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Title: Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit
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Manufacturer: Aldus Books Inc
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| Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit by Aldus Books Inc A SOUR TASTE | I was, at first, excited to see what I thought would be a thoughtful and well researched treatise on the Torah and its adherents. I became dissapointed when I encountered a virtolic tirade focused on Orthodox Jews and fundamentalists as a whole. Mr. Gold obviously had a bad experience in the world of Orthodox Judaism at some point in his life, and has struck out at what he considers to be the source of his woes.
While I do not dispute his discussion of archeology and some of the history he sites, I do not appreciate his utter disdain of those who wish to observe and kepp the laws of Jewish belief. Mr. Gold states that the belief in one supreme being did not originate with the patriarch Abraham, but with Zoroaster [Zarathustra(Greek for camel handler)], but failed to realize that this belief system arose around 600 BCE and not 3500 BCE.
The book is well writen and fairly erudite, but if Mr. Gold is so upset at the belief system the ancient laws and tenets spawn then he should find a better argument than the Torah is not devinely writen or inspired. I would find it hard to believe that everyone who reads this would argue the history or archeology , but the most important word Mr. Gold neglects is the one word that holds these beliefe systems, and all other too, together. That word is FAITH. | | Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit by Aldus Books Inc A Solid Vote for Liberal Religions | Gold takes the reasonably recent research results that shows the Old Testament/Torah to be tales of many authors rather than the word of God and uses it to attack Orthodox Judaism and other forms of fundamentalist religion. Although not a scholarly book he does backup his work with decent references (29 pages of notes). It also has a 12 page index. It is reasonably easy and enjoyable to read.
I enjoyed the last half of the book more than the first. In the end of the book he makes some good points about: God's Truth, Religious Fundamentalists, Religion and Science, and Rituals | | Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit by Aldus Books Inc Must Read! | | It's not everyday one finds such a unique and well written book. This wonderful book astonishingly shatters every argument put forward by top Jewish Orthodox theologians. I was literally shocked by the distinct style, eloquence and intellectual honestly put forward by R. H Gold. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in current debate that is taking between religious fundamentalism and secular humanism. | | Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit by Aldus Books Inc The Gold Standard | Mr. Gold is an American secular Jew, residing in the Bay Area, who is seeking to sound the alarm against the new aggressiveness (as he perceives it) of apologists for Jewish Orthodoxy. These scholars insist that the Torah, with all of its attendant superstition, intolerance, and outright absurdity, is uniformly the word of God. As such nothing can be subtracted from it. In Gold's view, this doctrine makes these advocates fundamentalists, just as much as the Christian evangelicals who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.
Some eyebrows will be raised at Gold's retention of the term "Old Testament," which most biblical scholars have discarded as imposing a Christian perspective on the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh. Perhaps the author is making a valid point, though, because the Jewish Orthodox writers regard their scriptures with the same unvarying reverence as evangelical Christians do. For the Orthodox it is their Old Testament. (Arguably the Oral Torah, regarded by some as of equal authority with the Written Torah, is the Jewish New Testament.)
Gold is a concerned layman, not a professional biblical scholar. He cites only a few books. Yet he excels in two areas. First, his literary style is outstandingly clear and engaging. The book can be read--with much profit, I might add--in a sitting.
Secondly, and most crucially, he subjects the claims of the Orthodox writers to withering, unremitting scrutiny. His conclusions are stark. "[T[he evidence weighs heavily, very heavily, against the truth of Orthodox Judaism. If we apply the same principles of rational belief that we rely on in everyday life, it is difficult--I would say impossible--to reach any conclusion other than that the dogma of Orthodox Judaism is not true. It is false. . . . Far from being divine immutable law, the doctrines of Orthodox Judaism--like fundamentalist dogma everywhere--are an anachronistic absurdity in this day and age, and they spawn a pious ignorance that subverts independent thought."
Gold also points out that archaeology has failed to confirm any of the key traditional claims of traditional biblical apologetics. Tellingly, he cites the Israeli archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog. "Following seventy years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel ... this is what archeologists have learned. The patriarch's acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not wander in the desert, and they did not conquer he land in a military campaign. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom." The only thing I would disagree with in this statement is the last. There is no evidence that David and Solomon ever existed.
If God was the author of the texts presenting these fictions, how could he have been so much in error? Or was he seeking simply purveying whoppers to deceive human beings?
Gold also takes on the Orthodox dogma of the unique survival of the Jewish people, one of their main arguments for the Jews being God's specifically chosen people. The argument takes this form: No people in history has suffered the way the Jews have. By any reasonable standard, the Jewish people should be extinct by now. Yet, not only have they miraculously survived the Holocaust, but, against all probability, they have returned to Israel and revived their ancient nation. So goes the litany.
And yet, as Gold points out, the survival of the Jewish people for thousands of years is scarcely the unique phenomenon the Orthodox like to claim that it is. The Basques, for example, have been around at least as long as the Jews have, if not considerably longer. In fact, the Basque presence in the Pyrenees predates recorded history. Recent genetic evidence indicates that they have survived in place for some forty thousand years, more than ten times the duration of an identifiable Jewish culture. (I am myself probably a descendent of the Basque diaspora.)
And of course there are many other instances of peoples surviving for millennia: the Parsis, the Armenians, the Latvians--to cite just three.
The Orthodox also assume that only the Torah assured the survival of the Jewish people. Yet the Basques, like many other survivor peoples, have no Torah. Rightly, Gold maintains that the Torah is secondary: it is the creation of the Jewish people, not the other way around.
Gold seeks to chart a middle course between the true believers, who swallow their Scriptures (whichever they are) whole, and such atheist absolutists as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who see no benefit of any sort from religion. In order to recover the inherent spiritual values it is essential to identify and discount the vast quantities of dross--including admonitions that are sheer evil--disfiguring the celebrated texts. This dunging out is a vast undertaking, and one must look elsewhere for more detailed critical exegesis, verse by verse. Yet Gold has written an invaluable study. It is in fact his first book, and I look forward to reading more by him.
| | Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit by Aldus Books Inc This is a book that every liberal Jew and every liberal Christian should read! | Bondage of the Mind is an important, brilliant book that is long overdue. There are lots of books promoting atheism, and even more (by several orders of magnitude) promoting religious fundamentalism. This book promotes neither. Instead, it asks readers to open their eyes - and their minds - to consider a compelling argument that the dogma of fundamentalism in general and of Orthodox Judaism in particular is false.
The author has done extensive research and thoroughly documents all the evidence he presents. The book is a first-rate piece of scholarship, but the author writes in a colloquial, often humorous style that make it a pleasure to read. He builds a powerful case that it makes no sense for anyone to give up much of his or her freedom for, as he puts it, the straightjacket of a flawed fundamentalist belief system.
Some of the reviews posted here are just flat out wrong. One claims that "Gold had pitted himself against an accomplished logician (Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb) and is found desperately wanting" and to prove this he recommends "a parallel reading of his and Gottlieb's texts based on logic alone." Well I did that, and it is Rabbi Gottlieb who comes up holding the short end of the stick - and I say that as the holder of a Masters degree in Philosophy from Stanford University, where the Philosophy Department is particularly strong in mathematical logic and the philosophy of science. (If you read Bondage of the Mind, you'll also see that Gold is not "frothing at the mouth," as Mr. Greenblatt suggests. An unfair ad hominem attack if I ever saw one.)
I read Rabbi Gottlieb's tract, "Living Up...to the Truth", that Gold cites in his book. It is a finely honed piece of rhetoric that presents arguments in such a way that they seem convincing to those who are already convinced, those who want to be convinced, or those who are not skilled in the analysis of extended argumentation. But the arguments themselves are completely without merit, repeatedly abuse legitimate principles of reasoning, and are flawed to the point of irresponsibility. For example, in Part III of his tract his absurd arguments would surely earn him a failing grade in rational decision theory. Similar to his distortion of the scientific method (mentioned in Gold's book), in which he pretends to be promoting the scientific method but in fact is propounding a fallacious line of reasoning that has nothing at all to do with the scientific method, here Gottlieb pretends to endorse principles of rational decision theory while in fact he is promoting a highly irrational, potentially dangerous principle of behavior.
A second reviewer alleges that Gold doesn't understand Judaism because, he claims, Orthodox Judaism is not based on a literal reading of the Torah. All anyone has to do is read Gottlieb's tract to determine, over and over again, that this statement is simply not true.
Bondage of the Mind probably won't change what card-carrying fundamentalists believe. (But it could, and there's no shame in hoping that it does.) But I think it is required reading by all liberal Jews and Christians. It gives them powerful ammunition to answer the Orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals when they claim, as Gold puts it so accurately, that they and they alone know The Truth and that it comes from God.
| | Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit by Aldus Books Inc Book Description | | There is a great debate unfolding across the country pitting reason and science against revelation and faith. Bondage of the Mind talks to that vast audience of modern readers who are trying to figure out where they stand on the spectrum of religious belief. Recognizing that even the most skeptical among us are uncomfortable with the atheist label, Bondage of the Mind develops a powerful argument that our choice is not limited to fundamentalism (I believe all of it) or atheism (I believe none of it). Bondage of the Mind relentlessly dismantles the doctrines of religious fundamentalism - focusing on Orthodox Judaism (Jewish fundamentalism) -- but its core message is not that religion should be abandoned. Rather, the core message is that religious fundamentalism is an insidious force that must be combated if our hearts and minds are to remain free. Bondage of the Mind announces itself as a book about truth, but it is also a book about freedom. |
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