“I guess what I’m trying to figure out is why is having a rainbow in a classroom is indoctrination and not having the Ten Commandments in a classroom,” Texas State Rep. James Talarico argued in a now viral video.
Texas State Rep. James Talarico using biblical scripture to tear down conservative Christian arguments
They're fine with the Old Testament, it's got plenty of treachery, rape, slavery and fraud cheered on by God, mixed in with smiting and destroying things that disagree with you.
They have a problem with the teachings of Christ in the New Testament, which is all a bit too "someone was different to me so I made friends with them and we ate together".
It draws an odd moral line here where a virgin prisoner of war can basically be raped for the rest of her life as a "wife" but the act of doing so makes it so the "husband" cannot sell her into slavery after leaving her.
I think the best way of summing up biblical ethics is "there's animal rights but women are the animals"
The sarcastic air quotes reveal your bias towards organized religion as a whole as well as your ignorance of Jewish culture.
Science and education are a fundamental part of Jewish culture. Someone regarded as one of the smartest people in recent history is Jewish and I imagine that without his parents valuing education and science, the rest of us would still think time and space are two separate things.
Yes, there are orthodox and dogmatic Jews just like in any religion. But just because someone has a much different world view than you doesn't mean they don't value reason.
The new testament and old testament "god" are so different that sometimes I wonder if the new testament is 5% Jesus^1 hijacking an old religion to try and make something good out of it, and 95% his followers trying to make sense and reconcile what Jesus taught with the old testament.
^1 afaik it's fairly well established that Jesus - or someone like him - existed, the big question is if they were actually a deity or not.
I think there's definitely something in your line of thinking. In modern terms, there's a lot retconning in the New Testament to make the books add up as a series. They spend the whole "intro" persuading you it follows a direct lineage over ~2000 years.
There's some pretty wild "fan theories". Some say it's correcting the "errors", "corruption of language over time" or "devil influence" of the older book, others say OT "YHWH" is not NT "God almighty", but an unrelated angry local God.
They all claim "Newest is truest" - even the more controversial "later sequels".