Sago Boulevard

In response to yesterday’s suicide attack killing three Israeli, Hamas leaves no doubt as to its position on targeting innocent Israeli civilians (via Jewlicious).

“It was a natural response to the Israeli crimes, to the continued Israeli killing, incursions and arrests,” said Hamas lawmaker Mushir al Masri. “Our Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves.”

Somebody please explain to me how disguising yourself as an Orthodox Jew, hitchhiking, and then blowing yourself up in the car is an act of self defense. The victims here were chosen randomly, with no connection to military or political activity. To those who like to draw moral equivalencies between Israeli military actions and Palestinian terrorism, I say this: The poor excuse for a human being who blew himself up specifically intended to kill as many civilians as possible and civilians with no connection to so-called “Israeli killing, incursions and arrests”. It wasn’t an act of political defiance; it was a simple act of murder. And Hamas, now the leading party of the Palestinian Authority, defends it openly. God help us all if this is who we have to make peace with.

A school in Florida surprised students with a Holocaust education project that didn’t exactly have the desired effect (via LMOM).

[E]ighth-graders with last names beginning with L through Z at Apopka Memorial Middle School were given yellow five-pointed stars for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Other students were privileged, the report said.

Father John Tinnelly said his son was forced to stand in the back of the classroom and not allowed to sit because he was wearing the yellow star.

“He was forced to go to the back of the lunch line four times by an administrator,” Tinnelly said.

Tinnelly said the experiment upset his child.

“He was crying,” Tinnelly said. “I said, ‘What are you crying about?’ He said, ‘Daddy, I was a Jew today.’”

I’m not sure that reaction should be the goal of Holocaust education.

According to the most recent news reports (NYTimes & Haaretz), Ehud Olmert’s Kadima finished on top but with less seats than expected. With 99.5% of the votes counted, Kadima is expected to win 28 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Amir Peretz’s Labor Party is second with 20. The Sefardi religious party, Shas, is third with 13. Keep an eye on the news this week for speculations about coalitions.

In his review of R. Soloveitchik’s The Emergence of Ethical Man, Haim Watzman (via Hirhurim) puts his finger on the most irritating part of the evolution-vs-intellegent-design debate.

The lines in the case of God v. Darwin could not be clearer. Counsel for the party of the first part claims that the principle of evolution by natural selection cannot be transcendentally true because it reserves no place for God. Counsel for the party of the second part does not dispute the fact that there is no place for God in biology. However, it draws a different conclusion—God at best simply does not exist; at worst, He is responsible for error and superstition.

Like a lawsuit, a public debate doesn’t encourage subtle reasoning. To win over public opinion, each side needs to present its case clearly and simply. Ambiguities are dangerous because they can be read as weakness or uncertainty.

For R. Soloveitchik, there is no contradiction between “divine creation and mechanistic evolution as such”. The problem, rather, is the seeming irreconcilability of “man as the bearer of the divine image with the equality of man and animal-plant existences.” It’s this subtle distinction that is lost in the public debate and it’s worth thinking about seriously. As R. Soloveitchik argues in several places, our rabbis were well aware of the tension between man-as-animal and man-as-divine-being. Watzman summarizes R. Soloveitchik’s approach as follows:

[T]he puzzle is that we are ethical beings. We encounter the physical world just as plants and animals do—that is, we have physical needs, desires, and instincts. Yet, unlike other beings, we can think about the world and consider our actions. We can resist our instincts, understand them, understand the desires and actions of other human beings. It is this difference that Rabbi Soloveitchik seeks to understand, through a consideration of our biological characteristics, the biblical creation story, and the halakhic tradition.
…
[The Emergence of Ethical Man] takes you directly into a great mind as it considers arguments, analyzes concepts, and strives to develop a cogent account of how a transcendent God can act within a physical world that runs according to a set of natural laws that can be deduced through scientific activity.

I’ve been in bed with fever for most of last week and, thus, not blogging. I’m happy to report that I’m feeling much better today. I’m still going to bed early as I’m not quite 100% yet but blogging should return to normal soon. Stay tuned.

Bill Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher joins the Prosblogion blogstaff. His first post on the Trinity is already up. Go check it out.

I linked to the Swinburne-Dennett exchange in a previous post. Jeremy Pierce, at Prosblogion, points out an interesting move that Swinburne makes in response to the so-called multiverse theory. Typically, the multiverse theory is used to rebut a version of the argument from design that points to the fine-tuning of the constants of nature. Here, Swinburne offers what Pierce calls a “meta-teleological argument”:

Some sort of multiverse theory might well be true. My point was that if there is a multiverse, it’s a multiverse of a kind which will produce at least one universe which will produce humans. But it’s logically possible that there might instead have been other quite different kinds of multiverse, or just one universe, not productive of humans. So why are the most general laws of the multiverse as they are? Why do all particles behave in exactly the same way as each other, so as together ultimately to produce human life? This enormous coincidence in particle behaviour requires explaining.

The newest Philosophers’ Carnival is up at Heaven Tree.

So says a gemara in Sanhedrin 104b and this article gives it a new meaning (via S & ADDeRabbi). Purim fever is indeed in the air.

Atheists often pose the question, “Why do you only believe the miraculous accounts of your own religion?” The implication is that I have no more reason to believe in the biblical miracles than those described in the Koran or the Gospels. But the question fails to appreciate how the religious personally approaches his faith. I didn’t sit down one day, consider whether or not God split the sea, and decide to believe it. If I did, the question would be a good one. Rather, I consider the theological explanation of the world presented by the Bible and the rabbinic tradition and conclude that the story it tells is compelling. If miraculous events are part of that story, then I accept them as well because of the role they play in the general theological account. It is this theological account that I believe best explains the world and humanity’s interaction with it.

Alvin Plantinga rips into Judge John Jones’ decision in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (via Mr. Grouchypants). One of the things I find most annoying about the ID debate is the argument that ID isn’t science because the claims it makes aren’t testable and falsifiable. To which Plantinga responds:

For example, the statement “God has designed 800-pound rabbits that live in Cleveland” is clearly testable, clearly falsifiable and indeed clearly false. Testability can’t be taken as a criterion for distinguishing scientific from nonscientific statements. That is because in the typical case individual statements are not verifiable or falsifiable.

As another example, the statement “There is at least one electron” is surely scientific, but it isn’t by itself verifiable or falsifiable. What is verifiable or falsifiable are whole theories involving electrons. These theories make verifiable or falsifiable predictions, but the sole statement “There is at least one electron” does not. In the same way, whole theories involving intelligent designers also make verifiable or falsifiable predictions, even if the bare statement that life has been intelligently designed does not.

I’m currently involved in two blog discussions about, among other things, what constitutes terrorism. One important implication that turns on how we answer that question is under what circumstance civilian casualities are justified in the name of an otherwise defensible war. Check out the posts and comments at Tikun Olam and Orthodox Anarchist.

Let us know who you are in the comments.

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Superman 65% Robin 55% The Flash 50% Hulk 45% Supergirl 40% Wonder Woman 30% Green Lantern 30% Iron Man 25% Catwoman 20% Batman 10%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

(via Johnny-Dee)

I was formally introducted to Leo Strauss as a sophomore, in a class entitled “Trends in Modern Jewish Philosophy”. I remember appreciating Strauss’ willingness to question the value-neutral approach of his fellow social scientists, in this case, as it related to studying religion. His political thought, though, is both more popular and more controversial. Neoconservatives look to him as their ideological father while liberals paint him as a subversive fascist. In the most recent issue of Prospect, Edward Skidelsky offers some context for this debate and Strauss’ thought in general. It’s long but worth the read.

I’m not a Straussian by any means, especically when it comes to reading Plato and Rambam. But such couragiously independent thinkers are rare in academic circles and I can admire Strauss as one of the few genuine philosophers of his day.

One of the classic difficulties of social contract theories is their reliance on obviously ficticious accounts that overemphasize the role of consent in the creation of states. I was thinking about this the other night while watching Seinfeld (”The Limo“):

George: Excuse me, sir, do you have the time?

Man: There’s a clock over there.

George: Where?

Man (pointing): There.

George: But you have a watch on.

Man: It’s right by the escalator.

George: Why don’t you just look at your watch?

Man: I told you, it’s right over there.

George: Let me see the watch.

George grabs the man’s wrist.

Man: Hey! What are you, some kind of nut?!

George: You know we’re living in a society!

The watch-wearing stranger perhaps believes that basic social norms do not apply to him unless he freely chooses to enter into an arrangement with his neighbors, whereby each individual surrenders some of his rights in exchange for certain protections. Yet, George informs him otherwise, that despite his seemingly lack of consent, he does in fact live in a society. It cannot be only by virture of our consent that our actions affect those around us. Our mere existence affects our parents, for example. This doesn’t rule out the possibilty of consent justifying certain kinds of coercion but it does call into question the picture of wholly free individuals in a pre-society state of nature.

Daniel Dennett and Richard Swinburne debate the issues surrounding Dennet’s recent book, Breaking the Spell (via Bill Vallicella). I’d like to echo Alan Rhoda’s note regarding the article’s subtitle: “A philosopher and a theologian debate the correct approach to the study of religion.” Swinburne is indeed a theologian but, given the context, it’s misleading. He is a leading academic philosopher of religion and philosopher of science.

Johnny-Dee argues that the existence of humor is better accounted for by theism than by naturalism. My philosophical interest in humor notwithstanding, I never thought of this before. Johnny-Dee himself admits that the argument isn’t very pursuasive on it’s own, but suggests that it may “add confirmation in an overall cumulative case for the existence of God.”

I’m generally inclined to believe that the great variety and intensity of human emotions is best explained by theism but I think this kind of argument often makes a false dichotomy. Johnny-Dee characterizes naturalism as the view that “the world is composed entirely of matter following laws of physics”. While many scientists and philosophers hold such a view, it is certainly conceivable to to reject it without embracing theism. That said, I’d prefer to limit the argument from humor to an argument against naturalism.

In his continuing series of posts on Dennet’s Breaking the Spell, Bill Vallicella works out some important distinctions between “belief that” and “belief in”.

In my response to Amba’s essay on “spiritual nomads”, I emphasized the inappropriateness of claiming to extract wisdom from Judaism without also embracing the mitzvot. This point is reinforced by a gemara in M. Shabbat (88b-89a).

At the time of the giving of the Torah, the rabbis explain, the angels appeared before God and asked regarding Moshe, “What business has one born of woman among us?” God replied that he is here to receive the Torah. The angels were outraged. How can God’s greatest gift be given to mere flesh and blood; it should be given to the angels instead. Moshe answered:

Sovereign of the Universe! The Torah which you give me, what is written in it? “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt.” Said he to them [the angels], Did you go down to Egypt; were you enslaved to Pharaoh: why then should the Torah be yours?… “You shall have no other gods” - do you dwell among peoples that engage in idol worship?… “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” - do you then perform work, that you need to rest?… “Honor your father and thy mother” - have you fathers and mothers?… You shall not murder”, “You shall not commit adultery”, “You shall not steal” - is there jealousy among you? Is the Evil Tempter among you? They [the angels] conceded to the Holy One, blessed be He.

On this passage, my rebbe R. Sobolofsky asks an obvious question. What were the angels really asking for? Didn’t they know that, not having physical bodies, the mitzvot would be of no use to them? He offers the following answer: The angels were asking for the wisdom of the Torah, for a way to grow close to God by studying His greatest treasure. Moshe answered them that this is impossible. The Torah’s wisdom is inextricably tied with the specific mitzvot that must be observed here on earth. You cannot have one without the other.