Mayim Bialik is a Fraud: How Ancient Religions are "Made New".

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i'm often asked about and sometimes criticized for being a religious person the entire day is full of opportunities for prayer and mindfulness the notion of mindfulness is a constant exercise for jews and while we may hone our mindfulness with an awareness of something that we call god for some people they use the notion of the universe at large or the love that binds us all or a mystical concept of oneness so you can be mindful even if you are an intellectual or philosophically oriented person i don't feel that my scientist self is compromised at all by participating in things like meditation yoga deep breathing and even prayer do i have issues with religion heck yeah do i have a strong distaste for the patriarchal flair of judeo-christianity yes ma'am do i have concerns that certain religious beliefs and political leanings that are in line with those religious beliefs might contribute to a world of hate and destruction rather than one of love and unity absolutely i am grateful to the approach that my religion has taken to increase mindfulness i'm grateful that i can connect with this trend in popular culture while still having it be completely consistent with the ancient religion that is mine for the most part our sense of what is and is not scientific itself is a sort of aesthetic judgment sometimes i ask members of my audience does this sound like science to you and the erudite members of my audience this is in fact enough to get them to pause and reflect that what they're listening to could not possibly be a legitimate scientific argument and sometimes i invoke that kind of aesthetic judgment going the other way i'm just asking my audience i'm presenting them with mri scans showing human brains and brain damage and i'm quoting peer-reviewed scientific articles that are quite difficult to understand i ask them look even if you can't understand all the latin terms that i've just read out to you even if you can't really follow this scientific argument can't you pick up can't you pick up on the sense on the feeling on the aesthetic of this being legitimate science that what you're reading here is not a sales pitch that it's not just a rumor made up on the internet it's not something a bunch of hippie teenagers came up with that's a marketing ploy to sell purified water that'll purify your soul no that this is somehow in the same sense that you can tell if someone's gay or straight you got gaydar somehow during our lives we develop some some sense that may not be entirely rational of what is and what is not science the clip i'm about to play for you does this sound like science does this even sound like something a legitimate historian would ever say so how does an ancient religion like judaism feel relevant in the 21st century well judaism in its original state was actually designed to introduce a concept of mindfulness you will be shocked to learn that when she refers to the original state of judaism she is referring to the 1990s and a fad that began in the united states of america not in ancient israel of incorporating bastardized elements of ancient theravada buddhism into modern judaism 2 000 years later but i ask you fundamentally her claim that the buddhist doctrine of mindfulness is the original teaching of judaism she's not claiming that she can quote moses she's not claiming that she can quote abraham she's not claiming that she can quote a much later author like maimonides no that this is secretly and mystically the original teaching of judaism and you know this is the sort of thing where you just might suspect that you could just do a very brief google search and find out that this is complete nonsense and debunk it and in fact find peer-reviewed articles like the one quoted on screen here by people with phds or some degree of academic respectability that do indeed establish that yes this just was a modern american invention very obviously stolen from buddhism by people who couldn't even read ancient scriptural languages of buddhism like pali and sanskrit you're just one or two google searches away and yet why is it that people in the audience don't take the moment to do that google search why is it that they don't stop to question i think it's because they didn't take that first step which may be an aesthetic judgment not entirely rational of questioning is this science is this even history is she in fact swimming in the same shark tank with real and verifiable facts and if not what am i listening to might it be that i'm listening to something that's much more like a modern fable for me practicing judaism means committing to a structure of intention and meaning which brings my life mindfulness and purpose how do you incorporate mindfulness into your life do you do it as part of a religious tradition or separate from a religious tradition what works for you and what doesn't tell me in the comments below like this video if you like it share this video please subscribe to my channel go to grocknation.com for more of my thoughts on religion see you next time the situation of judaism in the 21st century is peculiar in that its proponents the people who continue to make excuses for or propound judaism as a religion in the modern world can neither simply defend the ancient text as the source of their religion as something that defines what their religion is and ought to be nor can they openly espouse their religion as something that departs from freely contradicts the text that it doesn't rely on the authority of these ancient texts you notice here the portion of the translation highlighted in red what do you think could possibly be the hebrew term one in the same word in hebrew that two different translators rendered into english in such a radically incommensurable way yeah well it would be impossible to guess this is in fact part of the fascinating historical episode of the biblical god having a wife a wife called asherah the canaanites were also polytheistic of the many gods of the canaanites worship three in particular are important to the rest of the story they are el elyon whose name means literally god most high and who is believed to have been the father of the other gods ashira el elyon's wife and bell who is both god of storms and fertility in the english translation of the bible the hebrews are presented as choosing between the lord baal and ashira how could the hebrews be such idiots why wouldn't they worship the one god of all creation the picture looks different when the god you're supposed to be worshipping is yahweh sabiath which means the god of the armies yahweh started as basically the hebrew version of the greek god ares no wonder he was obsessed with war and death in the old testament that was back when he was still just their god of war now the picture made sense like the ancient greeks the hebrews had a pantheon of gods they worshipped at least the gods yahweh baal and ashira we have archaeological evidence of the polytheistic nature of early israelite culture and no this controversy doesn't just involve a few isolated portions of biblical text asher is mentioned at least 40 times in the bible and believe it or not new instances are still being discovered because they're concealed in plain sight as was this example we were just looking at where it gets reinterpreted and misinterpreted in various bizarre ways because in fact we do not merely have evidence that asherah was part of the biblical text we also have evidence of the attempts of later authors editors and scribes trying to conceal or minimize the presence of asherah as in general they were trying to conceal and minimize the significance of polytheism throughout the ancient text how can we sing the songs of yahweh while in a foreign land ezekiel a prophet who arose among the exiled hebrews expressed how alienated the hebrews had become he too blamed their plight on the hebrew people for a lack of devotion to yahweh it was then at a time when the hebrew people seemed most crushed at a time when it seemed certain that the cult of yahweh would surely die it instead did something that religion has done throughout history in order to survive it changed a new author who scholars call second isaiah arose and his words were appended to those of the first isaiah i am the first and i am the last besides me there is no god monotheism was born from this new monotheistic culture the priestly source p arises israelite history is rewritten once again exodus is rewritten by p to say that the el shaddai worshipped by abraham and the yahweh worshiped by moses were the same god any references to el elyon are explained by p as merely different names for yahweh the entire book of leviticus is authored genesis 1 is crafted as an improved monotheistic version of the babylonian account of creation second isaiah rewrites babylonian myths that were attributed to marduk such as his defeat of the dragon thai man attributing them instead to yahweh the torah is rebranded by p to look as if it had always been monotheistic so when you recognize that the source text is in this sense so fundamentally contestable that it is so open to interpretation and that very few of those interpretations could be harmless for people in the modern world if you make the decision to raise your children in the faith of judaism you are handing them a book that is a proven track record of being interpreted in a dangerous way in a manner that may devastate your own children's lives or that may cause your children to go on to do terrible things ruining other people's lives you know that this book and this religion has this potential no matter how pious and postmodern your personal reinterpretation of the religion might be you should recognize that placing divine authority and transcendental significance in such a text is inherently irresponsible dangerous and morally wrong i just talk about the politicians that don't do what they got to do and the powerful people that watch people suffer and die i want to save dark-skinned babies from going to prison and wasting their lives [Music] fit when i'm on some damn [ __ ] i mean really people like to disrespect my crew but the fact is that you know my name and i don't know you