divorced from reality. You quote the story of Elijah's triumph over the priests of the Baal as a proof of his "absolute" control. But if you indeed were right, can you tell us why had poor Elijah immediately after this "victory" to run for his life deep into the desert? Also why don't you relate to Jeremiah's plight and ABSOLUTE LACK OF CONTROL during the most fateful period of the 1^st Kingdom? Just to cut a long story short, except a short period after the Maccabean revolt, the Jewish kingdoms were never run neither by clergy nor by prophets. You asked me: "Can you say anything senseful about ancient Israel without mixing religion in, my friend?" I hope that I managed to do just that.

Now with regard to our debate about "wars waged against reality", you adamant and uncompromising faith in the omnipotence and validity of the Science is just another clear indication that YOU ARE NOT a scientist. True scientists are much more humble with regard to the real value of human science. They know that every scientific "truth" is valid only until it's proven inaccurate (in the good case) or completely wrong in the worse case. Vis a vis your hairsplitting epsilontics in distinguishing between "impossible" and "highly improbable", I tried to reconcile our differences by suggesting that we use different definitions for "winning wars against reality". But apparently this also was not sufficient for appeasing your puristic "scientific" approach and you accuse me of "abusing semantics". Nevertheless, I am glad that in spite of our differences, you still acknowledge that the rebirth of the Jewish statehood is an outstanding phenomenon in the History of Mankind. As a declared enthusiastic fan and supporter of modern Israel, you probably must be familiar with one of the most famous Ben-Gurion quotes: "In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles". And please note that no one ever accused Ben-Gurion of being religious.

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