There's also the minor detail that if you're a Christian the really canon stuff is in the New Testament, a lot if not most of the problematic stuff is in the Old Testament and not longer strictly applies (surely most of us remember "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"???), so I suspect the whole premise is false.
I just found it very tone deaf to open with that kind of story when it basically has the same effect as what he is complaining about. Its just odd.
1) Although if you happen to hit a disaster, reviewing a bit of the health guidelines in Leviticus couldn't hurt. It will also probably help if you remember a lot of it is basic how-not-to-die health guidelines.
2) I came from the Catholic and 7th Day Adv family (yeah, not exactly the most agreeable to mix), and both seem to have gone through the whole thing. Plus, they have a bit of disagreement as to what constitutes the whole thing. Luther did a bit of pruning.
A heck of a lot of intellectual firepower, Jewish and Christian, has been focused on all these texts over a couple of thousand years (more by the Jews?), it would be foolish to abandon your religion based simply on reading the Ur-texts with finding out at least some of what the world's best minds have had to say about them and what they might mean.
Heck, merely reading the wonderful prose of the King James Version requires e.g. recognizing that a lot of its prose was somewhat obsolete when William Tyndale's work from 3/4 of a century earlier was used as the basis of all early printed English bibles. So you need to learn archaic English ... and all of that will do you very well in studying subsequent English prose.
So not only is it possible to read your sacred book and still believe it, it's possible to read your sacred book and remaining fragments from other regional books (sacred and otherwise) - all in "close-to-original" language, and a wealth of other secondary material, and then still believe. You'll just slap your forehead than you might have originally bargained for when you started your quest...
If you don't mind my asking, what company do you work for, and what do they do?
So much brain power spent on scriptures which are, in the light of current knowledge… improbable to say the least. Sounds like a huge waste of effort, really.
Take the Genesis, for instance. Currently, only creationist crackpots actually believe it. It's more of a symbol. It seems however that some centuries ago, every Christian, including the most knowledgeable theologians, believed it.
Instead of trying to explain why the text was written for a good reason, wouldn't it be simpler to just recognize, as our knowledge expands, that the Elders were simply mistaken about such and such point, an move on? Just archive the mistakes and strike them from the cannon already, it would be much simpler for everyone.
But I guess a religion that routinely admits its own mistakes wouldn't be very religious, now would it?
Judaism is not a religion of creed, so Jews are not required to hold any particular beliefs. I expect you'll be surprised to learn that one can be a religious Jew and an atheist (I know a few, and it's "no other gods before me" not "believe in me" before you ask). Whether you believe in God or treat God as simply some kind of metaphor, the point of Judaism is that you must grapple with it, not blindly accept it.
Your final point is hilariously off-base. The mistakes are not only admitted, they are recorded in the book itself. It's easy to impress oneself by reading Leviticus and getting worked up. Make it through Job and Ecclesiastes, and you'll begin to see that complex ideas about this book are established and much older than people assume.
I don't believe you. More specifically, I don't believe that the majority of people that regularly visit the synagogue think they don't have to hold any particular belief to stay Jew. I believe even less that the majority of Jews who cease to believe in God continue to call themselves religious.
> The mistakes are not only admitted, they are recorded in the book itself.
Oh. I didn't know the book itself was evidence of the waste of effort I mentioned. Seriously, remove the mistakes already, don't put an erratum 357 pages later.
Anyway, every catholic I met believe in God and in the Immaculate Conception. And I think they also believed it was an important, if not fundamental, part of being catholic. Not to mention all the rituals that mention God and Jesus all over the place.
Which is why I cannot fathom a religion that does not at least strongly encourages its members to believe in something supernatural.
Seriously, you're tempting me to send a e-mail to Robert Aummann¹, and ask him about that. Or read Eliezer Yudkowsky about his childhood. Or just read the wikipedia². Let's see… Oh the chief reason why supernatural belief isn't required is because there's no recognized central authority… I bet however that most Rabbi strongly encourage a belief in something supernatural. If not directly, at least through the rituals they organize.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aumann
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_principles_of_faith
What makes someone a "bad Jew" is failing to practice Judaism. But there's no incentive to conduct a witchhunt over it, so there's no incentive for rhetoric about the importance of belief. I belong to a Conservative synagogue and I have never heard a sermon about the importance of believing in God. It isn't important. Ethical behavior is, and that is the content of our sermons.
It may be difficult to see a point to practicing if you don't believe in God, but, again, I know people who find value in the symbolism and the ritual and the religion's capacity to shape ethical behavior despite not believing in a supernatural being or origin. The entire Reconstructionist movement teaches that Judaism and the Bible were created by mankind. It may be a small movement, but it is real thing, and I know Conservative Jews who are atheists but still get value out of the practice.
I'm sure you will be able to find a marginal rabbi (probably "Orthodox", a self-applied label by a movement younger than the Reform) who will activate your confirmation bias. But I assure you, things are different outside your experience.
Please don't take hardcore fundamentalist strictly-literalist narratives as the accepted "way" of Christianity.
Genesis was regarded as metaphorical around ~400AD, iirc (Augustine). Pretty sure the modern literalist movement is a post-1850 phenomenon. I don't get into the creation story discussions, it is entirely irrelevant in many ways to me. Waste of our time, IMO.
Judaism in particular is aggressive about doubt and questioning. I read in one intro book on it (by a rabbi, I think) that doubt is one of the defining characteristics of Jewish faith.
Anyway, modern scholarship tries in part to disentangle what was meant in the context of that time and place, determining what the precise meaning (or set of meanings) could have meant, then drawing out inferences to be taken from the work. This does involve, from time to time, revising our understanding of what happened when, where, and why. The story of the early reformation is, in one dimension, loosely a story of rereading the texts and throwing out certain interpretations based on closer analysis.
I called them "creationist crackpots" for a reason. What I don't get, is why what shouldn't be interpreted literally, isn't simply stricken from the canon. I mean, what is the point of writing about a world created in seven days (oops, six), if we know it wasn't? Sabbath?
> Genesis was regarded as metaphorical around ~400AD, iirc (Augustine).
That's sooner than I expected. Which leaves us around 6 centuries to amend the book.
> Judaism in particular is aggressive about doubt and questioning.
Even if they aggressively show interest in doubt and questioning, I doubt it's for actually doubting an questioning, like, to the point of having some members realizing their religion is probably wrong after all. Here's a related example, from http://lesswrong.com/lw/ib/the_proper_use_of_doubt/
"""
Once, when I was holding forth upon the Way[1], I remarked upon how most organized belief systems exist to flee from doubt. A listener replied to me that the Jesuits must be immune from this criticism, because they practice organized doubt: their novices, he said, are told to doubt Christianity; doubt the existence of God; doubt if their calling is real; doubt that they are suitable for perpetual vows of chastity and poverty. And I said: Ah, but they're supposed to overcome these doubts, right? He said: No, they are to doubt that perhaps their doubts may grow and become stronger.
[1]: http://yudkowsky.net/virtues/
"""
If not, feedback about I did wrong would be most welcome.