A god no one believes in

Greetings.

Jewish date:  19 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Wayyera’).

Today’s holiday:  Friday of the Thirty-First Week of Ordinary Time.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Take Action: Keep up the heat | Save Darfur”, “We Need Generic Drugs: Ask these Senators to Fight « Public Option Please”, “AARP - Health Action Now!:  Tell the House: Pass the health reform bill!”, “We deserve an up-or-down vote!”, “Joe Lieberman must go.”, and “Take Action: Ask the Obama Administration to save Coal River Mountain”.

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Topic 1:  Chapters 1 and 2 of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman.  I have heard it claimed that an atheist once visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe and told him, “I don’t believe in God.”  The Lubavitcher Rebbe replied, “The God you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in Him either.”  This story may well be apocryphal, but it reflects Pullman’s depiction of religion both in general and the specifics.  Will Parry, searching for Lyra Silvertongue, meets two angels, Balthamos and later Baruch.  From them he learns about the Authority/God.  Angels, in His Dark Materials, are consciousness itself.  They came into being when matter first tried to understand itself.  The Authority, rather than being a creator, is the first angel that ever existed, and he has made himself out to be a true god and imposes his will on everything else.  This, frankly, is unlike the god of any real religion known to me.  The nearest I know of would be the Demiurge of Gnosticism, an evil being who falsely claims to be the true god.  However, the Demiurge, unlike the Authority, is the creator of the material world, and above and beyond him there is a genuine, immortal, ultimate deity.  As far as I can tell, the Authority is a kind of god no one believes in.  This is yet another failure of Pullman to depict religion realistically in a long list of such failures, and I have no hope that things will get any better in this series.

Topic 2:  There is a good chance I am going to get complained to if I do not mention the Fort Hood incident yesterday, even though I do not want to.  I burned out long ago on the violence committed all over this planet in the name of Islam, and I do not expect such violence to end anytime soon.  Islamic violence started after Muḥammad was forced out of Mecca.  He had had little success in convincing anyone he was a prophet (due to complete lack of evidence) or converting people to his new religion.  His message changed when he reached Medina from one of peace and harmony to one of intolerance and conquest.  It was at this point that Islam really took off, with people converting because they did not want to get beaten up or killed by Muḥammad and his thugs.  Muḥammad conquered much of the Arabian Peninsula in his lifetime, and after his death Muslims soon went on to conquer a swath of land stretching all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, converting many and using violence and terror to subdue the rest.  Subject peoples (dhimmis) had to live under harsh restrictions.  Though theoretically protected if they followed the rules Muslims set for them, in practice even an unfounded accusation of misbehavior could be enough to give Muslims an excuse to commit acts of violence against or murder them.  To this day, Muslims regularly use violence against those who do not agree with them.  Muḥammad set the precedent, and Muslims have to deal with it one way or another.  Last I heard it was not clear why the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, Major Nidal M. Hasan—a Muslim, opened fire and killed and wounded on his fellow soldiers, but he reportedly was horrified by the idea of having to go to Iraq and was feeling a lot of stress because of it.  Given the precent and the fact that he was extremely upset, for all I can tell he may have simply decided that killing non-Muslims was as an effective and religiously correct way of dealing with his problem as any other.

Articles on the incident:  “Rampage kills 12, wounds 31” and “Troubling portrait emerges of Fort Hood suspect”.

Peace and Shabbath shalom.

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

V is for “vile”

Greetings.

Jewish date:  17 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Wayyera’).

Worthy cause of the day:

Topic 1:  Chapter 14 of The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman.  We are told that the Specters, barely visible creatures which haunt the world in which Lyra Silvertongue and Will Parry met and attack adults, eat Dust.  I have no clue why Pullman put such things in his trilogy, expect maybe as an obstacle to be overcome.  Furthermore, the shaman John Parry/Dr. Grumman, makes use of his powers to create a storm and destroy enemy zeppelins.  This should not be a surprise, since in this trilogy witches also have real powers.  Also like witches, John Parry’s dæmon can go much further away from him than a normal human’s can.

Topic 2:  Last night I watched the pilot episode of  V (new series)—I enjoy science-fiction, including tearing it to shreds when it stinks—and the title of this post should give you a good idea what I think of what I saw.  It came off more as the Cliff notes to a whole season rather than a pilot.  Rather than dealing with how humanity reacts to first contact with an extraterrestrial race at a slow pace, the alien ships arrived, the aliens’ leader Anna introduced herself and her people (the Visitors), promising friendship and advanced technology in exchange for water and some minerals, and then suddenly the plot skips three weeks for no apparent reason and all suspension of disbelief is shredded by psychologically unrealistic writing as too many revelations happen too fast.

What I did not expect was for this travesty to have theological and epistemological aspects, which start with 29 cities on Earth shaking due to approaching Visitor spaceships (shaking added for drama, not physical plausibility).  In a (presumably Roman Catholic) church, a priest grabs some ritual items and runs out of the way of a falling sculpture of Jesus on the Cross.  This is arguably symbolic of the crisis of faith which this priest has three weeks later; he does not understand how to harmonize the existence of the Visitors with Christianity.  Why he feels this and why a crisisless colleague disagrees are never explained.  And it should be noted that in real life the crisis should not occur at all; the Vatican sees no problem with the existence of extraterrestrials, though it is not clear on whether they necessarily suffer from original sin.  Clearly the writers did not do their homework on this issue.  Furthermore, the church is packed with worshippers right after the three week gap.  How the arrival of the Visitors inspired so many people to turn to the Church is not explained.

Bad writing extends to beyond religion.  Humans come off as either pro-Visitor or anti-Visitor, with little in the way of exceptions.  The only thing allegedly good the Visitors bring are some “miraculous” cures and “hope”.  The bad things which the Visitors do are in secret, such as telling a reporter not to say anything to make the Visitors look bad when interviewing Anna or attacking people at a resistance meeting.  Most humans in either faction have little to say about why they believe what they do.  Even outright bad reasons would be better than this.

In short, this pilot dramatically, theologically, and epistemologically sucks.  The writing is so bad that even the dreadful Matrix Trilogy looks like poetry by comparison.

Peace, and please join me in praying that the network executives come to their senses and cancel V.

Aaron

Judgement without respect for facts and overpriced education

Greetings.

Jewish date:  16 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Wayyera’).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Tell Obama: No pesticide lobbyist nominees” and “Demand the Public Option! - The Petition Site”.

Topic 1:  Chapter 13 of The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman.  A lot of the “good” characters have formed a war council and are sharing information.  Lord Asriel’s extensive preparations for his war against the Authority (God) are related.  There is also complaining by the witches about the horrible things done by the Church/Magisterium in the name of the Authority, followed by an amazing inference:  that the Authority is Himself a horrible being.  This is not justified.  It is true that in real life that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches have done some truly horrible things, such as the Spanish Inquisition.  However, it would be unjustified to assume that everything the Churches have done is actually justified by Christianity.  For Christians, the model for behavior is Jesus of Nazareth as depicted in the Gospels.  For all Jesus’s bluster about how everyone who did not follow him were going to pay for it, Jesus was not an advocate of violence or cruelty.  He advocated extreme pacifism, this whole business of turning the other cheek, and he lived it.  He could have easily escaped being crucified, but instead he practically walked into the Romans’ hands and let them torture and kill him.  Pinning the sins of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches on Jesus would make no sense whatsoever.  Likewise, pinning the sins of the Magisterium on the Authority, without even bothering to ask what the Authority’s moral views are, is illogical and unjustified.

Topic 2:  “Terror Arrests and the 'Misunderstood' Religion”.  This article complains about efforts to whitewash Islam and dissociate it from everything and anything bad, such as terrorism.  The mistake is akin to that in the previous topic:  just as it makes no sense to judge God based on crimes he never espoused, it makes no sense to judge Muslims by a version of Islam that does not exist.  The difference between the two is that it is atheists who are trying to create the illusion of Divine criminality where it does not exist, while it is Muslims trying to create the illusion of a version of Islam which does not exist.

Topic 3:  “Government Funding is the only Future for Jewish Day Schools”.  On a different note from the previous two topics:  Rav Boteach notes the economically perilous state of Jewish education in the USA today.  It is so expensive that even Rav Boteach, a public figure with many bestselling books and a TV show, someone who presumably is raking in money, is barely paying for it for his children.  If he finds it hard, how much more so the less financially gifted!  Even if one does not accept his argument that the government should pay for the secular part of education at private schools, he notes that (at least in New Jersey, where he lives) educating students in public schools costs more than in private school.  As such, giving parents the option to send their children to a private school could save the state money.

Peace.

Aaron

Is Philip Pullman a LaVeyan Satanist?

Greetings.

Jewish date:  15 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Wayyera’).

Today’s holidays:  Yerov‘am ben Nevaṭ Day, All Souls Day (Western Christianity), the Days of the Dead (Hispanic Roman Catholicism).

Topic 1:  Today is a holiday instituted by Yerov‘am ben Nevaṭ, the first king of the ten northern tribes after the split of Israel away from Judah. His story is told in 1 Kings 11:26-14:20, with today’s holiday mentioned in 1 Kings 12:25-33, where he set up two golden calves for people to worship, thereby syncretizing Judaism with Canaanite paganism.  Considering that YHWH shows nothing but disgust for Canaanite paganism in the Hebrew Bible, this is a monstrously illogical and stupid thing to do on Yerov‘am’s part.  Yerov‘am is not remembered fondly.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  Chapters 10-12 of The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman.  Dr. Mary Malone, physicist and former nun, has followed Lyra’s suggestion and rigged her device which detects dark matter/Dust to be able to communicate with it.  The results are surprising.  Dark matter/Dust is actually rebellious angels (as in the Fall of Satan) who intervened in human evolution for the sake of vengeance.  And they want Mary to help them by finding Lyra and Will and “play the Serpent”.  Consider also that Dust also makes the alethiometer work, Lyra and by extension Will are also working for rebel angels.  All the good characters in play (including witches and the shaman John Parry) are lining up on the side against God, and all the evil characters are lining up on the side for God.  The major exception to this rule seems to be Lord Asriel, who does not seem to be particularly good, but he has not allied himself with the Church/Magisterium either.  For a trilogy which is supposed to be atheistic, there is an anomalously large amount of religion-related stuff going on.  Considering the symbolism, perhaps it is better to treat His Dark Materials as being not as atheistic but rather in the spirit of LaVeyan Satanism.  LaVeyan Satanism is a form of Christianity-hating atheism which in its basic literature, e.g., The Satanic Bible, revels in speaking as if Satan and other supernatural beings associated with evil really exist and are triumphant over God.  Intuition suggests that Pullman may be working along these lines in fiction.  We will see whether the rest of the trilogy is consistent with this hypothesis…


Topic 3:  “Internet believers: Pastors open online churches”.  Nothing wrong here.  I just think this is an interesting approach.  One of the things Christians are supposed to do is spread the Gospel, and it makes plenty of sense for pastors to try all sorts of approaches.


Peace.

Aaron

Militant atheist clichés, redefinition, and Israel in 1595

Greetings.

Jewish date:  14 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Wayyera’).

Today’s holidays:  The Days of the Dead (Hispanic Roman Catholicism), All Saints’ Day (Western Christianity). Feast of All Saints of the True Church (Thelema).

Worthy causes of the day:  “ACT for America:    We Call for a Formal Investigation
of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)”, “Release the Torture Memo Report”, “Help the Poor Deal with the Effects of Climate Change”, and “Take Action: Help permanently protect Americas Wildest Grassland”.

Topic 1:  Barry has noted that now, right after Halloween, would be a good time to go out and buy costumes for Purim.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  Chapters 5 through 9 of The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman.  A lot of this material is dedicated to progressing the plot (centered around a villain who has escaped from Lyra’s world) and the mechanics of inter-universe travel using a special knife (the “subtle knife” of the title of this book) which can cut holes between worlds.  Also showing up are:


A) Shamans among the Eskimos, more in mention that actually showing on-screen.  Their initiation requires going through a door into the “spirit world”.  Some never come back.


B) The Church in Lyra’s world keeping a close watch on scientific research, even censoring the results.  (Figures in a book written by a militant atheist.)


C) Horrible, barely visible monsters known as Specters which only attack adults.  They are viewed by some as Divine punishment for some sin.  (Also figures in a book written by a militant atheist; they like painting deities as mean and vengeful.)


D) Angels, otherwise known as bene elim (a genuine Hebrew term for angels) and Watchers.  They are seen in the form of winged, naked humans, largely due to the expectations of the witch who sees them, and they are working with Lord Asriel.  Lord Asriel, you will remember, is working towards killing God.  Reference is made to a rebellion of angels against God (think the fall of Satan) and angels breeding with humans.  The angels also have their own way to travel between worlds.  I am not clear what Pullman is planning with the angels, but intuition suggests a perverse version of Christian notions of angels.


E) The notion that Lyra/Pantalaimon and Will have destinies.


I am still not impressed with Pullman’s work, but after Pullman’s decision to have Lord Asriel working to kill God, there is little he can hope to do to redeem himself anyway.


Topic 3:  “The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception”.  This article slams the misuse of the term “Palestinian”, noting how the term has actually been used historically.  Essentially the modern use of the term is a fabrication used to help fight the Israeli-Arab War.  Previously the term was geographical and when referring to humans only referred to Jews.  It was not applied to Muslims/Arabs until 1967.  Related to this is the article “Jews dominated the Holy Land in 1695”, which discusses a travelogue by Adriaan Reland, who visited Israel in 1695 and found a lot of Jews and extremely few Muslims/Arabs.


Peace, and start planning for Purim.

Aaron

Dust, double standards, and good deeds

Greetings.

Jewish date:  12 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Lekh-Lekha).

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

Topic 1:  Chapters 3 and 4 of The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman.  The nature of Dust is explored by having the alethiometer lead Lyra to a physicist.  It is revealed that Dust is dark matter.  Dust/dark matter is conscious, and it is attracted to consciousness and the products of conscious thought, e.g., tools and other artifacts.  Dust/dark matter is not only responsible for the working of the alethiometer, but the Yì Jīng (I Ching) as well.  These claims suffer from two obvious problems:  1) Humans are conscious well before puberty.  Therefore one should expect that children well before puberty ought to be attracting Dust.  2) The world this conversation takes place in is supposed to be ours.  However, the Yì Jīng does not work in our world.  I am not impressed.

Topic 2:  Another crop of articles on the Israeli-Arab War:  “Dare to dream of a rebuilt Temple”, “CNN Waters Down the Israeli Response” and “Goldstone Report in the Clouds”.  Note the use of double standards to attack Jews and Israel and defend Muslims and the so-called “Palestinians”.

Topic 3:  “Clean Smell Promotes Good Deeds”.  I cannot make this up.

Shabbath shalom.

Aaron