Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

Two New Books On Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Luke Ford

Bart D. Ehrman is a professor of religious studies and his book is titled “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer.” A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, Ehrman trained to be a scholar of New Testament Studies and a minister. Born-again as a teenager, devoted to the scriptures (he memorized entire books of the New Testament), strenuously devout, he nevertheless lost his faith because, he reports, “I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the fact of life . . . I came to the point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge.” “The problem of suffering,” he recalls, “became for me the problem of faith.”
Much of the book is taken up with Ehrman’s examination of biblical passages that once gave him solace, but that now deliver only unanswerable questions: “Given [the] theology of selection – that God had chosen the people of Israel to be in a special relationship with him – what were Ancient Israelite thinkers to suppose when things did not go as planned or expected? . . . . How were they to explain the fact that the people of God suffered from famine, drought, and pestilence?”
Ehrman knows and surveys the standard answers to these questions – God is angry at a sinful, disobedient people; suffering is redemptive, as Christ demonstrated on the cross; evil and suffering exist so that God can make good out of them; suffering induces humility and is an antidote to pride; suffering is a test of faith – but he finds them unpersuasive and as horrible in their way as the events they fail to explain: “If God tortures, maims and murders people just to see how they will react – to see if they will not blame him, when in fact he is to blame – then this does not seem to me to be a God worthy of worship.”

Posted in Theodicy | Comments Off

A Lesson From Smokey

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Avi Shafran writes:

Which brings us back to more recent flames, those of the unprecedented California fires – which fire-management experts have dubbed “mega-fires,” since they are ten times larger and more intense than wildfires of a mere decade or two ago. More than eight million acres of American forest have burned this year already.
The reasons suggested for the unprecedented infernos include, of course, the “usual suspect” for all natural disasters these days, global warming. But the fact that Baja Mexico has evidenced only much smaller fires than adjacent San Diego County suggests strongly that something else is at work. That something, experts say, is a decades-old misguided conservation policy in the United States. Put simply, the longtime American approach to fire suppression—extinguishing small fires as soon as they appear, rather than allowing them to run their natural course and create undergrowth-free zones—has created huge swaths of unburned brush that, when fire does break out, serve as rich and abundant fuel for infernos of exceptional scope and intensity. “When,” asked University of California professor of earth sciences and fire-management expert Richard A. Minnich, quoted in The New York Times, “do we declare the policy a failure?”
So the culprit, so to speak, is Smokey the Bear. He seemed like a fine enough, if furry, fellow all those years, delivering his ursine, eminently common-sense message that putting out small fires was the obvious way to prevent larger ones. But he was wrong. precisely wrong,entirely wrong. Nothing personal (or specie-ist), but, in the end, only smarts can prevent mega-fires.

Posted in California | Comments Off

Liberty, Restored

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Yitzhok Adlerstein writes:

Last week’s New York Times coverage of haredi economic muscle ended on a rather sour note. Both the print story and the accompanying video clip offered the story of a young man who capitalized on his experience in one of the pizza capitals of the West (Deal, NJ) and opened up a pizza restaurant in Ramat Beit Shemesh – bet. After enough people expressed their displeasure with the fact that his store sat both men and women, reportedly through visiting upon him various projectiles in the from of tomatoes, hot oil, and gasoline – along with a death threat – he relocated to the safer precincts of RBS-alef. (“You can get a lot further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word.” – Al Capone.) There, he found the haredi clientele much more to his liking.
American Pizza’s sign shows the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Asked why, Mr. Shmueli said he consulted his rabbi. “The rabbi told me that the Statue of Liberty is a problem, spiritually speaking,” he said. Liberty is “chofesh,” which implies pure freedom. “Haredis don’t have chofesh,” he said. “We are servants of God.”
Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz, the always fearless General Editor of the Artscroll Gemara (Bavli and Yerushalmi) and Rav of an RBS shul, was moved to respond with a letter to the New York Times:
As the rabbi of a fast-growing synagogue in Ramat Beit Shemesh, I find the cited rabbi’s remark concerning the Statue of Liberty at the end of your article embarrassing and absurd (although I am not sorry that Lady Liberty fails to adorn a pizza store). As thousands upon thousands of Jewish immigrants to the U.S. can testify (including my father, of blessed memory, who entered the U.S. in 1948 after Hitler’s horrors), the Statue Of Liberty was, and remains, a symbol of selfless protection and freedom from tyranny, persecution, and vicious anti-Semitism. Immigrants would become teary-eyed when visiting it. If the good rabbi would bother to learn about its inscription (“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…”) he would know that the freedom which it represents is not the freedom of hedonism and self-indulgence, but the freedom of choice, a primary and fundamental value in Judaism, and one for which the United States of America deserves the world’s, and particularly Judaism’s, boundless gratitude.

Posted in Orthodoxy | Comments Off

Where will Sam Zell take the struggling Tribune Company?

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Luke Ford

Connie Bruck writes in The New Yorker:

Zell, who was raised in an Orthodox household and is a supporter of Israel, says that his religion has never been an issue in Abu Dhabi or in other Arab countries. “In no way, shape, or form do I hide the fact that I believe in Israel—open kimono!” he declared, using one of his favorite expressions to somewhat bizarre effect. But, he continued, “from the beginning of civilization Muslim rulers had Jewish advisers. I think it is actually a plus.”
…At twelve, he bought Playboy magazines in downtown Chicago for fifty cents and sold them for three dollars to friends in Highland Park, where his family had moved.
…“I’m an immigrant’s kid. I have a very different perspective on the world than somebody who grew up in Chicago and led what I would call a normal life. I think that being Jewish means that you’re vulnerable forever. Was there a stronger Jewish community anywhere in the world—more intellectual, more successful—than Germany in the late twenties and early thirties, before Hitler? And seven years later they’re building concentration camps! So, do I expect something like that to happen in the United States? Of course not. Do I think it could? Absolutely.”

Posted in Los Angeles Times | Comments Off

Surfing Rabbi: A Kabbalistic Quest for Soul By Nachum Shifren

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Luke Ford

You don’t have to be religious (most of its contents are secular) to enjoy this book about one of Pico-Robertson’s greatest characters.

Rabbi Yonasson Gershom writes on Amazon.com:

Not since "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" have two more unlikely activities been combined into one book title. Surfing Rabbi? If that sounds like an oxymoron to you, then you really should read this book. It’s the totally honest personal story of a 1960’s Malibu beach rat whose love of surf and sand eventually became a spiritual quest to delve more deeply into the power of his own Jewish roots. Today, he is both a Hasidic rabbi and avid surfer, demonstrating that to be a "religious Jew" does not have to mean withdrawing from the modern world.
I read this book on a cold, snowy, Minnesota Sabbath afternoon, which is about as far away from the ocean as a person can get. I knew nothing about surfing when I opened the book, but soon found myself completely caught up in the story. Here was a man so devoted to surfing, that he drove through a war zone just to get to the beach. Foolhardy or adventurous? I had to find out!
Rabbi Shifrin writes in a clear, personal style, so that even a landlubber like me can easily picture the beaches and surfer culture that he describes. Not that every scene comes out of "Endless Summer." Shifrin’s first attempt to catch a wave at Malibu was a dangerous disaster that knocked his fantasies down to earth — but also spurred him on to master this most challenging of sports. He became an expert surfer, lifeguard, and triathelete, so totally focused on riding the waves that he had little time for anything else in his life. Still, something was missing. The quest to fill that void eventually led him back to his Jewish roots and on to rabbinic ordination, where he learned that Judaism, like the ocean, is deep beyond imagining.
Today, Shifrin uses surfing as a form of youth outreach, and is known worldwide as "The Surfing Rabbi." His life, in the words of surf film producer Ira Opper, is about "riding the energy of the universe." Gentiles and Jews alike will find inspiration in this fascinating story.

Posted in Orthodoxy, Pico/Robertson | Comments Off

Fear Not Islamo-Fascism Nor Ahmadinejad

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Luke Ford

David Klinghoffer writes:

During Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, a Jewish friend asked me with breathless excitement, “Did you see on Little Green Footballs [a blog] how the thugs at Berkeley attacked Nonie Darwish and had to be pulled off her?” He was referring to the Egyptian-born Muslim-turned-Christian writer, who spoke at the University of California. Her memoir calls the “Islamo-Fascists” worse than the Nazis or communists.
In fact, my friend had misread an ambiguous headline on LGF. The nutty Berkeley left-wingers didn’t attack her. They interrupted her speech with slogans and rude behavior and were ejected from the auditorium.
I recall a wildly overheated article on, of all things, the Web site of Aish HaTorah, the Orthodox outreach group. The author cited as authoritative an implausible tale he heard on wacky right-wing radio host Michael Savage’s program that 20 Al Qaeda suitcase nukes were already in the United States, ready to be detonated any minute. That was a couple of years ago.
Like me, you are probably bombarded by e-mail lists from well-meaning but hyperventilating Jewish activists bursting to provide information about the wicked lies and terrible deeds of the Iranians, the Palestinians, the Syrians and the rest. There is a whole galaxy of popular Web sites and book authors devoted to banging away at this theme with harsh, braying words and images.

Posted in David Horowitz, David Klinghoffer | Comments Off

The Turning Of An Atheist

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Luke Ford

Mark Oppenheimer writes:

Unless you are a professional philosopher or a committed atheist, you probably have not heard of Antony Flew. Eighty-four years old and long retired, Flew lives with his wife in Reading, a medium-size town on the Thames an hour west of London. Over a long career he held appointments at a series of decent regional universities — Aberdeen, Keele, Reading — and earned a strong reputation writing on an unusual range of topics, from Hume to immortality to Darwin. His greatest contribution remains his first, a short paper from 1950 called “Theology and Falsification.” Flew was a precocious 27 when he delivered the paper at a meeting of the Socratic Club, the Oxford salon presided over by C. S. Lewis. Reprinted in dozens of anthologies, “Theology and Falsification” has become a heroic tract for committed atheists. In a masterfully terse thousand words, Flew argues that “God” is too vague a concept to be meaningful. For if God’s greatness entails being invisible, intangible and inscrutable, then he can’t be disproved — but nor can he be proved. Such powerful but simply stated arguments made Flew popular on the campus speaking circuit; videos from debates in the 1970s show a lanky man, his black hair professorially unkempt, vivisecting religious belief with an English public-school accent perfect for the seduction of American ears. Before the current crop of atheist crusader-authors — Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens — there was Antony Flew.
…But is Flew’s conversion what it seems to be? Depending on whom you ask, Antony Flew is either a true convert whose lifelong intellectual searchings finally brought him to God or a senescent scholar possibly being exploited by his associates. The version you prefer will depend on how you interpret a story that began 20 years ago, when some evangelical Christians found an atheist who, they thought, might be persuaded to join their side. In the intellectual tug of war that ensued, Flew himself — a continent away, his memory failing, without an Internet connection — had no idea how fiercely he was being fought over or how many of his acquaintances were calling or writing him just to shore up their cases.

Posted in Christianity | Comments Off

Camera Of Death On Hollywood Blvd Saturday Night

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Luke Ford

Click here for photos and report.

Posted in Camera of Death | Comments Off

A UCLA scientist targeted by animal rights militants defends her research on addiction and the brain

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Luke Ford

Edythe London writes:

For years, I have watched with growing concern as my UCLA colleagues have been subjected to increasing harassment, violence and threats by animal rights extremists. In the last 15 months, these attempts at intimidation have included the placement of a Molotov cocktail-type device at a colleague’s home and another under a colleague’s car — thankfully, they didn’t ignite — as well as rocks thrown through windows, phone and e-mail threats, banging on doors in the middle of the night and, on several occasions, direct confrontations with young children.
Then, several weeks ago, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the work I have been doing to understand and treat nicotine addition among adolescents informed readers that some of my research is done on primates. I was instantly on my guard. Would I be the next victim? Would the more extremist elements of the animal rights movement now turn their sights on me?
The answer came this week when the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for vandalism that caused between $20,000 and $30,000 worth of damage to my home after extremists broke a window and inserted a garden hose, flooding the interior. Later, in a public statement addressed to me, the extremists said they had been torn between flooding my house or setting it afire. Maybe I should feel lucky.
Having come to the United States as the child of Holocaust survivors who had lost almost everything, I appreciate that perhaps "only in America" could I have fulfilled my dream of becoming a biomedical scientist, supported in doing research to reduce human suffering. But it is difficult for me to understand why the same country that was founded on the idea of freedom for all gives rise to an organization like the Animal Liberation Front, a shadowy group identified by the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat, which threatens the safety of researchers engaged in animal studies that are crucial to moving medicine forward.

Posted in Terror | Comments Off

Why does Mrs. Clinton want driver’s licenses for illegal aliens?

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Luke Ford

John Fund writes:

The background here is the National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as "Motor Voter," that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. It required all states to offer voter registration to anyone getting a driver’s license. One simply fills out a form and checks a box stating he is a citizen; he is then registered and in most states does not have to show any ID to vote.
But no one checks if the person registering to vote is indeed a citizen. That greatly concerns New York election officials, who processed 245,000 voter registrations at DMV offices last year. "It would be [tough to catch] if someone wanted to . . . get a number of people registered who aren’t citizens and went ahead and got them drivers’ licenses," says Lee Daghlian, spokesman for New York’s Board of Elections. Assemblywoman Ginny Fields, a Long Island Democrat, warns that the state’s "Board of Elections has no voter police" and that the state probably has upwards of 500,000 illegal immigrants old enough to drive.
The potential for fraud is not trivial, as federal privacy laws prevent cross-checking voter registration rolls with immigration records. Nevertheless, a 1997 Congressional investigation found that "4,023 illegal voters possibly cast ballots in [a] disputed House election" in California. After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote.
Under pressure from liberal groups, some states have even abandoned the requirement that people check a citizenship box to be put on the voter rolls. Iowa has told local registrars they should register people even if they leave the citizenship box blank. Maryland officials wave illegal immigrants through the registration process, prompting a Justice Department letter warning they may be helping people violate federal law.
Gov. Spitzer is treading perilously close to that.

Posted in Immigration | Comments Off