Restoring Courage: Glenn Beck's Moment

בְּיָדוֹ אַפְקִיד רוּחִי
בְּעֵת אִישָׁן וְאָעִירָה
וְעִם רוּחִי גְוִיָּתִי
אֲדֹנָי לִי וְלֹא אִירָא
Into G-d's hand, I commit my spirit,
When I sleep, and I shall awake;
And with my spirit, my body.
G-d is with me, I shall not fear.
--Adon Olam

Israel is under attack.
The Jewish people are once again threatened by destruction.
Who among the nations will speak up for us?

This is not a novel statement.
In certain circles such a statement would inspire the response:
"Ya think?" It would be said with a certain sarcastic, world-weary tone intended to impress the listener with the speaker's oh, so sophisticated approach to events. No doubt the responder has a different and more self-flattering view of what sophistication is than the actual meaning, derived from the practice of the ancient Greek sophists to teach a rhetoric in which the Socratic rules of logic may be used to argue contradictory sides of an argument one after another. Sophistry was a method of teaching used to inculcate in the young elite the skills needed to be a successful politician in the Athenian democracy. In the right hands, such skills could be useful in order to create a platform from which a politician could discuss ideas, but more often to be sophisticated in the root sense meant using the skills to manipulate voters in order to obtain power over them.

Israel is under attack.
This is not novel, but it is true.
Israel's very right to exist is being questioned and delegitimized. No other country on the face of the earth has had its right to exist challenged this way, no matter how cruel its government is to its own people, no matter how belligerent it is toward other countries, no matter how it was created.

The sophists find reasons why it is good and right and just to allow such talk. The cynics say that Israel is evil and that the West is too mired in its own sin to do anything about it.

And into the breech steps an earnest and idealistic American Christian who is somewhat ignorant of Judaism and even more so about Jews ourselves. Like many American Christians, he does not understand our fears and foibles, our prickly response to those who are not MOT*s and yet who seem to like us anyway. Last week in Jerusalem, the radio host and commentator Glenn Beck held a rally in support of the Jewish people and of Israel. He called it Restoring Courage. He explained that just as the people of a small town in Ohio who had banded together to help one another in the face of the worst unemployment rate in the country had something to teach Americans about self-reliance, so too, does a tiny country surrounded by enemies have something to teach the world about courage.

With some trepidation, I arrived at the JCC in Albuquerque to watch the rally that was streamed from the south steps of the ancient Temple Mount in Jerusalem into a computer and onto a screen in New Mexico. I say 'with some trepidation', because Glenn Beck has made some gaffes about Jews and Judaism in the past that in my estimation were the product of his ignorance about us and his lack of knowledge about our long and trying history in relationship to Christianity.

I believe that these gaffes were the result of the fact that he views Judaism through the prism of his own experience with Christianity--as Christians are wont to do--and thus made these critical errors, not out of hatred, but out of ignorance and a habit of letting his mouth run ahead of his thoughts--as radio talk show hosts are wont to do. I also think that the Jewish leftists who gleefully took those gaffes out of context and ran with them while tolerating outright antisemitism from the men and women surrounding their O-Messiah were more than a little ridiculous, but that's another blog.

As I watched the sun move across the ancient stones of the walls and towers that once compromised the outer defenses of the Temple, and as I listened to the music by the Jerusalem Synagogue Choir (and an Israeli pop star soloist), and as I heard the speech by Jerusalem's Mayor, I was not only reassured, but I was also moved. And there at the JCC in Albuquerque, I was even more moved by the fact that when I reflexively stood for Hatikvah**, the whole roomful of people around me--who were mostly Christians from pro-Israel churches and campus organizations-- hastily, but graciously stood with me. The latter reminded me of the times within the past ten years that I have stood alone, surrounded by Christians (and sometimes even a few Jews), to defend Israel and the Jewish people against lies and calumny.

However, when Glenn Beck took the stage during his narration of the history of the Temple Mount--a place special to three religions--I gripped my chair with anxiety. What would this non-Jew say about Israel, sympathetic as he might be? Thus far the program had been very tasteful, and the historical narration did not peddle an exclusively Christian understanding nor was it condescending. But now, what would he say about Israel? About us?

As Daniel Gordis wrote in his book, Saving Israel, this anxiety stems from the expectation that when we hear about Israel from outsiders, we will hear a horror story designed to show that there is no goodness in Israel; that Israel is the state that has been designated to carry the sins of the world, as a scapegoat sent out into the desert is forced to bear the accusations that most people dare not aim at themselves, in their impossible pursuit of an impossible moral code that demands suicide. Israel, after all, is a country that is hated not for its vices, but for its virtues. So it was that as Mr. Beck began to speak, my anxiety mounted.

Just as the speaker was a different man than most who speak about Israel, so, too, was his speech different. He began by stating his purpose:

"Today, I ask you turn your eyes to Israel and restore courage. I have been asked: What can you teach Israel about Courage? My answer is simple. Nothing.Then they ask: Why are you coming to Israel? Because, I say: In Israel, you see courage." ***

Previously in the program, Beck had demonstrated that the courage of faith, the courage of hope, and the courage of tikkun olam (repairing of the world) through the awarding of three Restoring Courage awards, given to the Fogel family of Itamar (posthumously), Maxim's Restaurant in Haifa, and Rami Levy's Grocery Stores, respectively. When he said these words, his audience had already been given examples upon which to reflect.

As Glenn continued speaking, my hands relaxed, and then went to my eyes to wipe away tears, for I was moved no more by anxiety, but by a combination of pride and relief, and a growing and fierce resolve. For Glenn spoke first about Israel's virtue, the commitment of her people--our people--to be strong and of good courage:

"In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds . . . against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true."

I felt relief, coming to know that there are people out there who are not Jews, and who can still see-- see through the lies of those cold-hearted bureaucrats at the UN, and the calculated hatred of the NGOs at the Durban Conferences, and through the casual libels of moral equivalency from the left and from the right--that Israel has virtue, that it is committed--as perhaps no other country is--to the protection of something good and precious and true. And I felt pride in the people that I call my own, and in my own willingness--for I am not bold, not really--to stand up, blushing, trembling and afraid--to counter the lies, the hatred and the venality of moral equivalence; to stand for principle even in venues where I am sure to be vilified.

My resolve grew as the speech continued, and Glenn Beck talked about why restoring our courage is so important now. For the world, he said, is once again on the verge of plunging itself into darkness and tyranny and death. And in such a world, the so-called leaders do not have the courage to tell the truth of things, to stand against the darkness, and it is their cowardice that takes us into the shadow. And it is our cowardice that allows it, and teaches our children that there is no remedy except chaos and fear:

"We may think: Oh, how different are today’s youth! But the young merely imitate their parents. They have seen how the world reacts to evil – with indifference. They watch, they learn, they imitate. What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.
When the Fogel family was killed in their sleep the world barely took note. The grand councils of earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent. It’s no wonder our children light their streets on fire."

What one generation tolerates, the next will embrace.

This is why Beck would have us look to Israel in order to restore our own courage. For that is what it will take to overcome the silence of the grand councils and the false pomp of those who wish to rule us. And this is where the resolve comes, for courage--as the Cowardly Lion learned--is not something from without, but something that is ignited within:

"In the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the ancient Hebrews were led through the dark of night by a pillar of fire. Courage is the act of walking into the darkness, and knowing that each step would be guided and protected by the pillar of fire, if we follow it. God is with us."

And this is where my resolve meets my doubt. He says what we sing at Purim:
"Plot your plots. Scheme your schemes. They will amount to nothingness. Ki-emmanuel. For with us is G-d."
But sadly, there are so many Hamans plotting our destruction; so many Hamans, but only one Purim.

For on the surface, there seems a vast difference between this naive Christian from America, who has boundless confidence that the Master of the Universe must do justice, must free the captive and must keep the Covenant. Beck stands in Jerusalem restored by human hands, and tells us that standing here--here, as the stones of Jerusalem burn gold in the setting sun--is why we can have courage. He says that the Pillar of Fire did indeed bring us here, after severe and awesome trials. Like the generation the wandered in the wilderness, we have seen the signs and wonders. But we have also seen the death and destruction; the smoke and ash that was once the bodies of those who made up a great civilization in the heart of Europe. To many Jewish ears such words do not come comfortably, with the blessed assurance that the American, the Christian, seems to have. Does the Eternal keep the Covenant? Jews might joke--as we have--that we ought to sue for breech of contract; that perhaps G-d ought to choose a different people. And we are not altogether joking, as the dark evil of antisemitism rises once more in our own time.

But there is more to Beck than meets the eye. He is no stranger to pain and doubt and destruction; not wrought by others, but brought upon himself. And out of despair, he set himself the goal of finding his life's purpose, of restoring his own honor and courage. And standing there, as he did, in Jerusalem rebuilt by human hands, this man of the nations, a stranger in Israel, reminded us of the hope and courage of those who dusted off their hands and rebuilt the city. And my resolve smoulders and catches again as I remember that a nes--a Hebrew miracle--is not the suspension of natural law, it is the tangible result of a stubborn resolve, the pillar of fire that burns in the human heart, demanding that we push back against death and destruction, that we live and live well. If G-d is, then surely G-d is in the small, wavering flame of that resolve.

Jewish tradition teaches there is a moment for which each person was born; a purpose which, if discovered and pursued, will lead to greatness and awesome deeds. Otherwise, life is vanity and chasing after the wind. I believe that Glenn Beck was reaching for his own purpose, which he believes is to be a watchman upon the walls, when he said:

"Let us have the courage to choose life.
No more incitement.
No more threats.
No more terror.
No more talk of genocide.
No more hate.
No fear.
No more lies.

"We can read their signs, listen to their speeches. So we know that they say what they mean and mean what they say.

"Well: SO. DO. WE. . . .

"And so I say that if the world decides it must know who will stand with Israel, who will stand with the Jewish people, so they know exactly who to condemn, who to target, let them know this.

Condemn me. Target me. I will stand with Israel. I will stand with the Jewish people. And if they want to round us up again, I will proudly raise my hand and say 'Take me first.' "

And they call this man a fear-monger, a hater, a chaser after wind. The "ubiquitous they"--those who are oh, so sophisticated, and oh, so cynical--they who cannot accept that others have found what they refuse to look for within themselves, and so they see in others only what they find within: fear and hatred and futility.
But we are all weak vessels, our lives finite, our striving uncertain, and the possibilities for errors and false starts are very real. The cowards never start, and the weak fall by the wayside. And those who believe the rumors of their own evil throw themselves over into emptiness. But those who pick themselves up, and dust themselves off, finding the goodness within themselves and others, those are the ones who come to their moment.

Glenn Beck has found his purpose. He has come to his moment. If he does or says nothing else of meaning or weight in all the years left to him, it will not matter. Neither does it matter what the cynics say of him. He has lived his destiny. He has found his place among the righteous of the nations.

There is more to the speech. Beck outlines the responsibilities that go with the freedom to chart one's own course; the responsibilities that make it possible to create one's destiny. He urges us to take up the challenge, to commit to good purpose. There is more, and it is well worth reading. But he ends on a theme of the last lines of Adon Olam, the creed of Maimonides, saying:

"Evil is counting on us to do nothing. Evil is counting on us to be afraid. But evil has misjudged us. Evil has misjudged us as it has misjudged the Jewish people. The last line of a Jewish prayer is …Adonai li, v’lo ira.
God is with me, I fear not. . .

". . .There are many reasons to hear my words, leave here and do nothing. We all have been trained to believe that we are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough. Abraham was old, Moses was slow of speech, Ruth was a widow, David was a little boy, Joseph was in prison, and Lazarus was dead. What is your excuse?

"You were born for a time such as this. Begin by declaring that this is why you were placed on this earth. It doesn’t matter how you’ve spent your years on this planet. What matters is what you do now from here. I cannot promise you safety, prosperity or comfort. But I can promise you this. One day, your children and grandchildren will ask you: 'What did you do when the world was on the edge again? What did you say when the West, Israel and the Jews were blamed again?'

"You will look them in the eye and say: I had courage. And on the 24th of Av, I committed to stand with courage… to walk… to march… arm in arm… behind God’s pillar of fire.

Adonai li v’Lo Ira. God is with me, I fear not. "

Ken yehi ratzon. May it be G-d's will.

*Member of the Tribe
** The Hope--the Israeli National Anthem
*** All quotes from Beck's speech are taken from the full text published at The Blaze

Glenn Beck's Monkey Show: This View of Life

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its

several powers having been originally breathed

into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this

planet has gone cycling on according to the

fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning

endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful

have been, and are being, evolved."

--Charles Darwin, 1859: On the Origin of Species

In my second entry on the topic of Glenn Beck's misapprehension of the theory of evolution, I discussed the fallacy that he spoke on his radio show; the idea that humans evolved from monkeys, or even from apes. Darwin's theory does not posit this idea at all; rather human beings, as well as the great apes, have descended from some common ancestor that in certain features and functions resembles us both, however remotely. But I am not quite done, because another idea was expressed, later in that same hour of the radio broadcast, that is also fallacious: Glenn Beck's claim that collectivists require Darwin's theory, because they must have a view of human individuals as endlessly malleable and therefore perfectible by other humans or, in the case of socialists and outright communists, by some unspecified "social force" that generally turn out to be a force perpetrated by tyrants.

This idea turns on another common misunderstanding of Darwin's theory, one that became a force in American politics at the end of the 19th century, the idea called "Social Darwinism."
Social Darwinism can be defined as any number of political ideologies that use Darwin's theory to suggest that societies evolve in the biological sense and that certain individuals in society are more "evolved" than others, and that they have an obligation to direct human evolution to specific ends. This ideology has nothing to do with the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, except the usurpation of Darwin's name. And in Darwin's name, a whole host of fallacies have been developed to limit human freedom: the Nazi concept of the Obermenschen (supermen) is one, and so is the American progressive idea that a better citizen can be bred through eugenics.

Social 'Darwinism' includes two fallacies that make the ideology foreign to Darwin's theory. The first is that societies evolve biologically, meaning that society is an entity that natural selection acts upon, and that action changes gene frequencies due to various social pressures. The second is that Darwinian evolution is goal directed, and that natural selection is more than a mechanism, that in some way it is working to a specific, predetermined end.

I think the first fallacy is driven by a complete misunderstanding about how Darwinian evolution is defined, and the second by an equally powerful misapprehension about how natural selection works.

A society is nothing more than a grouping of individuals that are distinguished by location, and perhaps by a shared nationality and culture. There may be numerous social groups in that larger amorphous thing that we call society, and those different subsets may very well have their own unique subcultures and value systems. There is not much that defines a society except the obvious: that members of a society tend to socially interact with one another at some level. A society is not some mystical synergistic whole. It has no self-awareness and no will. If societies evolve, those changes are not biological, and they are not driven by natural selection.

Natural selection acts on the relatively fixed phenotype (the way that genes are expressed) of the individual, producing change over time in biological populations. That evolution--for change over time is what the word evolution means--is measured by the change of gene frequencies in a population over time. Individuals do not evolve, but biological populations do. A biological population is not some random group of individuals that interacts socially. Rather it is a group of individuals that can and do interbreed with one another. That they can interbreed means that they are members of the same species, but being a population means that these individuals have access to one another for the purpose of reproduction. Thus alleles (specific forms of each genes) are spread around that population. There are numerous biological populations of human beings on the earth, separated by geography and by culture and by language, which are but different barriers humans have to reproduction with one another. None of these barriers is perfect, and by migration of individuals from one population to another, novel alleles are introduced to populations, changing the gene frequencies in each population. Thus, evolution is always occurring.

When I said above that natural selection acts on individuals, I meant that the genetic traits of an individual vary in expression, creating as many unique phenotypes as there are individuals. Within a given environment, some expressions of a trait will lead to a robustness that allows an individual to survive and pass on those traits, while other expressions of the same trait may--in that same environment--lead to a weakness that means an individual does not live long enough to reproduce, or reproduces less often. Evolutionary "fitness" is defined as the number of offspring an individual has, thus influencing how many copies of the allele is passed on into the next generation, thus spreading through the population in greater or lesser numbers.

It is environment that effects the fitness of a certain trait. A trait that creates an effect that leads to the allele being passed on in great numbers in one environment, may have no such effect in another environment, or may be deleterious to the individual that carries it in a third environment. For example, the recessive allele that blocks the deposition of pigments in the eye, caused the blue-eyed phenotype, has no effect in northern climates, where the solar angle is low, but in equatorial locations, it results in a much greater risk of cataracts and cancer at a younger age. Thus one might expect to find more of the recessive "blue-eye" alleles in northern populations than in equatorial ones. Since there may be more than one direction of pressure on a trait (or suite of traits) at any given time, the end result is a variety of expression, creating those "endless forms most beautiful" of which Darwin spoke. In any given species in any given environment, not all traits are under selection at any given time. It really depends on the variety of alleles, and upon the rate of environmental change that a species may be experiencing. The point here is that fitness is not some fixed array of parameters that have been ranked by some conscious process of choosing. It is simply what variations on a trait, among those present, are most beneficial to the differential reproduction of the individuals within a population that carry them.

And this brings me to the second fallacy held by the Social "Darwinists": the fallacy that evolution has some direction, some predetermined end. Since natural selection acts on the variations of a trait that happen to be present in a given population at a given time, there can be no "goal" for evolution. If, as Stephen J. Gould used to say, we could rewind the tape of the evolution of life on earth and begin it again, we would not see the same movie. Evolution would likely run a wildly different course.

There is a random element to Darwinian evolution, and this is why species eventually go extinct, ending their contributions to the future of life on earth. Sooner or later, a variation on a trait that would allow a species to get through a certain set of environmental changes will not be present in any of the biological populations of the species; or else there will not be time for a beneficial variation to spread through the population, and the species will die out. Just as death is part of every individual life, extinction is the destiny of every species.

I think that this lack of direction, this randomness that exists in our being here at all, in how species come and go upon the earth, is the most unsettling idea about evolution of all for many people. It certainly changes one's view of one's place in a very large and random universe. And yet, it also magnifies the uniqueness of each individual life on earth, and places a premium on human self-awareness, which is what sets our species apart from the other lives that share our planet.

Since evolution has no direction, and since no individuals in a species are "more evolved" than any others, two things are true. One is that there is no perfection awaiting the future of human life on earth. We are what we are, and as human beings we exist within certain parameters that make us human. Although we are all unique, our uniqueness exists as variations on the theme of human being. Individuals do not evolve. Each of us can only play the genes we were dealt. The second truth is that no human beings are wiser than any others in their ability to know how to shape human evolution to certain ends. There are no philosopher-kings who can see outside the cave, and select for certain traits in order to bring the rest of us to what they believe is their level.

The Social "Darwinists", who have arrogantly arrogated to themselves the role of gods and goddesses, do so using a perversion of Darwinian evolution in which selection is anything but natural, and fitness is defined as those traits they most admire in themselves. Traits that may have very little to do with the traits that are actually under selection in different human populations. Unfortunately, there are those--like Glenn Beck--who have so little knowledge and understanding of Darwin's theory, that they equate the unifying theory of modern biology with an ideology that is based on a misunderstanding of evolution by natural selection; an ideology that is as profoundly wrong as are the misperceptions of the creationists. This is what I mean when I say that the leftists and the collectivists are often equally as ignorant of Darwin's theory of evolution as are those on the religious right.

But I believe the collectivists on the left are the more dangerous. The creationists are for the most part reacting to the usurpation of their power to pass their religion on to their children. All of the equal-time debates, all of the legal challenges they make are in response to public education. If creationists were no longer forced by law to pay for their children to be instructed to accept an idea that they believe is against their religion, there would be no debates and no legal battles. But those on the left believe that they have some mandate to act as those who would select out the traits that they believe do not contribute to the perfection of humanity in the next great step of "social evolution." But all such traits originate in the phenotype of individuals, so this means that certain individuals must be selected out. This is what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a notorious progressive, understood his role to be when he ruled that a woman could be forcibly sterilized for the good of the State, saying:

"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for a crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind." (Buck vs. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).

Here Holmes imagines himself to be the agent of selection, a selection that is not at all natural. He further implies that there is some direction to evolution, that a certain kind of human being--his kind--has some destiny that is the pinnacle, the perfect end of evolution. An end that would result in a deadly sameness, in which there would be no variation for natural selection to act upon. An end that would result in destruction and death, as it always does. An end that would result in the ultimate extinction of the human species from the face of the earth.

Nothing could be further from the true nature of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. This view of life predicts infinite variation in infinite combinations developing over time from so simple a beginning. There is indeed a grandeur in it, a grandeur that is missed by all of those who misapprehend the beauty of life on earth in all its wonderful variety.

Glenn Beck's Monkey Show: Not Even Wrong

“Even my fellow biologists are unacquainted with the
many lines of evidence for evolution, and most of
my university students,who supposedly learned evolution
in high school, come to my courses knowing almost nothing
of this central organizing theory of biology.”
--Jerry A. Coyne; Why Evolution is True. 2009.

In my last blog entry, I gave an overview of the problems I heard in Glenn Beck's latest attack on the theory of evolution by natural selection. To recap briefly, those problems are errors in knowledge, distractability from the main point and reason for the discussion, and philosophical errors at the level of premises, reasoning and argumentation. The blog entry can be found here.

In this blog entry, I will discuss Glenn Beck's misapprehension of the modern theory of evolution because it is not even wrong. By this I mean that Beck's argument on his show, that evolution cannot be true because he has never seen a half-monkey, half human, is so off the mark that it is not even an argument. It is a straw-man, and does not rise to the level of an argument that can even be discussed. The phrase implies that even an argument that is wrong, would be better than this one.

What I am not going to do is try to convince anyone that the theory of evolution is true. I accept the evidence for evolution, which is so varied, so strong and so convincing that its reality is not even a casual discussion among biologists. However, there is so much evidence, on so many levels and coming from so many fields in the natural and physical sciences that it would take more than one book to recount it all. The interested reader can begin with Jerry Coyne's book, cited above, and continue with many well-written and documented books in the popular scientific literature. There is also another reason, and that is that is useless to argue either major or minor points of the theory, citing evidence, when the real problem is on a different level. That is, most people who refuse to accept the evidence for evolution by natural selection do so not because of this or that point has not been adequately addressed, but because he or she has a religious view of the world that includes biblical literalism, which is incompatible with most of modern science. Argumentation without a general agreement on world view is futile. And I believe that the problem is a political one and not scientific at all, and as a libertarian I do not believe that it is my place to use the force of law to change another's beliefs. I have written my opinion about the issue of evolution and science education here .

Glenn Beck's problem is not that he does not accept the evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection. Although it is clear that he does not. His problem lies in that he attacked the theory citing a half-baked non-observation as evidence against it, and that indicated to anyone who knows the theory well that he does not know it or understand it in even the most rudimentary sense. This is not uncommon – as Coyne indicates in his book (quoted above). The purpose of this blog entry is not to change anyone's mind about evolution, but to discuss this common error that becomes the logical fallacy commonly called “the straw man argument” with amazing frequency.

The sum total of Glenn Beck's argument against evolution was that it was not likely to be true because , he said, “I haven't seen a half-person, half-monkey, yet.” When this statement came out of Beck's mouth, I shouted “Thank you, Bishop Wilberforce!” at the radio, because this was so reminiscent of the early arguments against evolution. From that time until this, the caricature of a blend of two species is, well, specious. It is a straw man put up in order to mock the opposition and to implant in the minds of listeners (or at least those who are ignorant of the actual theory of evolution) an idea that has never been a part of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Either Glenn was not paying attention during his high school biology class--a distinct possibility--or he is intentionally making a mockery of the theory in order to woo the most ignorant of his listeners. This second motive is also a possibility, however, it was not well-thought out, for in so doing he probably caused the majority of his listeners (including a NY News Tea Party reporter here) to do a double-take.

For those who have forgotten, or those who have never learned it, here is the theory of evolution by natural selection in a nutshell: The variation that we see among living organisms today arose gradually over time, brought about by a process called natural selection. There are five ideas that are necessary to any explanation of Darwin's theory and they are: evolution, speciation, the common ancestry of all life, natural selection, and gradualism. Evolution means change over time, and according to evolutionary theory, those changes in the genetic code of existing populations that create traits that give certain individuals a reproductive advantage – that is, traits that make it more likely for that individual to survive to reproduce – will become more common in the population over time. This change in the gene-frequencies of a population indicate that it is evolving.

Most of the time these changes in gene-frequencies occur naturally over time because successful reproducers pass those advantageous traits to their offspring, whereas those individuals who do not successful reproduce have no effect on the future genetic makeup of the population. This is natural selection*. Speciation usually occurs because enough variation occurs between two populations of the same species that they can no longer reproduce with one another. This is usually due to two populations being isolated from one another for some reason. Although speciation is arguably the most spectacular of the phenomena that the theory of evolution by natural selection explains, it is not the only one, or even the most common. But speciation is an effect of natural selection that has occurred many times over the history of life of earth, and that does mean that all species share a common ancestry; that is a link with every other species that is either a close relationship or a distant one, depending on how far back in the history of two species the divergence occurred.

*Although natural selection is by far the most common mechanism for evolutionary change in a population, it is not the only one: others such as gene-flow among populations, and the loss of genetic variation due to population bottlenecks and founder effect do have some influence.

For the purposes of our discussion about Glenn Beck's straw-man, the most important word in the paragraphs above is population. Populations evolve, individuals do not. That is because an individual's phenotype is fixed by the particular genotype he or she inherited. Some changes in gene expression do change over the lifetime, but an individual does not suddenly acquire half a genome from somewhere else. Therefore, one would not expect to ever see an individual that displays half the phenotype of one extant species and half the phenotype of another. Rather, if a biologist predicts that two species are closely related, she then expects to find many common traits between, and some important differences. Those common traits point to an ancestor species that is common to both of the related species. That ancestor species may or may not still be flourishing on earth. Extinction is also an important phenomenon that is predicted by the theory of evolution by natural selection.

With respect to human beings, monkeys do share common ancestry, which is indicated by enough common traits so that both monkeys and human beings are in the same taxonomic order: monkeys and humans are both primates. However, the most closely extant species to which humans are related are the great apes, all of whom are classified in the same taxonomic family – hominidae – which means “human-like”. The closest extant related species to humans is the chimpanzees. However, this does not mean that humans evolved from chimps. Nor does it mean that one should expect to find a half-chimp, half-person in the fossil record. Rather what we do find is that humans and chimps show a greater than 98% commonality in our genomes. We have enough traits in common to know that we had a common ancestor that walked the earth rather recently.

Another facet of Glenn Beck's mistake is that he equates some form of Lamarckism, the idea that evolution occurs by the passing of acquired traits to future generations through the genome, with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. If this occurred, then one could say that individuals evolve. This is a philosophical mistake that Glenn actually shares with the communists, who promoted the neo-Lamarckian ideology proposed by Lysenko. This fallacy is necessary to the modern collectivists, but the Darwinian theory of evolution is not. Darwinisms is in fact at odds with it. But that discussion is part of the next blog entry on this topic. Stay tuned!

Glenn Beck's Monkey Show: Overview

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."
--Alexander Pope: Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 15.

If a little learning is dangerous, then no knowlege at all can be positively deadly. Or at least, embarrassing.

Yesterday, Glenn Beck made a fool of himself on his radio program.


As with many bright people, he did so by assuming he understood something that he did not. He did what he tells his audience not to do by making a judgment about a scientific theory on the fly, and it was clear that he had no clue what the modern theory of evolution actually is and what it is not.


For the record, I listen to Beck several times a week, although I have been listening less and less this fall because it is getting harder and harder to actually hear Glenn make his point. This is because in the past year he has brought on a friend from Texas, Pat Gray, who generally distracts Glenn from his more serious points, causing a number of listeners, including me, to reach for the dial. Pat Gray appears to be far less thoughtful than Glenn, and is clearly not as well read. When the banter begins, it devolves quickly and the show becomes frustratingly difficult to follow, and downright silly. I don't have time for that, and clearly from discussions with other thoughtful patriots, neither do they.


That said, it is quite clear that Glenn Beck is not stupid, as many of the leftist blogs claim. The so-called discussions of this issue at places like the Huffington Post come across as equally ignorant and worse, devolve to ad hominen statements. There is a large difference between rational disagreement and the kind of mean-spirited, angry, profanity-driven drivel that the lefties regularly spew out against Beck. However, this does not excuse Glenn from the equally ignorant attack on the theory of evolution that he made during a clearly ADD hour on his show yesterday.


Most laymen do not understand the modern theory of evolution. It is not that it is not understandable or even all that complex, though wading through the plethora of evidence for it takes time and study. It is that it has either been taught badly or not taught at all. This is the fault of the generally poor science teaching that goes on in America's K-12 institutions, private and public. With very few exceptions K-12 science education has treated the discipline as a series of disconnected facts that must be committed to memory and regurgitated, rather than as a method for discovering how the physical universe works using observation through our senses and their extensions. It is also the fault of a political divide that has been handled badly by scientists, creating a hostility towards all science among those who are expected to pay for it all without having the faintest idea of what it actually is. (I will have more to say about this later).


Collectivists and progressives at the extremes of both political parties have seized on this divide, and have used it to their own political advantage. On the right, it has been used to promote a kind of populist know-nothingism that lets those pols manipulate the religious passion of their constituents for Christian dominionism and theocracy. On the left, it has been used to promote an agenda of thinly disguised eugenics in which a scientific theory has been hijacked to bolster a collectivist ideology and a socialist agenda. (I have already said a bit about this here). It is clear that neither left nor right has the intellectual high ground here, nor the moral decency to promote and appreciate thoughtful and intelligent ideation among their constituents. A pox on both their houses!


Glenn Beck's ignorant diatribe betrayed several problems. One is that his notion of the scientific theory of evolution betrays an ignorance not only of the theory itself, but of science in general, and how the work of science is done. It is clear that because he has heard twaddle from equally ignorant others, he believes he knows what it is without having actually studied it. He would not make such statements in regard to areas he actually knows something about. So he has made an error of knowlege compounded by a certain ignorant arrogance, in that he did not question his lack of education in the field of science. Clearly his motto to "question everything" was left behind as he thoughtlessly spewed forth, compounding his embarrassment of ignorance with every sentence.


Glenn also has a problem organizing his thoughts that was clearly evident here, and in other monologues. His reasoning starts out with a good series of propositions and then his thinking stops at a certain point, and he rarely gets to the logical conclusion of his thought. Often he makes connections that seem to be leading somewhere interesting, and then he veers off, unable to complete the line of reasoning. He stops short and leaves his listeners in confusion or yelling at radio, "finish it, man!" Part of the problem here is the aforementioned Pat Gray, who nit-picks unimportant diction rather than letting the reasoning come to the conclusion of thought before cleaning up the proposition. Another part of the problem is that ADD that I mentioned earlier. Glenn has made no secret of it, as indeed he can't. Glenn distracts himself, going down rabbit-holes, and on snipe-hunts of thought, chasing extraneous thoughts prior to making a conclusion. And being that distractable means that the conclusion is never made.


Finally, Glenn Beck has a philosophical problem, and this is the most important. Although he reasons well up to a point, he often cannot bring the conclusion home, because he cannot or will not take his ideas to the most logical conclusion. This is not limited to his attacks on science, but can also be heard in other topics he discusses. For example, if Beck really believes in the sovereignty of the individual, which is clearly stated in the 9 Principles of his 9-12 project, then he cannot continue to advocate for the social control that is part and parcel of conservative political thought. Although he says that he is libertarian in thought, and that he trusts the American people, he cannot quite match his thought to those words. Lately, as Glenn has become increasingly a preacher in the Great Awakening style of Jonathan Edwards or George Whitfield, I have begun to suspect that this inability to bring home the most logical conclusion to his chain of reasoning may lie in the contradiction between the idea that human beings are fit for liberty, and his religious notion that man is fatally flawed by original sin.

Two of these problems are weighty enough to deserve blog entries of their own, and so I shall go into much more detail about Glenn's fundamental misunderstanding and ignorance with respect to the modern theory of evolution in my second part. In the third, I shall address the philosophical knots he mananged to contort himself into with his claim that those who accept the evidence for evolution by natural selection must deny the inherent nature of the rights of man. The ignorance of the first leads directly to the ignorance of the second. That is, the misunderstanding and misapprehensions that Glenn speaks with regard to what Dennett calls "Darwin's dangerous idea", lead directly to his ignorance of the history of the idea, and the wicked stepchildren it has been distorted to create: Social Darwinism and Lysenkoism. The first, in the hands of the American Progressives, gave us eugenics and forced sterilization, and the second, in the hands of Soviet Communists, gave us the planned famine that killed millions of Kulaks.

These discussions are worth taking a bit of time and blog-space to have, because the issues that Darwinian evolution bring up, and the ignorance of what the theory actually means, is widespread, and not limited to one political pole. If the religious right has used such ignorance to advance their cause of social control, the left has turned a scientific theory into a dogma and ideology to be decided not by the evidence, and not by hypothesis testing, but through the ideology of consensus science, something that never was and never can be. This has grave implications for new and unfounded pseudo-scientific theory that is more akin to religion than it is to science: global warming. The secular, collectivist left is using this idea to advance their own agenda of social control. And the implications are just as totalitarian as anything your hot-farting fundamentalist dominionist can dream up.

More on Mixed Premises: Part II--Common Themes

This is part II of a discussion piece related to my Sunday July 18 blog entry entitled Mixed Premises: Glenn Beck, Collective Guilt and "the Jews". Yesterday, in More on Mixed Premises: Part I--Challenging Assumptions, I outlined the differences between Judaism and Christianity that I believe are the most important and most commonly misunderstood, so that they contribute to Jews and Christians in dialogue talking past one another. In today's post, I am going to discuss three common themes in the comments on the Mixed Premises post, found both here and on my Facebook link to it.

Part II: Discussion of Common Themes in Comments

כל מחלוקת שהיא לשם שמיים, סופה להתקיים; ושאינה לשם שמיים, אין סופה להתקיים

"All controversy waged in the name of heaven shall be of lasting worth,

but that not in the name of heaven shall not be of lasting worth."

--Pirkei Avot--The Ethics of the Fathers--5:20

My blog post on Sunday discussed Glenn Beck's anti-semmitic comment, an aside the appeared to assign collective responsibility for the death of Jesus to "the Jews." I used the example of this blunder--and I do think it was a blunder--to illustrate what happens when one does not examine, question and discard premises that are in conflict with one's bed-rock principles and values. Before I go further in this discussion, I want to emphasize two things:

1. I believe this is exactly the case for Glenn Beck. I don't think this clearly anti-semitic statement, made as an aside, can be used to claim that Glenn Beck is an anti-semite. I don't believe that the comment is a thoughtful expression of his position on the charge of deicide against "the Jews". Rather, as I wrote in the first essay on this issue, I think that his statement was the result of an unquestioned premise that he probably absorbed with his mother's milk, an unnamed collectivism that he applies reflexively and only in this particular context of his Christian religion; the context of his literal interpretation of the trial and death of Jesus as taken from a conflated version of the gospel accounts. Since I only know the man from what I have heard him say over the period of four years, I could be wrong. However, I do listen closely to what people say on a variety of issues and I don't think I am wrong in this instance.

2. I believe that this discussion is "for the sake of heaven." That is, it creates the opportunity for all who participate--including me--to examine our own premises, to question them, and to determine if any should be discarded in favor of the premises that are more consistent with our most deeply held values and principles. Therefore the discussion should remain on the level of ideas and concepts, and it should not deteriorate into attacks on persons, name-calling and other manifestations of sinat channam--causeless hatred.

Given that, I also believe that Glenn Beck has moved on with respect to this issue. That is, he is either unaware or unwilling to make himself aware of the real cause of the controversy, which has nothing to do with the politics of the people who tried to call him on it. I am sorry for him for this, because had he not been a celebrity, had he not conflated those who hate him with those who wished to see the matter corrected, he could have learned something important, something that would have made him a better man. "Who is wise?" asks Ben Zoma, "He who learns from all men."

We can learn from one another, even if Beck misses the opportunity.

The Discussion Its-Own-Self:

I. The most common response I received to my concern about Beck's remark, while varying in wording, went something like this: "I watched the whole video and I did not get that Beck made any mistake other than the use of a bad metaphor.

Response: The fact that this was the bad use of an example was part of my point. That it was so obvious to Beck--and to many of his listeners--that the charge of deicide is a fact, is my entire point. That Beck did not clarify this specific example, indicates that he did not see it as the problem. Rather, the problem to him was the entire idea of "collective salvation." And I agree that this is a problem, however, his lack of clarification made it possible for listeners to hear the remark either way. As I said, it was the fact that Beck approved Pat Gray's interpretation that "the Jews wanted him [Jesus] executed" on the Friday morning radio show that made the whole thing much more offensive. He never did complete the thought that began with "I'm saying that in a perverted world--", demonstrating that the remark was not important, that he never did understand the reason that many of us objected to the original remark. And this in turn demonstrates that Beck is indeed operating from mixed premises. That was the thesis that I was discussing.

II. The second most common objection to my essay was to my statement that Glenn Beck does not know the history behind the charge of deicide, and therefore he does not get how serious an issue it is to most American Jews. I was told by several people that they believed he does know the history, because he objects to National Socialism as a philosophy that leads inevitably to mass murder.

Response: I agree that 1) National Socialism (and all forms of collectivism) leads inevitably to mass murder; and 2) that Glenn Beck knows that history. However, I do NOT believe that he knows the extreme nature of the deicide accusation and the 1500 years of horror that it created. If he got that, he would certainly have hastened to clarify his example for his audience, if not immediately on the TV program, then certainly on the Friday program. Of course, I could posit the much more serious charge that Glenn does know the history of the deicide charge and refused to clarify in order to spare himself and other Christians a vicarious discomfort for the past, but that would mean that Glenn is willing to fudge on the truth. I certainly hope that is not the problem, although his defensiveness on the matter may indicate that it is.

I have noticed at various levels of Jewish-Christian dialogue that some Christians become as uncomfortable with a discussion of the truth about how Christian institutions treated Jews in the past, as if they were personally responsible for it in the here and now. Of course, that is also an indication of the very mixed premises we have been discussing. That is, if they feel guilty, they accept the premise that collective responsibility and guilt is correct. The answer is not that Jews should stop telling the truth about the history, but that those people who feel inappropriate guilt should discard such collectivist ideas. They can no more be guilty of persecution of Jews in the past, than Jews now can be guilty of the death of Jesus.

III. The third most common statement goes something like: "We all know that it was not the Jews that killed Jesus, it was the Romans that did it." Some people also stated that the Jews present in the crowd on the day of Jesus' death were responsible, even if present day Jews are not.

Response:

The short response to both of these statements is: Why is it so important to assign blame for the death of Jesus? Even if the gospel accounts are literally true in every detail, who killed Jesus should not matter to Christians because of their particular theology of the meaning of his death. The answer of a Christian should be: "We killed Jesus by our sins." Which illustrates that Christianity is itself mired in the premise of collective guilt and punishment, which seriously undermines the competing Christian claim of personal responsibility. There are the mixed premises again. And this is an issue that only Christians can sort out for themselves.

I am not a scholar of Christian scripture, but my knowledge of Jewish law and custom makes me doubt that the story is literally true. In fact, I did take a course in Christian scripture in which we used "The Synopsis of the Four Gospels" which lays out the same story from each gospel side by side in four columns on the page. It is quite interesting how many differences there are in the four accounts. My professor (a Catholic priest) taught that these accounts each had a larger theological point and should not be read literally. I realize that this will anger the literalists in Christianity, but there it is.

I don't think "the Romans" put Jesus to death any more than did "the Jews." Roman soldiers under the command of a Roman governor did. Most of the Roman soldiers doing occupation duty in Judea at that time were freed slaves from the wars with Gaul, and they probably had no clue about why they were executing Jews. Jesus was just one of the many thousands of Jews crucified during the time 'the Senate and People of Rome' governed Judea. Most Romans probably had little to no idea about where Judea was and why Rome was governing it. Even those in the Senate who did, probably thought of Judea as an abstraction and nothing more.

More to the point, no matter how much the governor supposedly abjured his own responsibility--"I did what the ubiquitous they told me to do"--it was his, not theirs. If he gave the order, he--and he alone--was responsible. With great power comes great responsibility. I doubt the literal truth of that portion of the story as well, because it would be a rare Roman who would care much about justice towards barbarians, and the history of Pontius Pilate indicates that he was a brutal governor to the point where even the Roman Senate--hardly the sensitive types--thought it was excessive and removed him from office.
So even if you take the gospel accounts to be true, an individualistic assessment of responsibility would require you to assign the blame to Pontius Pilate, and the over all responsibility to those who gave him power, the Roman Senate.

However, this belated excuse that "the Jews" are cleared from blame because "the Romans" killed Jesus, is in itself an evasion. Perhaps, the evasion takes place because present day Christians become very uncomfortable with the actions of previous Christians, which is also an error of assigning collective responsibility (see Response to Point I above). Or perhaps it is an evasion of the bloody history of Christianity, which was just as inevitable as the bloody history of any other religion or state that reasons from a collectivist philosophy or from mixed premises. But as an individualist, I do not assign responsibility to present-day Christians for the past sins of Christians against Jews or anyone else.

I think that blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus was just an excuse to rob, plunder, rape and kill the strangers living among the Christians of Europe. It has the same root as the excuses that Che used to kill dissenters in Cuba, or that Stalin used to starve the Kulaks off their land. That collectivism leads to this bloody end over and over again in history cannot be disputed. That is why I agree with Glenn Beck that collectivism is evil.

And this is why I wish that Beck would open his eyes and see past the accusers to the accusation itself, and acknowledge his mixed premises. He has a lot of influence, which gives him great power. And with great power comes great responsibility.

More on Mixed Premises: Part I--Challenging Assumptions

As a blogger, I am always gratified when there is discussion of my posts. Discussion brings out differing points of view, new insights, as well as the intellectually stimulating process of further thinking, the clarification of the writing, and the countering of arguments. Such has been the case with the post I published on Sunday 7/18 concerning Glenn Beck's mixed premises. I am well aware that my counters, my clarifications and my thought will not necessarily change the closely held opinions of others, and especially when they involve the issue of religion which is so basic to many people's thought that it goes unquestioned and is therefore difficult to discuss passionately without hurt feelings and misunderstandings. And although sometimes I do change my own opinions in response to these arguments, more often the synthesis of ideas in my own mind that occurs due to them leads me to a better understanding and better expression of my thesis.

In this spirit then, I would like to clarify and discuss some of the common themes that have arisen in the comments I have received here and on my Facebook link to the same post. This essay will be presented in two parts. First, as I have listened more to Glenn Beck on this topic, as well as reading the comments, I have noticed a certain assumption--that there is something called Judeo-Christian tradition--that has led to a good deal of unclarity about the very real differences between Judaism and Christianity. Although most Jews have a reasonably good idea of the differences, most Christians--as a result of being the dominant religious culture--are not aware of the fundamental differences that make Judaism and Christianity different religions entirely, even if both are Western in root and thought.

PART I: CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS

Hot August night and the leaves hangin' down
And the grass on the ground smellin' - sweet
Move up the road to the outside o' town
And the sound o' that good gospel beat
Sits a ragged tent, where there ain't no trees
And that gospel group, tellin' you and me

It's Love, Brother Love
Say Brother Love's Travellin' Salvation Show-ow (halle-halle)
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies
And everyone goes, 'cause everyone knows, brother Love's show
(Neil Diamond, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, 1969)

In listening to Glenn Beck I have noticed a shift in the emphasis of his themes, so that as he approaches his big Washington Restoring Honor Rally, it has become "Brother Glenn's Traveling Salvation Show". I have also noticed that he tends to treat Judaism and Christianity as one thing--Judeo-Christian--emphasis on the Christian--and from the Jewish perspective, he adds insult to injury by assuming that Jews are in agreement with the Christian gospel. His focus, though presented broadly as "America has to get back to God", is really that America has to accept the Gospel. I have heard him make statements refering to "Judeo-Christianity" that give me reason to believe that he is not only ignorant of the real differences between Judaism and Christianity, but that he shares the common assumption that Judaism is a sect of American Christianity, a sort of Christian-lite. Harmless, I suppose, for the most part, except that this ignorance and this assumption have lately caused him to make certain statements that revive the ancient deicide charge against Jews, and have also caused him to misperceive the reaction to these anti-semitic remarks.

It is certainly true that Judaism and Christianity both arose from the same roots--the tribal Israelite religion of the Hebrew Scriptures--but it is not true that Christianity either arose from or replaced modern Judaism. Rather, both arose at about the same time--Judaism being the elder by a few centuries--and in response to the same historical events, making both truly Western religions. (I would argue that Islam is not truly Western, though it is often given that designation, but that's another essay). Modern Judaism, which has its roots in the Babylonian exile and matured due to the Roman wars with Judea and the Second Exile, is a complete religion in its own right; it is not Christianity "lite", nor is it merely a precursor and foundation to Christianity. Although there are many differences between them, the most foundational of them have to do with each religion's understanding of human beings, to the nature of the Divine, and to the nature of law and faith. In broad strokes, these differences are as follows:

1) Rabbinic Judaism understands the human being to have free will, and to be responsible for his or her own actions, and to be expected to make decisions about those actions based on the importance of life as it is right here. There is no notion of original sin in Judaism; a person is judged solely on his or her own moral choices, and the standard of value is life on earth; there is no heaven or hell although some Jews have a notion of a "world to come" in which all men live by divine law.

Although normative Christianity also posits free will, it is incomplete because of the doctrine of original sin which posits that human choices are by nature skewed towards evil, which is why a human being cannot obtain goodness on his own and needs the blood sacrifice of Jesus in order to obtain it. Normative Christianity has a well-thought out notion of an afterlife and of eternal reward and punishment that supercedes in importance any earthly consequences.

2) Rabbinic Judaism does not have a well-characterized theology of the nature of the Divine; the existence of G-d is assumed, but not described. It is quite possible to be a good Jew without having any specific notion of the Divine, or any such belief at all, and many modern Jews believe that the Eternal dwells within the human being, rather than outside the universe. Rabbinic Judaism does not posit Divine omniscience and omnipotence. The Rabbinic tradition, and more formally, the Jewish philosophers of the European Enlightenment both convey the understanding of the amorality inherent in such a being.

Christianity, on the other hand, has many different well-developed theologies about the nature of their Trinity--which has made some creative and some destructive tendencies in the relationships among its sects--nearly all of which posit Divine omniscience and omnipotence. These theologies create for Christianity much lively thought and argument about the nature of good and evil, the quasi-dualistic nature of the universe, and faith and works, among others. This might be a reason for the multiplicity of different sects within Christianity and the the arguments about which sects are legitimately Christian and when a sect has become a different religion entirely. Whereas Rabbinic Judaism, without this theological specificity, has three broad sects related to differing views of the relationship of the individual to Jewish Law. This second difference is, I suspect, a result of the third difference below.

3) The Jewish religion in broad strokes is based on the mythos of a Divine covenant(contract) with a particular people, B'nei Israel, and since the basis of a contract is specific actions, Judaism does not rest on agreement to intellectual beliefs, but rather to agreement to specific actions codified in Halachah--Jewish Law. The Rabbis--the founders--of modern Judaism placed this Law in the realm of human action on earth ("It is NOT in heaven"), because they said it was not necessary to any being that does not have free will and freedom of action. The law (Halachah) and the teaching (Torah) belong to us, here and we a responsible to make our contribution to its implementation. Judaism is therefore orthopraxic--a religion of right action. It is also particularistic--Jews do not believe that others have the same obligations or purposes; rather they have other Divine obligations and purposes.

On the other hand, Christianity is based on the concept of the universal blood sacrifice of Jesus that brings all human beings in right relationship with the Trinity. According to Christianity, law is secondary to this atonement, done not from the merit of human beings but from grace. In order to participate in this atonement, each person must agree to "believe" in it, accepting specific intellectual beliefs--doctrines and dogmas--that bring him into the community of believers. From that point on--in varying degrees according to sect--Christians must act in certain virtuous ways modeled on the sacrifice of Jesus, but Christianity is primarily a religion of orthodoxy--right belief. It is universalistic in that Christians have a mission to cause everyone to accept these beliefs and thus attain salvation.

The bottom line for me is that Jews accept that there can be many covenants that lead different people to salvation, and Jews are concerned about their own particular covenant; whereas Christians accept only one covenant that supercedes all others, and are concerned that everyone accept that one. Jews are more concerned about right action that leads to more abundant life in the here and now; Christians are more concerned about right beliefs that put each human being in alignment with the atonement of Jesus' death and will be rewarded by eternal life in the eschatological there and then.

Both religions secondarily recognize the primary concerns of the sister religion, it is the primary emphasis that creates the fundamental difference. Both religions, in their normative forms and sects, focus on the individual and his or her responsibilty to Law and Action (Judaism) or Grace and Faith (Christianity). However, of the two, Judaism defines virtue as action that leads to life in the here and now, and Christianity defines virtue as sacrifice of earthly desires for heavenly gain.

Both religions are western--having borrowed or developed Greek logical argument, as well as the Greek emphasis on thought that leads to specific actions. However, Judaism borrowed more heavily from Greek logic and rationalism, and Christianity borrowed more heavily from Greek Gnosticism. These differences are probably due to the nascent time periods for each religion.

Again, I want to emphasize that this is a summary of what I see as the critical differences between modern Judaism and Christianity, done in very broad strokes. Whole books have been written just on the issues I touched on in this post, and volumes have been written about the historical periods and philosophical arguments that underpin each. I am also aware that neither religion is monolithic, and that Christianity, in particular, has a multiplicity of sects that differ among themselves in regard to the relative importance of these ideas, among other things. These arguments have indeed made Europe a bubbling and sometimes brutal cauldron of ferment and change.

Further, I am writing about these two religions from a different perspective than most, being more concerned with and knowlegable about Judaism than Christianity. I am not interested here in opening a debate about the relative merits of the two religious traditions, although I am sure my thoughts on this are clear to readers. And I have little regard for the argument that the United States is a "Christian" country; from 1791 onward,when the First Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, it became the supreme law of the land that the United States has NO established religion, and that everyone (including Brother Love) has the right to freely exercise of any religion he or she chooses. Finally, I am not open to comments that attempt to convert me to Christianity. I have chosen my path, and my feet are firmly on the Way of Torah. This part of the discussion was written for the sole purpose of laying common groundwork so that a fruitful discussion of Beck's remarks, the reactions to it, and his assumptions vs. reality can be entertained.

Mixed Premises: Glenn Beck, Collective Guilt and "the Jews"

Norma Rae:You a Jew?
Reuben Warshawsky: Beg your pardon?
Norma Rae: Are you a Jew?
Reuben Warshawsky: Born and bred.
Norma Rae: I never met a Jew before.
Reuben Warshawsky: How ya doin'? . . .
Norma Rae: Well, what makes you different?
Reuben Warshawsky: History.

(From the Movie Norma Rae, 1979)

History. That is what defines the difference between how a Jew--however secular--thinks about anti-semitic statements and how a non-Jew thinks about them. History. That is why many non-Jews are mystified by what Jews consider to be anti-semitic. It's history. The history of European Jewry that even American Jews seem to carry in their DNA and the history that Americans thankfully have not experience and know nothing about.

This difference in understanding is exempified by the popular radio talk-show host Glenn Beck, and his TV Christian testimony, and a crucial remark that probably seemed innocuous to him, but was disturbing to his Jewish listeners. In the interest of full disclosure, I do listen to Glenn Beck frequently. I am not crazy about his current revivalist mood, and I am not interested in his religious opinions, but I do admire his ability to make connections that are not obvious, and from them to discuss what is happening to the Constitution of the United States. I often agree with his assessment of the people and the actions that are making the news but my definition of the terms and my reasoning is very different from Beck's because his morality is definitively collectivist and Christian and mine is definitively individualist and rational. And yet, being a Jew and knowing the history, I shuddered at his remark.

On his Tuesday July 13, 2010 TV show, Beck dicussed the issue of collective salvation as presented by Black Liberation Theology. Part of the connection between liberation theology and Marxism is the idea that salvation is not individual, nor can it be attained by individual choice, rather it is collective, and therefore the initiation of force against individuals in order to "save" them can be morally justified. In liberation theology in general, Jesus is identified as the ultimate victim, and thus only victims have spiritual value and are among the elect. They, in turn, by forcing the oppressors ( usually identified as white, male, or wealthy) to "give back what they took", can save them as well. Since this salvation is collective, one does not have to be among the actual oppressed to be saved, rather one merely has to belong to some "oppressed" class or group as identified by those who promulgate this idea. (Jews, though certainly oppressed for millennia, never make the collectivist cut).

The problem is that such an idea also assigns collective responsibility over generations, and promotes the notion of collective punishment. There is no place for the individual moral choices that promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The "oppressed" are good by definition, and the "oppressors" are evil by definition, regardless of the actual actions of individuals so defined. This kind of collectivist morality has always led to mass torture and murder of the second group by the first.

In the segment of Glenn Beck's TV show on Fox News that is in question, Beck first plays a video of the founder of Black Liberation Theology, James Cone. (Full segment is available at JIDF. I do not agree with JIDF's politics nor their assessment of the Glenn Beck remark). Glenn Beck's full response to Cone deals with the Christian theology of the atonement by the crucifixion of Jesus.

Note: Jews DO NOT agree with the doctrine of original sin that was posited by the early Christians in order to explain the need for the crucifixion. Judaism teaches that the presence of human beings on the earth is very good -- tov meod--and that human beings are endowed with free will, which means that each person must make choices and it is the nature of those choices that determine whether he is good or evil. This is a religious expression of individual responsibility. This idea evolved over time within the Israelite religion, and became normative in very early Rabbinic Judaism.

In his response to Cone, while discussing the Christian doctrine of the cross, Beck begins by saying:

"This is kind of complex, because Jesus did identify with the victims. But Jesus was not a victim. He was a conqueror...Jesus conquered death. He wasn't victimized. He chose to give his life....If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would've come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did. That's an abomination." (The Glenn Beck Show, Tuesday, July 13, 2010--at approximately 6 minutes into the segment. Emphasis mine).

Here is a video of this crucial statement. It is in its own context, and can be understood just from this clip:

The last few words of this statement indicate not what liberation theology says about Jesus and the Jews, but what Glenn Beck appears to believe about the crucifixion of Jesus and the Jews: that "the Jews" were indeed responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. For him, it is not a matter of the responsibility of some people or some Jews, but it is the responsibility of "the Jews." The use of the collective noun "the Jews" is an assignment of collective responsibility. Beck did not continue this line of reasoning, but rather went on to discuss the difference between Black Liberation Theology and normative Christian theology regarding the blood atonement of Jesus' death. His offhand remark about what "they [the Jews] did" was never clarified. And although at this point it is possible to imagine that since this was not Beck's main point, he did not choose his words carefully, that is not how many Jews took it.

To many, many Jews--the liberal, the conservative, the libertarian--the remark made it difficult if not impossible to listen any further to what Beck had to say. I am one of them. The reason for this? History.

The charge of Deicide--the crime of killing a god--was first leveled at Jews by the fathers of the early Church, and was made more explicit following Constantine. The code of Justinian imposed legal handicaps and penalties for this "crime" collectively on the Jews of the Roman empire nearly five centuries after the death of Jesus, which indicates that these Christian theologians and leaders thought that the collective responsibility is borne by Jews across the generations. Augustine wrote that Jews must be made miserable forever for this "crime." The Anti-Defamation League of B'nei B'rith (ADL) characterizes the charge of deicide as one of the four big lies about Jews that have caused the most persecution of our people down through the centuries. Good Friday was generally 'Bad Friday" for the Jews of Europe, as Christians of various denominations attended church and learned every year that the Jews are eternally responsible for the suffering and death of Jesus. The Catholic Church approved the following prayer for the "perfidious Jews" as part of the Tridentine Good Friday Service until 1955:

"Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. ('Amen' is not responded, nor is said 'Let us pray', or 'Let us kneel', or 'Arise', but immediately is said:) Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness."

Such prayers, as well as the reading of the Passion, in which "the Jews" call for the death of Jesus, were not likely to inspire in the hearts of the Christian faithful any charity for their Jewish neighbors, and in fact many instances of the destruction of Jewish life and property occurred following Good Friday services across Christian Europe over the centuries.

Knowing this history in all the gory details means that Jews really hear what is being said even in passing, and apply to it all of the background that is the persistence of memory.

American Christians, who are generally ignorant of this history because it did not happen here--thanks to the wisdom of our Founders--do not hear it, they do not get it.

And Beck does not get it either. On his Friday radio program, Beck reacted to the accusations in the press and on blogs that he had made an antisemitic remark by reiterating the issue of liberation theology's doctrine of the atonement, saying that according to that heresy, Jesus' death did nothing salvific and that the empty tomb means nothing, because it is the "oppressed" who are the collective messiah, and their actions to take back from the "oppressors" what is theirs by force is what achieves salvation. ( BTW: Beck is NOT wrong here. This is an accurate summary of liberation theology). Then he goes on to say:

Beck: "What does the press report? That I said that Jesus had to come back and 'get them Jews.'

No! I'm saying that in a perverted world, in a perverted gospel that's exactly--'Glenn Beck says that the Jews killed Jesus! It was the Romans that killed Jesus!' Pat? . . ."

Pat Gray: (giggling) "Well, technically the Romans--"

Beck: "Yes!"

Pat Gray: "--carried out the will of the Great Sanhedrin--the Jews--wanted him executed--"

Beck: "Now does that make me--all of a sudden--anti-Jewish?"

Pat Gray: "No!"

Beck: "That's what they're gonna say!"

Pat Gray: "That's ridiculous ...It's ridiculous that ..."

Beck: "That's what they're gonna say . . .There's no one more pro-Israel and more pro-Jew than I am! I can't take it anymore! The lies! The bearing of false witness. Here's the truth. From Barack Obama, from Jim Wallace, from Van Jones--I'm going to play audio for you today that should shake you to your core. THIS IS the reason why they are doing these things. . .we found their manifesto and I swear to you this is the real thing. This is their plan . . . but above that is this perversion of religion, this perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . .that's what it is--that there's collective salvation and they'll FORCE you into it. I'll give you that in just a second . . .

(Transcribed by me).

It is clear here that Glenn Beck believes that those accusing him of anti-semitism are doing so because he has attacked the social gospel, liberation theology and collective salvation. And this is true of some of the people attacking him. They are latching onto the statement "the Jews wanted him [Jesus] executed" and "Jesus would've come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did" in order to focus their readers/viewers attention on these collective phrases--"the Jews", "the Jews", "what they did"--rather than on the larger argument that Glenn is making, which is that the doctrine of collective salvation perverts the individual nature of salvation according to normative Christianity. Glenn therefore continues this discussion by getting an evangelical preacher of some note to preach the normative version later on the same program.

BUT . . . that is not what many Jews who hear this are objecting to at all. Speaking for myself as a Jew (with the understanding that a great many Jews would say the same), I could not care less about the Christian doctrine of salvation by the blood atonement of Jesus. I do get that liberation theology is collectivist--and therefore evil--but I also hear those ugly accusations of collective responsibility for the death of Jesus hurled at my people. I hear: "what they [the Jews] did" and "the Jews wanted him executed." And I know from the bloody history of Christian Europe exactly where those charges lead.

When Glenn Beck argues that the Nazis and the Communists preached collective salvation and collective responsibility, he is being accurate. And when he argues that collectivism leads to the deaths of millions he is absolutely right. Because collectivists teach that there is some universal common "good" that trumps the good defined by each individual, they thereby justify forcing the individual to sacrifice for the "good of the collective." Beck condemns collectivism when it comes from the left, from the social gospel and from James Cone. But out of the other side of his mouth, he is unconsciously assigning collective responsiblity to a whole people over two millennia. Apparently, collectivism is not evil when used in the service of Christianity.

And this is the problem with much of the "religious right." They don't even hear the words they are using--words that are painfully obvious to a Jewish ear--words that preach their own brand of collectivism.

It is clear from this that Glenn Beck's worldview is founded on mixed premises. The assignment of collective responsibility and collective punishment is wrong when black liberationists want to take his property in order to "save" him, but when assigning collective responsibility to "the Jews" for the death of Jesus, it must be right--and he cannot be an antisemite--because this is what his religion has taught him from the cradle. He is so unconscious of this glaring contradiction that he cannot question it, nor can he apply his avowed principle--that collectivism is evil--universally to his conclusions. Many of the people on the left, or in the liberationist churches, have the same philosophical problem he has, though they are arguing from the opposite horn of the dilemma. That dilemma is created by the unquestioning adherence to a religious doctrine that has been handed down by tradition--an ugly tradition that has created even uglier results--crusades, pograms, holocaust.

I agree with Beck that collectivism is wrong; the difference between us is that I know that it is evil because it always removes the rights and responsiblilities of individuals, and it removes choice and consequence from human interaction. It ignores the very nature of the human being as an autonomous individual. The use of the concept of collective salvation must always create the role of the annointed--whether they are called "the oppressed", "the proletariat" or "the Christians"--and with it, the role of the damned--whether they be the "oppressors", the "bourgeoise", or "the Jews"--and these assignments are always made on the basis of the class variable--that is what group the person 'belongs to', not by the free association of individuals, but by the arbritrary association of birth. The notion of collective salvation must always come with the notions of collective responsiblity and collective punishment. Whether it is claimed in the name of a god or government, collectivism is always evil.

Beck preaches principles. Here is the principle that he is not applying consistently. That each human being is an individual who by his very nature has the right to life, liberty, and property. That each individual has the ability and the obligation of free will--that he can and must choose between right and wrong--and that each individual is responsible for the outcomes of those choices.

As I have said above, I believe from what Beck has said that he is unconscious of the contradiction between his political and religious beliefs. He appears to be unaware that he denies collective salvation as preached by liberation theology while simultaneously assigning collective responsibility to "the Jews." He does not even hear what he is saying, he does not catch it because it is so "obvious" to him, and he does not really know the bloody history of that particular collectivist notion.

I therefore wish for him the realization of the quote he loves from Jefferson:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

Edited once for typos, incomplete cut-pastes, and clarity.