If holy war is a serious problem in the Middle East and in the world today, the French atheist Michel Onfray knows where the whole thing started: with the Jews. Onfray's Atheist Manifesto, a bestseller in Europe, has a section called "The Jewish Invention of Holy War." Onfray traces a direct line "from the bloody sword of the Israelites killing off the Canaanites to the use of airlines as flying bombs in New York."
One might think the radical Muslims perpetrated 9/11 and other contemporary atrocities. But Onfray holds monotheism responsible for the Islamic mindset, and since Judaism came before Christianity and Islam, he insists that the roots of religious intolerance and conflict are in Moses and Abraham. First, the Jews declared themseves God's chosen people, implying that their enemies were the enemies of God. According to Onfray, "Yahweh blessed war and those who waged it. He sanctified combat, supervised it...sanctioned crimes, murders, assassination." Onfray goes on, "Yahweh steps in to justify the Jews in their extermination of certain peoples explicitly named in the Torah: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites and Jebusites." In an inflammatory way, Onfray even holds the ancient Israelites responsible for what he calls "the first genocide": the wholesale destruction of Jericho. If Bin Laden ever wanted a model, Onfray suggests, he could easily find it here.
I'm not suggesting Onfray is anti-Semitic: he is equally hostile to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this, Onfray resembles America's atheist troika of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. But in the process Onfray--like his British and American counterparts--fails to make necessary distinctions. The Old Testament depicts a harsh world, but it is no harsher than that of ancient Greece and Rome, with their Melian expeditions, savage wars of conquest, large-scale slavery, gladiatorial contests, and persecution of the Christians. So why hold monotheism responsible for practices that were hardly distinctive to it?
Moreover, the punitive tribal ethic of the Old Testament is specifically repudiated in the New Testament which replaces it with an ethic of universal brotherhood. Onfray flails away at Jesus, but he can find nothing in Christ's teachings that condones violence or terror. Yes, there were historical abuses committed in the name of Christianity, but even here Onfray goes overboard, attempting for example to blame Christianity for the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Finally Onfray does not even mention that there are important differences in the way the three monontheisms have evolved. These differences help to explain why much of the terrorism is the world is being perpetrated by Muslims and not by Jews or Christians. Where is the Jewish Bin Laden, the Christian Ahmadinejad? They exist only in the atheist imagination.
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 7)
61. Knight_of_BAAWA, your comment #55 is merely a rehash of your comment #35. Alas, it is my sad duty to inform you that an asinine comment does not become less asinine by repeating it.
richter at 9:16AM on Jul 24th 2007
62. Does anyone know how to keep Dinesh D'Souza from popping up up in my Google News alerts? This guy is so addled and dogmatic I can't stand it!
fvthinker at 11:17AM on Jul 24th 2007
63. When people enter any religion (or grow up in it), they bring with them all the faults, tendencies, experiences and environment! Some of them do change character or personality according to the strictures of that faith ("all are given a measure of faith"). Some never change, and most are somewhere in that process constantly, according to their maturity and understanding. Religion is a 'mile wide and an inch deep'. Therefore religion
does not 'cause wars, or hate, etc.' but merely brings out what we are when we start. It is the "working out our faith" (or not working it, as the case may be) that determines what agnostics, atheists, believers (and the mile wide spectrum surrounding all of us) really are; hopelessly unable to cure the ails of mankind, much less ourselves, unless there is great help!
George Mills at 9:56AM on Jul 24th 2007
64. How nice, richter. Now find me a woman who is half-pregnant. You can't, can you? Why do you think that is? Y'think maybe because pregnant and not-pregnant are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive? Yeah, that would be the reason. It's the SAME reason why there's no middle between atheism and theism: they are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive.
So, it is my proud duty to inform you that you're a complete idiot.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 9:58AM on Jul 24th 2007
65. To richter, Knight et al., there is certainly a third option, whatever you want to call it, and it is at the heart of non-theistic religions, and at the heart of those whose belief system is driven by reason, and that is that "God" is not a being who favors one group over another, or who talks to one person one time and someone else another, or who intervenes in our daily lives (down to the genetic decisions that get made), but simply the seed of all existence. God was the Big Bang.
John Nestico at 10:41AM on Jul 24th 2007
66. There was a show back in the sixties called that was the week that was and they did a song parody which said that everyone hates everyone else but everyone hates the Jews. This proves the point. At which point does blaming Jews for every ill become a parody of itself. To blame the ancient Israelites into morphing into fundamentalist muslims and then blaming jews for 9-11 on this basis makes rosie o'donnell sound rational.
eric at 3:17PM on Jul 24th 2007
67. I agree Eric. For some reason Europeans have down through the ages consistently blamed Jews for their troubles.
While America has had some Jew-haters, thankfully anti-semitism has never been as strong in the USA as it has always been in Europe and Russia. I would venture a guess that the worst level of antisemitism in the US was probably about like the least level of antisemitism in Europe.
I think people who stoop to blaming Jews for everything are in reality just losers and sour pusses. They are generally lazy beer or wine swilling types who do not want to go to school, do not like to think very much, and do not want to work very hard.
Because of their poor work ethinc and other slack habits, they themselves not surprisingly tend to fall behind the rest of the world. And when they look up from their drinks and see the world is passing them by, they bawl and bray that it is the Jews' fault. Radical Muslims do something similar.
We Americans on the other hand, are more fortunate than Europeans, simply because we live here, free from the corrupting influence of their histories. Thankfully, we are not as lazy as they tend to be, and we do not expect things to be handed to us on a platter. We expect to be sober and work hard and generally, we are a sober crowd and we do work hard. We value education, thinking and honest effort, and hard work. Most Americans think education is very important, but we also value and respect honest labor.
We Americans are not perfect - God knows we have made horrible mistakes (just look at the slavery and jim crow eras), but at least we do not have what appears in Europeans to be an in-grained tendency to blame others for our troubles generally and specifically, to lay everything bad on the backs of the Jews.
Again, we Americans are far from perfect, and Europeans are not the only Jew-haters around; fanatical Muslims are famous for antisemitism as well. I am not picking on Europeans; this article about this antisemetic so-called French "thinker" just happened to be about a European.
Ken Berg at 6:02PM on Jul 24th 2007
68. DD says, "I'm not suggesting Onfray is anti-Semitic:..."
Ken Berg says, "...this article about this antisemetic so-called French "thinker"..."
BTW Ken, they are Semites... so the word is anti-semitic...
Semites are people who speak semitic languages, the group includes Arabs, Aramaeans, Jews, and many Ethiopians. In a Biblical sense, Semites are peoples whose ancestry can be traced back to Shem, Noah's eldest son.
pboyfloyd at 7:29PM on Jul 24th 2007
69. Oh my -- Thomas Green has apparently wandered away from his keepers again. If you see him, don't panic. As scary as he may seem, people like Thomas are in fact more of a danger to themselves than to others. Thus he is unlikely to become violent UNLESS YOU ATTEMPT TO REMOVE HIS TIN FOIL HAT. My advice: don't.
richter at 10:22PM on Jul 24th 2007
70. Would someone please tell this so called member of the intelligensia that Jews believe they are the Chosen People and were picked because God, by any name you call him, chose them, the only monotheists at the time, to uphold his law.
What idiots some people can be...
REZA SANTORINI at 10:57PM on Jul 24th 2007
71. Ken Berg,
Your posts are always asinine, but this one was particularly bad. Your anti-European drivel is just as false and bigoted as any anti-Jewish rant I've ever seen.
You are typical of the narrow-minded nationalists who are, unfortunately, to be found in all countries of the world, and who want to believe that "we" are better than "them". The very way that you draw the line between "we" and "them", by national borders, is simple-minded. There are more differences between social classes within the U.S. than between the same social classes in the U.S. and Europe.
Joe Bob at 1:25AM on Jul 25th 2007
72. antisemitism among european intellectual has a long history. Incidently, antisemitism has evolved to mean specific antipathy toward jews and has lost its generic meaning regarding the technical definition of the word semite. you can look it up as yogi says. voltaire was a notorious antisemite and even in the enlightened 19th century the dreyfus affair clearly showed how entrenched antisemitism was in liberal france. that is what led a secular austrian jew named herzl to conclude that the only way jews would be normalized in the world was to have a country of their own and proposed a jewish national liberation movement called zionism which was in line with growing national liberation movements throughout europe and the world. as to the consequences of europe's antisemitic obsession, please not e that it was europe, specifically germany, with the collaberation of many other europeans, either officially or unofficially that carried out the worst pogrom in history killing two thirds of european jews from 1939 to 1945 including 18 memebers of my family.
eric at 9:34AM on Jul 25th 2007
73. Are you saying then, that you did not like that one Joe Bob?
; )
Of course I think we in the USA are better and more fortunate than Europeans are. What kind of an American would I be if I thought otherwise? However unlike your simplistic view of nationalism, mine is more complex.
Being proud of my country does not mean I dislike England, France or Germany, or any other country for that matter. I can be proud of America and think we are more fortunate and have a better system than others while still realizing we are all equal in God's eyes. Of course it is very true that we are not fundamentally "better" or more valuable than anyone on earth. We are however, creatures of time and space, and in this time and space, I am convinced that we Americans have a better society and system of government than do the European nations. Certainly in the past, Europe was miles ahead of us, but we live in 2007 now. Likewise, our society and system is not permanent either.
Generally, everyone in the world feels free to comment on the faults of the USA and this is Ok and is usually productive (helpful). Indeed, we are quite open to the world and usually put our faults in the front window for all to see. As such, I do not think it unreasonable to comment occassionally on the faults of Europeans, especially regarding as fundamental and old a problem as the anti-semitism for which they are legendary. It is no different that my commenting on the corruption and social injustices for which Mexico is so famous. That does not mean I dislike Mexico; it only means I have a realistic view of their system. In fact I like to visit Mexico and occassionally do. I would love to visit England and Europe someday, and would especially like to see Rome and Spain.
Honest criticism is different than not liking someone. A good example of this is the honest relationship we have with France. She is our oldest friend and gave us the Statue of Liberty, At the same time, we often disagree about how to approach things, and open criticize each other. Still, because we are old friends and honestly value each other, we always manage to patch things up and move forward as trusting friends and allies. After all the arguing, France and America will always help each other.
Also Pbf - You are right and I stand corrected; my spelling and typing sucks sometimes.
; )
Ken Berg at 10:59AM on Jul 25th 2007
74. In summary Joe Bob, I would encourage you to try to be more broad minded and not have such a simple view of the world.
Ken Berg at 11:01AM on Jul 25th 2007
75. John Nestico wrote, "Accordingly, those who don't share their [monotheists] beliefs and faith are not worthy of salvation."
They are worthy of salvation. They are worthy of living for. They are worthy of dying for.
oneblood at 11:04AM on Jul 25th 2007