A Hockey Fight Over Poetry

Jay Miller of the Boston Bruins: A great fighter.

Rita Dove, poet and scholar, is editor of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. This anthology was reviewed unfavorably by Helen Vendler, Harvard professor and a truly wonderful scholar of poetry.

Here is a snippet from Vendler's review, selected for touching on issues of religious and racial identity:

As “the melting pot was simmering,” the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War rise into Dove’s essay: “The old Euro-American literary standards were rejected, and African culture (or rather, an idealized idea of Africa)…became the rallying cry of the New Black Aesthetic.” Why should the precious and ever-rare concern for words and for their imaginative alignment be abused as “the old Euro-American literary standards”? It would have been useful if Dove had departed from her once-over-lightly historical summaries to explain the “literary standards” of “the New Black Aesthetic” as they appear in one of the poems she reprints, Amiri Baraka’s “Black Art”:

We want poems
like fists beating niggers out of Jocks
or dagger poems in the slimy bellies
of the owner-jews. Black poems to
smear on girdlemamma mulatto bitches
whose brains are red jelly stuck
between ‘lizabeth taylor’s toes. Stinking
Whores!…
Setting fire and death to
whities ass.

There is a lot of this showy violence (“cracking steel knuckles in a jewlady’s mouth,” etc.); and then Baraka, not finding any other way to close the rant, turns sentimental, in the manner of E.E. Cummings:

Let Black People understand
that they are the lovers and the sons
of lovers and warriors and sons
of warriors Are poems & poets &
all the loveliness here in the world

Dove must realize that the new “literary standards” behind this example of Baraka’s verse don’t immediately declare themselves. Printing something in short lines doesn’t make the writer a poet; it only makes him a person with a book of short lines. Nor is mere presence in the scene at a given moment enough to pronounce a person a poet. Although Dove mentions oral literature, orality has its own high standards (and we recognize them in action in everything from oral epic to Walt Whitman to black spirituals to Langston Hughes). If one wants evidence of black anger against “whitie” and “jewladies” and “mulatto bitches,” here it is. But a theme is not enough to make a poem.

Dove's reply is magnificent.

It is astounding to me how utterly Vendler misreads my critical assessment of the Black Arts Movement, construing my straightforward account of their defiant manifesto as endorsement of their tactics; she ignores a substantial critical paragraph in which I decry the fallout from the movement (“Against such clamor and thunder, introspective black poets had little chance to assert themselves and were swept under the steamroller,” I write in my introduction) and instead focuses on that handy whipping boy, Amiri Baraka, plucking passages from his historically seminal poem “Black Art” in which he denigrated Jews, thereby slyly, even creepily implying that I might have similar anti-Semitic tendencies. Smear by association…sound familiar? I would not have believed Vendler capable of throwing such cheap dirt, and no defense is necessary against these dishonorable tactics except the desire to shield my reputation from the kind of slanderous slime that sticks although it bears no truth. (I could argue equal opportunity offensiveness by having printed Hart Crane’s “A liquid theme that floating niggers swell”—but perhaps that makes me racist as well.)

In the same breath, Vendler—no slouch when it comes to lumping poets together by race—makes quick work of dismembering Gwendolyn Brooks, dismissing my description of Brooks’s “richly innovative” early poems as “hyperbole,” perhaps because I dared to compare those poems to “the best male poets of any race.” Evidently the 1950 Pulitzer committee thought highly enough of Ms. Brooks to award her the prize in poetry, at a time when there was little talk of diversity in America and the expression “multiculturalism” had yet to enter the public discourse. Analogous praise today, however, amounts in Dame Vendler’s eyes to nothing but “hype.”

What to make of this disagreement? Honestly, it's about time we had a good hockey fight in literary studies. We have needed some, and we need more. This is a good fight.

Let's argue about which poems to study and why. Let's compare Amiri Baraka to E.E. Cummings to Wallace Stevens to Gwendolyn Brooks. This is a terrific conversation, and we need to have it. And we need to have it publicly. We need to argue about and discuss literature as a model for how we wish the public to argue about and discuss literature.

Literature--poetry especially--is worth a fight.

Challenging the Christian God = Anti-Semitism?

I cry when you criticize my dad.

Watch the Christian persecution complex stretched to heretofore unseen bounds.

I never could have imagined I'd see this argument:

A further, even more dangerous issue is that in a vast majority of key cases of alleged Bible issues and difficulties being raised to try to indict the God of the Bible as a "fictional" "bronze age tribal deity" and "genocidal moral monster," etc, the texts being snipped out of context come from the Old Testament or the Tanach, especially the Pentateuch or Torah.

So, Dr Dawkins and co, kindly note: the direct implication of these anti-God, anti-Bible arguments, is that they are implicit attacks on Jews and Judaism, not just Christians and Christianity. Those who would make them, need to ask whether they would be willing to explicitly substitute terms directly accusing or challenging Jews, for those that accuse or challenge Christians.

“The God of the Old Testament [read: Jews] is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully . . . ” [Cf. Lennox- Dawkins debate, here. For a quick initial response to this sort of rhetoric, cf. CARM here and JPH of Tektonics here, here, here and here. Also cf. Vox Day's short book length critique of the new Atheists in a free to download format here. (Available from Amazon here.)]

The subtext of thinly veiled Anti-Semitism should be obvious, once we headline the reference to "The God of the Old Testament." Let's spell that out, a little more plainly: The God of the Old Testament [Jews].

Dr Dawkins, would you be willing to explicitly say that "the God of the Jews" is "jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully"?

Obviously not, or you would not have resorted to the sort of snide euphemism that allows you to pretend that it is only Bible-believing Christians who are in your cross-hairs.

I see no anti-semitism whatsoever, even when one substitutes "God of the Jews" for "God of the Old Testament." Dawkins's point remains valid and true.

If you want to talk anti-semitism: why are you calling the Hebrew Scriptures an "old" testament? To Jews, that testament is still operative and the Christian testament is false.

Moar on Moral Relativism

I continue to take a beating on my defense of moral relativism. Initially, the main purpose of my defense was to make only one claim:

To acknowledge cultural conditioning in morality does not prevent one from judging specific actions of another culture.

This claim still seems indisputably correct.

As is my wont, I took the one claim further and laid out a thumbnail defense of moral relativism. I was perhaps mistaken to do so, now that I reflect on matters. For one thing, I am not a philosopher and before these posts I have neither fully explored nor concretely adopted any particular philosophical stand related to morality. My mistake, then, has been to lock myself into a position of moral relativism before I have thoroughly investigated the scholarship in and around it.

Nevertheless, certain elements of relativism and objectivism seem irrefutable:

1. Cultural factors do play a role in what people consider moral and immoral behavior. Surely, we can agree on this?
2. An objectivist position that asserts universal rightness or wrongness of specific behavior/category X is indefensible. How can any human phenomenon, such as morality, be universal?

Beyond these elements, the important parts of the discussion concern not only when one is permitted to pass moral judgment on an act, as I've mentioned, but also when one is permitted to impose one's own morality on others by acting punitively or otherwise by prohibiting specific behavior.

I've also made a severe charge against some of the objectivists I have encountered:

Here's what I think actually is going on with these folks: What they are really after is sufficient justification for imposing one-world under Christianity. They're looking for the reason, not to use it necessarily but for the security of having it. They are like a nation that trusts only itself with nuclear weapons and doesn't get why that would make everyone else nervous.

Honestly, these statements frighten me a bit because they are serious. Yet, I am not sure they are incorrect. That's why I have not revised or stricken them. Perhaps someone can show me a reason to think I am wrong on these charges, but Christianity's self-appointed mission to evangelize strikes me as a reason to think I'm correct.  

So what now? I will read up over the next week or two and aim to come back with a better articulated version of my position--whatever it may be--and why I think it is the most reasonable.

A week or two is virtually no time, and the matters under discussion can legitimately take a lifetime to argue and to study. I know that, and I mean no disrespect to the subject or the people who study it. My modest aim is to put together something coherent and more considered; my aim, in other words, is to improve.

I need 2012 to be about my dissertation, more than anything else. Many topics, and indeed blogging itself, will probably be placed on the back burner next year.

Perry's Hail Mary

Clear desperation here. It's funny, except for the people who think he's sincere and who think he's correct.

Moral Relativism and What Christian Moralists Really Want

I've been talking in one or two places across the blogosphere about moral relativism. Largely, the exercise has been frustrating because people have not even attempted to address my argument:

The argument in favor of moral relativism, therefore, boils down to this:

• We are all already relativists in most every aspect of our daily lives.
• Moral relativism is descriptive, not prescriptive; it is not itself a moral system but a condition of moral agents (plural) acting in the world.
• Relativism does not entail moral equality between either acts or viewpoints.
• Moral relativism does not preclude making, legislating, or enforcing moral behavior.
• Relativism enables a necessary flexibility in assessing and evaluating moral acts, and improving moral law.

Yet in my travels, I've learned that the number-one source of discomfort for objectors is that moral relativism does not allow one to "claim the moral high ground."

Get that? Recognize that? They reject moral relativism because it does not give them the result they want: to be right, finally and irrevocably right. Being right--that is, having the moral high ground--is as political a position as there is: the superior vantage justifies imposing and enforcing the One True Morality^TM on absolutely everyone else.

I am not being hypocritical, self-righteous, or mean-spirited with the above comments. We know from the Mercier-Sperber paper that came out in SSRN this year that humans are built for the combat of argumentation, not the end-point of truth:

Abstract:
Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found. [emphasis added]

I want to list some of the common objections to moral relativism that I have heard, but I think tThe objections to moral relativism are worth noting, but I won't comment on them because they are easily dispatched:

• Objection 1: Any and every moral value is A-OK.
• Objection 2: No way to condemn Hitler, Stalin, etc.
• Objection 3: No way to resolve moral debates.
• Objection 4: No way to make moral progress.

I am disheartened that folks can't bring themselves to accept that other people and other cultures can have different moral values, or that our own moral values are historically and culturally contingent. I've also been surprised at the visceral component of the resistance to relativism. People react strongly against it, and they cling ferociously to the idea of objective moral values.

Clearly, something more than reason and even more than the moral high ground are at stake.

Here's what I think actually is going on with these folks: What they are really after is sufficient justification for imposing one-world under Christianity. They're looking for the reason, not to use it necessarily but for the security of having it. They are like a nation that trusts only itself with nuclear weapons and doesn't get why that would make everyone else nervous.

I May Have to Go to a Movie Theater (Wednesday Comedy)

I have not been in a movie theater since 2001, but The Three Stooges might bring me back. Seriously. I love the Stooges. Here's the trailer:



I do hope the movie includes a pie fight.

A Jewish-Born Atheist Does the Alpha Course

Over the next several weeks, I am going to post my impressions of the Alpha course, a series of weekly meetings introducing people to Christian belief.

Interestingly, there are no pastors or preachers heading the sessions: they are run by churchgoers, which contributes to a collegiate atmosphere. The course's "We are all discovering together" message would be impossible in a clergy-run operation, where clerics dispense their wisdom to the unknowing. I would later learn, however, that the group leaders often had more knowledge than they had first let on.

In our course, the sessions went the same every week:

• A meal (nominally free, but $5.00 per person donations were requested).
• Two worship songs. Starting in week #3 and continuing throughout, a woman led everyone in songs, with words presented behind her in a PowerPoint presentation.
• A DVD talk. Each talk is a recording of Nicky Gumbel, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton church in England, speaking before an audience in his church. Everyone in the course has a handbook outlining Gumbel's talks.
• Small group discussion. We had a group of 15 people, and we met together in a room to present responses to the talks, to share other impressions, and sometimes to go through exercises planned by the leaders. We had two nominal leaders and two helpers. They had taken the course before. Our group was one of three small groups. Group makeup seemed to be by age of the participants.

Hopefully, people will find my notes interesting and helpful. When I was first invited to take the course, along with my wife, I was happy to find at least one detailed account of an atheist's Alpha experience. This was the account of Stephen Butterfield in the UK.

But I am an American atheist, and my background is from Judaism. Also, my wife has a strong belief in Christianity. All of this gives me a different perspective on the course, and I am eager to share.

I did not intend at the outset to have a blog series on Alpha, but immediately I found it necessary to take notes and jot down impressions. Every week, I heard statements and arguments that were incredible. Yet, I felt like there was no outlet for me to question or challenge what was being said.

Should there have been such an outlet? I'm not sure, but I thought there would be one because the course was pitched as a way for people to get together to explore the "big questions." Here is a description from the Alpha web site:

Who Is Alpha For?
Alpha is for anyone…anyone who thinks there may be more to life than meets the eye.

People attend from all backgrounds, religions, and viewpoints. They come to investigate questions about the existence of God, the purpose of life, the afterlife, the claims of Jesus and more. Some people want to get beyond religion and find a relationship with God that really changes life. Others come for the close, long-lasting friendships that are built during the Alpha course.

Many guests have never been to church, others may have attended church occasionally but feel they have never really understood the basics of the Christian faith. Everyone is welcome.

My initial understanding was that the stuff about finding a relationship with God would be not as heavily pushed as it actually ended up being. Indeed, I soon learned that the primary aim of the course was to encourage and foster personal faith. We did not investigate--at least as I understand that word--the questions so much.

Over the next several weeks, I'll provide my notes on each session and additional commentary. I want to keep each post fairly light and brief. That is, I won't spend a lot of time refuting or challenging what I heard. What's the point? It's been done to death. Through brevity, I also want to protect the anonymity and privacy of the other people who participated in Alpha with me.

Everyone I met was very nice and seemingly open-minded, yet I was an outsider at Alpha and I remained one throughout. I was not always comfortable, and at times I was sad because I did not belong. That's a strange and awful feeling, to sense that you don't belong.

I'm interested to get reactions over the next few weeks. To me, it was ultimately worthwhile to take the course, if for nothing else then to be with my wife. I can't say I learned much that was new or surprising, except perhaps that people will accept extraordinary assertions. I dare say that given a similar environment, the obviously bullshit Gospel of Judas could have gotten a high level of acceptance in the group.

Why My Children Go to Church (and Why I Occasionally Go Too)

At the risk of hurting my Gnu Atheist creds, such that they are, I want to explain why my children go to Christian services every week, and why I sometimes do too.

I'm disclosing here because of a press release from Rice University with the headline, "Science and religion do mix." The release discusses a paper recently published by sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund. It reads:

They [Ecklund and co-authors] interviewed a scientifically selected sample of 275 participants, pulled from a survey of 2,198 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural and social sciences at 21 elite U.S. research universities. Only 15 percent of those surveyed view religion and science as always in conflict. Another 15 percent say the two are never in conflict, and 70 percent believe religion and science are only sometimes in conflict. Approximately half of the original survey population expressed some form of religious identity, whereas the other half did not.

“Much of the public believes that as science becomes more prominent, secularization increases and religion decreases,” Ecklund said. “Findings like these among elite scientists, who many individuals believe are most likely to be secular in their beliefs, definitely call into question ideas about the relationship between secularization and science.”

Many of those surveyed cited issues in the public realm (teaching of creationism versus evolution, stem cell research) as reasons for believing there is conflict between the two. The study showed that these individuals generally have a particular kind of religion in mind (and religious people and institutions) when they say that religion and science are in conflict.

Ecklund's paper and her previous research have already been treated by others, including Jerry Coyne, Eric MacDonald, P.Z. Myers, and Jason Rosenhouse. If you can stomach the sanctimoniousness, Uncommon Descent (Denyse O'Leary) has also noted Ecklund.

Now, I am not a scientist. But I am an atheist and I feel strongly that religious beliefs and rituals waste good human energy. That's why I stopped participating in and supporting my local Chabad Jewish center. One might therefore legitimately ask why on Earth I would agree to have my children go to church every week, and why I myself end up going to church stuff sometimes. So, if one should ask, these are my answers:

• My wife takes the kids to church. She wants to go to church, she wants the children to be Christian, and I support her.
• I go very infrequently, maybe two to four times a year. Usually, this is because one or more of the kids is singing or something like that. I would gladly go more often if my wife said that she wanted me to. I happen to like being with my wife. It's a love thing.
• When I go, I don't pray or worship. I just observe and listen. Whatever opinions I have about it all are expressed here.
• So far as I have gathered from asking questions and observing, most of what the kids learn at church is good stuff: be considerate, don't insult others, listen to Mommy and Daddy. The whole super-Jesus stuff is window dressing, as far as I can tell. It's another kind of Santa Claus belief, a metaphor for the stoic heroism that some think characterizes their lives.
• I have no worries at all about my kids, religion, and atheism. I really don't. I might worry more about them becoming Republicans.
• Do I want my kids to be atheists? No, I have no special desires about whether they decide to accept or reject religion. But I also have no special problem offering my opinion on religious beliefs and teachings. In the end, I trust that between what the kids learn from my wife's Christianity and from my own atheism, they'll find a religion or non-religion that makes them happy and supports their larger goals in life.
• The real "prize," as it were, is the kids pursuing the education and professions that excite them. The endgame is for them to find love, happiness, and well-being. If they think kneeling before a cross is part of this, then I won't squawk. I just happen to think that supplication before imaginary beings is unnecessary. On the other hand, I imagine that church may provide professional networking benefits for the kids--and for my wife and me.
• Do I think science and religion are in conflict? Yes, probably. I don't think they have a lot to say to each other, even though they would like to. But people negotiate conflicts all the time without being scarred.

So, I disagree with the headline: science and religion don't mix, in my opinion. Atheism and religion don't mix, either. But they can co-exist, and they can even fall in love with each other. And they can stay in love together--ooh, time for some Al Green.

In Defense of Moral Relativism

Moral relativism is a good thing. What's more, we already accept relativism as part of our ethical framework. How, for instance, does the so-called Golden Rule work without relativism? How can we hope to understand how to behave towards others without considering their circumstances and experiences?

Moral relativism is not a problem. The problem is what to do with it. To illustrate, take the following account:

I was teaching my senior Philosophy class. We had just finished a unit on Metaphysics and were about to get into Ethics, the philosophy of how we make moral judgments. The school had also just had several social-justice-type assemblies—multiculturalism, women’s rights, anti-violence and gay acceptance. So there was no shortage of reference points from which to begin.

I decided to open by simply displaying, without comment, the photo of Bibi Aisha. Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains. After crawling to her grandfather’s house, she was saved by a nearby American hospital. I felt quite sure that my students, seeing the suffering of this poor girl of their own age, would have a clear ethical reaction, from which we could build toward more difficult cases.

The picture is horrific. Aisha’s beautiful eyes stare hauntingly back at you above the mangled hole that was once her nose. Some of my students could not even raise their eyes to look at it. I could see that many were experiencing deep emotions.

But I was not prepared for their reaction.

I had expected strong aversion; but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture.

They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.” One student said, “I don’t feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff.”

Another said (with no consciousness of self-contradiction), “It’s just wrong to judge other cultures.”

Anderson, the teacher, is correct to identify the real problem: the refusal to make moral judgments. Moral relativism is one thing; moral judgments are another. Moral relativism does not preclude making moral judgments and never has.

Yes, another culture might consider that its citizens have made a morally good action in mutilating Aisha. We have every right to challenge the moral justification of the action, even though we are not of that culture. They consider the action right. We consider the action wrong. We argue about it. We try to get to the heart of the matter and to a workable agreement about morally justified behavior.

Nothing about moral relativism prevents us from outrage over heinous acts or from punishing wrongdoing. All that relativism actually requires of us is an acknowledgment that our own moral frame of reference is not the only valid one for understanding specific acts. The alternative is to declare in all arrogance that we alone possess the One True Way^TM of all morality, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. Of course, this has been tried before--and it has failed miserably. Just see how the ironically named Catholic Church has done in imposing their One True Way^TM.

Those who wish to use Anderson's story to critique of materialism or postmodernism are being obtuse; they are barking up not the wrong tree but the stupid tree. Such people include the insidious "Best Schools" folks, who post Anderson's account as part of their drive to bring back straight, white, and Christian as the ideal in education and society.

But Anderson's story actually shows the power of moral relativism to establish judgment. With reasoned and reasonable judgment--the kind that only moral relativism allows--we may make responsible, nuanced appeals to those who possess moral frameworks which differ sharply from our own.

The argument in favor of moral relativism, therefore, boils down to this:

• We are all already relativists in most every aspect of our daily lives.
• Relativism is descriptive, not prescriptive; it is not itself a moral system but a condition of moral agents (plural) acting in the world.
• Relativism does not entail moral equality between either acts or viewpoints.
• Moral relativism does not preclude making, legislating, or enforcing moral behavior.
• Relativism enables a necessary flexibility in assessing and evaluating moral acts, and improving moral law.

If one is not a relativist, how does one condemn the “mutilation”? After all, weren't the perpetrators enforcing divinely-sanctioned law? Yes, they were indeed acting according to an “objective” moral standard, as surely as the nation of Israel was in the slaughter of Deuteronomy 20:10-20. If one’s theory is that morality is divinely given, then one has nothing to say about either of the two cases above, except perhaps “hallelujah.”

One can be a relativist and then defend both cases. One can be a relativist and condemn both cases. But one cannot not be a relativist. The world is basically divided between people who accept this fact, and those who refuse to accept it.

Jazz Died in 1959

For me, Coltrane is the best of those who pushed jazz music beyond the jazz label.

Trumpeter Nicholas Payton has gotten attention with a post called "On Why Jazz Isn’t Cool Anymore . . . ." Payton's piece is not so much about the coolness of jazz as it is about what defines jazz as a genre.

I like pieces like this because the challenge is enjoyable. I happen to love jazz. I love Miles and Coltrane, Monk and Ornette, Art Tatum and Keith Jarrett, Wayne Shorter and Tomasz Stanko, Bobo Stenson and Marilyn Crispell, Mingus and Avishai Cohen, Evan Parker and Charlie Parker. And many others. I love the music, that daring improvisational music.

So Payton has written something daring. In sprawling, swirling fashion, he says:

Jazz is a brand.

Jazz ain’t music, it’s marketing, and bad marketing at that.

It has never been, nor will it ever be, music.

Here lies Jazz (1916 – 1959).

Too many musicians and not enough artists.

I believe music to be more of a medium than a brand.

Silence is music, too.

You can’t practice art.

In order for it to be true, one must live it.

I agree with Payton on the main part of his argument, that the name "jazz" no longer has any useful or meaningful resonance for working artists who are placed under the jazz umbrella.

In the 1960s, Miles Davis started to place "Directions in Music by Miles Davis" on his albums. The term "jazz" no longer described what he was doing, according to his own conception. The contemporary artists I listen to, such as the Esbjorn Svensson Trio and The Bad Plus, do not consider themselves jazz artists, although they clearly love and respect jazz.

I part company with Payton on at least one distinction. I don't see why he separates musicians and artists as groups of people. This seems a self-serving and doctrinaire classification.

I like better the salvo Payton gives in a follow-up post:

The music was just fine before it was called Jazz and will be just fine without the name.

There is nothing to be afraid of except yourselves.

I am Nicholas Payton and I play Black American Music.

I appreciate that he stands his ground, that he defines his own music and makes it available to us. Maybe one day, Payton will decide he no longer plays Black American music but rather plays Nicholas Payton's music. That will be good, too.

The Torah Declaration on Homosexuality

Love is not allowed in religion.

According to Jayson Littman, writing at the Huffington Post, some Orthodox rabbis have been asked to sign a declaration of the Jewish response to homosexuality, by which is specifically meant "homosexual Jews." Littman writes:

So this Declaration currently making rounds will serve as their official response in regards to guiding individuals with same-sex attractions. The endorser, Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia, urges all rabbis and mental health professionals to sign this Declaration, which offers modification and healing through reparative therapy as the sole option.

I abhor the secrecy element of this. Aren't we Jews always being targeted as having secret, sinister meetings?

Littman provides the text of the declaration. It's infuriating stuff. Here's the opening:

Over the past few years homosexual activists have infiltrated every aspect of the secular world and have achieved acceptance in the media and most of the general culture. They have been fighting fiercely on issues pertaining to the legitimacy of the homosexual lifestyle in all aspects of society, including homosexual marriage, in order to gain full acceptance. The last line of resistance against acceptance of the homosexual agenda has been mostly from the religious communities.

Although the writer of the declaration wants to demonize "the homosexual agenda," his writing is a bit too clear. As mentioned, the homosexual agenda is for civil equality and social acceptance. These are noble, not demonic ends. These are the good objectives other groups in America have valiantly sought and struggled for. To stand up as one who resists equality and tolerance is to identify as a douchebag. But if the writer really wants to rouse hatred and suspicion against the homosexual agenda, he should have been less specific.

The declaration gets nastier, however, as when it refuses to acknowledge homosexuality as "a genuine identity":

The Torah makes a clear statement that homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle or a genuine identity by severely prohibiting its conduct. Furthermore, the Torah, ever prescient about negative secular influences, warns us in Vayikra (Leviticus) 20:23 “Do not follow the traditions of the nations that I expel from before you…” Particularly the Torah writes this in regards to homosexuality and other forbidden sexual liaisons.

Yes, folks you read the above correctly: the implication is that homosexuality derives from the gentiles. It's a goy thing, not a human thing. Here, our fine Jewish leaders sound no less bigoted and naive than Iranian President and psychopath Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who famously declared that Iran had no homosexuals.

The position of the declaration is that homosexuality should be suppressed and re-directed:

From a Torah perspective, the question (sic) whether homosexual inclinations and behaviors are changeable is extremely relevant. The concept that G-d created a human being who is unable to find happiness in a loving relationship unless he violates a biblical prohibition is neither plausible nor acceptable. G-d is loving and merciful. Struggles, and yes, difficult struggles, along with healing and personal growth are part and parcel of this world. Impossible, life long, Torah prohibited situations with no achievable solutions are not.

We emphatically reject the notion that a homosexually inclined person cannot overcome his or her inclination and desire. Behaviors are changeable. The Torah does not forbid
something which is impossible to avoid. Abandoning people to lifelong loneliness and despair by denying all hope of overcoming and healing their same-sex attraction is heartlessly cruel. Such an attitude also violates the biblical prohibition in Vayikra (Leviticus) 19:14 “and you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.”

Homosexuality, the declaration says, is all and only about behavior, no different from an excessive love of Hostess Cup Cakes. Nevertheless, the declaration makes it clear that one should be ashamed of homosexual "inclination and desire." One should fight one's homosexuality.

My shame is to ever have thought highly of rabbis or their office.

The declaration closes with a focus on "love":

It requires tremendous bravery and fortitude for a person to confront and deal with same-sex attraction. For example a sixteen-year-old who is struggling with this issue may be confused and afraid and not know whom to speak to or what steps to take. We must create an atmosphere where this teenager (or anyone) can speak freely to a parent, rabbi, or mentor and be treated with love and compassion. Authority figures can then guide same-sex strugglers towards a path of healing and overcoming their inclinations.

The key point to remember is that these individuals are primarily innocent victims of childhood emotional wounds. They deserve our full love, support and encouragement in their striving towards healing. Struggling individuals who seek health and wellness should not be confused with the homosexual movement and their agenda. This distinction
is crucial. It reflects the difference between what G-d asks from all of us and what He unambiguously prohibits.

The declaration shows a remarkable lack of awareness of what love and compassion are. How can a person live a "full and healthy life" without being able to express romantic love freely? How can a person be happy and joyous in a community that rejects him or her?

I cry that Jewish rabbis do not see they espouse the same bigotry and ignorance that others have used against Jews in the Christian and Muslim worlds.

If what Shmuel Kamenetsky endorses is Jewish, then I am not Jewish. I will not be Jewish. I do not and will not accept either his authority on what the Torah says. His traditions are meaningless. They hold no weight either in interpreting what the Torah says or in what I should think or feel about subjects.

But this is not a Jewish problem, per se. It's a religious problem. It's a problem of using old books and religious tradition as over-riding authorities for opinions and decisions. Even the relatively benign "Statement of Principles" is unacceptable.

At some point, we have to admit that Halakhah can be wrong and immoral. The Torah can be wrong and immoral. The Talmud can be wrong and immoral. Jesus could be wrong and immoral. The New testament can be wrong an immoral. Mohammed, the Koran. Buddha, Confucius, Bruce Lee, George Clooney, Ronald Reagan, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa--all of them can be factually wrong and immoral.

When will we grow up? Maybe we won't.

The introduction to the declaration says that questions can be emailed to TorahDec@Gmail.com. I plan to email not a question but a polite condemnation of the declaration.

Kugel's HTRTB [Part 10]: Judaism vs. Modern Biblical Scholarship

After another too-long hiatus, we return to Chapter 36 in James L. Kugel’s How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now.

This is the tenth installment of the series. Last time, we concluded with Kugel again clarifying the problem of the Bible for modern readers, which is whether to accept it as both holy and true when so much of modern biblical scholarship seems to have cast doubt on its holiness and veracity:

Do we wish to follow the way Christian interpreters Paul or Jerome read the Bible? Do we wish to follow the way of the "anonymous group of Jewish interpreters" who in Kugel's special sense created the Bible from 300 BCE to the start of the common era? In any case, we cannot and do not read the Biblical text apart from ways of interpreting.

And what of the historical veracity problem? Kugel's argument here, I think, is that the value and efficacy of the Bible in the great change from 300 BCE onward never relied on faithful historical reconstruction. Historical veracity, in other words, is a serious problem only in a Protestant sola scriptura or text-centric interpretive matrix. The next subsection will present the way of interpretation deriving from Jewish tradition.

Unlike Christian traditions of reading the Bible, says Kugel, the Jewish tradition operates independently of the question of historical truth. This is because the Torah is not the sole or even primary authority in establishing God's instructions to humanity. There is the Torah, that is, the written Pentateuch, but there is also the Oral Torah, which encompasses "the traditions of [Torah's] proper interpretation and application." Both Torahs are asserted to have been given to Moses at the same time.

The Oral Torah includes not just biblical interpretation but also ritual, liturgical, and legal matters. The Oral Torah is said eventually to have become the Mishnah, the Tosfta, the two Talmuds, and various compilations of midrash. It's practical significance and utility in rabbinic Judaism were huge, for the written Torah meant whatever the Oral Torah said it meant.

The two Torah tradition, then, distinguishes Judaism from Christianity and Christian approaches to the Bible:

Judaism has at its heart a great secret. It endlessly lavishes praise on the written Torah, exalting its role as a divinely given guidebook and probing lovingly the tiniest details of its wording and even spelling [....] Yet upon inspection Judaism turns out to be quite the opposite of fundamentalism. The written text alone is not all-powerful; in fact, it rarely stands on its own. Its true significance usually lies not in the plain sense of its words but in what the Oral Torah has made of those words; this is its definitive and final interpretation.

Kugel argues that the Jewish tradition of interpretation cannot be reconciled with modern biblical scholarship. The Jewish tradition, as he had explained at the beginning of the book, encompasses Four Assumptions that all ancient interpreters seemed to share about biblical texts. I will give these assumption in abbreviated form, but the full text appears on pages 14-16:

1. The Bible is fundamentally cryptic.
2. The Bible is a book of lessons directed to readers in their own day.
3. The Bible contains no contradictions or mistakes.
4. The Bible is essentially a divinely given text, a book in which God speaks directly or through His prophets.

According to Kugel, the modern scholarly way of reading the Bible rejects the ancient interpretive traditions based on the Four Assumptions. The ancient traditions, on the other hand, do not take the Bible as standalone texts that are to be read at face value (even if they can, in fact, be read in such a way).

In light of the two Torah tradition and the Four Assumptions, what is Judaism's response to the discoveries of modern biblical scholarship?

The texts that make up the Bible were originally composed under whatever circumstances they were composed. What made them the Bible, however, was their definitive reinterpretation along the lines of the Four Assumptions of the ancient interpreters--a way of reading that was established in Judaism in the form of the Oral Torah. Read the Bible in this way and you are reading it properly, that is, in keeping with the understanding of those who made and canonized the Bible. Read it any other way and you have drastically misconstrued the intentions of the Bible's framers.

I wish Kugel had been even more argumentative at this point, particularly about the specific difference between the Jewish and fundamentalist responses to modern biblical scholarship. Kugel clearly thinks fundamentalism is unrealistic and isolationist. Yet he also thinks there is no reconciliation to be had in more liberal approaches, as we have seen in the immediately preceding posts of this blog series. Kugel also seems to agree with the consensus of modern biblical scholarship, which I recorded before from the publisher's book description:

The story of Adam and Eve, it turns out, was not originally about the "Fall of Man," but about the move from a primitive, hunter-gatherer society to a settled, agricultural one. As for the stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Esau, these narratives were not, at their origin, about individual people at all but, rather, explanations of some feature of Israelite society as it existed centuries after these figures were said to have lived. Dinah was never raped -- her story was created by an editor to solve a certain problem in Genesis. In the earliest version of the Exodus story, Moses probably did not divide the Red Sea in half; instead, the Egyptians perished in a storm at sea. Whatever the original Ten Commandments might have been, scholars are quite sure they were different from the ones we have today. What's more, the people long supposed to have written various books of the Bible were not, in the current consensus, their real authors: David did not write the Psalms, Solomon did not write Proverbs or Ecclesiastes; indeed, there is scarcely a book in the Bible that is not the product of different, anonymous authors and editors working in different periods.

Kugel's position, then, seems to be that modern biblical scholarship may be correct about the history and original meanings of biblical texts, but the scholarly consensus has no effect on what the texts really mean. The texts still mean what the Oral Torah says they do, even if they were originally created to communicate a very different kind of message. At some point in history, ancient interpreters got hold of the texts and were able to integrate them into a philosophy of God and Israel. By doing so, these interpreters brought out divine instructions and moral insights in the texts. The interpreters were building a textual universe predicated on God's relationship with His world, His patriarchs, and His people Israel. Their overriding mission was to help their own world of men and women follow from the textual universe; to make, in other words, the real world live out the model of the Torah.

I am not entirely comfortable with Kugel's argument here--although we should bear in mind that he has not yet concluded. However, I am struck by the argument because it touches on an observation I have been following during my participation in the Alpha course: what we often mean by religious faith is faith in a group or tradition, rather than direct trust in God, Jesus, or the Bible. In other words, we trust in the Lord to the extent we accept the authority and credibility of church leaders, pastoral organizations, and religious commentators. Kugel's faith lies in the ancient Jewish interpreters and in the rabbinic tradition. The project of these interpreters had no need for the kind of data brought out by modern scholars.

As I said, I am not entirely comfortable with Kugel's argument. It reminds me of the non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) view of science and religion advocated by biologist Stephen Jay Gould. But I wonder if the conclusions about the Bible and the methods developed by ancient interpreters really are unaffected by what modern scholars discover about the original meanings of the texts or about the non-historicity and non-authorship of certain biblical characters.

But let's keep going through the chapter and seem how Kugel continues to unfold his argument.

Paul Motian, 1931-2011

A great drummer and percussionist.

The War on the War on Christmas Begins Early

A Facebook contact posted the above image, which gathered several "like" votes quickly.

Honestly, though, who says it's not OK to say "Merry Christmas" and "God Bless America"? For fuck's sake, people, say what you have to say.

Of course, it is no less OK to say "Happy Holidays." It is no less OK to wish people well without limiting the greeting either to Christmas or to the various religious holidays this time of year. It's no less OK to point out that not everyone is Christian, not everyone observes Christmas, not everyone agrees that Christmas generally is a good thing, and not everyone expresses patriotism in with "God Bless America."

You want people to see that you are a Christian and a good patriot, too. You don't beat your wife and you don't kick your dog. You drive a pickup truck and you go to parades. Bully for you, pal, bully for you.

Basically an Underachiever: Five Great Films by Woody Allen

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

I watched part one of the Woody Allen documentary last night on my local PBS station. It was very good, and though I had not planned to see it, it was quite compelling.

Many of Allen's films are special to me. Here are the standouts:

1) Manhattan (1979): My all-time favorite, not only because Mariel Hemingway is beautiful.

2) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989): Great plot, great actors.

3) Zelig (1983): I love this movie! The PBS documentary had some moments that reminded me of the opening of Zelig.

4) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986): Another great 1980s film with an ensemble cast.

5) Sleeper (1973): Lots of smart gags.

The notable omission is Annie Hall (1976), which is unnecessary to put on a list. I have seen virtually no 1990s and beyond films by Allen (or anyone else, for that matter--in fact, I have not set foot in a movie theater since 2001).

I have a CD set of Allen's stand up act. It's the best stand up of all time, if you want my opinion.

The Evil God Challenge

Which one represents the true nature of "God"?

If you like a good disagreement among philosophers, you should check out the discussion between Stephen Law and Edward Feser. I won't recall the full play-by-play here, but the point of contention is the coherence of Law's Evil God Challenge.

Law illustrates the evil god challenge like so:

One author dismisses the evidential problem of evil as an argument against the existence of God as “worthless”. Why is it worthless? The author sweeps the problem to one side because they suppose it’s entirely dealt with by two points. The first point is: they suppose we can look forward to a limitless afterlife in which we’ll enjoy the beatific vision, and this is going to more than compensate us for all the horror we experience in this life. The author quotes St. Paul, who said: “the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.” The second point the author makes is this: that the pain etc. we experience now is the price paid for greater goods to be gained later. They illustrate by pointing out how suffering of child being forced to learn the violin is the price justifiably paid for great good of that child’s later being able to play violin (they admit this isn’t suffering on quite the scale of Auschwitz, but insist the same basic principle applies). Indeed, this particular author adds that, by supposing evil constitutes good evidence against a good God, the atheist is just assuming there’s no God and thus no wondrous afterlife etc. that more than compensates the evils we experience now. So the atheist’s argument based on suffering is hopelessly circular. Indeed, this author says that atheists who run such an argument need “a course in logic”!

But now here’s where the evil God challenge comes in. All these points made above can be flipped in defence of belief in an evil god. A defender of belief in an evil god can say we can look forward to an afterlife of unremitting terror and suffering, and this will more than compensate us for any good enjoyed now. Moreover, these goods we experience now are actually the price paid for greater evils (I give loads of examples in my paper). Moreover, by assuming that the goods we see around us constitute good evidence against an evil God, the evil-god-rejecter is just assuming there’s no evil God and thus no hellish afterlife that more than ou[t]weighs the goods. So this objection against belief in an evil god is hopelessly circular. Clearly, this critic of the evil god hypothesis needs” a course in logic”!

Feser's critique of the evil god challenge is nicely presented here:

Law claims that the evidence for the existence of a good God is no better than the evidence for the existence of an evil god, and that any theodicy a theist might put forward as a way of reconciling the fact of evil with the existence of a good God has a parallel in a reverse-theodicy a believer in an evil god could put forward to reconcile the presence of good in the world with the existence of an evil god. Now, no one actually believes in an evil god. Therefore, Law concludes, since (he claims) the evidence for a good God is no better than that for an evil God, no one should believe in a good God either. That’s the “evil god challenge.”

The trouble is that Law regards this as a challenge to theism generally, and it simply isn’t. It applies at most only to one, historically idiosyncratic version of theism.  So, suppose you regard the divine attributes as in principle metaphysically separable -- that something that is, for example, omnipotent or omniscient could nevertheless fail to be all-good. Suppose also that you regard good and evil as on a metaphysical par, neither more fundamental than the other. And suppose that you consider the grounds for belief in God to consist in an inductive inference to the effect that God is the best explanation of various bits of evidence -- the orderliness of the world, the good we find in it, etc. Given those specific metaphysical and epistemological assumptions -- the sort that might be made by someone beholden to a “theistic personalist” conception of God and who thinks Paley-style “design arguments” and the like are the best reason to believe in God -- Law’s challenge might be a problem. (Or maybe not. But since I have no time either for theistic personalism or for Paley-style “design arguments,” I really couldn’t care less.)

Feser gives a good summary of Law's position, and Law's argument isn't particularly difficult at any rate. Yet at this stage I think Law has the better of the debate. Law says that Feser could overcome the evil god challenge by coming up "with some really extraordinarily good argument for the existence of a good god, an argument that’s so very, very compelling that it more than outweighs the mountain of evidence against such a god constituted by the vast quantities of horror and suffering we see around us."

But Feser's response is a variety of "not MY god," in that he claims his argument is not subject to the evil god challenge. Feser's argument for god, he claims, is different--making Law's challenge "irrelevant." Feser explains:

His “evil god hypothesis” doesn’t stalemate the arguments for classical theism, for two reasons. First, unlike the “good god” of theistic personalism, the God of classical theism isn’t in the same genus as Law’s “evil god.” The God of classical theism isn’t the same kind of thing as Law’s “evil god” at all. (Indeed, unlike everything else that exists, the God of classical theism isn’t in a genus or kind in the first place -- that’s part of the whole point of classical theism.) So there is no parallel between alternative “hypotheses” of the sort Law needs in order to get his “challenge” off the ground.

Second, the arguments typically employed by classical theists simply cannot be stalemated by “evidential” considerations because they are typically not “evidential” or inductive or probabilistic arguments in the first place. If an Aristotelian argument from motion, or Aquinas’s “existence argument,” or Neo-Platonic arguments work at all, they get you demonstratively to something that is pure actuality, or subsistent being itself, or an absolute unity; and the other metaphysical theses alluded to get you from there to something that is of necessity perfectly good (indeed, something that is goodness itself). To suggest that what is purely actual or subsistent being itself might, given the “evidence,” be evil, is simply unintelligible. To make such a suggestion would merely be to show that the one making it doesn’t understand the metaphysical concepts in question.

I don't hear Feser saying much here. His first argument basically accuses Law of using a straw man as the "good" god. The second argument is bizarre. Although the classical God is conceived as pure and transcendent, the argument to purity and transcendence begins with inferences from reality. I don't see why it makes a difference whether we are talking about pure and transcendent evil as well as pure and transcendent good. In neither case do I buy Feser's appeal to exceptionalism.

Law puts the matter best in his comment to Feser: "Anyway, that's my take for what it's worth. I don't doubt you will continue to maintain that the evil god challenge "doesn't apply" to your sort of theism, despite the fact that it actually very nicely reveals the inadequacy of the theodicies you offered in your book."

Announcements

First, I am not moving over to Freethoughtblogs.com. I haven't been invited. Waaaah!

However, I have had my responses to set questions posted over at You, Me & Religion. Check it out. I answered the questions in the springtime, as you'll see by the reference to Pesach.

I have recently returned from an overnight getaway with my Alpha course group. It was a...a...a...an interesting experience, both personally and intellectually. I think I am going to start posting from my notes on the weekly sessions.

In the Humanities, We Too Want to Find Things Out

Tauriq Moosa at 3 Quarks Daily is unconvinced by my defense of pop-culture humanities, including conferences such as the Jersey Shore conference held recently at the University of Chicago. Moosa says I fail "to offer good reasons for us to take the conference even a little seriously." He then proceeds to assess the conference program against my assertions of value for the topics (based only on the titled of topics and papers--I was not there).

Here is Moosa on the identity studies topic:

I’ve never understood what identity studies are about and what it means. I say this and I live in South Africa. Having engaged with it for many years, I’ve found identity studies to be nothing but nonsense posturing as deep, complex, psychological questions. In the end, who the hell cares? I’m an ex-Muslim who studies bioethics, to change public policy on matters on euthanasia and organ donation, and I read too many comics – I’ve never considered what my identity is or means in the context of a society that is largely unemployed and uneducated. What I have considered is what those factors of unemployment and no education will do when I attempt to engage in political change on matters of medicine (since the majority of the very population I want to benefit might not at first understand my reasons for wanting medical practioners to kill their patients, legally).

But will engaging with what it means to, say, be a man in today’s world really be an important topic? I’m always hesitant about such topics since sometimes people want to take what should be a discussion as a platform to advocate how men (or women) should be; which I think is unfounded, since gender roles don’t make sense anymore with, for example, increasing acceptance of homosexual relationships and artificial insemination. Who cares “how” a man should be in today’s world? I don’t think it’s a relevant topic, but then that’s just me.

Moosa is completely correct about a danger in identity studies to produce "nonsense posturing as deep, complex, psychological questions." One is well served to have a BS-meter handy when reading any paper that purports to focus on identity issues.

Yet, questions of identity do have importance, as does engaging with such questions. Moosa asks why one should care about the topic, and why it matters to have students engage with questions of masculinity or femininity or race or income level or legal status or...so on and so on.

Here's why: because we want to know how things work, including societies and cultures. Some people want to know how light behaves under certain conditions. Others want to know how an organism survived millions of years ago in a hostile environment. Some people want to know what happens when two different molecules interact with each other. Some people want to know how people make sense of the sounds and gestures produced by other people. And some people want to know how different ideas get expressed, used, shared, and altered in a culture.

I am one of the people in this last group. I think we can look at identity categories, for one thing, as a way of studying the historical character of cultures. I believe further that knowing more about such categories and their uses in cultures helps to advance the cause of civil/legal equality and to lessen bigotry.

Moosa asks "Who cares 'how' a man should be in today’s world?" The answer is that I do. I care how masculinity gets defined, and I think it has broad social implications and historical connections. There's a light beer commercial series that focuses on unmanly behavior. Usually, one guy in the commercial won't drink the right kind of light beer and it ties into some earlier behavior that was either too child-like or too feminine. These humorous constructions of masculinity have interesting tie backs to other beer commercials and to other literature where men better behave like men. And we all know of real-life groups and situations where it was a matter of harm or death to act unmanly.

So, yeah, it's relevant how people construct manliness or Italian-American-ness or most any other identity. It's important. Moosa repeatedly he uses the words "important" (10 times) and "pointless" (6 times) to dismiss both the subject of the conference--Jersey Shore--and the approach to the subject--too shallow and posturing.

But I see the humanities as able to play an important role in (1) developing the cultural knowledge mentioned above, and (2) teaching the critical thinking skills required for such knowledge. As I remark in another post:

My point is not about the relative quality of the products, Jersey Shore vs. The Brothers Karamazov; it's about their value (also not equal) in allowing students to learn, discuss, and hone critical thinking skills. In my ideal world, the best teaching would lead people to be offended that Jersey Shore was ever offered as an option for entertainment. And then the show would fold along with others of its ilk.

Moosa rightly points out the dangers of people getting on platforms to tell us how men or women should be. In my conception, the humanities is descriptive, not prescriptive. Moosa also asks why people like me want to know how people of the past saw their world, why people like me want to understand the fictional worlds created in our literature, and why people like me want to study reality shows and comic books. The answer is (again) because we, like you, want to know how the world works. For us, the pleasure of finding things out concerns things that are made and valued by people. 

And that's why even a conference on Jersey Shore has a point and has importance. Moosa is quite right that the Jersey Shore conference could have been on anything: from the Darwin biopic to Lost, and everywhere in between. The point is, however, that we have companies and people who make something like Jersey Shore, we have companies and people who make money from the show, and we have people who watch it and have their various reactions to it. This point is important because it requires us to make up hypotheses, as Moosa does, for why the show is a hit. He says:

Most people are comfortably bored with their lives and, lacking creative stimulus enjoy seeing "better" versions of themselves through the tanned, ripped abs of Italian-American people from New Jersey; the show is so unbelievably stupid, you watch it the same way you do a car-crash in slow motion, except the things breaking are people’s lives and what’s dissolving is time better spent elsewhere; and so on.

These are excellent hypotheses and worth investigating. In my mind, in my conception of the humanities, these are precisely the kinds of questions to explore. I suspect that the papers of the Jersey Shore conference actually make just these explorations, except perhaps in a tapioca of puffed out prose, but the hypotheses are the point. We do humanities to make hypotheses, to make arguments, and to weigh and consider their merits and flaws.

From what I gather, a show like Jersey Shore screams for an explanation. Who would produce such a thing? Why would it resonate? If we start, dispassionately, at this show, what can we learn about the workings of a culture in which Snooki is a star?

These are questions of interpretation and argumentation, and they are also questions of information and data. Many of the cultural studies questions raised in the conference do or could lead to data. After all, most historical scholarship requires data on the period in question, even if the period is very recent. Indeed,  data appears to be quite "hot" in the humanities right now.

Should the Jersey Shore conference be taken seriously? I say "yes" because it offers views of a cultural phenomenon, a phenomenon that can give us information on how our world actually works. I know folks in the sciences who get up in arms when the government or the public views their projects as frivolous, unimportant, a waste, or without benefit.

May I humbly suggest, then, that the scholars in Jersey Shore conference might have their own takes on why the conference was not a waste of funding and was a legitimate way to serve education? And may I humbly suggest that these scholars offer their takes publicly?

Prepare to Lose (for Tristan Vick)

This post is respectfully dedicated to Tristan Vick, "Advocatus Atheist," who makes all of us better thinkers.

I mentioned before that I have been participating in an Alpha course with my wife, who is a Christian. I stand by my description of the course as:

A Christian outreach program. It consists of weekly sessions to persuade people into becoming more devout Christians. It purports to offer a "safe" place for raising doubts and questions about Christianity, but--if my experience is typical--it's really an ongoing sermon conducted in "free" dinners, worship songs, DVD lectures, and small group discussions.

The latter part of the description gives the most serious objection to the course, that it encourages doubts and questions to be raised but doesn't give time and attention for them to be pursued. This is problematic because it means the course is "safe" for voicing concerns but not for holding them. It's not a course in investigation or inquiry: it's a course in indoctrination.

Honest investigation and inquiry require one to be prepared to lose even cherished hypotheses and beliefs. Thus, I am ready to learn something new in Alpha that will change one or more of my opinions dramatically. If a compelling argument is brought before me, or if I come upon one myself, I am ready to admit that atheism is less correct or probably incorrect.

Yet, I wonder whether I really am prepared to give up atheism or whether I am just saying it to appear more rational to myself. Of course, I also wonder whether my fellow participants are prepared to lose Christianity. The point is that I have no reason to feel superior or satisfied in the course, even though I often cringe at what people say.

Beyond this, my fellow participants are my fellows: I like them and genuinely feel for the struggles and successes they face outside the classroom. Someone has a very ill parent. A couple is enduring the endless waiting of the adoption process. A couple is trying to make it work. A woman is coping with depression. A man is waiting on a job offer.

I have settled into thinking that my role in the course is to assert that atheists are normal people with legitimate reasons for rejecting religious and theistic doctrines. It is possible, I say, to perceive the full message of Christianity and to understand it as well as any believer...and also accept that it is untrue. It is possible to be good, happy, giving, peaceful, fulfilled, and whole without gods and religions.

Atheist philosopher George H. Smith wrote: "We have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, from the honest pursuit of truth." This is not quite true. Right or wrong, as individuals we often fear losing the comfort of familiar beliefs. We don't like the uncertainty that comes with  the honest pursuit of truth. We don't like bracketing most everything we think or believe as provisional and conditional--and subject to revision.

But self-identifying atheists, more than other people, have to declare themselves willing to pursue truth honestly. I say "more than other people" because pursuing truth is a raison d'etre of atheism. We therefore need to show that our opinions and beliefs are not sacrosanct.

We should, forgiving the mystical language, accept the wise counsel of Bruce Lee: "Like everyone else you want to learn the way to win. But never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat — to learn to die — is to be liberated from it. Once you accept, you are free to flow and to harmonize."

Holy Spirit, Holy Bullshit

Because I was invited, I have been attending an Alpha course with my wife, who is a Christian. The Alpha course, for those who don't know, is a Christian outreach program. It consists of weekly sessions to persuade people into becoming more devout Christians. It purports to offer a "safe" place for raising doubts and questions about Christianity, but--if my experience is typical--it's really an ongoing sermon conducted in "free" dinners, worship songs, DVD lectures, and small group discussions.

In my participation in the course, I have sought to be neither the token Jew nor the token atheist. Certainly, if anyone is under the impression that I may turn Christian, s/he is quite mistaken. After all...facts are facts, and no doctrine or dogma will make me give up on facts. And the facts are against Christianity as they are against Judaism, Islam, and all other theisms.

I may post later on my experiences in Alpha. My double background--Jewish and atheist--may add something new to other perspectives on the course that are already available. For now, though, I want to talk about the Holy Spirit. In the course, we seem to be building up to a focus on the importance of believing in it and venerating it.

My life as a medievalist and as an American has given me some access to the idea of the Holy Spirit, but now that I must face it by itself, squarely, I must ask: How is it that that we can talk about a holy spirit and not have the sense that we're just making shit up? I don't mean to be rude, but...come on! A fucking spirit? Are people serious about this?

Of course they are serious. I understand the importance placed on believing in or denying the Holy Spirit. I wish, however, that someone would attempt to justify the concept to me. More than most anything else in Christian doctrine, the Holy Spirit demonstrates that the power of religion comes from its stimulation of the individual psyche.

Let's look at a few pronouncements on the Holy Spirit, and remember also that for many faith demands belief in the Holy Spirit. Hear it again: Faith demands belief. Faith does not entail belief or lead to belief or point to belief. It demands and requires belief. Believe it or else you are not one of the faithful. If you disbelieve, you are not one of the godly and one of the church. If you disbelieve, you are an opponent of God and an enemy.

The basics of the belief are:

• The Holy Spirit is one "person" in the triune god. There's God the dad, Jesus the boy, and the Holy Spirit.
• The Holy Spirit shares the same essence as God and Jesus but is distinct: think of three separate impressions made in wax. Same substance, distinct forms.
• The Holy Spirit is not material but is rather perceived within a person as having emanated from God.

With the Holy Spirit, we are basically talking about people feeling as though they are instruments of God's will. The Holy Spirit is God acting in man. Christianity uses the Greek New Testament exclusively as justification for the concept. The Gospel of John figures prominently in the defense, as does the Book of Acts and Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

It's clear, however, that no justification for the concept of the Holy Spirit exists outside the NT and the Christian interpretive tradition. We cannot apprehend the Holy Spirit through the senses or through instruments. Yet we can get in big, big trouble for not believing in the Holy Spirit. This is the sin that will not be pardoned according to the Synoptic Gospels. And people scoff at Bertrand Russell for having said fear is the foundation of religion.

If you think religion is about intellectual or even emotional arguments, you are only partly and secondarily correct. The psyche, the motivational part of the mind, is the the endgame of religion. Religion is all about supplying motives and about motivating. The Holy Spirit is, ultimately, a metaphor for motivation: motivation against reason, motivation against intellect, motivation against interest.

I began thinking I didn't know what the Holy Spirit was, but I realize now that I get it perfectly. What's more, I get what Christianity uses it for.

He Noticed!

 
I'm a-flutter (really, I am!).

Jerry Coyne gives mention to my criticism of his take on the Jersey Shore conference. In his response, Coyne writes:

But of one thing I’m sure: reading The Brothers Karamazov will make them think even more deeply.

I totally agree. A person's efforts will be much more rewarded by reading Dostoyevsky than by watching Jersey Shore.

Yet, good teaching can help students gain real value from both, and the value available to students from serious discussion of Jersey Shore has a relevance that is not offered even by literary classics. Being able to talk to students about the characters, the stories, the values, and the goals of Jersey Shore provides a right-now context for concerns that students also have right now. And unlike The Brothers Karamazov, Jersey Shore lends itself to students better: very few students ever think they understand Dostoyevsky, even when they do, while all students feel like they have a handle on Jersey Shore.

My point is not about the relative quality of the products, Jersey Shore vs. The Brothers Karamazov; it's about their value (also not equal) in allowing students to learn, discuss, and hone critical thinking skills. In my ideal world, the best teaching would lead people to be offended that Jersey Shore was ever offered as an option for entertainment. And then the show would fold along with others of its ilk.

The Moral Deity That Commands "You Shall Not Allow Any Soul to Live"

Most everyone by now knows about the statement by biologist and public atheist Richard Dawkins on why he refuses to debate the Christian apologist William Lane Craig. A key reason, Dawkins explains, involves Deuteronomy 20:13-17 and Craig's endorsement of it. The passage has God commanding Moses to destroy various cities utterly, killing everyone indiscriminately.

Dawkins's refusal and citation of the Bible has, of course, caused fits of moral incoherence in the religious, who must reconcile (a) an authoritative picture of the god as vile and cruel with (b) a theory of the deity as good, just, and merciful. The reconciliation is impossible, and I'll admit to having enjoyed the conniptions of those who have sought to cling to their fantasy of a nice daddy-god.

Dawkins gives some of the biblical text in his article, but I prefer the Chabad version of the text, offered here with surrounding verses. This, then, is Deuteronomy 20:10-20:

10. When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall propose peace to it.

11. And it will be, if it responds to you with peace, and it opens up to you, then it will be, [that] all the people found therein shall become tributary to you, and they shall serve you.

12. But if it does not make peace with you, and it wages war against you, you shall besiege it,

13. and the Lord, your God, will deliver it into your hands, and you shall strike all its males with the edge of the sword.

14. However, the women, the children, and the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoils you shall take for yourself, and you shall eat the spoils of your enemies, which the Lord, your God, has given you.

15. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.

16. However, of these peoples' cities, which the Lord, your God, gives you as an inheritance, you shall not allow any soul to live.

17. Rather, you shall utterly destroy them: The Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord, your God, has commanded you.

18. So that they should not teach you to act according to all their abominations that they have done for their gods, whereby you would sin against the Lord, your God.

19. When you besiege a city for many days to wage war against it to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them, for you may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Is the tree of the field a man, to go into the siege before you?

20. However, a tree you know is not a food tree, you may destroy and cut down, and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until its submission.

This is brutal, nasty, indefensible stuff.

Craig has now responded to Dawkins's charges. Christian Today reports Craig as offering:

"There was no racial war here, no command to kill them all," he said, alluding to extermination of the Canaanites in the Old Testament, "the command was to drive them out."

He then said: "I would say that God has the right to give and take life as He sees fit. Children die all the time! If you believe in the salvation, as I do, of children, who die, what that meant is that the death of these children meant their salvation. People look at this [genocide] and think life ends at the grave but in fact this was the salvation of these children, who were far better dead … than being raised in this Canaanite culture."

Craig's response stinks. In his "no command to kill them all," Craig might be referring specifically to Numbers 33:50-56, but of course that's a change from the text cited by Dawkins.

Craig's next bit is outright repulsive: "God has the right to give and take life as He sees fit"? No, no, he does not have that right. At least, it is not obvious that God has such a right either to give or to take life. I would like to see the philosophical case for this.

The rest of Craig's response continues the fail. By his reasoning, a fanatical religious group commanded by God may wipe out each of us, including our young and cute little babies. We should feel pretty good about being murdered, though, because our kids will be far better off in the afterlife--no matter their fear, crying, pain, suffering, and brutalization before death finally comes.

Better hope Westboro Baptist doesn't build up a stockpile.