Peter wrote:
On 11/7/2011 3:29 PM, HeyBub wrote:
wrote:

My feeling is it doesn't matter much what people believe.
What matters is, in practice, does
the religion cause harm or do good.

As much as I've tried to find reliable research on that,
all I've encountered are opinions, anecdotes and outright lies.

At least one religion I know of, Judaism, has no belief test; the
official Jewish position that any religion, to the degree it teaches
and promotes charity, lovingkindness, justice, mercy, and so forth
is a good and holy road to God.

Except for Mormons, of course.



(Just kidding on that last)


Yeah, but - what is the proper way to be a faithfully observant Jew? Is it
the Hasidim, who essentially spend every hour of their entire
life re-assuring God and themselves that they respect, obey, believe
and follow as literally as possible every commandment and law written
in a book that went through many centuries of oral re-telling,
questionably accurate translation into other languages and is an
assembly of the writings of many different authors - all of which
were supposedly infallibly transmitting God's words? Or is it the
form of Judiasm practiced by those in the Reconstructionist, Reform,
Conservative, or the Orthodox branches? And even in each of those,
each congregation does it's "own thing" and essentially all members
of each congregation are doing their "own thing".

There is a belief test in Judaism. It's known as the "Shema".
see: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...ism/shema.html

Contrast the Shema:
"Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One."

with the Apostles Creed:
"I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And in
Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord..."

"Belief" does not appear in the former but is essential in the latter.

As to your basic question, there is no "proper" way to be a Jew. It's a
matter of personal taste. A "good Christian" is much like "good barbecue".
Both should be hyphenated in that there's no such thing as a "bad" one. In
Judaism, one can be a "good Jew" and also an atheist.

Weird, eh?