Philip Pullman fails theology!

Greetings.

Jewish date:  9 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Lekh-Lekha).

Today’s holiday:  Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “No triggers for a public option. Tell Congress now.”

Image of Philip Pullman via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  Last night I finished The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman, and a great secret of this story is finally revealed in chapter 21.

WARNING:  SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD.

The plot of this book focuses on two mysteries:  a weakly-interacting elementary particle known as “Dust” and the kidnapping of children.  Dust starts accumulating in children around puberty, a time when their dæmons loose the ability to change shape.  The Church has decided that Dust is evidence of (the purely Christian concept of) original sin.  Keep in mind, class, that original sin is sinfulness inherited from ’Adham (Adam) and Ḥawwah (Eve) due to their violating the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; since it is something people are supposed to be born with, something acquired at puberty is probably not whatever physical manifestation it has.

To get around this obvious problem, Pullman rewrites his world’s version of Genesis 3:2-7 to give ’Adham and Ḥawwah dæmons which change shape.  The Snake promises that if they (’Adham and Ḥawwah) eat the forbidden fruit, their dæmons will take on their true forms.  Only when they eat of the fruit do their dæmons take on fixed forms and do they realize they are different from the rest of the animal kingdom, which do not have dæmons.  This still does nothing to get around the mismatch between Dust acquisition and original sin.  Pullman also introduces novel interpretations of a phrase from Genesis 3:19, “for you are dirt and to dirt you will return”:  “thou shalt be subject to dust”—hence the name of the particle—and that somehow this phrase is supposed to indicate that YHWH (God)’s nature is somehow to be partly sinful.  Neither of these new interpretations is tenable in the original Hebrew—and I will (figuratively, not literally) grind into the dirt the face of anyone ignorant enough to dare claim otherwise.  Pullman is simply jamming Scripture into a vague semblance of a useful form in order to be able to make the Church rationalize doing something awful.

As I have mentioned previously, the point of kidnapping children is to perform on them intercission, the separation of body and dæmon/soul.  Not one, but two reasons for intercission are given.  The first, which villain #1, Mrs. Coulter, is supposed to intend, is to keep children from being affected by Dust and thus save them from original sin.  No reason whatsoever is given to believe this should work, and nothing is reported on whether it works.  In fact, it makes no sense to have severed children wander around away from the facility if this is really what they want to do; such children should be retained in order to measure whether they collect Dust or not.  The other reason, which the heroine Lyra deduces that villain #2, Lord Asriel, intends, is to release the energy of the bond holding body and dæmon together.  Lord Asriel actually does this, using the energy to power a contraption to enable traveling to another world.

In summary:  I am not impressed.  Rather than show us the truth or beauty of atheism (whatever that may be), Pullman has invented a Christian world embodying what he hates about Christianity.  He hates the Roman Catholic Church.  He hates John Calvin.  He hates the past abuses of the Church.  But Pullman has gone farther than that.  He has rewritten and reinterpreted Scripture, and he has invented new crimes for the Church to perform and lame rationalizations for those crimes.  In effect, he is preaching against a Church which has never existed.  This is disappointingly in line with the other works of the militant atheism movement which I have read, the only improvement being that his writing is readable.  If he is trying to build a case against Christianity or religion in general, the fabrications invalidate it.  If he is trying to build a case for atheism, he has made no case at all.

Next up:  Book 2:  The Subtle Knife.  I hope it does not prove as big a disappointment.

Topic 2:  By now you probably should have heard of claims of the Mayan calendar running out or a rogue planet swinging by Earth in 2012, causing horrific disaster.  In response to this, I feel it is appropriate to note some materials debunking such claims:  “Apocalypse 2012? The Truth About the End of the World” and “Doomsday 2012, the Planet Nibiru, and Cosmophobia”.  I also dug up a relevant list:  “The millennium and end-of-the-world predictions”.  Due note that the end of the World has been predicted numerous times, and all times which have passed so far has proven wrong.  Given the shaky evidence on which the 2012 claims are based (to put it politely), there is no reason to believe things will be any different this time.

Peace.

Aaron

Parashath Noaḥ and The Golden Compass

Greetings.

Jewish date:  5 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Noaḥ).

Topic 1:  In the interest of staying topical, I would like to note that I have done two reviews relevant to this week’s parashah:  one for Evan Almighty and another for the horrifically bad made-for-television movie Noah’s Ark.

Topic 2:  Chapters 14 and 15 of The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman.  In these plot-intensive chapters, the heroine Lyra Belacqua and her dæmon Pantalaimon reach the facility where the General Oblation Board is holding the missing children.  The children are kept in fairly comfortable conditions and regularly measured for a much mentioned microscopic particle known as “Dust” which is somehow connected with other worlds.  Lyra and Pantalaimon get to play heroes by rescuing a number of dæmons which have been separated from their children for purposes which still have to be explained, and they plan on breaking the captive children and their dæmons from the facility.  Severed dæmons could be a reflection of the concept of ghosts.  What any of the rest of this has to do with religion as conceived or practiced by real people is still up in the air.

Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Esotericism in Genesis

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 Tishri 5770 (Parashath Bere’shith).

Today’s holidays:  Choti Diwali – Narak Chaturdashi (day 2 of Diwali; Hinduism), Feast of Ida Craddock (Thelema).

Worthy cause of the day:  “MoveOn.org Political Action: Harry Reid: Include the Public Option” and “Take Action: Wild Lands Need You! Help Pass A Strong Climate Bill”.

Today’s topic:  This week’s parashah (section of the Torah read by Jews in synagogue), Bere’shith (Genesis 1:1-6:8), deals with the contentious subject of the origins of the Universe and humanity.  I have decided to take this opportunity to publish some material on this subject which has until now been sitting around on my hard drive doing nothing.

Contrary to the impression left by the people who make the most noise, belief in evolution is perfectly orthodox in Judaism and is approved by the Rabbinical Council of America (Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design 2005).

My personal take on the question:  There is no doubt that the opening chapters of Genesis have often been interpreted close to their literal meaning; this should be obvious to anyone who opens up Miqra’oth Gedoloth, the popular collection of commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.  However, there is reason to believe this is not the only legitimate way to interpret this material.  It is attested that in the times of Tanna’im and the ’Amora’im (≈ 40 BCE-450 CE), there were two branches of Pharisaic Jewish esoteric knowledge, Ma‘aseh Bere’shith (“the work of creation”) and Ma‘aseh Merkavah (“the work of the Chariot”) (Scholem 1987) which were only to be taught to a select few (Talmudh Bavli, Ḥaghighah 11b-12a; Talmudh Bavli Ḥaghighah 13a; Talmudh Bavli, Meghillah 25a-25b; Mishneh Torah, Sefer hamMadda‘, Hilkhoth Yesodhe hatTorah 4:17-18).  Due to insufficient transmission, this knowledge has been lost (Maimonides and Friedländer 1903, introduction to section 3).  Since we know we have this loss, it is irrational to assume that any specific interpretation of the pre-Abrahamic material in Genesis (Genesis 1:1-11:9) is the One True Interpretation (as if in Judaism we normally spoke in terms of One True Interpretations).  Furthermore, the fact that Ma‘aseh Bere’shith was considered inappropriate for all but a select few suggests something far removed from the literal meaning of the text, something difficult to understand and liable to misinterpretation.

For comparison, note the Song of Songs, which is traditionally regarded as esoteric and never to be taken a literal love song.

Physics is an aspect of the Divine Will.  Evolution, which is an effect of physics, is thus a working of the Divine Will.  Who are we to insist to YHWH how the Universe and everything in it was created?  Note that nothing in the Hebrew Bible conditions Divine love or mercy (or hatred or anger) or the commandments on our ancestry.  This is despite humanity’s humble origins even according to the literal meaning of the text:  dirt (Genesis 2:7).  Spiritual giants have often had humble beginnings.  It is not our origin which makes us important; it is who we are now and what we may become.

Bibliography:

Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design. Rabbinical Council of America, 2005-12-27 2005 [cited 2009-02-09. Available from http://www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=100635.

Maimonides, Moses, and Michael Friedländer. The guide for the perplexed (2d). G. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1903 [cited. Available from http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/index.htm.

Scholem, Gershom. 1987. Kabbalah. New York: Dorset Press. Original edition, Jerusalem:  Keter Publishing House Ltd., 1974.

Aaron