Rabbi Sacks challenges Liberal Jews on their atheism

4th minute

Howard Jacobson: 

"The business of what I eat, the business of what I wear and the whole business of the minutiae of a religious life doesn't suit me, and I also don't like to see it." 

That was when Rabbi Sacks should have burst into song.

After the song, Rabbi Sacks could have added:

"As for eating pork, you stuff yourself with pork as much as you like, Jacob, but even bad Jews like you know you are not supposed to do that. Therefore we and the goyim know you are a self-hating Jew and you know what, Jacob? The anti-Semites won't stop hating you just because they think you are an unobservant self-hating pork-guzzling Jew. That is because we have the best and worst of both worlds of Jews being both a religion and a race."

When Jacobson asks Rabbi Sacks if he is sure God exists, the answer could have been

"I am sure belief in God and His laws and our attempt to obey them as much as we can has helped the Jewish people stay together, work together and exist as the most powerful tribe in the world, and that is really the most that can be expected. We are nothing without our traditions. Without our traditions, we would be goyim."

11th minute
Alain de Botton:

"Why can't I pick and mix my religion?" 

Rabbi Sacks could have said:

"If we lived in a theocracy, you wouldn't be able to pick and choose the laws you obey, would you? Well, you could in theory, but if you were caught, arrested, tried and convicted, you would be treated and punished as a criminal, and this should probably stop you from breaking the law of the land, if you know what's good for you, Alain."

Rabbi Sacks should have said to Colin Blakemore:

"Science is the study of natural phenomena but religion is about imposing morality on your group to bring about group solidarity and keep it in existence. Jews have been around longer than the Chinese and have held on to their traditions better and longer. This is because Jews have a unique and supreme deity, while Chinese beliefs are a jumbled mish-mash of some wisdom mixed with a huge heap of hooey. It is for this reason that Jews are the most powerful tribe in the world and a superior race running AIPAC, dictating who becomes US Presidential candidate and controlling US foreign policy. So there."

'Prof Baker is one of the signatories of a British-led petition of more than 700 academics from several countries launched by Steven Rose, an Open University professor. Signatories including Oxford professors Colin Blakemore and Richard Dawkins say they "can no longer in good conscience continue to cooperate with official Israeli institutions, including universities".'

Lisa Jardine asks why God allows suffering.

Ho hum. These things are sent to try us, innit? Why does she think we already live in heaven? Who said we are already in Paradise entitling us to complain about room service to the Management?? Bloody hell, it is infuriating that these atheists don't get a good kicking every time they ask that dumb question again and again and again.

Rabbi Sacks, you must know that God created evil too.  Doesn't anyone know anything these days?! Give me strength.  http://biblehub.com/isaiah/45-7.htm

Maybe he was just holding back on Lisa Jardine cos she was a girl and might get upset if he mansplained things to her.

He said an interesting thing though, that Judaism is a religion of protest, a religion of struggle.  

Does that remind you too of jihad?

She also asked where is God in the howling mob. Rabbi Sacks says God is the protest against mob rule.

Rabbi Sacks:

God is the protest against the crowd. 

I suppose he means that having moral principles and defending them allows us to protest against the mob. Regrettably, Rabbi Sacks did not as I would have done in his place go on to develop the point that a theocracy would bring about good government and good government would protect Jews and others against pogroms and rich people would have their property rights respected by the mob if the mob thought the rules are fair enough and their country was being run properly ie not by a bunch of pussified libtards following the orders of stupid promiscuous women who are in the main unmarried and bad mothers incapable of being reasoned with.