Seduced by the Dark Side?

Someone who has commented on some of my blogs also posted a note on Facebook lamenting that I have been seduced by the "dark side". This is because I posted information about the Citizen's Continental Congress, which is to be a peaceful and legal response to the encroachments on the Constitution and upon our natural rights to life, liberty and property.



Part of the problem is that I posted a slide show (also posted below). It is what it is, but it not the slide show that I thought it was. That one was the one that Bob Shulz showed on his 50-State tour last winter and spring, a slide show that educated attendees about the 14 years of petitioning for Redress of Grievances that have yielded no response. (As I wrote in an earlier post about this, a petition for redress requires a response, but it does not dictate the terms of the response. The petitioner may not agree with a response, but if he in fact receives one, then the petition has been addressed).



In any case, I thought this new slide show was a souped-up version of Bob's slide show, but it was not. And I did post it without previewing it, something that a responsible blogger should never, ever do. After viewing the slide-show, I wished I had viewed it first. It contains some of the slides from Bob's original power point, but also has a good many others than present some of the subject matter of petitions as unsupported claims but does not explain the petition process and purpose. This is a good object lesson about checking every source, no matter how well known. (I know Bob and he has posted it at the Continental Congress website, but I do not know the Idaho coordinators that put this particular version together).



I am not going to spend a lot of time on all of the claims, but I do want to highlight two of them.

One was that we are living in a Communist country. I do not agree with that. I do believe that President Obama is Marxian in his philosophy, and that he subscribes to something called black liberation theology, which like other forms of liberation theology, draws heavily on Marxist ideology. However, what I see our Republic being transformed into is not communism; rather it looks to me like a corporatist statism, which I would call fascism (with a small 'f' to distinguish it from Mussolini's fascism). This is not something new, for the Republic has been morphing into statism for more than 100 years, how ever the pace picked up during the Bush II administration, and that pace has increased to an all out run since September of past year.

The other issue I want to briefly comment on is the President Obama birth certificate issue. Obama has refused to allow the publication of his original Hawaiian birth certificate, relying instead on an affidavit. This persistent refusal has fueled an internet meme based upon rumors started by some of his Kenyan family members combined with some true and some false statements about how Hawaii handles birth certificates. Currently, what we are given from the administration are statements from those who claim to have seen the original birth certificate. This is hearsay which will not erase reasonable doubt. There are also those who claim that even if Obama was born in Hawaii, he would not be a natural born citizen of the United States. This second claim is certainly false. The first claim is more problematic because reasonable doubt has been planted in the minds of enough people. For example, although I am inclined to believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, I cannot say that I know that for certain. President Obama could and probably should release the original vault birth certificate as this would erase any reasonable doubt in the minds of most citizens.

Of course, there will always be those who will not accept any response except the one that confirms their theories. That's life, as Frank Sinatra would say. However, this does not mean that everyone who is concerned about the issue is a "conspiracy theorist." On the contrary, if the evidence were to show that Obama was not born in the United States, then we would have a serious constitutional crisis on our hands. This is why We the People Foundation brought the matter to the Supreme Court. The foundation, on behalf of the citizens, wanted the question definitively answered. Like all petitions for redress, the people require an answer to their concern. It would best be answered by disclosure of the birth certificate. This is not an unreasonable request. I have had to show my copy of my birth certificate, the one with the Bureau County Clerk's seal on it, in order to enter school, get a driver's license, get a passport, and get married. It is not unreasonable for the president of the United States to show a birth certificate to demonstrate that he is constitutionally fit to serve.


What is even more problematic about this commenter's accusation that I have gone over to the "dark side" is that it betrays a certain belief about the nature of any political controversy. It is the belief that those who do not support his "side" are not just factually but morally wrong. This is the Vision of the Annointed that progressives use persistently to avoid arguments based on fact and reason, in order to smear their opponents as not only wrong, but as stupid, "loony" and unenlightened, and therefore evil. There can be no rational argument between those who hold the Vision of the Annointed and those who are deemed by them to hold the Vision of the Benighted. The reason for this is that the Annointed make no argument, but use innuendo and insinuation against their enemies in place of an argument. This smear tactic is nothing more than the logical fallacy of the Ad Hominem attack, but it is made particularly vicious by the use of catch phrases such as "conspiracy theory" and "tin-foil hat crazy" in order to shut down any discussion about the issue at hand. What is it about the program of the annointed, one must wonder, that would make them so anxious to avoid any reasonable discussion?

From my perspective, therefore, it is irrational to attempt to respond directly to smears such as this. Rather, I have decided to begin to address the ethical basis for my libertarian stance against collectivism and statism. I will do this in a series of forthcoming posts, addressing the ethics of individual rights, and the economic system that makes liberty possible, capitalism.

Have I gone over to the "dark side?" I would note that in the Star Wars series, Luke Skywalker and the Jedi fought on the side of freedom against a statist empire. I would note that it is much "easier" to believe what those in power want you to believe so that they can control you, than it is to take a stand for the Rule of Law and for Liberty.

I would say that on the contrary, my journey has been one of coming into the light of life. I am using the force that is inherent in every person, the knowledge that human life on this earth is good, and that a person must work and choose the good in order to live it.

Cool Fronts, Monsoon Clouds and Fog

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

The days are still long and warm, but the sun is rising a little later in the mornings, and the alarm clock is going off during civil twilight, whereas a month ago the sun was already peaking over the horizon. These past few days, there has been a cool breeze morning and evening, jacket weather. The Monsoon has been good to us, bringing rain, clouds and fog to water the late summer blooms.

A heavy cloud lies low over Cedar Crest, and a thinner fog spreads over the mountain valley, and the meadow.










Clouds over the Sandias, but the sun is shining in the Jemez, on the horizon, about 80 miles away.








A bright window in the rain clouds over Teypana. Later that morning we got quite a downpour, all hail the mighty Monsoon!














The fog settles in, cool and wet, over the meadow one morning on our walk at dawn.

On another morning this week, the fog drifted in, curtains of cloud moving across the meadow, made bright by the rising sun.

We do so live in G-d's Country!

Citizen's Continental Congress 2009

The Citizen's Continental Congress movement is underway:

For two weeks in November, delegates representing The People of the fifty states will join together in the tradition of the Founding Fathers and their Continental Congress of 1774. Continental Congress 2009 will convene as a national assembly of We The People and attest to the increasing abuses of our Governing Documents. Together, we will decide what peaceful, legal steps can be taken to bring about compliance with our Freedom documents.
More Information

If you are a patriot, you will want to get involved. I signed up to support the Continental Congress as Bernalillo County coordinator, and I am working to get polling locations and volunteers to man then on the day we elect our representatives. Our New Mexico coordinator, Dave Batcheller, is working to get nominees who are not elected officials but who are good representatives of the people of New Mexico to attend.

Election Day for Delegates is October 10! Go to We the People to help make this historic event happen!


CC2009 is Your Civic Duty

Live Free or Die!

Challenging Assumptions: Am I an Altruist?

This is the fourth post of my dialogue with C. August of Titanic Deck Chairs. In the last post, I discussed his question of whether I am an atheist. My answer in Challenging Assumptions: Am I an Atheist is that I do not identify myself as such, but I know that normative Christians would likely consider my naturalistic concept of G-d atheistic. the first and second posts can be followed by clicking the links.

In the same comment, C. August asks:

"Your definition of "what is the good?" is, as you know, very close to the Objectivist formulation. You said:This, then, is how I determine what is good. That which promotes life and those means by which a person can protect, preserve and enhance his or her life.

To put it bluntly, do you reject the self-sacrifice of altruism? Much like the Founders held a self-interested view implicitly, yet explicitly advocated Christian altruism, it is quite common for people to have mixed premises here. Or is your ethical view as consistently rationally selfish as what your statements seem to suggest?"

This is an interesting question indeed, because of the clear differences between Christian theology, which requires the willing human sacrifice of Jesus as expiation for the sins of humanity, and Judaism which derived from the Israelite religion which had long before rejected human sacrifice, and enshrined it in the story of Abraham and his son Isaac. Some Midrashim suggest that Abraham attempted the sacrifice because the people of the land were sacrificing their first born sons to the fire god, Malach, and Abraham wanted to follow suit. Their explanation is backed up by the fact that Abraham's G-d had to send a messenger to stop Abraham just before he murdered his son. Other Midrashim posit that it was Sarah who put a stop to the murderous deed. All the Midrash fix this story as the point where the Israelites stopped practicing the abomination of human sacrifice. The point is that by the time of the advent of Judaism, there was no human sacrifice, whereas Christianity enshrined this one exception for the purpose of redemption.

Jewish ethics do not require a Jews to give their lives for the sake of another. To illustrate the issue, in the Talmud, the rabbis resort to a lifeboat scenario. Two men are lost in the desert and one has enough water to save his own life or the save the life of the other, but there is not enough water to save both lives. Is he then required to give his water to the other and die? Or to share the water so that both die? The Rabbis say no, that the law allows him to keep his water for himself and save his own life, although they acknowledge the emotionally difficult nature of such a choice.

In Halachah, each life is equally valuable, and no innocent life is no more valuable than another. Thus, for example, a Jew may not deliberately kill another innocent person to save his own life. However, because each person's life is his own greatest value, a Jew may lawfully kill a rodef--a pursuer--who threatens her life. The Rabbinic concept is that of equivalent force, that it is permissible to use an equal amount of force against the rodef as is being threatened. The judgment of the person in harm's way is generally accepted as sufficient to the situation, since the rodef is guilty of the initiation of force. This is why abortion is allowed in certain situations according to Jewish law where it is never allowed in much of Christian tradition. The pregnant woman's assessment of the magnitude of the threat of death or great bodily harm to herself is accepted because she is the innocent person who is at risk.

So this takes care of the life and death issues. Jewish law does not require self-sacrifice unto death, and indeed, in most cases does not permit it.

However, Jewish law does require charitable giving to the poor of the community. To what extent, then is such giving required? The rabbis--contrary to certain Jewish sects--set a maximum of the tithe, or ten percent. The reason for the requirement of tzedakah is to promote a lawful and orderly community in order that no one is reduced begging in the streets nor dying miserably there. It was considered a shonde fur de goyim--a shame in front of the gentiles--for Jews to turn their backs on other Jews. The requirement of tzedakah became especially necessary in Christian Europe, where Jews were isolated in ghettos and were not citizens of places in which they lived. They could expect no help from the outside. Therefore, Jews are still well known for the amount of money they voluntarily give to other Jews in need, whether they are next door or half-way across the world. The reason for the maximum of the tithe is that by Jewish law, there is no virtue in impoverishing oneself and one's family in order to help the poor. If everyone did this, the entire ghetto would languish into poverty. This would be considered altruism by most dictionary definitions, but I do not believe that the Jewish sense of obligation to other Jews is self-sacrificial. Ultimately, it is self-interested. No Jew wanted the Gentile police or army to march into the ghetto because they could could not care for their own. That way would be certain destruction.

There is another piece of Jewish law here, that demonstrates my point. Jews are required to ransom captives--specifically other Jews according to the plain meaning of the law. But in Christian Europe, the nobles of the cities quickly got to the business of enriching themselves by capturing Jews whose business was in the wider world and holding them for exorbitant ransoms, such that paying them continually would impoverish and destroy the entire community. Therefore the medieval rabbis made a tikkun--a precendent--that Jews were not required to destitute themselves to ransom other Jews. Again, such a decision not to ransom would be a difficult one for Jews to make as we regard ourselves as family.

Personally, and in accordance with Jewish sensibilities, I regard my life as equally valuable as that of any other person of goodwill. I do not regard myself as anybody's sacrificial lamb and I do not believe that it is prudent to impoverish myself at the expense of others. I do not believe that it is my duty to live for others, and in fact I tend to believe that those who regard it as virtue to live for others are really out to control them. (You know the line: She lives for others, you can tell which others by their hunted expressions).

Nevertheless, my husband and I do give a reasonable amount of money to charitable causes of our own choice. We do see it as a virtue to build up our community, and we give a significant amount of time volunteering to tutor math and reading, to sit on our water coop board, and other such activities. We live here after all and we want it to be a good place for ourselves and our children to continue to live. And of course we provide significant support to our synagogue and to other Jewish causes that we deem worthy. I think the key here is that these are voluntary choices from which we see benefit to our own lives in one way or another.I believe that those who say that they receive no benefit from their charitable activities are liars or fools.

From the perspective of our evolution, human beings are quite vulnerable alone in the evolutionary environment of adaptation. They had to find ways to cooperate together to survive and to raise children. And when agriculture and cities came to be, that cooperation allowed specialization and the development of marvelous technologies that bettered each individual life. Thus there is a natural pleasure that we derive from working together to accomplish certain of our individual goals. However, to turn that voluntary association for mutual benefit into the idea that one person's life belongs to another (slavery), or that everyone's life belongs to some imaginary whole (such as the state) is a perversion of that natural desire for voluntary cooperation, and is therefore contrary to life and thus, it is evil.
For charity or cooperation to achieve a goal to have any moral meaning requires voluntary choice, just as does trade or any other economic activity.

To sum it all up then, I do not accept the concept of altruism as you define it, that a person is required to sacrifice his own interests to those of others. That is slavery. To accept this, I would then be unable to say that a person's life is his own, and that life is the highest value.

Challenging Assumptions: Am I an Atheist?

This is the third in a series of posts that have resulted from a dialogue with C. August of Titanic Deck Chairs about where I stand with respect to Objectivist ideas. As is the nature of good dialogue, C. August has posed a series of challenging questions that probe my assumptions about human reason, religion, and ethics. The post that inspired this dialogue--for it is not a debate: C. August appears to be interested and curious, rather than missionary--was Rules for Patriots? , the first response from Ragamuffin Studies was Objectivist Questions About Rights and Religion (Part I) and the second is more parsimonously titled Objectivist Questions (Part II) .

In his comment to my response to his question about natural rights, C. August begins by saying:

"Thank you for the very detailed response. It's a lot to go through, with the same amount of specialized (Jewish) language and concepts that non-Objectivists must have to deal with when reading detailed Objectivist philosophical arguments."

Very true, and indeed, my specialized vocabulary is probably harder for a non-Jew to wade through than Objectivist arguments are for a non-Objectivist who has some experience with philosophy. I was not trying to snow you--part of the exercise in writing these responses was to answer your questions and thus engage in dialogue with you, but the other part of my purpose is to clarify my own thinking for me, by putting it into words.

C. August then gets right to the point, which is an Objectivist virtue, and says:

"To put it simply, it sounds to me like you have recast Judaism to emulate Objectivism... or perhaps, recast Objectivism to fit Judaism. I'm not sure which. Maybe you even mean that they are basically the same in your eyes, and no recasting was necessary?"

Hmmm. I would say that I started with Judaism as I understand it, and although my practice of Judaism is rather traditional, my thought is not quite in accordance with traditional Jewish belief; rather the bent of my mind requires me to delve into more abstract Jewish philosophy. Jewish ideas concerning moral philosophy and political philosophy have evolved, perhaps rather steadily with one exception, and that is the punctuated leap from the Israelite sacrificial temple cult to modern Rabbinic Judaism that began with the rabbinic notion of Oral Torah--an interpretive tradition that allowed the Rabbis (capitalization denotes the authoritative Talmudic rabbinic tradition) to reinvent the religion while simultaneously claiming authority from the tradition. As the Engineering Geek would say, "very clever, these Hebes."

This evolution is possible because normative Rabbinic Judaism understands the human mind, and the knowledge gained from examination of nature of which it is part, to be equally definitive with the religious tradition. Thus, a Jew must study both Torah and the sefer ha-olam, the book of the world, to fully know the universe. My thought is in line with Maimonides, who fully stated the rabbinic notion that there can be no contradiction between Divine revelation and the discoveries of the human mind. These discoveries were defined by Maimonides to be science and philosophy, in accordance with Aristotle's definitions. Therefore I am no mystic; however, in accordance with Maimonides and unlike Aristotle, I understand Providence to extend to individuals rather than to some collective notion of humanity.

I am still ignorant on the point of whether the universe is purely external (in accordance with Aristotle) or created out of nothing, which is the normative Jewish view. I tend toward the former, but I have not studied the issue sufficiently to say that I know all of the implications of either claim. Suffice it to say that my understanding of G-d* proceeds from the nature of the physical universe alone. I do not accept the concept of a reality that cannot be defined or measured. I do accept that we have not yet measured or defined all of reality. There is ever more to be discovered!

*It is the Jewish custom not to complete the Name out of respect. Some Jews, myself included, use this custom to denote that our understandings of G-d are incomplete, and differ from the cultural Christian norm.

Am I an atheist? I do not define myself as such, rather I identify myself as a Jew.

However, as I state above, I can find no evidence at all for any supernatural (or supranatural?) realm of existence. Therefore, I understand much of the religious mythic tradition to be metaphor for observations about the world and human nature that our ancestors had insufficient knowledge and/or vocabulary to describe in any other way. And taken as metaphor, the mythic tradition can give us insight into the beginnings of human metacognition about human existence and ethics, but it cannot give us any scientific understanding of the universe.

When I say this, though, I need to make clear that I am not a Progressive. That is, I understand there to be certain moral absolutes derived from human nature that cannot be altered by novel political systems imposed on human societies. Human knowledge, understanding and wisdom with respect to the universe in which we live progresses with time, it evolves. But this progress does not imply that human nature is infinitely plastic. Genetic changes in the human brain that would reorganize the large-scale structure would result in speciation--the arrival of a new species on the human cladogram--rather than in the pefection of Homo sapiens as H. sapiens.

Am I an atheist? No, I am a Jew.
But in line with my Jewish understanding, I understand G-d to be bound by the same Natural Law that binds the universe, and that defines human nature as rational, and establishes moral absolutes derived from reason. Therefore, I see reason as primary and autonomous.
Perhaps the Dutch philosopher Grotius put it better than I just did:

" Even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change the principles of morality or abrogate those fundamental rights that are guarranteed by natural laws. These laws would not change their objective validity even if we should assume--per impossibile-- that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs." --Hugo Grotius, Introduction to De Jure Belli et Pacis, as cited in Cassirir, E. (1946). The Myth of the State. Yale University Press: New Haven. p. 172.

Am I an atheist? I do not define myself as such, but normative Christians probably would. That is their problem, created by their need to define the concept of God universally and in their own image and likeness. It is the same problem that causes liberal Christianity to do mental gymnastics to simultaneously reject Judaism as an acceptable religion according to Christian scripture and yet claim that somehow Jews share in Christian salvation.

As for me, I am a Jew.

Objectivist Questions (Part II)

Note: This is the second part of two posts. The first part may be found here, and the introductory remarks, at the very least, are well worth reading, as there I explain the cirmcumstances by which these blog entries were conceived, and I stipulate the background that underpins my thinking.

Yesterday, in his response to my response to his question, C. August posed another question, and also began to expound on an idea about the Founders that was quite interesting. I would love to hear more of this thoughts on this, but in the meantime, in this post I will respond to his further query.

C. AUGUST FURTHER QUERIES

"You highlighted as one of the qualities that make us human "the need to know the difference between good and evil, and the need to choose the good in order to choose life." I'm curious how you determine what is the good?

The Objectivist view is succinctly put in Galt's speech: "All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil." And this of course is based on the metaphysical facts of man's nature as a rational being, and one of volitional consciousness, who must pursue values (the good) to further his life (the ultimate value)."

RESPONSE

Firstly, the Objectivist view so beautifully put by Rand in her exposition that you quoted from Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that although she was not raised in a religious home, she nevertheless learned the ultimate Jewish value. Life. Rand clearly retained that Jewish value (among others) when she developed and explained her philosophy, however she did not overtly draw upon Jewish tradition to do so. Rather she built her philosophy on the basis of human nature, specifically in terms of human psychology, by which I mean how a human being thinks and makes choices. Since Rand did that, and did it so well that I have nothing to add to it, I will instead draw upon Jewish tradition and mythos to make the same point.

As a Jew, I also say that the ultimate value is Life. And I would add that I do not mean here an afterlife, but rather this life, embodied on this earth. As far as I know, there is no other, and thus Life must be lived for it's own sake, and not as preparation for death. (This is a major point of departure between Judaism and medieval Christianity). From a Jewish perspective, I come by this value from a Jewish perspective of the first Creation myth in B'reshit (Genesis).

The structure of this story, as written in Hebrew, demonstrates that it was never intended to be taken literally. The structure itself points to the reason that the Priestly author wrote it: it was to contrast the Israelite world-view about the value of life and the earth with that of the surrounding Akkadians. Certain Hebrew words would have recalled to the hearer the older, and very different creation story in the Enuma Elish. That the story has a sophisticated mythic structure is evident from the first Hebrew words "b'reshit bara elohim . . ." which can best be translated as "once, when G-d was about to create . . ." Whereas the Akkadian myth has the world created as a result of a war among the gods, and the earth itself was the shell of the dragon-goddess Tiamat, which points to the idea that embodied being is debased at best, the Priestly story tells of an orderly and lawful creation of the world by the peaceful spoken word. The orderly nature of the earth and all that inhabit it is demonstrated by the order of the days: each of the first three days is paired with the second three, so that light is paired with the sun, the expanse of the sky is paired with the birds of the air, and the separation of the dry land and ocean is paired with the life that lives on each. And each physical act of creation is termed "good." Just in case the hearer had missed the point. In particular, in this story the human being that is created on the sixth day is called "very good." Embodied human life is very good, and belongs to the physical universe.

Human life is very good in Jewish eyes, as it is, and on this earth. I will not expound again in detail on the Jewish understanding of the story of garden, as I have done that in several posts, including a digression in Rules for Patriots? Suffice it to say that there is no concept of Original Sin in Judaism. Human life is good as it is. Right here on this earth. We have no need of heaven(In the morning service, Jews deliberately repudiate the concept of Original Sin by saying: "The soul that you created within me is good . . .". This was necessary to keep that concept firmly out of Jewish thought during our sojourn in Christian Europe).

The mythos behind the rest of that story is that human beings cannot go back to the womb. We cannot forever be children living in the garden, needing to make no effort to live. That would not be Paradise, rather it would become hell. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a metaphor for the human understanding of our own mortality, and the urgency that puts upon our efforts to sustain our lives. As I said above, human beings, alone of all of the mammals, know that they are mortal, and make their living on the earth by use of their minds, and they therefore have the power and responsibility to choose between that which promotes life (good) and that which destroys life (evil). The fruit of the tree, therefore, implies not a fall from grace, but a promotion to conscious being, and it did indeed make humans "like gods" even as the snake (the ancient symbol of wisdom) promised that it would. Wisdom and knowledge come with a price; that price is the need to exert effort to comprehend, to learn, and finally, the knowledge that life is finite and therefore, that the time of a human life is precious and irreplacible to its owner.

From this story we can then infer these values: Life is good, death is evil. Knowledge is life promoting, willful ignorance promotes death and is thus evil. Humans must work to promote their own lives and those of their offspring, and they must make choices and take action to do so. It is therefore evil to take away a person's ability to freely act upon their own knowledge and make their own choices. Thus freedom is good, and slavery is evil. Since "by the sweat of your brow you must earn your bread", a human being has the need of property: the fruit tree and the wheat field. Thus property is good, but theft is evil.

The ability and necessity to choose is a result of consciousness. It is a quality that is ascribed only to G-d and to human beings, and this is why there is story in Midrash that depicts angels as being jealous of the human condition. However, sin (in Hebrew, aiming badly) is the result of making the wrong choices or, and more importantly, the deliberate refusal to consciously choose. This is so because that refusal will inevitably result in death and destruction.

This tale is told again as exposition, where in Devarim (Deuteronomy), we read:

"I have set before you this day life and death, the blessing and the curse*; Choose life, that you and your children may live!"
* The parallel structure of Hebrew poetry pairs thusly: life = a blessing, death = a curse. This is not a magical incantation, it is poetry.

This, then, is how I determine what is good. That which promotes life and those means by which a person can protect, preserve and enhance his or her life.

Objectivist Questions About Rights and Religion (Part I)

Every now and then, I get comments that contain some very thoughtful questions from a reader. These are questions that require a lot of thought and writing, and sometimes they even cause me to revise my own thinking. Such challenging questions are a pleasure to answer for several reasons. One is that I truly enjoy metacognition which is the process of thinking about my own thinking. Another is that I get the sense that I have found a kindred spirit, someone who really understands where my thinking is going, and does so even before I get there.

In the Buddhist tradition there is a saying: When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
This post is one of those metacognitive exercises based on two questions posed by C. August, an Objectivist. His blog is Titanic Deck Chairs and he also blogs at The Rule of Reason. I read it at least once a week, as it is usually part of the Objectivist Round-up. He began his first question with a compliment about my blog:

"I stop by your blog once in awhile, often when RationalJenn links to it, and am always struck by your eloquence, the depth of your thought and how you dig into ideas and explore them, and, inevitably for me, the contradictions between your ideas as espoused in this post, and what I presume to be your faith."

Now, a compliment from an Objectivist, especially about one's thinking, is never idle and never intended to flatter. I am therefore honored by the compliment. The last clause above then gets straight to the point and prefaces C. August's first question. However, before I attempt to answer it, I wish to clarify the position from which I answer.

I am not a philosopher. Although I have had some formal training in philosophy (six credit hours at the undergraduate level and three at the graduate level) and in logic (three credit hours), my primary approach to the world is as a scientist. This is a very important distinction because philosophers tend to build their arguments from axioms, from which they develop premises, and they make make inferences, but the result is a grand system of thought. A scientist on the other hand, tends to muck about in the physical universe, asking questions which are answered by way of the scientific method. Scientists develop hypotheses from observations of the actual workings of reality and then test those hypotheses and we require measurable results. Whereas a philosopher must probe the nature of reality, scientists begin with the assumption that reality is real. It is the philosophers of science that get down to the business of probing into how scientists think about their science. Most working scientists operate within the dominant paradigm of their disciplines, busy with the job of testing those ideas against the workings of the physical world. Science limits itself to probing questions about the physical world that can be answered by measurement and observation of its workings. In the world of modern philosophy, science is a red-headed step-child, divorced from its philosophical underpinning because most academic philosophers hold theories of knowledge that start with the idea that reality is not what it appears to be. Science cannot function with integrity within such a context.*

*IMHO as a scientist, this is the main problem with the pseudoscientific claims and extra-scientific claims being used for political purposes these days.

I make the above point to stress that although I may use philosophical terms in my response, I use them with the understanding of an interested layman and not as an academic philosopher. I am much more comfortable using the terminology of science and I use such terminology as a professional and academic in my fields. These caveats are further complicated by the fact that C. August's question delves into my adherence to the religion of Judaism, and although I am a well-educated Jew, and in a very important sense Judaism is my life's work, I am neither a professional Jew nor do I have a formal academic degree related to it.

C. AUGUST'S QUESTION

". . . [Y]ou refer to the natural rights of man, upon which most of your arguments in the post lie. What, ultimately, do you think is the source of those rights?
To frame the question, assuming it's one of the two, do you subscribe to the Lockean notion of rights from god? Or Rand's idea of rights as derived from the metaphysical nature of man as a rational animal, and the requirements of a being who lives by the free reason of his own mind?"

RESPONSE

Note: I attempted a response in the comments to my post Rules for Patriots? It was not very considered nor was it clear. This question really required more thought and careful writing.

C. August, in the clarification of your question your assumptions are spot on. My ideas about the Rights of Man as I describe them must come from either Locke or Rand. And, as you doubtless noted, I quoted Rand twice in the course of the post. With respect to my intellectual history, my thinking about such natural rights comes primarily from Locke, whom I studied in high school (I was classically educated) as part of American History. I studied his ideas with respect to natural rights in more depth in college as well, during classes in philosophy, anthropology, and history. So Locke is one of the giants upon whose shoulders I stand.

I first read Ayn Rand's fiction works in high school as well, not as part of any assignment, but because someone handed me Atlas Shrugged, and later I went out and purchased Anthem, The Fountainhead, and We the Living. I read them primarily for the story, and I most appreciated Atlas Shrugged. Although I enjoyed reading the others, it was this one that really got me thinking. I think Atlas was the first contemporary novel that I ever read that struck me as a novel about ideas rather than just as a story. Later I read Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, but I never did read any of her other fiction. (In the past year I had to purchase new copies of both Atlas and Capitalism, as the old ones were old and well-used paperbacks).

Given all of this, then, my understanding of the Rights of Man (natural rights), is founded on the Enlightenment ideas of Locke. But Rand's thinking completes Locke and Jefferson and builds on them and clarifies the true nature of the human being's niche on earth as a being capable of rational thought. I consider this idea to be Rand's unique contribution to the concept of natural rights. (I may be wrong here, as I am not well versed in modern philosophy).

Further, I think Jefferson's use of the term Creator is really a metaphor to describe something that he had not fully delineated in his own mind. I think he understood that natural rights are inherent to the human being (thus the adjective 'natural') because of his nature as a thinking organism who must knowingly choose between good and evil, and that the fact that rights are inherent means that they cannot be removed by fiat or by vote. By ascribing the origin of the Rights of Man to the Creator, I think both Locke and Jefferson thought they were placing natural rights beyond the reach of kings and governments. Further, I strongly argue that both Locke and Jefferson, each in his own way, had a more sophisticated concept of the Christian deity than do most American Christians today. Such is the abyssimal state of American education.


C. AUGUST FURTHER QUERIES

Basically, I'm curious how you square -- assuming you do -- faith in god with a this-worldly view of the rational, egoistic life of man that is seemingly implicit in your arguments (much like it was in the Founders' arguments).

RESPONSE

C. August, I believe that here your question rests on the assumption that my "faith" requires an intellectual belief (Is this an oxymoron?) system and that it is related to some "other-worldly" realm. In short, you begin with an understanding of religion and of the Eternal that is influenced almost exclusively by Christianity, a creedal, universalistic religion that requires intellectual assent and which has a very narrowly defined theology and which was spread throughout the West by force. Although certainly the Israelite religion did engage in conquest, Judaism never had that kind of power.

However, I suscribe to Judaism, which is really a world-view that originated as a set of tribal traditions handed down orally prior to being written. Whereas Christianity relies on doctrine and intellectual assent for membership, Judaism is primarily passed down from generation to generation as a set of memes. Whereas Christianity requires conversion, Judaism allows adoption.

In essence, the answer to your question is that Judaism requires no other world and thus need not be squared with the world we know; it was intended to situate Jews in the world they inhabit. Judaism is about living in this world as Jews, and Jews see themselves as both of this world and in it. When Jews have isolated themselves, it is for protection from those who have risen to destroy us.

Judaism is a set of traditions based on a rather sophisticated (for its time of origin) concept of law, which came from the Israelite religion but was transformed into Rabbinic Judaism two millenia ago. That transformation was in itself a remarkable achievement that was intended to preserve the values and ideas of a people going into permanent exile; an achievement that worked. But in that exile, something else occured as well, and Jews took part in the Great Conversation of the West (a classical metaphor), and Judaism proved to be durable, holding firmly to certain basic ideas, and yet evolving to become modern.

More to the point of your question, Judaism is not creedal and has no prescribed concept of the Deity. For the ancient Israelites, G-d was assumed to be, and attributes were assigned according to what Israel experienced as G-d*. Thus the G-d of Israel become associated with Law, with freedom, and by the time of the prophets, with individual responsibility. First and foremost in Judaism is the concept of the Covenant between G-d and Israel, in which Israel stands as eternal (it appears) witness to the lawfulness of Creation. The Covenant itself spells out a very particular set of behaviors and consequences that cannot reasonably be taken literally by a modern person. However, the overall point of the story is that actions have consequences and that G-d cannot mitigate them.


*Thus the famous (and usually badly translated) exchange between G-d and Moses in Shemot (Exodus). According to the story, Moses basically says: The people are never going to believe that the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wants them to go free from slavery. They're gonna to want you to introduce yourself by name. (e.g. Who the heck are you? Joe Shmoe?) And the famous answer is: "Eyeh asher eyeh" which can roughly be translated as "I am what I shall be." I tend to think this answer, a play on the Hebrew verb hey-yud-hey (to be) means roughly: Wait and see what I do, then you'll know who I am. Other Jews may disagree. That's the fun of Midrash.

This is all a very long way to get around to your final point, which I translate to mean "How the heck can a rational, egoistic modern woman believe all that Mickey Mouse Crap?"
You said it more elegantly and politely than that, but that's how a Jew might very well put it to another Jew.

My answer: I have never felt obligated to take it all literally. I interpret the tradition, just as our teachers and our teachers' teachers did before me. I intrepret the tradition to derive the purpose and meaning of my Jewish identity within the context of the Jewish community, right here in Albuquerque, NM. And I interpret the mythos of Hebrew scripture from what I know about human beings, and what I know about the world, all within the normative understanding of Judaism as it has evolved to this point. None of what I do with the tradition, and my more personal and private understandings of G-d, are at odds with my scientific understanding of the world, nor do they require me to divorce myself from rational thought and discourse.

Ultimately, in my understanding, G-d is a metaphor for the fullness of life, for wholeness, and for human freedom and dignity. G-d is not some alien entity that resides outside the universe, but rather, is some part of who we are as human beings. G-d is that part of us that strives continually to reach beyond our present selves, that longing to reach a potential that is not yet. (I am what I will be). Or perhaps, to paraphrase Nachman of Bratislava, G-d is those "better angels of our nature" that whisper to us continually, "Grow! Grow!"

Well, C. August, I am going to stop here. I will respond to your second question, the one in your second comment, the one that asks "what is good", later. It's time to eat and the dogs want my company on a happy exploration of the meadow.