This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
See this GitHub page for a collection of sources about socialism, imperialism, and other relevant topics.
This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.
We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.
Rules:
Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive
No I understand the argument I just reject it as an overly complicated attempt to justify something that seems pretty cut and dry.
That only makes sense if you look at theology from an idealist perspective.
But much like everything else in human society theology is subject to material conditions. Context is thus crucial for understanding why certain practices exist. In this case the "argument" does not exist to justify the practice or the scripture but to explain why the scripture exists by pointing to the material conditions in which it arose: said conditions being the development of Judaism from a polytheistic religion, to a henotheistic religion, to a monotheistic religion and the consolidation of power behind the priesthood of Yahweh and their drive to distinguish themselves from their neighbors and their god not as an equal to other gods but as superior to other gods and eventually as the only real god that exists.
It's all dialectics, baby.
You can't apply Historical materialism to myth. You can't cite historical context when nobody can be sure when the commandments were written. The oldest know copy of the ten commandments is from like 200 bce between a 900 and 1400 years after they were supposedly written.
The point of calling zioinist christians and people of Jewish heritage idol worshipers is not to engage with them in a serious discussion because they are idealists and spiritualists. You can't talk to them in materialist terms. The point of it is to harm their psyche by saying the foundational principle of their faith has been corrupted by the institutions they follow.
You can, in fact, apply historical materialism to myth. A myth is an idea and ideas materially exist and are capable of shaping the world and people in it as a consequence. This is especially true when they become the physical practices or written laws of religions that were/are followed by millions/billions of people.
I can, in fact, cite historical context because the practice of idolatry existed throughout the entire period you just covered and would not begin to fully be erased from West Asia until Christianization swept away the old pagan religions - and even then it likely persisted in secret and in rural communities for centuries after the fact. You make it sound like the Fertile Crescent is some lost period of history. We know about Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, Canaan, Israel, the Nabateans, the various dynasties of Egypt, the Sea Peoples, the Hittites, Urartu, the Medes, Elam, Akkad, etc. There's an entire meme around a coppersmith scamming his customers that only exists because we found his customer complaint tablets buried in his fucking house for Christ's sake. This isn't some vague unknown; we have a pretty good idea of how people in the region lived 4,000-5,000 years ago. Don't confuse your own ignorance of the region's history for the collective ignorance of the human race. People have dedicated their whole lives to studying this shit and we are constantly learning more and more through their extensive efforts.
There are plenty of real criticisms of the many hypocrisies in Christianity and Judaism that you can use to rile up zealots and fundamentalists that don't require this cringe reddit atheism you're doing.