This morning as I walked to my car I idly recalled how once as a teenager I had been waiting in the car for my mother while she ran into a store. The meter she had parked by ran out, and a traffic cop wrote a ticket and stuck it on the windshield as I watched.
As I got closer to my car, I noticed an orange envelope under windshield wiper. The city cleans the streets here on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I had accidentally parked on the wrong side of the street last night. I’d gotten my first parking ticket.
This must mean I have precognitive abilities, right? I was thinking about an incident involving a parking ticket, and then I discovered my car had been ticketed. I’m psychic!
Except… I’m not entirely sure whether I recalled the story before or after I noticed the ticket on my car. And then there are all the other times I’ve thought about incidents involving parking tickets when I didn’t get a ticket. I used to work for a place where part of my job was dealing with the company’s parking tickets. Back then, I thought about parking tickets all the time. But… I didn’t have a car then. So it doesn’t count, right? This can’t have just been a coincidence. It’s too weird. It’s spooky.
No, I’m sure of it. I’m psychic!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Am I A Zealot?
Over the last week I’ve had an interesting conversation in the comment thread to Frum Satire’s post, Is the Torah outdated and irrelevant? I’ve found myself in a debate over the existence of God, arguing for the unlikelihood of His existence. Frum Satire’s blog is an interesting place to have conversations like these because he draws a diverse group of people, who range from strong believers to atheists and from educated intellectuals to… those who are not so intellectual.
I have to ask myself, why do I do this? Part of the answer is because it’s fun. I enjoy debating (especially winning). Part of it is that such conversations force me to think about other points of view and to articulate my own beliefs, which leads me to a better understanding of issues surrounding religion. But I had to ask myself: could part of it be the zealotry of a recent convert?
I’ve been a skeptic for as long as I can remember, always insisting that what I learned in school make logical sense. I’ve always tried to relate what I learned to the real world, and thought about the practical implications of the various things my rabbeim would teach me. I’ve had serious doubts about religion and God since I was sixteen. Yet I’ve always had this hazy notion in the back of my head that God was out there. There were a few arguments for the existence of God that I had heard as a teenager, thought were pretty good, and never really let myself examine. Everyone around me didn’t have any doubts. I couldn’t deny the basis of my culture. And yet, I remember writing papers in college for a writing class where I discussed arguments for various religions and concluded that Hashem was the Creator of the universe and Judasim was the One True Religion. And I didn’t buy it. (The professor, a frum woman, loved it. I got an “A” in that class.)
It wasn’t until I discovered the blogosphere that I realized I wasn’t unique, that there were other people out there who agreed with me, and that it was okay to think the way I did. I found myself drawn to the blogs of fellow skeptics, both those who had left the frum lifestyle and those who, like me, continue to live in the frum community. We all love to hear opinions that confirm our own, and I was eating it up. Very quickly, I came to identify myself as a skeptic and even as an atheist. All this within the last couple of years.
So while the skeptical mode of thought is not new to me, my interest in science, logic, history, and theology are not new, my self-identification as a skeptic is new. And maybe, just maybe, part of why I’m drawn to theological debates is a compulsion to defend my new identity.
I have to ask myself, why do I do this? Part of the answer is because it’s fun. I enjoy debating (especially winning). Part of it is that such conversations force me to think about other points of view and to articulate my own beliefs, which leads me to a better understanding of issues surrounding religion. But I had to ask myself: could part of it be the zealotry of a recent convert?
I’ve been a skeptic for as long as I can remember, always insisting that what I learned in school make logical sense. I’ve always tried to relate what I learned to the real world, and thought about the practical implications of the various things my rabbeim would teach me. I’ve had serious doubts about religion and God since I was sixteen. Yet I’ve always had this hazy notion in the back of my head that God was out there. There were a few arguments for the existence of God that I had heard as a teenager, thought were pretty good, and never really let myself examine. Everyone around me didn’t have any doubts. I couldn’t deny the basis of my culture. And yet, I remember writing papers in college for a writing class where I discussed arguments for various religions and concluded that Hashem was the Creator of the universe and Judasim was the One True Religion. And I didn’t buy it. (The professor, a frum woman, loved it. I got an “A” in that class.)
It wasn’t until I discovered the blogosphere that I realized I wasn’t unique, that there were other people out there who agreed with me, and that it was okay to think the way I did. I found myself drawn to the blogs of fellow skeptics, both those who had left the frum lifestyle and those who, like me, continue to live in the frum community. We all love to hear opinions that confirm our own, and I was eating it up. Very quickly, I came to identify myself as a skeptic and even as an atheist. All this within the last couple of years.
So while the skeptical mode of thought is not new to me, my interest in science, logic, history, and theology are not new, my self-identification as a skeptic is new. And maybe, just maybe, part of why I’m drawn to theological debates is a compulsion to defend my new identity.
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Two, section three
Your Space Suit (Chapter Two, section three)
The author draws an analogy between an astronaut’s spacesuit and the physical body. He states that the body is necessary for the soul to function in the physical world, much as a spacesuit is necessary for the astronaut to function in space. As I’ve discussed before, that we perceive ourselves as a disembodied conscious driving our bodies around is merely a quirk of our experience, and fMRI studies are providing increasingly detailed data on how our experiences are produced by our brains. Here the author is codifying that quirk of experience in a theological theory to explain the purpose of our physical body and its relationship to the soul. Interestingly, he doesn’t explain how the metaphysical soul interacts with the physical body. How, exactly, does the non-physical soul get the proper neurons in the physical brain to fire in order to wiggle it's body’s fingers?
Amusingly, the author speculates that if “an alien passing by in his spaceship” saw a human astronaut, he would assume that the suit was the actual creature he was observing, rather than the person inside. Unless that alien was made of far sturdier stuff than we are and was able to survive in the vaccum of space in nothing but its skin, any sentient being with technology advanced enough to build a spaceship would have to know that what he was looking at was a protective suit. Of course this doesn’t affect the author’s point about the real person being the soul inside the body, but as a science fiction fan I found it funny.
At this point it’s impossible for me to say whether he is right or wrong. We’ve moved passed discussing whether or not the soul actually exists. Assuming that it does, the description of the soul as “wearing” the body fits with what we experience. Not that that really matters, because once we’re assuming something that hasn’t been shown to be true and discussing aspects of it that are not testable, everyone’s theory is equally valid. It’s like assuming that dryads exist, and then discussing their relationship to trees’ growth. No one has ever seen a dryad, and there is no way of determining their effect on trees. It’s magic.
The author continues with another alien analogy. This one is about a creature who must have come from a colder planet than Earth, because he parks his spaceship on a frozen lake and wanders off for a month. When he comes back the ice has thawed and his ship is gone. The ice is analogous to the body which “is certain to “disintegrate” at the end of life.” Therefore, the author says, focusing our lives on our bodies is foolish.
This is only true if there is something else. If our bodies are all we have, then what else should we focus on? I am not advocating an irresponsible hedonistic lifestyle, but if we can responsibly indulge ourselves in physical pleasures, why shouldn’t we? In fact, one can argue that, absent the existence of an immortal soul, physical pleasures (including such ethereal forms of pleasure as happiness, satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, etc.) are the only thing of real value.
He then quotes psychologist Dr. Judith Mishell, who like him assumes the existence of the soul and that all positive human traits are to be attributed to it. She uses the analogy of a horse and rider, and explains that the rider must be in control, encouraging and caring for the horse, being considerate of its needs, but never allowing the horse to do as it pleases. Again, assuming that there is a soul, this seems good advice. If the soul is indeed the seat of all virtues, of all higher aspirations, then it is only right that it should be the rider and in control of the body.
But one could tell the same story without referencing a metaphysical soul. Using Freud’s theory of the subconscious, we could say that the Superego should be the rider and maintain tight control over the Id (and Ego) while being sensitive to its needs.
To move even further away from the metaphysical, we could say that the executive functions of the brain, the areas that produce rational thought and weigh pros and cons, should be the rider and maintain control over the emotions and instinctual urges.
Treating the soul as the person inside the body feels right intuitively, and that is why the description of it as wearing the body as suit, or of it controlling the body like a rider on a horse, is so compelling. But we must remember that our intuition is a quick and dirty system for dealing with the deluge of information with which the world inundates us, is highly dependant on past expirience, and in areas in which we are not experts is often wrong. We must refrain from attributing to the soul that which is accounted for by the physical brain (or attributing to the soul that which we don’t yet fully understand simply because of our lack of knowledge). And we must remember that when discussing metaphysical entities which no one has ever seen and which have no measurable effects, all theories about those effects and about the entity’s relationship to the physical world are equally magical.
The author draws an analogy between an astronaut’s spacesuit and the physical body. He states that the body is necessary for the soul to function in the physical world, much as a spacesuit is necessary for the astronaut to function in space. As I’ve discussed before, that we perceive ourselves as a disembodied conscious driving our bodies around is merely a quirk of our experience, and fMRI studies are providing increasingly detailed data on how our experiences are produced by our brains. Here the author is codifying that quirk of experience in a theological theory to explain the purpose of our physical body and its relationship to the soul. Interestingly, he doesn’t explain how the metaphysical soul interacts with the physical body. How, exactly, does the non-physical soul get the proper neurons in the physical brain to fire in order to wiggle it's body’s fingers?
Amusingly, the author speculates that if “an alien passing by in his spaceship” saw a human astronaut, he would assume that the suit was the actual creature he was observing, rather than the person inside. Unless that alien was made of far sturdier stuff than we are and was able to survive in the vaccum of space in nothing but its skin, any sentient being with technology advanced enough to build a spaceship would have to know that what he was looking at was a protective suit. Of course this doesn’t affect the author’s point about the real person being the soul inside the body, but as a science fiction fan I found it funny.
At this point it’s impossible for me to say whether he is right or wrong. We’ve moved passed discussing whether or not the soul actually exists. Assuming that it does, the description of the soul as “wearing” the body fits with what we experience. Not that that really matters, because once we’re assuming something that hasn’t been shown to be true and discussing aspects of it that are not testable, everyone’s theory is equally valid. It’s like assuming that dryads exist, and then discussing their relationship to trees’ growth. No one has ever seen a dryad, and there is no way of determining their effect on trees. It’s magic.
The author continues with another alien analogy. This one is about a creature who must have come from a colder planet than Earth, because he parks his spaceship on a frozen lake and wanders off for a month. When he comes back the ice has thawed and his ship is gone. The ice is analogous to the body which “is certain to “disintegrate” at the end of life.” Therefore, the author says, focusing our lives on our bodies is foolish.
This is only true if there is something else. If our bodies are all we have, then what else should we focus on? I am not advocating an irresponsible hedonistic lifestyle, but if we can responsibly indulge ourselves in physical pleasures, why shouldn’t we? In fact, one can argue that, absent the existence of an immortal soul, physical pleasures (including such ethereal forms of pleasure as happiness, satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, etc.) are the only thing of real value.
He then quotes psychologist Dr. Judith Mishell, who like him assumes the existence of the soul and that all positive human traits are to be attributed to it. She uses the analogy of a horse and rider, and explains that the rider must be in control, encouraging and caring for the horse, being considerate of its needs, but never allowing the horse to do as it pleases. Again, assuming that there is a soul, this seems good advice. If the soul is indeed the seat of all virtues, of all higher aspirations, then it is only right that it should be the rider and in control of the body.
But one could tell the same story without referencing a metaphysical soul. Using Freud’s theory of the subconscious, we could say that the Superego should be the rider and maintain tight control over the Id (and Ego) while being sensitive to its needs.
To move even further away from the metaphysical, we could say that the executive functions of the brain, the areas that produce rational thought and weigh pros and cons, should be the rider and maintain control over the emotions and instinctual urges.
Treating the soul as the person inside the body feels right intuitively, and that is why the description of it as wearing the body as suit, or of it controlling the body like a rider on a horse, is so compelling. But we must remember that our intuition is a quick and dirty system for dealing with the deluge of information with which the world inundates us, is highly dependant on past expirience, and in areas in which we are not experts is often wrong. We must refrain from attributing to the soul that which is accounted for by the physical brain (or attributing to the soul that which we don’t yet fully understand simply because of our lack of knowledge). And we must remember that when discussing metaphysical entities which no one has ever seen and which have no measurable effects, all theories about those effects and about the entity’s relationship to the physical world are equally magical.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Two, section two
The Human U-Turn (Chapter Two, section two)
The author quotes Drs. Wade and Travis (who, coincidentally, were the authors of the textbook I used in my Intro-to-Psych class in college) as saying that our crowning achievement as a species is that, “We are the only species that tries to understand its own misunderstandings.” The author interprets this as meaning that only humans have the ability to think about their past behavior and try to correct what we did wrong. He then says that, “only the human soul has the faculty to choose between right and wrong.” He is guilty here of the equivocation fallacy, as understanding our misunderstandings and correcting them implies changing what we got wrong in the practical sense, not in the moral sense. Yet the psychologists’ statement doesn’t imply even that, and in point of fact other species are capable of learning from and correcting “wrong” behavior by trial and error. Rather they are saying that we are the only species that thinks about why we got it wrong in the first place.
Further, even if the quote was about moral right and wrong, our ability to determine which is which does not by itself imply a soul. I suppose that at this point the author is assuming that he has adequately proven the existence of the soul in the last chapter, and so I will have to put up with the constant leaps of logic assigning cognitions, emotions, and instincts to the soul.
In the very next sentence the author again commits the equivocation fallacy when he states that animals are capable only of genetically programmed changes while humans are capable of changes through introspection. The examples he uses to illustrate his point are tadpoles changing into frogs and caterpillars into butterflies. The pre-programmed physical changes these animals go through are not the same kind of change we are talking about when we speak about someone turning their life around.
{equivocation fallacy x2}
As an example of someone turning his life around we have another glurgy story, this one about an active KKK member who renounced his former racism and anti-Semitism as a result of, “the remarkable unconditional love of a local Jewish couple.” This is meant to illustrate the ability of the human soul to, “engage in self-examination and make unexpected U-turns.
What can I say except, once again, there is no reason to say this had anything to do with any supposed soul. What if far more likely is that the KKK member was put in the uncomfortable position of holding conflicting beliefs: 1) “Jews are evil.” 2) “A Jewish couple are the nicest people I know and have helped me considerably.” The psychological stress caused by holding two conflicting beliefs is called cognitive dissonance, and inevitably one of the beliefs is discarded in order to maintain a coherent perception of the world. In this case it was the anti-Semitic beliefs that were jettisoned, leading him to renounce his former attitudes in order to maintain his friendship with the Jewish couple. This is a well-documented psychological mechanism whose functioning does not require a metaphysical soul with a divine sense of morality.
I also want to point out that once again the story seems chosen to evoke an emotional response in the reader. Any tale of someone deciding what they had been doing was wrong and changing their life would have worked. What we get is the quintessential modern-day anti-Semite reformed through the love of a Jewish couple. Granted, the author is entitled to choose stories he feels would appeal to his readership, but at a certain point it crosses the line from interesting to manipulative.
{emotional manipulation, violation of Occam’s Razor}
The author ends this section by stating that only the human soul is, “driven to greater and greater accomplishments,” and then claims that Maslow said that, “no sooner does a human being fill a lesser need than he aspires to actualize the next level.” His use of “the human soul” when “human” alone would suffice is becoming annoying. And if I remember correctly, Maslow says that each level of needs has to be fulfilled before one can fulfill needs on the next level. That is, satisfying a lower level is necessary to attempt to satisfy needs on a higher level, but it is not sufficient. Not everyone aspires to fulfill all of the needs in the hierarchy. [There is also some research that shows people try to fulfill needs at multiple levels as the opportunity arises rather than fulfilling them hierarchically, but that may be beside the point]
The author has demonstrated that humans are capable of change through introspection, spurred along by psychological mechanisms. He also continues to claim that only humans are driven to accomplish as much as they can, a claim about which, as I’ve said previously, there is no real data. He has not demonstrated a soul is necessary to account for these factors, and at this point seems to be taking it for granted that all positive human traits are a product of the soul.
The author quotes Drs. Wade and Travis (who, coincidentally, were the authors of the textbook I used in my Intro-to-Psych class in college) as saying that our crowning achievement as a species is that, “We are the only species that tries to understand its own misunderstandings.” The author interprets this as meaning that only humans have the ability to think about their past behavior and try to correct what we did wrong. He then says that, “only the human soul has the faculty to choose between right and wrong.” He is guilty here of the equivocation fallacy, as understanding our misunderstandings and correcting them implies changing what we got wrong in the practical sense, not in the moral sense. Yet the psychologists’ statement doesn’t imply even that, and in point of fact other species are capable of learning from and correcting “wrong” behavior by trial and error. Rather they are saying that we are the only species that thinks about why we got it wrong in the first place.
Further, even if the quote was about moral right and wrong, our ability to determine which is which does not by itself imply a soul. I suppose that at this point the author is assuming that he has adequately proven the existence of the soul in the last chapter, and so I will have to put up with the constant leaps of logic assigning cognitions, emotions, and instincts to the soul.
In the very next sentence the author again commits the equivocation fallacy when he states that animals are capable only of genetically programmed changes while humans are capable of changes through introspection. The examples he uses to illustrate his point are tadpoles changing into frogs and caterpillars into butterflies. The pre-programmed physical changes these animals go through are not the same kind of change we are talking about when we speak about someone turning their life around.
{equivocation fallacy x2}
As an example of someone turning his life around we have another glurgy story, this one about an active KKK member who renounced his former racism and anti-Semitism as a result of, “the remarkable unconditional love of a local Jewish couple.” This is meant to illustrate the ability of the human soul to, “engage in self-examination and make unexpected U-turns.
What can I say except, once again, there is no reason to say this had anything to do with any supposed soul. What if far more likely is that the KKK member was put in the uncomfortable position of holding conflicting beliefs: 1) “Jews are evil.” 2) “A Jewish couple are the nicest people I know and have helped me considerably.” The psychological stress caused by holding two conflicting beliefs is called cognitive dissonance, and inevitably one of the beliefs is discarded in order to maintain a coherent perception of the world. In this case it was the anti-Semitic beliefs that were jettisoned, leading him to renounce his former attitudes in order to maintain his friendship with the Jewish couple. This is a well-documented psychological mechanism whose functioning does not require a metaphysical soul with a divine sense of morality.
I also want to point out that once again the story seems chosen to evoke an emotional response in the reader. Any tale of someone deciding what they had been doing was wrong and changing their life would have worked. What we get is the quintessential modern-day anti-Semite reformed through the love of a Jewish couple. Granted, the author is entitled to choose stories he feels would appeal to his readership, but at a certain point it crosses the line from interesting to manipulative.
{emotional manipulation, violation of Occam’s Razor}
The author ends this section by stating that only the human soul is, “driven to greater and greater accomplishments,” and then claims that Maslow said that, “no sooner does a human being fill a lesser need than he aspires to actualize the next level.” His use of “the human soul” when “human” alone would suffice is becoming annoying. And if I remember correctly, Maslow says that each level of needs has to be fulfilled before one can fulfill needs on the next level. That is, satisfying a lower level is necessary to attempt to satisfy needs on a higher level, but it is not sufficient. Not everyone aspires to fulfill all of the needs in the hierarchy. [There is also some research that shows people try to fulfill needs at multiple levels as the opportunity arises rather than fulfilling them hierarchically, but that may be beside the point]
The author has demonstrated that humans are capable of change through introspection, spurred along by psychological mechanisms. He also continues to claim that only humans are driven to accomplish as much as they can, a claim about which, as I’ve said previously, there is no real data. He has not demonstrated a soul is necessary to account for these factors, and at this point seems to be taking it for granted that all positive human traits are a product of the soul.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
The Devil’s Dictionary
The following are excerpts from The Devil’s Dictionary, a newspaper feature written by Ambrose Bierce in the late 1800s and published as a book in 1906. I quote it here with no changes to the original text.
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
DEPRAVED – the moral condition of a gentleman who holds the opposite opinion.
FAITH – Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If man's notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and nowise dependent on, their consequences — then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
IMPIETY – Your irreverence towards my deity.
INFIDEL, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and pumpums.
KORAN, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
MYTHOLOGY – The body of a primitive’s people’s beliefs concerning its origins, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts it invents later.
PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.
PRAY – To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
DEPRAVED – the moral condition of a gentleman who holds the opposite opinion.
FAITH – Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If man's notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and nowise dependent on, their consequences — then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
IMPIETY – Your irreverence towards my deity.
INFIDEL, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and pumpums.
KORAN, n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
MYTHOLOGY – The body of a primitive’s people’s beliefs concerning its origins, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts it invents later.
PANTHEISM, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future.
PRAY – To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Bloggers vs. Conformists Redux
In this week’s 5 Town’s Jewish Times there was a Letter to the Editor from Rabbi Ginzberg, whose article I (and many others) criticized last week. The letter was meant as a response to the, “phone calls, email, and letters,” R’ Ginzberg received following the publication of his article.
Instead of admitting that he had made some indefensible statements, R’ Ginzberg instead offered a “clarification.” What is fascinating about what followed is how it contradicts the original article. In last week’s article R’ Ginzberg made it clear that he considered blogging an invalid venue for expressing opinions, bemoaning the fact his friend had chosen to write a blog post rather than deliver a speech at the Agudah Convention. He accused bloggers – all bloggers – of not being “doers” (whatever that means).
In this week’s letter R’ Ginzberg backpedals furiously, praising those “wonderful Yidden who truly care about Klal Yisrael and … offer suggestions and solutions… using their real names.” He has changed from claiming blogging is always the wrong way of expressing one’s opinions to claiming that blogging ANONYMOUSLY is the wrong way of expressing one’s opinions. He accuses those who use pseudo-names of “hide[ing] like cowards behind their computer screens.” Yet there is no acknowledgment of this change of policy. Nor does he mention either the anonymous bloggers who were instrumental in bringing long-ignored issues to the community’s attention or the social sanctions that would be leveled against bloggers who discussed controversial topics under their real names.
He decries those who dare attack community leaders, and ends by expressing the wish that those who sincerely want to help the community “join together in unity and offer positive chizuk to each other, not bitter attacks.” It is unfortunate for him that not everyone shares his implied vision of limiting the discussion of the areas in which the community needs improvement to leadership-sanctioned topics and those involved in the discussion to people vulnerable to their society’s reaction against them.
Is using a pseudo-name so that your neighbors don’t know your opinions cowardly? Maybe, but in the real world the reaction of your community to your controversial opinions is a real concern. Given the choice between anonymous bloggers forcing positive changes or the community continuing to ignore serious problems because no one is brave enough to risk his family’s standing, R’ Ginzberg would choose the latter. I think most bloggers and those affected by less-than-pristine elements of frum society would prefer the former.
Instead of admitting that he had made some indefensible statements, R’ Ginzberg instead offered a “clarification.” What is fascinating about what followed is how it contradicts the original article. In last week’s article R’ Ginzberg made it clear that he considered blogging an invalid venue for expressing opinions, bemoaning the fact his friend had chosen to write a blog post rather than deliver a speech at the Agudah Convention. He accused bloggers – all bloggers – of not being “doers” (whatever that means).
In this week’s letter R’ Ginzberg backpedals furiously, praising those “wonderful Yidden who truly care about Klal Yisrael and … offer suggestions and solutions… using their real names.” He has changed from claiming blogging is always the wrong way of expressing one’s opinions to claiming that blogging ANONYMOUSLY is the wrong way of expressing one’s opinions. He accuses those who use pseudo-names of “hide[ing] like cowards behind their computer screens.” Yet there is no acknowledgment of this change of policy. Nor does he mention either the anonymous bloggers who were instrumental in bringing long-ignored issues to the community’s attention or the social sanctions that would be leveled against bloggers who discussed controversial topics under their real names.
He decries those who dare attack community leaders, and ends by expressing the wish that those who sincerely want to help the community “join together in unity and offer positive chizuk to each other, not bitter attacks.” It is unfortunate for him that not everyone shares his implied vision of limiting the discussion of the areas in which the community needs improvement to leadership-sanctioned topics and those involved in the discussion to people vulnerable to their society’s reaction against them.
Is using a pseudo-name so that your neighbors don’t know your opinions cowardly? Maybe, but in the real world the reaction of your community to your controversial opinions is a real concern. Given the choice between anonymous bloggers forcing positive changes or the community continuing to ignore serious problems because no one is brave enough to risk his family’s standing, R’ Ginzberg would choose the latter. I think most bloggers and those affected by less-than-pristine elements of frum society would prefer the former.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter Two, section one
Soul Defined: The Human U-Turn (Chapter Two, section one)
The author begins the chapter by asking what exactly the soul is and how we can relate to it. To, “…give us a glimpse into the power and nature of the soul,” he tells several glurgy stories.
The first is again related to WWII, and is about two concentration camp inmates. In a bad moment one tells the other that God loves him and gives him a hug. The second man would later claim that hug saved his life. The author asks, “If human existence is limited to the physical dimension, how can something as ethereal as love stave off death?” Firstly, in this case I would argue that it was hope, shared experience, and sense of meaning that helped the man survive, not “love” per se. Secondly, love is not as “ethereal” as the author would imagine, but is instead an emotion generated by our brain through the release of the neurotransmitters oxytocin and serotonin, a process “limited to the physical dimension.”
The second story is about a sickly boy who, told by doctors he would not live to adulthood, ran away from home and became a circus strongman through, “will power… and the power of the mind,” and lived to be an old man. The author implies that it was his mind/soul that overcame his illness and allowed him to perform amazing feats. Leaving aside that circus acts are just that – acts – there are several possible explanations for the boy’s recovery. 1) The doctors may have been mistaken. 2) The training and bodybuilding he went through to become a strongman strengthened his weak body and allowed it to fight off the disease. 3) There really is something to the mind-body connection. The belief that one will get better causing actual improvement is a well-known phenomenon called the placebo effect, and it is the main thing that drugs are tested against for efficacy (that is, trials are conducted to see if the drug’s active ingredients produce improvement over the placebo effect produced by a sugar pill). It is entirely plausible that the boy’s, “strength of mind [could] counteract the weakness of the body,” especially when we remember that the mind, as an emergent property of the brain, is part of the body. Thus we can discuss the influence of the mind on the body without having to posit a metaphysical soul.
The author cites several other cases of people who overcame extreme physical limitations to have notable careers. These people are to be admired for the fortitude and hard work that it took for them to succeed despite their disabilities, but their success neither implies a metaphysical soul nor tells us anything about the soul if it does exist. Attributing their success to the 'power of the human spirit' is an emotional appeal that actually detracts from the credit they deserve for their extraordinary achievements. It is the equivalent of saying, “Yes, they worked hard, but their success is really due to their fairy god-mothers waving their magic wands.”
The author claims that, “The above examples suggest that an invisible, non-physical component can profoundly affect corporeal reality.” They do no such thing! In none of the examples given is it necessary to posit a soul to explain the reported phenomena, and if the author’s statement is taken to refer to the mind alone (though I have no doubt he means the soul) it must be remembered, as I stated above, that the mind is as corporeal as any other part of the body.
{incorrect scientific fact, emotional appeal, unwarranted assumption}
The author provides a quote from Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch in which Rav Hirsch explains that man’s body was taken from the earth, but that which makes him alive is the spirit breathed into him by God. He further explains that this spirit survives death.
This is reassuring to a species aware of its own mortality, but it is theology, not science.
The author states that the relation between the spirit and the body is now beginning to be investigated scientifically, and that new experiments have shown the spirit’s effect on the body. I have a feeling that “spirit” in relation to these experiments is a synonym for “mind,” not, “soul,” but let’s see what the evidence shows.
The first study he cites showed that patients who merely believed they had received surgery to reduce pain in their knee showed just as much improvement as patients who had actually received the surgery. While this is a good argument against continuing to perform said surgery, it is merely a demonstration of the placebo effect. This is not “groundbreaking” as the author claims, but merely yet another affirmation of a well-known effect. It is also not evidence for the power of a transcendent human spirit, but a fascinating insight into how our beliefs about a situation influence our experience of it.
In the second study he cites, one in which patients with Parkinson’s were given either a dopamine injection or a placebo, the author explicitly states that, “the placebo – or rather the patient’s expectations – caused the brain to release as much dopamine as the active drug!” These are very interesting results, but it does not show, as the author claims, “That thoughts, hopes, and expectations can produce such demonstrable physical effects reveals the power of the spirit.” Unless, as I speculated above, “spirit” here means “mind.” The results show how our mind, as an emergent property of our brain, can affect our brain and cause it to inhibit the activity that produces pain and increase the activity that releases dopamine. This is similar to how clicking on an icon on your computer screen – an image produced by software, an emergent property of the ones and zeros encoded on your computer’s hard drive – can cause the physical door of your disc drive to open.
{equivocation fallacy}
The author begins the chapter by asking what exactly the soul is and how we can relate to it. To, “…give us a glimpse into the power and nature of the soul,” he tells several glurgy stories.
The first is again related to WWII, and is about two concentration camp inmates. In a bad moment one tells the other that God loves him and gives him a hug. The second man would later claim that hug saved his life. The author asks, “If human existence is limited to the physical dimension, how can something as ethereal as love stave off death?” Firstly, in this case I would argue that it was hope, shared experience, and sense of meaning that helped the man survive, not “love” per se. Secondly, love is not as “ethereal” as the author would imagine, but is instead an emotion generated by our brain through the release of the neurotransmitters oxytocin and serotonin, a process “limited to the physical dimension.”
The second story is about a sickly boy who, told by doctors he would not live to adulthood, ran away from home and became a circus strongman through, “will power… and the power of the mind,” and lived to be an old man. The author implies that it was his mind/soul that overcame his illness and allowed him to perform amazing feats. Leaving aside that circus acts are just that – acts – there are several possible explanations for the boy’s recovery. 1) The doctors may have been mistaken. 2) The training and bodybuilding he went through to become a strongman strengthened his weak body and allowed it to fight off the disease. 3) There really is something to the mind-body connection. The belief that one will get better causing actual improvement is a well-known phenomenon called the placebo effect, and it is the main thing that drugs are tested against for efficacy (that is, trials are conducted to see if the drug’s active ingredients produce improvement over the placebo effect produced by a sugar pill). It is entirely plausible that the boy’s, “strength of mind [could] counteract the weakness of the body,” especially when we remember that the mind, as an emergent property of the brain, is part of the body. Thus we can discuss the influence of the mind on the body without having to posit a metaphysical soul.
The author cites several other cases of people who overcame extreme physical limitations to have notable careers. These people are to be admired for the fortitude and hard work that it took for them to succeed despite their disabilities, but their success neither implies a metaphysical soul nor tells us anything about the soul if it does exist. Attributing their success to the 'power of the human spirit' is an emotional appeal that actually detracts from the credit they deserve for their extraordinary achievements. It is the equivalent of saying, “Yes, they worked hard, but their success is really due to their fairy god-mothers waving their magic wands.”
The author claims that, “The above examples suggest that an invisible, non-physical component can profoundly affect corporeal reality.” They do no such thing! In none of the examples given is it necessary to posit a soul to explain the reported phenomena, and if the author’s statement is taken to refer to the mind alone (though I have no doubt he means the soul) it must be remembered, as I stated above, that the mind is as corporeal as any other part of the body.
{incorrect scientific fact, emotional appeal, unwarranted assumption}
The author provides a quote from Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch in which Rav Hirsch explains that man’s body was taken from the earth, but that which makes him alive is the spirit breathed into him by God. He further explains that this spirit survives death.
This is reassuring to a species aware of its own mortality, but it is theology, not science.
The author states that the relation between the spirit and the body is now beginning to be investigated scientifically, and that new experiments have shown the spirit’s effect on the body. I have a feeling that “spirit” in relation to these experiments is a synonym for “mind,” not, “soul,” but let’s see what the evidence shows.
The first study he cites showed that patients who merely believed they had received surgery to reduce pain in their knee showed just as much improvement as patients who had actually received the surgery. While this is a good argument against continuing to perform said surgery, it is merely a demonstration of the placebo effect. This is not “groundbreaking” as the author claims, but merely yet another affirmation of a well-known effect. It is also not evidence for the power of a transcendent human spirit, but a fascinating insight into how our beliefs about a situation influence our experience of it.
In the second study he cites, one in which patients with Parkinson’s were given either a dopamine injection or a placebo, the author explicitly states that, “the placebo – or rather the patient’s expectations – caused the brain to release as much dopamine as the active drug!” These are very interesting results, but it does not show, as the author claims, “That thoughts, hopes, and expectations can produce such demonstrable physical effects reveals the power of the spirit.” Unless, as I speculated above, “spirit” here means “mind.” The results show how our mind, as an emergent property of our brain, can affect our brain and cause it to inhibit the activity that produces pain and increase the activity that releases dopamine. This is similar to how clicking on an icon on your computer screen – an image produced by software, an emergent property of the ones and zeros encoded on your computer’s hard drive – can cause the physical door of your disc drive to open.
{equivocation fallacy}
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