The Radical Secularist

The Neuronally challenged David Brooks strikes again: In what may be taken as a follow-up to an Op-ed in which he precipitously proclaimed the “End of [Moral] Philosophy” (see our April 2009 archive for his piece and our commentaries), he has again decided to bless us with his journalistic musings about “moral naturalism,” by editorializing a conference he attended on the subject. Let me begin with the former: a responsible journalist (which Brooks clearly is not) would have begun by defining the view about which he fancies himself to be reporting and commenting upon. If he had done his homework, he would have realized that the term “moral naturalism”, although sometimes used by philosophers to distinguish their views from supernaturalistic views of morality (including but not limited to those of religion or theology), it is more commonly used to refer to the “realist” metaethical theory that moral facts and properties are identical with or reducible to natural facts and properties. In the former sense, any moral view (like those advocated for and defended at The Radical Secularist) that eschews dubious metaphysical speculations about nonnatural facts and properties is naturalistic. However, one may be a moral naturalist in this sense without being one in the narrower, more specialized, and (among those who trade in the currency of the concept) common use of the term. Why is this definitional distinction important? Minimally, it would have saved Brooks from misinforming the public on a conference and topic his editorializing and thereby compromising whatever journalistic integrity he might have. For although his apparent identification of moral naturalism with “moral sentimentalism” at least has the merit of being consistent with moral naturalism in the wide, anti-supernaturalist sense, it mistakenly identifies it with that sense. Although moral sentimentalism–which may be simply defined as the view that our moral distinctions, or ideas of what, say, is morally right or wrong, virtuous or vicious originate with our feelings of approval or disapproval rather than rational intuition or deliberation–is naturalistic in the wide sense, it is plainly false, as Brooks seems to think, that “moral naturalists [AS SUCH] believe that we have moral sentiments that have emerged from a long history of relationships.” One may be a moral naturalist in either the wide or narrow sense without being a moral sentimentalist.

A second problem with Brooks’s editorial is his failure to distinguish between descriptive and normative ethics, namely empirical descriptions of what moral values we actually hold and what may have caused us to hold them, and normative assessments or evaluations of what values we should or ought to hold, namely which values ought to be recognized, felt, or endorsed as good. In failing to make this fairly basic distinction of ethical inquiry (one any student who has taken an introductory course in philosophical ethics ought to be capable of making), Brooks once again commits the journalistic injustice of misinforming his readers: just because we may have evolved to respond approvingly to acts of fairness or kindness, and disapprovingly to unfair or unkind acts, we may (that is to say it makes perfect logical sense) to ask whether such acts are good or bad, and therefore whether we ought to respond in the way evolution has disposed us to respond. Consider for example phobias, many of which evolutionary psychologists argue are evolutionary adaptions to selective pressures of our ancestors. Yet, we can reasonably question whether xenophobia or ethnocentrism are morally good. Similarly, if sentiments of disapproval of women in the workplace or positions of power, or homosexuality, could be shown to be rooted in evolutionary adaptations, would that ipso facto make them good or right? What these examples, and many like them suggest, is that there is a differences between explaining behavior that is consistent with morality and identifying (or correctly theorizing about) what makes such behavior moral.

All this is to say that however “nice [Brooks finds it] to see people investigating morality in ways that are concrete and empirical,” this ought not provide solace to those, like Brooks, who are “wary of abstract theorizing.” Moral naturalists, sentimentalists, and evolutionists are as dependent upon “abstract theorizing,” by which Brooks presumably means philosophy, as are other metaethical and normative ethical theories, including those he seemingly prefers, namely religious or theological theories. This brings me to the evaluative or editorial segment of his Op-ed.

Although Brooks clearly prefers a “naturalistic” approach to ethics over a “philosophical”, or at least “rationalistic” one, he’s unhappy with its “implicit tendencies.” Where the sentimentalist or evolutionary approach, as he understands them, has a tendency to emphasize the social virtues, like cooperation and empathy, he would also, if not rather, have them explain “the yearning for transcendence and the sacred, which plays such a major role in every human society.” Why, one might ask, ought “moral naturalism” explain this phenomenon: for no other reason, Brooks answers, than to “satisfy those” (presumably himself included) “who want their morality to be awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great.” Naturally, what Brooks means here is those who want their morality to come from supernatural origins, paradigmatically some supposed divine being or god. But why we should want or believe that our morals (descriptively and normatively understood) are of a supernatural origin, Brooks remains unsurprisingly silent. My guess is that this is because he is not so much “wary” but incapable “of abstract theorizing.” If he were, he would quickly realize that there is no good reason for believing or desiring a religious or theological ethics, as it is metaphysically, epistemically, and logically indefensible, and to do so is inconsistent with the aims and values of the “moral naturalism” he criticizes.  None of this is to say that moral naturalism, and sentimentalism and evolutionary morality in particular, are free of difficulties, but only that Brooks fails to understand them because he fails to understand the position that he takes himself to be describing and evaluating.  If the Times is going to report and comment upon scientific and philosophical affairs, then they would do well to have those with some knowledge of these issues do so, not uneducated journalists like David Brooks.

For Brooks’s Op-ed, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks

Although toleration is a value of Western democracies and culture more generally, it ought not be confused for its supreme and overarching value. To this, right of place goes to equality and liberty, with which toleration ought not be confused. Although a free and equal society is, by and large, a “tolerant society” it does not entail it, especially when being tolerant conflicts with the equality and freedom of some of its members. The question of whether or not muslim women have the right to wear burqua’s is not, as Britain’s Immigration Minister, Damien Green sees it, ultimately a question about whether it would be consistent with a “tolerant society” but, as the French rightly see it, with whether it is consistent with a free and equal society. Seen in its proper light, the dispute is, or ought to be, ultimately a dispute not about value but about fact–namely the fact of whether or not a burqua ban is consistent with the values of liberty and equality. The French by and large believe that it is, as evidenced by the French Parliament’s decision, and its likely ratification into law.

(A response)

Radical: from latin radix, root. Secularist: from saecularis, of the age of the time. By extension taken to be of the present time, of the world as it is, of material actuality (since the 13th century) and not belonging to the order of the divine.

Secularism is a simple affirmation of the matters of this world without an allusion or reliance on matters otherwordly. We solidly stand on this side of the ontological divide which keeps our finitude in a state of constant abjection from the august infinitude of all poor metaphysics.

The articulation of our positions, political and ethical, belongs to the material elucidation of these problems and we have a heavy reliance on scientific methods and positions, including an inexhaustible skepticism which is actively suspicious of the type of certainties that religion is so eager to provide.

One can only kill or torture with certainty of some or other sort, so we tend to think that normally doubt is a politically a lot less dangerous and philosophically a lot less suspicious.  In other words, we are thoroughly rooted in this world and care little for gods and imaginary friends. Given the consistently ugly history of religion, much of it compiled in these pages, the answer to your questions is a resounding, YES, the world is in dire need of a radicalized form of secularism.

–Martin Gak

This article was published in Argentina’s Cronista Comercial on April 29, 2010

dedicated to my student AB

While the legal battles over the status of gay marriages continue to rage on newspaper covers and TV screens, it is probably important to remind ourselves what are the stakes in this discussion.

At this time the debate seems to be focused on the legality of these unions, but this discussion is only secondary to a much more fundamental one which must be tackled first. The issue is not wether gay marriages subvert the law, the questions is wether a law which denies equality of rights to minorities is morally permissible.

We can surely still find those who find homosexuality offensive. Yet, to aesthetic arguments against the granting of rights we ought to pay little attention. It seems irrelevant if the sights of homosexuality disgust somebody or not. No society with deliberative pretensions can define its moral and political commitments treating its values as matters of taste.  If most of our fellow citizens happens to consider that some or other ethnic group offends with their appearance their aesthetic predilections and under such pretext were to demand its segregation or expulsion, we would simply claim that the population in question suffers some form of severe intellectual deficiency.

The questions of the holiness of marriage is equally absurd though it seems to continue to have some force. The demand of respect for the sanctity of marriage has no place at all in a secular democratic domain.  While the state may well permit the different religious groups to define its sacraments and unions as they may see fit, none of these groups may have the right or authority to define the rights and obligations of the members of the state.  Hence, its not the secular state that must respect religious sacraments–the state would thus commit itself to a religious position–it is the religious institutions who must must be obligated to respect the rights and obligations that the state define in secular terms. If the state echoes the theological demands of anyone of these religious groups, it stands in direct confrontation not only with secular values but with the religious freedom of all other religious groups.

Is an institution alternative to marriage viable? No. Precisely because the question at stake concerns the equality of rights, whatever maybe the primary structure of relations by which the state recognizes matrimonial rights and obligations it must be the same for all. As a society, we judge our actions by the standard of equality of rights and coherence in our political and moral demands. For a society that values the respect for the privacy and individual choices of its members, its incongruent to deny gay widowers the pension of their loved ones, incoherent to deny a lesbian mother custody of children adopted by her partner and cruel to deny any man or woman irrespective of their sexual orientation the right to visit, make decisions and hold the hand of a dying lover. This debate is not one about legal technicalities, whatever happens with gay marriage will be a reflection of our moral fiber and what we are as a society.

—Martin Gak

In the face of what is now being called “New Atheism” several authors–mostly among progressive religious communities–seem to have found a new strategy for defending what continues to be the unwitting defense of pietistic dogmatism: equate the new radicalized atheism with religious fundamentalism. One of the last salvoes fired by the progressive believers can be found in Skye Jethani’s article for the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/skye-jethani/what-evangelicals-and-ath_b_549775.html

Jethani’s article denotes a spectacular intellectual ineptitude which betrays a rather strange lack of understanding of basic questions of scientific method for somebody that is concerned with debating scientific scepticism. This seems to be at the core of what Jethani misses, religion deals in certainties, science does not. And then, atheism as the shorthand for the type of materialistic scepticism which emanates from science to other disciplines cannot but remain, not just suspicious, but actively unconvinced by claims of certainty.  Only a failure to recognize this fundamental difference could make anyone suppose that the so called “new atheism” is in any way grounded on a fundamental claim of certainty.

Religion is, indeed,  a relation of certainty which is held in spite of all lack of sufficient evidence. The source of these certainty is, of course, not knowledge but belief. And precisely because of the abysmal separation between the object of religious certainty–a god or a future beyond human toils and tribulations–it is impossible to bridge this gap by way of knowledge–as the Calvinists, for instanace, well know, how could a finite knowledge know the infinite? Hence, the commitment to the god or the proclaimed future must be nothing other than one of belief. But this belief is not merely cursory, it has, indeed, cognitive purport, cognitive pretensions: the religious agent claims to know something by a process other than knowledge. Ask a believer “how” he knows and he will oftentimes tell you “he just does”.

The object of this certainty  is a manifest destiny invariably dependent on a metaphysical anthropology which claims to account for the “true nature” of the human, what the human authentically is. This account belong to a theist tale in some cases–one that has a presiding god–and in other cases a non-theological one. For instance, Buddhism is non-theistic though still religious and grounded in some claim of transcedental certainty yet we would not claim that  Buddhists are atheists.

So what are we to make of the often repeated story that it is atheism which has produced the most murderous fundamentalisms of recent history? Are Nazism, Stalinism, Fascism or Maoism atheist projects?  Certainly a good part of what is often called “atheist” systems were, in fact, theists and felt justified by divine command to commit all sorts of atrocities. For instance: Franco, Pinochet in Chile, Degrelle in Belgium, Laval  and Petin in occupied France–which are often conveniently forgotten in mentioning Nazism–Salazar in Portugal, Diem in Vietnam, Batista in Cuba, both Duvaliers in Haiti, Videla, Bignone and Galtieri in Argentina, Rios Mont in Guatemala–now an evnagelists–or Mugabe in Zaire–just to name a few– were all staunch Caltholics. Also, Hitler and Moussolini were Catholics, though it can be disputed that their catholicism defied their political agenda. Yet they seemed pretty comfortable with the help of the Vatican and the alliance with Franco, Petin or Tiso.

Islam has been prominently in the news on account of the plethora of political figures whose religious commitments are the basis of much murderous work, so while the examples are plentiful of believers killing in the name of Allah,  we can for instance refer to Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban as two recent and notable examples of religious violence. Jews of course have at least 60 years of documented religiously grounded occupation in the name of religious and ethnic purity on Palestinian land (Please see 4b in the Law of Return). And should one be tempted to portray eastern religions in too kind a light we should keep in mind for instance the Indian BJP and their atrocious political manners or the Soto Zen schools of Japan who in the eve of the Rape  of Nanjing had figures such as Zen Master Harada Daiun Sogaku  support what would become one of the most egregious crimes in the history of WWII with the following words: ”If ordered to march: tramp, tramp or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest wisdom of enlightenment. The unity of Zen and war … extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war now under way.” As for wars and other calamities brought about directly by religious demand, the list is long and well known, so we will save here some time.

While all these are clearly religious grounds for political violence,  in one all important this family portrait can easily include Teutonic Nazism, Proletarian Stalinism or the strange brand of  violent Kamer Rouge pastoralism. Just like theistic and non-theistic religions, all these political models have at the core of their program a transcedental anthropology which  makes a claim of indubitable certainty as to the authentic nature and destiny of humans. What in Judaism, Islam or Christianity maybe the attainment and fulfillment of the human’s divine nature–for which, once more, their is not a shred of evidence whatsoever thus must be taken on belief–the Nazis had the fulfillment of the destiny of the German spirit as many a form of Marxism had the fulfillment of the destiny of the proletarians or Pol Pot the authentic nature of the Khamer people and their peasant fate. This mechanic of teleological certainty can be articulated in relation to Maoism, Franquism, Italian Fascism, etc. One can look just about anywhere where a claim of certainty concerning transcedental authenticity dwells and find religion and its suspicious demand for faith–to substitute the lack of evidence–to justify actions. It is only certainty that can provide sufficient justification to kill or torture.

On this account, atheism has little if anything to do with religion. Science as the epitome of atheism does not trade in certainties. All propositions are open to further scrutiny and all claims are at best regulative. Thus, no atheist would claim that any given god does not exist anymore that we would claim that there are not china teapots floating about the earth. What the atheist in his sceptical demeanor would claim is that all things being equal, the existence of the teapot is improvable. As things stand, there is no evidence to assert its existence and as such it is foolhardy to go organize an expedition into orbit to retrieve it. With regards to God, the claim is not that it categorically does not exist but rather than the lack of sufficient evidence makes its putative existence explanatorily weak and in terms of moral demands it is simply an insufficient justification for action, such as murdering sodomites (Leviticus 20:13), plucking the eyes of children who mock their parents (Proverbs 30:17) or killing those of us who insult the Jewish and Christian god (Leviticus 24:16).

—Martin Gak

There is a logical fallacy of the variety of the argumentum ad hominem which is often called argumentum ad hitlerum. It starts and stops with more or less these words addressed to the interlocutor: “you are a nazi”. I have been accused of being a nazi a few times and I have now adopted a more or less rigorous strategy. I grant the point and then restate the position. In other words, I propose: “let us say that I am indeed a nazi–unlikely as that may be–and now I would like to know what is the qualm with the position I hold”. More often than not, in the past few years, I have encountered this nobel arguments in discussions concerning the policies of the Israeli state with regards both to its neighbors and the Palestinian population. At one point or another, as many have discovered before me, criticizing Israel will invariably result in being called a nazi. The thrust of the claim relies on the nominal claim that the state of Israel has to Judaism. If the state is Jewish, criticism of Israel is an attack on Judaism. By definition, any attack on Judaism is the product of irrational racial or religious hate ergo criticism of Israel is an act of antisemitism in the image and likeness of what , say, Hitler would do. Yes, a brilliant mode of argumentation indeed. To wit, every sentenced ever uttered or written with respect to the so-called “New Antisemitism” is nothing but just that.

Now since Israel has been making effective use of this technique, last week, the man with the easiest job at the Vatican–the Preacher to the Pope who presumably has an even less challenging job than the Vatican’s Preacher to the Vatican Choir– decided to try his hand at precisely this game. The Rev Raniero Cantalamessa dared to compare the current attacks on the vatican to antisemitism. Lo and behold!

To be fair, it was not the reverend himself who came up with such strange a strategy to defend the Vatican. The culprit, which has more or less remained hidden from scrutiny, was a Jewish friend of Cantalamessa–Singthetable in Italian, not kidding. In his letter, this “Jewish friend” of the reverend made the comparison that has brought Jewish organizations into a mild neurotic paroxysm, which they seldom undergo when their “Israeli friends” do the same. Now, this is what the “Jewish friend” wrote to reverend Cantalamessa–I just don’t get tired of that name–in his letter: “The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,” Now, perhaps is not worth addressing here the manner in which the Jewish community in individuals–like Catalamessa’s friend and institutions such as Aipac are the very authors of this type of banalization of antisemitism, Israel being probably the main culprit–it is worth asking the question about the alleged shift from personal responsibilities to collective guilt. Is it true that the criticism leveled against the church are indeed acts of anti-religious stereotyping?

Well, the short answer is no. The church is not being accused of sexual abuse as a whole. Particular priests are being accused of sexual abuse of children. In the midst of the report on the massive number of abuses across Europe and the US, the question was bound to be what kind of responsibility should be assigned to the institutional bodies that oversaw these individual clergymen. What transpired as the story unfolded is that the church in its institutional bodies and authorities undertook a systematic and deliberate attempt to cover up the crimes. There is little or no force to the claim of stereotyping since there is no overt claim about what priesthood could entail in terms of sexual morality or if the church as an institution fosters wittingly or unwittingly the rape of children–of course I am thinking it but not saying it. What there is, on the other hand, is a clear demand for the Catholic church to submit any of its members who are suspected of aiding, abetting or giving cover to rapists and molesters. Because the evidence against both the current pope and the previous one as well as against many members of the clergy is mounting, it is the institution that must be brought into close scrutiny. If the church is willing to behave as a cave in which criminals are given shelter, then it should be prepared to be treated as such.

-Martin Gak

Last night I insulted somebody’s grandmother. Its not the first time I find myself in the unsavory position of feeling compelled to call into question the wisdom of my friend’s elders. Not too long ago, during what was mostly a polite dinner I was told that all my philosophical pretensions could hardly compete with the worldly wisdom of the mother of some other acquaintance. This woman, who by the son’s own admission had little or no formal schooling apparently was the possessor of some tremendous preternatural intuition which could put any particle physicist to shame even in matters concerning particle physics. Now, since I take philosophy to be a technical discipline much like, say, physics in which there are high degrees of specialization I ventured the possibility that my friends mother may not be competent in philosophical matters, I may even have used the word incompetent though I am not entirely sure. You can imagine the response. It went something like this: are you calling my mother stupid? My answer should have been, “no, I am simply claiming that she is incompetent in issues of philosophical technicalities.” but it probably was “not completely”. Oh well…
Now, there is something about philosophy that gives people the impression that no qualifications are necessary for its practice and that at the end of the day, say, Kant had nothing more illuminating to say that Oprah. In the end, people seem to be incapable of recognizing the force of a better argument. This is strange when you take into consideration that by their own estimation accuracy, correctness and truthfulness are highly valued. None of these happy idiots in their right minds would approach their grocer to ask for a diagnostic on possible coronary problems and yet when it comes to the meaning of say, the objective purport of moral claims, they all feel entitled to impose their ignorance with the authority of a medieval canonic jurist who just woke up from cryogenic suspension. But why?
I find some solace in the fact that philosophy is not the only discipline that is the target of intellectual usurpation by snake oil sellers. This week I watch Deepak Chopra play this game with quantum physics at Cal Tech. Chopra, one of the most prolific charlatans of the past two decades, sat in front of an audience of scientists and grounding his claim to authority on his medical specialization in endocrinology proceeded to explain to a audience chock-full-of experts what principles of quantum physics were truly all about. Apparently, single handedly Chopra had solved the problem of microscopic and macroscopic continuity which permitted to use the exotic behavior of electrons to resolve some of the salient questions in his now almost complete account of human psych-ology. Yes, the study of the soul.
A more common area of intellectual dishonesty which exploits the riffraff stupidity has been biology. Last night I treated myself to a short session of torture in which Ben Stain–always the savant idiot–submits Dawkins to roughly the following line of interrogation concerning the beginning of life: q: “where does life begin?” a: “we don’t know exactly” q: “you don’t know?” a: “we dont know” q:”so you don’t know?” a:”we dont know” q: “So are you saying that you don’t know where life comes from” a:”correct”. This is not an exact citation of the exchanged in Stein’s new blockbuster Expelled but it does represent the general thrust of the manner in which theists like to approach honest investigation, that is, dishonestly. The question that Stein was asking is really this one: “How do you know its not god?” Or perhaps in a more expansive formuation, “you say that you do not know how life started but you say that you know how life did start: not by divine work.”
The answer that Dawkins should have provided is this: “Dear sir, you are a dishonest imbecile who, were science a religious project–Jihadists is what Chopra calls rigorous science–would be shot in the head in the public square. But you are in luck, the team of deranged murderers is the one you happen to belong to.” Why such nastiness you may ask. Here is the answer: What Stein and Chopra and my friends and acquaintances share is the obscene abuse–as John McGuire should put it–of the intellectual candor of honest research. The principle by which all universal claims both in science and philosophy, etc are liable to further observations–philosophy even in its most metaphysical forms still needs to be in agreement with the world we observe–gives no scientific or philosophical assertion the benefit of being the final one. When science claims that it does not yet know it admits precisely to this. It is indeed this admission that opens the doors for the dogmatic parasites which feed their claims–oftentimes outlandish–on the inconclusiveness of hypotheses. If you don’t know how life started, how do you know its not god? The question is stupid simply on these bases: Step 1: Look around your room and try to think of the things that are not there (a nuclear submarine, an acre of land in Canberra, a German hunter with his dog, the russian prime minister, a Swedish midget riding a zebra just to name a few.) Step 2: Prove that they are in fact not there. Sure there is no evidence, I presume, that they are there but where is the evidence that they are not?
Now it seems rather irrelevant how you feel about the Swedish midget and his loyal friend the zebra and, to be honest, I don’t much care about it either. Madness can be, under the proper lighting conditions, adorable. But that is only until the zebra starts talking and demanding that you stone homosexuals, kill you son, exterminate the dwellers of the apartment next to yours or demand that you refrain from masturbation. For any one of these many claims I would need something that until then I had been happy to forego: evidence.
The reason for such need is very simple to explain much thanks to the efforts of metaethicists–a core area of philosophical ethics–who have toiled over these questions for at least two thousand years or so. The reason why I now need evidence is that when you come out of your bedroom demanding that I kill my children I am bound to ask for a justification. Why should I kill my children? Your answer may be that it is because the midget’s zebra demands that I do so and we must do what the zebra says. Here is however when we get to the crucial question: “is that so?” Now, if you can show that it is so, then it seems that I cannot but accept the demand and hill my children. On the other hand, if you cannot show that it is so, then it seems that I no longer have reasons to kill my children and that would bring our conversation to an end. As you may quickly realize, it is not me that needs to show that the zebra does not exist. It is you who is making a demand on me so it is you who need to compel me to act and thus it is you who must offer justification by way of evidence.
Now, anyone reading should be more or less aware that there is a difference between the questions of Stein and the vexing issues that come up in the wake of the demands posed on us by the midget’s zebra. Stein does not seem to be claiming that any order is being issued by this creative god. However appearances are deceptive. The claim that Stein would like to make is that science has a clear place for the presence of a transcendental moral authority. Stein, as he pointed out in interview with Glen Beck, another of our brightest minds, takes issue with the possibility that there is a material cause to the beginning of life. Not an extraterrestrial genetic engineer, not the causal encounter of two molecules under unusual conditions, no… What Stein forces into the space left empty by the inconclusiveness of the biological account is a divine designer with will and power. Certainly he could have conjured any of the things that you cannot show that populate your room like the Swedish midget and his zebra or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) but he chose a god. To what avail? To flag the place where science leaves space for the possible evidence that would justify the demand to kill your children, exterminate foreign nations, burn heretics at the stake and stone sodomites to death. The question is simply are we justified.
This then, brings me back to the insulted grandmother. At some point or other after a few glasses of wine–never talk about gods and other fictional characters while drinking, i have known people that stopped talking to each other over disagreements on the proper description of Hobbits–I referred to the current stories coming out of Rome in which the church has now evidently undertaken a systematic coverup of sexual abuse in 5 known countries–countries in which the legal system is convincingly effective and not say Paraguay or the Philippines for which we should already be bracing ourselves–I pointed out that I took the silent acquiescence of Catholics around the world to be a form of aiding and abetting if not to foster the rape of children. As it was meant to happen, my friend referred me to her grandmother who is a devout Catholic who goes to church weekly and then she proceeded to ask me if I thought this woman was responsible. Now, it hard to take a shot at adorable grandmothers who bake pies and make hot chocolate while wearing pretty aprons and their white hair arrange in a bun but the answer could not but be yes. Yes, this woman along with all her generation and previous generations of Catholics but also of Jews and Muslims and Buddhists who have seen their religious institutions demand the most outrageous of acts against fellow human being in the name of a god are responsible for asking for evidence and justifications. We know well that the sexual abuses by the members of the church, the burning of heretics at the stake but also the murder of christians in the name of Islam, as the suppression of women’s rights under the Taliban, the execution of homosexuals in Islamic republics, the dispossession and murder of palestinians under the guise of the preservation of judaism did not start last week or last year. These are crimes which sanctioned by god were presented as acts of goodness. Any grandmother , any mother and any father as responsible for their children and their grandchildren and their respective generations had the duty to ask “is it so?” Is there really a god that justifies all these brutality. The onus is on the church, on the synagogue and on the mosque to show us that there is a god not on us to show that there is none. We are not making demands.
And then there is one more point to be made and that concerns the use of grandmothers as argumentative tools. This was best said by Norman Finkelstein when in response to the hysterical cry of a young Canadian who demanded respect for the state of Israel by alluding to her grandmother who lived through the holocaust pointed out that these strategy is nothing but the usurpation of the holocaust for the sake of political manipulation. Indeed, my take is that in the face of the “my grandmother was turned into soap” argument, we should express nothing but disdain and deride those who use the position to sustain a political point. In fact, grandmothers should have no space in political discourse other as the responsible parties in their own success and failures.

-Martin Gak

It has been often argued that Israel as a Jewish state does not grounds its formulation of political identity on theological principles. One of the ways in which defender of the state go about doing this is showing that legal departures from the Halachic principles–Jewish religious jurisprudence based on testamental sources and Talmud–and that a sizable portion of the Israeli Jewish population is secular. It is often also pointed out that Zionism in its foundational form had little interest in religious issues and this accords with the fact that many of the members of early zionism where socialists anarchists and communists who had little or no tolerance of religious discourse. All these things are indeed true and yet this is what the Israeli law concerning the immigration of Jews to what was Palestinian territory states:

LAW OF RETURN from the Foreign Ministry:
Law of Return 5710-1950
Right of Aliyah**

1. Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an Oleh**.

Oleh’s visa

2. (a) Aliyah shall be by Oleh’s visa.

EMENDATIONS from 1970:

4B. For the purposes of this Law, “Jew” means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.” (1970)

And in relation to the POPULATION REGISTRY, the law further states:

3A. (a) A person shall not be registered as a Jew by ethnic affiliation or religion if a notification under this Law or another entry in the Registry or a public document indicates that he is not a Jew, so long as the said notification, entry or document has not been controverted to the satisfaction of the Chief Registration Officer or so long as declaratory judgment of a competent court or tribunal has not otherwise determined.(b) For the purposes of this Law and of any registration or document thereunder, “Jew” has the same meaning as in section 4B (quoted above) of the Law of Return, 5710-1950.

Source: Israeli Foreign Ministry (http://www.nbn.org.il/aliyahpedia/getting-started/first-steps-aliyah-process/1058-israels-law-of-return.html)

The reason why the law of return must be understood as an integral element in the definition of membership is because as opposed to the progressive move of populations in American nations or the suppression and reemergence of native populations in colonial territories, the development of the Jewish population on Palestinian territory is the product of the social engineering developed by strict way of migratory mechanism in the early and mid 20th century. In some sense, as opposed to the Brazilian state that can generally afford to include marginal communities in the national count while depriving them of civil rights a state that by design is built for the exclusive use of a foreign population must import its members and expel the ‘new foreigners’. The right of return is not a compliment to the law of nationality of 1952 but its source.

In no uncertain terms, the 50 law refers to Jews in the most generic of terms. The question of what is a jew is of course no small matter. Particularly if “Jew” is not only the condition of membership but also the very identity of the state. The 1970′s emendation sheds some light on the question by referring to religion and ethnicity. Both of these idea are doubtlessly problematic and this is why.

The idea that Jews are an ethnicity is patently false. Whatever Judaism may be, jews come in many a form and color: the list is long but includes lemba jews,. igbo jews, akwa jews, chinese jews, japanese jews, Juhur imunis, Kurdish Jews, Uzbeki Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, Indian Nasranis. This is a vast catalogue of ethnicities which is simply incongruent with the idea of a Jewish ethnicity.
The idea of a jewish ethnicity defined biologically was one that the Israeli state may have echoed from Nazi Germany. In fact, the practical use of this definition of “jew” is that it gives the state the possibility to declare itself the heaven for all those who the German genocidal machine considers Jews. But this perfect fit comes at a very high price.

In Israel, the principle of national participation by ethnic principles becomes defined racially and because the state of Israel takes itself to be a Jewish state, insofar as the definition of the preeminent member of the Israeli state is defined racially, the state is now the carrier of the virus of racial discrimination. What prima facie seems to be a clear case of positive discrimination on the side of the state of Israel as a response to the ominous racial discrimination of the German state–et al–turns now into a principle of racial discrimination for the Israeli state itself in which race defines membership. Under this guise, “Jewish state” is a state in which a race–Jews–dominate in whatever manner over other races.

Now, because the idea of jewish ethnicity is a bogus one we cannot claim that the Jewish identity of the state is racial. In fact the racial discrimination of different groups of Jews–for many years sepharadi Jews–goes to show that Jew is not a genuine ethnic category.

The more interesting question concerns the theological underpinnings of the Israeli state. In some sense, the idea of religious unity is also an ambiguous one but at the same time is a more plausible story of common identity. In some shape or other, ceteris paribus, Jews across the board can be recognized religiously by some defining theological features which are clearly lacking in biological matters. In some manner or other and with a panoply of exegetical approaches all these communities trace back their religious practices to what we may want to call, for the sake of simplicity, the Abrahamic saga and the emergent of a single and all powerful god. Much of the lithurgy is shared among some very diverse communities and a principle of theological voluntarism which takes divine command to be the very nature of good.

Now, it is not necessary for the sake of this argument to go into specific details as to the content of these norms nor to their particular textual sources though most of the post-testamental judaism is in some form or other Halachic. What is of importance is that the definition of what a Jew is by a religious standard as it’s expressed in the emendation 4b of 1970 is a deference of the state’s jurisprudential principle of national membership to a theological norm. It is religion that defines the nature of the individual who is a jew–be it in the form it may–and the state takes this taxonomy as law.

The resulting picture of the state that emerges from this story is not particularly pretty either. Under the guise of the religious principle, the “Jewish State” is a state where a religious group takes precedence over others. Now the problem is not race defining participation but tehology defining participation.

We have two major issue that immediately become apparent in trading in theological principles. The first one is that monotheistic gods are notoriously jealous and sociopathic. So much as admiring another god is sufficient–by the accounts of revealed texts–for these gods to destroy populations and produce unspeakable harm. The rule of one god is incompatible with the rule of any other god. When secular principles define the legality of religious practices diverging religious practices are possible. When an non-negotiable, indisputable and universal theological principle define legality, all alternative religious practices cannot but be illegal.

One may be tempted to point out that israel is a secular country in which many other religious laws are not respected but this is just the indication of a massive problem. The issue is a well established problem in jurisprudence, if any law negates the law in some sense it is self negating. If the Israeli law, for instance, permitted the use of electricity during Shabat–which it does–in some sense is negating the validity of the source of the law that forbids such practice. Since the source of the law, namely god, is the source of the principle of identification of the member of the state, the law that permits the use of electricity negates the authority of theology in defining the affairs of the state including its membership.

The second problem which should be of much more concern is that the primacy of membership and participation–the rights and duties of those living with the state– is now defined not by merit of practice, secular rights or duties but by one deity over others. In this state, religious discrimination is not just permissible but essential to the survival of the nation.

In light of all this we must ask once again, is a Jewish state something that we can endorse?

-Martin Gak

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