Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) offers three main ideas in “The Gay Science,” written in 1882 with additions in 1887, a book called “one of his most beautiful, most idea rich books,”[1] whose title is also translated as “The Joyful Wisdom.” First, God is dead or, as I understand it, the reliance on God should cease. He [...]
Maimonides Disparages Morality One book of the Talmud [...]
Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart By Bayer and Figdor Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, 178 pages ISBN 978-1-4422-3679-0 Cost: $27.69 While the authors of this easy to read book on atheism reject the idea that there is a God and that the Ten Commandments were divinely revealed, they maintain that people can learn what is true [...]
By Israel Drazin There are significant interpretations of Genesis that many people do not know. This is do in part because much scriptural material is obscure or at best ambiguous. This is not surprising or even bad. All good literature has parts that are obscure or ambiguous. As the great Argentinean writer Jorge [...]
By Israel Drazin The Book of Esther is one of the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible. Curiously, God is not mentioned in this volume of Scripture and there is no indication that God was involved in any way in helping Esther and Mordecai save the Jews of Persia from [...]
By Israel Drazin In my discussion on “Are intelligent people moral,” I wrote that Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) taught in his Guide of the Perplexed 1:2 that people should work to develop their thinking and understanding by studying the sciences and logic, and make life decisions based on what they learnt, on [...]
An Intelligent Person is not Moral By Israel Drazin Morals are rules of proper conduct, what is good and what is bad. They inform people how to live a proper and safe life. Moral deeds seem to be what all people should do. But is this true? Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) seems [...]
