How much tolerance should we give to people who put forward propaganda as journalism claiming the protections of the First Amendment? Look at America today, hopelessly divided, how much of that division is an example of the Paradox of Tolerance? Should a tolerant society turn its back on its intolerant members? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb puzzles out the limits of a free press.

Remembrance lies at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. Every spring Jews and Christians remember the great events that shaped their faiths and cultures: the Passover and the Crucifixion. But in the millennia that have passed since those events there have been other great moments in the development of those faiths that have fallen out of historical memories. IN this FRDH, First Rough Draft of History, podcast Michael Goldfarb remembers Gabriel Riesser, a very important and interesting person

In this BBC documentary, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb, goes on a Journey to Ashkenaz. He visits what is today Ukraine which was once the heartland of Ashkenazic Jewry. It is where his father’s family comes from. Excellent sound and music in this piece.

Bible Study for Atheists: Jewish Quarrels

This edition of Bible Study for Atheists looks at today’s Jewish quarrels and asks whether the arguments among Jews today over whether to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem and the expansion of Israeli settlements into the West Bank is an echo of the quarrels of Biblical times. Is the story of the 12 tribes of Israel separating into two kingdoms true? How deep is the historical continuity between the Israelites whose story we read in the Old Testament and that of modern Jewry?

Remembrance, Ritual, the Sacred and Auschwitz

What is the historical process by which something becomes sacred? Is Auschwitz a sacred place?

In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb asks what is the historical process that leads to the creation of a religion, or changes in the practice of one that already exists.

Is it possible that events of modern history will someday take on religious significance, or are people today intellectually and emotionally incapable of understanding their experience as “awesome” in the sense that the great religions mean the term?

Using sound from his personal archive Goldfarb builds a case that the catastrophe of the Holocaust, like the catastrophe of the destructions of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, should and will be incorporated into Jewish religious observance.

Bible Study for Atheists 3: Judging Roy Moore a Blasphemer

Share this Bible Study for Atheists, in which FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb looks at the controversy over Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. A self-proclaimed man of God whose behavior seems like blasphemy.
How is it that the most religious part of America is also home to the most blasphemers?
And Alabama really is the most religious state in the country, According to a 2016 survey by Pew research Alabama ranked first in the nation for religiosity. 82% of its people say they believe with “absolute certainty” in God, nearly tHree quarters of Alabamans say they pray to him every day.
Yet, many in that state are still lining up to support a man who acknowledges preying on underage girls, and just generally falling short of all moral precepts contained in the Bible.
The Southern mindset is very religious. It imposes itself on visitors, even an atheist needs a modicum of biblical knowledge and language to have conversation with Southerners. So this Bible Study for Atheists tries to figure this out in Biblical terms.
When you think of Moore, and all the other public or political Christians who have been caught out in scandals think of blasphemy. Isn’t it blasphemy to present yourself to the world as a Godly person while behaving in ways that depart from all moral teaching? And isn’t blasphemy a terrible sin. St. Thomas Aquinas thought it a worse sin than murder.

Bible Study for Atheists: America, One Nation Under Whose God?

This Bible study for atheists looks at what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote about God in the Declaration of Independence. Many evangelical or political Christians argue that the US is a “Christian” country because Jefferson used the word. Michael Goldfarb challenges that idea which explores the Enlightenment use of God as Nature. Far from the scriptural understanding of the Judeo-Christian divinity. He traces Jefferson’s ideas back to those of Enlightenment philosopher Benedict Spinoza. He uses Spinoza’s own bible study as a way of explaining what the founding father’s intentions were.

Spinoza, who wrote in Latin, coined the phrase Deus sive natura, God or Nature. Nature for Spinoza is is all there is. YOu can call it God if you like but it does not cause itself, or create itself. It is not the creator God of the Bible, anthropomorphized, and directing the fate of human beings and particularly the Israelites, his chosen people.
This was pretty revolutionary theory, for the late 17th century. By the late 18th century Jefferson and the Founders were moving it out of the realm of speculation and putting it into practice in the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment to the Constitution.

This is the second Bible Study for Atheists, a semi-regular feature of the FRDH podcast. Response to the first Bible Study for Atheists was overwhelmingly positive and is still regularly listened to at the FRDH podcast website. This edition of Bible Study for Atheists will provide background for those who wish to keep religion out of government in America and need to argue with evangelical friends and neighbors about why.