From: gross@befvax.uchicago.edu
Subject: Re: Gay teens, suicide, Christianity, and Judaism
Reply-To: gross@befvax.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago, Dept of Molecular Genetics
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 05:36:41 GMT

In article <1992Apr15.041833.4967@gboro.glassboro.edu>, kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dust In The Wind) writes:
>
>Leon Gross writes about Jack Carroll:
>
>> Sorry, but the quote says "anybody who claims to be a Christian or a Jew",
>
>The quote ALSO says "and cannot or will not demonstrate that he has repudiated
>the power-lusting part of his heritage" -- that's what we call a `qualifier'.
>(In Computer Science lingo, the conditional fails if one side of the AND is
>false.)  

Thank you for patronizing me.  I make a living by teaching logic, and 
programming computers, and I'll soon have a PhD in the Philosophy of Language.
The qualifier ITSELF is anti-Jewish.
Compare:  "For those who are male, and cannot or will not demonstrate that
he has repudiated his wife-beating tendancies. . "
It has a qualifier, but it is still buying into a negative stereotype
of men.  It implies that men DO have those tendancies, as a general rule,
and makes me the exception if I do not.  It's offensive to me even if
I don't have those tendancies.

>It specifically eliminates the interpretation that _all_ Christians
>or Jews are being criticised. 
No, it certainly doesn't.  
Compare "For those who are black, and who are not drug dealers......"
Racist?  If some says yes, would you say, "Well you don't deal drugs,
so were not talking about you."?

>Certainly, you can rip Mr Carroll's comments
>out of context and twist them so they say other things, and you can even claim
>that the result is the only way to read what he wrote -- but not many people
>will be stupid enough to believe you.
Ordinary language, its meaning and use, is more complicated then the
truth-functional operations used in computer science and logic.  
Meaning is not just a question of a statements truth conditions.
Something can not be made less offensive by pointing out the 'logical'
structure.  The rhetoric is still there.  So far, a bunch of people
have been 'stupid enough' to believe me.

>In reply to the comment that nobody has called Mr Carroll a Christian-hater,
>Mr Gross says:
>
>> No, the cases are different.  The Catholic church throughout many centuries
>> was very powerful and coercive, and frequently used violence in the name 
>> of religion. (e.g. crusades, inquisition, etc.)  
>> This simply isn't true for Jews in the same period.  
>
>   The Jewish State was very powerful and coercive, and frequently used
>   violence in the name of religion (eg, the genocide of the Midianites).

That was a long time ago, and historians aren't sure what happens.
We know what happened in Europe, and the effects still are around.
For example, how many Jews are there in Spain, and how did the Jews
get to Northern Europe?  Also, the Holocaust didn't come out of nowhere.
There is a long tradition of anti-Semitism in Europe, and the Roman
Catholic Church is responsible for part of this anti-Semitism.
And the Church just renounced the Inquisition at the end of the
last century.  This isn't ancient history.

>The Jews didn't kill anybody in the Middle Ages, but the armed invasion of
>Caanan included atrocities that haven't been attributed to the Crusades (can
>anybody cite an instance of the RCC executing infants?).  I rather suspect
>that if you add up all the victims reported in Joshua, you'll get a much
>higher death toll than for the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition combined.

Sorry, but you're just wrong.  There were many Crusades, not just one.
They happened over a period of a couple of hundred of years.
And the violence was not localized to the 'Holy Land' but Jews were
killed by the Crusaders on the way.  Hundreds of thousands of infidels
were killed in the 'Holy Land'.  Jews of all ages were killed
in the Inqusition.

>Why does it matter when a religious group kills people?  If it's not hateful
>to describe recent atrocities as bloody, why is it hateful to describe ancient
>atrocities as bloody?

Because there is little, if no, continuity between the biblical 'events'
that you mention and present day Jews.  For instance, Jews in the Bible
did animal sacrifice; they don't today.  The person is defaming present
day Jews, not those of the past.  He is asking them to disassociate
themselves to things that they have almost no relationship to in the
first place.

>Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu

Leon Gross
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.