A while back I sent a letter to the Columbus Dispatch concerning their decision to print an anti Israel op-ed style letter to the editor that quoted Wikipedia as a source. The Dispatch printed my letter. A few days later a letter criticizing me was also printed:
Writer's criticism was incomplete
Columbus Dispatch, The (OH) - Sunday, February 22, 2009
In Benzion N. Chinn 's Feb. 14 letter, "Using Wikipedia as a source undermines credibility," he disparaged Wikipedia. He questioned a Wikipedia entry on Israeli/Zionist actions that have led to the appropriation of Palestinian lands. The actions of Israeli/Zionists have been well-documented by many other sources. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, a book by former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti, would be a good starting point. Chinn also failed to mention that any entry in Wikipedia is available for editing by anyone with additional or contradictory information. Perhaps Chinn needs to join in the Wikipedia process. Chinn questioned letter writer Aghlaba Peerzada's understanding of critical writing and extended an invitation to him to attend a class he ( Chinn ) is teaching. Perhaps Chinn should seek out a class for himself. STEVEN BORNSTEIN Columbus
I would like to point out that Mr. Bornstein never actually deals with the issue at hand. I never said that Israel was above criticism or that legitimate scholarly criticism could not be put forth against Israel. I have not read the book mentioned so I will not say anything for or against it. I acknowledge that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone. That is precisely the problem. I have edited Wikipedia articles in the past. This may make them better articles but it does not give them authority. There is still no one putting their name and reputation behind the article. So I stand with my previous statement. I have no problem with people criticizing Israel they need to do better than Wikipedia.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Blue Jackets versus Penguins: A Fan’s Dilemma
Last night the Pittsburgh Penguins came to Columbus to play the Blue Jackets. As I have mentioned previously I have been a lifelong Penguin fan, though, since coming to Columbus I have become an active Jackets fan as well. This year the Penguins have been playing horribly and the Jackets, despite numerous injuries, have been playing very well. Now this statement needs to be placed into the context of the two teams. Both teams are in sixth place in their respective conferences and the Penguins, in fact, have a slightly better record. The Penguins, though, have Sidney Crosby and Evengi Malkin and went to the Stanly Cup last year. The Blue Jackets have Rick Nash and have never even been to the playoffs.
I have been to numerous Blue Jackets games, but have never seen the Penguins play live. Considering that I do not live in Pittsburgh and even if I did Penguin tickets, so I hear, for all intents and purposes start at around $100 this was an opportunity I did not want to miss. So right after class I went downtown to stand in line to get the Huntington green seats (nose bleeds) for $10. These go on sale two hours before the game. Unfortunately these tickets sold out just before my turn. This actually turned out to be a good thing since I then got on line for the Student Rush tickets which go on sale an hour before the game. I ended up getting a lower bowl seat for $25. (Just so you should know I was reading Miriam Bodian’s Dying in the Law of Moses while standing on line so I was not completely wasting my time.)I feel particularly fortunate to have gotten such a seat as this game set a franchise attendance record of 19,167. It seems that there were a lot of Penguin fans from Ohio and even Pittsburgh who had the same idea as I did.
So who to cheer for? Since I like both teams I wanted the game to go into overtime so both teams would at least get a point. I have been a Penguin fan a lot longer than I have been a Blue Jackets fan and I had come specifically to watch the Penguins. What decided it for me was the sight of all these Penguin fans; they must have made up at least forty percent of the crowd. Even the announcers were acknowledging the strong Penguin presence. For all intents and purposes the Penguins were not playing an away game. Pittsburgh fans are of course well known for their willingness to travel and as a fan of Pittsburgh teams I am really proud of that. That being said it got to me, as a Columbus person, that we were getting overrun in our own city. I never thought this would happen, but I ended up cheering against the Penguins.
The game was a classic, worthy of the more than nineteen thousand in attendance and worth every penny that they spent. By the early third period the Jackets had managed to build a 3 – 0 lead thanks to Steve Mason’s superb goaltending (By the end of the game he had faced forty one shots) and all round solid play by the rest of the team. Than in a span of less than four minutes the Penguins put up three goals. The Penguins are that good offensively. The Jackets though held on and managed to put the game into overtime and then into a shootout where Kristian Huselius won the game for them.
So I got my wish. The Blue Jackets won, but the Penguins still got a point.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A Movie for Purim
One Night with the King is a film based on the biblical book of Esther. Just to be clear form this beginning, this is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination. An excellent cast and some fine performances is not enough to compensate for a miserable screenplay. This is a pity because Esther is a great story and there is no reason why it should not make a good film. It has a beautiful heroine, Esther, caught in a dangerous exotic situation; she is a Jew, the niece of the sage Mordachai, forced to marry the Persian King, Achasveros (Xerxes). In order to survive she must hide her true identity. There is a villain, Haman, worthy of a James Bond film, with an unstoppable plot to kill lots of people, mainly all the Jews in the world. There is plenty of violence and intrigue to go around; people get hauled off and executed on a regular basis. In the end the Jews are saved so we can now eat, drink and celebrate. (This is story type narrative in all of its glory, which is why it is almost certainly not a historical event.)
Despite all of the film’s flaws it still managed to prove enjoyable. For one thing I am very fond of the book of Esther so seeing it as a film was worth beholding. Also the film, while fairly faithful to the source material, makes a number of interesting interpretive choices. My take on King Achasveros has tended to swing between the story of Esther itself, which portrays him as an easily manipulated fool, who seems to make most of the important decisions in the story while drunk, and the Talmud, which portrays him as being quite intelligent and very much in charge of the situation. I like to think of Achasveros as the sort of person who may be a clown but is a very smart clown; someone somewhere between Henry VIII and Herman Goering. People underestimate him and think they can manipulate him. Really he has everyone where he wants them and controls everything. The Xerxes of the film, played by Luke Goss (The villain in Hellboy II), is a total hunk. He is the sort of man that, regardless of his crown, girls would fall in love with. And the film plays on the idea that Esther is, at least to some extent, in love with him. Hegai is a very minor character in the story, he is simply the chamberlain in charge of the king’s harem, so I never thought much of him. The film turns him into a major character, who is a friend and confidant of Esther. He is also a giant black man, whose situation as the castrated slave of the king is clearly meant to draw parallels to African slavery in America. James Callis (Gaius Baltar in the television show Battlestar Galactica) steals the show as Haman. He actually manages to make Haman scary and intimidating. Admittedly the film goes way over the top with him, having him wear a swastika necklace and having him yell about the connections between the Greeks and their Democracy and the Jews with their one God and their hoped for savior. (The film was made by Christians so I guess they had to stick a christological reference in somewhere.) The climax of the story has Esther reveal her true identity to Achasveros, while both he and Haman are present at a private banquet that she is hosting. Esther does this in order to forestall the decree to kill the Jews, which Haman had Achasveros sign. Achasveros storms out of the room and Haman falls upon Esther and pleads for mercy. Achasveros comes back and thinks that Haman was attacking Esther. He therefore immediately has Haman executed. The film plays this scene out as Haman thinking he has won and that Esther’s gambit has failed. He starts to mock plead with her before turning and assaulting her.
Honorable mention should be made of John Rhys-Davies (Gimli in Lord of the Rings) who plays Mordachai. He is effective as a sage and caring father figure for Esther. Also honorable mention should be made of John Noble (Denethor in Lord of the Rings) as Prince Admatha. In the story Admatha is simply the name of Haman’s father. The film turns him into an early villain who helps bring Haman into power and whom Haman knocks off before too long.
So in the end this is not a good film, but those who are familiar with the story of Esther should at least get a good laugh out of it.
Despite all of the film’s flaws it still managed to prove enjoyable. For one thing I am very fond of the book of Esther so seeing it as a film was worth beholding. Also the film, while fairly faithful to the source material, makes a number of interesting interpretive choices. My take on King Achasveros has tended to swing between the story of Esther itself, which portrays him as an easily manipulated fool, who seems to make most of the important decisions in the story while drunk, and the Talmud, which portrays him as being quite intelligent and very much in charge of the situation. I like to think of Achasveros as the sort of person who may be a clown but is a very smart clown; someone somewhere between Henry VIII and Herman Goering. People underestimate him and think they can manipulate him. Really he has everyone where he wants them and controls everything. The Xerxes of the film, played by Luke Goss (The villain in Hellboy II), is a total hunk. He is the sort of man that, regardless of his crown, girls would fall in love with. And the film plays on the idea that Esther is, at least to some extent, in love with him. Hegai is a very minor character in the story, he is simply the chamberlain in charge of the king’s harem, so I never thought much of him. The film turns him into a major character, who is a friend and confidant of Esther. He is also a giant black man, whose situation as the castrated slave of the king is clearly meant to draw parallels to African slavery in America. James Callis (Gaius Baltar in the television show Battlestar Galactica) steals the show as Haman. He actually manages to make Haman scary and intimidating. Admittedly the film goes way over the top with him, having him wear a swastika necklace and having him yell about the connections between the Greeks and their Democracy and the Jews with their one God and their hoped for savior. (The film was made by Christians so I guess they had to stick a christological reference in somewhere.) The climax of the story has Esther reveal her true identity to Achasveros, while both he and Haman are present at a private banquet that she is hosting. Esther does this in order to forestall the decree to kill the Jews, which Haman had Achasveros sign. Achasveros storms out of the room and Haman falls upon Esther and pleads for mercy. Achasveros comes back and thinks that Haman was attacking Esther. He therefore immediately has Haman executed. The film plays this scene out as Haman thinking he has won and that Esther’s gambit has failed. He starts to mock plead with her before turning and assaulting her.
Honorable mention should be made of John Rhys-Davies (Gimli in Lord of the Rings) who plays Mordachai. He is effective as a sage and caring father figure for Esther. Also honorable mention should be made of John Noble (Denethor in Lord of the Rings) as Prince Admatha. In the story Admatha is simply the name of Haman’s father. The film turns him into an early villain who helps bring Haman into power and whom Haman knocks off before too long.
So in the end this is not a good film, but those who are familiar with the story of Esther should at least get a good laugh out of it.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
History 112: Maus and the Use of Holocaust Survivor Testimony
I worked for two summers for the MALACH program at the University of Maryland. This program worked on the creation of a computer system to do word searches through audio databases. We are all familiar with programs, such as Google, which can search through text. MALACH was attempting to do something much more difficult; it was trying to get a computer system to accurately translate sound waves into text in order to be searched. As a test subject, the MALACH program was using the Shoah Foundation’s database of Holocaust survivor testimony. This was a computer science project in which we historians were brought in to test the program for accuracy. Over the course of these two summers I gained an intimate acquaintance with Holocaust survivor testimony; its strengths and weaknesses. Once, one of the computer science people asked me if the widespread accessibility to these survivor testimonies would be useful to historians. I answered her no.
The problem with Holocaust survivor testimony, as with any form of personal recollection, is that it offers no context. Mr. Schwartz you tell us that you were shipped by train to Auschwitz. On what day did you arrive? How many people were on the train with you? How do you know that those in the other line were sent to their deaths? How do you know that there were gas chambers or that the smokestacks you saw were from cremated bodies? What can you tell us about the survival rates for camp inmates? It is unlikely that our hypothetical Holocaust survivor would be able to offer satisfactory answers based on his personal experience. Holocaust survivor testimony comes up particularly short when compared with hard documents. I have the German documents to tell me on almost any given day how many trains arrived in Auschwitz and how many people were on board. These documents tell me all I need to know about the operation of the gas chambers and the crematoria. The documents tell me what the survival rates were from camp inmates. As a historian, therefore, I do not need Mr. Schwartz. (What I did not mention in class, for obvious reasons, was that there are also serious accuracy problems with survivor testimonies. It was a running joke for those of us working on the MALACH program that every high ranking German officer in these testimonies was either Heinrich Himmler or Adolf Eichmann and that every doctor was Josef Mangele. It is for this reason, as well as what I said previously, that Deborah Lipstadt made a specific point of not using survivor testimony during her trial with David Irving. Instead she lined up professional historians armed with documents to take the witness stand and call Irving a fraud and a liar.)
Holocaust survivor testimony does serve a useful purpose, though, in that it can put a human face on material. The assigned reading, Maus by Art Spiegelman, is an excellent example of this. Maus is a graphic novel based on the experiances of his father, Vladek Spiegelman, during the war. There is a certain irony in this in that the people in this story are all portrayed as animals along racial lines. The Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, the Poles pigs and the French frogs. This is Art Spiegelman turning Nazi ideology on its head by deliberately playing according to its stereotypes. The lines between races is very clear cut in Maus yet the personalities portrayed goes flat against that. There are decent Poles and really rotten Jews, The Jews may be mice but they are most certainly not vermin.
At various points in the novel the characters wear masks. For example Vladek wears a pig mask when walking the streets a Pole. Art portrays himself at one point as a human wearing a mouse mask. The species that we are faced with are revealed to be nothing more than masks. Everyone is human though circumstances have forced them to wear animals masks and assume a given identity.
The problem with Holocaust survivor testimony, as with any form of personal recollection, is that it offers no context. Mr. Schwartz you tell us that you were shipped by train to Auschwitz. On what day did you arrive? How many people were on the train with you? How do you know that those in the other line were sent to their deaths? How do you know that there were gas chambers or that the smokestacks you saw were from cremated bodies? What can you tell us about the survival rates for camp inmates? It is unlikely that our hypothetical Holocaust survivor would be able to offer satisfactory answers based on his personal experience. Holocaust survivor testimony comes up particularly short when compared with hard documents. I have the German documents to tell me on almost any given day how many trains arrived in Auschwitz and how many people were on board. These documents tell me all I need to know about the operation of the gas chambers and the crematoria. The documents tell me what the survival rates were from camp inmates. As a historian, therefore, I do not need Mr. Schwartz. (What I did not mention in class, for obvious reasons, was that there are also serious accuracy problems with survivor testimonies. It was a running joke for those of us working on the MALACH program that every high ranking German officer in these testimonies was either Heinrich Himmler or Adolf Eichmann and that every doctor was Josef Mangele. It is for this reason, as well as what I said previously, that Deborah Lipstadt made a specific point of not using survivor testimony during her trial with David Irving. Instead she lined up professional historians armed with documents to take the witness stand and call Irving a fraud and a liar.)
Holocaust survivor testimony does serve a useful purpose, though, in that it can put a human face on material. The assigned reading, Maus by Art Spiegelman, is an excellent example of this. Maus is a graphic novel based on the experiances of his father, Vladek Spiegelman, during the war. There is a certain irony in this in that the people in this story are all portrayed as animals along racial lines. The Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, the Poles pigs and the French frogs. This is Art Spiegelman turning Nazi ideology on its head by deliberately playing according to its stereotypes. The lines between races is very clear cut in Maus yet the personalities portrayed goes flat against that. There are decent Poles and really rotten Jews, The Jews may be mice but they are most certainly not vermin.
At various points in the novel the characters wear masks. For example Vladek wears a pig mask when walking the streets a Pole. Art portrays himself at one point as a human wearing a mouse mask. The species that we are faced with are revealed to be nothing more than masks. Everyone is human though circumstances have forced them to wear animals masks and assume a given identity.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
History 112: Putting in a Good Word for Comrade Stalin
As readers of this blog and those who know me in person are aware, I am politically fairly conservative, at least by college campus standards. I view Communism, at least the variety that believes in the use of force to achieve its aims, in only slightly more favorable terms than Nazism. Even that is largely due to the fact that, as the grandson of Holocaust survivors, Nazism is something personal. In truth, expropriating the wealth of all those with something worthwhile to steal before sending them off to their deaths is hardly an improvement over expropriating the wealth of your least favorite racial group before shipping them off to their deaths. The later makes you a mass murdering racist. The former makes you a mass murdering hostis humani generis (enemy of the human race).
With this in mind, I found myself bending over backwards, in class, to defend Joseph Stalin’s five year program to industrialize the Soviet Union during the 1930s. To be clear, this move by Stalin was a humanitarian catastrophe to rival anything down by Nazi Germany. While there was a full scale famine engulfing the Soviet Union, caused by lousy economic theory and even worse science, the Soviet Union was shipping wheat to the West. In essence the Soviet government allowed upwards of seven million people to starve to death in the Ukraine in order to buy machinery. In addition to this tens of millions of people were shipped off to Siberian gulags as class enemies. As a historian, though, it is my job to get past the polemics and even, in some sense, to redeem those being studied. I want my students to learn something more from me than just “Stalin and Communism were evil and that western intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw, who traveled to the Soviet Union during the 1930s, were dupes for praising it.” To say that Stalin and Communism were evil, while true, is of little interest. The historical method, though, forces us to make things interesting by asking questions such as why, if Stalinist Russia was as bad as it was, did people support it. Why would a sane rational person support Stalin?
During a period in which the entire western world was gripped by the Great Depression, the Soviet Union was experiencing a rise in production. While mass unemployment was the norm across the western world, the Soviet Union had full employment. The Soviet government was bringing roads, machines and electricity to people who never had them. Thanks to Communism, millions of people who never had the opportunity to learn to read or get an education were now being given the chance to go to school. This is not to deny the very real dark side to Stalinist Russia, but this side is also real.
The assigned reading for this class, selections from John Scott’s Behind the Urals, proved to be remarkably useful for this person. Scott was an American steel worker who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1931 and worked at Magnitogorsk, one of the major Soviet industrial centers built during this period. While Scott came to the Soviet Union as an idealistic believer, his first hand experience soon soured him. As such Scott is perfectly willing to criticize the Soviet government and is quite frank about the human cost of Stalin’s actions. That being said Scott’s main purpose is not to attack Stalin or the Soviet Union, but to recount his experience and to give a sense of the people he worked with, most of whom he treats quite positively.
I will take it as a mark of honor if one of my students were to complain that I am a Communist, using my position to ensnare innocent young minds into my political ideology.
With this in mind, I found myself bending over backwards, in class, to defend Joseph Stalin’s five year program to industrialize the Soviet Union during the 1930s. To be clear, this move by Stalin was a humanitarian catastrophe to rival anything down by Nazi Germany. While there was a full scale famine engulfing the Soviet Union, caused by lousy economic theory and even worse science, the Soviet Union was shipping wheat to the West. In essence the Soviet government allowed upwards of seven million people to starve to death in the Ukraine in order to buy machinery. In addition to this tens of millions of people were shipped off to Siberian gulags as class enemies. As a historian, though, it is my job to get past the polemics and even, in some sense, to redeem those being studied. I want my students to learn something more from me than just “Stalin and Communism were evil and that western intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw, who traveled to the Soviet Union during the 1930s, were dupes for praising it.” To say that Stalin and Communism were evil, while true, is of little interest. The historical method, though, forces us to make things interesting by asking questions such as why, if Stalinist Russia was as bad as it was, did people support it. Why would a sane rational person support Stalin?
During a period in which the entire western world was gripped by the Great Depression, the Soviet Union was experiencing a rise in production. While mass unemployment was the norm across the western world, the Soviet Union had full employment. The Soviet government was bringing roads, machines and electricity to people who never had them. Thanks to Communism, millions of people who never had the opportunity to learn to read or get an education were now being given the chance to go to school. This is not to deny the very real dark side to Stalinist Russia, but this side is also real.
The assigned reading for this class, selections from John Scott’s Behind the Urals, proved to be remarkably useful for this person. Scott was an American steel worker who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1931 and worked at Magnitogorsk, one of the major Soviet industrial centers built during this period. While Scott came to the Soviet Union as an idealistic believer, his first hand experience soon soured him. As such Scott is perfectly willing to criticize the Soviet government and is quite frank about the human cost of Stalin’s actions. That being said Scott’s main purpose is not to attack Stalin or the Soviet Union, but to recount his experience and to give a sense of the people he worked with, most of whom he treats quite positively.
I will take it as a mark of honor if one of my students were to complain that I am a Communist, using my position to ensnare innocent young minds into my political ideology.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Birthday Presents
Today is my twenty-sixth birthday. Here are some of the things on my birthday wish list, ranging from the personal to the “in terra pax homínibus bonæ voluntátis.” I would like Patrick Rothfuss to finally finish Wise Man’s Fear and for Amazon to stop filling me with false hope about its release. For those of you who do not understand what I am talking about I strongly suggest that they pick up a copy of Name of the Wind and read what is looking to join Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever as one of the greatest works of fantasy ever written. While we are on the topic of Thomas Covenant, I would not say no to having book three of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Against All Things Ending, come out a little sooner. It is slated for 2010. It would be nice if Stephenie Meyer would reconsider her decision not to complete Midnight Sun, her parallel novel to Twilight. Can Fox cancel Joss Whedon’s miserable new television series, Dollhouse, and then allow him to bring Firefly back?
For Israel I would ask that they may form a stable coalition of parties that will actually manage to stay together for a full four years; a coalition made up of conservative parties that will actually defend Israel. May they be able to do this without the help of a single Haredi party to hold the government hostage. Benjamin Netanyahu is one of a rare breed of non-American politicians who supports limited government; he grew up here in the United States and received much of his political training here. So his leadership may have an economic side bonus for Israel. For America, I would ask that they be given a Democratic party that will, now that they are in power, take the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously and a Republican party that will, now that they have been rightly tossed out of power, support limited government. I think having at least one small government party, even if it the one in the minority, is worth wishing for.
For those of you who are unable to come through with any of these gift suggestions, but still wish to get me something here is my Amazon wish list.
For Israel I would ask that they may form a stable coalition of parties that will actually manage to stay together for a full four years; a coalition made up of conservative parties that will actually defend Israel. May they be able to do this without the help of a single Haredi party to hold the government hostage. Benjamin Netanyahu is one of a rare breed of non-American politicians who supports limited government; he grew up here in the United States and received much of his political training here. So his leadership may have an economic side bonus for Israel. For America, I would ask that they be given a Democratic party that will, now that they are in power, take the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously and a Republican party that will, now that they have been rightly tossed out of power, support limited government. I think having at least one small government party, even if it the one in the minority, is worth wishing for.
For those of you who are unable to come through with any of these gift suggestions, but still wish to get me something here is my Amazon wish list.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Religious Choices: A Response to Bart
This is a response to a recent comment from Bart, who challenged me as to my consistency in choosing to follow certain laws while ignoring others. He raises some good questions. Different people may respond differently to them, here is mine.
There are two issues at hand here. There is the issue of the relationship between one’s personal values and the public policies that one supports and then there is the issue of the process of religious decision making. As to the first issue, which I think is really the side issue here, I do not believe that making laws against theft is forcing one’s values on other people as theft is an action that does direct empirical harm to others. Someone breaking into my apartment and stealing my television is different from my atheist gay neighbor having gay sex with his boyfriend and reading PZ Myers to him in the privacy of his own home. Since I am a Libertarian and take a hard-line stance on the distinction between empirical and non-empirical damage, I am in a far better position than most when it comes to this issue.
To transition into the second and what I think the real issue at hand. While my religion may ban me from having gay sex and, arguably, bans my neighbor from having gay sex, there is nothing in my religion that says that I have to try to stop him either through physical force or through my vote. The most my religion may ask of me is to politely “rebuke” my neighbor and point out that there are alternatives to his way of thinking and living. Even this would be assuming that I am qualified to rebuke people. There are many people out there who have taken it upon themselves to serve as rebukers, who are not qualified and do far more harm than good.
Just as I am under no obligation to stop gay sex I am under no obligation to stop gay marriage. I am sorry if I was not clear on this matter previously, but while I do not support having Judaism recognize gay marriage, I have no problem if the State of Ohio or the Federal government decides to legalize gay marriage. Homosexuality is not different than any other sin. How much sleep do you think I have lost over the government subsidizing pig farmers? Well mainly because, as a Libertarian, I oppose pretty much all government subsidies, but not because of anything having to do with Leviticus. So I am not "amending" God’s law to suit modern times. The same ban on homosexuality from biblical times is still in place in full force. I would also point out that as a Jew I am in a far better position than a Christian in regard to this issue. I do not say that homosexual sex is an abomination while pork or a shrimp cocktail (a la Prop 8: the Musical) is okay.
All serious thinking people, no matter their theology, will, on a regular basis, find themselves having to weigh different issues against each other. The threat posed by Saddam Hussein weighed against the cost and dangers of trying to removing him from power. The desire to protect unborn children weighed against a person’s right to control their own bodies. (Unlike most feminists, I am actually consistent on this issue since when I talk about the right to make choices when it comes to one’s own body I am not only talking about abortion but also the right to use drugs and sell one’s organs on an open market. I do not believe in men’s rights or women’s rights. I believe in human rights.) Inevitably, one is going to have to make compromises. I do not believe that all those who opposed the war in Iraq wanted Saddam in power or that those who support abortion want to butcher fetuses. They made a decision to way one issue over another.
This applies to religion as well. When one engages with a religion one is engaging a whole complex tradition. For example Islam. People who quote passages in the Koran that support violence against unbelievers and compares Jews and Christians to apes are missing the point. Islam is a lot more than just the Koran; it is a whole body of different legal traditions. If you wish to understand Islam’s view of violence toward unbelievers you cannot just look in the Koran you also have to follow the issue through nearly fifteen hundred years of Islamic legal thought. The Koran deals with a situation in the seventh century where Mohammed and his followers were at war with Jews and Christians. How should Muslims in twenty-first century America apply these passages? There is a range of possibilities and a religious Muslim would possess a lot of leeway, while working under the guidance of his local Islamic religious authority and the Islamic legal tradition. There are a number of Muslims in the history department here at Ohio State. The ones that I have gotten to know are all really good people. To the best of my knowledge, none of them have tried to murder me. That does not make them bad Muslims or cafeteria Muslims, choosing to practice some things while ignoring other things. They are simply the products of a fifteen hundred year tradition in dialogue with twenty-first century America.
Here is a World War II Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny taking on a pack of Japanese soldiers. It climaxes with Bugs handing out ice cream covered grenades to apelike Japanese soldiers to blow them to bits. This is a fairly racist piece and not the sort of thing that I would want to be shown to children without corrective commentary. That being said, I would not interpret this cartoon as Warner Brothers telling me that my Japanese neighbors in twenty-first century America are monkeys and that I should go wage jihad against them. It is self-understood that this cartoon was made in a very specific context, World War II, and that it is meant only to apply to this very specific context.
This past week, in the weekly Torah portion, we read the famous (or infamous) passage of “thou shall not suffer a mechashefa (usually translated as “witch”) to live.” (Exodus 22:17) This passage has been used to justify a lot of horrible things, among the least of which has been the attempt to ban Harry Potter. As one can see from this blog, I am a very big Harry Potter fan. I do not see this as me making compromises with the modern world. As I understand the passage, it is not meant to ban the actions described in Harry Potter let alone to ban me from reading about them.
To conclude, I do not see myself as making compromises with the modern world. At no point do I simply say that something does not fit in with modern values and can therefore simply be done away with. My actions and lifestyle choices are well rooted within Jewish tradition. I grant you that there is a personal element to this. I am ultimately the one who has to make choices for myself. I am a product of twenty-first century America so the process with which I look at Jewish sources and make decisions about how to act as a Jew is going to be different than Jews who lived in first-century Judea or fifteenth-century Spain. This does not mean that I am making arbitrary choices simply to suit myself; there is a thought process.
There are two issues at hand here. There is the issue of the relationship between one’s personal values and the public policies that one supports and then there is the issue of the process of religious decision making. As to the first issue, which I think is really the side issue here, I do not believe that making laws against theft is forcing one’s values on other people as theft is an action that does direct empirical harm to others. Someone breaking into my apartment and stealing my television is different from my atheist gay neighbor having gay sex with his boyfriend and reading PZ Myers to him in the privacy of his own home. Since I am a Libertarian and take a hard-line stance on the distinction between empirical and non-empirical damage, I am in a far better position than most when it comes to this issue.
To transition into the second and what I think the real issue at hand. While my religion may ban me from having gay sex and, arguably, bans my neighbor from having gay sex, there is nothing in my religion that says that I have to try to stop him either through physical force or through my vote. The most my religion may ask of me is to politely “rebuke” my neighbor and point out that there are alternatives to his way of thinking and living. Even this would be assuming that I am qualified to rebuke people. There are many people out there who have taken it upon themselves to serve as rebukers, who are not qualified and do far more harm than good.
Just as I am under no obligation to stop gay sex I am under no obligation to stop gay marriage. I am sorry if I was not clear on this matter previously, but while I do not support having Judaism recognize gay marriage, I have no problem if the State of Ohio or the Federal government decides to legalize gay marriage. Homosexuality is not different than any other sin. How much sleep do you think I have lost over the government subsidizing pig farmers? Well mainly because, as a Libertarian, I oppose pretty much all government subsidies, but not because of anything having to do with Leviticus. So I am not "amending" God’s law to suit modern times. The same ban on homosexuality from biblical times is still in place in full force. I would also point out that as a Jew I am in a far better position than a Christian in regard to this issue. I do not say that homosexual sex is an abomination while pork or a shrimp cocktail (a la Prop 8: the Musical) is okay.
All serious thinking people, no matter their theology, will, on a regular basis, find themselves having to weigh different issues against each other. The threat posed by Saddam Hussein weighed against the cost and dangers of trying to removing him from power. The desire to protect unborn children weighed against a person’s right to control their own bodies. (Unlike most feminists, I am actually consistent on this issue since when I talk about the right to make choices when it comes to one’s own body I am not only talking about abortion but also the right to use drugs and sell one’s organs on an open market. I do not believe in men’s rights or women’s rights. I believe in human rights.) Inevitably, one is going to have to make compromises. I do not believe that all those who opposed the war in Iraq wanted Saddam in power or that those who support abortion want to butcher fetuses. They made a decision to way one issue over another.
This applies to religion as well. When one engages with a religion one is engaging a whole complex tradition. For example Islam. People who quote passages in the Koran that support violence against unbelievers and compares Jews and Christians to apes are missing the point. Islam is a lot more than just the Koran; it is a whole body of different legal traditions. If you wish to understand Islam’s view of violence toward unbelievers you cannot just look in the Koran you also have to follow the issue through nearly fifteen hundred years of Islamic legal thought. The Koran deals with a situation in the seventh century where Mohammed and his followers were at war with Jews and Christians. How should Muslims in twenty-first century America apply these passages? There is a range of possibilities and a religious Muslim would possess a lot of leeway, while working under the guidance of his local Islamic religious authority and the Islamic legal tradition. There are a number of Muslims in the history department here at Ohio State. The ones that I have gotten to know are all really good people. To the best of my knowledge, none of them have tried to murder me. That does not make them bad Muslims or cafeteria Muslims, choosing to practice some things while ignoring other things. They are simply the products of a fifteen hundred year tradition in dialogue with twenty-first century America.
Here is a World War II Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny taking on a pack of Japanese soldiers. It climaxes with Bugs handing out ice cream covered grenades to apelike Japanese soldiers to blow them to bits. This is a fairly racist piece and not the sort of thing that I would want to be shown to children without corrective commentary. That being said, I would not interpret this cartoon as Warner Brothers telling me that my Japanese neighbors in twenty-first century America are monkeys and that I should go wage jihad against them. It is self-understood that this cartoon was made in a very specific context, World War II, and that it is meant only to apply to this very specific context.
This past week, in the weekly Torah portion, we read the famous (or infamous) passage of “thou shall not suffer a mechashefa (usually translated as “witch”) to live.” (Exodus 22:17) This passage has been used to justify a lot of horrible things, among the least of which has been the attempt to ban Harry Potter. As one can see from this blog, I am a very big Harry Potter fan. I do not see this as me making compromises with the modern world. As I understand the passage, it is not meant to ban the actions described in Harry Potter let alone to ban me from reading about them.
To conclude, I do not see myself as making compromises with the modern world. At no point do I simply say that something does not fit in with modern values and can therefore simply be done away with. My actions and lifestyle choices are well rooted within Jewish tradition. I grant you that there is a personal element to this. I am ultimately the one who has to make choices for myself. I am a product of twenty-first century America so the process with which I look at Jewish sources and make decisions about how to act as a Jew is going to be different than Jews who lived in first-century Judea or fifteenth-century Spain. This does not mean that I am making arbitrary choices simply to suit myself; there is a thought process.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Ann Coulter Versus Historians
Ann Coulter takes a swipe at historians with her latest piece, “Why We Don’t Celebrate ‘Historians Day.” Her complaint is that a recent poll of historians ranked George W. Bush the seventh worst president in American history. According to Coulter:
Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing political activism in a cushy university job.
Coulter goes on to note that this is shocking as “most liberals can't even name seven U.S. presidents.”
I know many very liberal historians and yes they can name more than seven U.S. presidents. Speaking as a historian who has never been a member of the Weather Underground and has never used a cushy university job to engage in left wing political activism, if historians really wanted to go after Bush they would have placed him last. Regardless of what one thinks of his policies, and I am probably more sympathetic to them than most in my profession, it is very difficult to give Bush high marks as a president. Was he effective in rallying his party and a clear cut majority of the electorate around his policies? With the exception of the weeks after September 11, no. Was he a masterful orator? No. Maybe he was like Eisenhower and subtly controlled his advisors without anyone knowing? Time will tell, but as far we could see, this was a president controlled by his staff as few in history have been. I cannot think of one positive way that Bush affected the office of the presidency. While none of this means that Bush was a completely horrible president, he should be viewed as mediocre to well below average. Seventh worst may be a bit tough, but it is not unreasonable. If I were voting I would probably have Bush ranked somewhere between twenty-five and thirty spots from the top. But then again I am biased, I voted for the man.
Personally I do not think whe can properly evaluate and rank recent presidents. One needs some distance for that. I would say fifty years. So we are just about ready to evaluate and rank Kennedy.
Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing political activism in a cushy university job.
Coulter goes on to note that this is shocking as “most liberals can't even name seven U.S. presidents.”
I know many very liberal historians and yes they can name more than seven U.S. presidents. Speaking as a historian who has never been a member of the Weather Underground and has never used a cushy university job to engage in left wing political activism, if historians really wanted to go after Bush they would have placed him last. Regardless of what one thinks of his policies, and I am probably more sympathetic to them than most in my profession, it is very difficult to give Bush high marks as a president. Was he effective in rallying his party and a clear cut majority of the electorate around his policies? With the exception of the weeks after September 11, no. Was he a masterful orator? No. Maybe he was like Eisenhower and subtly controlled his advisors without anyone knowing? Time will tell, but as far we could see, this was a president controlled by his staff as few in history have been. I cannot think of one positive way that Bush affected the office of the presidency. While none of this means that Bush was a completely horrible president, he should be viewed as mediocre to well below average. Seventh worst may be a bit tough, but it is not unreasonable. If I were voting I would probably have Bush ranked somewhere between twenty-five and thirty spots from the top. But then again I am biased, I voted for the man.
Personally I do not think whe can properly evaluate and rank recent presidents. One needs some distance for that. I would say fifty years. So we are just about ready to evaluate and rank Kennedy.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
An Introduction and a Word of Explanation: A Response to Some Comments (Part II)
Part I
The place, I suspect, were I part ways with most of those writing comments is that I am a committed theist, even if it is a very abstract deity, and desire to come to terms with Him. I do not claim to be able to prove that this deity exists in any ultimate sense. I accept his existence as a more reasonable alternative to not having such a being. (I am willing to elaborate on this in future posts, but I expect that many of my readers will just have to agree to disagree with me on this one.)
When talking about secularism it is important to distinguish between several different issues. There are many things that may be labeled as secular that I support. For example, I support the secularization of the political sphere. I have no interest to go back to kings presiding over Church councils to decide religious dogma. This view of the political as something divorced from religion owes itself to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as much as it does to John Locke and John Stuart Mill. I also have no interest in trying to force my own morality on other people. I am a Libertarian and I take an even more extreme stance on this issue than most liberals. I go so far as to support the legalization of prostitution and of all drugs, including hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. I believe that a person should have the right to control one’s body so not only do I believe in legalized abortion but I also believe that people should be able to sell their kidneys and other bodily organs on the open market. I am even willing to go along with gay marriage. (I also believe that private businesses should have the right to practice discrimination but we can save that for later.) I am perfectly willing to live my own simple puritanical life in a fully hedonistic world. This would again be an example of the Augustinian side to me. I expect the world to be sinful and corrupt so I am going to live my life and not worry too much about everyone else.
This political secularism is very different from social secularism and secular moral values. While there are many social and ethical issues that we agree on and can work together like fighting poverty and racism. That being said, there are ethical differences between me and much of the secular world. For me, sexuality is an ethical issue. Sex, in of itself, is ethically problematic since it involves physically taking someone and using their body as a means to your own pleasure. (I hope to further delve into this issue in later posts) I would no more do anything to enable and encourage unmarried teenagers to have sex than I would to help them in acts of racism and intolerance that cause no physical harm to others.
There is a type of secularism that I find attractive and is where I would go if I ever decided to abandon Judaism, theistic ethical humanism. To believe in God as the creator of the laws of nature and the giver of moral law and to attempt to relate to him particularly through living an ethical life that advances the human race. This may be a more accurate description of my theology than Orthodox Judaism. (Why I remain an Orthodox Jew and do not take this option is an issue for a different post.) This brand of secularism would maintain the same moral standards as any formal religion and would still value ritual, whilst doing away with the dogma of religion; it would be a religion of reason.
Be that as it may, I choose to operate within the context of Orthodox Judaism and to relate to my theoretical deity through the prism of Orthodox Judaism. More than the Bible, this means the rabbinic tradition. As with most traditions, this is not a coherent whole but a stream with many different branches. I try to make the decisions as to what I accept not out a sense of what is most convenient for me but with an eye to defending what I see as the best of the tradition. A big part of this is that I submit myself to religious authorities and recognize that the buck stops with them. They may get it right they may get it wrong, but someone has to make a decision.
As long as I remain within Orthodox Judaism I am going to make a serious effort to keep to Jewish practice to the best of my understanding. So for example, even when I am at the HCCO banquet and I see no other Orthodox Jews around, I am not going to sample the salmon or the chocolate chip cookies even though one could make a good case that they are kosher from the perspective of the Bible. For me, kosher is a way that I can relate to God with every bite of food that I eat. I am also a Kantian so I am going to keep those rules of my own making and am not about to cheat on those rules even if it is for a small thing of little consequences. Being consistent and true to one’s own rules is something of supreme value.
The place, I suspect, were I part ways with most of those writing comments is that I am a committed theist, even if it is a very abstract deity, and desire to come to terms with Him. I do not claim to be able to prove that this deity exists in any ultimate sense. I accept his existence as a more reasonable alternative to not having such a being. (I am willing to elaborate on this in future posts, but I expect that many of my readers will just have to agree to disagree with me on this one.)
When talking about secularism it is important to distinguish between several different issues. There are many things that may be labeled as secular that I support. For example, I support the secularization of the political sphere. I have no interest to go back to kings presiding over Church councils to decide religious dogma. This view of the political as something divorced from religion owes itself to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as much as it does to John Locke and John Stuart Mill. I also have no interest in trying to force my own morality on other people. I am a Libertarian and I take an even more extreme stance on this issue than most liberals. I go so far as to support the legalization of prostitution and of all drugs, including hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. I believe that a person should have the right to control one’s body so not only do I believe in legalized abortion but I also believe that people should be able to sell their kidneys and other bodily organs on the open market. I am even willing to go along with gay marriage. (I also believe that private businesses should have the right to practice discrimination but we can save that for later.) I am perfectly willing to live my own simple puritanical life in a fully hedonistic world. This would again be an example of the Augustinian side to me. I expect the world to be sinful and corrupt so I am going to live my life and not worry too much about everyone else.
This political secularism is very different from social secularism and secular moral values. While there are many social and ethical issues that we agree on and can work together like fighting poverty and racism. That being said, there are ethical differences between me and much of the secular world. For me, sexuality is an ethical issue. Sex, in of itself, is ethically problematic since it involves physically taking someone and using their body as a means to your own pleasure. (I hope to further delve into this issue in later posts) I would no more do anything to enable and encourage unmarried teenagers to have sex than I would to help them in acts of racism and intolerance that cause no physical harm to others.
There is a type of secularism that I find attractive and is where I would go if I ever decided to abandon Judaism, theistic ethical humanism. To believe in God as the creator of the laws of nature and the giver of moral law and to attempt to relate to him particularly through living an ethical life that advances the human race. This may be a more accurate description of my theology than Orthodox Judaism. (Why I remain an Orthodox Jew and do not take this option is an issue for a different post.) This brand of secularism would maintain the same moral standards as any formal religion and would still value ritual, whilst doing away with the dogma of religion; it would be a religion of reason.
Be that as it may, I choose to operate within the context of Orthodox Judaism and to relate to my theoretical deity through the prism of Orthodox Judaism. More than the Bible, this means the rabbinic tradition. As with most traditions, this is not a coherent whole but a stream with many different branches. I try to make the decisions as to what I accept not out a sense of what is most convenient for me but with an eye to defending what I see as the best of the tradition. A big part of this is that I submit myself to religious authorities and recognize that the buck stops with them. They may get it right they may get it wrong, but someone has to make a decision.
As long as I remain within Orthodox Judaism I am going to make a serious effort to keep to Jewish practice to the best of my understanding. So for example, even when I am at the HCCO banquet and I see no other Orthodox Jews around, I am not going to sample the salmon or the chocolate chip cookies even though one could make a good case that they are kosher from the perspective of the Bible. For me, kosher is a way that I can relate to God with every bite of food that I eat. I am also a Kantian so I am going to keep those rules of my own making and am not about to cheat on those rules even if it is for a small thing of little consequences. Being consistent and true to one’s own rules is something of supreme value.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
An Introduction and a Word of Explanation: A Response to Some Comments (Part I)
My recent post on PZ Myers’ lecture has generated a lot of discussion. There were a number of excellent comments that deserve full responses. Also, since there were many first-timers to this blog, I thought it would be worthwhile to put in a word of explanation as to who I am and the nature of this blog. First off, while I am a theist and a practicing Orthodox Jew, I welcome people and ideas of all sorts. I am not trying to preach to anyone or convince anyone to follow any particular system of belief and practice. I try to treat everyone with respect. For example, I have received positive comments from Mormons for my postings on Mormonism, thanking me for treating them fairly. This, I think, comes out of the fact that this blog exists more for my education and my personal search than for anyone else. I wish to understand people on their own terms. So no matter whom you are or what you believe, I am interested in you and what you believe for its own sake. I want you to help me understand.
I come from a specific place, which affects what sort of questions I ask and the issues that I interest myself in. Obviously, as with the thinkers I study professionally, I am also a product of my environment and time period. If I were to put an overarching thesis to my thought it would be: I have rejected much of the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) upbringing of my youth, but am critical of what I see in modern secularism so I am left trying to consider alternatives. Underlying this thesis are the questions of why I am not Haredi, or, for that matter, any other type of religious fundamentalist, and why am I not a secularist.
For the purposes of this blog, religious fundamentalism is a response to modernity that argues that one’s sacred texts are by definition the Truth and therefore any claims made by the methods of thought developed by modernity that contradict said sacred texts are by definition false. The irony of this is that religious fundamentalism is as much a product of modernity as the secularism it is supposed to oppose. Secularism is the ideology that one should operate outside of any traditional religion. It should be noted that secular is not the same as being an atheist. One can believe in God and still choose not to accept any established religion.
I strongly suspect that most of those who commented on my previous post will strongly be able to identify with my rejection of religious fundamentalism and it is likely that on that front we share a lot in common. It is the second question of why I am not a secularist that seems to befuddle many. So why am I not working “toward helping to advance humanity out of the shadows of religion toward the sunlight of secularism?” What do I have against secularism? “Is it the scientific facts underpinning secularism or the chaotic freedom of the social aspects that [I] disagree with? And if it is the latter, is that based on personal distaste for modern culture or leftover religious proscriptions? Why would a seemingly rational person like myself “who accepts facts through the lens of inquiry, not dogma” refuse to eat food that was not kosher?
I am glad that so many of you are willing to give me the benefit of doubt that I am a rational being and not some superstitious relic from an ancient world. I believe I owe you the respect to not try to preach to you or to try to claim that my way of doing things is some unchallengeable only road to the Truth. For one thing, I do not believe that myself about my own beliefs. I am just a graduate student in his mid-twenties trying to make an educated rational guess as to the nature of this world and trying to come up with a plausible way of living based on that best guess. What I will try, in this post and in the future, is to prove worthy of your benefit of the doubt by making the case for my rationality.
(To be continued …)
I come from a specific place, which affects what sort of questions I ask and the issues that I interest myself in. Obviously, as with the thinkers I study professionally, I am also a product of my environment and time period. If I were to put an overarching thesis to my thought it would be: I have rejected much of the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) upbringing of my youth, but am critical of what I see in modern secularism so I am left trying to consider alternatives. Underlying this thesis are the questions of why I am not Haredi, or, for that matter, any other type of religious fundamentalist, and why am I not a secularist.
For the purposes of this blog, religious fundamentalism is a response to modernity that argues that one’s sacred texts are by definition the Truth and therefore any claims made by the methods of thought developed by modernity that contradict said sacred texts are by definition false. The irony of this is that religious fundamentalism is as much a product of modernity as the secularism it is supposed to oppose. Secularism is the ideology that one should operate outside of any traditional religion. It should be noted that secular is not the same as being an atheist. One can believe in God and still choose not to accept any established religion.
I strongly suspect that most of those who commented on my previous post will strongly be able to identify with my rejection of religious fundamentalism and it is likely that on that front we share a lot in common. It is the second question of why I am not a secularist that seems to befuddle many. So why am I not working “toward helping to advance humanity out of the shadows of religion toward the sunlight of secularism?” What do I have against secularism? “Is it the scientific facts underpinning secularism or the chaotic freedom of the social aspects that [I] disagree with? And if it is the latter, is that based on personal distaste for modern culture or leftover religious proscriptions? Why would a seemingly rational person like myself “who accepts facts through the lens of inquiry, not dogma” refuse to eat food that was not kosher?
I am glad that so many of you are willing to give me the benefit of doubt that I am a rational being and not some superstitious relic from an ancient world. I believe I owe you the respect to not try to preach to you or to try to claim that my way of doing things is some unchallengeable only road to the Truth. For one thing, I do not believe that myself about my own beliefs. I am just a graduate student in his mid-twenties trying to make an educated rational guess as to the nature of this world and trying to come up with a plausible way of living based on that best guess. What I will try, in this post and in the future, is to prove worthy of your benefit of the doubt by making the case for my rationality.
(To be continued …)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
The Atheist Convention in Columbus
(For those of you who did not grow up in the Orthodox Jewish community during the mid 90s, the title refers to a song, “the Atheist Convention in L.A.” The song is about a Muslim atheist, a Christian atheist and a Jewish atheist traveling to Los Angeles for an atheist convention. During the flight there is an accident and the plane begins to go down. The three atheists, believing that they are going to die, all begin to pray. The plane mysteriously manages to right itself and everyone on board is saved. The song ends with the three atheists each returning to their ancestral faith.)
This past Saturday evening, the Humanist Community of Central Ohio hosted Pharyngula’s Dr. PZ Myers as part of their banquet in honor of Darwin Day. The event was held at the Fawcett Center, just a few blocks away from where I live. As a reader of Pharyngula, I did not want to miss the opportunity. I did not want to attend the banquet, though, since it cost $25 for students and it would not have been kosher anyway so I contacted the Humanist Community to find out if I could come just for the lecture and they very nicely said yes, though they recommended a $5 donation, which was perfectly reasonable.
PZ Myers is an atheist in the Richard Dawkins mold, known for his hard-hitting polemics. I expected more of the same here. The PZ Myers I heard and got to speak briefly with afterward managed to surprise me. He was not the internet polemicist that I was familiar with, but a scholar, a biologist and a gentleman. He spoke magnificently, putting complex ideas across in ways that a lay audience could understand without talking down to them. What particularly gained him respect in my eyes was that he avoided taking potshots at William Paley, the nineteenth-century English theologian who authored the famous watchmaker argument for design, and actually praised him. I only wish that more people could see Dr. PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota-Morris and not just PZ Myers of Pharyngula; our cultural discourse would be all the healthier for it.
Here are my notes summarizing Dr. Myers’ lecture. As always any mistakes are mine.
Darwin and Design by PZ Myers
Charles Darwin went on his famous five-year sea voyage (1831-36) on the Beagle, during which time he formulated his theory when he was twenty-two years old. We are used to thinking of Darwin as an old man with a beard, but he was really not that much older than our college students when he began his work on evolution. Darwin did not immediately publish his thoughts upon his return to England. He spent more than twenty years doing further research, particularly on barnacles. This is one of the things that scientists today so love about him.
To put Darwin’s argument in syllogistic form:
If there is a variability in a population
If success correlates to variation
If excess reproduction occurs
If variation is heritable
Than the relative frequency of the different variants must change (adaption will occur)
It should be pointed out that, in practice, there is no difference between micro and macroevolution. It is all really one thing.
It is interesting to note that Thomas Huxley, later known as “Darwin’s bulldog” started off as an opponent of evolution, but was converted upon reading a draft of the Origin of Species.
Darwin was heavily influenced by William Paley and his book, Natural Theology. Paley wished to show how complex the natural world was and how this necessitated a creator. Paley acted as a sort of scientist, though coming from a theological perspective, and you have to respect him for that. A big chunk of the Origin of Species is a rebuttal to Paley. Darwin blew Intelligent Design out of the water in 1859.
Biologists can show how complex designs can come about from simple designs. This process is called Bricolage. This term is taken from the arts; one tinkers with existing designs and creates something new from it. What we see in the natural world is cobbled together from different pieces.
It is difficult to define complexity. For example, the driftwood debris at Olympia beach in Washington is complex, far more complex than a brick wall, but came about through a natural process. It would be very difficult to draw the debris and it serves a multitude of purposes, such as food for various organisms, yet it is all due to chance. Random things are much more complex than things that are designed.
Human beings are complex. Brad Pitt, for example is a metazoan. He possesses approximately 5 x 1013 cells and twenty thousand genes. 4% of these genes are for adhesion, 12% signaling and 6% act as switches. His brain consists of 1012 cells, 1011 neurons and 1014 synopses.
This is what creationists do; point out how complex life is and say that God must have done it. Of course simply saying that God did it is not very interesting. Much of what we see in such a complex metazoan as Brad Pitt is reproduced in simple organisms.
Choanoflagellates are single cell organisms that have a lot in common with sponges. We see that they are able to clump together and act as a singular organism. This could be a precursor to multi-celled organisms. The Choanoflagellate possesses things that were once thought to be unique to metazoans; they have receptors such as tyrosine kinases, cadherins and integrins. Trichoplax adhaerens are in a phylum all by themselves. Think of them as micro organic versions of the Blob. They possess genes found in complex brains like ours. In essence our brain is a glorified digestive system. What we think is special about us exists in simpler organisms, serving another purpose.
But evolution can also create things. Nylonase bacteria eat nylon, a product which did not exist before the 1930s. A Japanese nylon factory was dumping waste into the local river and sure enough within a matter of decades the bacteria had evolved to be able to eat nylon. What we have here is a frameshift where a previously useless protein turns out to be useful in binding to nylon. The bacteria were able to exploit this.
In conclusion, nature is not an engineer. The factors that play a role in change are chance, modularity, multifunctionality, incremental tinkering and contingency.
There was a question and answer session following the lecture where Dr. Myers again proved to be far more congenial and far more open to certain nuances than he is on Pharyngula. He acknowledged the need for multiple approaches such as trying to build bridges as opposed to the no holds barred method of attack usually employed by him and Dawkins. Myers noted that part of the problem with attacking organized religion is that many people out there have deeply religious relatives who are wonderful people whom they love. So when you attack religion people take it as a personal attack on their grandmother or the like. (This is somewhat disingenuous on his part as his attacks can get quite personal.) He talked a bit about the documentary Expelled. He had a great story about him trying to go see a pre-screening with Dawkins. Apparently Myers was recognized and kicked out, but nobody kicked out Dawkins. So they got the best of both worlds. He got expelled from Expelled, which allowed him to avoid having to sit through it, and Dawkins got to watch it and write a nasty review of it. As Myers sees it they made the right decision to actively oppose the film even though it made slightly more money, mostly from atheists going to see it, because at the end of the day the film was received negatively. This was a better outcome than if the film had been allowed to just pass unnoticed.
This past Saturday evening, the Humanist Community of Central Ohio hosted Pharyngula’s Dr. PZ Myers as part of their banquet in honor of Darwin Day. The event was held at the Fawcett Center, just a few blocks away from where I live. As a reader of Pharyngula, I did not want to miss the opportunity. I did not want to attend the banquet, though, since it cost $25 for students and it would not have been kosher anyway so I contacted the Humanist Community to find out if I could come just for the lecture and they very nicely said yes, though they recommended a $5 donation, which was perfectly reasonable.
PZ Myers is an atheist in the Richard Dawkins mold, known for his hard-hitting polemics. I expected more of the same here. The PZ Myers I heard and got to speak briefly with afterward managed to surprise me. He was not the internet polemicist that I was familiar with, but a scholar, a biologist and a gentleman. He spoke magnificently, putting complex ideas across in ways that a lay audience could understand without talking down to them. What particularly gained him respect in my eyes was that he avoided taking potshots at William Paley, the nineteenth-century English theologian who authored the famous watchmaker argument for design, and actually praised him. I only wish that more people could see Dr. PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota-Morris and not just PZ Myers of Pharyngula; our cultural discourse would be all the healthier for it.
Here are my notes summarizing Dr. Myers’ lecture. As always any mistakes are mine.
Darwin and Design by PZ Myers
Charles Darwin went on his famous five-year sea voyage (1831-36) on the Beagle, during which time he formulated his theory when he was twenty-two years old. We are used to thinking of Darwin as an old man with a beard, but he was really not that much older than our college students when he began his work on evolution. Darwin did not immediately publish his thoughts upon his return to England. He spent more than twenty years doing further research, particularly on barnacles. This is one of the things that scientists today so love about him.
To put Darwin’s argument in syllogistic form:
If there is a variability in a population
If success correlates to variation
If excess reproduction occurs
If variation is heritable
Than the relative frequency of the different variants must change (adaption will occur)
It should be pointed out that, in practice, there is no difference between micro and macroevolution. It is all really one thing.
It is interesting to note that Thomas Huxley, later known as “Darwin’s bulldog” started off as an opponent of evolution, but was converted upon reading a draft of the Origin of Species.
Darwin was heavily influenced by William Paley and his book, Natural Theology. Paley wished to show how complex the natural world was and how this necessitated a creator. Paley acted as a sort of scientist, though coming from a theological perspective, and you have to respect him for that. A big chunk of the Origin of Species is a rebuttal to Paley. Darwin blew Intelligent Design out of the water in 1859.
Biologists can show how complex designs can come about from simple designs. This process is called Bricolage. This term is taken from the arts; one tinkers with existing designs and creates something new from it. What we see in the natural world is cobbled together from different pieces.
It is difficult to define complexity. For example, the driftwood debris at Olympia beach in Washington is complex, far more complex than a brick wall, but came about through a natural process. It would be very difficult to draw the debris and it serves a multitude of purposes, such as food for various organisms, yet it is all due to chance. Random things are much more complex than things that are designed.
Human beings are complex. Brad Pitt, for example is a metazoan. He possesses approximately 5 x 1013 cells and twenty thousand genes. 4% of these genes are for adhesion, 12% signaling and 6% act as switches. His brain consists of 1012 cells, 1011 neurons and 1014 synopses.
This is what creationists do; point out how complex life is and say that God must have done it. Of course simply saying that God did it is not very interesting. Much of what we see in such a complex metazoan as Brad Pitt is reproduced in simple organisms.
Choanoflagellates are single cell organisms that have a lot in common with sponges. We see that they are able to clump together and act as a singular organism. This could be a precursor to multi-celled organisms. The Choanoflagellate possesses things that were once thought to be unique to metazoans; they have receptors such as tyrosine kinases, cadherins and integrins. Trichoplax adhaerens are in a phylum all by themselves. Think of them as micro organic versions of the Blob. They possess genes found in complex brains like ours. In essence our brain is a glorified digestive system. What we think is special about us exists in simpler organisms, serving another purpose.
But evolution can also create things. Nylonase bacteria eat nylon, a product which did not exist before the 1930s. A Japanese nylon factory was dumping waste into the local river and sure enough within a matter of decades the bacteria had evolved to be able to eat nylon. What we have here is a frameshift where a previously useless protein turns out to be useful in binding to nylon. The bacteria were able to exploit this.
In conclusion, nature is not an engineer. The factors that play a role in change are chance, modularity, multifunctionality, incremental tinkering and contingency.
There was a question and answer session following the lecture where Dr. Myers again proved to be far more congenial and far more open to certain nuances than he is on Pharyngula. He acknowledged the need for multiple approaches such as trying to build bridges as opposed to the no holds barred method of attack usually employed by him and Dawkins. Myers noted that part of the problem with attacking organized religion is that many people out there have deeply religious relatives who are wonderful people whom they love. So when you attack religion people take it as a personal attack on their grandmother or the like. (This is somewhat disingenuous on his part as his attacks can get quite personal.) He talked a bit about the documentary Expelled. He had a great story about him trying to go see a pre-screening with Dawkins. Apparently Myers was recognized and kicked out, but nobody kicked out Dawkins. So they got the best of both worlds. He got expelled from Expelled, which allowed him to avoid having to sit through it, and Dawkins got to watch it and write a nasty review of it. As Myers sees it they made the right decision to actively oppose the film even though it made slightly more money, mostly from atheists going to see it, because at the end of the day the film was received negatively. This was a better outcome than if the film had been allowed to just pass unnoticed.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Religious Fundamentalists Gone Absolutely Insane (Or Just Gripped by a Pathological Desire to Swindle the Ignorant)
Rare 200-year-old book—now back in print—confirms the historical accuracy of the Bible!
PRE-ORDER TODAY TO GET A $10 INSTANT REBATE & FREE-SHIPPING!
The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected Volume 1 + FREE CD-ROM
"Years ago I purchased this rare book from a widow in a small West Virginia town. Her late husband was a collector of old history books. Once I opened the book I couldn't put it down. Intricate maps of the ancient world unfolded before my eyes. Fascinating illustrations with the translation of ancient languages and charts with the ages of the Antediluvian Patriarchs were interspersed throughout the text. I've never seen Biblical and Secular history woven together in this way. I've always known that the Bible's history was true--but my faith in God's Word was strengthened like never before." — Ray Vallorani, Co-Founder of Tolle Lege Press (Publishers of the 1599 Geneva Bible)
This special edition of The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected Volume 1: From The Creation of the World to the Dissolution of the Assyrian Empire by Samuel Shuckford, D.D. was originally published in 1808. Inside you will find intricate fold-out maps of the ancient world such as the location of the Garden of Eden and the settlements of Noah's descendants. You'll also find charts and graphs on the ages of the patriarchs, ancient languages, and more. The author dramatically weaves the historical accounts of the Bible and secular history together into one powerful narrative. Dr. Shuckford's research confirms the accuracy of the Bible—from the Creation and Fall of Man to the Dissolution of the Assyrian Empire at the death of Sardanapalus, and to the declension of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, under the reigns of Ahaz and Pekah. Hardback with Leather Binding • 500 pages • Gold Foil Stamping • Gold-gilded pages
PRE-ORDER TODAY TO GET A $10 INSTANT REBATE & FREE-SHIPPING!RETAIL $39.95 • ONLY $29.95 with FREE CD-ROM! • PRE-ORDER!
FREE BONUS ITEM WITH YOUR ORDER!: A CD-ROM of the complete book with searchable/ printable text!
I am often critical of atheists like Pharyngula for falling into hysteria over religious fundamentalists. I am someone who believes in maintaining a civil tone and measuring one’s words. I try to see some measure rationality and sanity in all. (I confess that, as someone with Asperger syndrome, this something that I myself have difficulty with and need to constantly work on.) Then there are things, like this recent ad from Townhall that make me just want to scream, tear my hair out and despair of there ever being a popular intellectually credible opposition to modern secularism. Townhall is a conservative site and I am on their daily e-mail list for conservative commentary. (I am also on a number of liberal e-mail lists.) I have not read the book in question so I am not about to pass judgment on the book itself. That being said anyone who reads two-hundred year old works of history in order to learn history does not understand the nature of historical study. The field of ancient history has changed quite a bit in two hundred years, about as much as the natural sciences have over the same period of time. For example, when this book was written the Rosetta stone had only just been discovered and scholars could still not read hieroglyphics yet. For all intents and purposes, back in 1808 we were ignorant children, who knew nothing about ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. By definition, no book written at the time, no matter how scholarly, could be useful in supporting or undermining the historical accuracy of the Bible.
The only excuse one could have for reading such a book is if one was interested in historiography in general and in early nineteenth century Christian scholarship in particular. Townhall should be ashamed of themselves for peddling such wares to the ignorant. Any conservative writer with an ounce of intellectual credibility should refuse to allow themselves to be associated with Townhall or to allow their writing to be posted on its website. Score one for Pharyngula.
PRE-ORDER TODAY TO GET A $10 INSTANT REBATE & FREE-SHIPPING!
The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected Volume 1 + FREE CD-ROM
"Years ago I purchased this rare book from a widow in a small West Virginia town. Her late husband was a collector of old history books. Once I opened the book I couldn't put it down. Intricate maps of the ancient world unfolded before my eyes. Fascinating illustrations with the translation of ancient languages and charts with the ages of the Antediluvian Patriarchs were interspersed throughout the text. I've never seen Biblical and Secular history woven together in this way. I've always known that the Bible's history was true--but my faith in God's Word was strengthened like never before." — Ray Vallorani, Co-Founder of Tolle Lege Press (Publishers of the 1599 Geneva Bible)
This special edition of The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected Volume 1: From The Creation of the World to the Dissolution of the Assyrian Empire by Samuel Shuckford, D.D. was originally published in 1808. Inside you will find intricate fold-out maps of the ancient world such as the location of the Garden of Eden and the settlements of Noah's descendants. You'll also find charts and graphs on the ages of the patriarchs, ancient languages, and more. The author dramatically weaves the historical accounts of the Bible and secular history together into one powerful narrative. Dr. Shuckford's research confirms the accuracy of the Bible—from the Creation and Fall of Man to the Dissolution of the Assyrian Empire at the death of Sardanapalus, and to the declension of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, under the reigns of Ahaz and Pekah. Hardback with Leather Binding • 500 pages • Gold Foil Stamping • Gold-gilded pages
PRE-ORDER TODAY TO GET A $10 INSTANT REBATE & FREE-SHIPPING!RETAIL $39.95 • ONLY $29.95 with FREE CD-ROM! • PRE-ORDER!
FREE BONUS ITEM WITH YOUR ORDER!: A CD-ROM of the complete book with searchable/ printable text!
I am often critical of atheists like Pharyngula for falling into hysteria over religious fundamentalists. I am someone who believes in maintaining a civil tone and measuring one’s words. I try to see some measure rationality and sanity in all. (I confess that, as someone with Asperger syndrome, this something that I myself have difficulty with and need to constantly work on.) Then there are things, like this recent ad from Townhall that make me just want to scream, tear my hair out and despair of there ever being a popular intellectually credible opposition to modern secularism. Townhall is a conservative site and I am on their daily e-mail list for conservative commentary. (I am also on a number of liberal e-mail lists.) I have not read the book in question so I am not about to pass judgment on the book itself. That being said anyone who reads two-hundred year old works of history in order to learn history does not understand the nature of historical study. The field of ancient history has changed quite a bit in two hundred years, about as much as the natural sciences have over the same period of time. For example, when this book was written the Rosetta stone had only just been discovered and scholars could still not read hieroglyphics yet. For all intents and purposes, back in 1808 we were ignorant children, who knew nothing about ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. By definition, no book written at the time, no matter how scholarly, could be useful in supporting or undermining the historical accuracy of the Bible.
The only excuse one could have for reading such a book is if one was interested in historiography in general and in early nineteenth century Christian scholarship in particular. Townhall should be ashamed of themselves for peddling such wares to the ignorant. Any conservative writer with an ounce of intellectual credibility should refuse to allow themselves to be associated with Townhall or to allow their writing to be posted on its website. Score one for Pharyngula.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
History 112: Factory Regulations (Part II)
Part I
Apprenticeship Contract for Young Women Employed in the Silk Mills of Tarare, France, 1850s
Art. 1. To be admitted, young women must be between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, of good character and in good health, intelligent and industrious, and must have been vaccinated. They must present their birth certificate, a certificate of vaccination, and a trousseau.
We are dealing with girls from the country. How many of them have been vaccinated or have birth certificates? In order to get these things these girls are going to have to spend money, which likely means borrowing money. So many of these girls are already going to be starting off in debt. It is a lot easier to take advantage of people who are in debt and are, therefore, not in a position to leave.
Art. 4. The pupil promises to be obedient and submissive to the mistresses charged with her conduct and instruction, as well as to conform to the rules of establishment.
What does it mean to be obedient and submissive? Not to complain about conditions, report abuses or anything to upset the management.
Art. 6. If the sick pupil remains in the establishment, every care necessitated by her condition will be given to her.
Medical care for those who get sick? Not exactly. The management only has to take care of those sick girls that they decide to keep in the establishment. They can just kick out every girl who gets sick and save themselves the trouble.
Art. 8. The director along has the right to authorize or refuse leaves. Hey will be granted only on the request of the father or guardian of the pupil.
Most of these girls are not from the immediate area and their fathers are not on hand to ask for leave. A girl would have to get letter or telegram sent to their father who would then have to send a message back. So for all intents and purposes no requests to leave can be made.
Art. 10. The effective work time is twelve hours. Summer and winter, the day begins at 5 o’clock and ends at 7:15. Breakfast is from 7:30 to 8:15; lunch is from 12:00 to 1:00; snack is from 5:30; supper is at 7:15. After the second year, pupils will receive lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. They will be taught to sew and do a little cooking.
So these girls are to be given an education to help them move up in the world. The funny thing is that with all the emphasis on the specific times for everything there is no time given for education. So, for all intents and purposes, we can assume that these girls are not being given a meaningful education. It is not in the management’s interest to do so. People who do not have an educated have fewer options and can be forced to work for less.
Art. 12. Wages are not due until the end of the year. …
Art. 13. Any apprentice who leaves the establishment before the end of her term, or who has been dismissed for bad conduct, conspiracy, rebellion, laziness, or a serious breach of the rules loses her rights to wages for the current year; beyond this, in such a case, the father or guardian of the pupil agrees to pay the director of the establishment the sum of one hundred francs to indemnify him for the non-fulfillment of the present agreement. …
The management can decide to fire a girl in December for bad conduct, conspiracy, rebellion or laziness, which of course can mean anything that upsets the management, and the girl would lose a full year’s pay. Not only that but her father would have to pay the management.
Art. 16. On her arrival, the apprentice will submit to inspection by the house doctor. Any girl who has a skin disease or who found to be sickly will not be accepted and will be sent away immediately at her own expense.
The management can just send girls home whom they decide they do not want and do not have to pay anything. Where would these girls get the money for a return trip? Many of them would have likely needed to borrow money just to make the trip. So will they will have to borrow more money and go further into debt.
(From Documents in European Economic History, vol. 1, the Process of Industrialization, 1750-1870 and Victorian Women: a Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France and the United States)
Apprenticeship Contract for Young Women Employed in the Silk Mills of Tarare, France, 1850s
Art. 1. To be admitted, young women must be between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, of good character and in good health, intelligent and industrious, and must have been vaccinated. They must present their birth certificate, a certificate of vaccination, and a trousseau.
We are dealing with girls from the country. How many of them have been vaccinated or have birth certificates? In order to get these things these girls are going to have to spend money, which likely means borrowing money. So many of these girls are already going to be starting off in debt. It is a lot easier to take advantage of people who are in debt and are, therefore, not in a position to leave.
Art. 4. The pupil promises to be obedient and submissive to the mistresses charged with her conduct and instruction, as well as to conform to the rules of establishment.
What does it mean to be obedient and submissive? Not to complain about conditions, report abuses or anything to upset the management.
Art. 6. If the sick pupil remains in the establishment, every care necessitated by her condition will be given to her.
Medical care for those who get sick? Not exactly. The management only has to take care of those sick girls that they decide to keep in the establishment. They can just kick out every girl who gets sick and save themselves the trouble.
Art. 8. The director along has the right to authorize or refuse leaves. Hey will be granted only on the request of the father or guardian of the pupil.
Most of these girls are not from the immediate area and their fathers are not on hand to ask for leave. A girl would have to get letter or telegram sent to their father who would then have to send a message back. So for all intents and purposes no requests to leave can be made.
Art. 10. The effective work time is twelve hours. Summer and winter, the day begins at 5 o’clock and ends at 7:15. Breakfast is from 7:30 to 8:15; lunch is from 12:00 to 1:00; snack is from 5:30; supper is at 7:15. After the second year, pupils will receive lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. They will be taught to sew and do a little cooking.
So these girls are to be given an education to help them move up in the world. The funny thing is that with all the emphasis on the specific times for everything there is no time given for education. So, for all intents and purposes, we can assume that these girls are not being given a meaningful education. It is not in the management’s interest to do so. People who do not have an educated have fewer options and can be forced to work for less.
Art. 12. Wages are not due until the end of the year. …
Art. 13. Any apprentice who leaves the establishment before the end of her term, or who has been dismissed for bad conduct, conspiracy, rebellion, laziness, or a serious breach of the rules loses her rights to wages for the current year; beyond this, in such a case, the father or guardian of the pupil agrees to pay the director of the establishment the sum of one hundred francs to indemnify him for the non-fulfillment of the present agreement. …
The management can decide to fire a girl in December for bad conduct, conspiracy, rebellion or laziness, which of course can mean anything that upsets the management, and the girl would lose a full year’s pay. Not only that but her father would have to pay the management.
Art. 16. On her arrival, the apprentice will submit to inspection by the house doctor. Any girl who has a skin disease or who found to be sickly will not be accepted and will be sent away immediately at her own expense.
The management can just send girls home whom they decide they do not want and do not have to pay anything. Where would these girls get the money for a return trip? Many of them would have likely needed to borrow money just to make the trip. So will they will have to borrow more money and go further into debt.
(From Documents in European Economic History, vol. 1, the Process of Industrialization, 1750-1870 and Victorian Women: a Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France and the United States)
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