A Response to @Ladyrebecca on Pope Francis's Death

My comment on The Shepherd who abandoned his flock became so long it deserved its own post.

Firstly, my sentiments exactly.

As a former Catholic, now a reasonably religious Orthodox Jew, I also share your thoughts that on the one hand it doesn't matter (not my religion) but on the other hand the Catholic Church is still a significant force for good or ill.

COVID Tyranny

The world has moved on from COVID tyranny, yet there has been no reckoning, no "Cheshbon Nefesh" in Hebrew (Accounting of Life). Klaus Swabb resigns, but he should be convicted. Pope Francis dies, without ever apologising. Fauci is still a free man.

In my own country, Bibi has (partly) redeemed himself by winning extraordinarily strategic victories against Israel's enemies and re-making the Middle East. Yet I can never forgive him for deciding that a virus was an enemy to be fought like it was a terrorist group, turning Jews against each other and preventing freedom of worship.

We should Never Forget what was done to humanity by the COVID Tyrants and keep fighting until justice is done.

Catholic Church

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The Catholic Church is dying and the Christian myth is fading, as it no longer resonates with modern people.

Its core myths and miracles are so inconsistent with science that they are as believable as Roman, Greek or Aztec mythology. This is why I left Catholicism at age 14, long before I discovered Judaism.

The reality is that Christianity has failed its encounter with modernity and prosperity. Once staunchly Catholic societies such as Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy where once "every sperm [was] sacred" now are hostile to children and have ultra-low fertility.

But Christianity is not alone in this failure. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Atheism are all failing to perform their basic task of at least persisting from generation to generation. All have catastrophically low fertility once they encounter modernity and even moderate prosperity.

Judaism

Fertility

Only genuinely practiced Judaism is able to maintain fertility in the face of modernity and prosperity. All Jews in Israel (including the secular) have fertility far above any other advanced country - TFRs between 2.5 (secular) - 6 (ultra-orthodox) with an average TFR of 3.1. Orthodox Jews outside Israel also have high fertility while being economically integrated & successful and technology users (unlike other high fertility groups such as the Amish).

This obviously does not include the non or barely practicing, assimilated, Democrat voting Reform Jews of America, who have even lower fertility than their Christian counterparts.

Science & Judaism

As surprising as it may seem to outsiders, Judaism is also consistent with science.
All the miracles in the Torah / Jewish Bible / "Old" Testament are examples of God using highly unusual (but not impossible) natural phenomena, happening at a particular time, to assist (or sometimes punish) the Jewish People.

It fits with my view that a God who created a Unified Order, governed by a fairly simple set of basic laws (The Four Fundamental Forces of Nature) would not break those laws, but may bend them.

Quantum Physics with its associated uncertainty principles allows God wiggle room to occasionally intervene in human affairs without breaking the Laws of Nature.

Indeed it is only belief in One God that created the Universe and the Laws of Nature that allowed Man to discover Science. Without such belief, the World appears random and chaotic - maybe the product of multiple gods fighting. As Ben Shapiro notes in one of his books, Aristotle and his disciples many have been religious polytheists but were philosophical monotheists.

But while the Greek foundations of Western Civilisation are not possible without (Jewish) monotheism, the Greek insight that we should discover and seek to understand Nature from first principles is also derivable from Jewish belief, without resort to Greek ideas.

One simply has to contemplate what we know about God to give us some guidance as to what the purpose of humanity is.

God is Intelligent, above all things and is also One, and thus alone.
God created this magnificent Universe including intelligent life - us.

Clearly the purpose of humanity is to use its intelligence to come to understand and appreciate more fully the glory of God's Creation, both through Religion but also through Science.

Properly understood Judaism and Science are fully consistent and self-reinforcing.

Only those ignorant of one of the other (or both) think they are inconsistent.

Gerald L. Schroeder has written a series of books on this topic starting with Genesis and The Big Bang.

A New "Myth"?

The community at large needs a unifying myth that should point them to something larger than their ephemeral lives.

It is clear that the decline of religion has had devastating consequences, both personally and civilisationally. For a long time religion was a powerful and successful civilisational technology.

@ladyrebecca suggest humanity needs a new myth, but there is no successful new myths that provides people purpose in life and makes them happy and fertile while being prosperous and technologically advanced.

Maybe settlement of Mars and expansion of humanity into the solar system will provide a new motivation for some, but the vast majority will inevitably be left behind on Earth.

Maybe we will discover Alien Life and that will trigger new religions to arise.

But these are just speculations and the impending doom of civilisational collapse due to low fertility and anomie needs more than just speculative solutions.

The reality is that currently there is only one civilisational technology (or "myth") that works in today's world - genuinely practiced Judaism (Israeli & Orthodox).

Judaism does not proselytize and it is quite difficult to convert, but it is possible.
I did.
I've also known many others over the years who also have converted.

It is a radical and hard path, but it appears to be the only currently viable option for someone looking for a new "myth" that still works in today's world.