E.S.Goldsmith: A Reconstructionist Message

Ratzio

Thanks

R' Goldsmith says that god is indeed 2Ps, however not 'person or personality' but 'power and process' . This is difficult to understand since power and process are details of the whole and god is meant to be the whole. Therefore Being/Existence personified into a god still seems more accurate. I think Kaplan would of had agreed to this even if he did not make it to the exzct formula 

Ratio and Sahliel

A few comments on that video (who's link moved here:
http://mvakshederekh.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html


... unless we get rid of the idea that god is a person or a personality we will always be defending ideas that are outmoded or outright dangerous...

This is one of the approaches of the so called liberal movements which I find almost despising and outrageous.
As long as humanity is around, new "fashionable" ideas will always come up. Once it was the Canaanites, Egyptians, and then the Greeks; today it's scientism. There is hardly an objective criterion where you can judge ideas about God. Somewhere you have to draw the line, and say: I stick to my people's traditions and out-wait the current fashion. I have a feeling that Mr. Goldsmith is trying hard to put Judaism into a scientific straitjacket. What he got is not Judaism but pseudoscience. I hardly see it as honest. Since the days of Kaplan there is a new-age trend which seems to make sense to many people; let's mingle with Buddhism and Shamanism. Science has nothing to say about god or morality and religion has no say about empirical data.

... God is power and a process

Pantheism doesn't sit well within Judaism (although there exist some mystical trends like Chasidism), and rightfully till this day most Jews believe in a personal God who is outside of "regular" existence. Should one do away with the Tanach were God is always an entity which is wholly other? Prophets always addressed him in 2^nd person "Thou - אתה". The Sages also requires us to use 2^nd person in blessings and prayer.