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finish mikraite
| author | Franklin Schmidt <fschmidt@gmail.com> |
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| date | Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:13:16 -0600 |
| parents | 30ab8cf88df6 |
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| files | src/mikraite/Beauty.html src/mikraite/God_for_Atheists.html src/mikraite/Modern_Culture.html src/mikraite/Who_is_my_neighbor.html src/mikraite/images/fake-knife-mask-masks-society-Favim.jpg src/mikraite/mikraite.html |
| diffstat | 6 files changed, 332 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) [+] |
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--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/src/mikraite/Beauty.html Thu Sep 18 19:13:16 2025 -0600 @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +<!doctype html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> + <script src="/site.js"></script> + <script> head() </script> + <title>Arkian - Beauty</title> + </head> + <body> + <script> header() </script> + <div content> +<h1>Beauty</h1> + +<p>When the music CD first came out to replace vinyl records, I thought it was great idea. I am a computer programmer and at that time I had a lot of faith in technology. But when I first heard a CD, it sounded to terrible to me. The people I told this to asked me what was wrong with the sound, and I really didn't have an answer. It just didn't sound right. Yes the sound was flawless, no scratches or warping, but some of the feeling of the music seemed to be lost. A few years later I read an article, "The CD and the damage done" by Neil Young, that described the problem. The CD records those frequencies that are audible to the human ear and throws the rest out. This is reductionist thinking. The problem is that inaudible frequencies affect the way we hear audible frequencies. Music, like all forms of beauty, is holistic, and even those parts of beauty that we can't experience directly in isolation nevertheless contribute to the beauty of the whole.</p> + +<p>Beauty is hard to define. It is one of those basic things that we know when we see it. Modern definitions of beauty are interesting for how wrong they are. Merriam-Webster is typical:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit</p> +</blockquote> +<cite><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beauty">http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beauty</a></cite> + +<p>All modern definitions focus on pleasure which just shows how poorly beauty is understood in modern culture. Eating a steak or a candy bar can give pleasure but contains no beauty. My definition of beauty is something that resonates with my soul. In order to do this, that something must have integrity meaning internal consistency. This consistency is also something I sense. So if I look at a beautiful landscape and I see something that doesn't belong there, the beauty is lost. And when I hear music with the sound being altered by the lack of some inaudible frequencies, this is also inconsistent with my expectation and so destroys the beauty. It is this requirement of integrity/consistency that makes beauty holistic.</p> + +<p>Art museums are another example of reductionist thinking. Just as the audible sounds in music are affected by the inaudible sounds, so also is any piece of visual art affected by its surroundings. The most effective visual beauty should extend to one's entire field of vision. So a beautiful landscape is most effective when you are there because then it occupies your whole visual field. A picture of the landscape is much less effective. Similarly, a piece of art is most effective in a room that has the same spirit as the art itself. So when one walks into an old church whose artwork and architecture are consistent, one feels much more of an impact than one does from any individual piece of art in a museum even if the museum art is better than the church art.</p> + +<p>Another word that tends to be confused with beauty is attractiveness. Here again the steak and candy counterexamples apply. Beauty is a specific kind of attractiveness, attractiveness in a long term sense. Something beautiful is something that we would value or cherish over the long term. This is why integrity is so important to beauty, because only something with integrity can be trusted over the long term. For something only short term, integrity matters much less. A beautiful landscape or city is a place we could imagine living for the long term. Food is generally short term, we eat it now, so it isn't really connected to beauty. A half-naked slut is attractive but not at all beautiful because her value is clearly short term. A beautiful woman is the kind one would want to marry, for the long term. Music taps directly into our emotions. There is fun music that is attractive but not beautiful, and there is more serious music that is beautiful because it ties into our long term emotional needs.</p> + +<p>Creating beauty is the inverse process of experiencing beauty. To create beauty, one expresses one's own internal feeling in some concrete way that others can then experience. When one creates something for a specific location, that thing must be consistent and harmonious with its surroundings for it to be beautiful. This is something that most people do naturally. When people live together in a town and each person builds his own house, he will tend to be affected by the patterns he sees around him, so a natural consistency will result. This is how beautiful towns and cities are built. But when a house or building is designed remotely without consideration of the surroundings, the result is ugly. Modern housing developments try to get around this by building a whole community at a time, but this inevitably fails to produce beauty and only produces sterility. Beauty requires variation within a harmonious whole, not mindless repetition. A great book on beauty in the context of architecture is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Timeless-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028/">The Timeless Way of Building</a> which explains why traditional methods are far superior to modern methods.</p> + +<p>The creation of beauty requires the harmony of everything involved, namely those people who are involved in the creation and harmony with the location if applicable. This harmony is virtually impossible in modern culture which is fundamentally reductionist in thinking. The only thing of beauty that the modern world can create are those things that can be created by individuals in isolation, and the only category that I know of that fits is music. Modern architecture and modern urban design is incredibly ugly.</p> + +<p>Modern art deserves special mention, this being the ugliest category of things ever created in human history. This level of ugliness can only be created intentionally. Modern art is the celebration of ugliness in modern culture. Those who like modern art inevitably consider themselves to be progressive, at the cutting edge of modern culture. Modern culture is all about selfishness, immorality, and disrupting harmony. For a person who has fully absorbed modern culture, modern art will resonate with his soul. His soul is ugly, so he will be attracted to ugliness and repulsed by beauty. This level of depravity can't be reached by the majority of the population that still retains some sense of decency, and this is why modern art is a niche market designed for the leaders of modern culture.</p> + +<p>Religion has been a major source of beauty. Religion is holistic and is designed to touch all aspects of life. A group of people who share a religion will share a lot in common which makes it easier for them to work together in harmony and create something beautiful together. Religions value beauty as a way of reaching their members. So churches and other religious buildings are often beautiful.</p> + +<script> mikraite('https://mikraite.arkian.net/Beauty-tp101.html',2013) </script> + </div> + </body> +</html>
--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/src/mikraite/God_for_Atheists.html Thu Sep 18 19:13:16 2025 -0600 @@ -0,0 +1,109 @@ +<!doctype html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> + <script src="/site.js"></script> + <script> head() </script> + <title>Arkian - God for Atheists</title> + <style> + div[story] { + background-color: #eee; + padding: 4px; + } + </style> + </head> + <body> + <script> header() </script> + <div content> +<h1>God for Atheists</h1> + +<p>This is written assuming that you are a skeptical Atheist, not a fundamentalist Atheist.</p> + +<p>A true skeptic is skeptical about everything. He questions all assumptions. Many who call themselves skeptics are actually faithful followers of the Secular Liberal faith. These people are not true skeptics since they never question their own beliefs.</p> + +<p>The life of a true skeptic is harder than that of a person with faith. A skeptic must continuously study issues to reach conclusions. In studying a text, the skeptic will likely reject those texts that require him to accept too many assumption. The skeptic will accept those texts that don't include many assumptions and whose conclusions are supported by known facts of science and history.</p> + +<p>So let us consider how a skeptic would react to different belief systems. We can start with Christianity and the New Testament. Clearly these are not appropriate for the skeptic. Christianity demands faith which the skeptic is unwilling to give. And the New Testament is full of miracles that won't be accepted by the skeptic. Next we can try Islam. Islam makes fewer assumptions than Christianity does but it demands greater obedience. The skeptic will not obey if he doesn't see the reason to obey. Obedience for its own sake will not work for the skeptic. Next we can try Rabbinic Judaism. Here people are expected to trust the judgement of the rabbis. A skeptic will not trust someone else's judgement, he must verify things for himself.</p> + +<p>Now let's consider Secular Humanism/Liberalism. History shows that this system reflects the decline of all successful cultures and anthropology shows feminist ideals (which are part of this belief system) are inversely correlated with cultural development (see "Sex and Culture" by Unwin) and finally, <a href="Human_Evolution.html">an understanding of evolution</a> shows how this belief system actually causes evolutionary decay in the population. So a true skeptic with any degree of intelligence and knowledge of science and history would be horrified by Secular Humanism/Liberalism.</p> + +<p>Where does this leave the skeptic? Is there any belief system or text appropriate for him? The answer is yes, the Old Testament is the most perfect book for the skeptic. The Old Testament makes no demands of him regarding belief. The Old Testament is a guide to morality. And the morality of the Old Testament is fully supported by history and science. The simplest example of this is the success of religions based on the Old Testament. No other text has produced so many successful cultures. And no other text has lasted so long and is still respected by so many people. The only explanation for this is that the Old Testament contains a moral code that makes cultures successful.</p> + +<p>Let us consider the issues of belief in the Old Testament. The first issue to consider is belief in God. But to ask the question of whether one believes in God, God must be defined. How can one talk about belief or disbelief in something if one doesn't know what that something is? But no definition or clear description of God is provided in the Old Testament. In fact, the opposite is true, the Old Testament carefully avoids any definition or description of God. The Old Testament even has God bluntly refuse to define himself in this passage:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what should I tell them?”</p> + +<p>God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Exodus 3:13-14</cite> + +<p>So what exactly does it mean to believe in this God who refuses to define himself? One answer may be that even though God isn't defined, his actions are described in the Old Testament, so believing in God actually means believing in a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. But there is actually no basis for this answer. Nowhere in the Old Testament does it ask the reader to take the stories literally. Unlike the New Testament, the Old Testament never demands faith or belief in the stories. It doesn't even demand for belief in God himself. It only demands that you do not worship other (immoral) gods. The demands of the Old Testament are all moral, not demands of belief. If you consider the time that the Old Testament was written, it was a time when fables were used to convey morality. In fact Aesop's Fables was written at about the same time as the Old Testament was compiled. So there is no requirement that the skeptic take the Old Testament stories literally.</p> + +<p>Before continuing, I just want to make clear that there is no right answer as to whether the Old Testament stories should be taken literally. If you are a person of faith, then it is reasonable for you to take the Old Testament stories literally. But if you are skeptic, then it is reasonable for you to take some of the Old Testament stories as fables. There is no right or wrong answer here.</p> + +<p>Returning to the question of belief, if God isn't defined and the Old Testament stories don't have to be taken literally, what exactly is there to believe in? Factually, not much. But the word "belief" refers to more than just facts. I can say "I believe in you" or "I believe in my country". In these cases "I believe in X" does not mean that I believe in the existence of X. It means that I support X. The Old Testament is a book about morality with God serving as an embodiment of moral values. So when a skeptic says "I believe in God", what he means is that he believes in the morality of the Old Testament. When an atheist says that he doesn't believe in God, what he really means (whether he knows it or not) is that he doesn't believe in the morality of the Old Testament.</p> + +<p>Those who are greatly concerned with truth may not be satisfied with this answer. They can simply restate the question as "Do you believe in the existence of God?". Since God isn't defined, a skeptic must create a definition of God in order to answer this question. The skeptic should pick a definition that allows the answer to be "yes". I suggest that the skeptic define God as natural law.</p> + +<p>This definition may seem odd to some. Some may wonder if this God, defined as natural law, is really the same God as the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God. In fact, people's definition of anything will vary slightly. Two people's definition of words like "table" or "chair" will not be exactly the same. What matters is that the important characteristics of the thing being defined match. In the case of God, the important characteristics are the morality He represents. The definition of the Christian God varies slightly from the Jewish and Muslim God because the Christian God is the holy trinity while the Jewish and Muslim God is not defined this way. But this doesn't really matter because this part of the definition is not the essence of God. The essence of God is the morality of the Old Testament, and this is shared by the God of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the Old Testament, so all are the same God.</p> + +<p>To better explain this view of God, here is a fictional story of my founding a religion.</p> + +<div story> + +<p>To found my religion, I first wrote my holy book about the god Gravity. Here is an excerpt:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>And Gravity said "I guide the earth around the sun, and the moon around the earth. I hold the galaxies together. I keep the waters of the oceans in their place. I allow the walking creatures to walk and I keep the air that they breath on earth."</p> + +<p>Gravity said to his people "You shall love me because without me, you would not live. You would have no air to breath and no water to drink. At the same time, you shall fear me, for if you fall from high places, I will kill you."</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Next I organized my church where each week we pray as follows:</p> + +<p>"We thank Gravity for guiding the celestial bodies, for providing us with air and water, and for allowing us to live."</p> + +<p>And then I went to spread the word of Gravity. I encountered Atheist with whom I had this conversation:</p> + +<p>Me: Do you believe in Gravity?</p> + +<p>Atheist: I believe in no gods.</p> + +<p>Me: But don't you see how the earth is guided around the sun, and the moon around the earth, and all of the other things that Gravity does? + +<p>Atheist: Yes I see those things, but they are done by science, not by Gravity. + +<p>Me: But there is no contradiction between science and Gravity. In fact Gravity is a part of science, Gravity is the force of science that does these things.</p> + +<p>Atheist: But in your holy book, Gravity is a god who speaks, and I cannot believe in such a god.</p> + +<p>Me: You are free to take my holy book as literally as you choose, but the central aspect of Gravity is what He does. If you reject Gravity, then you are rejecting the concept of some one unified being or force that does the things that Gravity does.</p> + +<p>Atheist: No, I do not reject the force, I just reject your god of the force. This in the same way that I reject Poseidon but I do not reject oceans.</p> + +<p>Me: But there is a difference between Gravity and Poseidon. Poseidon is the god of the oceans, not the oceans themselves. But Gravity is not the god of the scientific force of gravity. Gravity is gravity itself. The stories in my holy book, if taken literally, may attribute more traits to Gravity than gravity itself has, but the distinction between the god Gravity and the scientific force of gravity is insignificant, so by rejecting Gravity, you also reject gravity.</p> + +<p>Atheist: So what am I to do if I believe in gravity but not in the specifically god-like aspects of Gravity?</p> + +<p>Me: Do not deny Gravity. Instead, reject Atheism and accept Gravity but simply interpret Gravity as gravity as a scientific force to be respected.</p> + +<p>Atheist: Okay, I accept Gravity/gravity.</p> + +</div> + +<p>In my fictional story, Gravity is a god who corresponds to the force of gravity. If I had to go back 3000 years and explain gravity, explaining this force as a god may not be a bad idea. This would in no way detract from the key idea that there is one unified force out there that does all these things.</p> + +<p>The god of the Old Testament is YHWH. This is a name. In most translations, this is replaced with "God" or "Lord" or some other meaning which distorts the Old Testament's original intent to avoid assigning a specific meaning to YHWH. We don't know the correct pronunciation of YHWH, so I will arbitrarily use Yehovah because I want to use a pronounceable name. It is true that Yehovah was considered a god and that many thought of him as lord, but the fact is that Yehovah goes out of His way in the Old Testament to avoid being pigeon-holed, to avoid being defined, classified, and even named at the beginning.</p> + +<p>Now I would like to make an analogy: the god Gravity is to the force of gravity what the god Yehovah is to the force of yehovah. The force yehovah is just the lower-case word of the god Yehovah. Just as with Gravity/gravity, there isn't that much of difference between Yehovah and yehovah, the only difference being one of interpretation. So what exactly is the force yehovah? The closest concept we have is "natural law". And by natural law, we mean one set of laws that dictate not only the laws of science but also the laws of morality. These laws include all the forces of physics as well as evolution and the forces that determine which moral systems work. This means that yehovah will enforce morality by naturally destroying those societies that follow the wrong morality.</p> + +<p>Now let's consider some of the statements in the Old Testament. For example, yehovah is one, there are no other gods. This means that there is only one natural law and that there are no other gods that can violate that natural law. In fact you can read the entire Old Testament either in terms of Yehovah or yehovah and it will make just as much sense either way.</p> + +<p>The existence of yehovah as a set of natural laws that includes a force that supports morality is as scientifically undeniable as the theory of evolution itself. Scientists refuse to study this topic because most of them are Modernists and this conflicts with their faith. But denying reality has repercussions. Someone who denies gravity because they reject my holy book of Gravity may encourage people to jump off a cliff and try to fly. Similarly, those who reject yehovah because they reject some literal Old Testament stories are effectively encouraging culture to jump off a cultural cliff into the moral abyss.</p> + +<p>Why is yehovah undeniable? Read my article on <a href="Human_Evolution.html">Human Evolution</a> to find out. In this article, I explain why certain morals are required to make tribes successful, and because of this, evolution ultimately supports morality. And since yehovah is basically the same as Yehovah who is God, and since yehovah exists, a skeptic can say with confidence that God exists.</p> + +<script> mikraite('https://mikraite.arkian.net/God-for-Atheists-tp18.html',2013) </script> + </div> + </body> +</html>
--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/src/mikraite/Modern_Culture.html Thu Sep 18 19:13:16 2025 -0600 @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +<!doctype html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> + <script src="/site.js"></script> + <script> head() </script> + <title>Arkian - Modern Culture</title> + </head> + <body> + <script> header() </script> + <div content> +<h1>Modern Culture</h1> + +<p><img src="images/fake-knife-mask-masks-society-Favim.jpg" xborder="0"></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>How sad for me!<br> +For I am like one who—<br> +when the summer fruit has been gathered<br> +after the gleaning of the grape harvest—<br> +finds no grape cluster to eat,<br> +no early fig, which I crave.<br> +Godly people have vanished from the land;<br> +there is no one upright among the people.<br> +All of them wait in ambush to shed blood;<br> +they hunt each other with a net.<br> +Both hands are good at accomplishing evil:<br> +the official and the judge demand a bribe;<br> +when the powerful man communicates his evil desire,<br> +they plot it together.<br> +The best of them is like a brier;<br> +the most upright is worse than a hedge of thorns.<br> +The day of your watchmen,<br> +the day of your punishment, is coming;<br> +at this time their panic is here.<br> +Do not rely on a friend;<br> +don’t trust in a close companion.<br> +Seal your mouth<br> +from the woman who lies in your arms.<br> +Surely a son considers his father a fool,<br> +a daughter opposes her mother,<br> +and a daughter-in-law is against her mother-in-law;<br> +a man’s enemies are the men of his own household.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Micah 7:1-6</cite> + +<blockquote> +<p>“I will make youths their leaders,<br> +and the unstable will govern them.”<br> +The people will oppress one another,<br> +man against man, neighbor against neighbor;<br> +the youth will act arrogantly toward the elder,<br> +and the worthless toward the honorable.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Isaiah 3:4-5</cite> + +<blockquote> +<p>The Lord also says:</p> + +<p>Because the daughters of Zion are haughty,<br> +walking with heads held high<br> +and seductive eyes,<br> +going along with prancing steps,<br> +jingling their ankle bracelets,<br> +the Lord will put scabs on the heads<br> +of the daughters of Zion,<br> +and the Lord will shave their foreheads bare.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Isaiah 3:16-17</cite> + +<blockquote> +<p>Woe to those enacting crooked statutes<br> +and writing oppressive laws<br> +to keep the poor from getting a fair trial<br> +and to deprive the afflicted among my people of justice,<br> +so that widows can be their spoil<br> +and they can plunder the fatherless.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Isaiah 10:1-2</cite> + +<blockquote> +<p>Everyone has to be on guard against his friend.<br> +Don’t trust any brother,<br> +for every brother will certainly deceive,<br> +and every friend spread slander.<br> +Each one betrays his friend;<br> +no one tells the truth.<br> +They have taught their tongues to speak lies;<br> +they wear themselves out doing wrong.<br> +You live in a world of deception.<br> +In their deception they refuse to know Me.<br> +This is the Lord’s declaration.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Jeremiah 9:4-6</cite> + +<p>I have seen the decline of morality in America with my own eyes. Americans today are a horrible people; shallow, immoral, untrustworthy, backstabbing, arrogant, and to top it off, self-righteous. Of my American friends, those who were moral were destroyed, one went insane and the other killed himself. The rest fit in with America and stabbed me in the back. Of these, the one I knew best chased after my wife. I hate modern Americans and I would never have one as a friend now.</p> + +<p>I reject all sides of modern culture. The Left and the Right are just two sides of the same evil beast. The hippie and the banker are the same, both selfish and inconsiderate of others. The banker selfishly pursues wealth without concern for how his actions affect others. The hippie selfishly pursues his pleasures and personal freedoms without concern for how his actions affect others. Modern culture produces big government, broken families, broken communities, bad art, bad architecture, bad urban design, and bad people.</p> + +<p>The main point of the prophets of the Old Testament was that Israel had become corrupted by Baal worship. Baal worship was the modern culture of that time. Our modern culture is basically another form of Baal worship. Modern culture is evil and must be completely rejected by moral people.</p> + +<script> mikraite('https://mikraite.arkian.net/Modern-Culture-tp41.html',2013) </script> + </div> + </body> +</html>
--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/src/mikraite/Who_is_my_neighbor.html Thu Sep 18 19:13:16 2025 -0600 @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +<!doctype html> +<html lang="en"> + <head> + <script src="/site.js"></script> + <script> head() </script> + <title>Arkian - Who is my neighbor?</title> + </head> + <body> + <script> header() </script> + <div content> +<h1>Who is my neighbor?</h1> + +<p>A discussion with Jesus:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Just then an expert in the law stood up to test Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”</p> + +<p>“What is written in the law?” He asked him. “How do you read it?”</p> + +<p>He answered:</p> + +<p>Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.</p> + +<p>“You’ve answered correctly,” He told him. “Do this and you will live.”</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Luke 10:25-28</cite> + +<p>The answer here is based on the Old Testament.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Deuteronomy 6:5</cite> + +<blockquote> +<p>Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am Yahweh.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Leviticus 19:18</cite> + +<p>When Ruth, the Moabite, joined the Israelites, she said:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>your people will be my people,<br> +and your God will be my God.</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Ruth 1:16</cite> + +<p>This reflects the same two principles as expressed in Luke above.</p> + +<p>The story from Luke continues:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”</p> + +<p>Jesus took up the question and said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’</p> + +<p>“Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”</p> + +<p>“The one who showed mercy to him,” he said.</p> + +<p>Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”</p> +</blockquote> +<cite>Luke 10:29-37</cite> + +<p>I have the impression that Christians interpret this story to mean that everyone is your neighbor, but the words of the story itself contradict this view. Jesus is asked "Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor" and answers "The one who showed mercy". Jesus did not answer that all three are neighbors.</p> + +<p>Who were the Samaritans? The Samaritans were another religion that worshipped the same god as the Jews but with a somewhat different Bible and beliefs. Read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans">Wikipedia</a> for details. In many ways, the difference between the Jews and Samaritans at the time of Jesus is similar to the difference between Jews and Christians today.</p> + +<p>In this story, Jesus is telling us who he thinks is our neighbor and who is NOT our neighbor. The concept of neighbor means member of one's community. At the time of the Old Testament, this question wasn't an issue because people lived in a close community. But Rome changed this and created a cosmopolitan empire where many different people lived together. This introduced the question of how people should be grouped; by race, by belief, or by what? Jesus's view is that a community is defined by a group of people who would help each other and who share the same god even if their race and their specific beliefs about God differ. Why did Jesus choose to contrast the Samaritan with a priest and a Levite? Because the priest represents shared belief and the Levite represents ancestry. So Jesus chose these two as examples of things that aren't a valid basis of defining a neighbor: belief and ancestry. What counts is people who are willing to help each other.</p> + +<p>When Jesus said "Go and do the same", he meant to form communities of people who help each other. This is exactly what the Mikraite community is about. And this is in sharp contrast to all modern religions. Judaism is about ancestry and Christianity is about belief. Both Judaism and Christianity violate Jesus's message in the Good Samaritan story.</p> + +<script> mikraite('https://mikraite.arkian.net/Who-is-my-neighbor-tp481.html',2015) </script> + </div> + </body> +</html>
--- a/src/mikraite/mikraite.html Wed Sep 17 20:40:28 2025 -0600 +++ b/src/mikraite/mikraite.html Thu Sep 18 19:13:16 2025 -0600 @@ -23,9 +23,13 @@ <li><a href="The_Rechabites_Example.html">The Rechabites’ Example</a> - 2017</li> <li><a href="Translating_Psalm_94.html">Translating Psalm 94</a> - 2017</li> <li><a href="In_Defense_of_Feminism.html">In Defense of Feminism</a> - 2016</li> + <li><a href="Who_is_my_neighbor.html">Who is my neighbor?</a> - 2015</li> <li><a href="Understanding.html">Understanding</a> - 2013</li> <li><a href="The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Christian_Culture.html">The Rise and Fall of Christian Culture</a> - 2013</li> + <li><a href="God_for_Atheists.html">God for Atheists</a> - 2013</li> <li><a href="Human_Evolution.html">Human Evolution</a> - 2013</li> + <li><a href="Beauty.html">Beauty</a> - 2013</li> + <li><a href="Modern_Culture.html">Modern Culture</a> - 2013</li> </ul> </div> </body>