Wednesday, August 27, 2014

ISIS' British Faithful



http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/08/26/ctw-dnt-paton-walsh-supporters-of-terror.cnn.html

Listen to this London Muslim preacher. I think ISIS is on the verge of overplaying its hand.

And he's got it all wrong ideologically. The battle is not between those who believe in God and those who believe in man, but rather between those who believe their own narrow idea of God should control everyone (the jihadists) and those who believe a society is best when it allows different religions and different secular visions the freedom to co-exist (as long as they don’t harm each other).

Against the jihadists and fundamentalists, we need to stand with pluralism. And we may be having to stand tougher pretty soon. If these folks really want to attack the West directly, I think they will find the West capable of fighting back.

Although I'm usually critical of US bombing campaigns (and was critical of the Iraq war to begin with, which only managed to destabilize Iraq) I'm fully behind any military action of ours that may weaken ISIS. I suspect we're going to be dealing with the loyalists of this new "caliphate" for some time.

And how is London managing to deal with these people? I really do strongly suspect that if ISIS starts launching anything like sustained attacks in Europe, it's going to end badly for the millions of moderate European Muslims caught in the middle.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Leonard Cohen: Staying Power



Cohen back in the day.

I’ve just begun a reread of my tattered copy of Beautiful Losers and notice here online that Leonard Cohen is bringing out a new album for his 80th birthday.

Cohen's tenacity is a wonder and gift. He has given us so much--the ground he’s covered, the class and grace with which he’s covered it; no one compares.

In early celebration of the singer’s birthday, I’m posting some lines and videos. Not to be missed.

E.

I. Cohen in a 1966 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Brilliant:


II. Performing “Hallelujah” in 2009:



III. Cohen’s poem “French and English” from the 1978 book Death of a Ladies Man:

I think you are fools to speak French
It is a language which invites the mind
to rebel against itself causing inflamed ideas
grotesque postures and a theoretical approach
to common body functions. It ordains the soul
in a tacky priesthood devoted to the salvation
of a failed erection. It is the language
of cancer as it annexes the spirit and
installs a tumor in every honeycomb
Between the rotten teeth of French are incubated
the pettiest notions of destiny and the shabbiest
versions of glory and the dreariest dogma of change
ever to pollute the simplicity of human action
French is a carnival mirror in which the
brachycephalic idiot is affirmed and encouraged
to compose a manifesto on the destruction of the sideshow

I think you are fools to speak English
I know what you are thinking when you speak English
You are thinking piggy English thoughts
you sterilized swine of a language that has no genitals
You are peepee and kaka and nothing else
and therefore the lovers die in all your songs
You can’t fool me you cradle of urine
where Jesus Christ was finally put to sleep
and even the bowels of Satan cannot find
a decent place to stink in your flat rhythms of ambition and disease
English, I know you, you are frightened by saliva
your adventure is the glass bricks of sociology
you are German with a license to kill

I hate you but it is not in English
I love you but it is not in French
I speak to the devil but it is not about your punishment
I speak to the table but it is not about your plan
I kneel between the legs of the moon
in a vehicle of perfect stuttering
and you dare to interview me on the matter
of your loathsome destinies
you poor boobies of the north
who have set out for heaven with your mouths on fire
Surrender now surrender to each other
your loveliest useless aspects
and live with me in this and other voices
like the wind harps you were meant to be
Come and sleep in the mother tongue
and be awakened by a virgin
(O dead-hearted turns of particular speech)
be awakened by a virgin
into a sovereign state of common grace

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Who are the Yazidi?



Iconic image of Yazidi angel Melek Taus.

Sadly we can now add genocide to the crimes committed by the radical Sunni movement ISIS. The news out of northern Iraq over recent weeks is heartbreaking in almost every respect, but for those who value religious pluralism the evidence that ISIS is doing its best to exterminate Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities is especially depressing.

According to most reports, Christian Iraqis are given the choice to convert on the spot to Sunni Islam or die. Either that, or they are killed outright without being given the choice of apostasy. For Yazidis, at least in most reports I have read, no choice is offered. The men are killed and the women and children (those deemed worth using at least) are taken as slaves. Some witnesses who’ve managed to escape speak of groups of Yazidis buried alive; at least one report speaks of a pregnant Yazidi woman having being cut open, her womb and unborn child yanked out of her.

As one Yazidi man put it: “These ISIS fighters cry out ‘God is great’, and then do such things. What kind of human beings are they?”

Indeed. It it were me writing the battle cry for ISIS, it would go: “God is great, but our version of Islam is greater!”

The concept of God, and of how God relates to humanity, has clearly gone haywire in this branch of Sunni Islam. ISIS brings not a return to the Islam of the Prophet Mohammed, but yet another modern utopianism run amok. We can add it to the list: Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, Sunni Jihadism.

The crime of genocide against the Yazidi represents a special threat to our human religious inheritance because the Yazidi community is so small. Worldwide there are around 700,000 Yazidis, 93% of which live in the Iraqi province now under ISIS control.

The Yazidi religion is, according to most authorities, a syncretism of elements from Sufism and the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. The creation story they subscribe to includes a first human named Adam, as with the other western monotheisms, but the importance they give angels, particularly the angel they call Melek Taus, puts them more in line with Zoroastrianism and even with ancient Gnosticism.

According to the Yazidi, God created the world and then put it under the command of seven angels, emanations from the Godhead, chief of which is Melek Taus, literally “the Peacock Angel”. That the Yazidi symbolize their chief angel with a peacock has led some to assert flippantly that the Yazidi “worship peacocks”--an explanation about as subtle as would be the assertion that Christians worship doves because the Holy Spirit is symbolized by that bird. The story of Melek Taus is a fascinating one; and, one would think, may have led the Yazidi to a uniquely nuanced understanding of authority.

When God created the first human, Adam, he asked the seven angels to bow down before the new creation. One of the seven, Melek Taus, refused.

“How can I bow to another being!” the angel said to God. “I am from your illumination [i.e., a direct emanation from the Godhead] while Adam is made of dust.”

God accepted this argument,and made Melek Taus leader of the other six angels.

The Yazidi, then, conceive of this highest angel as the power that rules directly over the world, their God being more removed, somewhat as in western Deism. What’s more, human good and ill fortune are meted out by Melek Taus according to his wisdom and will, and it is not proper for humans to question their lot. Good and evil are seen as inherent in every human heart, and individuals may choose one or the other. The Yazidi teach that we are to do as Melek Taus did, and choose the true and good.

Of course this is only a very rough sketch, but it gives some idea of the Yazidi belief system, how it is similar to yet different from what is found in the three Abrahamic religions.

Another striking difference is found in the Yazidi belief regarding their ancestral heritage. According to a tale in one of the two collections of Yazidi scripture, they are descended not from Adam and Eve, but from Adam alone. The story is told that a child was born of Adam from his seed stored in a jar, and when this child grew to adulthood he married an houri. The Yazidi are descendants of this “son of Jar” and the houri. It is presumably for this reason that the Yazidi forbid exogamy, i.e., marriage to someone who is not him- or herself a Yazidi. Likewise one cannot convert to Yazidism, as the religion is that of the people born in this lineage from Adam and the houri.

It is the Yazidi’s worship of Melek Taus, and the story of this angel’s refusal to bow to Adam, that has led their Muslim neighbors to characterize them as “worshippers of Satan”. In both the Christian story and in Islam, the angel Lucifer (or, in Islam, Iblis) refused to submit to God through pride, and was cast down from God’s presence--thus our image of Satan as fallen angel. The Yazidi story however is different, as Melek Taus does not refuse through pride, but through respect for the element of God in himself: in other words, through wisdom. In fact the Yazidi consider that the command to bow down to Adam was God’s way of testing the angels, and that Melek Taus is the only one to have passed the test.

Yazidi beliefs are known to outsiders largely through two texts compiled in the early 20th century: the Book of Revelation and the Black Book. These texts, which most scholars agree were not actually written by Yazidis, contain internal contradictions but have been judged to be generally accurate regarding main beliefs and customs.

Since the first appearance of the sect sometime in the Middle Ages, the Yazidi have been persecuted by their Muslim overlords. The current genocide being practiced by ISIS fanatics however poses a special threat to this faith community. Small Yazidi communities exist in Germany, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, there is a community of several hundred in Lincoln, Nebraska in the US, but the vast majority of Yazidis are now being massacred and enslaved by the barbarians now overrunning northern Iraq.

President Obama’s decision to call for bombing raids in support of the Kurds, Christians and Yazidis against ISIS was overdue. Like many others, I believe our 2003 invasion of Iraq was a grave miscalculation, and that much of the mayhem that has ensued there is a direct result of this initial major blunder. We should not have troops on the ground in Iraq forever, but we should do what we can to beat back the Sunni extremists who are now and always have been our real enemy. The Obama administration shouldn’t have let ISIS get as far as Mosul, much less to within striking reach of the Kurdish capital Erbil.

Eric Mader

FIVE LINKS (and how to help)

1. Check this article at CNN. In the upper left (at least at present) is a link to the full video report from CNN’s Ivan Watson, who accompanied a helicopter supply and rescue operation to Yazidis trapped atop Mt. Sinjar. One of the most striking pieces of video journalism I’ve seen in years.

2. Yazidis in America, thankful for the support they’ve gotten, nonetheless fear their Iraqi community has been left to fall through the cracks of US insistence on a “unified Iraq”. Voice of America reports.

3. Faced with news of what's happening to their family members in Iraq, Yazidis in Nebraska are paralyzed by guilt, reports the LA Times.

4. Son of Yazidi leader calls for British aid.

5. The Catholic organization Caritas: one of the legitimate and reliable ways to help Iraq’s persecuted religious minorities. I would offer more possibilities, but this is the only one I've been able to find that is already up and running in Kurdish territory.



Yazidi man with child in flight from ISIS genocide.


Saturday, August 16, 2014

Yoyo



Ta-An


A man on the sidewalk yelling at the designer sunglasses in the optical shop display window. And I find myself agreeing with him. “Yeah! Fuck those sunglasses! Who do they fucking think they are!” And the sunglasses just sitting there in rows, looking at us like they don’t even hear.

Things are getting out of hand.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Atheist Fundamentalism on the Rise: Don’t let your friends turn newther


Most people of faith will agree: there’s a huge difference between the secular person who isn’t convinced of God’s existence and the atheist who thinks religious people should shut up and that only secularists have anything to say on ethical issues.

A good friend of mine from high school made the following Facebook post recently. I was disheartened to see it. Not that I hadn’t seen plenty such memes in recent years, but coming from him it seemed to be a declaration of sorts.

In recent months I’d engaged in edgy online debates with Steve and several others over the role of religion in America. If Steve’s post especially depressed me, it was because he’d graduated from one of America’s best universities and had always shown himself to be open-minded on the various tribes that battle in the cultural arena. That he’d put this up for his thousand-and-more friends showed he’d grown closer to the militant atheist line. Here he was echoing some of their most tired tropes.

Atheist fundamentalists have gotten the traction they have in recent years in part because they offer such a simple narrative. To agnostics too busy to think through the complexity of the issues, it becomes seductively easy to see the world as neatly divided between those who believe in science and those who believe in Christ.

As it turned out, Steve wasn’t toeing the line I thought. At least he finally explained, pointedly, that his post didn’t quite mean what it seemed to mean. But still, I’ve seen my friend various times on this edge, once averring that the world would be better if Christianity were done away with, other times echoing this or that New Atheist sound bite.

What can one do to keep moderate, secular friends from turning newther [a term I’ve adopted for those who subscribe to or ape the New Atheist mode of discussing religion: explanation here]?

This particular FB discussion covers a lot of ground and raises points some Christians won’t like, but still I think nearly all will find parts of it worthwhile. Exactly what my friend Steve intends by “magic”, I can’t quite grasp, and he has yet to make it clearer.

Eric Mader

STEVE JOHNSON: I'm a believer in efficacy. If magic works, I'd roll with that. Just give me something that works. And I don't mean, after massive interpretations that try to reframe something that didn't work as something that did.


July 21 at 4:25am

ERIC MADER: Steve, the whole of history is and always has been a matter of interpretation and reinterpretation. And the borderline between what you think of as magic and what you think of as science isn't as clear as you take it to be. The fact you believe there is an identifiable object--religion--you can point to as "something that didn't work" in the past is just more proof of the degree to which your thinking it tied to the logic of one particular reinterpretation--that of the 18th and 19th centuries. And yes, for all of us, to one degree or another, our thinking is trammeled to Enlightenment models, because we were all educated in the modern West. But the point is to learn to be conscious of it as a questionable bunch of assumptions that has deviously set our discourse and thought to repeat the same tracks over and over. For us it is an overarching structure, taken for granted, where Science is the bedfellow of Technology, who in turn is the bedfellow of Progress, and where all three keep loving it up to the rocking tunes of the Free Market.

I find this structure, as I say, deeply questionable. Because, hey, that we keep singing this same song with such lame confidence may finally do us in. (And note: Part of this song has always been those few catchy verses where Science and Religion are posited as opposites. And here your meme is singing that same old refrain again, as if, again, we had to choose one or the other. It is a false choice.)

Your meme reverences the man in a lab coat as a potential savior. “If only we’d let him do his work we’d be on track.” That's the implicit message, no? But this reverence for the man in the lab coat is part of our problem. After just a couple hundred years of the Enlightenment culture he represents, here we are literally on the verge of collective suicide. Think about it, Steve. Homo sapiens has been around for 200,000 years, living according to a wide variety of religious codes ("magic") and social structures, but once modern science and the culture of scientism arrive on the scene--here we are at the brink of mass extinction.

All of which is not to say that I’m against science education. Only that I don't see anything in our Enlightenment culture that will get us out of the mess we're now in. I don't see anything there, and I have yet to hear anything from you, Mr. Johnson, that "will work".

Furthermore, when scientism (i.e. science as promoted by the New Atheists) thinks it can offer our culture a more meaningful philosophical ground than religion or theology--in those cases I'll do my damnedest to kick it over. Because then it is trying to replace things it cannot replace. It is being as dumb as Fundamentalist religion, and in fact is a Fundamentalist religion. And it poses a greater threat than the Biblical Fundamentalists.

In short: We cannot escape reinterpretation, which is what culture does. To the extent we think we can throw out things that have been deeply rooted in humanity for eons--to that extent we don't understand humanity. We only put ourselves in deeper peril--prey to utopian pipe dreams like those offered by Bolsheviks or Maoists, themselves children of the Enlightenment who got too excited about science, who got too eager to rid their societies of religion and "backward" cultural norms. July 21 at 11:15pm

STEVE JOHNSON: Actually Eric, I gotta hand it to you. I didn't really think about the dude in the lab coat, nor did I notice there was a cross on the 'chalkboard'. And although I am in technology, I see technology as nothing short of magic in many ways. So considering what my comment was, based on the fact that I only saw the words cognitively, and then posted... here is what I was hoping to convey: Frankly, I don't care what 'thing' we use as a species, as long as it works. If Wands and Spells do the trick, and we can fix what was made wrong, then I am all for it. If prayers to deities of all manners and ilks works, then lets get on our knees, or sit in the lotus position. I couldn't care less. But, lets let efficacy be the guide. Not wishful thinking. There are myriad proofs that science doesn't answer many things. There are myriad proofs that none of our "theories" or "world views" are an answer to any larger or specific question in particular. Why are the bees dying? I want a definitive answer, and I want it to stop. If religion, or magic, or science, or ass wiping gets the answer, so be it. But if you are huge believer in ass wiping (and I presume you are not except in the same way it is effective to you) then let ass wiping rule the day on finding and answering the problems we face. But if it turns out that ass wiping isn't the way, please don't tell me that it did work, but I don't have enough faith, or that I need to run more tests, or that in lab environments it works, just not today. Or that the outrageous side effects of ass wiping although worse than the original problem, did in fact solve the original problem. So, I think, believe it or not, we are exactly on the same page. What you said above is in fact what I believe. The difference is, I have no sacred cows. The markets? Pffft. Epic Failure. Only the those who have the undying faith of a religionist can still believe in them. Science? Pfftt. Its good, maybe our best tool, but it cannot explain so many things its sad. Religions? Ha. Nearly all the concrete facts that Science was able to prove came by fighting off religions. So, Magic? I think I am a buyer. And I don't think Religion qualifies as magic. But pushing a button and something happening might just qualify. Either way, I should get back to my original thought. Efficacy is my 'god' of choosing. If it works, I'm in. And that goes for religion too. If it works, I'm a buyer. If not, I'm out. And the evidence that it works, whichever form of thought you are going to deploy needs to be provable, at some level, without constant reengineering the situation to make the proof be there. July 22 at 6:04am

DEBRA SERBANIC: Bottom line.....it's a comic and each is entitled to their own opinion not trying to fuel the fire. I thought the comic was funny. Like the bible, didn't take it literally. I believe in ass wiping. July 22 at 6:08am

STEVE JOHNSON: I have always believed in the efficacy of ass wiping. July 22 at 6:19am

ERIC MADER: Steve, your argument simply reduces all aspects of culture (and ultimately human being itself) to material efficacy.

This Sunday at Mass I stood with the other congregants and prayed for peace in the Ukraine, Palestine and Iraq. If you think that myself and the other people there believed that we were delivering a "to-do list" to a deity who would then, because of our prayer, immediately go and effect peace in these regions by divine fiat, then you simply don't understand religion (as usual, I might add). Because part of the efficacy of our prayer is in our own witness in standing there, in our togetherness, in our meditating for a moment on the crises in the world and how our actions (in voting, volunteering, etc.) might improve or worsen things; part of the efficacy is in our coming together there and then, and that because of the truth we celebrate some of us will be moved, beyond our Sunday participation, to work for and push for settlements of the terrible conflicts now raging. Because we believe in peace as a goal in itself, regardless of strategic interests. Because we strongly believe that this is God's will, as conveyed through Christ.

I submit that if we are on the same page, as you say, then you need to broaden your perspective regarding the complexity of how culture(s) find meaning, assert meaning, and apply it to the world. And you can do this regardless of whether or not you believe God exists or what you think of claims of miracles, etc.

Again: If the individual human being is a particular organization of carbon-based molecules (which is all science can ultimately tell us about human being) then the reasons to respect individual human lives are no more compelling than the reasons to respect the life of a snail or a gnat. When the next totalitarian movements begin to sweep over the planet, I believe those who have faith in a soul, in a God, rather than those who depend only on what can be empirically demonstrated by science, will be better prepared to resist and more courageous in resisting. In other words, their faith will be EFFICACIOUS in defending our liberty. As it is currently efficacious is running schools and orphanages, caring for the homeless, giving voice to the oppressed. July 22 at 10:11am

DENNIS LOWELL: OK - We've gotta smoke a big fat joint together this weekend..... July 22 at 10:41am

ERIC MADER: Dennis knows efficacy when he sees it. July 22 at 11:05am

STEVE JOHNSON: Eric, my argument DOES NOT reduce all aspects of culture and the human being itself to material efficacy. Let's take the case of Magic. Or Prayer. I read a study that confirmed that something like 50 Buddhist Monks prayed for peace for the city of Washington DC. During the experiment, violent crime and rape fell an astonishing 75% (or something like that). So is this efficacious? In my view, if it is in fact true, then yes, it is. IF Voldemort, the head of the new-found Republican Party, were to stand up at the Republican convention, and wave his wand, thus making all the "attendees" understand the plight of the poor, I would say that was efficacious. It worked. How it worked is a mystery. Why it worked is a mystery. But that it did in fact work, is all that I want to base my belief structure on. If you and the congregation of praying Catholics are able to bring peace to the Ukraine and the Israel/Palestine conflict, than I will stand with you all, and demand that we all practice this because it worked. How? Why? Again, a mystery. However, if 6 years from now, a nuke goes off and everyone in either region is killed, and then peace comes because of it...And the Priest who lead the congregation of prayers that your group did last night, claims that the prayer of last night, done 6 years prior IS THE REASON that peace is now there, I will not support that is a causative link. As that would require so many lenses of 'so called' truth to be lacquered onto the facts that it makes anything true. My view is fairly simple. It does not deny reality, nor does it deny that reality may not be knowable or understandable. It does however put front and center 'the effectiveness' of whatever approach is utilized. There will clearly be some forms of action that will be amoral, and so, it might be effective, but it is not moral. So, effectiveness may not be the only guide post, and it may not be the preeminent one in any given situation. But, effectiveness being absent usually leaves so much room for interpretation that we are left without any real truth. I am not saying that a person who may find a prayer effective for 'whatever' it is they utilize prayer to fix/heal/change/express, and if it is effective for them individually and in groups, by all means...please practice it. Because for them, it is effective. And I honor that. But if two parties are attempt to resolve an issue, than effectiveness is a great guide, and for me, most often, the only real arbiter of what is and what isn't. Excuse typos, words missing, just had to get this out, despite errors. July 23 at 1:24am

ERIC MADER: I see I may have misinterpreted your meaning here, Steve, and that my assumption as to what you were getting at led me into attack mode. Let me explain. I read the photo and remarks in the context of our long-term debate/dialogue on religion in America. One of the lengthiest FB threads you've ever hosted was a couple months back where you, myself and several others debated the New Atheism, religious education, evolution, etc. In that debate one of the main topics taken up was the importance of interpretation--namely, the fact that Christianity, like all religions, has gone through many stages of development, change of stress, literalism vs. figurative thinking, etc. It’s pretty clear that the New Atheists do their best to suppress this complex history. Which is significant because very much of the debate online has been influenced by their prefab reduction. What the New Atheists have tried to do is reduce Western religion to a caricature they can then knock down in favor of the narrowly positivist materialism they support. It's a classic strawman. And so: To listen to them, religion = magical thinking = a naive literalism like that of the small child who believes there is a literal Tooth Fairy. Thus, as these folks argue, religion should be extirpated, should be laughed out of the public arena, etc. To me and to most people educated in the humanities (poli sci, anthropology, philosophy) this view of religion is an idiotic reduction of a multifaceted human phenomenon. In fact many atheists are deeply embarrassed by the likes of Dawkins and Harris--embarrassed by the epistemological shallowness. Whether you like it or not, your post echoes this whole prefab reductionism we then debated. Consider: Your post offers a meme showing a guy in a lab coat equating Christianity with "magic" and lamenting that science is being "cancelled" because of such magical thinking. And you, in your comment, criticize people who use "interpretation" to try to validate a "magic" that “never worked” in the first place. In the context of our debates and other things you've posted in recent years, this seemed to me to be saying: "A lot of modern folks have newfangled interpretations of what religion means, but hey, we all know that religion is just a kind of naive magic, so don't try to make it anything else. Science is what can give us answers, because magic doesn't work!” That's how I understood your meaning, in the context of our previous debates and in the context of the meme itself. If that's indeed what you meant, it’s not simply something I disagree with, but you are basically declaring yourself not just a guy I can debate differences with, but my ideological enemy. Because you are subscribing to the New Atheist soundbite that “one must choose” between religion and science--and since religion "didn't work", then science is the answer.

Like most educated religious people, I don’t see any need to choose between religion and science, because each addresses different levels of the reality we experience. When religious people clash clearly with scientists over matters of biology (for example, when biblical literalists claim the earth is 6,000 years old) I think it’s obvious the scientists are right. But that is not a big deal to educated religious people, it is not in any sense a “serious blow to Christianity”, because through the whole history of the faith, going back to ancient times, there have been thinkers in the Church who argue that the biblical account of creation is NOT literal, but figurative or symbolic. Which has also been my view from the beginning. So you can see my ire for contemporary atheists: they’re working overtime to misrepresent what religion is, to tell ME what I believe so that they can then refute me, all the while spending virtually no time going to actual Christian writers or theologians to check if their portrayal is right.

If I’ve written with some bitterness, it’s because all the evidence pointed to your post being a restatement of their general argument. I now see from your last long remark that this might not have been your original meaning. You’re apparently still among the sane people who see that religion, like science, is a mixed bag. Each is an immensely complex part of culture that brings both good and bad, and the essential is to support the good and lessen the bad. If you indeed still subscribe to this kind of basic wisdom, then I owe you an apology. But honestly: If my first understanding of your meaning was correct, if you think humanity “must choose” between religion and science, and that religion should be steadily but completely pushed from the public arena, then I’d have to conclude that you’re just shallow, because you don’t understand what you’re talking about, and what’s more, you’ve betrayed the basic American respect for pluralism. You’re becoming illiberal in the classic sense.

If you want to respond to this, please weigh my arguments carefully. If you don’t respond, fine and good. I’ll take it to mean you accept the apology and that my revised assessment, i.e., that you’re not becoming just another New Atheist loudmouth, is the right one. July 23 at 2:06pm

DENNIS LOWELL: Eric Mader - Your post is thought-provoking. Thanks! I like your point about religion evolving - if scientists have been wrong for centuries and are "allowed" to evolve, why shouldn't religion. I do, however, see a difference. I've always had more respect for people who listen and absorb the facts (which is why I enjoyed your thread) and I've valued their contributions over those who just echo a few "cherry picked" talking points. Along these lines, I believe that you should start with the facts and end with a conclusion - not the other way around. Maybe I'm wrong (it's happened before), but I've felt that religion starts with a conclusion (Jesus is God; the Bible is the word of God....) and works backwards to include/exclude facts that support/oppose their views. This has always been my rub with organized religion. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts. - Cheers July 25 at 9:01am

STEVE JOHNSON: Eric: I think I said in the thread that I never noticed the cross on the chalk board when I posted. When I read it, it seemed to me to be saying that Science had some kind of answer for everything, and frankly, it doesn't. I like the overall notional construct of science, but it is flawed too. I have had too many personal experiences that Science doesn't even deem an actual question worthy of finding an answer to. But, what I also fully comprehend is that you feel religion is under attack from the New Atheists. Candidly I am not an atheist. I believe in what religions call a god. I prefer to use words that come from our own modern 'stories'...like 'the force' or the 'all pervasive love'. I don't however subscribe to any literal translations of ancient works (or interpreted properly or otherwise), as I have found them PERSONALLY as lame as Science in answering the questions of the Spirit. If I were to have to join a team or religious brand (and yes, that is how I perceive them) I would join the Buddhists. Mainly because they don't appear to own property, or corporate 501c's nor do they appear to have followers who congregate in packs that then vote in blocks or attempt to enforce a code of ethics on others, where those codes are derived by their decree from a god head. Granted, the texts those followers cite may state exactly the opposite of the followers claims, but the followers themselves do not agree or understand the works they utilize to make their points often enough. So, I don't consider myself a new Atheist in any way, and I would most likely consider their arguments fairly mundane and trivializing of many of personal experiences I have had that are real, and could only fall into a category for science that would be labeled "unexplainable". Which leaves the term Magic. If you fully comprehend what is actually happening inside of a computer, it is as close to what one might call magic (even though it is explainable) as one can get. And it works. And so I add my call for efficacy. So, whether or not Science will answer all the questions that matter is still up for debate, and what I see from most of the religious folk is not what you say or believe but something vastly less sophisticated and nuanced...and so, I turn to a word that is still relatively clean. And I like it. Magic. So, yes, I believe in Magic, and yes, it is preferable to Science and Religions because it has at a level something that neither posses. It has efficacy and answers things that are relevant to the spirit and the soul. I hope at some level, I have redeemed myself in your eyes. July 25 at 11:09am

ERIC MADER: Dennis Lowell - Thanks for weighing in here. I think you hit on something that needs to be recognized by more Christians: namely that the arguments many of them give for their religion are merely circular, and they perhaps “believe” these arguments because they internalized them from their upbringing. And so, to hear some Christians tell it: The Christian God is real because the Bible says so; and the Bible is a trustworthy source because it was inspired by God.

My own experience of Christianity is very different from this. Though raised a Lutheran, even as an adolescent I found, when I questioned myself as to what truth there was in it, that I couldn’t believe. At 16 I declared myself an atheist. I began to study literature and philosophy, a bit in high school on my own, and seriously in university. Then, at the end of the 1980s, partly based on my study, and partly based on my own experiences, I came to believe there was a compelling truth, or at least a reflection of truth, in some of the basic assertions of the Christian faith: 1) the material universe is not all there is; 2) there is a God behind the universe; 3) we are endowed with a soul (we ourselves are not merely flesh and bone: there’s another level to us); 4) the man Jesus was in fact a privileged conveyor of how God relates to humanity and the world, how God intends to relate to us, and how we must respond by bringing ourselves into closer harmony with an emerging “kingdom of God” (however that term may be understood).

As I say, I came to be convinced of these few things at the end of the 1980s. It may seem to you that this would make me a Christian, a member of that two-billion-strong body of believers worldwide. But actually these elements I was convinced of didn’t really make me a Christian, because for most Christians the litmus test for the true faith is the Nicene Creed: a “real” Christian, according to most, is someone who can recite this creed as a series of propositions that are true. But there was much in the Creed that I didn’t believe true. Probably some of the things I didn’t accept were precisely those things that many Christians “believe” without actually examining them--things they’d been taught to accept and defend as true without first, as you put it, arriving at the truth of the statement after carefully considering all the facts.

Nonetheless, regardless of my eccentricity during those years, I insisted I was a Christian and argued that anyone who believed in a few basic tenets should also be considered one. Thus the Christian, to me, is someone who can say: 1) I believe there is a God; 2) Jesus is a privileged voice for God (the “anointed one”, or, in Hebrew, Messiah); 3) I believe there is a spiritual element in the universe and in each of us as individuals; 4) I will try to follow Jesus’ teachings as best I understand them.

And so, to anyone who finds Jesus a “great teacher”, to the extent he or she makes this finding more determinant in his or her life--i.e., to the extent he or she becomes an avowed follower of Jesus--to that extent the person may be called a Christian. Do you believe all the currently existing species were created by God in a brief period of time? Do you believe in the stories of virgin birth? Do believe Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead? Do you believe his first followers stood and watched as he was literally taken up into heaven? In my thinking, which I still hold to on this point, you can be a Christian without believing any of these things as literal happenings. Because the essentials of Christianity are in points 1-4 above.

In the 1990s and 2000s I worked to define more clearly both how I believed and how I came to understand the truth of Christianity. I coined a term for this particular way of believing: it was a “durationist” Christianity. A lot of that work ended up in my book HERETIC DAYS.

I go this roundabout way in answer to your comments because I feel too many people have been set up to take our religious traditions as either/or constructs. Either you subscribe to the whole program, including the belief in a relative literalism of biblical texts, or you reject the whole program. This is deeply wrong and deeply destructive to our cultural and spiritual possibilities. It is far better for contemporary people to approach Christianity as a tradition of which they might make what they want. (I say approach, as in: during the early stages of one's engagement with Christianity.) The individual, as in you yourself, can find whatever truth in the Gospel texts you deem valid. You are not asked to believe all these things literally happened or that the orthodox Christian reading is the only one. As happened with me, these texts and this tradition can then become the fascinating matter of a long-term work of spiritual and historical sleuthing. Do the texts represent what Jesus really taught? Are there not perhaps many hints in the texts of something different, something that was repressed by orthodox Christianity in the course of its development? Is not orthodox Christianity perhaps keeping us from making contact with something more essential in Jesus that Jesus would want us to find?

In any case, the story of Jesus of Nazareth and the God he meant to tell us about is one of the most contested and tantalizing historical mysteries we have. Especially given that the movement created from this man’s life work has shaped our world more than the work of any other individual. And this is true whether one is a believer or not. We live in a culture whose intellectual grounds are thoroughly Christian: our basic understanding of history (as a progressive process “going somewhere”), of justice, of how the individual relates to society--all these derive from our Christian background.

But I’ve gone on too long. You may want to check out the following few links, if you’d like to know more about my own route pursuing these questions.

The Durationist Gospel

Heretic Days: First Reactions

July 27 at 12:43pm

ERIC MADER: Steve Johnson: Yes, you’ve redeemed yourself. Of course. And I agree with you that far too many Christians (especially in America, where many have become living advertisements against the faith) have come to stand for things their own scriptures consider deeply wrong. In my view this sad situation is largely a result of the perilous linkage made between Protestants and the GOP back in the 1980s. Christians have been misled by this alliance to equate their religion with specific right-wing political goals. I think Pope Francis has offered some sorely needed, and truly Christian, answers to the sick nonsense we get from Fox News and friends.

But as for what you call “magic”: In fact I like your conscious choice to adopt a term, to try to set it off from both science and religion. I do, however, think you need to formulate more clearly how you see “magic” relating to “the force” or whatever you prefer to call the guiding power in your universe. Especially: How can anything you might call magic--as it evidences itself in computer technology for example--be expected to help fulfill the goals of “the force”? How can we get any guidance as to whether “magic” is being employed to further or undermine “the force”? Also: If there is a “force” or “pervasive spirit of love”, as you say, why is the universe not already determined by it? Why, in other words, is there hate and violence and bigotry if indeed the spirit of love is “pervasive”?

You say you reject reverence for ancient scriptures, regardless of how they are interpreted. Does that mean that “magic” was not an active force in ancient times? Or that Jesus or the Buddha had no access to this power we now are starting to access?

I submit that the main thing behind your finding that ancient scriptures offer “lame” solutions is that you haven’t really studied the range of interpretations of ancient texts. Of course the predicaments ancient people found themselves in were both similar to and different from the predicaments we are in. And the genius or possibility of spiritual insight on the part of ancient people was, I would argue, equal to our own. But whatever.

I do know of a book, now written a while ago, that may turn you on if you’re thinking in these directions. Erik Davis: Techgnosis. Maybe you know of Davis already. The book is dated in some respects, but it is absolutely not dated in essentials.

And if you want to have a “double dose” of gnosis that might get your attention, order Davis’ book along with Ron Miller’s The Gospel of Thomas: A Guidebook for Spiritual Practice. In this second book you’ll get a surprisingly different version of Jesus, based on a long-lost ancient collection of his sayings, that will possibly show him more in line with your currently developing notion of “magic”.

But again: I’d be very interested to see how you explain the connection between “the force” and what you call “magic”, especially as this latter might manifest itself in or through technology. July 27 at 1:44pm

ERIC MADER: I’ve often taught Philip K. Dick's work here in Taipei. Here's a nice piece of Davis' writing on what made the master tick:

Philip K. Dick’s Divine Interference

July 27 at 1:47pm

DENNIS LOWELL: Eric Mader: Thanks, again, for your thoughtful reply. I enjoyed reading of your background and found that it has some parallels to mine. Though we may have ended with somewhat different conclusions, I think our thought processes are aligned. (By calling them conclusions, I don’t want to imply that we aren’t still both working through things.) I’ve been interested in (and struggled with) religion and spirituality my entire life. When I was younger, I traveled to see the Dalai Lama and identified pretty strongly with Buddhism. I enjoy reading the very approachable books that Bart Ehrman writes about historical Jesus, etc. I took my kids to church at the local Unitarian Church when they were younger. I enjoyed their approach to religion – the Dalai Lama called it the “fruit salad” approach. Take a little of the best of everything and mix it up (something that must churches would really frown on). However, even the UU church finally turned me off.

This was back around 2002, when the Iraq war was starting. Even though I was strongly opposed to the war at that time, I didn’t want to hear about it from a pastor on Sunday. I REALLY wanted the spiritual piece [peace], without the baggage. Therein lies my conundrum: Religion and Spirituality are separate. There is a relationship between the two, but they have very different goals and these have been at odds since the earliest days of Christianity. The goal of religion is to build a congregation with followers. I know that this could be argued, but for the biggest churches (including the Catholic church) this is true. In order to best build a congregation, churches use things like rituals, patternicity, and the discouragement of individualism. I’m not saying that EVERY church does this or everything in the church is designed to build a following, but in general, religion says “stop asking questions, we have the answer… God”. This is exactly the opposite of what spirituality calls for.

In a gross simplification, religion is supposed to facilitate finding “The Truth” (but still build a congregation). In order to find the truth, you have to spend real time thinking about it and probably have to go down many wrong paths. So religion has to do this crazy dance of letting you stray down those paths, but not so far that you don’t still land at “The RIGHT Truth”. Honestly, Eric, I think that this is how the more liberal churches view it. For the more conservative churches, they don’t do the dance at all - “it’s our way or good luck in hell." (OK – I know that hell could be interpreted as the eternal separation from God’s love, but still, does my love for a different God, or different understanding of God, mean that I end with separation?)

Anyway, that’s my struggle with religion in general. My struggle with Christianity is more complex and involves conflicting scriptures that were written 30+ years after Jesus’ death, their misinterpretation, and the conflicting goals of the church that I’ve outlined. I know this is being a little harsh on the churches and I don't mean to imply that the people within the congregation all share the same views. I’m looking forward to reading your book (you’ll have to put your next one on audible, as that’s how I get most of my reading in these days – long commute). Cheers! August 2 at 1:54a

ERIC MADER: Dennis Lowell: You're right that we have a lot in common in our general route. And so most of your considerations here are congenial to me, and of course I get the distinction between religion and spirituality you present. But personally, for a long time now, I don't see the two as being necessarily in conflict in the way you do. With some religious communities, yes, the conflict can be very real. Try to tell a Fundamentalist where you think he's wrong, and he'll tell you how he knows he's right and why are you "outside" real Christianity. But I don't think this kind of inside and outside divide is characteristic of many Christian communities now. And so it doesn't steer me away from Christianity as a whole.

I'll offer a metaphor for religion vs. spirituality that may give some idea of how I see them. Think of the relationship as something like that between nation and individual. You, for instance, are part of the American population, an American citizen, and presumably you support many of the things America stands for. But you'll define these things that "America stands for" in your own way. In other words, you may support America's codification of civil rights, its history of progress in this area, and the value it places on a free press and free civil debate. While insisting these are what America is at heart, you may think its international role as "exceptional nation", its free-wheeling capitalism, its willingness to treat the world as its playground--who cares what other countries say--you may find all these things to be aberrations, not truly what is great about America. But at the same time, while you're reading this, there's another American down the block from you who emphatically supports the international hubris, who thinks the market is in fact way too regulated, and who wants the world to become culturally more and more like America, malls and all. In short: You and this guy both subscribe to “America”; you both hold the passport and feel patriotism. Yet your ideas of what is great in America and what is excess dribble are very different. But neither of you would like to renounce your citizenship based on these differences.

I don't see why it should not be the same with churches. I have gone a long route through atheism, through a kind of gnosticism, and now have converted to Catholicism. There are things in the Catholic tradition that I think make it great and true, other things that I think are wrongheaded and aberrant. Another Catholic down the block from me might stress a different set of elements. In other words: We each have our own spirituality; we don't quite agree; but those things in each other we disagree with are not enough to make us renounce our citizenship.

Just as the blanket phenomenon called America can foster different kinds of patriotism, so the phenomenon called Christianity can foster different kinds of spirituality. I will not leave a church just because I disagree with some of the things a pastor or priest says from the pulpit. Rather: I'll try through my own engagement to move the church in the direction I find true.

There's another point here I'd like to raise, having to do with the value of conditional acceptance of doctrine. A very important phrase in my own development is Credo ut intelligam: “I believe in order to understand." If one sees a religious tradition as a very complex symbolic system for conveying spiritual truth, it is necessary, if one ever wants to find that truth, to learn the system. And just as one learns a foreign language, or learns a new dance step, by doing it, so one learns a religion's understanding of reality by seriously entertaining its tenets. Part of my final decision to convert to Catholicism was that I saw in it the most complete repository of spiritual, theological, and experiential wisdom about the meaning of Jesus Christ as conveyed in the New Testament. And so I decided to enter this church, to begin to think and move according to its promptings; and moving in this slightly new way, positioned in this slightly new place, I would see a different spectrum of reality. Simple as that. If some parts of the tradition left me unconvinced, that didn't matter. I would understand more and more in terms of my own spirituality simply because the seriousness and depth of the tradition I was living with and studying was far greater than anything I could come up with on my own. Credo ut intelligam.

The problem with the fruit salad approach you mention is that, not really learning any one tradition, you risk missing certain depths. To make another analogy, I'd much rather learn to be a very good pianist than learn to be a dabbler in piano, a dabbler in guitar, and an amateur flautist. Immersed in piano, I'd learn more about music as such. Which is the point.

At one point you write: "Even though I was strongly opposed to the [Iraq] war at that time, I didn’t want to hear about it from a pastor on Sunday. I REALLY wanted the spiritual piece [peace], without the baggage." I'd say that one doesn't get spiritual piece or peace without struggle--whether that be struggle with the vagaries of one's own skewed perceptions and nagging worries and desires, or struggle with the injustices in the world. Quietism is a possible response to the world, and it may have some fundamental validity, but it's never been the kind of approach that has attracted me.

Also, regarding the historical Jesus, I've done a lot of study in these areas also, and I believe they are well worth the effort. The kinds of things Ehrman works on are seen as a threat by some believers, but they don't bother me in the least; in fact I relish the problems and contradictions of the textual and historical record. The crucial thing to me is not that the Gospels are second-hand accounts or were redacted by different hands, but that such an extraordinary figure as Jesus existed, that some core of this tradition we have about him, a core collection of parables and a core of historical events, are true. The vagaries of the Gospels are just what you'd expect from an ancient community of followers and believers who'd experienced such a figure as Jesus was. In short: We don't know exactly what he was and what he said, but we know roughly. We know as much or more about Jesus than we do about many important ancient figures: Socrates, the Roman emperors, Virgil.

Before I finish I want to make sure I'm not misunderstood in my remarks on Credo ut intellegam above. I used the analogy of learning a foreign language, but didn't really explain. If I say that I've chosen to "believe in order to understand", this is not to say that I'm pretending to believe, that I'm putting on an effort of belief in order, some day, to actually believe. No, it's rather that I'm learning a new language; I'm believing in the sense one believes when, learning German, one repeats a new sentence several times: one's grasp of the syntax may be a bit slippery, one doesn't quite feel how this series of sounds means what one knows it means (there's the English translation on the right-hand page) but one is confident even so that there's a compelling representation of the world in this series of sounds: that German is a real language and that this way of saying the world is as valid as one's native English way. Thus, learning a language, one must believe in order to understand. This is similar to the way I've begun to believe Catholicism, with one crucial difference. Since I'm convinced the Church has been guided by the Holy Spirit over the course of history, this "language" I'm now learning is more profound, and very likely offers a truer representation of reality, than any theological pidgin I could put together on my own (which I think is true regardless of whether or not said pidgin may itself be guided in places by the Spirit).

Still waiting for Steve Johnson to address my last remarks to him. And truly: Those two books I suggest, Steve, I really think you'd dig a whole spectrum of things in them. Take the plunge. August 3 at 7:58pm

Monday, August 11, 2014

Percy and Eric



by Eric Mader

I’ll always remember Percy and Eric. I taught them beginning English back in 2003 or ’04 here in Taiwan. In the class they attended, around twenty-five students, they were one of two pairs of brothers. The average age of the kids was 8 or 9, and I was to teach them the very rudiments, ABCs and phonics.

I remember telling them the first day, as I learned their names, that the older brother Eric must be smart “because all Erics are smart”.

Boy was I wrong. Percy and Eric proved to be by far the slowest kids in the class, showing all the usual signs of slowness. I can still see them seated each in a different part of the room complacently picking their noses while the other kids were busy tracing out the shapes of the letters.

“Percy, what are you doing?”

And he’d blush and quickly wipe the remaining snot onto the desktop. Right in front of me. As if that was what protocol demanded. "If caught picking snot, wipe on the nearest item of furniture."

I’d get a tissue and Percy would return to messing up the letter “g” in his notebook.

Correcting their homework was a nightmare, because not only would the mistakes be legion, but the paper itself would by grimy and crumpled, bits of snot stuck randomly here and there.

When Percy didn’t know an answer, he had a habit of screwing up his face and staring at the ceiling with an expression so idiotic it looked like it had been practiced for a movie role. Eric did it sometimes, but Percy was the poster boy for this look. I’d been watching them stare at the ceiling this way for months, amused, when finally before class one day the boys’ father showed up. He wanted to sit at the back of the room to observe and see how his sons were doing.

“Sure, no problem,” I said, giving him a copy of the material so he could follow along.

Then, twenty minutes into class, when I’d asked some simple question or other and was waiting for someone to raise a hand, I saw the father in the back staring up at the ceiling, his face twisted in deep concentration trying to think of the answer.

It was the same rapt, hopeless look Percy and Eric had been giving me for months.

I couldn’t control myself, I burst out laughing. I put down my textbook and paced a bit in front of the room, trying to get back my composure. Nobody knew what I was laughing at.

“Teacher is crazy,” said one of the girls.

That class, I argued to coworkers, was a sad demonstration of the fatal power of genetic inheritance. For the whole of the first year, the other pair of brothers, Tom and Brian, always came out first and second on exams. Always. And Percy and Eric always came out last and second last.

Though always scoring lowest, it’s true Percy and Eric didn’t actually fail. To fail one of our exams would be something of a feat. One time, however, there was a substitute teacher taking the class for me, and as there had been an exam the week before, she had the scores in her folder. She told the class that this time a lot of them hadn’t done well and that one student even failed.

“Who?” everyone wanted to know. “Who failed?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said, as per school rules.

But they kept pestering: “Who who who?” And Percy, I was told, stood up and was pounding on his desk: “Who failed? Who failed?” He refused to give up.

“Well,” the substitute said, giving him a meaningful look. “You really want to know, Percy?”

He didn’t get the hint.

“Who?” he yelled. “Tell us!”

“Well--you failed.”

I’m told he blushed all over, then hung his head and began bawling, so that he had to leave the classroom for awhile.

Of course Eric was laughing gleefully. He wasn’t the idiot.

These tales about Percy and Eric, and Brian and Tom, were bantered about the office, if only because it was all so predictable. I did my best to encourage Percy and Eric and occasionally bring the Ace brothers down a peg, but it was no use. The former never got their fingers unstuck from their noses; the latter were invariably sharp as razors.

Percy and Eric’s father didn’t seem to mind his sons’ slowness, but their mother often came in looking worried and frazzled, trying to figure out ways to get her boys out of the last slots. She wanted extra help for them, extra homework. She’d oversee their homework herself. And she did. Sometimes worksheets were handed in without snot all over them, and with certain of the answers written in a different, more precise hand.

In fact I’ve experienced a few iterations of this scenario over the years, a son or pair of brothers who are seriously slow (always nose pickers), a father who seems content with the world, and a mother meanwhile worried sick, unwilling to accept that her boys are what they seem. My first encounter with this syndrome came in my first year teaching in the form of a hand-wringing woman who desperately wanted me to tutor her teenage son Tom. She’d pay me extra to come to their house and tutor him once a week, but I repeatedly said I was too busy (a lie) for the simple reason that I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle sitting next to a kid with snot stuck on his clothes, on his chair, on his homework. Yes, I could have dealt with the slowness, I'd have worked hard at breaking through, but I just couldn't handle the snot.

It was some months after Percy failed that exam. I noticed I hadn’t seen the boys’ mother around the school and was told Percy and Eric wouldn’t be continuing.

“Why not?” I asked in surprise.

“Their mother passed away during the weekend,” the secretary told me. “She had cancer of some kind--it was just discovered a few months ago. The family is in mourning.”

I was really affected by the news. I sat for awhile on the sofa in the office in a kind of funk. I’d just talked to the mother a couple months earlier. And now the boys had only their none-too-sharp father to look after them.

"It's sad," the secretary said. "But you didn't really like teaching them, did you?"

Some weeks later I saw the father, thinner, in the park near the school. My Chinese wasn’t very good then, but I told him as best I could that I was very sorry to hear the news and hoped his family was doing alright. And to say hello to Percy and Eric. He had tears in his eyes by the time I finished my few sentences.

And then a couple years ago I saw Percy again, standing in a doorway off a Taipei lane with a classmate. The two were wearing the uniforms of some Taipei high school, their uniforms were filthy, and Percy was smoking and complaining loudly about something, using the usual teenage exaggerations and vulgar words. His appearance was almost identical to what it was in childhood, the same weirdly curly lightish-brown hair, odd for a Taiwanese, the same buck teeth. He didn’t see me there, but I know if I’d gone to say hello to him that he’d have blushed to be caught with the cigarette.

And it's true I didn't really like teaching them. Which says something about me, and something about the unfairness of the world.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Sorry, your Antisemitism Card has expired



CNN: Nobel laureate Wiesel:
Hamas must stop using children as human shields

This weekend my friend Mary Goodwin posted the above link on Facebook. The following argument ensued. I’m reposting it here because many friends have been writing on the tragedy of the current fighting. As usual, there's no end in sight--and why is that? Mary and I see quite different things. Comments welcome.

ERIC MADER: It is good to see Wiesel come out in this way, if only because it powerfully reminds people that Hamas certainly also bears responsibility for the deaths on the Palestinian side. But I don't think Israel holds any moral high ground in this fight. And the hawks in Jerusalem know very well their overreaction will only strengthen Hamas.

MARY GOODWIN: According to the article, there is strong Israeli public support for the current campaign to pummel Hamas into submission (not just a few 'hawks,' as you call them). I admire the Israelis for ignoring their many critics and doing what it takes to defend their country against terrorism. I have FB friends from Israel whose feeds are full of angry accusations at the world that "never lifted a finger when Jews were targets and now thinks it can impose 'moral' standards on Israel."

ERIC MADER: The problem, now as always, Mary, is that it's not just "their" country. If Israel would recognize borders between its territory and Palestinian territory, if--and this is the most crucial thing in my mind--it would halt the building of settlements on other people's land, then there would be an argument that Israel was being attacked by terrorists. As it is, Israel is in a military conflict, and I am happy to call it that for as long as Israel continues building or defending settlements. Lucky for Israel, it has the big guns on its side, thanks largely to my own government's lavish support.

As for Israelis who talk about how the world "never lifted a finger when Jews were targets and now thinks it can impose 'moral' standards on Israel," this is called "the Antisemitism Card". Sadly this phrase has come into existence. But the only reason is HAS come into existence is because of Israelis who, every time there is criticism of their government's policies, talk about how the criticism is evidence of antisemitism. Which is bullshit. The current events in the Middle East have nothing to do with European antisemitism in the early and mid-20th century. Referring arguments about Israeli policy to discussions of the Holocaust is a monumental case of "changing the subject".

There are plenty of vicious anti-Semites in the world, but that does not mean those who criticize Israeli policy are among them. In my case, for instance, I am disgusted with Israeli policy more because I love Jewish culture than because I'm against it. As a supporter of Jewish culture, I'd like to see its supposed representative government not continually supporting the policies it does. In short: The existence of antisemitism in the world is not a blank check which renders the Israeli government somehow insulated from criticism.

Israel cannot "pummel Hamas into submission". All it can do is pummel Hamas into attracting more and more support. Isn't this obvious? Rather than overreact to the piddly threats of an enemy whose rockets can't even reach their targets, it would be strategically wiser for Israel to under-react. By projecting its vastly superior force into Gaza, Israel is just prodding angry Muslims across the globe to take out their checkbooks and donate more to Hamas. And prodding Palestinians in ever greater numbers to dream of becoming suicide bombers.

MARY GOODWIN: Eric, you need to read more on Hamas' explicit refusal to negotiate with Israel or to participate in a peace process. "Their" definition of ownership of the area excludes a Jewish state. I think that the problem is Hamas, not the Palestinian people; there are many other recent articles describing Hamas' LACK of support in the region, especially from Egypt and other former supporters, as well as its reckless and murderous disregard for its own people. In the main, Palestinians and Israelis support a two-state policy. Hamas will not negotiate. And as for the "Holocaust Card," I think that if you have endured a Holocaust, you can play that card forever. The well-meaning outsiders (that is all of us) who are horrified to watch Palestinian children killed by bombs might remember that the Israelis have kids, too, and just because the Palestinian rockets don't reach their target it doesn't mean that they aren't equally lethal or aren't launched with lethal intent. Incompetence does not equal innocence; neither does competence equal guilt

ERIC MADER: I know what Hamas is and I know how many Arab states view it. I've read plenty. I know Hamas lacks support in the region, and of course Hamas is far from innocent. My thesis is that it is better to INCREASE Hamas' isolation rather than push the Muslim street toward rallying for them. So how does one do this, how does one help Hamas to obsolescence? Explain.

Israel is now doing just what Hamas wants it to do. As for Hamas' refusal to negotiate, so what? Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist? Well, it's very clear, by its actions on the ground (again: by continual settlement building, for example) that Israel refuses to recognize any Palestinian state's right to exist. Tit for tat.

As for the Antisemitism Card, your argument seems to be that since the Holocaust happened, Jews are forever incapable of abusing human rights. And the idea of Israeli leaders becoming war criminals--well, that would be a contradiction in terms, a logical impossibility. Right? Thus: Regardless of what Israeli bombs or bulldozers or blockades might do, we just need to remember the Holocaust and everything is elevated to a different moral level. Right?

I'm sorry if my reaction here seems a little over the top, or if I seem to be putting words in your mouth, but this, in my view, is what it means to evoke to the Holocaust when discussing current Israeli policy. It is a diversionary tactic and needs to be loudly called out as such every time it appears. What happened in the West in the mid-20th century is irrelevant to the morality (or otherwise) of how the Israeli state now uses its very real military power.

So, again, how do we weaken Hamas? My position is that we must rally neither for Hamas nor for Netanyahu's version of the Israeli state. Like Dick Cheney and al Qaeda back in 2003, Netanyahu and Hamas are secretly best buddies. Each helps the other push its own agenda. If we were smart, we'd be doing our best to marginalize both sides in these equations.


A child stands in front of the rubble of his home in Gaza.