{"id":2834,"date":"2015-07-18T09:44:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T14:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/?p=2834"},"modified":"2015-07-21T14:04:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T19:04:14","slug":"imagine-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2015\/07\/imagine-this.html","title":{"rendered":"Imagine THIS!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

**Update** Rabbi Fuchs commented at the bottom of this post. My response can be found here.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"By<\/a>
By RMajouji at fr.wikipedia [CC BY 1.0<\/a>], from Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stephen Fuchs, the rabbi emeritus of West Hartford\u2019s Beth Israel and former president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, really, really does not like John Lennon\u2019s song, Imagine. <\/em>This is from his blog, findingourselvesinbiblicalnarratives.com<\/a>\u00a0(and\u00a0I thought \u201ctheatheistrabbi\u201d was a mouthful):<\/p>\n

I detest John Lennon\u2019s iconic, Imagine<\/em>. Not only do I find the melody insipid, but the lyric \u201cAnd no religion too,\u201d punctures my soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After dismissing Lennon and then Bill Maher, he explains why religion is not the horrible war-mongering idea that Maher et al., believe\u00a0it to be:<\/p>\n

The problem is not with religion itself but with the distortion of religious ideals. Those wars result from our inability to accept that well-meaning people can view religious questions and practices differently. We do not need to do away with religion. We need to do away with our compulsion to force OUR religion on others. We need to learn to not only tolerate, but to respect and affirm religious diversity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Must religious liberals always go straight\u00a0to defensive silliness like this?\u00a0I assume that a rabbi who quotes Epictetus<\/a> knows something about logical fallacies. So why does he fall into this one?<\/p>\n

After\u00a0asserting that the only problem with religion is its lack of respect and affirmation for diversity, he proceeds to\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0a remarkable lack of respect for nontheists:<\/p>\n

Without religion humanity would never have perceived that life has purpose and meaning and that we are each called in our own way to treat others with dignity and respect and to use our talents to create a more just, caring and compassionate society.<\/p>\n

Without religion no one would have ever felt the call of a good, caring God, to feed, the poor, clothe the naked and house the homeless. Of course many people today do not believe in God but still do wonderfully positive things. But would they have ever discovered the impulse to do those things had people long ago not done them because they felt God commanded them to?<\/p>\n

I doubt it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As long as they are staying in their own lane,\u00a0I have no problem with religious people doing their thing. I\u2019m not with\u00a0Bill Maher and\u00a0Christopher Hitchens in pronouncing\u00a0that\u00a0all religions are\u00a0poison (though they make some excellent points). I judge people and their beliefs by their behavior. Reform Judaism has been a great leader in the progressive world and I admire that.<\/p>\n

But I do not admire the thinking of a Reform rabbi who in one paragraph lectures about the need for respect and affirmation of religious diversity while in another informs nontheists\u00a0that they would never\u00a0have discovered the \u201cimpulse\u201d to do good things if people had not long ago felt commanded by God to do so. This assessment is as insulting as it is inaccurate. Rabbi Fuchs wrote a book all about the wonderful contemporary life lessons in the Torah. So I\u2019ve got to believe that a smart fellow like him would also be able to locate the almost uncountable ghastly Torah tales\u00a0about what people felt commanded by God to do.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it\u00a0does not demonstrate much respect or affirmation for religious diversity when you claim that only your monotheistic version of this imaginary god had\u00a0the\u00a0power to inspire \u201cwonderfully positive things.\u201d Surely Rabbi Fuchs is aware of the fact that many civilizations were able to morally advance without the influence of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already said something nice about Reform Judaism, the movement in which I was raised. I did not stop identifying as a Reform Jew because I felt it was insufficiently progressive. I left because I was no longer interested in all the bullshit involved in twisting texts and history\u00a0in order to preserve an impossible supernatural conception of a\u00a0universe with\u00a0God at its center.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, when I\u2019m feeling isolated from the rest of the Jewish world, I forget why I declared my\u00a0open atheism and moved over to Secular Humanistic Judaism. Then someone like\u00a0Rabbi Fuchs\u00a0comes along to remind\u00a0me why.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**Update** Rabbi Fuchs commented at the bottom of this post. My response can be found here. Stephen Fuchs, the rabbi emeritus of West Hartford\u2019s Beth Israel and former president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, really, really does not like John Lennon\u2019s song, Imagine. This is from his blog, findingourselvesinbiblicalnarratives.com\u00a0(and\u00a0I thought \u201ctheatheistrabbi\u201d was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":2837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24,25],"class_list":["post-2834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-liberal-judaism","tag-liberal-religions-and-theologies"],"yoast_head":"\nImagine THIS!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"**Update** Rabbi Fuchs commented at the bottom of this post. My response can be found here. 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Falick\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2015\/07\/imagine-this.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2015\/07\/imagine-this.html\",\"name\":\"Imagine THIS!\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-07-18T14:44:48+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-07-21T19:04:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/#\/schema\/person\/fc95554b64c99ed45146c32bf5cd2372\"},\"description\":\"**Update** Rabbi Fuchs commented at the bottom of this post. My response can be found here. 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