Atheists - Jews claim Torah influenced whole world? That includes YOU?
Look for article - "What would a world without Torah look like?"
Here's some interesting parts from the article:
(as in polytheistic societies today), where the literacy rate was generally 1/10 of 1%. Even ancient Rome, which needed a literate ruling class to administer its far-flung empire, boasted a literary rate of only 10-15%. Not only did Greece and Rome not deem it beneficial to educate the masses, but they viewed education as a potential danger to the stability of society.
The Torah innovated the idea of education for all.
The right to life, which the American Declaration of Independence considered "self-evident," was not evident to any society in the world before or after Sinai, except where the Torah's influence penetrated.
Into a world where killing for convenience or sport was the universal norm, the Torah introduced the concept of the sacredness of life. "Do not murder,"
When the Torah laid down the principle of equal justice before the law, the rest of the world must have laughed.
The division of time into seven-day units punctuated by the Sabbath, a day of rest, is an invention of the Torah.
Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings. And not only would our sensorium, the screen through which we receive the world, be different: we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.
The Torah introduced a purposeful God, with a plan for human history. If humankind will obey the commandments -- the Divinely ordained blueprint -- then a utopian world will ensue. The future will be different -- and better -- than the past. Thus the Torah introduced linear time. In so doing, it catapulted humanity into a world of meaningful moral choices, where human beings could create their own destinies, forge their own futures.
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The purpose of this question is to evaluate the core foundations of Judaism. It seems that Atheists and the free-thinking community is afraid of critiquing this religion. As I am intellectually honest, I refuse to hide from being called anti-Semitic.