New Years Eve and Eastwick

Greetings.

Jewish date:  14 Ṭeveth 5770 (Parashath Wayḥi).

Today’s holidays:  New Years Eve (Western Christianity), Feast of Sylvester (Roman Catholicism), Affeye (Discordianism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Support Clinical Trials: A Vital Lifeline for Cancer Patients! - The Petition Site”.

Topic 1:  Did not know that New Years Eve is a religious holiday?  Then consider this:  Assume that Jesus of Nazareth was born on December 25.  (The date is questionable, but let us assume it anyway.)  Jewish males are supposed to be circumcised on the eighth day of life.  Therefor, if Jesus was born on December 25, he was circumcised on January 1.  That is what tonight’s celebration is about.

Topic 2:  The latest episode of Eastwick, “Magic Snow and Creep Gene”.  This is the least magical episode so far.  Roxie killed Jamie in self-defense, and Kat and Joanna helped her fake him leaving town.  After that they do not feel inclined to use their powers.  Darryl disappears temporarily, and when he returns he tells Roxie something of his life-story.  Twenty-five years earlier, Eleanor, Bun, and a third woman, Gloria (mother of Jamie), inadvertently summoned Darryl when they started to work magic.  Unfortunately, things went horribly wrong, Gloria had a relationship with Darryl and then about nine months later committed suicide, and Eleanor and Bun tried to kill Darryl.  Darryl left Eastwick and only returned when inadvertently summoned by Roxie, Kat, and Joanna.  While Darryl refuses to say what he is other than a “person”, his purpose in Eastwick is to help people with magic.  Now that his magical protégées have stopped working magic, he has to leave Eastwick again.  This course of action is obviated when Roxie, Kat, and Joanna take up magic again, most graphically in this episode when Kat makes it snow indoors.  I hope we get a bit more info on what Darryl is in the last two episodes.

Also notable:  String-pulling behind the scenes.  Bizarre conspiracies.  The first episode in which Darryl sleeps with one of his protégées (Roxie).

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor, noting how far New Years Eve has strayed from its religious roots:  “fred at last new years party”:


Peace.

Aaron

Someone please tell the atheists to knock off trying to steal holidays

Greetings.

Jewish date:  30 Kislew 5770 (Parashath MiqQeṣ).

Today’s holidays:  Day 6 of Ḥanukkah (Judaism), Ro’sh Ḥodhesh (Judaism), Thursday of the Third Week of Advent (Roman Catholicism), Saturnalia (ancient Roman).

Worthy causes of the day:  “School Lunch Meat Gets an 'F'”, “Obama: Don't Waver in Your Demand for a Public Option - The Petition Site”, and “Save BioGems: Take Action: Save Polar Bears”.

Topic 1:  “Tea and Psychopathy”, the latest episode of Eastwick.  A couple of relevant things are going on in this episode.  Kat embraces her magical ability to heal to such an extent that she starts wearing herself out, some of her hair turns gray, and she gets nosebleeds.  Clearly magic in this world is not free; it might be cheap, but enough cheap items together can be very expensive.  Also, her abusive ex-husband Ray starts to think she has magic powers when she drops icicles on him and less than subtly hints she may do worse in the future.  Furthermore, Eleanor’s plot to kill Darryl (again) continues unfold.  Eleanor herself poisons Joanna and her frenemy Max to keep them from interfering with her plan, while her coconspirator Jamie tries to force Roxie into murdering Darryl with an unusual dagger she once saw in a vision.  She resists and stabs Jamie instead, which puts him on track to kill her as per her early visions of him.  Evidently Eleanor and Jamie are playing according to the rule that the ends justify the means.  There also seems to be an element of predestination in the visions; so far none of them has been avert.

Topic 2:  “Judge OKs winter solstice display at Ark. Capitol”.  Once again, atheists are at it again trying to usurp a preexisting holiday, in this case the winter solstice.  (Hint:  The Neopagans claimed it first.)  They thus sued to put up a display featuring Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  This alone kills any effect they might hope for, given that Bill Gates is not exactly a paragon of morality or reason.  The text for their display, “As the old year passes and a new year is born, we reflect on that which has passed and hope for a better tomorrow.  May the light of reason be a beacon to a brighter future for us all.” is actually a generic platitude.  Few people of any belief system would say something like “May the light of irrationality be a beacon to a brighter future for us all”, the idea is so obviously bad.  Militant atheism is atheism pushed in ways which may give serious atheists something to rally around, but really annoys everyone else—which is neither bright or rational if they want anyone to listen to them enough to be converted.  My advice again:  Atheists really ought to drop the idea of stealing anyone else’s holiday.  Forever.  And they need to get past this idea of “we’re smart and rational and everyone else isn’t”, because it is false, it is annoying, and no one is buying it.  What they need to do is fire their current PR department and start giving people actual reasons to think they are wonderful, and the only way they can do reliably do that is become wonderful.

Topic 3:  For today’s dose of religious humor:  “The Greatest Christmas Decoration Ever!”  I get the humor, but I really, really do not recommend anyone copy this stunt, as it may make people panic.

Peace and happy Ḥanukkah.

Aaron

Magic, minarets, and solar retinopathy

Greetings.

Jewish date:  16 Kislew 5770 (Parashath Wayishlaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Saint Day of Frances Xavier (Roman Catholicism), Feast of the Annihilation of the Prophet (Thelema).

So much going on religiously…  So little time to blog about it if I want to apply for jobs today…  Anyone who knows of someone who would pay me to blog about religion, please let me know.

Topic 1:  Eastwick, episode 9:  “Tasers and Mind Erasers”.  The writers have clearly come out on the side of making Darryl Van Horne not the Devil.  Yes, he is a manipulative, self-centered pleasure-seeker, but in this episode he is at his most vulnerable.  Jamie has attempted to poison Darryl, but he accidentally poisoned art critic Greta Noa instead.  Greta is in critical condition, and Daryl spends much of this episode begging Kat to use her healing powers to save Greta.  Whatever Darryl is, he still has human feelings and is not completely evil.  Either that or he is doing an excellent job of hiding his lack of caring and has a powerful motive for pretending to care for Greta and coercing Kat into healing her.

Also in this episode:  More use of magic and preminitions by Roxie, Kat, and Joanna, with Roxie adding mind-reading to her repertoire.  More plotting by Bun and Eleanor to kill Darryl, including informing Jamie that he is Darryl’s son(!) and nudging Jamie towards killing Roxie, as he has already been predicted to at least try to do.

Topic 2:  “Switzerland votes to prohibit the building of mosque minarets”.  Almost everyone has probably heard about this by now, and there is a definite issue of freedom of religion.  Keep in mind that freedom of religion exists only when it applies as broadly as possible—and that includes the freedom to believe and practice religions others find repulsive and loathsome.  While many may not like seeing minarets, do keep in mind that a minaret does not, in and of itself, harm anyone.  At best, minarets are symbols of something else truly offensive.  If so, why are they not going after what is truly offensive in the first place?

Also:  “Can we blame the Swiss?” by Tawfik Hamid.  This article gives an introspective Muslim perspective on what happened.  Rather than attack Swiss Christians for being a bunch of rotten people, he looks at how Muslims behave, both in Europe and in Muslim countries, and asks what Christians are supposed to think about them.  Do Swiss Christians really want their country Islamized?  Should anyone expect them to feel unboundedly tolerant Muslims in Europe when Christians in Muslim countries are treated so shabbily?  These questions at the very least give some context to why the minaret ban passed in the first place.

Topic 3:  “Hospital sees increase in eye condition after Knock 'visions'” by Pamela Duncan.  This article deals with people staring at the Sun at a Roman Catholic shrine in Ireland and unsurprisingly hurting their eyes.  I have said it before, and I will say it again, only this time in uppercase for emphasis:  WHATEVER GOD EXISTS OR KARMA DOES NOT RELIABLY PROTECT PEOPLE FROM STUPIDITY, NO MATTER HOW ALLEGEDLY PIOUS IT IS!!!  I know it sounds judgmental, but that is the way our universe works, like it or not.  There is an entire Web-site, What's The Harm?, dedicated to showing the harm done by falsehood and stupidity, including stupidity in the name of religion.  Keep in mind:  if YHWH did not want us to think, He would not have given us huge brains.  If being stupid were pious, wisdom literature (Ecclesiastes and Proverbs) would never have made it into the Hebrew Bible!

Peace.

Aaron

V is for “vaccine” and “vitamin”

Greetings.

Jewish date:  9 Kislew 5770 (Parashath Wayyeṣe’).

Today’s holidays:  Thursday of the Thirty-Fourth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Day of the Covenant (Bahá’í Faith), Yaum-Arafah (Islam).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Take Action: Tell President Obama to Save Rainforests and Stop Climate Change”.

Topic 1:  V (new series), episode 4:  “It’s Only The Beginning”.  This is more of a moral/ethical episode than a theological one.

A) There is a focus on the Vs performing medical miracles—apparently a reason a lot of people like the Vs—with the announcement of plans for them to distribute a new “vitamin shot” to boost the human immune system.  This should raise a question to anyone in the sciences:  is anyone doing proper studies to make sure V medicine actually works on humans better than human medicine or placebos?  Yes, there are “miracles”, but the unexpected sometimes happens in medicine.  For all we know, some of the “miracle cures” of the Vs are spontaneous remissions which the Vs take credit for.  Furthermore, is there any followup being done to track complications and side effects?  So far none of the characters seems to have thought about this issue, though they actually examine the “vitamin shots” and find out they contain——vitamins.  Seemingly ordinary influenza vaccine, however, may have been contaminated, and so the resistance takes a vial and destroys the rest.  It is not revealed why the Vs are tampering with influenza vaccines, but tampering with medicine certainly violates medical ethics.  (General rule in medical ethics:  never do anything to anyone without their informed consent.  But since the Vs are definitely doing naughty things in secret, this violation should be no surprise.)  Medicine is also used to try to control the reporter Chad Decker.  While reporting on V medical technology, he is scanned by a V medical scanner.  The Vs tell him that he will have a brain aneurysm in six months which human technology cannot detect.  There is a waiting list for V medical treatment, so there is an implication that he will have to do something for the Vs to save his life.

B) Questions of morality in in war are showing up, as they should.  Father Jack is asked if he is a priest or a soldier while he gives some emergency medical aid.  He has been both at the same time—he was an army chaplain and did two tours in Iraq.  Christianity has for the most part outgrown its militant past, and  it is a past that many consider a mistake.  Father Jack clearly feels awkward, even if his behavior is justified.  His problems are nothing compared to those of the Fifth Column, the Vs’ internal resistance.  One of the Fifth Column killed a V sleeper agent.  In order to spare the guilty party from Anna’s wrath, another of the Fifth Columnists took credit.  To make things really conflicted, Anna ordered the true guilty party, a medical officer, to inflict the punishment on the one who took credit:  skinning.  (Anna is not a nice humanoid lizard creature.)  The V who took credit justified himself to the true guilty party on the grounds of who was expendable and who was not and demanded that the true guilty party do as Anna ordered him.  He complied, but he was clearly forcing himself to do it.

C) Anna seems to have a messiah or goddess complex.  She does not tolerate “disharmony” among the V.  (See the above bit about skinning a rebel.)  Also, at the end of the episode, she sits naked(!) on a lit platform and apparently broadcasts good feelings which include her claiming to be wonderful (“bliss”).

This wraps up the series until March.  Things are not quite as bad as they seemed based on the pilot episode alone, but there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made.  In particular, the sudden reaction of many humans to the arrival of the Vs to start going to church still remains to be explained.  Fortunately there is hope that this series will turn out alright.

Topic 2:  Eastwick, episode 8:  “Paint and Pleasure”.  Theological progress is made by Roxanne, who has a vision of herself wearing a fancy necklace and snogging Darryl.  (And, yes, I have watched too much British TV.)  Soon afterwards Darryl presents her with the necklace and holds a party to introduce her paintings to the critical world.  The party is a success, with a critic praising Roxy’s art and noting all the paintings have been sold.  Roxy does end up snogging with Darryl, but she terminates the snogging session to go back to the party; she recognizes that the vision was of snogging, not going any further than that.  Therefore, even if fatalism rules in this world, the only thing she knows she must do is snog Darryl.  She later decides to go further with Darryl, but changes her mind once he stupidly hints that he was the one who bought her paintings.  (Good for the writers.  Darryl’s evil and sort of slimy.  He should not be getting what he wants.)  Roxy also gets a vision while looking at a painting of hers that was not at the party; she sees a dagger dripping blood.  The rest of the magic in the episode is fairly ordinary for this show.  Joanna, feeling depressed, mesmerizes a homosexual man into sleeping with her in Darryl’s bathroom.  Kat unpremeditatedly causes strong wind, strong enough to overturn a baby grand piano, when she sees her ex-husband snogging with his new girlfriend.

Topic 3:  More religious humor:  “Breaking News”.

I still have no idea why black cats are associated with evil.  Black = darkness = evil (opposite of light = good) makes enough sense, but why cats in particular?  Any enlightenment would be much appreciated.

Peace.

Aaron

Does Mrs. Coulter belong in children’s books?

Greetings.

Jewish date:  18 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Wayyera’).

Today’s holiday:  Thursday of the Thirty-First Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  The last chapter of The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman.  Theologically new is the shaman John Parry’s revelation that the Subtle Knife is the only thing that can kill the Authority/God.  Again, I repeat, Pullman has set this series on track for a theological train-wreck.  If the Authority accurately reflects the God of Christianity, then if anyone kills Him, Pullman screws up by having something impossible happen; do note that “immortal” means by definition “impossible to be killed”.  If, on the other hand, the Authority is a sufficiently low being that He can be killed, then He is not a good reflection of the God of Christianity, which makes His defeat a failure compared to the actual goal that Pullman seems to be trying to accomplish.  Either way, Pullman loses.

Also, we find out that the rebel angels have been working behind the scenes to move the plot along in order that they may kill the Authority.  Sounds rather like the Christian Satan; doesn’t it?

It is also revealed that the witches have a prophecy that Lyra is supposed to be the new Ḥawwah (Eve).  Mrs. Coulter decides (through completely opaque reasoning processes) that she will have to destroy Lyra to prevent another Fall.  If this is a reflection of any prophecy or reasoning in any real religion, I would be very interested in knowing.

I would also like to raise my concern about the content of this series so far.  This is allegedly a series of children’s books.  Yet Pullman seems to delight in content which people frequently complain is inappropriate for children.  There are (in no particular order):

Image of inappropriate-for-children’s-books character Mrs. Coulter (portrayed by Nichole Kidman) via Wikipedia

• Graphic violence, including blood, loss of body parts, and death.
• Accidental homicide.
• Murder.
• Mention of castration and genital mutilation.  (I really cannot make this up.  Nor would I want to.)
• Mention of trepanation, including skulls of the dead with holes in them.
• Illicit unions, sometimes resulting in offspring.  (Thank you, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, and the entire witch community.)
• Seduction.  (Thank you, again, Mrs. Coulter.)
• Poisoning.  (Ditto.)
• Turning people into zombies or zombie-like beings.  (Probably ditto.)
• Torture.  (Definitely ditto.)

Yes, I am well aware that children cannot and should not be sheltered from everything bad in the world, but Pullman has been going out of his way to put all this stuff in, whether or not it is really necessary for the plot.  E.g., mention of castration and genital mutilation only serves to make the Church/Magisterium look bad.  It has nothing to actually do with the plot and does not affect any characters who appear on-screen; if it were removed, the story would be unaffected.  And again, I note that the Church/Magisterium, which is behind a lot of this awful stuff, is an overblown, antireligious stereotype of a church and does not reflect well any real church today.  If Pullman is trying to show us how wonderful atheists are, he is doing a horrible job.

Up next:  The Amber Spyglass, the concluding book of His Dark Materials.

Topic 2:  It is time again for another Eastwick review.  (I watch this show and strain the theology out so you neither have to nor want to.)  Roxanne, famous for her visionary dreams, sees her dead boyfriend Chad in one.  He tells her to follow the signs, setting her off on a quest leading from a hammer to a T-shirt to a CD he recorded just for her.  There are various uses of magical power, ranging from telekinesis to healing.  More notably, Darryl, the character who may really be Satan, gets into Palpatine mode again while fire-walking and lectures Roxanne on the curse of ’Adham (Adam) and Ḥawwah, which he claims to be self-awareness and all the emotions which make life fun.  (Apparently he has not read Genesis 3:16-19.)  It also looks increasingly like Darryl periodically visits Eastwick and causes trouble.  Two older characters, Eleanor and Bun, are about to discuss the situation, and Eleanor claims they are going to have to kill Darryl again, implying that they have done it at least once before.

Topic 3:  “Discovering Jewish Terror” and “Video: Meet the Foreign Press: Are They Objective?”  These articles look at Orwellian misuse of terminology and double standards in how Israel is treated in the media.  (And yes, this is a chronic problem.)

Peace.

Aaron

Pullman stabs himself with The Subtle Knife

Greetings.

Jewish date:  11 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Lekh-Lekha).

Today’s holidays:  Thursday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Take Action: Sign the petition to President Obama | Save Darfur”.

Topic 1:  I have now read chapter 2 of The Subtle Knife (Book 2 of His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman, and Pullman sets himself up for disaster.  The setting shifts back to the world Lyra started in.  Serafina Pekkala, a witch, discovers a lot of Church officials and Mrs. Coulter in a room together, plotting their next move.  They have already lost Lyra and an alethiometer (a divination device, the “Golden Compass” of The Golden Compass), and they are using their alethiometer and torturing a witch who thought with Lyra in an effort to get more information.  Lyra is the central character of prophesies, and they are very upset to have lost track of her and are trying to get hold of her again.  After euthanizing the tortured witch, Serafina goes on to investigate further consult and turn up other dirt on the Church and Lord Asriel.  It turns out that Lord Asriel has taken upon himself to do something amazingly ambitious and audacious:  he hopes to kill the Authority, the god of the Church/Magisterium.  This is the point where Pullman (figuratively) stabs himself, because he sets up a situation in which he cannot win.  If the Authority is an accurate reflection of the Christian Trinity, then this is impossible.  The Trinity is supposed to be immortal; therefore by definition there is nothing any human could possibly do to kill Him/Them.  Thus if Lord Asriel or any other human character kills an immaterial Authority, Pullman has him do something impossible.  On the other hand, if the Authority is sufficiently low a being so as to be killable, Pullman is attacking a god which does not reflect the one that Christians actually believe in.  Either way, Pullman loses.

Topic 2:  It is time again for another update of the latest episode of Eastwick, this time “Bonfire and Betrayal”, a Halloween episode, with references to witch burnings.  (Who did not see that coming?)  There is more of the tension between predestination versus free will in Roxanne’s visions, with attempts to prevent a foreseen death.  There is the disgraced pastor going insane and trying to murder Joanna.  (This feels cliché, or at least soap operaish.  Actually, the whole show feels soap operaish.)  There are more magic powers.  Nothing spectacular.

Peace.

Aaron

The Holocaust, free speech, Galileo, and Eastwick

Greetings.

Jewish date:  4 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Noaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Thursday of the Twenty-Ninth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Call them out: Tell Harry Reid to expose the Democrats who want to filibuster a public option”, “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  Stand with Melanie, not the insurance CEOs”, and “GOP: Stop Spewing Health Care Lies”.

Topic 1:  “Holocaust overload”:  George Orwell wrote a famous essay, “Politics and the English Language” on the misuse and abuse of the English language, often to political ends.  Words can be so misused and overused that they lose their meaning.  This article describes misuse of the word “Holocaust” which threatens to make the term almost meaningless.

Topic 2:  “Free Speech Under Foreign Assault”:  Major rule:  Suppressing free speech does not make one’s views any more true.  Those Muslims who adopt the tactic of abusing libel laws to squelch their opponents are advised to stop this dishonorable course of action and learn to make valid arguments like real men (and real women).

Topic 3:  “Galileo's Contradiction: The Astronomer Who Riled the Inquisition Fathered 2 Nuns”:  There is a common misconception that science and religion are diametrical opposites.  This does not reflect the actual religious views of serious scientists, e.g., the observant Catholic Galileo Galilei.

Topic 4:  Yesterday’s episode of Eastwick (that show I love to hate), “Mooning and Crooning”, deals with much of the town engaging in wild behavior induced by the full Moon.  I suspect that this may have been magicked inadvertently by Kat, Roxanne, and Joanna on Darryl’s suggestion.  Not really anything new theologically, though Darryl does provide the rudiments of a cover story.

Peace.

Aaron

The Internet, anti-Semitism, and Eastwick

Greetings.

Jewish date:  27 Tishri 5770 (Parashath Bere’shith).

Today’s holiday:  Dhanteras (day 1 of Diwali; Hinduism)

Worthy causes of the day:  “Take Action: Save Rainforests and Stop Climate Change”, “Divided We Fail:  It's not over yet - tell Congress to stay committed to reform!”, “Message in a Bottle”, and “Take Action: Stand with Melanie, not the insurance CEOs”.

Topic 1:  “The Belzer Rebbe and the Internet”.  This article deals with a practical feature of Jewish law:  an enactment is only valid if Jews actually follow it.  There have been been enactments made against using the Internet, and they are frequently violated.  The practical uses of the Internet outweigh the paranoia against it.

Topic 2:  “The Times: Reinterpreting 'International Law'”:  This article details misunderstanding of the Geneva Conventions and baseless accusations in the war against Israel and the Jews.

Topic 3:  Yes, it is time again to discuss the show I love to hate, Eastwick.  Yesterday’s episode, “Fleas and Casserole”, brings little new.  Roxanne is still having premonition dreams, and Joanna mesmerizes yet another person.  Notable, though, is the appearance of a book of spells bearing on its cover a curly triangular symbol seen in various contexts, including as a scar on Jamie, the man Roxanne has foreseen will murder her.

That’s all for now.  Peace.

Aaron

Mere Christianity, Eastwick, the Temple Mount, and morality

Greetings.

Jewish date:  20 Tishri 5770.

Today’s holidays:  Ḥol hamMo‘edh Sukkoth (Judaism), Thursday of the Twenty-Seventh Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Protect Against Toxic Chemicals”.

Topic 1:  Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (of The Chronicles of Narnia fame).  I finished reading it for the second time yesterday.  Mere Christianity is an intelligent explanation of fundamental Christian doctrines, including the teachings and nature of Jesus of Nazareth, for intelligent humans and should be considered recommended reading.  Notable is Lewis’s moral proof of the existence of God.  Lewis claims that morality is a human universal.  A lot of the details vary widely among religions and cultures, but a lot of the basics are widely agreed upon, e.g. “don’t murder” and “don’t steal”.  Lewis takes the universality of human morality as a sign that there is an objective morality and as a reason to believe that God exists.  This is by no means a rock-solid proof.  A lot of basic morality could have been shaped by evolution, both genetic and cultural, to be something which yields a functional society.  Once the basic moral system was established, it could have been spread all over the planet by human migration.  Still, the idea is a worthy attempt at a proof of the existence of God.

Topic 2:  The latest episode of Eastwick, “Madams and Madames”.  (I have to suffer watching this show, so all of you must suffer along with me.)  The more I think about it, the more the character of Darryl Van Horne seems to be a combination of two characters which we are supposed to hate:  Charles “Upchuck” Ruttheimer III from Daria and Emperor Palpatine of the Star Wars Universe.  Like Upchuck, Darryl is rich, obnoxious, and has a tendency to hit on women, even when he has little chance of success.  Like Palpatine, Darryl is evil, immoral, and (one might say) an evangelist for the Dark Side—which he seriously engages in in this episode.  However, if there is any influence, it is likely The Witches of Eastwick (1984) which is the influence on Daria (1997) and the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999-2005).  However, it is possible that some influence the other way has crept in during this latest incarnation of The Witches of Eastwick; time and future reading will tell.  Other things going on in this episode:  a Christian pastor opposes Darryl’s plan to build a brewery on the grounds that the land was promised to the church.  Darryl manipulates Joanna into exposing the pastor as a hypocrite who visits a whorehouse.  (Classify that as an anti-religious cliché.)  Meanwhile, Roxanne is haunted by visions of the dead Gus, her daughter’s would-be rapist.  This leads to her consulting a medium, whom she quickly recognizes as a fake.  Gus finally goes away after Roxanne gives her condolences to his mother.  And on top of this we have Kat and Roxanne working more magic via wishes.

Topic 3:  “Factor behind Temple Mount riots” gives more background on the current round of the Israeli-Arab War, with the Arabs rioting over apparently nothing anyone actually did.  The rioting may well be a political tactic to put pressure on Israel to make concessions (a form of jihad) or deflect attention away from ‘Abbas.  “J'lem: 'We win, you lose'” looks at the issue of competing narratives of Jerusalem in the Israeli-Arab War from a game-theoretic point of view.  Current Arab refusal to acknowledge the Jewish narrative and empirically accurate history and an insistence on a fictional history of a Palestine which never existed works against any chance of making peace except under the unacceptable term of accepting the dominance of Islam.  Not to mention that lying in order to win an argument is essentially admitting that one is wrong, as if the truth were on one’s side, a lie would be unnecessary.

Topic 4:  “Orthodox focus on Jewish ethics at High Holidays”:  Just a reminder that morality is part of religion and that we should never forget it.

That’s all for today.  Happy Sukkoth.

Aaron

Jimmy Carter, anti-Semitism, and Eastwick

Greetings.

Jewish date:  13 Tishri 5770.

Today’s holiday:  Holy Protection of the Theotokos (Greek Orthodox Christianity).

Worthy causes of the day:  Give blood, please.  I just got called asking for a donation of platelets, and I scheduled an appointment for the day after Simḥath Torah.  If you can give blood, please do so and save a life.  Also:  “I SUPPORT A PUBLIC OPTION”, “Call them out: Tell Harry Reid to expose the Democrats who want to filibuster a public option”, “Send a message to your Senators (Support Senate clean energy legislation)”, and “Responsible Teen Sex-Education Programs”.

Progress on my sukkah:  Furniture and an electric light have been installed.  The decorations are going up today (YHWH willing).  Also:  see the Dry Bones cartoon “Sukkot (1994)”.

Topic 1:  “Jimmy Carter’s Price Tag”.  This article by Rav Shmuely Boteach argues that Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite.  This may sound surprising, considering Carter’s one-sided criticism of Israel (e.g., Palestine Peace Not Apartheid).  Rav Boteach argues that Carter is actually a “useful idiot” who takes the moral shortcut of assuming that in any conflict, the weaker of the two parties is always right (“underdogma”).  Unless one’s moral system explicitly claims the weak are always right and the strong are always wrong—and I am not aware of any formally declared moral system which does—this is a fallacy.  Morality is usually conceived of dealing with how one behaves, and there is nothing impossible or even unlikely about the strong doing good and the weak doing evil.  Power simply makes it easier to do evil on a larger scale.  However, the ability to do great evil does not always translate into doing great evil.  In the Israeli-Arab War (in progress since the 1920s), if Israel has really been committing genocide as its detractors have claimed, it has been doing an unbelievably incompetent job of it.  Israel has a larger population, a stronger military, a higher level of education, and more resources than the so-called “Palestinians”.  Israel has repeatedly beaten off invading armies.  If they really wanted to wipe out the “Palestinians”, who are more of a nuisance to Israeli society than an actual danger, they could have done so easily long ago.  Instead, only a few thousand “Palestinians” (at most) have died at Israeli hands—out of a population of a few million.  This puts the chances of a “Palestinian” being killed by Israelis in the neighborhood of 0.1%.  This is completely inconsistent with genocide; it is completely consistent with Israel fighting a defensive war against the “Palestinians”.

Topic 2:  “Israel: As Fanatical as Iran?”:  This Honest Reporting report documents a variation on tu quoque (“Hey, Israel’s just as bad as Iran.  Why aren’t you picking on them instead?”), a bizarre accusation involving chewing gun, and one-sidedness in the Goldstone Report.

Topic 3:  They had another episode of Eastwick on television last night, “Reaping and Sewing”, and you must all now suffer along with me.  I am kicking myself (figuratively) over not realizing before my last Eastwick post that the concept of working magic via wishes is very similar to the concept behind the monstrously stupid film and book The Secret, in which one is supposed to get whatever one thinks about (“the law of attraction”, which apparently does not work for me).  In the world of Eastwick, however, Darryl claims that it really does work for Joanna.  In this episode, Joanna continues her investigation of Darryl van Horne and strongly suspects that he has stolen the identity of a dead child; Darryl has certainly done something magical to cover up his true past, and it is not like Satan would have his own birth certificate or Social Security number.  The rest of the theology and magic is pretty much the same as in the previous episode:  premonitions, the ethics of controlling other people through magic, and unintended conjuring.

Time for me to move on to other things I have to do...

Aaron

Anti-Semitism and Eastwick

Greetings.

Jewish date:  6 Tishri 5770.

Today’s holidays:  Ten Days of Repentance (Judaism), Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Greater Eleusinian Mysteries (Thelema).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Save Orphan Bears: End Cruel Den Hunts” and “Sierra Club:  Add Your Voice and Help Us Reach Our Goal by October 4th!”  Also:  “Video: Will Ferrell stands up for the real health care victims”.

Topic 1:  More anti-Semitism using Orwellian language documented:  “New Statesman: Propaganda for Terrorists”.  Commentary on anti-Semitism in the United Nations:  “the Goldstone UN Gaza Report”.

Topic 2:  Last night was the pilot episode of the new TV series Eastwick, based on John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick.  The vibes I got from the promo suggested it would be bad or at least go into territory better left unexplored on TV, but a check on Wikipedia suggested that one of the characters, at least in the original novel or movie versions thereof, might be the Devil.  Dreading what the result would be (especially since I have not read the novel or seen the movie versions), I watched it, hoping it would be irrelevant to my project and I could ignore it afterwards.  Unfortunately, it turned out relevant, and so you all have to suffer along with me.  (Where is another season of Kings or even Reaper when you need it?)

The show is set it the fictional New England town of Eastwick, which has the stereotypical Pilgrim heritage, including hints of past burning of witches.  Three women who live in this town, Roxanne Torcoletti, Joanna Frankel, and Kat Gardener, find mysterious coins which they throw into a fountain, wishing for better lives.  Soon afterwards, a rich, charismatic, and mysterious stranger with an aura of evil and the too-obvious name Darryl Van Horne arrives in town and starts acquiring real estate and businesses.  He hits on all three of the aforementioned women (unsurprisingly, with a name like that) and reveals to them that they have magic powers, which can be evoked by wishing, wittingly or unwittingly.  Roxanne, hired by Darryl to make a sculpture of him, has highly detailed predictive dreams.  Joanna learns she has hypnotic powers she can use to control people—and has to wrestle with the morality of using them.  Kat’s power seems to be calling down lightning to strike her good-for-nothing husband.  There are also allegations that Van Horne has been in Eastwick previously, with hints of an unnaturally long lifespan.  This episode comes off as working towards the paranoid Christian fantasy of witches making deals with the Devil, including having sexual intercourse with him—though this being just the pilot, nothing near this far has happened yet.

What I want to see, in order to prevent this series turning into a total theological train wreck:  above anything else, a justification for the behavior of the Christian Satan.  One possibility is that he is fantastically stupid; angels are far less powerful than deities, so Satan is arguably being an idiot for rebelling against God.  He is also arguably a highly stubborn idiot, since thousands (or billions) of years is a long time to be holding a grudge which one can never truly satisfy.  The best he can hope for is to carry on a petty vendetta until he finally gets squished like the (relative) bug he is.  However, an idiot Satan is an ineffective Satan, so this is unlikely to be invoked.  More workable would be to give Satan a different value system than God or even to be working for God in quality assurance.  Another plausible route would be to make Darryl something other than the Devil, though this route requires more creativity.

OK, on to other things I need to do today...

Aaron