So you're a jew?

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:23, archived)

well sadly not, perhaps,
because to be a Jew you have to have Jewish parents. Well you can convert, if you really want to, but they don't like it much. To be Jewish is more than just to believe in that particular God, but to be under that particular covenant from that particular God. Or to dispel a certain common misunderstanding I seem to hear a lot, Jews don't believe that non-Jews go to Hell. It's perhaps a defining paradox of Judaism, that they believe in a Universal God but not a Universal religion.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:27, archived)

Jews don't believe in the afterlife, do they?
And I thought it was only orthodox jews that got uppity about conversion?
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:29, archived)

Jews believe in "the World to Come,"
that is one of the pillars of their faith. This isn't necessarily the same thing as having immortal souls, although they have also come to believe in this, it isn't original. It gets complex.

I don't know what the Liberal stance is on conversion but even from my own perspective it's unnecessary. It's their tradition and their culture, it would seem like butting in. It's only the theology and metaphysics that has truth value, not the customs.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:37, archived)

Why do you believe in a certain God but disregard all other God's that humanity has created?
Is your religion due to your initial exposure to the idea of a God, that is to say the first you were taught, or have you sort of whittled down your choices to arrive at your current belief?
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:32, archived)

My parents weren't really religious, if that's what you mean.
They were married in a church and got me Christened but that's about the extent of their church-going, these were just the done things. My dad was more into theories about aliens, my mum didn't much care about anything that didn't help with the housework.

I've investigated a lot of things. There's a certain amount of truth all over the place, the Buddha said some sensible things but Buddhism is properly agnostic although it has absorbed a lot of Hindu metaphysics. There's a lot of interesting Hindu philosophy as well, in fact my own view of the Universe has something in common with the Hindu cosmology lately. But Hinduism is still at root naive polytheism that has developed more towards monism through intellectual speculation. Judaism is interesting almost for being the other way around.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:45, archived)

Sikhism is interesting in that it expresses a fundamental physical truth in spiritual terms.
Their higher power is not a named deity but an intangible, universal force of light, truth, order, etc. - and it has since been deduced that the very presence of stuctured matter from atoms to life itself resulted from the prevalence of order against entropy.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 0:58, archived)

I don't know where you intend to go with this.
The Sikhs call God "Waheguru" but note that it is only one name amongst any number of possible names. They meditate upon the "naam" or "name".
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Thu 6 Oct 2011, 1:04, archived)