respondingtojblogs

You Are A Soul II

2006-09-07T05:18:00.000-04:00

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.
- Vincent van Gogh

Our last thought experiment asked you to imagine that the technology exists to replace neurons in your brain with exact replicas. Imagine that your friendly neighborhood neurologist (or ersatz-neurologist) conducted this procedure on you. Do you think there would be any change in to your cognitive ability? Your sense of “self?”

The common answer is generally no (based on informal polling conducted by myself). A sense of self is an admittedly fuzzy concept in that it is ill defined. What do we mean by sense of self? Obviously there is no hard definition of self or identity or similar concepts, but you can more easily imagine that observations of others of yourself after this procedure would not change. Let’s put this line of thought on hold and present the second thought experiment.

Thought Experiment #2
Now imagine that instead of replicating and replacing a single neuron, your neurologist is able to map your entire brain, but she does not recreate it using our magic artificial neuron. Instead she whips out a .357 Magnum and drills one into your right ear. You are now dead. But suppose she now recreates your brain using her artificial neurons. What result?

Shoshana noted the problem of a time lag in the last experiment. But since I am making this up as I go along, imagine the technology exists to record your neurons up until the precise moment of death.

The point of these thought experiments is to get what it means to be conscious. Is consciousness the byproduct of an arrangement of neurons? Does consciousness rest upon the neural configuration or is it the neural configuration?

After initially writing off these thought experiments, I thought about it a little longer until I was so perplexed it hurt. It seems to be that rather than talking about souls, we ought to be talking about brains. You are your brain. You can even go as far as to say that you are your body. Both are dynamic. Both represent unique combinations over time. Your neurons are not arranged the same way they were when you were five, or even seconds ago. Likewise, your body is not the same one you had when you began reading this post.

And therein lies the rub.

If the foundation of our sense of self is our body or our brain, and that this foundation is unique over time, than does “sense” or identity mean anything?

If our brain states (or body states) are unique over time, than aren’t we literally living for the moment? By this I mean that if our brain states change than our sense of self is really a collection of snapshots at any given moment. Rather than having a static homunculi who dispassionately records the changes to your brain, it seems more likely that your current sense of self is contemplating its memories of another self.

Lest this turn into utter psychobabble, consider this scenario, take from The Mind’s I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. You are tooling along in your spaceship when you run out of gas and are forced to make a crash landing on Mars. You have ample ramen noodle to last you the rest of your natural life on Mars. But (omitting the chance of rescue) will never see your family again. Aboard the ship there is a device that records every molecule of your body is able to beam a radio signal to a body reassembling machine located on Earth. After recording your body, the machine vaporizes you and then sends along your "map" to the reassembly device.

Deciding your children need a parent, you step into the recording device and POOF you are in the reassembly machine on Earth. And you live happily ever after. Or do you? You begin to wonder if you are the same person that walk into the recorder. You remember walking into the recorder. You remember pressing the red button. But is it the same you? The only person who could possibly answer that question in the negative is (possibly) dead and is telling no tales.

The mechanics of this sci-fi vignette are the same as our though experiment. Is it possible to reconstruct yourself from the configuration of your brain? Is it possible to blink in and out of the conscious experience? Have you ever had general anesthesia (I haven’t, but I am assured by those who have that it is a relevant experience)?

If you haven't lost interest, these experiments continue.

You Are A Soul I

2006-09-04T01:40:00.000-04:00

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
- C.S. Lewis

My current wanderings led me to reconsider a series of thought experiments I wrote off in more optimistic times. Please keep in mind that the point of the experiments is not to speculate about future technologies. The point is to try to abstract out fuzzy terms and get to the essence of being. I confess that I was hostile to this line of thinking when I was first introduced to these experiments and it took me a while to adjust. But the problems the experiments raise and/or address are crucial, it seems, to a rational understanding of existence.

The experiments build on each other, so I think it would be useful to present them as a series.

I also confess that I am a novice in this area and I am still developing my thoughts in the area.

Try them out.

Thought Experiment #1
Suppose the technology exists to create an artificial neuron. The exact composition of the artificial neuron is not important, but suffice it to say that the technology exists to replicate every chemical property of a neuron. The technology to take an accurate reading of a neuron, that is, its exact chemical properties, also exists. Hence it is possible for a neurologist to identify an individual neuron, determine its exact properties and its exact connections to surrounding neurons. The neurologist is further able to replicate the neuron, extract the original neuron and replace with an artificial one.

Query: Suppose a neurologist conducted this procedure on your brain, removing one neuron and replacing it with another. Will there be any impact on your sense of self or your cognitive ability?

Putting the Genie Back in the Bottle

2006-09-03T17:55:00.000-04:00

“[T]hat was the fatal flaw in the Charedi Philosophy. They crashed around the world selling "spirituality" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for eighty bucks an Esrog. But their loss and failure is ours too. What the Chareidim took down with them was the central illusion of a whole life-style that they helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of Religiosity: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”

I debated whether or not I would blog again, at least at respondingtojblogs, but in the end my need to whine won out over everything else. I’ve been alternating between incredibly busy and incredibly fallow these past months, and it’s been gratifying to see that people still pop in once a while.

The reason I haven’t posted is that is seems I’ve traveled this road as far as it will take me. Now that I have left civilization and I am at the edge of an endless expanse of desert, there is not much else to say.

I initially came to blogosphere to work out my sfeikos b’emunah. I know think that most forms of organized religion are a perverse joke. I don’t say that with relish, but with regret. The story told by religion is as compelling as it is comforting. We aren’t just near-random samples of molecules, there is a reason for suffering in this life, the reward in the next life is great, and that the vale of tears eventually lifts into a mountain of joy.

To accept that as true again.

Instead we are left rudderless in an uncaring world. Our feeble faculties are burdened by the baggage of our forefathers. Even the language we use often obfuscates rather than clarifies. And in the end, there is no release. It would be nice to pretend I am a rebellious teenager who, after sneaking a cigarette on Shabbos, can confess to his mashgiach and redevote himself to the fairy tale. Instead, the idea that we are soulless, organic, and emotional computational machines haunts every waking moment.

I initially wanted this blog to be an instrument of debate, to present ideas to my readers and get their thoughts, but at this point debate seems near pointless.

All this is not to say that life isn’t filled with wonder. It is. What is despairing is our utter inability to pursue this wonder. After a certain point we recognize our failings and discourse becomes fanciful speculations of future technologies or solipsistic answers to intractable problems.

Therefore, it is difficult to produce posts that aren’t inherently emotional, since it is hard to produce new rational stuff. This post itself is emotional and self-indulgent, but I guess that just about sums up humanity.

The bottom line? Take the Blue Pill.

V for Vulgate

2006-03-21T01:10:00.000-05:00

I am currently reading Rabbi Louis Jacobs' Principles of the Jewish Faith, the first book in a long time to literally keep me up all night. I began his book last night and found myself standing over a kitchen counter I sauntered over to hours earlier to get a drink, with the sun rising and I was only up to the Eighth Principle.

For the uninitiated, the Eighth Principle of Faith concerns the divine nature of the Torah. This principle is extraordinarily difficult to understand, chiefly because physical evidence demands that we view the Torah as at least somewhat man-made. To be sure, the Ninth Principle, that the Torah is unchanging, seems even more problematic, but is widely regarded as an affirmation that Judaism will never be superseded by another religion. In other words, nothing external to the Torah can overturn a normative, halakhic practice.

The Eighth Principle, however, is extremely troublesome. It is difficult to see how anyone with a sense of history can fail to see the Torah as a statement of separateness that chiefly operated over a specific people at a specific time. More on this later.

For starters, what is meant by the "Torah?" The exact method of authorship of the Bible is the subject of Talmudic dispute. Some hold that the Torah was written in installments during various periods in the Wilderness (see Gittin 60a). Others hold that God dictated the entire text of the Torah to Moses (see Sanhedrin 99a). Buy what does "text" mean? Jacobs writes of Esdras, a book in the Apocrypha which records an interesting account of Ezra rewriting the Torah which was destroyed. Of the text we have today, the Masoretic, several versions are existent and there are other versions of the Bible of the same period and even one that predates the Masoretic text.

Even if you were to accept that the Masoretic text is the correct one (again, which version?) and all other texts are a corrupted form of the correct text, you are left with the problem of the Documentary Hypothesis and other forms of Biblical criticism. Ibn Ezra was well familiar with this problem. In Deuteronomy 1:1, the Bible states that "These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel beyond the Jordan." This verse makes no sense. If the B'nei Yisroel had not yet crossed the Jordan, why would the verse use a spatial orientation that suggests that they were on the East Bank of the Jordan? We know they are on the East Bank, because they hadnt crossed the river yet. Ibn Ezra says "If you know the secret of the twelve, and of 'And Moses wrote,' and of 'The Canaanite was then in the land,' and of 'In the mount where the Lord is seen,' and of 'Behold his bedstead was a beadstead of iron,' you will discover the truth." The secret of the twelve are the twelve last verse of the Bible that are difficult ot imagine Moshe wrote. The other "secrets" are various anachronisms that are quite difficult to understand given a belief that Moses transcribed these events in one sitting or even contemporaneously as events unfolded.

But even putting these difficulties aside, I would like to return to the one element of the Bible, and, indeed, of all of Judaism that should shake anyone’s faith to the core: Cultures record unique moments in time. In other words, there is no reason to think that just as the Institutes of Justinian and the Code of Hammurabi capture not so much a timeless ethical system, but a unique taste of a culture existing in a specific place in time and space, the Bible captures a desert people recording their culture, especially insofar as it separates them from their neighbors.

Jacobs provides three examples which serve to demonstrate this idea:

1. The Babylonian Story of the Flood

This is really old hat for j-blogosphere. By now most of us are at least somewhat acquainted with the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the Utnapishtim takes a three hour tour at the behest of a god bent on destroying humanity by flood and who later releases a bird to discover whether or not the earth is once again safe to inhabit.

2. Cooking a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk

Maimonidies explains this prohibition as an explicit statement by the author of the Bible (God, if you like) that the B’nei Yisorel should not imitate a common idolatrous practice of the time that had nothing to do with cheeseburgers (to be totally fair, the Rambam speculated that the practice was connected to idolatry, speculation which was later confirmed in the 1930s when a collection of Canaanite tablets revealed that this was indeed a Canaanite temple ritual).

3. The Goring Ox

Suffice it to say that the law concerning a goring ox (Exodus 21:29-30) is nearly identical to the Code of Hammurabi and the Law of Eshunna.

4. The Slave’s Ear

Both Exodus and the Code of Hammurabi talk about damaging a servant’s ear in a ceremony concerning his emancipation. Accoridng to Hammurabi, a slave who desires freedom has his ear cut off, while Exodus state that a servant who desires to stay past his term of servitude has his ear bored.

My point in all this is that it is increasingly difficult to see oneself as the keeper of a Mesorah that stretched back to Moses. It is far easier to see oneself as the heir to a cultural record of people who prided themselves as separate from their neighbors, but who were a product of their cultural milieu nonetheless. Any greenhorn apologist can point out how vastly superior the B’nei Yisroel were as compared to their neighbors. Indeed it is not hard to read the Bible as a magnificent testimonial to the high morals of the B’nei Yisroel. But of what import is that today? It is this normative claim that becomes much more difficult in the face of considering Judaism no different than any other culture- it creates myths and legends to further it communal interest. Given early Judaism’s desire for separateness, it is no mystery that we have maintained a cohesive identity for so long. But is it true? Is there deeper meaning to be culled from a cultural document?

No answers here.

I Was Lost in the Cities, Alone in the Hills

2006-03-17T06:14:00.000-05:00

The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I want to thank those who encouraged me to continue to blog and I have an obscene gesture for those who gloated at my absence.

The truth is that this blog's purpose was to examine a particular question: Is normative Judaism compatible with reason? To this end, I have sought to limit my posts in an effort to refine this blog's focus. Therefore, I don't blog politics, personal musings, or my dream journal.

Unfortunately, while this made for a quality posts, it also means that there are times when I have nothing to say. Recently, in addition to dealing with real life, there has not been much to say. I came to the j-blogosphere looking to reconcile the religion of my youth with the information I current possess. At this present moment, the results are unsatisfactory.

There are certain facts I cannot shake and any attempt to reconcile these facts with reason smack of apologia and a wishful reading of history. For example, the idea that every culture got their religion wrong and only these misguided folk are subject to the forces of history is a kicker (see this post for what I mean). Orthodox and, indeed, most stains of Judaism insist that Torah, while it may not be literally true, contained a unique deposit of divine wisdom to be mined by future generations. That this idea can be held by men of reason boggles my mind. This is similar to the belief held by many that the Jewish people have out-survived other cultures. Bosh.

The ancient cultures live on in modernism. For example, Greek ideals died in the paralysis of an inefficient government, were revived by the Roman Empire, rediscovered by the Enlightenment and affirmed the Founding Fathers. Each host culture added and changed the original, leaving its own unique imprint on a conversation begun many millennia ago.

Orthodox Judaism takes a different view of their own history. They prefer to believe that their lifestyle was sanctioned by God Himself 5,000 years ago. Bosh again.

Judaism is essentially an insular religion which discreetly reinvents itself every so often to accommodate the latest devastating body blow to its dogma. Men can devote their lives to reconciling an archaic system with a brave new world, and some do.

Others choose to live in the era to which they were born.

This isn’t a retirement post or, worse yet, one of those contemptible non-retirement retirement posts for which certain bloggers are famous. I expect that posting will remain very light unless someone finally finds a rock with “Made by God” stamped on it.

The Lone and Level Sands Stretch Far Away

2006-02-10T01:11:00.000-05:00

Apparently, Ezzie still needs some goading before I get his take on my recent slew of posts, so here goes.

I’ve been mentally compiling a list of the things that make me incredibly uncomfortable with Judaism. By discomfort I do not mean that I feel a rule chafing against the way I want to live my life (not to say there aren’t a few of those), but certain demands that Judaism makes on my worldview.

The first and most obvious is the conflict between Torah and Science. I’ve seen cute ways of getting around this problem, from linguistic gymnastics to typical “kiruv klown” attacks on established scientific theory. I am not going to debate the contours of this conflict. Suffice it to say that the Torah, read literally, makes stark assertions of fact (e.g., six days of creation, existence of firmament, geocentrism, young universe, global flood, etc.) that are at odds with any modern understanding of the world. Any attempt to get around these issues is always intellectually unsatisfying and has the appearance of trying to give complex and kludgy explanations that were clearly never contemplated by the Ancient Israelites.

Far more disturbing then outright conflict with physical law, however, is the assumption that Judaism somehow transcends the law of time.

Time is an extremely unintuitive concept for man. If were to live for 90 years, we would think ourselves old. But what happens given large amounts of time? We can reconstruct what occurs given large expanses of time, but I think that we underestimate its power. On a very grand scale, for instance, you have geologic time. Glaciers form, rivers scrape mountains into canyons, etc.

My point, however, is that time does more than shape our physical surroundings. It changes culture as well. Every culture develops myths, complex social interactions, economic markets, religion, and political systems. These institutions in turn feedback on themselves and their complexity grows over time. Political and economic systems grow more complex. Some myths are forgotten, while some gain central importance to the culture. To be sure, there are some limitations on this cycle (for an excellent quick read on this, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel is a must read), but for all current developed civilizations this is true.

Therefore, what Judaism requires, in addition to a suspension in belief of physics, biology, etc. is a suspension of another natural law- the impact of time on a culture. It is inconceivable to me that while non-Judaic cultures have been subject to such a force, Judaism and Jews have remained free from the impact of time- that our Holy books have not always existed, that myths have not developed and attracted prominent feature, and that the basic tenets of our belief today are not fundamentally different than they were 5,000 years ago.

The opening Mishna in the Ethics of our Fathers glibly glosses over the transmission of the Mesorah. The unbroken chain from Sinai to present day is emphasized in Yeshivas and by Kiruv professionals. Indeed, in debates over whether to leave religion, the unwillingness to break with a tradition 5,000 years old runs strong. But would I be leaving a tradition 5,000 years old? I suspect if I was to live my life as Biblical characters did, I would be deemed as heretical as if I denied the existence of God Himself. On the other hand, embracing religion is to deny a fundamental law of nature- cultures change. The Faith of the Fathers is not the Faith of the Sons.

I Give You My Onliness

2006-02-06T00:49:00.000-05:00

This post is likely to be more stream of conscious than I am used to, but bear with me.

I have accepted the obvious conclusion that I am at a crossroads in my life with regard to religion. At this point, the secular version of life and meaning is trouncing the religion of my childhood. I think that a lot of "leaving religion" is really just a phase of maturation. We all reach the point in life when we realize that the candyland version of life we were taught as children is not an entirely accurate depiction of life on the Third Rock. (Of course one can argue that this is an ideal to which we should strive.) Making the leap from religious life to secular life is not all that different from transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and brings with it some of the same concerns. Childhood was something special (or at least was supposed to be), but as an adult you are a member of society with all the obligations of any other adult. For example, at some point, we stop coddling child tyrants and force them to conform to society's (reasonable) expectation of how we should behave. The obnoxious adult-child is not just another spoiled brat, but a deviant.

Is there a parallel with religion?

I started thinking about that this weekend. In Joseph Heller's Catch-22 there is a character named Major Major Major (alas, I do not currently possess a copy of this excellent novel, but I am working from memory). Major Major Major had a rough childhood and is comfortable with the camaraderie and fellow officers of the Army Air Corps. Unfortunately, once "an IBM computer with a sense of humor" (I think that's the quote) decides to promote Capt. Major Major Major to Major, making him Major Major Major Major, the brass has no choice but to make him his squadron's commanding officer. As a result he is no longer able to participate in the squadron basketball games, the one activity he enjoys, because the men are to deferential to his new rank and position. In order to get back into the game, he dons a Groucho Marx-type glasses and moustache disguise and joins a game. Much to his chagrin, instead of the men treating him as an equal, they begin to take advantage of a superior officer who sheds his badge of office- they begin by roughing him up in the course of the game, and end up flat out beating the stuffing out of him.

I think there is a parallel in leaving religion. Both my secular and Jewish-but-unaffiliated friends and co-workers treated me with respect for my religious beliefs (or, more accurately, practices). Once I leave that behind, I become any other person. My position does not demand any respect or deference. Orthodox Judaism (in stark contrast to Reconstructionism) puts a heavy emphasis on being separate and above the other nations. While I never did like this (look for a future post on this topic), I certainly did benefit from it. Despite what many religious Jews think, good people treat religious people with an added dollop of deference. Of course they also treat the rational with added deference.

And perhaps that is the lesson. Part of growing up is competing with your fellow man on an equal field. It is no contest to excel when your rivals are handicapped. To be first among equals is a far greater achievement. That is the essence of transitioning from a child to an adult.

Salvation is Free

2006-02-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

It seems that my post yesterday was overly long, so I am going to post a Cliff notes version.

My intention was to introduce an argument that runs counter to the idea that religion exists to meet an unfilled need for a system of ethics and a meaning to life.

Paul Bloom suggests an alternative theory- religion stems not from this unmet need, but from the human cognitive structure. Based on studies conducted on newborns, there exists two separate systems in the brain- one responsible for appreciating the laws of physics (e.g., if you hold a ball in front of an infant and release it, the infant will express shock if the ball does not drop) and one responsible for appreciating emotions. The existence of these two systems as separate semi-autonomous modules is evinced in infants who suffer from autism (i.e., a lack of emotional understanding) who still possess the system for appreciating physics.

The essential problem with religion is that it does much more than fulfill the need for ethics or any of the other utilitarian justifications for religion. Superstitious beliefs, however useful, are not needed to create a model of ethics. Bloom suggests a reason why human beings are intrinsically superstitious- the higher faculties of reason blur the discreteness of these two systems- if people of emotions, why not read emotions into rocks? It does not take a great leap of the imagination to see primitive man as superstitious- just look at today’s current society.

In fact, if you accept that man is intrinsically superstitious, an Orthodox Jew must ask herself not only from when cometh MY salvation, but from where did pre-Judaic religion arise?

I have heard kiruv klowny arguments that ask my same initial question- if the superstitious tapestry of religion is not necessary, it’s existence must be of divine origin. Bloom’s article is not even needed to rebut this question- the existence of pre-Judaic religions- with their own superstitious tapestry- is proof enough that man is inherently superstitious and could make up that tapestry out of whole cloth.

The human mind is a maze of heuristics and semi-autonomous units. Our poor ability to grasp non-intuitive concepts, especially with regards to the end of our conscious experience (or something as simple as a coin flip) should inform how trusting we should be of superstition and its elements in religion.

From Whence Cometh My Salvation

2006-02-01T14:39:00.000-05:00

From Whence Cometh My Salvation?

I. Introduction

Disclaimer: For the purposes of this post, I am going to assume the veracity of the secular viewpoint of the world, at least as a hypothesis. Please feel free to rebut it. It seems that some of those who approach the precipice of heresy drawback because the world become a dark, scary place. This post is just an attempt to flesh out the details of the secular world.

If one were to assume the view that the world is the product of natural processes- human culture and religion and included, the question begs itself- where the heck did religion come from. Indeed, the idea seems so alien to natural existence that it’s presence alone is used by some to claim that religion itself must be divine. This position is clearly not tenable, at least not to an Orthodox Jew, as other religions predate Judaism, even by the text of the Bible. Abraham is widely considered the first Jew who entered into a relationship with God after destroying his fathers idols.

Nonetheless, the question is intriguing. In a previous issue of the Atlantic (December 2005), Paul Bloom explores this question in an article entitled “Is God An Accident?” The title is a bit misleading—the article explores the possibility that God is the product of man and his cognitive functions. The article is behind a subscription wall, so I quote it extensively. The quotes are not integral to the post, so feel free to skim them.

II. What is Religion?

Bloom first addresses religion as a simple set of ethical imperatives. Many Orthoprax continue acting in the manner of their tradition simply because they believe that the moral code embodied in the religion is irreplaceable. But religion is more than that. Its innovation lies in the spiritual realm it created- Heaven, Hell, Good, Evil, God, Satan, etc. A moral code can exist very easily without these things. Legal systems do not require faith in the return of a dead Judge.

Says Bloom:

When I was a teenager my rabbi believed at the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was the Messiah, and that the world was soon to end. He believed that the earth was a few thousand years old, and that the fossil record was a consequence of the Great Flood. He could describe the afterlife, and was able to answer adolescent questions about the fate of Hitler's soul.

My rabbi was no crackpot; he was an intelligent and amiable man, a teacher and a scholar. But he held views that struck me as strange, even disturbing. Like many secular people, I am comfortable with religion as a source of spirituality and transcendence, tolerance and love, charity and good works. Who can object to the faith of Martin Luther King Jr. or the Dalai Lama--at least as long as that faith grounds moral positions one already accepts? I am uncomfortable, however, with religion when it makes claims about the natural world, let alone a world beyond nature. It is easy for those of us who reject supernatural beliefs to agree with Stephen Jay Gould that the best way to accord dignity and respect to both science and religion is to recognize that they apply to "non-overlapping magisteria": science gets the realm of facts, religion the realm of values.

For better or worse, though, religion is much more than a set of ethical principles or a vague sense of transcendence. The anthropologist Edward Tylor got it right in 1871, when he noted that the "minimum definition of religion" is a belief in spiritual beings, in the supernatural. My rabbi's specific claims were a minority view in the culture in which I was raised, but those sorts of views--about the creation of the universe, the end of the world, the fates of souls--define religion as billions of people understand and practice it.

Another explanation for religion is that is serves to assuage the angst of living. Personally, I think Judaism does an extremely poor job of that. Jewish concepts that explain What It Is All About raise more problems than they solve. Mainly, the idea of Heaven is something entirely removed from anything that I can relate to. Yet many of my very religious friends regularly invoke the Afterlife. “Don’t do that or you will burn.” “That guy is totally going to burn.” It is difficult to take someone seriously after hearing a phrase like that.

Our experience on this world is the product of sensation through our physical organs. The idea that we will be able to bring this senses with us after we cross over is more than slightly ridiculous. Indeed, I often find that Judaism invokes anthropocentric ideas—the mind, sensation, punishment, reward—that are clearly human and therefore mundane, and then imports them into the realm of Divinity. For example, we hear of God’s mind, God’s emotion, God’s reward and God’s punishment. It is at the very least unsettling to hear that God is one of us after all. Is it that much of a leap to suggest that he is a product of us?

The language gap between the spiritual, which should be ineffable, and the mundane begs for a separate post, and frankly I’m not sure if I have the scholarship for it. It’s one of those things that causes me to chase my tail in the wee hours of the morning.

In either case, Bloom says:

One traditional approach to the origin of religious belief begins with the observation that it is difficult to be a person. There is evil all around; everyone we love will die; and soon we ourselves will die--either slowly and probably unpleasantly or quickly and probably unpleasantly. For all but a pampered and lucky few life really is nasty, brutish, and short. And if our lives have some greater meaning, it is hardly obvious.

So perhaps, as Marx suggested, we have adopted religion as an opiate, to soothe the pain of existence. As the philosopher Susanne K. Langer has put it, man "cannot deal with Chaos"; supernatural beliefs solve the problem of this chaos by providing meaning. We are not mere things; we are lovingly crafted by God, and serve his purposes. Religion tells us that this is a just world, in which the good will be rewarded and the evil punished. Most of all, it addresses our fear of death. Freud summed it all up by describing a "three-fold task" for religious beliefs: "they must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them."

Religions can sometimes do all these things, and it would be unrealistic to deny that this partly explains their existence. Indeed, sometimes theologians use the foregoing arguments to make a case for why we should believe: if one wishes for purpose, meaning, and eternal life, there is nowhere to go but toward God.

One problem with this view is that, as the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker reminds us, we don't typically get solace from propositions that we don't already believe to be true. Hungry people don't cheer themselves up by believing that they just had a large meal. Heaven is a reassuring notion only insofar as people believe such a place exists; it is this belief that an adequate theory of religion has to explain in the first place.

Pinker, by the way, is a must read.

Many argue that religion exists to fulfill some unmet need of mankind. Whether it is to provide for a system of morality, a meaning to life, or a system of governance. The central point of Bloom’s article and this post is that religion can exist not to due to a demand for it, but rather due to the physical structure of man.

Human conduct will eventually be explained through a detailed analysis of the brain and its cognitive centers. If you accept this as true, then it follows that all human culture, included, has some basis in the brain. Now theologians and people who should know better argue that religion exists to fulfill this mission. What they don’t realize is that this severely undermine the supernatural or divine basis for religion.

Assuming arguendo that religion is the product of this unmet need (that is the need to create a system outside of the individual brain) for morality, there is no longer any need to believe all that stuff about God and there is no basis to select among religions other than the extent to which they satisfy this unmet need. The implications are obvious- if religion is a primitive creation by primitive man, modern man through study and experimentation can certainly do better. Ancient medicine is far worse than modern medicine, and only a fool would argue that because ancient medicine managed to produce some positive health value it should be kept.

These folks are clearly attempting to justify an ancient system that insulates and separate its members. This insulation, achieved by socialization, makes the act of separation repulsive to its members. Any alternative to separation would be preferable to trashing the old ways. Get over yourselves. One could speculate that this desire to keep the system at all costs is what drives the evolution of religion.

Which leads into Bloom’s next point:

The major alternative theory is social: religion brings people together, giving them an edge over those who lack this social glue. Sometimes this argument is presented in cultural terms, and sometimes it is seen from an evolutionary perspective: survival of the fittest working at the level not of the gene or the individual but of the social group. In either case the claim is that religion thrives because groups that have it outgrow and outlast those that do not.

In this conception religion is a fraternity, and the analogy runs deep. Just as fraternities used to paddle freshmen on the rear end to instill loyalty and commitment, religions have painful initiation rites--for example, snipping off part of the penis. Also, certain puzzling features of many religions, such as dietary restrictions and distinctive dress, make perfect sense once they are viewed as tools to ensure group solidarity.

III. Religion As “Accident”

Having dispensed with the usual social utility justifications for religion, we come to Bloom’s central point: Religion is a byproduct of the brain. Our brains were wired, by evolutionary advantage, to act in a certain manner. Religion can be an artifact of that structure rather than something extrinsic to it.

To give a poor illustration of this, consider music. Humans, for the most part enjoy music. But what is it? I am well out of my area of expertise, but we can go about answering that question by looking at what we enjoy music. For most non-Bjork fans, tonality is important. Without going into too much detail, tonality is a defined mathematical relationship among notes (which themselves are numerically defined). Tones are arranged into scales which express the relationship among the notes. One does not need perfect pitch to appreciate the relationship among the notes. In fact, when you are listening to music, the first several notes basically define the scale being used. Once the scale has been defined, there is a limited number of notes that can follow the previous note and you mind anticipates this. Should a note not in the scale, we are surprised that our expectation has not been met and the music sounds “wrong.” This idea of anticipation and expectations can be applied to rhythm as well.

The point of all this is that music is somehow the by product of how humans think. We look for, or predict, relationships and are disturbed when an expected relationship is violated. The prediction model of cognition is one of some note and one that Bloom uses. My point, however, is not to lay out a blueprint of the mind, but to show that aspects of human culture are not designed to meet some sort of demand, but because once created, they conform with how our brain works, and are therefore pleasant.

Says Bloom:

Enthusiasm is building among scientists for a quite different view--that religion emerged not to serve a purpose but by accident.

This is not a value judgment. Many of the good things in life are, from an evolutionary perspective, accidents. People sometimes give money, time, and even blood to help unknown strangers in faraway countries whom they will never see. From the perspective of one's genes this is disastrous--the suicidal squandering of resources for no benefit. But its origin is not magical; long-distance altruism is most likely a by-product of other, more adaptive traits, such as empathy and abstract reasoning. Similarly, there is no reproductive advantage to the pleasure we get from paintings or movies. It just so happens that our eyes and brains, which evolved to react to three-dimensional objects in the real world, can respond to two-dimensional projections on a canvas or a screen.

Supernatural beliefs might be explained in a similar way. This is the religion-as-accident theory that emerges from my work and the work of cognitive scientists such as Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Justin Barrett, and Deborah Kelemen. One version of this theory begins with the notion that a distinction between the physical and the psychological is fundamental to human thought. Purely physical things, such as rocks and trees, are subject to the pitiless laws of Newton. Throw a rock, and it will fly through space on a certain path; if you put a branch on the ground, it will not disappear, scamper away, or fly into space. Psychological things, such as people, possess minds, intentions, beliefs, goals, and desires. They move unexpectedly, according to volition and whim; they can chase or run away. There is a moral difference as well: a rock cannot be evil or kind; a person can.

Where does the distinction between the physical and the psychological come from? Is it something we learn through experience, or is it somehow pre-wired into our brains? One way to find out is to study babies. It is notoriously difficult to know what babies are thinking, given that they can't speak and have little control over their bodies. (They are harder to test than rats or pigeons, because they cannot run mazes or peck levers.) But recently investigators have used the technique of showing them different events and recording how long they look at them, exploiting the fact that babies, like the rest of us, tend to look longer at something they find unusual or bizarre.

* * *

Newborns prefer to look at faces over anything else, and the sounds they most like to hear are human voices--preferably their mothers'. They quickly come to recognize different emotions, such as anger, fear, and happiness, and respond appropriately to them. Before they are a year old they can determine the target of an adult's gaze, and can learn by attending to the emotions of others; if a baby is crawling toward an area that might be dangerous and an adult makes a horrified or disgusted face, the baby usually knows enough to stay away.

A skeptic might argue that these social capacities can be explained as a set of primitive responses, but there is some evidence that they reflect a deeper understanding. For instance, when twelve-month-olds see one object chasing another, they seem to understand that it really is chasing, with the goal of catching; they expect the chaser to continue its pursuit along the most direct path, and are surprised when it does otherwise. Understanding of the physical world and understanding of the social world can be seen as akin to two distinct computers in a baby's brain, running separate programs and performing separate tasks. The understandings develop at different rates: the social one emerges somewhat later than the physical one. They evolved at different points in our prehistory; our physical understanding is shared by many species, whereas our social understanding is a relatively recent adaptation, and in some regards might be uniquely human.

At this point the religion-as-accident theory says nothing about supernatural beliefs. Babies have two systems that work in a cold-bloodedly rational way to help them anticipate and understand--and, when they get older, to manipulate--physical and social entities. In other words, both these systems are biological adaptations that give human beings a badly needed head start in dealing with objects and people. But these systems go awry in two important ways that are the foundations of religion. First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls. This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife. Second, as we will see, our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist. This makes us animists and creationists.

Humans, equipped by evolutionary processes are able to appreciate physical and emotional realities. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine the advantage of understanding that it’s a bad idea to drop a rock on your own head, or to continue taunting a displeased person holding a club. Further, these two systems are separated from each other. Autism, for example, occurs when the cognitive system responsible for recognizing emotion in others is damaged.

Now that we have recognized the existence of these two disparate systems, the emotional and the physical, Bloom examines the possibilities of interaction between the two:

For those of us who are not autistic, the separateness of these two mechanisms, one for understanding the physical world and one for understanding the social world, gives rise to a duality of experience. We experience the world of material things as separate from the world of goals and desires. The biggest consequence has to do with the way we think of ourselves and others. We are dualists; it seems intuitively obvious that a physical body and a conscious entity--a mind or soul--are genuinely distinct. We don't feel that we are our bodies. Rather, we feel that we occupy them, we possess them, we own them.

This duality is immediately apparent in our imaginative life. Because we see people as separate from their bodies, we easily understand situations in which people's bodies are radically changed while their personhood stays intact. Kafka envisioned a man transformed into a gigantic insect; Homer described the plight of men transformed into pigs; in Shrek2 an ogre is transformed into a human being, and a donkey into a steed; in Star Trek a scheming villain forcibly occupies Captain Kirk's body so as to take command of the Enterprise; in The Tale of the Body Thief, Anne Rice tells of a vampire and a human being who agree to trade bodies for a day; and in 13 Going on 30 a teenager wakes up as thirty-year-old Jennifer Garner. We don't think of these events as real, of course, but they are fully understandable; it makes intuitive sense to us that people can be separated from their bodies, and similar transformations show up in religions around the world.

This notion of an immaterial soul potentially separable from the body clashes starkly with the scientific view. For psychologists and neuroscientists, the brain is the source of mental life; our consciousness, emotions, and will are the products of neural processes. As the claim is sometimes put, The mind is what the brain does. I don't want to overstate the consensus here; there is no accepted theory as to precisely how this happens, and some scholars are skeptical that we will ever develop such a theory. But no scientist takes seriously Cartesian dualism, which posits that thinking need not involve the brain. There is just too much evidence against it.

Still, it feels right, even to those who have never had religious training, and even to young children.

* * *

If bodies and souls are thought of as separate, there can be bodies without souls. A corpse is seen as a body that used to have a soul. Most things--chairs, cups, trees--never had souls; they never had will or consciousness. At least some nonhuman animals are seen in the same way, as what Descartes described as "beast-machines," or complex automata. Some artificial creatures, such as industrial robots, Haitian zombies, and Jewish golems, are also seen as soulless beings, lacking free will or moral feeling.
* * *

Then there are souls without bodies. Most people I know believe in a God who created the universe, performs miracles, and listens to prayers. He is omnipotent and omniscient, possessing infinite kindness, justice, and mercy. But he does not in any literal sense have a body. Some people also believe in lesser noncorporeal beings that can temporarily take physical form or occupy human beings or animals: examples include angels, ghosts, poltergeists, succubi, dybbuks, and the demons that Jesus so frequently expelled from people's bodies.

This belief system opens the possibility that we ourselves can survive the death of our bodies. Most people believe that when the body is destroyed, the soul lives on. It might ascend to heaven, descend to hell, go off into some sort of parallel world, or occupy some other body, human or animal. Indeed, the belief that the world teems with ancestor spirits--the souls of people who have been liberated from their bodies through death--is common across cultures. We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder--some would say impossible--to imagine the end of our very existence. The notion of a soul without a body makes sense to us.

* * *

This is just half the story. Our dualism makes it possible for us to think of supernatural entities and events; it is why such things make sense. But there is another factor that makes the perception of them compelling, often irresistible. We have what the anthropologist Pascal Boyer has called a hypertrophy of social cognition. We see purpose, intention, design, even when it is not there.

* * *

Our quickness to over-read purpose into things extends to the perception of intentional design. People have a terrible eye for randomness. If you show them a string of heads and tails that was produced by a random-number generator, they tend to think it is rigged--it looks orderly to them, too orderly. After 9/11 people claimed to see Satan in the billowing smoke from the World Trade Center. Before that some people were stirred by the Nun Bun, a baked good that bore an eerie resemblance to Mother Teresa. In November of 2004 someone posted on eBay a ten-year-old grilled cheese sandwich that looked remarkably like the Virgin Mary; it sold for $28,000. (In response pranksters posted a grilled cheese sandwich bearing images of the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley.) There are those who listen to the static from radios and other electronic devices and hear messages from dead people--a phenomenon presented with great seriousness in the Michael Keaton movie White Noise. Older readers who lived their formative years before CDs and MPEGs might remember listening intently for the significant and sometimes scatological messages that were said to come from records played backward.

* * *

Darwin changed everything. His great insight was that one could explain complex and adaptive design without positing a divine designer. Natural selection can be simulated on a computer; in fact, genetic algorithms, which mimic natural selection, are used to solve otherwise intractable computational problems. And we can see natural selection at work in case studies across the world, from the evolution of beak size in Galapagos finches to the arms race we engage in with many viruses, which have an unfortunate capacity to respond adaptively to vaccines.

Richard Dawkins may well be right when he describes the theory of natural selection as one of our species' finest accomplishments; it is an intellectually satisfying and empirically supported account of our own existence. But almost nobody believes it. One poll found that more than a third of college undergraduates believe that the Garden of Eden was where the first human beings appeared. And even among those who claim to endorse Darwinian evolution, many distort it in one way or another, often seeing it as a mysterious internal force driving species toward perfection. (Dawkins writes that it appears almost as if "the human brain is specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism.") And if you are tempted to see this as a red state--blue state issue, think again: although it's true that more Bush voters than Kerry voters are creationists, just about half of Kerry voters believe that God created human beings in their present form, and most of the rest believe that although we evolved from less-advanced life forms, God guided the process. Most Kerry voters want evolution to be taught either alongside creationism or not at all.

What's the problem with Darwin? His theory of evolution does clash with the religious beliefs that some people already hold. For Jews and Christians, God willed the world into being in six days, calling different things into existence. Other religions posit more physical processes on the part of the creator or creators, such as vomiting, procreation, masturbation, or the molding of clay. Not much room here for random variation and differential reproductive success.

But the real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us. When we see a complex structure, we see it as the product of beliefs and goals and desires. Our social mode of understanding leaves it difficult for us to make sense of it any other way. Our gut feeling is that design requires a designer--a fact that is understandably exploited by those who argue against Darwin.

At the end of the day, you are confronted with two theories of human existence. One posits the existence of things outside of our realm of experience, and one that utilizes that we understand (scientifically, not intuitively, about our own selves). The former has no support in reality but its own terms- it has no grounding in the physical or the appreciable. Proponents of the former often use the cutesy trick of asking the question “Don’t you think that it is possible that something exists outside of our realm of sensation, have you ever seen a radio wave?” That is a great question and an important initial question.

The far more important question is whether proponents of religion are willing to chuck information we DO possess about our physical reality for the pipedream of a reality outside of our own.

I Am That I Am

2006-01-20T02:14:00.000-05:00

Tonight I was shooting the breeze with a good friend of mine whose faith is similarly dead (it was precisely these sort of bull sessions that began my downward spiral). Unlike me, however, he sincerely laments the fact that in all probability there is no God, and in the event there is, Judaism is unlikely to have done Him justice.

His litany of complaints are actually quite similar to this sorry sod who is unable to accept such a possibility (see this incriminating post). If one were to accept this view, goes the argument, morality disappears and life becomes bleak, etc.

But is Judaism so much different? Do we ever know God? Do we ever really understand His ways? Fanatics seem to think the answer to these questions is a resounding yes. They are readily able to discern the will of God, speak in His name, and describe his Features. That is clearly bosh. The RaMBaM’s third article of faith states “I believe, with complete faith, that the Creator, blessed is His name, does not possess a body, that bodily concepts do not apply to Him, and He has no resemblance.”

To ascribe will and features to God, seems to me, violates this principle. Interestingly, the RaMBaM’s own statement seems to violate itself, as creation is a physical construct as well. I guess the RaMBaM’s fascination with creatio ex nihlo, explains how he can call God a creator. Note that under this approach, the most odious of all the Kiruv Klowny arguments for God— the dreaded Watchmaker—runs up against this principle of faith. The argument conflates a human act of creation with the Godly act of creation, and thus infers the latter from the former.

Back to my friend.

He is reluctant to accept the world as it is. He wishes that what he was taught as a child was true. He wants an all powerful benevolent force to be watching over him, and he wants to know that the Big Rockcandy Mountains await him beyond this place of wrath and tears.

But did he ever know a benevolent God? Did he really think that he was going to experience a Heaven in a physical sense? Even Judaism does not teach this concept. God cannot be benevolent, as benevolence is a physical concept. There is no jealous God, as jealousy is a physical concept. There is no physical experience of Heaven, because Heaven is a non-physical state of existence. In fact, Moses, desperate to know God asks him is name and receives the famous reply of “I am that I am.” God is God. There is no other way to explain Him, because to bring Him down into a human lexicon is an impossibility, even a profanity. Hence, I see a fundamental gap between God and man. If He has no physical dimension, how can we ever feel connected to Him?

To take it one step further- is an incomprehensible existence any different? Are we that much poorer if we cannot answer certain questions? It may be that we are unable to escape the illusion of our “I.” It may be that we do not understand How It All Started.

It is what It is.

Worked before, didn’t it?

Is Rational Religion Possible?

2006-01-15T05:29:00.000-05:00

"Men who openly confess that they can form no idea of God, and only know Him through created things, of which they know not the causes, can unblushingly accuse philosophers of Atheism."

State of the Hashkafa (Ramble in D Minor)

2006-01-15T05:06:00.000-05:00

JOHN EDWARD: Everything I tell people is positive and gives them hope. How does that make me a douche?
STAN: Because the big questions in life are tough: Why are we here, Where are we from, Where are we going. But if people believe in asshole douchey liars like you, we're never going to find the real answers to those questions. You arent just lying, you are slowing down the progress of all mankind. You douche.

I guess this post is mostly space filler while I debate attempting to sleep- lately I've been questioning why I bother to blog.

The really big questions in life seem to dwarf the men who try to give the answers. The orthodox rabbis I know have neat little packages tied in bows for every question you could ever ask. The fact that their answers are less than satisfying to anyone with a modicum of rationality or sense of history does not phase them, but has taken a heavy toll on me.

Here is a list of things that irk me about Orthodox Judaism:

1. Leadership is hereditary.
Why is it so important that a rabbi have yichus and why is it essential that his children take over the family business? Given the scarcity of true rabbinic talent, what are the odds that a rabbi's son will be his equal? I don't recall Einstein's children achieving at the same scale of their father.

2. The Bible is so obviously a collection of edited myths, it boggles the mind that people who believe in them literally are taken seriously.

3. The Oral tradition is obviously a hodgepodge of disparate views, few of which are actually connected to the religion practiced by the Ancient Israelites.

4. Heaven. Heaven seems to be pretty important to the adherents of Orthodox Judaism. Why the devil wasn't it mentioned in the Bible? How does one experience heaven? All our senses are derived from physical organs.

5. Resurrection. Again, omitted from the Bible. One of the mantras of Orthodox Judaism is that an oral tradition is needed to explain the Written Law. Great, what text requires tekhiyat hameitim?

6. The idea that Judaism contains some sort of secret wisdom. If you look at diverse belief systems, you see recurring themes. Example of this include asceticism, dietary laws, and messianism. What exactly is the great innovation of Orthodox Judaism. The monotheism thing was a long time ago, and wasn't necessarily new back then either.

7. The idea that Judaism is immune from historic time. Things change over time. The idea that Orthodox Judaism resembles in anyway (from blekhs to bedika to Borsalinos) is laughable.

I am not so foolish as to think that I can add anything to a debate that dates back to the beginning of human existence. It's fun to live the debate though.

UPDATE: The list is hardly comprehensive, even as I hit "Publish Post" I thought of a few others, but I will save them for a different day.

Promises to Keep

2006-01-09T01:17:00.000-05:00

Posting has been light due to a myriad of commitments and some R&R. Regular blogging will commence shortly.

I Hate Blogger

2006-01-03T06:40:00.000-05:00

Between Firefox's instability and Blogger's inability to recover posts, I'm working on a post for the third time. I'm writing these things in word processors now.

Chanukah Wrap Up

2006-01-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

Why is it that the most erudite rabbis insist that the Macabees fought the Greeks?

They were Syrians! Although Antiochus was driven out of Judea by the Macabees, he was eventually checked by the Romans of all people.

Also, why does the blessing over the Chanukah lights read "...as You commanded us," when it is clearly a rabbinical requirement?

A Secular New World

2006-01-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

"All say, 'How hard it is that we have to die'-- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live." -Pudd'n Head Wilson

When I first read this quote, I thought that it was more of Twain's later, pessimistic view of life-- as though death is a release from the troubles of this world.

But I think there is a more uplifting message here. Life is such a rare thing, that the price of death is as paltry as it is necessary.

Traveling Light

2005-12-29T08:49:00.000-05:00

I don't mind travel and I don't mind not sleeping, but when you combine the two, it leads to overpacking. And overpacking makes me cranky. Fortunately I took a sacred oath to never travel with more than one bag, so I should be okay. Thus endeth the rant.

On Friendship

2005-12-28T02:11:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I'm not sure why I bother to blog about Hashkafic issues. I don't think I possess any special intelligence that will glean any insight that several thousand years of human civilization hasn't come up with yet.

A case in point is this discussion I had on GH's blog a little while ago. GH thought it was absurd to consider a state of existence that doesn't have any higher purpose (i.e., one that is not man made). I don't see what the big deal is. Religion invents far more questions than it answers. The Kiruv Klowny rabbi is satisfied with using God as First Cause. Here is how that conversation goes:

Me: Rabbi, I'm not sure God exists.

Rabbi: C'mon, how else did we get here? Creatio ex nihlo is impossible! Blah blah, Rambam, blah blah.

Me: Gee, I guess you have a point. I have no idea how the basic ingredients of the Universe got here.

Rabbi: Aha!

This is usually where I leave the conversation. But God does not answer anything. He only presents more questions. Who created Him? If yesh mi'ayin is impossible, where did He come from? And if He does not need a creator, doesn't that violate the whole premise of the original question?

And let's not pretend the Torah offers clear cut ethical advice either. Much mediation of competing interests are done by human rabbis, since real life presents complications that a mere paper cannot address.

Which brings me to my next point. Living your life according to a religious code is not nearly as meaningful as some would like to pretend it is. According to the religious view, this period of life is only preparation for an eternal life. Inequity does not matter here, because the Big Guy will make it okay there.

From a secular point of view, this life is what is important. What we do in the here and now is important because when this "brief light is extinguished, an eternal night must be slept." Life becomes infinitely more meaningful when you realize that this is the one life we will ever lead. It is far more enjoyable to grapple with the questions that life presents than to try to dance the dance of religious apologetics. Does the believer really have faith that their religion is immutable? That religion is free from the pressure exerted by archaeological time? That 5,000 years can pass without religious thinkers like the Rambam and his intellectual predecessors altering the religion of the ancient B'nei Yisroel? That the description of prophecy dovetails too perfectly with the symptoms of epilepsy? That there is no evidence supporting a global flood? That there is no evidence for Exodus? That Ezra in canonizing the Bible did not massage his source material?

Human existence is far too fascinating to close the door of rigorous inquiry with the blind acceptance of Orthodox dogma.

Some, like GH, question the possibility of a meaningful life outside of religion. The secular life is described as "depressing" or cold and dark. It seems to me quite the opposite is true. The conception of religious life is the depressing one. God created this world, plunked us into it and then created a labyrinth of questions that we can never resolve. Religious apologists always have the nuclear option at their disposal- the irrational belief that God presents these questions to test us and if we choose to go with our reason, we have failed the test. Faith in God means putting dogma over reason. That must make an interesting scene in the Heavenly vestibule. I come before God, or whatever angel has been appropriated for the purpose, to explain my life.

God: Why did you not believe in the Flood?

Me: I couldn't help it. The mind you gave me told me it couldn't possibly be true.

God: But it was.

Me: How was I supposed to know that? You altered the historical record.

God: But it was a test!

Me: But how am I supposed to know when to suspend reason? Can I be rational in one sphere of existence and then hang it up when it comes to You?

And so while I plummet to Perdition, the irrational are admitted into Heaven.

Then there is the Modern (Orthodox) version of the Bible in which everything is allegory. That is even more distasteful. Nothing has any real meaning anymore. Heaven isn't a place full of togas and grapes but more of the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you do what God wants. The Bible stories are not depictions of actual events, but moral metaphors. Which definitely explains why early commentators derived law out of word usage. I'm not sure how anyone could believe this and remain Orthodox at all. If it is the story that is important, and not the words itself, the Talmud has some major explaining to do. Christianity, of course, has a much better take on this:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

But I digress.

In the comment thread, Holy Hyrax challenged my assertion that pursuing meaningful friendships is a goal of secularism. As usual, I am frustrated to discover that this is hardly an original idea. Cicero, in his essay "On Friendship" wrote "without friendship, life can have no true enjoyment." And he should know, the poor bastard.

As Cicero believed in the Socratic eternal soul, his idea of friendship reflected something eternal about human relations. He wrote:

And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this certainly is the sovereign one- that it gives us bright hopes for the future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true friend, a man sees it were a second self. So that as his friend is, so is he. If his friend is rich, he is not poor. If his friend is strong, he is not weak, as his friend's strength is his own. And in his friend's life, he enjoys a second life after his own is finished. This last is perhaps the most difficult to conceive. But such is the effect of the respect, the loving remembrance, and the regret of friends which follows us to the grave. While they take the sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the survivors.

While I make no claims about the eternality of the soul, should one exist, this idea of friendship presents us with the idea that the choices we make in this world is all that is permanent. Should you feud with someone, after you die, there will be nothing that will cure it. For the rest of eternity the fact that you were not friends is unalterable. The converse of that is if you have a close friend, even the shifting sands of time will not be able to change that fact.

A depressing existence? I don't think so.

Beware the Hills

2005-12-24T18:42:00.000-05:00

Here is some free advice to those who want to run in Jerusalem- buy a topographical map. While my trusty tourist map ensured I didn't get totally lost, not knowing the elevation and gradient of your route is a sure way to kill yourself on murderous hills.

That being said, I had a decent run to the Knesset and its surrounding park. I fell in with a bunch of military types somewhere near Gan Saker who promptly led me way off my path and into a sudden rain shower. It was worth it though because it gave me a chance to ask directions from a young Russian couple whose Hebrew was far worse than mine.

Unfortunately, the weather has not been cooperating so it looks like I am going to have to retrain once I get back to the States.

Merry Chanukah, Happy Christmas

2005-12-20T14:15:00.000-05:00

This year I finally accomplished one the milestones to maturity- I planned and executed a holiday greeting card list. Of course by the time I was through, I was terrified that I wrote Christmas instead of Chanukah and vice versa.

And I have no problem wishing someone a merry Christmas. Of all the Christian holidays, this one is actually quite insignificant to Christian theology. The people I wish a merry Christmas are the same ones who have no problem wishing me a happy Chanukah. Lastly, it is so bizarre that some UO do not say Christmas, since "Christ" is Greek for "anointed" and by using that term, you are acknowledging that Jesus was the anointed Messiah. Yet in the same document where a UO writer is so meticulous in writing "XMas," he has no problem writing Christian. Is there a difference here I am not getting?

Golden Globe Nominations

2005-12-13T08:55:00.000-05:00

Among the contenders for best drama are "Brokeback Mountain" and "A History of Violence."

Apparently this year's theme is "uncomfortable sex scenes."

My apologies to anyone who hasn't seen "A History of Violence." Don't.

Blog Spotlight

2005-12-13T04:22:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't checked them out, JewsInGreen is a Jewish mil-blog. Wisely, they seem to avoid politics and focus on the cultural aspects of Jews in the military.

Also, they gave me my new wallpaper. This was my old one.

It's always annoyed me that the UO community treats the armed forces like a foreign animal. Do they really think that the Jewish kingdoms of yore didn't rely on a standing army to protect it?

I recognize that military service necessarily means violation of some halakha, but in today's age of Shabbos-clock euthanasia machines, I'm sure there are allowances to be found for the men and women who protect us all.

Skeptic Morality

2005-12-11T23:18:00.000-05:00

I would be entirely remiss not to point out this discussion on GH's blog over whether morality and comfort with our existence demands religion.

I will convert my comments into a post as soon as possible.

Jettison Your Loved Ones

2005-12-11T16:55:00.000-05:00

If you, like me, enjoy those artsy, over-the-top-corny, made-for-film-class films, you'll love this one.

Iranian Chutzpa

2005-12-11T15:00:00.000-05:00

As a federal judge once explained to me, chutzpa is a defendant who murders his parents and then throws himself at the mercy of the court as an orphan.

As the situation in Iran rapidly spirals down to nuclear confrontation, the mullahs invite the US to invest in one of their civilian reactors. That sounds like a superb idea. Nothing like freeing up those budget lines for military applications.

Running in the Old City

2005-12-10T21:55:00.000-05:00

I am leaving this frozen tundra you call Amerika shortly for warmer pastures.

Does anyone have any idea what constitutes proper running attire in the Old City? I'm assuming it is improper to run shirtless, my usual attire anytime it's above 70F.

"Kid Looks Russian, Prays Jewish, and Fights Black"

2005-12-10T20:44:00.000-05:00

While real life continues to prevent me from posting anything of real substance, I came across this:

After receiving numerous plaudits for his role in 8 Mile, Eminem has finally lined up a new part to follow on with his Hollywood success story. The rap superstar is reportedly going to play Dmitry Salita, the Jewish boxing sensation, on the big screen.

Which is quite incredible, considering I used to slum in the same Chabad shul as Salita and didn't even know he boxed for several years.

IMDB doesn't have the movie listed and the report is kinda old, but this kid definitely deserves it. His website is here.

I think I owe someone a hat tip for this. Let me know who you are.

Meals Ready To Eat

2005-12-08T03:27:00.000-05:00

Just to make sure you know about these. I didn't know about them until they were mentioned in a recent Hirhurim post.

I remember an Army two-star extolling the virtues of the military self-heating MRE. He said excitedly, "You can heat them up with any liquid- a handful of snow or a bladder full of urine!"

I'm guessing Gil uses more conventional liquids.

Halakhic Euthanasia

2005-12-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

My jaw hit the ground when I heard this one.

Of course, I am used to such ridiculous heterim from my childhood, but the way this article is written, Orthodox rabbis sound positively demented.

Machines will perform euthanasia on terminally ill patients in Israel under legislation devised not to offend Jewish law, which forbids people taking human life.

A special timer will be fitted to a patient's respirator which will sound an alarm 12 hours before turning it off.

Normally, carers would override the alarm and keep the respirator turned on but, if various stringent conditions are met, including the giving of consent by the patient or legal guardian, the alarm would not be overridden.

Similar timing devices, known as Sabbath clocks, are used in the homes of orthodox Jews so that light switches and electrical devices can be turned on during the Sabbath without offending religious strictures.

Hat tip: WanderingJew

Blog Spotlight

2005-12-04T22:04:00.000-05:00

Posting is sparse as I deal with real life, but I would like to point out that one of my commenters, B. Spinoza, has started a new blog. I can't really claim Spinoza as one of my commenters, since we both started as commenters to the J-Blogfather.

Spinoza plays the admirable role of the little Dutch boy, and should be hosting lively discussions on important topics. Hope he has enough fingers.

God, Religion, and Emotion

2005-12-02T03:16:00.000-05:00

The comments on this thread forced me to order my thoughts on God and Emotion. There are two issues here that I will try to address:

I. Affirming Religious Beliefs Based on Emotion
When discussing religion with folks more religious than myself, they often fall back onto a sort of appeal to emotion, the prototypical (and extremely tired) version of which is, "Haven't you ever experienced a Shabbos?"

Yes, I've experienced many Shabbosim. Hanging out with family for 25 hours with good food is bound to give you an emotional response. The idea of counting down the hours of sabbatical peace before the chaos of the week rushes into your life is bound to put you in an emotional state of mind. Seudat Shilishit (it's easier to type the Ivrit version) is a particularly emotional time. Besides it's heavy kabbalistic overtones, you sing the 23 psalm and sing Yedid Nefesh, a lovely ode to an emotional connection with God. Then the day ends by extinguishing a candle, a practice whose origins I can only speculate about, and it's time to repeat the cycle of a weary week until the next day of rest.

It is safe to conclude that Shabbos is an emotional experience.

So what?

If you justify a religious practice on the idea that it makes you feel good, there are plenty of alternatives available to you. Join a cult (insert Mis-Nagid snark here), pop a pill, or join many other religions whose members report a positive, faith affirming, emotional experience.

While a Shabbos experience may seem truly magical in a proper setting, once you remove yourself from that setting the day loses much of it's importance. Try skipping a meal this time around and let me know how you feel. If that doesn't work, repeat.

To think of an emotional response to a religious practice as indicative of value in the practice, is a little demeaning to your religion. Emotion is a primitive brain function. Other species have emotion. Even if you don't buy into the whole evolution fraud, you have to admit that emotion is an animalistic characteristic. Surely a religion should appeal to the higher faculties of mankind. If we follow our emotion aren't we just blindly following our baser instincts?

Which leads me to my next topic.

II. Reading Emotion into God
Now that we have established that religion is not only a very human attribute, but even an animalistic one, how do you imagine God experiences emotion?

Some speculate that emotion serves an important purpose by setting goals for its organism. If you view the higher brain as a computational device, without emotion, it would be useless. Imagine building the perfect calculator and then not inputting any data. It just sits there doing nothing. I'm not sure that God would need emotion of this sort, afterall, surely he isn't a slave to his emotion as that would be a ridiculous anthropomorphism.

Frankly, I think this theory is extremely unsound, mainly because, as stated above, the emotional centers of the brain preceded the higher brain.

An alternative view is that emotion serves only very basic life functions (chiefly the four F's- Feasting, Fighting, Fleeing, and Procreating). Once the higher brain evolved, however, the two systems struggle against each other. The higher brain may dictate one course of action, while your primitive brain screams against it. The resulting dialectic is probably 90% of the human tragedy. Again, this narrative seems to have no relation to a Godly emotion. Did God go through the evolutionary process? Did He have to engage in the four F's?

(Possibly. Fighting: YHWH, Feasting: Bacchus, Fleeing: Klipa, Procreating: Catholicism)

Therefore, to imagine any sort of divine relation to emotion is fairly ridiculous. How then do you explain reports of God laughing (Baba Metiza 59b), mourning (Megillah 10b), or enjoying the aroma of good BBQ (Leviticus passim)?

Leatherneck Books

2005-12-01T20:43:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder what the Marines are reading?

You Are as Young as Your Faith, As Old As Your Doubt

2005-12-01T18:48:00.000-05:00

Anonymousette, a respondingtojblogs friend is back and discusses her faith.

I'm glad she's here to say nice things about religion. At least someone is.

A Season of Mavericks: Peres to Leave Labor and Join Sharon

2005-11-30T07:14:00.000-05:00

From the AP:

Elder statesman Shimon Peres has signaled plans to leave the Labor Party on Wednesday after six decades and throw his support behind Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new centrist party.

The move would cap dramatic realignments in Israeli politics over the past month, following the summer pullout from Gaza.

A poll published Wednesday showed Sharon's new party - Kadima - has widened its lead and is now positioned to crush its rivals in March elections.

Peres is expected to return to Israel from Spain on Wednesday and hold a news conference.

Officials close to the longtime Labor leader said Wednesday he will announce he is leaving political life and will no longer be part of any major party. But he is expected to support Sharon in the election and, under an emerging deal, Peres could receive a Cabinet post in the next government if Sharon wins.

Although Peres has been trying to keep his announcement under wraps, he gave broad hints while talking to reporters in Barcelona on Tuesday, saying it was a difficult decision and praising Sharon.

"I shall decide tomorrow night," he said.

Neither Sleep Nor Slumber

2005-11-30T02:22:00.000-05:00

Fool! What is sleep, but the likeness of icy death?
The fates shall give us a long period of rest.
-Ovid

On the Border: Lebanon, Israel, and the Party of God

2005-11-30T01:04:00.000-05:00

Michael Totten photoblogged a recent trip to the Israeli/Lebanese Border. His photos show the tenuous military situation, as well as Hezbollah's public relations efforts.

*Warning: Graphic Content*

Via Instapundit

Thanksgiving Memories

2005-11-29T23:07:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's the long hours, but I found this Thanksgiving post quite touching.

Unforgiven

2005-11-29T20:31:00.000-05:00

Personal kudos to B. Spinoza for getting the new header.

The man in the image is indeed Clint Eastwood as William Munny in Unforgiven.

The movie is all about the old guard of the West confronting a changed world and their difficulty in responding to it. It's so rich with morals that I am just going to have to recommend you watch it. Of course I grew up with Sergio Leone's Man With No Name spaghetti westerns, so the movie was a real treat.

Waiting for Eureka

2005-11-28T16:18:00.000-05:00

Despite the harmony I achieved in reconciling what I know with how the world works, I am still obviously missing something, or I wouldn't be up at 4:00AM. This got me to thinking to what consider what exactly is it that I am looking for.

When I "lost my faith," or when I reached that lovely paradigm shift discussed here, I had an "Aha!" moment. The questions that were lingering for years came into sharp focus and something clicked. An afterlife is so hard to imagine, because it most likely does not exist. There is so much evidence for evolution because it is true. There is a paucity of evidence supporting the Biblical narrative because it's mostly not literally true. Free will is an ill-defined concept because it most likely does not exist. Bad things happen to good people because bad things happen to bad people. Man is torn between emotion and intellect because different neural structures literally compete against each other. Jewish music sucks because Jewish music sucks.

But what now? How can religion ever prevail? The thought of a magical silver bullet is most unlikely. The leading kiruv klowny theories supporting the existence of a God as described in the Bible are so ridiculous that it is entertaining to hear someone try to make the case. Will there ever be a moment when my world view shifts again and I see truth behind everything that seems like nonsense now?

For some reason I doubt it. People far smarter than I am devoted their lives to the reconciling the division between science (i.e., "reality") and the mythical nature of religion and failed. RYBS didn't succeed and instead came to terms with the dialectic with out resolution and concluded that life is the struggle between these two competing views of human existence. I have a feeling the remaining years of my life are going to be a low-level conflict, or a war of attrition, between reality and my upbringing. Eventually one might win, but the lonely man of agnosticism faces the same conflict as the lonely man of faith.

What would resolution even look like?

Marketing Halakha

2005-11-27T22:24:00.000-05:00

This is the closest I ever came to using foul language in a post. It seems that Jewish retailers can't help but make it seem as though their products were custom designed for Jews and therefore holy.

First, via GH, is the Holy Compass:

An amazing, attractive, compass that defies nature as it spins and stops in the direction of our prayers and dreams- Jerusalem! No computer chips, no circuitry, this non-electric, patented device, defies the laws of nature to point directly toward Jerusalem from any place you are in the world.

The compass ships in an elegant jewelry case and is recommended by leading Rabbi's
(Rav Moshe Halbershtam, shlit"a, Rav Moshe Sternbuch, shlit"a, Rav Yosef Lieberman , shlit"a).

Second, via BTA, is the Shabbos Alarm Clock:

* Shabbat Mode- All alarms shut off by themselves after one minute! Once set, no need to touch your KosherClock on Shabbos! NO PROBLEM WITH MUKTZAH.
* 5 Beep Alarms- on Shabbos wake up for shacharis, enjoy a snooze, don't miss your chavrusa and be on time for mincha.
* Record Feature- on weekdays only, wake up to the voice of a loved one, or a recorded melody. (Do not use recorded alarms on Shabbat.)
* Photo Frame- holds a 2.4" x 2.7" picture.

Auto Shut-off Alarm Clock for Shabbat with 5 alarms and weekday recording
For example: Set the first alarm to go off at 8:00am. Set the second alarm for 8:15am. Each alarm will ring for one minute and then shut itself off automatically. No need to touch your KosherClock. The effect will be just like a snooze alarm. And to make sure you don't accidentally touch any of the buttons when you are still half asleep, KosherClock has a special hard flip cover as a heker. Perhaps you'll set the third alarm for 9:00am for your wife. The fourth alarm can be set at 4:00 pm to wake you for your afternoon chavrusah. And if you tend to get carried away with your learning, set the fifth alarm to warn you that it's time to walk to Shul for mincha.

What a fabulous gift idea, for Bar Mitzvah, Graduation, Birthday or especially for Grandparents living in another town.

I don't get the granparents thing. My grandfather is up at 5:00AM and he doesn't need no sticking alarm clock.

Would be uncouth to wonder how much money was involved in obtaining haskamas for these items? Some days I am embarrassed to be a member of the tribe.

A Fulfilling Lifestyle

2005-11-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

Blogger ate my last attempt at this, so here goes.

BTA has posted (I, II) a series of letters written by Rabbi Sampson Raphael Hirsch in the voice of an off-the-derech Jew. Needless to say, I will have to buy the book to read RSRH's answer, but the comments got me thinking. Is there anything redeeming in the Orthodox lifestyle, assuming that the theology is nonsense?

GH (who refuses to retire and that is a good thing) recently wrote why he has no problem with observing halakha:

If I am comfortable with Halachah and the Orthodox Lifestyle, what difference if all the claims of Orthodoxy are 100% true or not? They might well all be true, so it certainly makes no sense for me to drop any Halachic observance, especially when I am so comfortable with it.

But what happens when it is the liefestyle that contributes to the mental angst. Living your life from vapid practice to vapid practice is maddening. At some point, the intellect must control our actions.

I wear teffilin without feeling anything. I keep shabbos without feeling anything. I keep kosher without feeling anything. When I go to shul, I pray without feeling anything. A turning point came this succos when I witnessed grown men hollering on the top of their lungs whilst waving a palm frond and a lemon. Whatever supreme religious ecstasy they were feeling was definitely lost on me. A testifying Baptist congregation has ruakh too and I fail to see the difference between these two moments of religious ecstasy.

That the lifestyle is costless does not convince me. It is maddening to engage in practices you know are pointless. What does a lifestyle riddled with paradox have to offer, when an alternative system exists with a minimum of questions? Let me know.

More Thoughts on the Afterlife

2005-11-26T19:56:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, DovBear had a ~~surprisingly~~ remarkably insightful post. In it he wondered how does God think without a physical brain. Today we are fairly certain that our mental processes are a result of our wonderful, physical brain. The rational answer is that the idea that God has thoughts and emotions is anthropomorphism run amok. I guess the apologetic answer is that God created man in His image, replete with the same cognitive processes He possesses.

To extend the question further, how do Jews imagine the afterlife. Death, by any religious definition, is the soul departing from its physical shell. The brain is part of that physical shell. How can we experience the pain of hell without a brain? My elementary school rabbis taught me that Heaven is the joy of experiencing the nearness of God's presence. A Chabad rabbi taught me that Hell is the experience of not being reincorporated into the God's essence and regret at what could have been. These emotions are impulses from the emotional center of the brain. Without it what else is there?

After Dinner Movie

2005-11-25T00:14:00.000-05:00

Tonight I am enjoying Exodus along with a Romeo y Julieto (Habana).

Here are two techniques for those of you who have some cigars lying around outside the misty confines of a humidor:

1. The Bathroom Method:

Place the cigar on a ledge in the bathroom. Run the shower and the sink at full blast as hot as you can make them. Close the door and let the steam accumulate in the room. A bonus technique is to place the cigar in a perforates baggie and afix it to the room's vent if it has one. Many vents have a leverfor opening and closing the vent which makes a handy place to hook the bag onto. I do not like this method because the area you are filling with steam is far larger than the area of the cigar, hence it is inefficient. Also, if the room is large and the water heater small, you may not generate enough steam.

2. The respondingtojblogs Method (pat. pending):

Take a small sauce pan and fill it with a cup of water. Fold a sheet of tinfoil so a strip several layer thick, 2 inches wide, and about 8 inches long is formed. Perforate the center of the strip with a fork. Fold the strip of foil into a U-shape around the cigar, so that the cigar is centered on the strip. Now fold the strip with the cigar in the center so that the foil is mesa-shaped and affix the foil to the pot. Cover the whole mess with a hood of foil to trap the steam and turn the burner on full blast and moisten to perfection.

Back to the movie, I liked Eva Marie Saint better in North by Northwest (I have yet to see On the Waterfront). The book, which I read in high school after finding a copy in the yeshiva's library (how it survived there, I will never know) is far, far better than the movie.

Still, it is nice to reflect on that fleeting moment in history when it was cool to be Jewish.

Finding the Ideal Woman

2005-11-24T23:42:00.000-05:00

From one Black Widow to another.

The Equalizing Nature of Judaism

2005-11-24T21:04:00.000-05:00

I fear if I don’t commit this to “paper” it will be lost forever, as my turkey coma is coming on strong. The turkey, incidentally, came out beautifully minus a broken ankle.

In undergrad I studied, amongst other things, sociology. I was never much impressed with this field, as its principle insights come from other disciplines to be examined by scholars without training in the disciplines they either critique use to bolster their thesis.

One of my classes focused on the sociological effects the economic structure in the United States. The class was pretty straightforward hardcore socialism- Marx and Engel made up the bulk of the reading. In analyzing the “two Americas” concept, the class studied the divide between the rich and the poor and how that divide affects the social structure of social life.

Much is made about the disparity in the quality of education received by the rich, in their ritzy private schools and that received by the poor sods in public schools. Judaism, however, does not have this problem. While at the extreme margins it is possible to imagine a really rich religious child who receives private tutoring and an extremely poor religious child whose family is so destitute that he is sent to public school, in most instances Yeshivas are a melting pot of the rich and the poor.

Although the UO community has a rigid, albeit informal, social hierarchy, the Yeshiva system serves an important equalizing factor in education.

There, I’ve said something positive about ultra Orthodoxy and feel free to pass this along to any sociology students looking for an easy dissertation. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to have tryptophan nightmares.

Pre-Thanksgiving Movie

2005-11-24T01:57:00.000-05:00

This movie kills me. Luckily I'm a Cary Grant fan and Audrey Hepburn isn't too hard on the eyes. James Coburn is an added treat. They're almost enough to see past the ridiculous dialogue.

Mikvah Thoughts

2005-11-23T18:31:00.000-05:00

Lazer Brody shares his glurgey take on the practice of ritual immersion:

Rebbe Nachman of Breslev teaches that immersion in the mikva is the cure for all troubles, and has the power to purify a person from every form of sin and impurity. The spiritual power of the mikva is rooted in the most exalted levels of wisdom and love.
When the soul is purified, the brain thinks more clearly and the body feels a sense of wellbeing. Immersion in the mikva is superb preparation for both prayer and Torah learning. As such, many people - especially in Israel - immerse in the mikva every morning.

Immersion in the mikva before the Sabbath prepares the soul to receive the added, high-level sanctity of the Sabbath.
The Kabbalists say that when one immerses oneself in the mikva in this world, one's soul is immersed and purified in the upper worlds.

I already made my views on this subject clear. I never felt any spirituality going to mikvah, unless spirituality is akin to worrying about athlete's foot. I understand that tumah and tahara are matters of khoq, the practice still strikes me as fairly bizarre. The interaction between the physical world and that of tumah and tahara is just strange and beggars rational justification. Which would lead one into a discussion of taharas ha'mishpakha, and I don't plan on going there.

New Header II

2005-11-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

I'm so proud of this header, I think I'm going to give it up for Lent.

Jews and the Internet

2005-11-23T06:05:00.000-05:00

Must read article in today's Times. They scramble the details a bit, but it's nice to know someone is watching.

Just before Rosh Hashanah, the Orthodox schools and institutions of Lakewood, N.J., a community of 6,500 families in Ocean County, issued a proclamation forbidding children and high school students from using Internet-linked computers.

"Many children (and adults) have fallen prey to the immoral lures that are present on the Internet, and their lives have been destroyed," the seven-page proclamation began.

It barred even adults from going online at home except for the needs of a livelihood - and then only with rabbinical authorization.

Other faiths have also grappled with the Internet, though outright bans are rare. In 2000, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a "user beware" policy that warned parents to exercise some common-sense precautions like filters to ward off pornography.

More liberal Orthodox believers see the Internet as "an unbelievable tool" that must be used with sensible precautions, said Rabbi Kenneth Brander, dean of the Center for the Jewish Future, a division of Yeshiva University.

"Judaism does not believe in a Robinson Crusoe type of lifestyle," he said. "Our responsibility as Jews is to bring light into a larger society, and you don't do that by retreating."
...
So many haredim depend on the Internet for their livelihoods that the irony was not lost on them that the Lakewood ban displayed a keen sophistication about the Web.
...
Hasidim and other haredim have never been Luddites opposed to technology. But in building what they call a fence to safeguard Torah observance, they discourage enrollment in college, and social contacts between men and women. Some yeshivas will expel a child if they learn the family has a television.

"If television wasn't banned, we wouldn't have kids studying and learning Torah 16 to 18 hours a day," said Rabbi Shalom Storch, principal of Yeshiva Nesivos Ohr, a day school in Lakewood.

Hat Tip: Bloghead

A Scrawny Hero

2005-11-23T05:56:00.000-05:00

Meet David Markovitch:

IDF paratrooper Corporal David Markovitch foiled a would-be attack when he killed four Hizbullah operatives carrying an anti-tank missile in the village of Ghajar in South Lebanon on Monday.

Markovitch, a trained sniper, aimed at the rocket, which exploded and killed three of the terrorists. He then shot the fourth, whose body was taken back across the lines by other Hizbullah members. The IDF was holding the other three bodies.

Markovitch, who was drafted eight months ago, was described by an Israel Radio interviewer as "not especially large or threatening, even with a helmet on his head," and was eager to praise his commander and cohorts when grilled for details.

"We were four [soldiers] working together, everyone did his job. We wanted to duck and hide, but our commander, Natan, gave the orders. We're a team," Markovitch said.

He told reporters that "it happened that [we] were in the middle of things, but really, it was a miracle. Them not seeing us - it was a miracle." Despite being trained combat soldiers, Markovitch admitted, they were afraid. "We didn't know what was going to happen," he said. "We were panicked, but we did our job."

"The terrorist - I saw him, and then...boom. It was a matter of seconds, the entire thing."

Insomnia Watch

2005-11-23T04:59:00.000-05:00

Just a random musing at 5:30AM.

I've started using Google Talk as an alternative to AIM. While the basic instant messaging technology does not change much, Google Talk has a fairly impressive user-to-user voice calling system. I had a conversation with someone in Philadelphia and the transmission was near instantaneous. Which is more impressive when you realize that the microphone captures the sound, turns it over to GT for encryption, sends it through the internet to the receiving computer, decrypts the message and then plays it. And it works. The quality was superior to that of an analog phonecall.

I suppose a truer test of the technology would be over greater distances and calls abroad. A key feature that is not available, however, is GT-to-telephone service, which would necessarily cost Google more than a pure IP-to-IP call.

What's even more fun to speculate is a golden, future time when WiFi or similar wireless internet networks are made widespread. All telephone calls could be VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol- i.e., calls that exist purely as packets of data on the internet that flow between two internet users) and this greater interconnectivity will not only be cheaper to run, but offers superior transmission quality than the analog telephone system. Gone are antiquated telephone PBXs (although they have come a long way) and costly telephone service.

Unfortunately, the telecom industry rather than embrace the technology and work to develop it will most likely chose to fight readily available WiFi and are sure to fight VOIP.

Exhibit A is an article describing the telecom industry's fight to prevent Philadelphia from providing free WiFi throughout the city. Although I am a big fan of industry in general, this is fairly ridiculous. It's kind of sobering to think that politicians would attempt to deep-six a program that is clearly on the cutting edge of technology and would serve as a great test subject for this next step in communication technology.

Exhibit B is an article detailing the FCC's ruling forcing VOIP carriers to provide 911 with the location of their users. This article details the sort of kludge solution that needs to be worked out for this new technology. At first blush it seems reasonable. A VOIP user suffering a stroke who is able to dial 911 but unable to speak should rescued just as a standard telephone victim would be saved. But cell phone carriers are not required to provide 911 with the location of a user. In fact, and this is rich, I attempted to report a crime to the Metro PD here in DC, but my phone was roaming on another carrier's network, whose cell tower is located outside of DC. Hence, instead of getting my local cops, I got the Arlington PD. Which probably wouldn't have worked out too well if I was in need of serious medical attention or needed the police to exercise its monopoly on legitimate force on my behalf.

Another problem that faces VOIP and even new instant messaging programs such as Google Talk is the problem of network effects. Basically, envision a telephone service that consists of you and your mother. The equipment backing the network only allows you to talk to your mother (her paradise I am sure). Now envision a network that allows you to talk to your whole family. Clearly you would prefer the network that allows a greater number of possible conversations. For this reason it was difficult for other firms to compete for local telephone service, and this is why it is difficult for upstart IM programs to gain a toehold.

However, I believe that VOIP and IM programs are different. The problem with network effects and the MaBell debacle was the problem of physical infrastructure. Physical line had to be laid by the telephone company to each house and from each house to a PBX and from each PBX to a series of "long lines," or super lines that connected the telephone exchanges. Here, the infrastructure exists and it's just a matter of time until someone perfects the VOIP technology and makes it readily accessible.

See what happens when I play around with my blog header? The inner geek emerges.

New Header

2005-11-22T22:56:00.000-05:00

It seems no one gets the picture and many don't like the contrast between the black and the rest of the blog.

Thoughts?

And I will personally give kudos to anyone who can identify the figure in the header (other than those I have already told).

Housekeeping

2005-11-22T13:39:00.000-05:00

I've modified the layout of the blog to make it more readable. Please let me know if it doesn't load properly on your screen.

With Murtha and Laughter Let Old Wrinkles Come

2005-11-21T20:11:00.000-05:00

The redeeming quality of treadmills is that you can watch television while you run. After SpongeBob SquarePants (which was very disappointing, I remember it being funnier), I caught Vice President Cheney's speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

It's worth excerpting a few choice tidbits.

But nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion or that you cannot reexamine a decision made by the president and the Congress some years ago.

To the contrary, I believe it is critical that we continue to remind ourselves why this nation took action and why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror and why we have a duty to persevere.

What is not legitimate and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence.

Some of the most irresponsible comments have come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein.

These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities.

And they were free to reach their own judgments based upon the evidence.

They concluded, as the president and I had concluded, and as the previous administration had concluded, that Saddam Hussein was a threat.

Available intelligence indicated that the dictator of Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and this judgment was shared by the intelligence agencies of many other nations, according to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb commission.

All of us understood, as well, that for more than a decade, the U.N. Security Council had demanded that Saddam Hussein make a full accounting of his weapons programs.

The burden of proof was entirely on the dictator of Iraq, not on the U.N. or the United States or anyone else. And he repeatedly refused to comply throughout the course of the decade.

And...

Meanwhile, back in the United States, a few politicians are suggesting these brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood.

This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate.

And...

The terrorists want to end American and Western influence in the Middle East.

Their goal in that region is to gain control of a country so they have a base from which to launch attacks and to wage war against governments that do not meet their demands.

For a time, the terrorists had such a base in Afghanistan under the backward and violent rule of the Taliban. And the terrorists hope to overturn Iraq's democratic government and return that country to the rule of tyrants.

The terrorists believe that by controlling an entire country, they will be able to target and overthrow other governments in the region and to establish a radical Islamic empire that encompasses a region from Spain across North Africa through the Middle East and South Asia all the way to Indonesia.

They have made clear as well their ultimate ambitions: to arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate all Western countries and to cause mass death in the United States.

Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.

The reality is the terrorists were at war with our country long before the liberation of Iraq and long before the attacks of 9/11. And for many years, they were the ones on the offensive. They grew bolder in the belief that if they killed Americans, they could change American policy.

In Beirut in 1983, terrorists killed 241 of our servicemen. Thereafter, the United States withdrew from Beirut.

In Mogadishu in 1993, terrorists killed 19 American soldiers. Thereafter, the U.S. withdrew its forces from Somalia.

Over time the terrorists concluded that they could strike America without paying a price, because they did repeatedly: the bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, the murders at the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in 1995, the Khobar Towers in 1996, the simultaneous bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and, of course, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

Believing they could strike us with impunity and that they could change U.S. policy, they attacked us on 9/11 here in the homeland, killing 3,000 people.

Now they're making a stand in Iraq, testing our resolve, trying to intimidate the United States into abandoning our friends and permitting the overthrow of this new Middle Eastern democracy.

Recently, we obtained a message from the number two man in Al Qaida, Mr. Zawahiri, that he sent to his chief deputy in Iraq, the terrorist Zarqawi. The letter makes clear that Iraq is part of a larger plan of imposing Islamic radicalism across the broader Middle East, making Iraq a terrorist haven and a staging ground for attacks against other nations.

Zawahiri also expresses the view that America can be made to run again.
In light of the commitments our country has made, and given the stated intentions of the enemy, those who advocate a sudden withdraw from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with Zarqawi, bin Laden and Zawahiri in control of Iraq? Would we be safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?

It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone.

In fact, such a retreat would convince the terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder and blackmail.

A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America.

I realize most of my last few posts have dealt with politics and not religion, which everyone loves hearing about. I'll return to that as soon as possible, however, it is important to counter this ridiculous notion that the Bush Administration lied about pre-war intelligence and that leaving Iraq immediately or within six months is a good idea. Why six months? Why not a week? What's magical about six months, other than the fact that Murtha is naturally attracted to big, round numbers.

Query

2005-11-21T20:02:00.000-05:00

What's worse than running on a treadmill?
Doing it after staying awake for 36 hours.

What worse than running on a treadmill after staying awake for 36 hours?
Running without your pair of $15.00 socks.

That's it, nothing else to see here.

NOLA Synagogues on Brink

2005-11-21T15:04:00.000-05:00

From the Forward:

Before Hurricane Katrina hit, the Shir Chadash Conservative Congregation had $750,000 in pledges from congregants and was planning to update its 1970s-era building in suburban New Orleans. Now, nearly three months after the storm, the city's only Conservative congregation faces a fiscal crisis and is simply hoping to survive.

The synagogue suffered at least $700,000 in water damage — a sum that must be paid in full, since the congregation lacked flood insurance. Monthly dues have been suspended, the vast majority of temple families have not returned home and the ultimate size of the future membership remains uncertain.

"[It's] down to the barebones," said the congregation's executive director, Michael Kancher. "The next two years are going to be tough."

The physical damage to Jewish institutions across the city is significant, as synagogues and religious schools brace for lower numbers and lean times.

The offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, located on the third floor of a brick building in suburban Metairie, survived unscathed and reopened October 17. But the building's first two floors, which house a satellite of the Jewish Community Center and the federation-run community day school, sustained damage from water and mold. In addition to Shir Chadash, Metairie's Reform congregation Gates of Prayer suffered significant water damage, while Congregation Beth Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in New Orleans's Lakeview neighborhood, may have been damaged beyond repair.
...

Insane Left Smack Clinton on Iraq WMD

2005-11-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

Mike Marqusee, writing for CounterPunch, where the insanity is so strong you can smell the disease, isn't fooled by Clinton's recent back peddling on the case against Saddam.

Clinton publicly backed the invasion of 2003--and he can't credibly claim he did so because (like the US public) he was misled by White House propaganda about Iraq's WMD and links to Al Qaeda. In fact, his administration laid the groundwork for the Iraq policy pursued by Bush.

Be sure to listen to this audio file put together by my peeps at WABC radio in NY and publicized by Drudge. It's a regular hit parade of Democratic politicians pushing the case for WMD. Either they were grossly negligent in their oversight capacity or they spineless political hacks who compromise national security for the sake of electoral politics. You decide.

While I'm at it, be sure to read this piece by the Hitch explaining how much tinfoil you need in your hat to believe Bush lied to the nation.

Keeping the Internet Free

2005-11-21T06:55:00.000-05:00

Bravo to the WaPo. In an editorial, the paper disfavors handing over the architecture of the Internet to the United Nations:

...
It's possible that a multilateral overseer of the Internet might be just as efficient. But the ponderous International Telecommunication Union, the U.N. body that would be a leading candidate to take over the domain registry, has a record of resisting innovation -- including the advent of the Internet. Moreover, a multilateral domain-registering body would be caught between the different visions of its members: on the one side, autocratic regimes such as Saudi Arabia and China that want to restrict access to the Internet; on the other side, open societies that want low barriers to entry. These clashes of vision would probably make multilateral regulation inefficiently political.

You may say that this is a fair price to pay to uphold the principle of sovereignty. If a country wants to keep certain users from registering domain names (Nazi groups, child pornographers, criminals), then perhaps it has a right to do so. But the clinching argument is that countries can exercise that sovereignty

to a reasonable degree without controlling domain names. They can order Internet users in their territory to take offensive material down. They can order their banks or credit card companies to refuse to process payments to unsavory Web sites based abroad. Indeed, governments' ample ability to regulate the Internet has already been demonstrated by some of the countries pushing for reform, such as authoritarian China. The sovereign nations of the world have no need to wrest control of the Internet from the United States, because they already have it.

Hopefully this new penchant for multilateralism will never extend to a medium that has and will continue to change the way we live our lives.

Fallen Art

2005-11-21T05:14:00.000-05:00

Despite its political overtones, this short and extremely macabre animation is fascinating. Right click over the link and select "save as."

This is not exactly work friendly and definitely not for children.

Background on the film.

In Fashion Reminiscent of Genghis Kahn

2005-11-21T04:08:00.000-05:00

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The poem continues, but you get my drift.

Blog Spotlight

2005-11-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

I just want to point out Moving On, a really touching blog written by a father who lost his ten year old daughter.

His posts are always well-written, cogent, and sobering.

Crime Under-reported in DC Metro

2005-11-21T02:43:00.000-05:00

This is a lovely bit of news. Turns out that the Metro authorities do not include crimes committed on the Metro if the incident was handled by law enforcement other than the Metro cops. Which is ridiculous when you realize that the Metro system cuts through three states. Well, two states and a vassal of the federal government.

Funny story, I actually got into a fight on the Metro, but that's a story for another time (mainly because it wasn't that exciting).

Zarqawi Update

2005-11-21T02:37:00.000-05:00

The jury is still out on whether Abu Musab "Fredo" al-Zarqawi has bit the big one, and both the White House and the J-Post, the first English source to report the story, are backing off.

Israeli Schools to Teach Pollard Case

2005-11-21T02:29:00.000-05:00

From Haaretz:

Jonathan Pollard has been imprisoned for 7,304 days. On Monday, for the first time since he was incarcerated over 20 years ago for spying for Israel, a local government authority is seeking to express what it sees as the broad public support here for "Pollard's contribution to the State of Israel."

In accordance with a directive by Education Minister Limor Livnat, all schools will spend one hour on Tuesday learning about Pollard's case. Teachers will recall the events leading to his imprisonment in the United States, and they have been instructed to discuss the obligations of Israel toward him with their students.

...

I have already made views on Pollard known. I think there are more valuable causes than a busted spy's.

Zarqawi Might Be Dead in Blast

2005-11-20T13:16:00.000-05:00

This is too good to be true, and we've been disappointed before.

Of course look for the insane left to portray this as a Bush publicity stunt whether it is true or not.

Hattip: LGF

Update I (11/20/05 1353):
That didn't take long.

More details here:

A U.S. and Iraqi raid on a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq safe house in Mosul sparked a three-hour firefight in which four insurgents and four policemen were killed and three guerrillas blew themselves up, said Gov. Duraid Kashmoulaof Nineveh province.
Iraqi and U.S. forces had suspected Abu Musab Zarqawi, leader of Iraq's most feared insurgent group, might be at the house, Kashmoula said. Zarqawi's whereabouts have been the topic of a stream of murky reports; U.S. military officials have said they believe Zarqawi has vowed not to be taken alive.

The U.S. military was examining the dead late Saturday, the governor said. U.S. military spokesmen in Baghdad said they had no information other than word of the firefight.

Two thoughts:
I. The story is not implausible, since Zarqawi has been disowned by his family, and someone may have ratted him out.

II. A producer at a Mid-East might have gotten a litte over anxious and couldn't wait for confirmation. If the U.S. military is conducting DNA tests, it stands to reason that the story would break from American sources.

Bush Mountain Biking in China

2005-11-20T13:03:00.000-05:00

I am trying to decide whether biking with the president is a good detail or bad. I remember reading that the agents enjoyed running with him, but mountain biking is hard! I'd rather run 10 miles cross-country than bike it.

Labor Pulls Out

2005-11-20T12:55:00.000-05:00

In a widely-expected move, the Peretz-lead Labor (Labour?) Party has pulled out of the government, while Sharon mulls leaving Likud.

Wait a sec, I though Sharon was at the center of the PNAC-Likud International Zionist Conspiracy to Subjugate and Ethnically Cleanse Indigenous People. Damn, but those Likudniks are crafty.

Aguilera No JAP

2005-11-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

Christina Aguilera has tied the knot, and quite honestly I couldn't give a damn, however this part stood out:

Sources told the magazine that Aguilera, her hair decorated in jewels and pulled back in a bun topped by white flowers, walked down the aisle in a Christian Lacroix gown. The couple exchanged rings in front of about 130 guests.

130? If a pop star can do it, is there a reason the standard Jewish weddings have more like 600 guests?

Reform Jews On Holy War

2005-11-20T04:19:00.000-05:00

From the AP:

The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them "zealots" who claim a "monopoly on God" while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler's.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said "religious right" leaders believe "unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person."

"What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?" he said during the movement's national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday.

The audience of 5,000 responded to the speech with enthusiastic applause.

Yoffie did not mention evangelical Christians directly, using the term "religious right" instead. In a separate interview, he said the phrase encompassed conservative activists of all faiths, including within the Jewish community.

He used particularly strong language to condemn conservative attitudes toward homosexuals. He said he understood that traditionalists have concluded gay marriage violates Scripture, but he said that did not justify denying legal protections to same-sex partners and their children.

"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."

The Union for Reform Judaism represents about 900 synagogues in North America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million people. Of the three major streams of U.S. Judaism - Orthodox and Conservative are the others - it is the only one that sanctions gay ordination and supports civil marriage for same-gender couples.

Yoffie said liberals and conservatives share some concerns, such as the potential damage to children from violent or highly sexual TV shows and other popular media. But he said, overall, conservatives too narrowly define family values, making a "frozen embryo in a fertility clinic" more important than a child, and ignoring poverty and other social ills.

One attendee, Judy Weinman of Troy, N.Y., said she thought Yoffie was "right on target."

"He reminded us of where we have things in common and where we're different," she said.

Yoffie also urged lawmakers to model themselves on presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who famously told a Houston clergy group in 1960 that a president should not make policy based on his religion.

On other topics, Yoffie asked Reform synagogues to do more to hold onto members, who often leave after their children go to college. He also said the Reform movement, which is among the most accepting of non-Jewish spouses, should make a greater effort to invite spouses to convert.

That's real lovely- imply the "Christian" right is akin to Hitler. Hey, here's a question. If there are many paths to God, why the need for converts?

I find it hard to understand how a religious leader who is so keen on moral relativism would tell another religion how to act.

Why is it that the alternatives to UO seem like nothing more than front groups for liberal causes?

Neusner on the Pentateuch

2005-11-19T17:40:00.000-05:00

I started reading Jacob Neusner's Transformations in Ancient Judaism. It's fairly dense material and I wish he footnoted his work (the book does not include any references). His basic thesis is that the creation/formation/redaction of the Pentateuch, Mishnah, and Talmud/Midrash were in response to crises experienced by ancient Jews.

His work doesn't lend itself to pithy quotes, but this one ain't bad:

[T]he Torah extended the range of the covenant to even humble matters of ordinary, everyday life: sanctification of the here and now. The human condition takes on a heightened intensity when God cares what you eat for lunch, on the one hand, but will reward you for having [chosen] suitable food, on the other.

As a side grouse, the book doesn't appear to be edited at all, and I find myself distracted by typos. And with that, I am off to freeze on the Virginia shore of the Potomac.

Krauthammer on Intelligent Design

2005-11-18T04:49:00.000-05:00

I usually make it a habit of reading Krauthammer's Friday column before I go to sleep on Friday night, but this one is too good.

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.

The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?

He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions -- arguably, the most important questions in life -- that lie beyond the material.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

On Free Will: Part I

2005-11-18T02:00:00.000-05:00

Introduction

I've been meaning to post something on free will, given a recent conversation I had (you know who you are), but the topic is so rich, I imagine it will grow into several posts.

I can kick it off with a recent anecdote. I was having a conversation with a very prominent government official. I can't identify him by name or by title to protect his identity (and to some extent to protect my own anonymity), but suffice it to say that he operates at the highest level of government and is on first name basis with at least one Supreme Court justice and the current resident of the Naval Observatory. I say this not to impress but to give you some context.

We were discussing Consilience, a book by E.O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist, which he had read and I have not. Wilson's basic thesis is that the human condition, its literature, its religion, and its culture will one day be understood through the study of physical processes, particularly the brain. The official told me that he envisions that one day, but not in his lifetime, and in all likelihood not mine either, neuroscience will be able to achieve complete understanding of how the brain shaped the human condition.

Now this happens to be a small pet cause of mine, especially after reading the seminal book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker and On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. So I asked him the next logical question: How did he think society would react when neuroscience is able to demonstrate the non-existence of free will. (This is not beyond possibility, the technical minded can imagine an experiment which would demonstrate the mind as a Turing machine or an Oracle.)

His response:
"What do I care, I'll be dead?"

Tolstoy vs. Carmell

I finished reading Tolstoy's War and Peace over Simchas Torah, but lingered over his second epilogue, which is basically a treatment of free will and history. In it he utterly destroys a kiruv clowny argument made by Aryeh Carmell in his essay "Freedom, Providence, and the Scientific Outlook," which I read in Challenge, a collection of essays on reconciling Torah and science edited by Carmell. I don't want to knock the essay too badly, because some of it is quite good, especially the section that addresses the semantics of free will. And, although for some odd reason he bothers to discuss it, he eliminates quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle as possible saviors of free will. He also has some strange speculation of the existence of a mindon or psychon fundamental particle responsible for free will, which quite frankly is entirely kiruv clowny.

In his essay, Carmell writes:

In any case, if there were indeed a conflict between physics and free will, which would have the burden of proof? Which represents itself with more certainty to the human mind? The laws of physics are, after all, derivative, while of my ability to make decisions I have direct cognisance.

Arthur H. Compton, the Nobel physicist, put this point very forcefully: "One's ability to move his hand at will is much more directly and certainly known than are even the well-tested laws of Newton and...if these laws deny one's ability to move his hand at will, the preferable conclusion is that Newton's laws require modification."

Compton did not of course mean his remarks to apply only to Newtonian physics. They apply certainly with no less force to modern physics with its basically statistical laws.

Phew. So basically free will exists because we think it does. It is odd for a scientist to trust his own intuition over physical law, no?

As it turns out Tolstoy thought so too. In his second epilogue to War and Peace he writes:

(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the influence of the external world, we never get a conception of freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in which there was least obstruction to that action either from things around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary between the past and the future- that is, outside time, which is impossible.

(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is, an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform an action without a cause is the cause of my action.

The arm raising thought experiment is nonsensical and it taints Carmell's essay. What is interesting is that neither Tolstoy nor Carmell inform their work with any neuroscience. Tolstoy, writing in the 19th century, had an excuse.

NAACP Head Joins GOP

2005-11-18T00:22:00.000-05:00

Interesting news out of Florida:

For decades, Republicans have struggled to reach out to black Americans. But now in Orange County, the GOP has to reach no further than the NAACP.

As of this week, Derrick Wallace, head of Orange County's NAACP, has switched parties -- to become a Republican.

"I've thought about this for two years," Wallace said Tuesday afternoon, just a few hours after returning from the elections office. "This is not a decision I made yesterday."

It is, however, a decision that rang out like a shot among political circles.

Republican Party leader Lew Oliver described himself as "extraordinarily pleased," while Democratic leader Tim Shea said he was disappointed.

Wallace, a construction-company exec, was candid about the fact that his business life was a big part of his decision to change.

"It's purely a business decision. Ninety percent of those I do business with are Republicans," he said. "Opportunities that have come to my firm have been brought by Republicans."

To that, Shea responded: "I'm a little confused. Are we talking about the National Association for the Advancement of Construction Professionals -- or Colored People?"

Wallace elaborated that his "business" line of thought also referred to the NAACP. Behind many of the power desks in this town sit Republicans. And he said he wants his organization to be part of that structure. Just as importantly, he said, he didn't want people to immediately brand -- or dismiss -- NAACP concerns as synonymous with those of liberal Democrats. "I want this branch to be respected," he said.

Oliver said they already are, noting that all of the members of the GOP executive board joined the NAACP a few years back to show that they were serious about outreach. "We have taken pains to do our very best to reach out," he said.

But Shea and other Democrats have long maintained that Republican talk about inclusion is little more than that: talk. They cite GOP policy after policy -- on everything from voting rights to health care -- that disproportionately negatively affects blacks.

Wallace's party switch may not be a complete surprise. After his own long-shot bid for mayor of Orlando fell short in 2003, he twice supported Republican candidates for the post.

Still, Wallace's new GOP standing is historic for the NAACP -- an organization that is vastly Democratic.

"I don't think my doing this hurts anything. In fact, I think it helps," Wallace said. "But we'll hear what others have to say. I'm sure I will."

I don't see any evidence that this part of a broader trend, but it's fun to think so. As the battle over the estate tax shows, wealth blacks have the same concerns as wealthy whites, and they are unwilling to allow the Democratic Party to redistribute their hard earned fortunes.

The political economics of a possible trend are titillating. The Democratic Party has long taken the black vote for granted and this built in demographic is probably the only thing preventing a total collapse in southern states.

Bin Laden on Williamsburg Bus Ads

2005-11-17T22:59:00.000-05:00

What would OBL have to say about the advertisements the Williamsburg community protests from time to time?

Osama bin Laden wants the United States to convert to Islam, ditch its constitution, abolish banks, jail homosexuals and sign the Kyoto climate change treaty.

The first complete collection of the Saudi's statements published today portrays a world in which Islam's enemies will take the first steps towards salvation by embracing the "religion of all the prophets".
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden is billed as the first accurate compendium of the terrorist leader's words, threats and ruminations from 1994 to 2004.
Its editors have rooted out many statements which they identified as forgeries and retranslated to correct "horrendous" errors.

His terms for America's surrender appeared after the September 2001 suicide attacks and include demands that amount to the abandonment of much of western life.

Alcohol and gambling would be barred and there would be an end to women's photos in newspapers or advertising.

Hattip: LGF

NY Jews Urge Tougher US Stance On Israel

2005-11-17T22:42:00.000-05:00

Who are these people?

New York Jewish leaders encouraged U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to intervene aggressively in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the Gaza border crossings, telling her this would gain the support of American Jews, according to sources affiliated with the community's liberal wing.

In particular, the sources said, they urged her to take a tough line against Israel, especially on issues such as a settlement freeze and dismantling illegal settlement outposts. The sources said several leading New York Jews held talks with Rice recently at which these issues, as well as the impasse over the border crossings, were discussed.

Ending the White Phosphorus Idiocy

2005-11-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

It's nice to see someone is sticking up for my good buddy, Willy Pete. A milblogger debunks the recent hysteria over the use of the "chemical weapons." It has come to my attention that cordite is a chemical compound that expands at high speed to drive little bits of metal into innocent Iraqi militants. But then we already knew our savage military routinely engages in all sorts of war crimes. The history revisionists are surely hell-bent on proving it.

An Instapundit reader notes that if WP is actually a chemical weapon, then Saddam had plenty of them and there were in fact stockpiles of WMD.

More Iranian Animation

2005-11-17T11:37:00.000-05:00

Here are some more execrable children's cartoons courtesy of the Mullah's propaganda machine:
I, II.

Courtesy of MEMRI TV.

Protest: Syrian Style

2005-11-17T07:21:00.000-05:00

Just who is demonstrating on behalf of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad? The two groups of people with the greatest liberty under the Assad regime of course: Children and prisoners.

In Syria, even the prisoners are supporting the government in its standoff with the United Nations: They're on a three-day hunger strike to express solidarity.
It's all part of a new and more aggressive stance by President Bashar Assad, who's made clear in recent days that his country intends to fight back hard against a U.N. probe that implicated Syria in murder.

Some may dismiss the hunger strike as a government-staged stunt. But it shows how far Damascus will go to prove that normal Syrians support the president:

- Children ages 6 to 10 have held a pro-regime sit-in.
- Syria's black, red and white flag flutters from all balconies and car windows.
- And, according to an association that cares for prisoners, 90 percent of inmates in Damascus jails began a hunger strike this week to protest the international pressure.

It's nice to think that those imprisoned in Syria's jails are so patriotic. Actually, they just might be true Syrian patriots who prefer a democratic government as opposed the current inept regime which put them in the poke in the first place.

Start Back Over As One

2005-11-17T06:54:00.000-05:00

Many apologies to my readers. Real life rudely extended my blogging vacation. The good news at the end of all it, there was a lot of beer. Really a lot. A keg and a half's worth. But that's a story for a different time.

But more than just apologize, I want to thank the commenters who kept the last thread going, notably, Anonymousette, K., Holy Hyrax (get a damn blog) and HWHL. I'm not sure why he thinks he is on my list of blogs to avoid, but he brings a blissfully ignorant perspective that fills me with nostalgia.

I also want to thank Ezzie for taking over wacking Dov Bear with the clue bat in my absence.

In the comments on the previous post, both Holy Hyrax asked if it was possible to be rational and believe in God. Mis-Nagid seemed to indicated that some belief systems involving a deity are rational, but I am not familiar with them.

The arguments for God that squeeze Him in the role of First Cause are not irrational in that they don't contradict any physical evidence, but they strike me as fairly ridiculous. The line of questioning begins with the assumption that all things have a creator. The kiruv klowny rabbis that I have spoken end their argument right there. All things have a creator, therefore this world must have a creator, and that creator is God.

Which is ridiculous. The whole premise is built on the assumption that all things have a creator. Who created God? The questioner then drops this assumption with the Judaic conception of the timeless Creator. David Hume made this line of questioning fairly ridiculous to Christian deists, and if one attempts to find the God of the Jews in this ridiculous argument, they will be fairly disappointed as well.

I'm Back

2005-11-14T03:23:00.000-05:00

My blogging vacation is now over. My apologies for the lack of bloggage, but my real-world commitments have been keeping me busy. In the past eight days, I've pulled three all nighters. Longest period without sleep: ~50 hours, nowhere near my personal record of 70. Longest period of continuous sleep: six hours.

Of course GH's retirement kinda took the zest out of blogging, but his recent blessing to me is a new source of inspiration. Just to speculate about GH's retirement: He said that he was packing it in due to new job commitments and I believe. Even my humble blog really eats into my regular routine. But is it possible something else is at work? In one of his last posts, GH speculated that some gedolim get depressed later in life, possibly by the realization that the dialectic between religious and scientific man (to roughly paraphrase RYBS) is one that offers no resolution. Is it possible that those who pick up the mantle of resolving these issues are invariably disappointed and are left with more questions than answers.

It seems that the whole system is falling apart. To cite anecdotal evidence, no one I know who went out to reconcile their religion with the real world came back the same. They come to the realization that the answers they wanted are not there. It would be lovely to pick up a book by some cool rabbi who lays out the case for God and utilizes actual reasoning in doing so.

Instead they realize that the rational framework offers no justification for religion. They discover the apologists standard line- eilu v'eilu divrei elokim chayim- that these two entities are separate and never shall the twain meet. Belief in God requires a suspension of the reason.

Is it possible that GH came to this realization and realized that the uphill battle wasn't worth it. That life is short and it's a healthier strategy to focus on his family and community than to tilt at windmills?

I think it's a good possibility. The system is falling apart all around us, and any rabbi who attempts to tackle this issue is either castigated by the UO or falls off into the abyss of logic. We all desperately want to believe that resolution lies off in the future, but it is right in front of us. The world makes sense. We are just scared too scared of it.

So I wish GH the best of luck in retirement, and toast his enormous contribution to the j-blogosphere.

Happy Veterans Day

2005-11-11T00:51:00.000-05:00

Jim Massey: Liar

2005-11-11T00:16:00.000-05:00

In honor of today's celebration, here is a piece of good news. Apparently people are wising up to the fact that Jim Massey can't tell an atrocitiy from the delusions that flit across his diseased mind:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Among his claims:

Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.

Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.

A tractor-trailer was filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.

Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill, Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports. Earlier this year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan, and he's spoken at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others.

News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.

He wasn't.

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

While I kind of feel sorry for Massey, since he sounds rather ill, it is loads of fun to watch the DemocraticUnderground crackpots vie for who has the crackiest pot of them all.

Happy Birthday

2005-11-10T11:41:00.000-05:00

Mount Nebo

2005-11-09T16:33:00.000-05:00

It seems that Godol Hador is really leaving. For once I hope DovBear is correct and that he will be back, but I respect GH's decision. Blogging consumes a lot of time, and GH not only posts frequently on heady topics, but he then expounds and defends himself in comment threads that routinely reach 100 comments.

For me, he is irreplacable. He was a trailblazer in trying to make Orthodox Judaism rational and defend our tradition against insane fundamentalists who more closely resemble unthinking Mullahs than God's Chosen.

I can't pretend to think that I can take his place, since we definitely have opposing view points on many crucial issues (although given more time, who knows, he could have convinced me) and quite frankly he knows a heck of a lot more than I do. Therefore, I have reserved http://postgodolhador.blogspot.com. This will be a collaborative blog shared among bloggers who appeared in GH's comments (and newcomers) to continue the "great conversation" contained in GH's blog. If there is interest in this, please email me. I have no interest in running the blog, just reading its posts.

Hat Tip: Holy Hyrax for the title of this post.

Status Update

2005-11-07T23:14:00.000-05:00

I am still technically on blogging vacation (as announced at the bottom of last post) dealing with the demands of real life. However, since some of you view my Blogger profile, I should explain that I reserved a blog called "Post-Godol Hador." I really hope that GH stays in the fight for rational truth, but in the event he leaves, he will leave a huge gaping hole in the j-blogosphere. I prefer that he curtail his posting rather leave, but I guess that is in the hands of a higher authority (Mrs. GH, who must be long suffering).

I can't imagine who would fill his shoes, since his place in all this mess is unique. What I propose in the unfortunate event of him calling it quits is a collaborative blog authored by his regulars. At least if GH leaves he will return to us in spirit, ala Mis-Nagid, albeit one who, hopefully, guest posts frequently.

Sidenote: How ironic is it that Blogger's spell check doesn't have "blogging" or "blogosphere" in its dictionary?

Shifting Without a Clutch

2005-11-04T13:16:00.000-05:00

BTA has been kind enough to edit and put up my guest post on his blog, which promises to add something to the current situation confronting many religious Jews today. Here it is on my blog:

Education and Re-education:
My name is Anonym and I am an OTD FFB. I think I was always a good kid. I got good grades through out elementary and high school. I competed in an interschool halakha competition (don't worry it wasn't on a useful topic). My science education was quintessential Yeshiva Orthodox. In junior high, the professor gave me our science exams to grade. We skipped several chapters in high school bio. Trigonometry was a joke (the only thing for which I don't forgive my high school).

My point is that I was not a "troubled teen." Me and my group of friends would discuss science and halakha. We discovered Challenge and got very into it. Of course we would never believe that man came from monkeys, that's ridiculous. I mean look at us, we're Yeshiva students toiling in God's word, how could we come from monkeys?Our rabbis honestly told us that fossil evidence is entirely manufactured. Dinosaurs are a myth. Why Orthodoxy chose to pick on dinosaurs is beyone me...

It was very clear that we were in the right and anyone who opposed us was either sadly mistaken or an evil genius- to be avoided like the plague for his potential for misleading us.

Paradigm Shift Without A Clutch
Then I got into the world, which I won't discuss (I assure you I was still a good kid, I just don't want to reveal identifying details).This summer I had time off and got to thinking. I had just read an excellent book on evolutionary psychology and was thinking about the arguments the author made. It wasn't an overly technical book, but suddenly my world changed. I understood that evolution as discussed in Yeshiva was an awful distortion of the actual theory and that the evolutionary mechanism is a simple description of physical law (whether or not it fully explains mankind is a matter up for debate, but there can be no question that the mechanism is there). And that was my tipping point. My worldview rotated on axis and I realized that all the garbage I digested, all the apologetics, all the ridiculous "proofs," and all the trappings of Orthodoxy, were flatly wrong.

It was a pretty awful feeling, so I called one my Yeshiva buddies, who I will call Mike. He left Yeshiva a little after me and is in a scientific profession. "Mike, I got a serious problem. I finally see the religion for what it is. It's nonsense. They have no concept of science, they don't understand evolution and none of it holds up to rational scrutiny." Mike asked, "Is this a joke?" "No, why?""Because you called me about this three years ago, and your exact words were 'Mike, I'm not sure about this religion, something doesn't seem right, they can't explain science.'"

The difference between this crisis and whatever heart-to-heart I had with Mike three years ago is incalculable. It is one thing to question your faith and then fall back on one of the standard pat answers tossed about by the "cool" rabbis bold enough to discuss science-inspired doubts (Hint: God must be Swiss 'cause He makes watches). That kind of thing wasn't going to help this time around. The watchmaker explanations only left me more wound up. [Ed.: sorry, couldn't resist]

The switch in my perspective is so fundamental that the only people who seem to know what I am talking about are those who experienced it themselves. But you know something, I still can't leave my religion. There is a great pizza place around the block from me. Since my crisis kicked into high gear, I cannot articulate what is keeping me from walking in there, but I can't.

The socialization you get from an FFB upbringing is similar to the pressure a BT feels to maintain your adopted lifestyle. I think we face a very similar dilemma as to where you go from here. Orthodox Judaism is not something you can easily walk away from if you are a cool-headed, stable person.

The "Other"
One more point that addresses the difference between a FFB and a BT going off the derech, and I guess you can tell me if this happened to you. The absolutely worse part about losing your faith is that you suddenly assume the identity of the "other." Like throughout my Yeshiva years, we would hear about the "other." You know; the secular scientist hellbent on disproving religion, the rebellious teenager who falls into drugs and promiscuous sex, and the middle-aged man who suddenly divorced his wife, left his kids and the derech. And upon hearing each horror story, you pat yourself on the back, smile at your buddies and think, "Gee, thank God I am not like them. I'll never be so evil. Suns may rise and also set, but at least I will never do that."

And after the turning point in the crisis of faith (when you realize that using religion to search for the answer is of no use, since the answer is right in front of you, but you don't want to accept it) you realize that you came to the same conclusions "they" did, and while some may have had problems, and perhaps they used faulty reasoning to get where they did, ultimately you and "they" are now in the same boat, or in what I like to dramatically refer to as the Wasteland.

I am not unhappy with it, in the sense that I have some emotional beef with it. I don't think all rabbis are hapless fools. I am not angry with God (although I think He might have a few choice words about me). Insofar as it has gotten me into my current jam, I don't regret the day I was born into this tiny faith. I hate change. I keep the same hairstyle, own one watch, and mourn the running shoes I retire.

Although I cannot intellectually justify any of my current observance, you don't just walk away from 20 years of chinukh.And so I started all the usual "truth seeking." Reading religious philosophy, talking to a few Rabbis and then it hit me that I wasn't seeking the truth, but trying to hide from it. A religion that requires you to spend your whole life trying to justify it is probably not going to be provable. There is not silver bullet that will remove all your doubts. No one has the answer. It's just impossible for people on the other side to realize how fundamental the paradigm shift is.

Why is this meandering post on an OTD BT blog, while I am an OTD FFB? I venture to guess that many BTs were attracted to Judaism for the wonderful picture of harmony and warmth it provides. Shabbos IS enjoyable if spent with friends and family. Shul can be fun when the Rabbi is brilliant, the singing tonal, and the kiddush scene sociable. I don't think that many BT's experience this shift and that's what brings them into the fold. Many people feel something is missing in their lives because life in this galaxy can be cold and lonely. Judaism looks good and it even works pretty well, provided you don't "look behind the curtain." Therefore, I think I am in the same position as many OTD BTs who find themselves on the other side of the shift.I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.Incidentally, if anyone reads this and thinks I haven't done due diligence, by all means contact me and prove that Orthodoxy is rational. I can be reached by sending an email to respondingtojblogs on the gmail email service.

PSA: I am going to be pretty busy the next few days, so blogging will be light to non-existent.

Us and Them: Part V

2005-11-03T23:24:00.000-05:00

Us. Them.

You know life is, like, totally complicated.
How do you know if you are doing the right thing?
Morality is complex, and even religion doesn't answer all the questions about how to conduct yourself.

But here is a hint: If your religion treats dissent as betrayal, it's time to get out.

Don't Rock the Boat

2005-11-03T17:02:00.000-05:00

Richard Cohen, in today's WaPo, bemoans the "instablity" in the Middle East due to the Iraq war. To wit:

The United States would love for the Assad regime to go. But what would replace it? It's hard to imagine, but it could be something worse: the radical Muslim Brotherhood, for instance. It is about the closest thing Assad and his clique have to an organized opposition. Replacing a secular dictatorship with a radically religious one is not what Washington would call progress.
In short, and not taking into account the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, the war in Iraq has hardly made this area more stable. It's true, of course, that nothing catastrophic has yet occurred in the region, but the casual assurance that nothing will happen must now be held to a new post-Iraq standard: Just about everything Washington said was happening (weapons of mass destruction) and would happen (an easy occupation) has turned out to be utterly false.

One could almost forgive President Bush for waging war under false or mistaken pretenses had a better, more democratic Middle East come out of it. But just as the 1991 Persian Gulf War introduced an element of instability in the region -- the rise of al Qaeda in response to the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia -- so might this one do something similar. A Shiite arc is forming, Iraq is infested with terrorists and coming apart, Syria might be going from bad to worse, and Saudi Arabia is complaining loudly that the war's only winners are the Shiites and Iran. From here, it looks like a war that is already going badly for America could go even worse for much of the Middle East.

In Cohen's world, change is bad because it causes instability. But change, by its very definition is something that is unstable. It seeks to undermine the status quo. Cohen, apparently, would like change without instability, something that is a physical impossibility. If you agree that change is needed in the Middle East, and I think there is consensus on that issue (unless Cohen loves the prosepct of a nuclear Iran, the theocracy in Riyadh, and terror without end in Israel), effecting change means bringing instability to the status quo.

Folks like Cohen are so risk-adverse that, following their logic, change would be impossible. But the Middle East needs instability and the blood letting it would entail. For example, everyone knows that a civil war has to be fought between radical and moderate Palestinians, but no one wants to admit to it. Under Cohen's thought the status quo is not worth instability, his euphemism for bloodshed. But bloodshed is at times necessary. Even federalism required a civil war before the idea's of Hamilton and Madison were realized.

Instability leads to bloodshed, but it is the mother of a better world.

Update: I've linked this post to The Polical Teens open trackback.

Reid: A Very Special Prosecutor

2005-11-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

This is very funny, but don't blame me if it's offensive.

Slate Smackdown of Dowd

2005-11-03T10:22:00.000-05:00

Katie Rolphie at Slate has some choice words about Maureen Dowd's recent rant about her spinsterhood and her nostalgia for feminsim (the way it used to be):

Maureen Dowd's penchant for provocative overstatement has found its most recent outlet in a much talked about excerpt of her new book, Are Men Necessary?, in the New York Times Magazine. In it she bemoans a perceived return of 1950s values and courtship rituals and portrays a younger generation of women as grasping, shallow housewife wannabes and "yummy mommies." In the most inflammatory and intriguing passages, she claims that men are put off by women in power, that they prefer the women who serve them—maids, masseuses, and secretaries—to their equals. She attributes the fact that she is unmarried to her powerful position as an op-ed columnist at the New York Times. Then she notes her own family history of domestic service and concludes that "being a maid would have enhanced my chances with men."
Is this dark view of sexual politics a little extreme? If it is, it shouldn't be surprising. Dowd pushes every statement to its most exaggerated form; her column occupies a space somewhere in between the other columns on the New York Times op-ed page and the political cartoons that sometimes run there. She is, at her best, a brilliant caricaturist of the political scene, turning each presidency into vivid farce. As a caricaturist, she has a fondness for punchy one-liners strung together, and for the one-sentence paragraph: "Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest"; "We had the Belle Epoque. Now we have the Botox Epoch"; and "As a species is it possible that men are ever so last century?" Her style evokes a brainier Candace Bushnell, whose oeuvre she frequently refers to, but it is given extra weightiness by her position at the Times.

Ouch.

JC Watts: Republicans Are Arrogant

2005-11-03T00:13:00.000-05:00

From Instapundit:

"Republicans in just 10 years have developed the arrogance it took the Democrats 30 years to develop."

Ouch. When I read that it hurt. I really respect JC Watts and used to be friendly with his staff. When he speaks, I listen.

He is refering to, among Libby, Miers, and DeLay, the congressional spending spree that doesn't seem to end. I don't really view Libby, Miers, and DeLay are any fault of the Republican Party, but the spending is an issue that should be core to the party.

From his editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Republicans in Congress are spending like profligates with no tomorrow. The freshman senator from my home state of Oklahoma, Dr. Tom Coburn, recently assumed the role of skunk at the garden party when he inquired about a quarter of a billion dollar bridge to nowhere in Alaska, and had the temerity to suggest that money could be used to rebuild several real bridges to somewhere in Louisiana and Mississippi.
And Tom Delay may or may not be serving his last term in Congress as he faces politically-inspired charges of corrupt fund-raising practices. Certainly, Delay plays hardball, but the last time I checked, being a jerk is not an indictable offense.

I was part of that wild and crazy Class of '94 that shook the political landscape by taking over the House after more than 50 years of unfettered Democrat control. We came to Washington full of ideals and conviction.

But sadly, what they say about absolute power is coming to reality in the 2005 GOP Washington. Republicans in just 10 years have developed the arrogance it took the Democrats 30 years to develop.

He has words for Democrats too:

But speaking of arrogance, DNC Chair Howard Dean, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Campaign Chairman Rahm Emanuel -- the man in the takeover hot seat -- have visions of retaking the majority. Essentially, they believe the basic plan of getting their base to the polls, increasing Hispanic voters, and better communication will put them over the top. They believe their failures in these mechanical functions have cost them in the past decade.

The Democratic leadership is talking about the party's campaign for change and their "new" ideas.

But when you peel the layers of the onion back and start to ask what their new ideas are, you find their party's "big ideas" are the same old things they've been doing for the last 40 years. A Democrat's "big idea" means big spending.

Free college education. More regulation. More money for the No Child Left Behind Act, in spite of the fact that they say it hasn't worked. More money for hurricane victims ... more money for health care ... even more money for military! Now there's a new idea for Democrats!

Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" recently asked Rep. Emanuel how we will pay for these expensive initiatives, in response to which he promptly laid the bill at your feet. In spite of the fact most Americans will pay 50 to 55 cents of every dollar they make in some government tax or fee, Democrats want more.

Republicans promote tax relief. Democrats want more taxes.

For all the weaknesses of my former colleagues, they have held the line on taxes. Republicans want to make tax relief permanent. Democrats want more of your money.

And perhaps more importantly, Democrats still don't understand the values voter. They think better communications will turn the tide with this voter. They just don't get it on cultural and social issues.

Had the values voter not rejected them last time, John Kerry would be in the White House today.

Democrat leadership continues to fail to address social, cultural and economic policy in line with the will of the majority of Americans. They think they can do the same old thing the same old way but not get the same old results.

The Nuclear Disarmament Committee Falls Apart

2005-11-02T20:51:00.000-05:00

From the AP:

The 14 centrists who averted a Senate breakdown over judicial nominees last spring are showing signs of splintering on President Bush's latest nominee for the Supreme Court.

That is weakening the hand of Democrats opposed to conservative judge Samuel Alito and enhancing his prospects for confirmation.

The unity of the seven Democrats and the seven Republicans in the "Gang of 14" was all that halted a major filibuster fight between GOP leader Bill Frist and Democratic leader Harry Reid earlier this year over Bush's lower court nominees.

The early defection of two of the group's Republicans, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, could hurt if Democrats decide to attempt a filibuster of Alito, the New Jersey jurist Bush nominated Monday to replace retiring Sandra Day O'Connor.

If Democrats do filibuster, Frist wants to change the Senate rules to eliminate the delaying tactic - something the centrist group blocked in May.

Psssst...don't tell Kos. He thinks they can rely on Rule 21 to indefinitely tie up the Senate. No wonder he is this week's jackass.

I Am the Highway

2005-11-02T20:45:00.000-05:00

Man, there is nothing quite like hitting mile 4 and being totally blinded by incoming traffic on a near-by highway.

Or expressed mathematically:
Running path + Zero ambient light + Xeon bulb headlights 10 yards away= Total blindness.

Damn you daylight savings time.

On the plus side I still ended up shirtless, despite it being November.

Are You A Good Person?

2005-11-02T17:26:00.000-05:00

I've hit upon the perfect test to see whether you are a good person. If you feel pity when you watch this video, good for you. Other choice heatbreakers are this one and this one (crescendos at 2:30 mark). Go to this page if you want to see more.

It is truly a sad state of affairs. Especially the use of the little kids pointing to the rostrum while shout "Yechi!." The image is very disturbing (e.g.) .

For all things Chabad, read this and this.

Personally, I really like Chabad. The rabbi I consult is Chabad, I like singing La Marseilles in davening, I think Al Tirah is the best part of daily Jewish liturgy, and I think it is useful to be able to slug whiskey and talk about God with a rabbi. All this is a response to losing their primary religious figure who encouraged them to think he was the Messiah. It's sad, but to what degree is our faith removed from theirs? There, but for the grace of the rebbe, go us.

Joe Wilson: Liar

2005-11-02T14:54:00.000-05:00

This op-ed in the LA Times is an excellent starting point in unraveling the myth that Joe Wilson was a brave whistleblower:

Much more egregious were the ways in which Wilson misrepresented his findings. In his famous New York Times Op-Ed article (July 6, 2003), Wilson gave the impression that his eight-day jaunt proved that Iraq was not trying to acquire uranium in Africa. Therefore, when administration officials nevertheless cited concerns about Hussein's nuclear ambitions, Wilson claimed that they had "twisted" evidence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." The Senate Intelligence Committee was not kind to this claim either.

The panel's report found that, far from discrediting the Iraq-Niger uranium link, Wilson actually provided fresh details about a 1999 meeting between Niger's prime minister and an Iraqi delegation. Beyond that, he had not supplied new information. According to the panel, intelligence analysts "did not think" that his findings "clarified the story on the reported Iraq-Niger uranium deal." In other words, Wilson had hardly exposed as fraudulent the "16 words" included in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, the British government, in its own post-invasion review of intelligence, found that this claim was "well founded."

This is not an isolated example. Pretty much all of the claims that the administration doctored evidence about Iraq have been euthanized, not only by the Senate committee but also by the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission. The latest proof that intelligence was not "politicized" comes from an unlikely source-- Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has been denouncing the hawkish "cabal" supposedly leading us toward "disaster." Yet, in between bouts of trashing the administration, Wilkerson said on Oct. 19 that "the consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming" that Hussein was building illicit weapons. This view was endorsed by "the French, the Germans, the Brits." The French, of all people, even offered "proof positive" that Hussein was buying aluminum tubes "for centrifuges." Wilkerson also recalled seeing satellite photos "that would lead me to believe that Saddam Hussein, at least on occasion, was ... giving us disinformation."

Given Reid's Rule 21 snitfit yesterday, it's important to separate putative lies and actual lies. Maybe Reid should drag Wilson in front of any committee investigating pre-war intelligence.

Adolescent Musings on Religion and Blogging

2005-11-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

From the poets at Godsmack:

You're always hiding behind your so called goddess
So what you don't think that we can see your face
Resurrected back before the final fallen
I'll never rest until I can make my own way
I'm not afraid of fading
I stand alone
Feeling your sting down inside of me
I'm not dying for it
I stand alone
Everything that I believe is fading

Eh, I am probably enjoying a second adolescence.

Us and Them: Part IV

2005-11-02T13:51:00.000-05:00

The J-Post reports on the Eged's segregation policy in seating. Private buses in the U.S. similiarly separate the sexes when offering transportation between UO communities. What is most puzzling is that they actually have Mahadrin service and Glatt Mahadrin service.

In addition to the regular mehadrin lines, there are also what are known as "Glatt Mehadrin" that operate inside haredi city centers. On the "glatt" lines women enter the bus from the side door. Women with bus passes punch their own holes. Women who pay in cash have to somehow transfer the money to the driver at the front of the bus. Little children are often used. When there is no other choice the woman herself walks to the front to pay, says Rosenstein.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Orthomom.

Iran Continues Descent Into Darkness

2005-11-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

From the AP:

Iran's hard-line government said Wednesday it was removing 40 ambassadors and senior diplomats, including supporters of warmer ties with the West, from their posts in a shake-up that comes as the Islamic republic takes a more confrontational international stance.

All in all very disturbing. Of course, Iran could just be trying to accumulate a stack of chips to be used at the nuclear negotiating table, or the regime is just doing what religious fanatics do best.

Remember Us Not As Lost, Violent Souls, But Only As The Hollow Men

2005-11-02T03:07:00.000-05:00

Ba'al Tshuvas Anonymous joins the j-blogosphere. For a brief history see here.

BTA seeks to address the issues confronting ba'alei tshuvas (tshuvot?) who find themselves dissatisfied with their adopted religiosity and right back at square one. I am not sure whether or not ba'alei tshuvas who find themselves in this uncomfortable position face challenges substantially different than a frum-from-birth Jew who similiarly finds him/herself in the same situation.

Excerpted from my comments on BTA's initial post:

I think we face a very similar dilemna as to where you go from here. Orthodox Judaism is not something you can easily walk away from if you are a rational, stable person.

One more point that addresses the difference between a FFB and a BT going off the derech, and I guess you can tell me if this happened to you. The absolutely worse part about losing your faith is that you suddenly assume the identity of the "other." Like through out my Yeshiva years, we would hear about the "other." The secular scientist hellbent on disproving religion, the rebellious teenager who falls into drugs and promiscuous sex, and the middle-aged man who suddenly divorced his wife, left his kids and the derech. And upon hearing each horror story, you pat yourself on the back, smile at your buddies and think, "Gee, thank God I am not like them. I'll never be so evil. Suns may rise and also set, but at least I will never do that."

And after the turning point in the crisis of faith (when you realize that using religion to search for the answer is of no use, since the answer is right in front of you, but you don't want to accept it) you realize that you came to the same conclusions "they" did, and while some may have had problems, and perhaps they used faulty reasoning to get where they did, ultimately you and "they" are now in the same boat, or in what I like to dramatically refer to as the Wasteland.

The most frustrating part, for me at least, is the desire to have the "answers" given to you by some philosopher/rabbi/scientist. The answers are in front of us, but our reluctance to accept them is what drives the human condition.

Ferrer Joins Today's Theme

2005-11-01T23:43:00.000-05:00

I have reached a conclusion.

Democrats haven't just picked this day to commit political suicide, but have adopted it as their primary strategy (see I, II, III). This video from The Political Teen depicts Mike Bloomberg as a damsal (belle? What the heck do you call a cowboy's girl?) to Bush's cowboy.

Another home run Freddy!