So, come to find out, the guy does NOT have a Smith-or-Jones type name after all! Good thing I asked.

serial: Also, I really really hope Nilly catches up on all this and has something to say. I really, really want to know her thoughts when she wraps her amazing brain around Abraham and Isaac.

Ugh, David. We hate them. Have a nice dinner.

My dinner is cooking and seriously stinking up the joint (salmon).

Would a just God put Abraham through the process of deciding to kill his son and making all of the preparations?

I think you're misunderstanding me. The drama of the story is to say, "look, I know you'd do anything for god, god knows you'd do anything for god, and since god is aware that you're that devoted, you don't have to actually prove your devotion in this barbaric way, you bunch of freaks."

Like not eating pork as a way to avoid that pork-eater disease. At the time, it made sense, but people were going to be freaks and still eat the pork even though it was killing them. But since people are all devoted to the Bully in the Sky, we'll just say the Bully isn't cool with pig meat and we'll save our people.

Your question assumes that there is a god. Me? I think god = the great and powerful oz, and some philosopher was horrified at the screams and gurgles of people bleeding out on alters. So he got behind a curtain and set a bush on fire. The stories, at their base sense, are social lubricant meant to stop people from committing unspeakable acts in the name of an imaginary friend in the sky who eats babies.

And if I'm coming at the Torah with that perspective, then it's just the laws of a people from long ago, who went through all the arguments about whether the low tech Phoenix Board of yore in the desert should have a moderator or a preferential voting, and this is what they decided.

I post at the Judiasm board.

serial: Also, I really really hope Nilly catches up on all this and has something to say. I really, really want to know her thoughts when she wraps her amazing brain around Abraham and Isaac.

We had a long talk about it in our pajamas one morning.

YOU ARE SO JEALOUS

YOU ARE SO JEALOUS

Well, yeah. Did she Nilly the Bible?

YOU ARE SO JEALOUS

Of BOTH of you. Uh-huh.

Your question assumes that there is a god. Me? I think god = the great and powerful oz, and some philosopher was horrified at the screams and gurgles of people bleeding out on alters. So he got behind a curtain and set a bush on fire. The stories, at their base sense, are social lubricant meant to stop people from committing unspeakable acts in the name of an imaginary friend in the sky who eats babies.

This is perfectly put and pretty much what I believe. Only it doesn't sound nearly as funny how I put it.

David, I'm really sorry it happened, and am still so glad it's over for you.

Sophia, it looks to me like the letters are making Excel unable to parse your list as numbers, whatever you tell it to do. I don't know of a workaround except to relabel as pure numbers (make 10b into 10.2, something like that).

Look, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all say that God was just and good in doing this, because God is just and good by definition. They all say that Abraham was just and good in following God's wishes, because the just and good acts are always found in God's wishes.

I'm not sure this is true. I have heard, for example, the argument that the God of the New Testament is a more evolved God than he was in the Old Testament, so maybe not all the acts of God (or those taken in God's name) of the O.T. were good. I'm not sure what Hersch's interpretation of the incident is, but I'm willing to bet it's more subtle than "obedience to God's will is by definition good".

we have the tool sharpener guy banging his bell with a real hammer to tell people he's around to give your knives, lawn mower blades, and saws a tweak.

Dang, I wish we had one of these. Trying to find a good and convenient place to get our knives sharpened is still a work in progress.