The scope of Comparative Religion

Question

This question created a debate about the scope of comparative religion (or in that case, comparative ideology) questions, which can be found in the comments there. The issue seems to be as follows:

• Is a question which asks for the Jewish view of X on topic?

  • If so, how much information about X must be provided? Does the information need to be in the post, or is externally linking enough?

What is the difference between the above question, this question

Is Christianity Avodah Zara?

and this question

Among the gentiles, why Job and Bilaam were recognized as prophets whereas Muhammad was not?

What is the burden of the asker to supply the information about non-Jewish topics in his question, and when do they apply? The above closed question asks for the Jewish values that would lead to a given position, and the necessary background to the position is linked.

Answer 1

Well, I tried changing the question to make it more explicitly a comparative Jewish question, since apparently that intent wasn't clear, and I have now removed all reference to the specific political ideology as anything other than self-identification.

However, asking what about Jewish beliefs cause those who adhere to them to be more likely to believe things in other areas seems on topic to me.

If there was a study which shows that Orthodox Jews are less likely to believe in catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming* than Jews who are not of that religious affiliation (so reform, conservative, unaffiliated whatever) I would think it perfectly on topic to ask why.

I think the real opposition is that the concern is that the topic is contentious. That is not a reason in and of itself to close questions though. But I'm not really all that emotionally vested in this question. If it stays off topic, so be it. But I would appreciate a consistent explanation as to why. If I went back and looked, I could probably come up with 10 counter examples instead of just two, I'm just not vested enough to do it. (But here is one).

If the mods just don't want the question, OK.

I want to explain what I mean by that last line. There was a question asking for a product recommendation about which Beis Din to use in Monsey. That got pounced on so hard by the moderators it made my head spin. Closed as primarily opinion based, and then locked to prevent comments (I had started writing a comment before it got closed, and then ended up being the motivation for locking, I think).

Now, to me it is patently obvious that there was nothing more opinion based about that question than the many other product-recommendation questions that are open and are accepting answers. Rather I suspect it was a (perfectly reasonable) concern about a rapid deterioration into Loshon Hara, etc. that making recommendations about specific people's services would entail.

I suspect this is the (subconscious) motivation for closing this question - it expects a lot of attention on the politics, which creates endless pointless debate, and not so much on the Judaism.

I'm OK with that, but would appreciate if that was clearly stated, if that is the reason.

^{* An example that came out in chat}

Answer 2

I wrote the following in an answer to the now-deleted earlier question asking specifically about the avodah-zara question:

The wording of the question body is not ideal (our standards were probably looser in 2009), but the question of the title, and the question that answers generally address, is IMO on-topic here. "Is Christianity avodah zara" is not in kind different from "are Oreos kosher" -- we can't be expected to know the details of Christian practice or Oreo manufacture, but we have reputable sources from people who have looked into these matters. Good answers will draw on those sources.

To me, a key difference between this question and the politics one is the expectation that there are Jewish writings on the subject. I don't know if I would have closed the politics one; I was still mulling it over when it got put on hold. To my eye, the politics question asks answerers to do much more work than the others, and it would be better if the question articulated the political values in question. (Not just a link; bring it into the question.)

As for the Muhammad question, I think it's a weak question and maybe it should be closed, but "why don't we recognize as a prophet somebody who came hundreds of years after prophecy ended (and didn't usher in the messianic age)" is, at least, answerable without requiring additional knowledge.