Paraphrasing Will Rogers I'll say that I don't belong to an organized religion. I'm Jewish.

As for the old Testament new Testament debate, I'll remind y'all of the obvious. Jews don't have either. We have 'The'.

By the same selective quotations and analysis that is represented here, one can try to use the OT or NT, and probably the Koran, the Bhavagad-kita to argue for harsh punishment, lenient punishment, pro and anti-Darwinism, pro and anti socialism, pretty much anything you have set your mind to. If you look you will find Jews all over the political spectrum, even in this thread perhaps.

What has always impressed me about the 'OT' is what I regard its frankness. It starts right out with narrative that does not stint from acknowledging incest, wife stealing, murder. It lays before you fraternal strife and reconciliation, notions of tribal organization, and the harshness and forgiveness inherent in God.

I do not find the OT to be 'defacto' conservative. I find it to be honest.

I do not find the NT (which I have read on a superficial level) to be half so engaging, because I see it as a brochure. It's trying to sell me on Christ's teachings by way of his 'closer than thou' relation to the deity. I don't think it captures human nature in the raw half so well as the OT. Most of what Jesus has to say is perceptive but not brilliant, and he doesn't say all that needs to be said. From my point of view, naturally, he doesn't fulfill prophecy. Those arguments invariably try to define the prophecy to prove the deity rather than the other way around, which is like shooting the arrow and then drawing the target around it.

I depart from most Jews, and Christians and Muslims in that I don't expect our problems to be taken in hand from the outside. the concept of Messiah as a separate being is I think a real problem for the world.

I think WE are the Messiah. If not now, hopefully soon. We need to see the messiah in ourselves and others, not some imposed outside being.

I didn't invent any of this. A lot of people from all backgrounds are coming to similar conclusions. I value my religion and respect that of others, for we all have more in common with the above concepts regardless of what they call themselves. It's the narrow minded folk with the very tiny heavens I disagree with.

I have arrived at using the language of science as a standard while trying not to forget that one can make a false god out of anything. ANYTHING.