The House of David

Monday, October 27, 2003

Saul and the Prophets

I will not allow myself to comment further on the good Reverend's assertions about "the Church and the Holy Spirit". I can however suggest a way out of this one:

Of Scripture: one community believes it presents man's best efforts to capture the human experienced of God, the other that it represents God's best effort to capture our attention as his Word enters our experience.

Why not both?

The Psalms are hymns from men to God, and so - taken literally! - are the "capture[d]... human experience of God". Ditto the Gospels, four theologically biased histories not unlike those of Sidney Blumenthal. The Torah too: those opening chapters of Genesis are wrong on the facts, but they do a bang-up job of capturing the attention of any Iron Age Semites lacking the benefits of modern science. They also let us know, to a limited extent, the pre-existent beliefs of the communities to whom God sent the Prophets.

The Prophets on the other hand present their books as "God's best effort to capture our attention". Perhaps we ought to take them at their word.

Some may argue that these "Prophets" should have pointed out the defects of those pre-existent beliefs I mentioned. But who says they didn't? This is before the canon, remember. The Prophets spoke out against a number of silly Canaanite ideas and practices. The additional word He spoke unto Jeremiah (on him peace), "for when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifice" (7:22), aimed to keep Leviticus out, too. But not everyone always follows a Prophet. Leviticus, you can blame on the priests.

There is always going to be an interplay between this world and the next, between Saul and the Prophets. A Prophet must speak the language of his community. (Jeremiah and Psalm 139, for instance.) He might well want to go on about planets around other worlds, or the 4.6 billion year age of the Earth, but he is dealing with enough skepticism as it is, just from preaching God's morality.

It is an idea - possibly a crazy idea - but before arguing over what the word of God means, perhaps one should first find out which parts of the Bible claim to be the word of God? It's not that hard.

posted by Zimri on 20:00 | link |

Anglican schism

For those who have been thinking the Anglicans are getting all worked up over gay marriage alone, let me set you straight: it's not about homosexuality. That is an effect, not the cause, of what has been going on.

The MCJournal quotes Rev. Dr. Peter J. A. Cook as asserting that there are "two creedal communities" within Anglicanism today. They have differing views on Scripture, on Christ, and on "the Church and the Holy Spirit".

In the Christian tradition since Athanasius, God is triune. God is the Father (the Old Testament YHWH), God is the Son (Jesus, the Messiah), and God is the Holy Spirit (on which more later). Those who deny this Trinity are outside the Tradition. The Mormons flirt with polytheism and the Muslims deny Jesus's divinity, and so Christendom rejects them - despite that they accept Jesus as the Christ and venerate him above all others (barring perhaps their respective Prophets).

Christianity permits any level of dissent over the the Son specifically (Matthew 12:32a // Luke 12:10) and over non-Trinitarian subjects (Mark 3:28-30 > Matthew 12:31+32b). Those passages imply that if a Christian is wrong, even up to the point of blasphemy, she may yet recant and be forgiven. Coptic Thomas 44 is a Trinitarian clarification of full Matthew 12:31-32 that permitted its readers (Gnostics) to question the Father as well; it is now de-facto Scripture for modern liberals, and the Gospels at least permit that non-canonical interpretation. But no Christian, traditional or gnostic, liberal or conservative, must ever permit himself to "blaspheme the Holy Spirit". That much would lock him out of the Christian Heaven.

Dr Peter Cook's three points of divergence parallel the Trinity. First is Scripture, where the Father has acted in the past. Second is Christ, who founded the Church and is remembered in, or is physically, Communion. And last is "the Church and the Holy Spirit".

I submit that Cook did this deliberately. "The Church" is the only thing keeping his letter from declaring that the two sides differ over the Holy Spirit. This institution is keeping the Anglican faith from dividing itself on Earth and in Heaven.

This is not word-splitting. This is not name-calling. This is a threat to Anglican unity delivered from the very teachings of Christ.

Even now the axe is leveled at the root of the Episcopalian tree.

posted by Zimri on 18:39 | link |

The Fairness Doctrine and protest music

We all know that commercial radio has a right to play propaganda of dubious musical quality, as long as people can claim it as music.

But were are the apologists for the Fairness Doctrine? What about the rights of the listener?

I'm only suggesting that, whenever they play that Timberlake song, they should give us an opposing viewpoint. I mean, we can't just go on being brainwashed. Think of the children. How about some Iranian protest music, sung in English or else covered by the Cranberries? Or some Toby Keith or the Clash.

posted by Zimri on 17:34 | link |

Sunday, October 26, 2003

The perpetual motion machine against the Da Vinci Code

Telford Work is wondering why people are asking him about that Da Vinci Code thing which I keep seeing around the bookstores. He makes the point that the book is offensive to him and to any other Bible-believing Christian, not so much for its conclusions as for its methods. The Shi'a-Pundit rather liked it, though.

I haven't read it. But Sandra Meisel in Crisis magazine has read it, and weighed it against the facts of Biblical research. This allowed me a peek at its critics' methods.

Meisel rightly points out that one large mark against the DVC is its reliance on Baigent & Leigh, well-known peddlers of conspiracy theories. Meisel also points out a number of factual errors in the DVC. I don't know much about albinism nor the history of the Middle Ages, so I'll just have to concede those points.

Fortunately, she does eventually get around to topics that I actually do know a little about:

Yet it's Brown's Christology that's false — and blindingly so. He requires the present New Testament to be a post-Constantinian fabrication that displaced true accounts now represented only by surviving Gnostic texts. He claims that Christ wasn't considered divine until the Council of Nicea voted him so in 325 at the behest of the emperor. Then Constantine — a lifelong sun worshipper — ordered all older scriptural texts destroyed, which is why no complete set of Gospels predates the fourth century. Christians somehow failed to notice the sudden and drastic change in their doctrine.
...Analysis of textual families, comparison with fragments and quotations, plus historical correlations securely date the orthodox Gospels to the first century and indicate that they're earlier than the Gnostic forgeries. (The Epistles of St. Paul are, of course, even earlier than the Gospels.)
Primitive Church documents and the testimony of the ante-Nicean Fathers confirm that Christians have always believed Jesus to be Lord, God, and Savior — even when that faith meant death. The earliest partial canon of Scripture dates from the late second century and already rejected Gnostic writings. ...

Uh, no.

First, not all four Gospels can be "securely" dated to the first century. The Gospel of John is, arguably, a revision of a Messianic Gospel, now mostly lost, edited toward something between the beliefs of the Qumran sect and docetic Gnosticism. (Go here and check the pages under "Deutero-Synoptic Problem" and "John". But a Google for "Egerton" on the 'Web will net the same result.) The Gospel of Mark, albeit to a lesser extent, is also a revision of a lost prior variant. Meisel may not agree; and even if she did agree, those "findings" would render an early date for Christian gnosticism even less likely. Either way Meisel should not have asserted the primacy of the four-gospel canon without references.

Meisel also doesn't explain why it took Christians so long to create a canon. Rational scholars agree that the concept of canon did not exist, until the dueling Churches of Marcion and of the proto-orthodox invented it (with different canons). Meisel is claiming that the proto-orthodox partisans were The Church all along - before they agreed on a canon, and before they could claim a majority within Christianity.

Meisel's idea that the church rejected Gnosticism root-and-branch is frankly ludicrous. Try reading John 17 aloud some time. Go look up Origen and Clement of Alexandria, and their influence on the mystic and monastic movements. To Meisel, a gnostic book is "Gnostic" because it is rejected by the Orthodox, and it is rejected by the Orthodox because it is "Gnostic". Am I the only one noticing some circularity here?

If I had been writing Meisel's article, I would have defined Gnosticism as a multitude of faiths, and concentrated on the sort found in the DVC ("Deified Wisdom"). I would have come clean that the New Testament contains at least one forgery (2 Peter). From there I would have proposed a tighter canon, that preserves the earliest books possible. By comparison I would have noted the late dates of the Gospels of Mary and Philip, and every other apocryphal document currently recognised. I am not sure what I would have done about John; Meisel might ethically claim it as "a Christian gospel later claimed by Gnostics" and argue for its priority against other Gnostic work. I would sum up by saying that Deified Wisdom is a heresy within a sect of Christianity, none of which can be retrojected earlier than Christianity's second century.

The factual errors in Da Vinci Code are indeed serious, and there is no reason to doubt that the book has made additional clunkers in its biblical scholarship. (I'm still not going to read it until I have to.) It is a shame that Sandra Meisel could not step out of Catholic apologetics, to refute the DVC in the way it needs to be refuted.

posted by Zimri on 11:32 | link |

Saturday, October 25, 2003

Predestination and pre-existence

Assume that the God of Jeremiah 1:5 is powerful enough to know everything within this universe, and all probabilities of everything within it. That means first that this God would be an outsider to this space-time bubble. Second, this God would know everything about Jeremiah at every time in that prophet's life.

Therefore, that prophet - and all humans - were/are/will-be existent in that God's mind. If that God is the same God who created the universe, as Jeremiah 16:12-16 asserts, then that God poked his finger in two spots of our history: at the act of Creation, and at the revelation to Jeremiah. At the act of Creation, then, Jeremiah's program had already been written; it just hadn't yet been run on the universal mainframe.

It is possible to have an omniscient God who did not act at Creation. In that case - since this God is outside time - future generations would not be pre-existent in this space-time until such a God first acted here. From that point on, though, Joseph Smith's Abraham would have the advantage.

Jeremiah claimed his God was the Creator. If Jeremiah's God were also omniscient, then Jeremiah had a pre-existent soul.

posted by Zimri on 18:36 | link |

Two types of deity

I define a deity as something mortals worship. If Egyptians decide to worship Pharaoh, then Pharaoh is their god. If Egyptians change their mind and worship Allah, then Allah is their god.

Whether Pharaoh or Allah is the "real" god, depends on what Egyptians want their god to do. If they want a god to lead them into battle, Pharaoh is the better choice. But if they want a god to rig the field so that Pharaoh can actually win the battle, Allah is better for them. That is because Pharaoh cannot act outside the laws of the universe, which include uncertainty. Egyptians today prefer to worship Allah.

Pharaoh is a creature bound to space and time. The movie Stargate depicts a race of aliens so much more powerful than their servants, that their servants worship them. American soldiers recognise the alien "magic" as superior technology, expose the humbug and liberate the captives. In future, we may one day receive a visit from aliens more powerful than we are, and may not be able to see through their subterfuge.

Allah is not a creature, knowably, and is not bound to space and time. If one assumes a Creator, He was a creative force in the beginning, and so was outside that point in our space-time. Since He is not bound by the universe's rules, He could re-enter the universe and tweak things at any point in our timeline. But the Creator is just one example of someThing from Outside. If one Being exists on the outside of our universe, why not others?

In either case, the divinities in question accept our worship for their own purposes. This or that command may end up to our benefit. But overall, they would expect us to follow their commands not because we agreed to it, but because they are commands. They would not even need to tell us their ultimate aims. Gods are tyrants. That is why Jaye Davidson was the bad guy in Stargate, and why transcosmic beings are so scary in H.P. Lovecraft's books.

If gods exist, they do not exist for our sake. Those of us who submit to their demands, insofar as said demands do not serve humanity, are traitors to humanity. It does not matter if the submitters number one or one billion.

posted by Zimri on 17:43 | link |

God may not change - but scriptures do

Richard Abanes and other religious believers argue that God's attributes are constant. Therefore, for them, there is no problem citing 1 John 3 or the Qur'an, which say that God knows everything, and applying that belief back to days before either scripture. So we get Jeremiah cited as God's assertion of omniscience, from a passage in which the Lord had said far less than that.

Jeremiah did not know 1 John 3 nor the Qur'an, nor did God reveal their full tenets to His prophet. An ethical researcher must not project his beliefs, no matter how "True" they are for him, back to a time when those beliefs were unknown.

If impartial research reveals that certain doctrines evolved over time, to meet the perceived needs of different communities, rather than being true for God at all times - I guess that's just too damn bad for the silly fundies, innit?

posted by Zimri on 16:57 | link |

The Psalms as books of prophecy

A better anti-abortion argument that does not rely on soul pre-existence - nor even on the Bible - does exist. This argument is called the "pro-life" position, that Morality is the sum of those ethics that preserve human life. The Bible endorses this position for the unborn, but not in revelation or Torah: the first parts of Psalm 139 praises God for His paramount knowledge of human life. This life begins when the person is "knit together".

The New Testament views the Psalms as prophecy (Luke 24:44), and has Jesus cite a non-prophetic word of David as a theological proof-text (Mark 12:36-7, from Psalm 110). The Qur'an likewise believes that God revealed those zabur of David to David (4:163), while believing that the Old Testament has been generally corrupted; so Islam should also prefer the self-proclaimed Davidic Psalm 139 as superior to the other psalms.

Now, Psalm 139 was just a statement of the human believer, in the same way Israel's ban on hip-meat was a custom of Israel's children (Genesis 32:32). Jesus used Psalm 110 under those limited terms in Mark; but in Luke after the resurrection, Jesus changed the rules. Luke's acceptance of the Psalms as Prophecy is analogous to the Mishnah's acceptance of Genesis 32 as Torah (Mishnah Hullin 7:1).

Luke's use of the Psalms was unethical, and a major reason I do not hold to the four-Gospel canon. We should read the Psalms outside the centuries-later context of the Four Gospels (and of the Qur'an, insofar as it refers to them).

And on those terms Psalm 139 was an opinion, but not a revelation. In the case of the pro-life stance: the psalm is a precedent, but not a proof.

posted by Zimri on 16:38 | link |

The Bible, and souls before birth

In my field of research, I'm often running into doctrines that cite some canonical verse to support them. Oftentimes the verse is out of its context. I've noticed abortion is one issue that collects a number of bad arguments around it.

At the beginning of the book of Jeremiah (in any recension), the Lord relates this couplet to the prophet: "before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee // and before thou didst come out of the womb I sanctified thee". Then the Lord says what he did it for: to make Jeremiah a nabi la-goyim (prophet to the nations).

That first couplet is a revelation that is not for us, Jeremiah's audience. The Lord directed it to Jeremiah alone. Jeremiah is relating it so that he can impress on us the power and foreknowledge of the One Who speaks through him. Jeremiah had other divine revelations to give, that were more relevant to the situation.

But in that throwaway line, two Judaeo-Christian doctrines have emerged. One is the doctrine against abortion; the other is the doctrine that humans pre-exist before conception. The Bible does not provide either doctrine explicitly. The Bible may however assume such doctrines, in order for God's couplet in Jeremiah to make sense.

For the verse to be an anti-abortion proof text, it would have to say something about the soul of the child during its development in the womb. Unfortunately the fetus is only "sanctified" there, an act that might apply equally to a holy rock.

The fetus was "known" before it was "formed in the belly". A child's "form[ation] in the belly" is a process that has a specific moment for its beginning: that moment at which the egg becomes a fertilized egg with its own DNA. Before that, there is no child in this world. Therefore, if God planned the child in advance of its creation, and if God implanted the spirit of the child into the fetus at some point before its mother knew of the pregnancy, then there would be a case against abortion. If one were relying only on Jeremiah, any given anti-abortion position must assume that the baby's soul existed even prior to conception. If the anti-abortion stance is general, then the Mormons are right and we all pre-exist.

A Christian or Jew (or, maybe, Muslim) could get around soul pre-existence by insisting that God planned Jeremiah before causing him to be, because God wanted to intervene at this time and for that He needed a prophet. In this case Jeremiah is much like the Muslim Jesus (Qur'an 3:47, 4:171, 19:21), albeit without need for a virgin birth. Otherwise God plans or does not care to plan woman's children; Jeremiah simply does not say. But that means Jeremiah's revelation is off the table for those anti-abortionists who also do not believe in general soul pre-existence.

The Christian haeresiologist Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods p.381, thought instead that Jeremiah was assuming God's omniscience. The scholar William Holladay, The Psalms through Three Thousand Years p.41, thinks the "Davidic" Psalm 139 preceded Jeremiah; and Abanes cited that hymn as part of Jeremiah's "context". (Abanes also cited Psalm 147:5, 1 John 3:19-20, and Romans 4:17 - but those are all post-Exilic and without so close a parallel to Jeremiah.) But Jeremiah does not require God to be omniscient for Him to reveal that opening couplet. God only has to know enough to create Jeremiah and send him on his way. The same applies for Psalm 139, which does not assume soul pre-existence. One could argue the meaning and limits of God's knowledge beyond the minimum which Jeremiah established, but it is not relevant to this debate.

There are other reasons to be against abortion, but those reasons do not depend on Jeremiah's prophecy.

posted by Zimri on 15:13 | link |

Shutting down the debate (and I feel fine)

From the files of the Drudge Report, the NYT is reporting that the Democratic candidates are calling their internal debates a waste of time.

They're right, but for the wrong reasons. These candidates are complaining only about the debates' format. But why have a televised debate at all?

A one-on-one debate will only point out the person who comes out best against an opponent in a zero-sum competition. This situation will certainly recur for the winner in a legislative role ("will my district win over district X?"). But it is not going to recur in the course of an executive role. The leader instead has to make decisions and to explain the unpopular ones.

The debates aren't even good at picking the electoral winner. I can think of three pairings off the top of my head where the superior of the two in the debate did not win the election: Lazio v. Hilary!, Nixon v. Kennedy, and Bush v. Gore. This is because the winners looked bad on camera in that situation.

Instead of a direct debate, executive candidates should agree to press conferences, where the candidates' staffs each draw up questions for the other candidate to answer. There can be rules about which questions: for instance no questions about the candidates' past or current scandals. The questions can (and probably will) refer to future decisions that might touch on said scandals: as an example, a candidate who has admitted recreational drug use can be grilled on his drug policy.

The same applies for the candidates' staff: no direct debates. As the exception, their choices for U.N. Ambassador might square off, each presenting his/her boss's foreign policy. Or, if it becomes politically impossible to ignore a debate, the candidate can send a minion against the opponent. One of Clinton's best moves was to sic Gore on Perot, unfortunately after the election's close. I'd personally love to see Bush set Rumsfield or Rice loose on some of the lightweights we're seeing today.

These televised debates for the presidency are not representative of the president's role, and therefore ought not to be a factor in choosing the president. The only beneficiaries of the debates are the major television networks, and I see no reason why we voters need to keep subsidising them.

posted by Zimri on 12:59 | link |

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Apes, despised

The first Arab conquerors respected the Tawrat above the other books. In their earliest writings, they went so far as to preach that God had punished the Jews for not obeying the Sabbath (4:47,153-4). But by the time of 16:124 (after the Dome), Islam came to view the Sabbath(s) as a divine trap for the People of the Book. The Sabbath served only to made Jews and Christians dispute among themselves.

I bring this up because the Sabbath is further connected to a better-known canard, that Jews are "pigs and monkeys".

The Qur'an in 2:65 refers to a story about God cursing a people to "be apes, despised": 7:163-166 pins it on those who "broke the Sabbath" who were then exiled by armies (7:167-8) and replaced by a new generation (7:169). Sura 7 is probably composite; a Jewish fable about keeping the Sabbath holy to which some pious humbug appended verses that accentuated the apes' former Judaism.

Sura 5:60 uses the phrase "apes and swine" in a reminder of God's chastisement. Alongside worshippers of evil and those whom God had smitten, some miscreants had sinned so badly that God had transformed them into ludicrous and unclean beasts (respectively). But upon whom did God level this curse?

5:60 is within a block of polemic against all the people of the Book, both Jews and Christians (5:57-66, esp. 5:63,66). In context, the sura was warning of the transgressors of the past, who were (probably) not Jews nor Christians.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. Sura 5 directs most of its aggression to the Jews, as David Yeagley has noted. Even within 5:57-66, the sura singles them out. The first part of 5:64 notes "The Jews say, God's hands are bound" and then curses them: "may their own hands be bound". 5:60 may be a different curse, but it is still a curse.

The same 5:64, albeit rather later (it is a "long slog", to coin a phrase), asserts that "they" are mufsideen and that "God loves not the mufsideen". Yeagley took "they" to mean Jews only, with which I happen to disagree. But if that is a mistake, then it is an honest one; and if Yeagley can expand the curse of 5:64 in that direction, anyone else could certainly expand it to the other direction and associate it with 5:60 as well.

The Qur'an's attacks on Jews and Christians don't really bug me. There are polemics in those earlier holy books too. What bugs me are the Qur'an's blasphemies against God.

My grandmother is a former Jew who left the faith. One day I boorishly thought it within my bounds to insult that religion. She told me in response that the Jews gave the world the Sabbath, which is Judaeo-Christianity's greatest blessing; that even in dark days of slavery and tyranny, for one day in seven everyone could just take a rest from it all.

4:153-4 says that God made up extra laws, effectively tricking the Jews. Suras 16 carries that even to the Sabbath. Even sura 7 only treats the Sabbath as a distinguishing characteristic of Jews, so they can break it and give God an excuse to make a mockery of them. This is treated as gospel by sura 2 and, by the Qur'an's overall context, sura 5.

May the mockers be hyenas in the next life.

posted by Zimri on 19:10 | link |

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Where is the love? (and why should we care?)

One particularly unethical text has recently come to my notice, Justin Timberlake's rap song "Where Is The Love?". It claims to be anti-hate and pro-love, but it's not.

Here is a lyric-sheet. Go ahead and read that first.

Some parts of this farrago concentrate on general horrors of war (People killin', people dyin' // Children hurt and you hear them cryin'), and that racial discrimination is bad, which are decent enough sentiments. But those verses are juxtaposed with other verses. Not only are those other verses morally questionable of themselves; but by juxtaposing them with the righteous verses, the song is slandering dissenters and thereby poisoning the debate.

Start with the chorus, which is the slow part of the song and the part everyone's going to sing along to. That part puts the war-effects doublet alongside "practice what you preach, turn the other cheek" (c.f. Luke 6:29). I don't see a corresponding quote of the Qur'an, for all its verses-of-tolerance and such. Therefore the song says that the warmongers are a side that professes Christianity, but not Islam; and Christians ought to be ashamed to fight, but not Muslims. Note also that, for Timberlake, 3000 dead in the WTC and Saddam's crimes are mere slaps on the cheek to be shrugged off.

The opening verse has this pericope: Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism // But we still got terrorists here livin' // In the USA, the big CIA // The Bloods and The Crips and the KKK. The song puts CIA up alongside real terrorists (the KKK), criminal gangs (the Bloods and the Crips); and then it puts all four groups alongside verses preaching not to be racist. As for the facts: the KKK is racist and White, and the Bloods and Crips aren't racist but are perceived as minority-driven. Therefore the song is implying the CIA is equal with the others as racist, criminal, and terrorist. In the rhyming progression - USA>CIA>KKK - and in putting all the above in the same verse, it additionally insinuates that the USA is itself racist if it fights terrorists of other nations.

The second verse goes more to the means. The "nations" that are at war aren't setting bombs, or flying bombs into planes, they are "dropping bombs". Again, this is a dig at the US and Israel, with no corresponding attack on other nations. The same verse then claims that the war has some underlying motive, which can't be terrorism because that reason is given in the preceding verse. So what other reason could there be? Timberlake doesn't say. For that matter, who's been using chemical gas? Again, Timberlake isn't saying. He wants his piece to be read as an inoffensive plea for love among all nations. Since he won't tell us here, he is referring us to antiwar sites for the "real" information (read: anti-Semitic and/or oil-fetish propaganda). Something tells me they won't be blaming Wahhabists or Saddam.

The third verse calls "money-making" "selfish". The media (which of course doesn't include Timberlake or the channels playing his music) is blamed for "negative images". Neither is directly related to the warfare that is the point of the song's chorus (although "Kids act like what they see in the cinema" may be a clue), and the verse provides no argument, so again, we have to make that link ourselves. Presumably those who support the war are unthinking and greedy (it's all about money! oiiilll!) and need to be given other "images".

To sum up: Timberlake is saying American Christians should follow the synoptic-gospels' pacifist sayings, and that Americans in general shouldn't allow their government to defend them by pre-emptive attacks on other nations. He also asserts that America's government is dishonest and corrupt. There is little argument; instead, Timberlake puts unbelievers into the same handbasket as racists, hypocrites, and people who do not care about children. In short, we're the bad guys and we ought to surrender.

Timberlake's moral priorities can certainly be defended, especially from a Christian standpoint. I'm neither Christian nor pacifist, but I'm certainly open to (ethical) argument. This song however is nothing but Leftist propaganda set to music and disseminated to children. If it does convince any listeners, it will convince them for the wrong reasons.

The song is so unethical as to be immoral.

posted by Zimri on 17:52 | link |

Ethics with a Gunn

I've been reading up on the difference between ethics and morals, just to make sure that the essays below make sense outside my own brain. So far I've found a few essays online, which all agree that an "ethic" and a "moral" are types of "value". Pat Gunn basically says that a moral is an ethic with a gun.

I didn't like that definition, so I kept looking. So many essays on ethics and morals! But there were a few that stood out. Kevin Baldeosingh of Trinidad said that ethics is the science of morals. An ethic can arise out of self-interest with no need for a definition of "morals". For instance, if a newspaper is honest, it will sell more copies than a competitor that is not honest. Journalistic honesty is therefore a journalistic ethic, but is amoral(!). To insist that non-journalists also be honest would be a higher, "moral", judgement. Raymie Stata has a similar definition, whose lineage he traces back to Ayn Rand (whom I have barely read).

Ayn Rand is an Objectivist and therefore thinks of morals as higher-order ethics. It is however not always obvious what the moral course might be. When dealing with a zero-sum game, such as a fixed inheritance and how it should be divided, what is moral for one side is immoral for the other. Therefore I prefer to talk of "moral priorities" in cases like that.

When you have a society which claims to value morals over ethics, though, watch out. As they say in Dune, "When religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows." People will disagree at the least over priorities in morality, let alone morals themselves. When a side cannot win the argument with ethics, it will often discard ethics and reach for the gun.

The two definitions therefore are not dissimilar. The "Gunn Definition" of morals is a good empirical observation of "moralities" of any "value" shorn of "ethics" (I need the scare quotes because these moralities are not thought of as absolute). Stata (with Rand) assumes a higher value of Life, and from that derives a Platonic objective Morality. Baldeosingh would prefer to handle the ethical side of things.

I can't see the moral results of my personal ethics in the essays below, and I strive for caution when dealing with something I can't prove in thirty minutes, so I am going with Baldeosingh's definition.

posted by Zimri on 17:39 | link |

Friday, October 17, 2003

The frozen breath of God

In this post I laid out sura 4's moral priorities: in inheritance, it sided with the man's children over the man's widow. In the followup, I warned of the dangers of arguing against moral priorities, particularly when one or both sides are personally involved.

Sura 4's priorities may be proper or improper. Take two extreme examples. On the one hand, the wretched Anna Nicole Smith is a living advertisement for an American caliphate. But on the other, a woman who watches with dismay as her children become cocaine addicts would want to hang on to their inheritance a little longer than sura 4 allows. Even if the wider community agreed with sura 4's priorities, it should be sympathetic to the widow with problem children. If I were Muslim, I would argue that such a widow be allowed to bend sura 4.

The Qur'an's legal implications, alongside local traditions (hadith), have been hashed out in Islamic jurisprudence (sunna), now codified into schools of Sunni and Shi'a law (shari'a). This is where one should look for any help for the widow in a children-oriented legal system. This is also where my knowledge falls short.

But I do know that sura 4 is "the word of Allâh", and so Muslims are under pressure to follow it absolutely, rather than to take it as an example of a moral priority. In addition, its legal interpreters must be religious men, who are not subject to empirical proofs or popular accountability, and are also incidentally not women.

Sura 4 also enjoins the zakat, a command that Muslims give to Islamically-approved charities. This became one of the five pillars of Islam, and is now considered one of Islam's selling points.

But here, too, zakat would be distributed by Muslims (by definition). That means some mullah would inevitably involve himself in doling out the dinars. Nothing keeps him from demanding the recipient "prove" she is a good Muslim, perhaps by safehousing a cell of Hamas bombers. Remember, we are dealing with laws of God here; secular morality doesn't apply and the mullah is accountable to no human.

The case against Islam isn't whether its moral precepts are right, wrong, or either in varying contexts. The case against Islam is that it is a religion. Its precepts are moral a priori. If a mullah says a thing and can point to shari'a, there is no appeal. And if the mullah receives a widow whose sons are worthless, even if the mullah were righteous and sympathetic, he too would be constrained by sura 4:12.

The problem with the breath of God is that it is frozen. No-one can repeal sura 4:12, and if a mullah convinces a community that he speaks for God no-one can repeal him either.

The Qur'an's morals are often praiseworthy. It is Islam's ethics that hamper the lives of Muslims.

UPDATE: Clarifications.

posted by Zimri on 00:35 | link |

Thursday, October 16, 2003

On moral priorities

I've lost arguments in blogdom before. That doesn't bug me; in those cases I post corrections and move on. What does bug me, is when I win the argument but I'm the only one who sees it. This happened last year and prompted this post.

But two sides can also reach a draw. A good example would be when each side has a personal stake in a zero-sum competition. In this case, one side probably won't convince the other.

The example below concerned inheritance: should it go to the man's children, or to his widow, or else how should it be divided? Sura 4 law is a 7:1 compromise between relatives and widow. That would sound pretty sweet to a woman who has seven-plus times more faith in her kin than she has in herself (sans hubby). But you can't tell someone who doesn't have this "faith-ratio" that she is wrong. She knows better than you do about the situation in her own family. She has determined, rationally, that sura 4 would tip the scales to a less morally-deserving side than her own.

One can win only by convincing the audience that his or her side is more morally deserving. But "winning" an argument like that often just makes one look like a jerk. Who wants to be against bereaved widows? (I mean, except for misanthropic contrarians.)

posted by Zimri on 22:54 | link |

A sura on women, and laws of inheritance

I am currently in discussion over at Fatima's site, concerning Islamic family law. A certain commenter called Carol asked if there was a "place" in Islam for widows. I don't know much about "Islam"; but I do know sura 4, and that document dates as far back as Mu'awiya's caliphate or earlier. (The Dome of the Rock and sura 5 both cited it.)

We are dealing here with the case in which the dead man left behind a widow and children. Sura 4 says the man's inheritance first goes to payment of debt, and the net remainder would mostly go to the dead man's children, with 1/8 for the widow.

Another commentor, Susan, says that in the non-Islamic society in which she lives, matters are different. If her husband died that she would "get the whole kit and caboodle". She avers "that the secular society and inheritance laws of my particular state would take care of me a lot better than Islam". Also:

What's the point of giving a widow's property away to various relatives if she's just going to end up on the public dole ("zakat") because she's only been left a measly 1/8 of her husband's property? Answer: because it gives society (read "mullahs") control over the woman. If she has a substantial amount of money of her own she doesn't need to tow the line quite so strictly.

"Society" actually starts with the classic seventh-century CE extended family. The wider community, led by religious authorities, gets involved to the degree that the family fails. So we'll deal with the family part first.

Since we're dealing with a non-indigent family, society's function would be to insist the widow and her children fulfil their sides of the deal. The children stand to continue the family name and honour. It is assumed that the children are adult, and would spend part of their inheritance taking care of their mother.

Again, I do not know Islamic law, and the sura doesn't say, so I do not know how Islam would handle minors who get the 7/8. One obvious solution would be for the widow to place that sum into trust for when the children grow up. The sura also does not forbid the widow to spend it on that man's childrens' clothes, education, and so on. It should allow for the widow to keep her husband's house in the name of that mans' children, because they still need it and it is the bayt of the family. "Society" - the wider family and community - would then have an oversight role. (The sunna of various regions worked out the details. Again, I'm only dealing with sura 4's baseline here.)

I can see mullahs getting involved in two cases. First, if the widow and her extended family together cannot afford to sustain the widow; and second, if the wider family cannot ensure that the widow is protecting the childrens' 7/8. The mullahs therefore are not acting for the sake of Islam. They are acting for the sake of the dead man's children.

Susan's conflation of "society" with society's last resort (the mullahs) is simplistic. It most likely comes out of distrust of the personal motives of Islamic religious authorities. I have dealt with theocracy's problems elsewhere, and will likely visit that again. But that is a side issue in this case. We're assuming the family is just and wealthy enough that the mullahs can stay at the mosque.

The real issue here is, does the widow deserve the husband's full inheritance? If so, why? It's certainly a great deal for her. Her children aren't going to mind too much either. But if her husband had had children from a previous marriage, those children are going to be shut out of the will. (Anna Nicole Smith, anyone?)

The secular West better provides for the financial freedom of a man's widow, but sura 4 better protects the man's descendents. Which you prefer will depend on your moral priorities.

UPDATE: Susan pointed out, what about assets that can't be split into eighths and carried off, like a house. Altered post accordingly.

posted by Zimri on 18:53 | link |

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Night of the long knives

I emerge from hiatus to read on Drudge:

BLITZ ON RUSH LIMBAUGH TO INTENSIFY ON THURSDAY WITH CHARGES OF DRUG ABUSE...

AFTER DAY OF INTENSE MEDIA BASHING ON LIMBAUGH SPORTS QUOTES /// NATIONAL ENQUIRER TO ALLEGE IN BOMBSHELL REPORT: 'RUSH LIMBAUGH IN DRUG RING'... HOUSEKEEPER WORE WIRE IN SET-UP, SUPPLIED PAIN PILLS TO DEAF TALKSHOW HOST... ENQUIRER ALLEGES ABUSE OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PILLS...

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS SET TO SPLASH PAGE ONE THURSDAY, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE.

As of now (9:30 pm) this is the only story on Drudge.

I am truly, deeply saddened to read this.

I am an ex-Rush fan. I used to listen to his radio show every day and watch his TV show every night, exactly a decade ago. His show had an immense effect on me at the time, which co-incided with and perhaps co-induced my nervous breakdown that winter. Perhaps one day I will get up the courage to post that story on the blog. For now, I will only say that even after that breakdown I still tuned my radio to his show, off and on, until about 1995 or so.

In '93, I had been moving from vague libertarianism to Horowitzian conservatism. PJ O'Rourke had a hand in pushing me on my way, but it was Limbaugh's radio and TV spots that guided me from there. Limbaugh taught me that I could be a conservative and still not a racist.

This was important to me. I had come from a British boarding school where racism was overt. Being libertarian ("Liberal", as it was then and there called) was the way you could remain anti-communist without buying into the anti-immigrant right wing. Over in the States, there is no party-label option for the old-school Liberal. That forces non-partisans into alternate means of politics. I was alone; the Internet was still a couple of years away; that forced me to the radio. And on the radio was Limbaugh.

Limbaugh - then - was keen to showcase political conservatives of any race, including Blacks. He had the Black conservative group "Project 21" on his TV spot, counteracting the standard line on Rodney King, and also counteracting Ben Chavis's hideous "gang summit". And Limbaugh was right: the Republicans cannot keep their majority or their very souls without appealing to Black support, and Blacks are not going to do well if they do not have a political alternative (even Al Sharpton agrees with this!).

Even after '94 I used to turn to Limbaugh on the radio, just to keep tabs on him. Limbaugh didn't let me down. In '96 Limbaugh commented on Colin Powell's maybe-run for the Republican nomination for President. Limbaugh said he was GLAD that Powell was running, even though they disagreed, because it would add "competition" to the Republican field: "competition is always good!", I distinctly remember.

I stopped listening to Limbaugh in '97. One day I was driving through Kirby and Westheimer, I flipped to his channel - he was commenting on a study on the Southern "honour culture", wherein a couple of academics ~~(whose last names happened to sound Jewish - there was a "-stein" suffix on one of them)~~ had pointed out that crime rates were higher down here, and that much of this was due to an "honour culture" which requires that insults be avenged. Instead of defending the honour culture, or else suggesting how it might be channelled away from fellow Americans, he played it up as an anti-South bias among academics. He lingered on the academics' names a few times, presumably because they sounded liberal or something. And at the end, he asked what might happen if the same study were performed on the "Bronx".

I read this as bordering too close to the ~~anti-Semitic and~~ racist fringe. And I never listened to him again. And, yes, there is a pattern: a look at Google will point out Rush spinning for Trent Lott last year, and that infamous "take that bone out of your nose and call me back" quip from years before.

I kept enough distance not to trash Limbaugh's name when he underwent that ear surgery. Now of course he's gone further than that, sliming a quarterback as some kind of affirmative-action legacy.

To paraphrase Hershel Shanks on John Strugnell, disgraced anti-semitic Dead Sea scholar - one can feel pity for Limbaugh's fall from grace, and for any mental anguish that has brought him to this pass. But for Limbaugh's racism - only he can shoulder the shame.

UPDATE 10/18/2009: I believe the book in question would be Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South by Nisbett and Cohen. The year is pretty much right: the book came out in 1996. But it wasn't "Epstein" he would have cited; it was "Cohen". Six years later and I missed a bit so, sorry.

UPDATE 10/20/2009: This article could be taken as to impute antiSemitism to Limbaugh. Since I didn't get Cohen's name right I probably got Limbaugh's tone of voice wrong too. I can't claim Limbaugh set special emphasis on his Jewishness. He did however put down the Bronx and I still think that's racial code, so I'm not backing off that one.

Labels: conservatives, race

posted by Zimri on 22:12 | link |