Thursday, December 17, 2009

Checklist of the Fundie


I am a big believer in the notion that politics and ideology are not linear, but circular or at least bend in a horseshoe shape. Those on the extremes are not nearly as far apart from each other as they would have us believe. Often they share almost identical foundational assumptions as to the nature of the world. Recently I got into another back and forth with Bray of the Fundie, a usually relatively sane Haredi blogger, over on his blog. Bray had resurrected an old post of his discussing what appears to be his favorite trump card against religious rationalists like me, a quote from Maimonides saying that religious knowledge is different from other forms of knowledge. According to Maimonides:


It behooves a person to contemplate the holy Torah’s laws and, as much as his faculties allow him, to know their ultimate purpose. (Still) a topic/concept for which he can find no reason nor any cause should not become lightly esteemed in his eyes. And he should not ‘violate the boundary’ to ascend to the Divine lest He (i.e. G-d) ‘break through’ to him. (An allusion to Shemos 19:24) and a person’s thoughts / intellectual approach to Torah ought not to be equivalent to his approach to other, mundane, matters.

Bray wishes to use the “patron saint” of rationalist Judaism to argue that Judaism is above reason and that we should follow it (or its accepted representatives) even if it is not in keeping with our reason or even downright contrary to it.

I responded to Bray by drawing a distinction between knowing the rational behind something and believing that there is one even if it eludes you.

I believe in a universe that runs on rational laws. I do not, and neither does modern science, understand all of these laws and there is much that goes on in the universe that we do not understand. That being said, I still believe that those rational laws are out there and am committed to discovering them. I am not going to simply throw up my hands and say mystery/Flying Spaghetti Monster. Similarly with religion, the God I believe in is one that operates according to rational laws. He is neither capricious nor arbitrary. There is much in what he does and commands that I do not understand. That being said I still believe that there is a rational behind everything. When dealing with science and God I am willing to assume rationality to a far greater degree than with human beings. With human beings my starting assumption is that they are behaving rationally and I will try to find a rational behind everything that they do. (This is important to the sort of work I do in history.) That being said, if, at the end of the day, I cannot find a rational to their actions, I will throw up my hands and say they were irrational.

Bray responded, not by defending his position, but by insisting on his interpretation of Maimonides as “delineating a havdala between Qodesh/Torah as a discipline and khol/ all other branches of wisdom?”

I defended Maimonides by appealing once again to the model of science.

It is not a matter of some double standard in favor of Torah that allows you to fix the game in advance to come out in favor of God. What we have is a principled granting of the benefit of the doubt to specific systems which have already given good cause for it. To take a Thomas Kuhn approach, if you are a scientist developing a scientific theory that works in general you are not going to abandon it simply because you run into a small difficulty. If Kuhn was a yeshiva student he might say: “no one ever died from a kasha.”

It is at this point that Bray sprung a peculiar sounding argument coming from someone from the religious fundamentalist side. It was the sort of argument that one would have expected Richard Dawkins to use if he were debating me. Bray started listing elements of Judaism that should offend an ethical rationalist such as me:

Border dwelling pilgrims required to leave their property and families unprotected 3 times a year


Men may practice polygamy while women must be monogamous


Rapists must marry their victims if the victims agrees


Diverse capital punishments for adulterous bas kohens and their paramours


Monetary remuneration if an assailant dismembers his victim but flogging if he merely pinches him (and the aggregate 5 payments are less than a shava pruta)


Flogging for stealing back one's own stolen property


"Blood redeemers" vendetta killings either allowed or considered a mitzvah


Aunt-nephew marriages=incest while Uncle-niece marriages are allowed


Prohibited to remarry my own divorcee if she was lawfully wedded in-between but permitted to do so if she promiscuously slept around


House demolition mandated for certain discolorations in the plaster.


Perjured witnesses are punished in kind, unless of course the victim they framed has already been executed, in which case they walk off Scot free


Slavery


No Divorce rights for women


A father being able to marry his daughter off to anyone he chooses while she is still a non-consenting minor


Genocide against seven indigenous Canaanite Nations and the Amalekites


Death by stoning for dropping a carrot into a pot of boiling water on Saturday


Incest allowed for brother sister converts (M'D'Oraysa)


Farmers required to leave their fields fallow for two consecutive years (years 49-50 in the Jubilee cycle)

Needless to say I reject Bray’s understanding of these laws. I am sure we could go back and forth about how to understand Jewish law, but I see that as beside the point. How is it that Bray comes to defend Judaism by engaging in the same caricature of Judaism that Dawkins uses to attack it? I have my understanding of Judaism that does not have me violating any of the ethical norms that have been at the foundation of all civilized peoples. My Judaism believes in justice for all and mercy for all the unfortunate. I may be mistaken in my understanding of Judaism. You may look over the sources and conclude that Dawkins and Bray are correct. I would still be a moral, if mistaken, person. Dawkins is certainly a moral person for rejecting Judaism as he understands it. But what can we say about Bray, who embraces what must be viewed, even from his perspective, as an immoral religion? He certainly cannot be viewed as moral; he is a nihilist who does not even believe in the concept of morality.

Bray likes to talk about the importance of separating between believers and unbelievers. I also believe in the importance of putting up some barriers. Every ideological act puts up a wall of separation against those who believe differently. I do hope, though, that every time my hands waves people away it is not so vigorous as to preclude waving them in to come closer. However much I must separate myself from intellectually honest and moral atheists, I will fight against those who blaspheme God by claiming to believe in him; those who hold up an idol and say that God is not all rational and not all moral and these things can be dispensed with.

11 comments:

The Bray of Fundie said...

drawing a distinction between knowing the rational behind something and believing that there is one even if it alludes you.

typo or Freudian slip?

Izgad said...

Thank you for catching that.

The Bray of Fundie said...

I am sure we could go back and forth about how to understand Jewish law, but I see that as beside the point.

I see it as the very point itself. You presume that with exposure to more sources, more dilligent and conceptual study and/or a spike in IQ we can descover the rational for all the Mitzvot. While there is a partial truth in this it is also true that with exposure to more sources, more dilligent and conceptual study and/or a spike in IQ we can descover more and more that is irrational for many of the Mitzvot.

I myself was unaware of the one about stealing back ones own property until last week.

The Bray of Fundie said...

I very much resent your chrachterization/ caricature of me as amoral.

Although my masthead said that my blog was the home of the flaming diaper dialogue until a few weeks ago I do not foam at the mouth, condone violent hafganot or buy into the culture of ratcheting up khumros.

While not a TK I am not a totally unletterd Jew. I am aware that the same Torah that features my checklist features interets free loans, crop rotation, loving the righteous convert, not opressing widows and orphans, a pure meritocarcy in Torah study,tithing to support the poor, unparralleled strcit sancrions against gossip and malicious, insulting speech, a value system that says its better to die by fire than embarras another publicly, a Shabbos table taht is a bahvioral-cognitive therapy exercise in sensitivity training by covering the khallot etc.

Yet I don't pick and choose and deny one part of the Torah in favor of the other.

I am neither immoral nor amoral (at least not philosophically). And G-d is certainly not. It's just that I define morality as follows: "Whatever is consistent wit hthe will of haShem is good, ethical and moral. Whatever is inconsistent is not." There is no external morality. There is only bowing my head to the will of G-d as expressed in His Holy Torah even though the Torah platform contains mutually exclusive planks.

A Jew ought to be ready willling and able to treat the orphan with an extra measure of kindness and flog the fellow who ate an olives worth of pork. Cognitive dissonance? No! Judaism.

Izgad said...

“I see it as the very point itself. You presume that with exposure to more sources, more diligent and conceptual study and/or a spike in IQ we can discover the rational for all the Mitzvot. While there is a partial truth in this it is also true that with exposure to more sources, more diligent and conceptual study and/or a spike in IQ we can discover more and more that is irrational for many of the Mitzvot.”

Before we debate what this Jewish law consists of that we should live our lives according to its dictates we have to decide whether we should care what Jewish law is in the first place that we would try to live our lives according to it. The standard Haredi response to this is to try to prove the existence of God through the argument from design and the truth of TMS from a tradition/Kuzari argument. We live in a post Enlightenment world which is raised various challenges to the existence of God and TMS and we could debate whether and to what extent these arguments have been refuted. There is a more fundamental issue here. Say I give you your God and TMS. I could still go ethical Satanist on you and choose to rebel. I could decide that God exists but that he is an immoral tyrannical being, who is a cosmic variation of the sadistic wealthy kid who likes to burn ants with a magnifying glass and will only allow other kids to be his friend, come over to his house and play his Playstation 3 if they agree to do everything he wants them to do. Knowing full well that my decision will rob me of eternal bliss and give me nothing but an eternity of hellfire, I would decide to martyr myself in fighting God even though it is hopeless. This is actually going to be a major theme of Asael, if you have not already read the beginning of it. Pullman’s His Dark Materials series turns Paradise Lost on its head and has the rebellious angels as the good guys fighting an evil deity.

“I do not foam at the mouth, condone violent hafganot or buy into the culture of ratcheting up khumros.”

That is why I referred to you as “relatively sane.” I certainly see you as a step above the likes of Jewish Philosopher or the type of Haredi portrayed by Authentic Judaism.

“I define morality as follows: "Whatever is consistent with the will of haShem is good, ethical and moral. Whatever is inconsistent is not." There is no external morality.”

Are you familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma from Plato? If we define morality simply in terms of what God tells us than it is meaningless to talk about God being good. So God tells you to help old ladies cross the street and you do it. If God tells you to kill old ladies, peel their skin off and wear it and not necessarily in that order you would also do it. You have no objective morality; all you have is not getting thrown into an eternity of hellfire. If the Nazis told you to cook your child and eat him with lots of ketchup or they will cut your eyes out would you do it? Why is it any difference if God tells you to do it?

I believe that God is a rational and righteous being who always acts according to universally valid standards of ethics. Because of this I accept him as my God and will follow him into the valley of the shadow of death. I love him with all my heart, all my soul and all my attributes.

Vox Populi said...

You know, I actually don't have a problem with most of the stuff on this list. A lot of it actually has analogues in the common law.

Regarding Euthypro:

Defining morality by what G-d tells you is nice, because it makes things superficially easy - lots of bright lines. You don't have to worry about any issues of the day, or work out a comprehensive system of morality or values - because everything in a one step answer - WWG(have me)D? It's tight and neat and self-contained, if a bit circular.

One of the problems, of course, is that Bray has never met G-d, and thus, does not know what He wants from him. He must defer to his Rabbis, who likewise, have never met G-d, but they rely on other people, etc. etc. The long and short of it is, that Bray himself cannot possibly think that the only morality he recognizes is the Will of G-d, because he must rely on his own innate moral compass to decide what that is. If his rebbe muvak would tell him tomorrow that the time has come for Barack Obama to die, Bray would of course decide that that is not the Will of G-d. But why? If the rabbis he has always relied on to teach him the will of G-d tell him that the G-d wants Obama to greet the big rope line in the sky - then surely Bray must believe that that is the will of G-d?

So with us all. We always filter what it is that we think G-d "wants" us to do through what we think is the right thing to do. Chareidim find such an acknowledgment a sign of weakness, but I think it's a fairly positive observation (positive, as in the opposite of normative). Can anyone think of times when we thought one thing was the more moral course of action - but our hands were tied because of G-d? G-d often "tells" me to do things i don't want to do - but so far, I have never been faced with the choice between being true to my morals and true to my religion - not really. Has anyone else?

I apologize to Bray if I've mischaracterized his opinions or beliefs in any way.

Izgad said...

So Bray if God or your rebbe tells you: “take your president, your only one, that you love, Obama and go to the land of Moriah and bring him up as a burnt offering” do you get up in the morning and saddle your own donkey.

The Bray of Fundie said...

There is a more fundamental issue here. Say I give you your God and TMS. I could still go ethical Satanist on you and choose to rebel. I could decide that God exists but that he is an immoral tyrannical being

I'd say you haven't given me enough. G-d is good. You want to have a semantical battle? Lets put it this way. If Satan is ethical and good then I'll be bad and unethical.

Izgad said...

What if Satan was a kind decent angel, who believed in helping old ladies and all unfortunate people and God was a celestial Rabbi Leib Tropper? Would you agree to perform all the necessary special favors for our Tropper god and his friends in order to be allowed into his club?

The Bray of Fundie said...

Not in order to be in his club, but lishma, because it is the right thing to do. All it takes is the transvaluation of values.

IIRC Rav Chaim Brisker said that we only percive certain Mitzvahs to be rational because of istakal b'oraysa u'vara ahlma but in theory haShem could have crated a world in which gezel would accrue to qiyum HaOlam instaed of to Khurban HaOlam.

Izgad said...

Bray

You keep on stating your belief that God could have defined moral values any way he wished, but you dodge facing off against the consequences of that belief. When I confront the issue of Jews rioting in the streets, destroying traffic lights, stealing from the government, molesting children and pushing women to do sexual favors in order to get a conversion, I can take a hard line stance. These people transgress the moral order of the universe and by definition they are insane, wicked or willfully ignorant. All you can say is that these people go against the moral law as it incidentally exists in our present universe. In your system there could be a universe where they are in the right; it is just their misfortune to be living in the wrong universe.

Ironically, this leads to a situation where you would have to be the more “tolerant” and “liberal” one. I am free to be “intolerant,” “fanatical” and “conservative.” In the end you cannot say that you are opposed to these people in any meaningful way. At best you can say that these people are not to your personal taste or that you do not approve of their tactics.