The Torah is the Old Testament. The Talmud is a long, multi-volume series of rabbinic commentaries and applications of the Torah, as well as general discussions of philosophy, ethics, etc. Think of it as THE Jewish blog, with lots of manual links and comments spaced over a couple thousand years, plus unnoted commentary and arguments by all who study it. "The Essence of Judaism: On Teaching Judaism to Seventh Graders" is an entertaining explanation of how this process goes. Pirkei Avot (loosely, "The Wisdom of the Fathers") is the most frequently read and translated Talmud volume, since it deals only with general morals, ethics, and philosophy, and spends little to no time on halacha (Jewish law). That reach gives it an arguable place among the Great Books of civilization.
As a surprising demonstration of that reach, it turns out that the Talmud (I strongly suspect it's mostly Pirkei Avot) enjoys near-universal distribution in South Korea, of all places:
"Almost every house in South Korea has a translated Talmud. But unlike Israel, even Korean mothers study it and read from it to their young children. Yes, in a country of almost 49 million people, many of whom believe in Buddhism and Christianity, there are more people who read the Talmud - or at least have a copy of it at home - than in the Jewish state."
Turns out there's a reason for this...
I was amazed. A NY Times guest op-ed that actually acknowledged the need for attitude adjustments on the part of militant atheists like Richard Dawkins, as well as a dishonest creationism that even if true at its core, is not and never can be science (negative hypothesis, anyone?). The reconciliation of religion and science is important on many levels, not least of which is the fact that religious morality and the ethic of science form the twin pillars upon which our civilization rest. I've discussed this before.
Robert Wright of the New America Foundation:
"The "war" between science and religion is notable for the amount of civil disobedience on both sides. Most scientists and most religious believers refuse to be drafted into the fight. Whether out of a live-and-let-live philosophy, or a belief that religion and science are actually compatible, or a heartfelt indifference to the question, they're choosing to sit this one out. Still, the war continues, and it's not just a sideshow. There are intensely motivated and vocal people on both sides making serious and conflicting claims.... William James said that religious belief is "the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." Science has its own version of the unseen order, the laws of nature. In principle, the two kinds of order can themselves be put into harmony - and in that adjustment, too, may lie a supreme good."
In one way, inspiring models are as real as anything can be, in another way they're totally lame and never stand up to examination.
To illustrate that, here is a mouse, a perfectly ordinary mouse, that quite likely was killed as mere vermin after his or her victory, or was fed repeatedly to snakes till one got him.
But to the extent that the harsh and circumscribed life of a tiny creature marked for death can be heroic, this mouse was as heroic as possible. (link)
PJ O'Rourke is diagnosed with cancer, and pens an article about freedom, death, and G-d's creation: "Give me liberty, and give me death." Key graf:
"Thus, the next time I glimpse death ... well, I'm not going over and introducing myself. I'm not giving the grim reaper fist daps. But I'll remind myself to try, at least, to thank God for death. And then I'll thank God, with all my heart, for whiskey."
There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. [From, "The Question of Global Warming."]Dyson is not the first to point out that environmentalism has morphed into an actual religion in its own right. In Global Cooling Ain't so Hot, Either, I pointed out:
Michael Crichton and J.R. Dunn have written highly insightful essays about how environmentalism is a religion in its own right. See “Environmentalism as Religion” by Crichton and Dunn’s piece, “A Necessary Apocalypse,” in which he shows how gobal-warming environmentalism is not merely a religion, it is an apocalyptic religion. Its deity is Mother Earth (Gaia), for whom human beings are mortal enemies. NBC’s Matt Lauer inadvertantly gave away Gaiaism’s central article of faith thus:There is, I think, a close correspondence between the main articles of religion of Judaism-Christianity and those of contemporary environmentalism, so much so that I would say enviromentalism's religious template is culturally derived from Christianity and its parent, Judaism. However, enviromentalism offers neither paradise nor "life more abundant." But there is more than mere religiousity at work in environmentalism. H.L. Mencken observed, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." And so it is, I think, with environmentalism today.Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives … The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home.My second son was required to take ecology his junior year in high school; he related to me that the curriculum basically said there was nothing wrong with earth that the disappearance of humanity wouldn’t cure.
Read the rest at Sense of Events.
This doesn't happen every day: John Derbyshire writes a column that most of Winds' readership will agree with, as he covers Ben Stein's creationist movie Expelled: NO Intelligence Allowed. Now, over to Derb:
"The misrepresentations in Expelled are far too numerous for me to list here, and the task is unnecessary since others have done it. The aforementioned Expelled Exposed website is a great resource. Biologist P. Z. Myers, in a less organized way, has been pointing up the errors and deceptions in Expelled since the wretched thing hove into view. (Here he links to a whole stack of reviews, including a couple of positives.) Other science-literate bloggers have been weighing in, often very angrily. One of my favorite comments came from "Pixy Misa" (Andrew Mazels) who correctly called Ben Stein's accusing Darwin of responsibility for the Holocaust "a blood libel on science."
I would actually go further than that, to something like “a blood libel on Western Civilization."
I join Derb as someone who's pretty disappointed in Ben Stein, and Derb's points elsewhere in the article about the inherent dishonesty of the creationist enterprise reflect my biggest objection as well.
A group of leading atheists is puzzled by the continued existence and vitality of religion.What an interesting thing for atheists to ponder. In the modern day one either has to accept some kind of deistic understanding of the origin of the universe or an evolutionary understanding that excludes any sort of deity from contributing to the origin of the universe and all contained therein. I am not saying that one must either be religious or non-religious, for the dichotomy is true even for adherents of non-deistic or nature religions. Either deity (or deities) had a hand in existence itself, or it/they did not.
So why would a deity-denying atheist be puzzled that religion is thriving? If evolution as they describe it is true, then religion is itself a product thereof. Not only that, but Judaism is an evolutionary product, so is Christianity, so is Islam, so is Buddhism, so is Shamanisn, so is ... well, you get the idea.
And so is the theory of evolution itself. And astrology. And tarot-card reading. And medical science. And faith healing. And everything else. So why do materialists single out religion as a particularly puzzling thing to exist? Why religion and not, say, athletics or stamp collecting or consumption of alcohol?
Read the rest at DonaldSensing.com.
See Islamic Council of Victoria director Waleed Aly:
"Here, the vociferous protests came from people who, quite clearly, have not bothered to read Benedict's speech. Worse, some (like al-Hilali and Ameer Ali) themselves regularly complain of being quoted incorrectly and out of context. Had such critics done their homework, they would have noted Benedict's description of Manuel II's "startling brusqueness". Manuel's point was that violent doctrine could not come from God because missionary violence is contrary to rationality. Benedict's point was a subtle one: that Manuel draws a positive link between religious truth and reason. This was the central theme of the Pope's address. He was silent on Manuel's attitude to Islam because it was beside the point he was making."
The rest is also worth reading, and I especially liked his use of the phrase "overblown response of surreal imbecility"; surely a keeper for future situations of all kinds. But his first 2 paragraphs nailed it, echoing Rev. Sensing's point yesterday before making his own:
Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club has posted the entire text of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Commencement speech, in which the then-exiled Russian warned the Western world that its time might be up soon if it didn't get religion.
That's a flip summary of Solzhenitzyn's message--his speech is actually much more than that. It's an indictment of many of the flaws of Western society, and when I read it just now I could only imagine how the students, faculty, and guests at that occasion almost thirty years ago received his stern and gloomy Jeremaid.
Solzhenitzyn is a strange figure, a man of a complexity that belies facile description. His speech must have been shockingly strange at the time. Today it is shocking in another way, because the first two-thirds of it--a critique of the flaws of Western society--seems shockingly familiar.
That makes him somewhat prescient; he's both a Jeremiah and a Cassandra, although I don't necessarily agree with his suggested solution to the problem because, paradoxically and ironically, Solzhenitzyn's remedy--a return to religion--gives at least the appearance of resembling the remedy of the Islamicist fundamentalist jihadis.
It has failed in every venue that implemented it, usually disastrously, and often in rivers and oceans of blood and skulls. Poverty and even starvation follow in its wake. We're talking about an atrocity on the level of the Bee Gees' version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Lee Harris looks at the question, and it's an interesting look that taps into socialism as a religion that justifies itself by faith alone, the role and importance of myth in human life, and the challenge facing capitalism and liberty in response.
UPDATE: On a related note, see also "Activism's Onanist Fantasy Ideology," which Harris' essay illuminates in a new light.
There are many kinds of stories in religion, but two of the most significant are things we'll call Stories of Foundation and Stories of Definition. For the Jews, Abraham's rejection of idols and discovery of the One G-d is the major story of foundation, and Moses on Mount Sinai the major story of definition. Christians place Jesus in both roles, albeit at different times in his life. The crucifixion is their major story of definition, hence The Passion of the Christ.
The story of the Sri Guru Gobind Singh Sahib Ji at Anandpur, when he inducted the first Khalsas and then added an unusual very beneficial twist, stands among the most remarkable acts of definition in human history, defining both a religion and a people. It's also one of the most remarkable acts of leadership. Guru Gobind Rai was the 10th of the great Sikh Gurus, and as the story goes:
