Can One Believe in Heliocentrism and Still be a Scientist?

Four hundred years ago Judaism and Christianity were challenged by the rise of heliocentrism, the belief that the earth circles around the sun, and the collapse of geocentrism, the belief that the sun, stars and all the planets circle around the earth. This was a problem for Jews and Christians in that according to the book of Joshua, the sun stood still for the Children of Israel, implying that the sun circles the earth. This without any doubt is a major challenge to the authority of the Bible. In the standard Whig narrative, this shift is seen as one of the two great triumphs of the forces of science over the forces of religion, the other one, of course, being evolution. What is so often glossed over though is that, while heliocentrism is a challenge to Judaism and Christianity, this challenge pales in comparison to the challenge heliocentrism poses to empiricism and any faith in humanity’s ability to understand the natural world around him. If I accept heliocentrism, which I do, then I must recognize that when I look up at the sky I am falling victim to one massive optical illusion for the sun, the stars and the planets all appear to circle around the earth. If my senses can be fooled on something as basic as the sky above me then I must ask whether I am mistaken about everything else I think I know about the natural world. I must like Descartes come to doubt whether I have hands or feet or whether there is even an earth if it is not merely an illusion. If I cannot be confident that the world even exists then I must also come, like David Hume to question whether there is even such a thing as a law of nature. Why should a non-existent world even have consistent laws? If I cannot talk about laws of nature then I can have no science. How can I search for patterns and rules that do not exist? If my belief in science can survive admitting that the heavens are a giant optical illusion then surely my religion can survive admitting that Joshua is not meant to be taken literally.
Today with evolution we find ourselves in a similar situation. Can our faith survive admitting that Genesis is not meant to be taken literally? This may be a problem but it is nothing compared to the problem faced by the believer in science. If I accept evolution, which I do, then I must admit that, as C.S Lewis argued, my intelligence, my ability to reason, and every other tool with which I explore the natural world is the byproduct of natural selection. If human beings use the methodology of science simply because that mode of thinking helps the human species survive then we have no reason to assume that it is valid. As with heliocentrism, if my belief in science can survive admitting that the human mind is the product of natural selection then surely my religion can survive admitting that Genesis is not to be taken literally.
When reading Richard Dawkins, I am reminded of Nachmonides’ constant reply to Pablo Christiani at the Barcelona debate: if you truly understood what you were saying then you would realize that your claim is a far bigger problem for you than it is for me.

Awards Dinner

STUDENT AWARDS BBQ
Wednesday, May 30, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
at OSU Hillel
46 E. 16th Ave.

Join us for a free BBQ dinner to congratulate your fellow students for their achievements in Jewish studies

The Gretel B. Bloch Scholarship:
CORI ZAREM

The Ellen E. and Victor J. Cohn
Scholarship for Study at Hebrew University:
WHITNEY PARSON, KATE LEVIN, JAMESON LETT

The Morris and Fannie Skilken
Scholarship for Yiddish and Ashkenazi Studies:
KATE LEVIN

Roth Essay Contest:
ELLIOT KLAYMAN, AARON DESATNIK

The Samuel M. Melton Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies:
UFUK ULUTAS

The George M. and Renée K. Levine
Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies:
BENZION CHINN

Diane Cummins Scholarship in Hebrew and Yiddish
KATE LEVIN

Tyranny and the Left's Failure of Imagination

I often ask anti-war protestors if it was morally acceptable for us to go to war with Nazi Germany, a country that had not attacked us and which posed no direct threat to our interests. There is no reason why we could not have, in the days after December 7, 1941, sent Joseph Kennedy to Berlin to tell Hitler that we had no interest in fighting him and were willing to break off our support of Great Britain if he would not try to stop us from fighting Japan, a country that did attack us. We spent billions of dollars and put several million American soldiers on the frontlines to fight an "unnecessary" war.
The thing that really gets me about the war in Iraq is that we have absolutely lost the moral argument. Most of the world and most of the Democratic Party looks at what happened in Iraq and see America as the villains. That just boggles the mind: we invaded a country under the control of Saddam Husain, a brutal dictator, who had been our most prominent enemy for over a decade. This was a man who had no respect for human rights and who broke countless treaties. If you cannot go to war against Saddam then who on this planet are you allowed to fight a war with? This is not to say that it was a smart thing to go to war with Saddam. That is a separate debate.
After we defeated Saddam we set about reconstructing the country. This was no different than our occupations of Germany and Japan after the war, countries which we did far worse things to. As with the invasion of Iraq, the wisdom of our attempt to help put together a functioning government and country is not the question here. Whether our heads were in the right places or not, our hearts were. How is it that Arab terrorists can murder innocent Iraqi civilians and America gets the blame? The narrative we have seen after every attack these past few years is that this is an example of our failure. The dead civilians are added to the cost of our invasion and occupation. For all intents and purposes, we might as well have murdered them ourselves. Most of the left in this country and most of the western world seem to have trouble telling the difference between trying to fight against tyranny and tyranny itself. They become the moral equivalents of each other.
I would suggest that the problem is that the left, at a fundamental level, is suffering from a failure of the imagination to truly appreciate tyranny. For the modern-day left, a tyrannical government is one that does things like not allow gay marriage, or abortion and keeps files on what books people check out of the library. This becomes a major problem when the left has to confront a real tyrant like Saddam. They do not have a word for a type of government acting above and beyond making stupid laws that interfere with people’s lives. As a result, they cannot imagine such a thing existing. So Hitler and Saddam were tyrants and so is George W. Bush. Words like tyranny, racism, bigotry, and injustice no longer have any meaning. As a fighting nineteenth-century liberal I find that scary.

New Proof for Global Warming

I admit that I have my doubts about Global Warming. How much has the earth's temperature risen over the past century? Have humans played a significant role in this warming? How negative will the effects be and is there a cost-effective means of countering it?

I do not have a Ph.D. in Climatology, Ecology, or Earth Sciences. So I am in no position to go about evaluating the evidence. This is an issue that is so politically loaded that one simply does not know whom to trust. (Surely not Al Gore) Normally, I would say trust the experts, but I must confess that I have no idea how to even go about figuring out who are the experts. This creates the frustrating situation where I must throw up my hands and say I really just do not know.

Today, while walking around campus, I was handed a Lyndon LaRouche pamphlet titled "Implications of the Gore Hoax." In true to form Larouche fashion, he proceeds to explain how Global Warming is a hoax being perpetrated upon the world as part of a grand conspiracy by the intellectual heirs to the Venetian bankers and Norman Crusaders in order to take over the world.

Clearly, if Lyndon Larouche is denouncing something as part of the synarchist plot to bring down the global economy and create a new world empire then what he is denouncing must be good and true. Ergo, if Larouche does not believe in Global Warming, then it must really be happening.

Abortion Rights and the Health Exemption for Thieves

The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, has upheld a Federal law banning “partial-birth” abortions. The main objection to this law and other similar attempts to place limits on abortion rights posed by abortion rights activists is that such laws lack exceptions for the health of the mother. Opponents of abortion have objected to writing such health exemptions into the law, seeing them as loopholes which would render abortion laws to be meaningless. Anyone could have an abortion and simply claim that there was a health issue involved. (That health issue could be headaches, throwing up in the morning and looking like a bloated whale.)
The problem I have with the health argument in regards to abortion is that implicitly every law has a health exception. We have laws against stealing but no one is going to put a man in jail because he was starving and therefore stole a loaf of bread. The police are not going to make an arrest, the DA is not going to not prosecute, the jury will not convict and the judge is not going to sentence. This health exemption is not written anywhere but it is self understood. For every law in existence I could construct an emergency scenario which would justify the breaking of that law. There is no need to have exceptions for these emergency scenarios to be put onto the books. If one finds oneself in one of these emergency situations then one commits the crime and trusts in the fact that the legal system will understand that this was one of those emergency situations and make an exception.
If a doctor honestly believes that there is a legitimate health risk if a woman does not have a partial abortion and he is willing, with a straight face, to say this in a court of law then he will be able to conduct that abortion without any fear of going to jail. We can trust in the unwritten law of common sense.

To Nuke or Not to Nuke: Some Thoughts about MAD

During the Cold War the United States operated on what is generally referred to as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). It was official US policy that if the Soviet Union took out a US city with a nuclear missile we would retaliate with nuclear missiles against Soviet cities. The idea behind this policy was that the leaders of the Soviet Union, as rational individuals, would not risk using nuclear weapons against us knowing that their actions would result in the annihilation of their own cities. Such a policy depended on our threat being believable. We were prepared to slaughter millions of Soviet civilians and the Soviets knew it. Dr. Strangelove aside, this policy worked. MAD created the circumstances in which no sane leader would ever resort to nuclear weapons.
I bring this topic up now as I wonder if the policy of MAD still applies today. If tomorrow New York City goes up in a mushroom cloud courtesy of Iran does that mean that we would nuke Tehran? What if Iran tried to use a nuclear weapon against us but failed; what then? What if a terrorist group set off a nuclear bomb on US soil. Would we retaliate with nuclear weapons against every single country who aided this effort? More importantly then what we might actually do in such a situation is what our enemies believe we would do.
One has to ask: is it moral to put MAD into actual practice? It is built around the concept of murdering millions of enemy civilians as an act of revenge. Nuking Iranian cities would not bring New York back. If we accept the logic of MAD then we should be consistent and apply it to other issues besides for nuclear weapons. If terrorists carry out attacks targeted against civilian populations then it should be morally acceptable to retaliate against the civilian population centers of the countries that aided the terrorists.
This would mean that we accept the notion that there is nothing inherently immoral about targeting civilians in war and that the only reason why one should not do so is that it would invite retaliations. I accept such a notion but I know that most people, even conservatives, do not.

Three Cheers For President Clinton

It has been a long time since I have had anything good to say about Bill Clinton. I got my first taste of politics back in the summer of '92 watching the news in my grandmother's kitchen. Back then I was a big follower of then Governor Clinton. What can I say, some kids get into rock stars and actors I got into politicians. My disenchantment from Clinton occurred over a long period of time. I don't think I can pin it down to any single moment. It was somewhere between my growing disenchantment with the Oslo Accords and Monica Lewinsky.
Now Clinton has gone on the attack against President Jimmy Carter, someone whom I had great respect for up until a few years ago. (link) For those of you who have really had their heads in the clouds Carter published an anti-Israel hate fest titled Peace Not Apartheid.
Thank You President Clinton for doing the right and moral thing (for once).

Interfaith Dialogue

Jim Nimmo, a gay rights activist from Oklahoma, wrote an interesting article in the American Chronicle, (link) in which he argues that the opposition to gay marriage is linked to religion and that all religion is based on bigotry.
I sent him the following email:
As someone who supports gay marriage, I question some of your arguments. You seem to operate on the assumption that any opposition to gay marriage or to gays in general is based on homophobia and is of a religious origin. The reason why I support gay marriage is that I look around and see gay couples who are married and function in the same way as heterosexual couples so it seems reasonable to me have our marriage laws reflect this reality. Someone could be a complete atheist and look around and say that gay couples have not reached that point so we should just leave the laws as they are for the moment. If we present the argument for gay marriage like I just did then I believe we could get most of the country and even a decent percentage of people on the right to go along with it. In general I fail to see how any religious ban on gay sex would be any different then bans on eating pork or eating meat during Lent. I see homosexuality as an action that should be defended upon libertarian grounds. Not as a state of being that should be defended as a civil right. If we assume that homosexuality is a state of being then the state has the right to start asking itself what sorts of beings it prefers. Your attacks on religion are not helpful. By attacking religion you are making this about religion. Many people on the right suspect that the gay marriage movement is a conspiracy to get the courts to say that anyone who does not support gay marriage is a bigot. Hence the court would be saying that any religion that does not support gay marriage is bigoted and is no different then say the KKK.
Benzion N. Chinn
P.S The term is Hasdic Judaism not Hasdism Judaism.

He responded to my email:
Mr. Chinn,> > Thanks for reading and also for your support of gay marriage.> I think we're on the same page in regard to a libertatrian POV about> two people of any gender combination and/or religious/non-religious> status being recognized first from the civil government for a valid> marriage license. Religious ceremonies can come later, if at all.> > I think the issue IS religion and the pernicious, parasitic way it> has of infecting our civil and social atmosphere.> > I do not wish any opponent harm: I want them to leave their> prejucide out of the public forum as it always brings harm to those> whose beliefs and education differ from the oppressors.> > Until our American First Amendment is formally repealed, instead of> being simply ignored by many, we should maintain a strict seperation> of religous views from being injected into our civil codes, be they> progressive or knee-jerk beliefs.> > As I stated in my essay, why should one denomination be allowed to> hold sway over another? Is the intent of such a practice to> reinforce the inculcated bigotry some people choose to use as a> smoke screen, a bigotry which we both want to suspend?> > Thanks for the terminology correction. I knew it didn't look right> but couldn't get my head around it. Living as a goy in Oklahoma> leaves me little exposure to non-xtian practices and language.> > Best wishes.> > Jim Nimmo

To which I responded:The issue of the more extreme factions of a group being able to hold> the more moderate factions hostage is an interesting issue that goes> beyond religion. I see it all over the place.> Particularly in the case of religion, the more extreme groups (in> the case of Judaism that would be Hasidic Jews and other types of> Haredim.) do not view the more moderate groups as having any sort of> legitimacy, while the moderates still view those on the extreme as> being legitimate. The reason for this is that the general perception> is that those on the extreme are the most religious, the "true> believers." This allows those on the extreme to ignore the moderates> while the moderates have to constantly pay attention to those on the> extreme.> At the end of the day it those who are on the extreme who manage to> dictate the agenda and everyone else is caught simply trying to> react.> One of the problems with how we currently put the first amendment> into practice is that it makes it very difficult to deal with> religion in a public context. Religion becomes something that only> goes on in private religious circles, where the extremes can> dominate the conversation.> Just as I have no problem with having government paid chaplains in> the armed forces and Congress opening sessions with a prayer. I have> no problem with there being government chaplains in public schools> and there being prayer in public schools. Just as long as it does> not cross the line into becoming an active campaign to create a> dominant religion.> As to my letter. You did not answer the question of what is the> difference between banning homosexual sex and banning any other> action? Religions usually have lots of taboos, why can't> homosexuality simply be one more of them? While this may put the> members of a given religion who are homosexuals in a really tough> position, it would not make the religion homophobic.
Benzion Chinn

I have never been given any sort of answer as to why homosexuality must be treated as a state of being instead of as an action that some people enjoy doing. Of course once we start treating homosexuality as an action then the notion of gay rights collapses.

Dancing at Two Weddings

An interesting article here from the NY Times dealing with a gathering of on the edge haredim.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/nyregion/thecity/18hasi.html?ex=1331956800&en=3be95d08f3129f34&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Medieval Aliens

In speaking to people about the Middle Ages I often have to disabuse them of the Whig narrative of history, which they may have imbibed. According to the Whig narrative, there was the golden era of Greece and Rome, filled with enlightenment and philosophy. This was followed by the dark Medieval age, which was dominated by intolerance and superstition. Mankind only awoke from its slumber after a thousand years, when it had the Renaissance. In dealing with the Jewish community, my cause is made particularly difficult because I have to contend with fake historians like Rabbi Berel Wein, who have hypocritically taken up this Whig narrative and used it when dealing with the Catholic church, but of course exempt Judaism from it. I recently read a novel titled Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. It is about a group of aliens known as the Krenken, who crash near a German village during the Black Death. What I really loved about this book was its ability to portray the villagers who come in contact with these aliens and in particular the priest, Father Dietrich, as being sophisticated individuals in their own uniquely medieval way. I find the author's comments in his historical notes to be particularly comforting. He writes: For one thing, they [people in the Middle Ages] took Christianity seriously; in many ways, more seriously than modern Bible-thumpers. At the same time, they took it more matter-of-factly. ... Philosophers studied nature with virtually no intrusions by theologians who were themselves natural philosophers. ... Never before or since has such a large proportion of a population been educated so exclusively in logic, reason, and science. "Key was the concept of secondary causation: God had endowed material bodies with the ability to act upon one another by their own natures. Hence, 'natural law.' If God made the entire world, then invoking God to explain the rainbow or magnetism or rectilinear motion added nothing to human understanding. Philosophers therefore sought natural explanations to natural phenomena. That a later century would invoke religion over a trivial matter of the earth's motion would likely have astonished them." I would like to thank you Mr. Flynn for doing so successfully what we historians try and usually fail to do.

Speaker For the Dead

In Orson Scott Card’s Ender series, the main character Andrew Wiggin serves as a Speaker for the Dead. He tells over the life stories of those who had died not to praise or condemn the dead but simply so that those hearing could understand what the deceased stood for and how they understood themselves. The motive of the speaker is that he believes that there is an inherent value to human existence and that by honestly seeking to come to an understanding of an individual one can come to a greater understanding of humanity as a whole. I see the historian as serving a similar function for modern-day society. 

We are the stewards of the knowledge of societies and worlds that are dead and buried. Their values and all that they stood for are gone and there are few who would even understand them. (Just as our society will one day pass from this earth to be inherited by people who are incapable of even understanding our values and what we stood for.) The historian’s task is to serve as a speaker for those who can no longer speak for themselves. Not out of any present-day agenda, but simply because he believes that human beings have intrinsic value and that by honestly coming to terms with human beings, even those no longer here, we can come to a greater understanding of present-day humanity. This is not to say that the past repeats itself, but simply that it gives a context with which to place ourselves. The historian studies the past, but more than that he lives in the past. If the past is like a foreign country then the historian is like the intelligence officer who has spent decades living in the country he studies and has more of this country within him than that of his native land. While this intelligence officer may never become a native of the country he studies, he will never again be able to truly be a native of the country of his origin either. Not that I believe that historians are infallible oracles from whom the past radiates through. Just as a person today cannot embody anything more than just a perspective of this world so to the historian is simply an expression of one amongst many legitimate perspectives on the past. 

My goal in teaching history is to challenge students by forcing them to come to terms with the fact that there were sane, moral people who thought in ways that go against everything my students have been taught to believe. For example, most societies in history have tended toward hierarchy in their structure and in particular they have been patriarchal. I take it for granted that all of my students believe in equality and in women’s rights in one form or another. I would want to bring about just a glimmer of a crisis of faith; that just for a moment my students should wonder whether it is we who are wrong and Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Maimonides who are right. Not that I want my students to stop believing in equality. On the contrary, I want to make them stronger believers. I would want them to go from simply spouting dogma about equality to actively accepting it, fully aware of the price they pay in doing so. 

Ultimately being a historian involves being both a liberal and a conservative. The historian is a liberal in that he actively seeks to challenge the status quo. He lives with an open mind and with the possibility of other ways of living one's life. On the other hand the field of history, unlike any other field of study besides for religion, is built around defending tradition, the conservative action par excellence. Not to say that the historian necessarily wants to replicate past ways of living in the present. That being said, if the historian did not believe that there was some real value to traditional ways of life he would have chosen a different field. 

 Postscript: Those who know me well would realize that my way of thinking is ultimately rooted within this contradiction.

The Potter Prophecy

An idea recently occurred to me about the prophecy in Harry Potter. We know that the cause of Voldemort coming after the Potters, when Harry was a baby, was that Snape overheard part of the prophecy and told Voldemort. Could it be that Snape, at this point, was already working for Dumbledore and that Dumbledore told Snape to tell Voldemort about it. Dumbledore's purpose would have been to bait Voldemort into coming after Harry, thus causing the prophecy to come true and bringing about the initial downfall of Voldemort. This would mean that Dumbledore had lied to Harry in order to cover up the fact that he bore a responsibility for the death of Harry's parents. We know that Dumbledore wanted to be the Potters' secret keeper. Could it be that Dumbledore intended to somehow give Voldemort the secret himself in order that Voldemort would be able to go after the Potters. We already know that Dumbledore had refrained from telling Harry the full truth about things in the past in order to protect him. Could it also be that Dumbledore did not told Harry the full prophecy, particularly the part that was fulfilled by Snape killing Dumbledore?
This may or may not be what will happen. It would make for a really cool plot twist. It would not make Dumbledore a bad person. It would just make him someone who made some impossible moral choices.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today I have reached level 24 of glorious singlehood. I am still trying to figure out what special codes and powers I now get. I am already licensed to drive and drink, just not at the same time.
I would like to thank my best friend Ariel for the book he gave me. And for calling me a "terrorist." (When my great-aunt misread the note, which said Averroeist, she did not realize that an Averroeist is a terrorist who sneaks into innocent frum populations and spreads esoteric heresy. This is of course why you need gedolim. Only gedolim can be smart enough to understand the complex natures of our heresies.)
What did I do today? Mainly I fasted. I met with a professor who seemed to like my proposed thesis for a seminar paper. After breakfast, I celebrated over beer and Haagen-Dazs.
To an exciting action-packed year of wine, women, and papers.