From: strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re:      Re: God Is Unfair
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 00:01:01 GMT
Organization: IBM Research

In article <1992Nov19.092029.24644@bmerh85.bnr.ca>, dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham) writes:
|> In article <1992Nov18.151044.23933@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
|> 
|> >... Make sure that the
|> >lesson can be understood at multiple levels --- by young
|> >children and by adults.
|> 
|> As I mentioned in another article, I wasn't referring to any of Homer's
|> stuff.  If I were, I'd have to agree that extracting lessons from
|> it might be difficult; maybe even as difficult as extracting lessons
|> from the Torah.  What I'm a little confused about though, is your
|> stipulation that my lesson must be understood by young children
|> as well as adults.  Why?  We don't teach anything else that way.
|> We don't teach quantum mechanics or calculus to kids in kindergarten,
|> and we don't teach university students how to tie their shoelaces
|> or drink their milk without spilling it.  Why should ethics be any
|> different?
|> 
I expressed myself badly.  What I meant to say is
that from the same text one should be able to
extract different lessons for people at different
levels of sophistication.

Daniel Starr brought up using Aristotle and Plato, and you approved,
so I'd like to pursue that direction a bit.  Of course we have
Aristotle and Plato on our bookshelves, and I don't
dispute their greatness.  But I'd like to understand
how you propose to use them for teaching youngsters.

With the Jewish Bible, there's a whole history of a people's
having evolved a way of life around these principles.  There
are also commentaries, Midrashim, and so forth, making
it a living system.  You have criticized this living system
on several grounds, one of which is that some of today's
interpretation appears to contradict the text.  That may
be a weakness, but it's also a strength.  There is no
such living system for Aristotelianism or Platonism.
Followers of the two schools didn't evolve their systems,
so now if I tried to teach it, I'd be teaching a much
more calcified doctrine than I'd be by trying to teach
Judaism.  Additionally you don't see a market for
Platonic/Aristotelian picturebooks for preschoolers.

Now in your other posting you write:
>It seems
>to me that if the intent is to teach from literature, the literature
>ought to be as clear as possible, and not require a whole lot of
>contorted interpretations or reference to magical gods and things.
>If a flaw is found in the work, it ought to be rewritten rather
>than "interpreted."

I disagree in part.  (I agree that if you're an atheist,
you want to eliminate references to magic and gods.)
The problem is that, for example, Nicomachean Ethics
was never either reinterpreted or rewritten.  It
was never even re-*applied* to contemporary problems.

Suppose I want to give a lesson on the kinds of
subjects we deal with in religion: e.g. charity,
compensation, rehabilitation, forgiveness, 
etc.  How can I craft a lesson from Nicomachean
Ethics?  It's a nice distillation of abstract
principles, but I think I can't use it by itself
without lots of additional material.

On the other hand, there's still a lot of
morally questionable stuff, and nobody has
provided either a rewritten or re-interpreted
version.  Plato, for example, seems to support
a kind of government censorship at least as
obnoxious as the Catholic Church's Index of
Forbidden Literature.

I should point out that the positive features of
Aristotle and Plato *did* work their way into Judaism.
Philo of Alexandria and later, the Rambam (that is,
Rabbi Moses Maimonides) attempted to apply the
reasoning systems, some of the new abstraction,
and the principles of rationalism to Torah.



|> I apologize if I sound like I'm vehemently attacking your closed-mindedness.
|> I do think that you have a blind spot when it comes to the down
|> side of your culture, but otherwise, you seem like an entirely
|> reasonable person.  I suppose we all have that blind spot.  Perhaps
|> you could at least concede that I might have some small reason to
|> be a little nervous that there are a sizeable number of people out there
|> who use as their holy book a text that says that I am evil because
|> I am an unbeliever, and which describes a number of slaughters of
|> peoples because they didn't kiss Yahweh's ass.
|> 

There are definitely a sizable number of people who use
the Bible to preach hate.  Not only do we have reason
to be "a little nervous" about them; we have an affirmative
duty to refute them.

The Jewish Bible does not say that you are evil because
you are an unbeliever.  Anybody who teaches this is
actually breaking a commandment not to slander the nation.
My daughter's speech quotes Genesis 18:19 "... he may
command his children and his household after him, that
they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness
and justice".  Biblical Hebrew style is to say the same
thing twice, so "keep the way of the Lord" *means*
"to do righteousness and justice".  The idea of being
judged by beliefs rather than behavior is a Christian idea, not Jewish.
The sages reinforced the message by saying "the righteous
of all nations shall have their place in the world to come."
Now I know that you don't believe in the world to come either,
and neither do many Jews, but the point of the quote is that
you don't have to be Jewish to be "saved".

Are there Jewish hatemongers?  You bet!  Go into soc.culture.jewish
and read the threads about the teachings of the late Rabbi Kahane.
He taught that Arabs who did not voluntarily relinquish
their civil rights should be expelled from Israel.  A few
defend him.  But most have stood up to denounce him as
a racist, even though he was a rabbi, and a scholar, and,
unfortunately, a martyr --- killed by an assassin's bullet.


|> 
|> >What do you think accounts for the relative improvement
|> >(from more backwards to no more backwards) the Jews have
|> >made over the centuries?
|> 
|> Science.
|> 
I agree.  What do you think draws Jews to science?


|> Yes, they were cruel.  But, as far as I can tell, they were
|> fairly sane.  My impression is that the Jews were to the Roman
|> empire what the fundies are to our current civilization.
|> 

I disagree entirely.  Do you mean that Jews tried to
influence the government to make Judaism the state religion???
What is your evidence for that???


|> 
|> Then where is the golden age of Judaism?  If the Jews picked up
|> the best features of Hellenism, why were they not able to pick
|> up where the Greeks left off?  Why was it the Muslims who preserved
|> and nurtured their knowledge?  Where is the Jewish vision of
|> a better world?  The Greeks pondered such questions, and proposed
|> sweeping changes.  Those changes did not include praying harder
|> to their gods, or trying harder to extract wisdom from Homer.
|> Granted, Plato was all too willing to encourage superstition,
|> but not among the philosopher-kings.  Not among the people who
|> were calling the shots.
|> 

In that respect, Plato was less egalitarian than the Jews.
And Judaism became less and less superstitious over time.

Where is the golden age of Judaism?  Some have written
that we're living in it now.  Look at the contribution
Jews are making to sciences and the arts, way out of
proportion to their distribution in the population.

Incidentally, the Jews did pick up where the Greeks
left off and did nurture the knowledge.  The decline
of Spain as a cultural center was in part precipitated
by the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.
 
|> >The Greeks did not
|> >do so well in picking up the positive features of
|> >their neighbors,
|> 
|> This exactly contradicts my admittedly limited understanding.  I
|> thought that the Greeks were as enlightened as they were because
|> they were a seafaring nation and had plenty of opportunity to
|> observe other cultures.

Well the Jews had even plentier of opportunity to observe
other cultures, since they were constantly being expelled
from one place or another.

In addition to being physically distributed, their
occupations were restricted such that their most
successful members were advisors to government,
merchants, and scholars.


|> 
|> >Of course, the Jews never claimed to be the most advanced
|> >in every respect.  The Bible itself describes occasions
|> >when the Jews had to retreat because their opponents
|> >had chariots with iron wheels, while the Jews didn't have that technology.
|> >Similarly, the prohibition against graven images
|> >meant that other cultures were more advanced in
|> >painting and sculpture.
|> 
|> In which respects were they the most advanced?

IMHO, the fact that they taught that reading and scholarship
and study are commandments.  The scholar was respected
over the rich man, the brave warrior, the popular politician.

-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598
Newsgroups: alt.atheism