A Christian recently posted something about knowing “to choose the good and reject the bad” on Facebook. This quote is pulled from Isaiah 7, which talks about the fall of Ephraim (Israel) and Samaria to the Assyrian Empire before “Emmanuel” learned “to choose the good and reject the bad.” It seems to me that this passage is not about choosing moral good over moral bad (that is, “evil”) but rather about learning to discern between types of food, what is good (delicious and healthy) and what is bad (bland and lacking in nourishment).
In fact, I found faith in the Bible to be absolutely useless in determining right and wrong behavior. Most Christians base their lives on the commandment of Jesus to “love your neighbor” (actually, this was not Jesus’ commandment – it’s from the Hebrew Bible) while completing ignoring the majority of the commands that appear in the rest of the Hebrew Bible. They tend to claim (though not all Christians) that only moral laws from Moses are obligatory for those who follow Jesus.
Smorgasbord Morality of Religion
Yet, how do they determine what are “moral” laws and what are not? I assume that if it violates their conscience, then it is a moral prohibition (such as the prohibition on homosexuality), while if it is in disagreement with their conscience or something that they don’t care about, then it’s acceptable (such as those verses which deal with refraining from touching a woman during her monthly period). The Bible says that a woman is unclean during menstruation and that you cannot touch anything that she has touched, since that impurity (tum’ah) is transferred to those things. Why is this not considered a “moral” law? Because Christians don’t see the need in it.
My question would then be: How can Christians pick and choose what they find binding in the laws of the Pentateuch? It seems unfair that they would “follow” certain laws from the Torah (do Christians really find abstinence from homosexual acts difficult?) and force them on others as the result of arbitrary choice.
Are my own moral choices just as arbitrary? Do I have a better basis for my morality? I don’t know if I can answer that question. I mean, I understand how morality developed from our biological past. I have read loads on the various moral theories that people have proposed. I once identified with Kant and his “categorical imperative,” which is fashioned somewhat after the Golden Rule. That is, we should act on those maxims which we would wish to see acted upon by all men. Would we want all people to be homosexual? No, of course not. Does this mean that homosexuality is an immoral act? Is this an improper way of looking at it? Perhaps we should ask it differently: Would we wish all people to love passionately and come to their own determination of who they are? Well, yes. So, perhaps human sexuality can be viewed in this way through the Kantian model. What about war? Do we want all to fight to the best of their ability for the sake of the defense of their people? Do we want war to increase? Do we really want peace in the world? What is the way to come to this end?
No Other Home
The current operation that Israel is conducting in Gaza – which is having ripples all over the world – is a moral catastrophe. How can we possibly deal with the fallout of this operation? Is a third war inevitable? I’m really getting depressed thinking about the possibilities and what might happen. To what extent is religion to be the cause of the next great war? ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations all over Europe… Another Holocaust for the Jews? Another period of the world just looking on as Israel fights for its survival? The insistence on the part of otherwise upstanding Europeans that Jews “go back where they came from” and “give the Palestinians their land back”…
Where do they propose Jews return to? Do the Ethiopians Jews go back to Ethiopia? Do Yemenite Jews go back to Yemen? Do Iraqi Jews go back to Iraq? Do Iranian Jews go back to Iran? Do European Jews go back to Europe? European Jews came to Israel to establish a state for those who remained from the slaughter of the Holocaust. The Jews of the great majority of Islamic countries came to Israel in order to have freedom to remain Jewish and not be forced to be second-class citizens or convert to Islam. They cannot go back. Jews cannot go back to Europe, where anti-Semitism is boiling over once again. They cannot go back to Yemen or Iran or Ethiopia, where they are not free to have their own religious or ethnic expression.
So, where do all these people who call for Israel to “go back” wish that Israelis would go? Well, given that Israel had no statehood for almost 2000 years, given that Jews wandered and were homeless among the nations for even longer than that (since the first diaspora), given that Jews had no voice and no independence before the State of Israel… What they really wish is that Israel would disappear, that Jews would again become dependent on others, that there would be no Jewish freedom, no Jewish hope, no Jewish identity. They seek, by their insistence on Israel’s acquiescence to these demands, the disappearance and dissolution of the Jewish people. This is the ultimate goal of these protests, masked as they are by cries for human rights and Palestinian freedom.
My moral dismay aside, no one could really think that what is being demanded of Israel is moral. No one could really, when all cards are laid on the table, believe that sending the Jews back “where they came from” could be anything less than the destruction of the Jewish State. This is certainly immoral. No matter what goes on with the negotiations, with the war, with the future, the existence of Israel must be assured. Not because the Bible gives Israel the right to the land (because the Bible cannot be our basis for morality or for anything else – we need to get past that idea already), but because the dissolution of the Jewish State at this point would represent nothing but a new diaspora, a new “casting forth” of the people of Israel into the world, where they will suffer once again.
I wish the Palestinian people freedom – freedom from religious oppression, freedom from superstitious thinking, freedom of self-determination, freedom to have a state of their own and their own government and autonomy. Yet, their freedom will not be won by groups like Hamas. Freedom will come when Israel’s right to existence is assured by the other side – and both together take steps to establish each other’s borders and to protect each other’s existence, as neighbors should do.
Free Palestine… from terrorism, from religious compulsion, from lack of education, from poverty. Indeed, free Palestine! Let them be free to prosper and to be happy. But, freedom to make war with Israel and to fire rockets is far from the aspirations that they should have for themselves… no matter what system one uses to determine moral virtue.
Post Scriptum
Having written this, I went back and read Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape, and I now see how he goes from “is” to “ought,” so I must take back what I said in the opening paragraph of this blog entry. Essentially, science can inform us as to better ways (in the plural) of achieving states of well-being for humans, in the same way that it can inform us regarding better states of health. We can know this by comparing various states and looking at what more highly correlates with unhappiness, stress, disease, etc. and at what more highly correlates with happiness, freedom, health, etc. By comparing, we can see what things lead better toward these states of higher well-being and make decisions regarding moral choices. This can be done on different levels. Essentially, the “ought” of morality comes from choices that lead in the direction of better well-being. Once we know what is better, we ought to do those things which will bring those states about. Thus, “is” becomes “ought” through better knowledge of this side of our existence.
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