Flew recants

Every now and then philosophers change their minds about a position they hold. To most of us it is no big deal. From time to time it makes a tiny little splash in an already small pool of philosophical gossip. I remember a year or two ago Frank Jackson changed his mind about the Colorblind Mary argument, and a few Philosophy of Mind geeks had something to talk about for a week. I assume that there are less than 1000 people in the world who actually know what I am talking about, and less than 10 who care.

But when Anthony Flew does it, I think it is a big deal. Anthony Flew's Theology and falsification has been anthologized about fifty times. It is probably one of the most widely read piece of philosophy. He put forward one of the most standard argument for atheism ever. (I taught his paper in my class last week.) He now claims to believe in God. This is really big philosophy gossip. (Hat tip to Julian Sanchez.) Anthony Flew's name is almost synonymous with atheism (and libertarianism too).

Apparently his reasons are that he is becoming convinced by some fine tuning arguments, which I never bought, and I never understand people who do. Those arguments are designed to answer the question of "Why does the universe exist" or "Why does this particular universe exist. Presumably only certain universes are possible. That is to say that only certain kinds of universes can be supported by physics. There are a few answers to this question. God is one of them, though as many point out, it is hard to see how God answers the question in any real way. (Others, for example, involve the "many universes" answer.)

I wonder how much clarifying Flew plans on doing about this. According to one source he has not really changed his mind at all.

Now, although what Flew thinks at any given time makes no difference, it is interesting. It is the philosopher's equivelant of celebrity gossip. Flew's opinion is about as interesting as anyone elses, except that he has probably given this a lot of thought, but it is only the content of that thought, only his ability to give us his well thought out reasons and arguments, that matter in the end.

Orthodox Joke

The latest in our collection of Religious Jewish Jokes:

Why are Yeshiva guys not going to see The Passion of the Christ?

Becuase it is in Aramaic, and they are waiting for the Artscroll translation.

Upcoming vacation

"E" and I just booked tickets to Turkey and Israel. We will be in Istanbul, Izmir, and Jerusalem. Anyone know anything we should not miss in either of those places?

Review of Rabih Alameddine's I, the Divine

I decided to take a chance on Alameddine's other book, despite the fact that I really did not like his first one. This time persistence paid off. I, the Divine is a much better book.

It is a novel in first chapters. It is written from the standpoint of Sarah Nour el-din, a woman who keeps telling us the story of her life over and over. There is an anecdote in the story where Sara wants a particular painting she sees in a museum. So she decides to replicate the painting. It takes her 17 tries to get the painting right, and then the whole series gets exhibited as a history of the making of the painting, in chronological order. This book, written as her autobiography, is the same way. It is a collection of first chapters in her autobiography. Each time she has a new way of looking at her life, as if she can't make up her mind what is important. What sort of events should she tell about. Is her relationship to her mother most important, her brother, her first sexual encounter, her grandfather, her birth, her lovers, her child? So each time she writes the first chapter, we see a new angle of her life. The effect is rather good, and not nearly as pretentious as it sounds.

The book has no traditional plot, other than Sarah's life. Sara is Lebanese. She is a mother. She is a lover. She is part of a family, a friend, a player in a series of relationships, she exists in a social hierarchy, which is all conveyed well in the book. Her whole life is articulated, in a successive series of false starts in an attempt to convey her life.

Open Source Translation Project

I was talking to my friend "E" today and we came up with this great idea. The idea is Open Source translations.

Here is the plan. We ask everyone in the world who is bilingual (for now in English and something else) to take books, or whatever, in their language and translate it in to English. Of course this is a big undertaking, so what we really ask is if people can translate a page, or a paragraph, or a chapter. Ultimately the editor will colate all these pages and put them together.

We thought that there are tons of books out there, and we were thinking of Jewish books, but really, any books are useful to have, that should all be in English. Imagine if we took the complete responsa of Maimonides. There are probably a few hundred. If everyone with a spare hour or two did one responsa, we can have the whole thing translated. We put it up on line and ask people to check it for accuracy. Ultimately you have an editor who is fully competent in the language skim the whole thing, and you have a book. I was thinking that the complete poem of Yehudah Halevi might be useful too. Many have been translated, and many have not. If a hundred people each did one or two, we can have it done in no time, and it will be a great boon to the scholarly community, and look nice on academics' resumes.

This will of course take some web work, but it is ultimately doable, and I hope "E" and I can get to do this. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this, from any language to any other, be in touch. I think that open-source translations might be a good way to harness the talents of millions of bilingual people out there who only have a limited amount of time.

Computers have been doing this for a while. If we just chop the job up in to little parts and lewt everyine have a little part, we can get the whole thing done.

This is something that school children can get involved in, as can anyone who knows the language and can work a computer.

Review of Leo Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing

Sometimes one has a learning experience that really changes one's perspective. Reading Leo Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing is such an experience. I remember once reading a volume of David Halivni's Mekorot u' Mesorot and coming away transformed. The Talmud took on a whole new meaning. Each line of text was a different story than you originally suppose. It is right there in front of you waiting to be uncovered. Reading early biblical criticism, while not as easily convincing, is similar.

Persecution's goal is to teach us how to read in between the lines of certain texts. Those of us who study contemporary philosophy occasionally get a bit condescending when it comes to the medievals. (Unless he is reading too much in to them, which I doubt) Strauss reminds us that the medievals might have been backward, but they were not stupid. The medieval philosophers had to do their best work under the most adverse of conditions. Freedoms, such as we have now did not exist for most of recorded human history. To write and live one had to be careful. Censorship was ubiquitous. The geniuses who knew that they were writing for posterity needed to get certain messages out. Many of the subjects they needed to publicize might sound trivial now. But keep in mind that in the 16th century the soul's immortality was a VERY important topic of discussion for some of the top minds of the age.

Spinoza, Yehuda Halevi, and Maimonides all had things that they were trying desperately to say, but could not. Strauss shows us the secret to deciphering these authors. Strauss really reveals the genius of the authors he speaks about and renews my respect for their brilliance, and Strauss' too. Hume could not publish his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in his lifetime as what he said was too controversial. It was controversial despite the fact that Hume never really tips his hand and tells us what he is really thinking. With Hume we see the first light of free thought. Before that we have secret messages embedded in texts which we have to uncover. The methodology varies from author to author, and Strauss doesn't give away too many secrets, but he definitely give us a new way to look at old philosophers.

This book was published some 50 years ago, but it is still as relevant today as it was then. Strauss, is by the way, taken to be one of the godfathers of the neocon movement. I suppose if one were to read between some lines here, one can see in the essay on Yehuda Halevi, why.

Post-election "analysis": They're just not that in to you

I have seen now countless hours of c-span, colloquia, and discussion, zillions of pages of blogging, op-eding, and punditry - all on the analysis of why Kerry lost the election. Countless theories have been put forth. I am pretty sick of them. By now we all know them by heart: no clear message, not sufficient youth vote, gays, irrational fear of terror, . . . The whole thing bores me to tears.

The Democrats just need to face reality: The country is just not in to you. Move on.

Yet another backlash has begun

I recently complained about the lack of real diversity on my campus after an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education did the same for the average US campus. I have since discovered that the Columbia Spectator has complained about this two days before me, the New York Times did it a week later, and so has today's Wall Street Journal. Now there's diversity for you.

But the story gets worse. To democrats and liberals this lack of diversity is either a good thing or simply a joke. (See the famous Brandom quotes about liberals just being smarter. . .) However, it is the same kind of joke that got Bush elected, and will start coming back to bite these people in the butt pretty soon. Using the American university as a large liberal indoctrination center will encourage lots of blowback (unintended consequences). How so? Well, today's NY Times has a piece on Liberty School of Law. The school's founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell said that "If our graduates wind up in the government, they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible." This, frankly, scared the hell out of me. But they are attracting students and justifying their existence on the grounds that there are not two sides presented on campuses in any discussion on any issue. There is no liberal and conservative view, but rather just a liberal view, and they are providing the conservative one. So we will end up with two types, liberals and conservatives, and this country will get locked in to ever murkier battles about some fundamental issues and we will be so polarized that half the country will be essentially democratically disenfranchised.

Liberals would do well to realize what is going on and not react by becoming even more liberal. That has been the strategy till now, and all it got them is a very conservative Executive branch, a very conservative legislative branch, a soon-to-be very conservative judicial branch, and a very large chip on their shoulder. It is time for liberals to take stock of themselves and their causes.

Here is some advice:
1) As many of my friends would say: "Stop hatin'". Get over the fact that you lost and stop hating Bush and conservatives. Stop patronizing them as if you know better. Most likely you don't. If you do, you certainly aren't smart enough to convince conservatives of it.

2) Prioritize. Find out what is important and pursue it. Do not pursue every single cause you think goes with the liberal package. If you think the environment is really the most important thing on the national agenda, pursue it. Tell us clearly why it is so important and how you will fix it. Do not blame anyone for not doing it, just pursue those issues. Do not think you will win every battle though. Do not then go for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, the FCC, tort reform, gay marriage, socialized medicine, more money for everything, bigger government, smaller military, more museums, abortion promotion, feeding the whales, helping the Palestinians, ignoring the Sudanese, supporting the UN, ending globalization, and whatever else liberals are vigorously pursuing these days.

3) Compromise. Realize that if you have any long-term interests, there will be short term compromises that you will have to make. Moreover, you are already making them because you have no choice, so you might as well look magnanimous doing it. Pretend to talk about how silly the gay marriage idea was. Agree that the Patriot act might help prevent some terrorism. Realize that Saddam was not a good guy and should have been removed regardless of whether he actually was in bed with bin Laden, or he just gave large sums of money to suicide bombers.

4) Listen. In a non-patronizing way, take a conservative to lunch. Find out what he or she cares about. Do not read a pamphlet called something like "How to win a debate with a conservative" beforehand. Do not try to be right. You will just end up realizing you are right, and the person you had lunch with will realize why he hates you and wants to screw over everything you hold dear. You will come off as sanctimonious and arrogant, like you usually do. This time, really listen. Realize that you two share the same country, and right now, he is on top. One day you might be, but now he is. Even if you disagree, you must learn to respect his point of view. This is what we have been teaching liberals since J. S. Mill. It is about time liberals take their own advice.

5) Think. Think about a) why you are a liberal and b) what that means to you. You might just find that you have accepted a whole package of ideas just because they were bundled together by Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, or the Village Voice. How many people out there really believe in every last one of the liberal dogmas? I certainly do not. Nor could I possible believe in every conservative dogma, nor could any sane human. Allow yourself the freedom to have your own opinions about everything. Assume that there are some things you might agree to if you can make a conservative friend. It won't hurt, I promise.

All of these will win you points with conservatives, will not change much anyway in "their" favor, and might get you a concession or two on something important. Moreover it might stem the flow of people leaving liberal and Democratic camps in droves.

Universities like Falwell's thrive on being the "alternative viewpoint". If liberals wire a bit less to the left there would be no need for such strong alternatives, and they would loose momentum.

As if you needed more reasons not to trust the UN

While I am sure the UN is doing important work in such important places as Namibia, it becomes clearer and clearer that when it come to real problems, it has an interest only in making gestures and sits around hoping that no one notices what it is really doing.

Three things in the news lately.

First, oil for food money (which was being embezzled left and right by the higher ups at the UN was going from Saddam Hussein to the families of suicide bombers. I wonder if anyone at the UN knew about this, or was it like everything else there - shrouded in secrecy and official cover-up?

Second, they have apparently asked anti-Semites to write the official UN report on anti-Semitism. I hear a literary version of Durban here. (For those of you who remember, Durban was where a major UN conference on racism pretty much turned in to a Jew-hating fest.) The UN might want to consider asking people who are familiar with the being a victim of anti-semitism, not a perpetrator, to write the report. I am sure they would never ask Sharon to write the report of the Palestinian problem.

Lastly, there is the month-old issue that the UN is knowingly employing Hamas members to help with various routine relief projects.

I want to talk about this last thing. We all know that the UN has been complicit in aiding Palestinian gunmen (famous ambulance video here.). But this is far more insidious. Why? Because Hamas in the territories, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, derives some of its street credibility from their suicide bombings and other terrorist operations. However, most of their popularity comes from the fact that they are a social institution. Hamas (and Hezbollah) operate schools, Mosques, and welfare programs of all sorts. It is THIS that makes them popular, and feeds their campaigns for "votes", funds, and probably most significantly, "martyrs" for the cause. Employing members of Hamas to do welfare activities puts them in higher profile places where Hamas can take partial credit for the work that the UN is doing. Thus the Hamas membership rises, and the UN can claim that they are politically neutral.

It is this sort of activity that perpetuates terrorist popularity. Classic bait-and-switch. They lure you in with free food and education, and then get you to blow yourself up "for the cause". The UN is providing much of the bait.

UNRWA is largely supported by American and Canadian tax dollars (40 percent). The US has supported many bad causes in its day. Some because there was a higher political goal, some out of bad judgment, and some out of ignorance. What is our excuse for this one, and where are the big complainers?

The Arafat Legacy

Lately one reads a lot about the Arafat Legacy. To some he is a Hero, to others a murderous butcher. I am assuming that those who view him as a hero cannot understand those who view him as a terrorist, and vise versa.

I think that the reason for the divergence of attitudes is obvious. It is not that one side likes terrorism, and the other does not. It is also not that one side likes the keeping the Palestinians in the quandary that they are in and the other does not. (If you fall in to one of those categories, I probably do not like you, and this does not apply to you.)

It goes back to a difference that is the foundation of the theory of Just War, one that I have mentioned many times before.

Arafat is a terrorist. He is a murderer of school children. He violated every internationally agreed-upon norm of civility and human decency. He inspired the last 40 years of depraved anti-civilian barbarism, including the Sept 11 attacks. There are few words (in English, Arabic has some that come close) to describe the inhumanity of Arafat.

Arafat also has goals that one should be able to sympathize with. He wants to liberate his people from foreign rule. He wants political autonomy and national self-determination and independence.

Let us make believe that there were absolutely no political options that Arafat had for negotiating with Israel. Let us also pretend that Israel was mistreating and politically disenfranchising the Palestinians. And let us further stipulate that the Palestinians had a central negotiating body, and a whole bunch of other reasonable conditions were met. . . It would seem to me that he is then (under our hypothetical scenario)fighting something resembling a just war.

However, regardless of the justice of his cause, he is fighting the war unjustly.

Those who praise Arafat forget this distinction. They seem to think that if the cause is just then all means to achieve it are Ok. But it is not. If your cause is just, then you can still be a vile terrorist. All you need to do is to deliberately target one school bus. You still have a just cause, but you are a murderer.

One must not praise a man and forget how despicable he was, but of course one must not let the actions of terrorism make us forget that despite the abhorence of their ways, there is still a legitimate problem, and they have a grievance that needs to be resolved.

Arafat's legacy was that he managed to blur this distinction. He blurred it so bad that he got a Noble Prize from an organization that could not see past what they saw was his just cause, and his merely temporary decision to use just means to attempt to resolve it.

So the propaganda goes back and forth. One side recalls the oppression of the Palestinian people. The other side recalls Arafat's strategy: target the innocent.

Arafat was the wrong leader for the Palestinian people. Had there been someone else 40 years ago, to lead the Palestinians, who understood that one does not take a just cause and fight it unjustly, there likely would be a lot of messes that the world is not in today.

Stickers for all - a proposed compromise

In the latest set of battles between the religiously zealous and the scientifically zealous, we find the new sticker war. Creationists want a sticker on school textbooks claiming that evolution is not a fact but merely a theory. The scientists (and ACLU, et al) claim that 1) it is a fact, and 2) the stickers would violate the separation between church and state.

Now, everyone knows that evolution is not a fact, though it is about as close as scientists get to one. There is a LOT of evidence for it, though there are a lot of internal disputes about many details. And 2, it is clear that the only real challenge to the scientific story comes from religion, or religiously motivated thinkers.

(In some sense this is reminiscient of our last election.)

In the spirit of ecumenical harmony, I would like to propose a compromise that I suspect would make both sides upset. We allow the stickers to be put on every science book in Georgia. In exchange, the scientists get to put a corresponding sticker on each bible in Georgia that says “This Bible contains material on many topics, both scientific, historical and ethical. All of this is mythology, not a fact, regarding the origin of the cosmos, humanity, civilization, and ethics. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”

Thus we have some Church in the State and some State in the Church. Good idea, no?

Saturday Night in Cuba?

On Saturday night I went with a friend and his wife to a Cuban club in Union City/West New York, NJ. I had a lot of fun. It took me forever (and lots of drinks) to get up the courage to actually dance, but the food was good, and I had no idea what was going on, being the only person there who did not speak any Spanish. It was really interesting how friendly everyone was was. Strangers were trying really hard and being really tolerant in the process of teaching me salsa and merengue. I frankly suck. But everyone was great. I had a great time.

Lubavitchers in my life

On Friday night I went to the local synagogue in my neighborhood. I did this because I need to use a synagogues facilities on Wednesday for something my parents requested, and when I met the Rabbi he told me to come by on Friday night. So I thought the polite thing to do would be to show up. I did. The Rabbi was a Lubavitch rabbi, and the synagogue itself was a very mixed crowd of all sorts of people.

After the prayer, the rabbi insisted I stay for a meal afterward. Apparently there was a shabbaton of sorts. So before I could say no, I was already seated in front of a wrapped up chala and piece of gifelte fish at a table with about a half a dozen complete strangers. This was all fine. Everyone was pretty friendly.

There was a speaker there at dinner. She was a conservative woman who had written a bit about the Lubavitch community worldwide. She spoke really well. Her job was not to fawn over the community, but to talk about her experiences, which she did wonderfully. She obviously did not feel compelled to toe any line or hold back from saying anything, and yet the whole speech was full of praise, not the kind of praise you get from a fan, but rather from one who really has been well treated by the community, despite her status as an outsider. Her stories were fun and entertaining, talking about the different Chabad communities she visited and places she saw.

That got me to thinking about the various times in my life I have experiences the Chabad community. They have been actively doing outreach all my life. They started just after Israel's Six Day War, when there was 1) a strong pro-Israel feeling on the planet as a response to the war, and 2) when the counterculture zeitgeist was taking off, and Chabad was as counterculture as any hippy commune.

I remember two things from my childhood. The first was their "Army of Hashem" thing that they sent out. Everyone got their little newsletter, and I think everyone was able to get higher rank if they sent something in or did something. I forget what it was, but I do not think I was too involved, but I am pretty sure we all got their weekly or monthly newsletters.

The second thing I recall was their campaigns to have people purchase letters in torah scrolls. They had individuals go from door to door selling letters in torah scrolls. IT must have cost a dollar or a few dollars to sponsor the writing in a scroll, and you got to choose which letter you would be sponsoring. I remember my when one of these people came to my grandparents' home he bought letters for all of us. I think it was the first letter of our names.

As I grew up this all faded. Both of these things fell off my radar and I think fell off the radar of much of mainstream orthodoxy.

When I was in college Chabad took on other connotations. Chabad became rather obsessed with the Messiah. They were always rather obsessed with it, but then it took on a face, ie, the Rebbe, Schneerson. When he died, it looked for a moment like Chabad was going to become the new Christianity. At the time I had been taking a class with David Berger, the academic who wrote fiercely against the sect cautioning that they were breaking off from mainstream Judaism. I had a chat or two with him about it. He took this very seriously.

Ten years later this seems to have died down. One does not hear too many people too openly insist that the Rebbe never died, or is divine, or will be resurrected. . . Chabad has resumed, albeit without traditional leadership. There was never a new Rebbe appointed. One hopes that they do that soon.

I also remember rather fondly ending up in Gam Gam in Venice one Friday night. I had a quite pleasant meal there right on the water. Gam Gam is a Kosher restaurant operated by the Chabad community there. Again, I am not sure how I got there, but I it was fun.

I also recall the civilian rabbi who came in to Fort Knox for a little while each Sunday. He too was Lubavitch. He was not, to be hones, the most charismatic fellow, but he was nice, and he was there. This meant a lot to us there in Basic Combat Training. Basic Combat Training is brutal. The rabbi's presence each Sunday was comforting and reassuring, even if you are like me, one who is not too interested in God or religion or any such stuff.

My very diverse school [sic]

The last issue of my university newpaper had the reports of a poll askingthe faculty members who they plan on voting for. There were not many respondents and I have no idea how representative the answers were, but here is what basically happened. Every respondednt wrote almost the same thing. They all were planning to vote for Kerry. They of course all offered the same disclaimer: They would rather vote for Nader, but given the way the 2000 election went, they were going to stick with Kerry.

I remember marvelling to myself two weeks ago when I read it that I am in the most diverse city on the planet, most likely in one of the most diverse educational institutions in the world, and still the faculty all manages to have the same opinion. I mean there were blacks who gave that answer, whites, hispanics, women, gays, you name it. What the hell is the point of diversity if everyone ends up with the same opinion at the end? Isn't diversity supposed to be about the clas of opinions. Isn't it supposed to force us to question our dogmas, instead of reenforcing them? According to Professor Bauerlein things are no different anywhere else, and moreover he thinks it is a bad idea. I, of course, could not agree more. Why tout diversity if you are not really diverse, but merely colorful. Walpaper can be colorful, but that does not make for a good university.

Man, I just wish I really believed all these academic, intellectual, cultural and religious dogmas that get thrown out. Life would be so much easier if I just hated Bush, loved Nader, believed in the labor theory of value, read Harry Potter and the Da Vinchy Code, watched football, ate in McDonalds, wore whatever happens to be fashionable at the moment, and was very superficial. But I do none of those things. So life just sucks for me, doesn't it?

Veterans Day Parade

Today I got to March in the Veteran's Day Parade. I hope I did not get on TV or anything. It was weird watching all these people videotape you and take pictures of you though. It was not a bad event and we even had some fun.