Love Thy Neighbor
The Evolution of In-Group Morality
By John Hartung
Skeptic, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1995

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 1670

Abstract
The world's major religions espouse a moral code which includes injunctions against murder, theft and lying. Or so conventional 19th- and 20th-century Western wisdom would have it. Evidence put forth here argues that this convention is a conceit which does not apply to the West's own religious foundations. In particular, rules against murder, theft, and lying codified by the Ten Commandments were intended to apply only within a cooperating group for the purpose of enabling that group to compete successfully against other groups. In addition, this in-group morality has functioned, both historically and by express intent, to create adverse circumstances between groups by actively promoting murder, theft, and lying as tools of competition. Contemporary efforts to present Judeo-Christian in-group morality as universal morality defy the plain meaning of the texts upon which Judaism and Christianity are based. Accordingly, this effort is ultimately hopeless.
Note: For a printable PDF of "Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality" and other articles by John Hartung, please visit: http://strugglesforexistence.com.

A Look in the Mirror
Southern Baptists recently counted the number of people expected to go to hell from Alabama-a whopping 46.1%, or 1.86 million souls. The New York Times (1993) explained how: "The study took each county's population and subtracted from it the membership of all churches. After that, Baptist researchers used a secret formula to estimate how many people from different denominations and faiths were probably going to heaven." Newsday (1993) reported that based on this calculation "a higher percentage of Methodists are saved than are Roman Catholics" and that "virtually everyone not belonging to a church congregation was counted among the lost."
And according to the New York Times, when thousands of the world's clerical leaders gathered at the second World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago one hundred years after the first such gathering in 1893, "Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian churches that are embraced by many Americans shunned the gathering on theological grounds, and the established centrist and liberal denominations, like the Episcopalians and Methodists that have usually supported interfaith talks, were scarcely visible."
Eastern Orthodox Christians came, but left en masse when they found themselves in the company of "neo-pagans," and Jewish groups withdrew when the Nation of Islam showed up. Sikhs and Hindus stayed but tried to push each other out of the convention center (physically), and the Dalai Lama astutely concluded "Nonsense!" in response to his own question: "If we have conflicts in the name of religion, can we help resolve other problems?" (Steinfels, 1993, p. 93).
Nonsense indeed, but finger pointing can be useful if one is facing a mirror. If each of the world's families tends to its own backyard before the neighborhood inspection begins, we may all be able to live together. To that end we in the West should inspect Judaism and its demographically dominant offshoot, Christianity, before criticizing other religions.

Who Is Thy Neighbor?
When grade school twins help each other put a puzzle together, same-sex fraternal twins use the word I a lot, pull the puzzle away from each other, tussle over pieces that look like they will fit, take a long time to get the job done, and are not particularly pleased with the result. In distinction, identical twins use we a lot, keep the puzzle between themselves, hand each other fitting pieces, get the job done quickly, and seem pleased with their accomplishment (Segal 1984).
Evolutionary theorists argue that identical twins will naturally treat each other according to the gold standard of morality: "love thy neighbor as thyself." In kin selection terms, such twins have no room for conflict because their "degree of relatedness," or "r" is 100% (r=1) (Hamilton, 1964). Their self-interests are identical with their concern for each other, because each twin is as genetically related to their twin's offspring as they are to their own. For identical twins, to help thy other is to help thyself.
The phrase Love thy neighbor as thyself comes from the Torah.1 The word Torah means law, and the Torah is the Law. If Moses had been transmitting the word of his god to modern biologists, he might have said "Love your neighbor as if r=1-as if all of your genes are identical." According to the ancient Israelites' autobiographical ethnography, this was the general principle from which prohibitions against murder, theft, and lying were derived. But who qualifies for this apex of morality? Who is thy neighbor?
Most contemporary Jews and Christians, both of whom have the highest regard for the god of the Torah, answer that the law applies to everybody, as spelled out in the following excerpt from a Christian-authored promotion for the Committee for Judaism and Social Justice (Walz, 1992; for a more elaborate but ideologically identical interpretation, see Hefner, 1991): "It is upon the Biblical command to 'love your neighbor as yourself'-starting in the family and extending to the community, the business world and ultimately international affairs-that the Committee for Judaism and Social Justice is depending for its growth."
But when the Israelites received the love law, they were isolated in a desert.2 According to the account, they lived in tents clustered by extended families, they had no non-Israelite neighbors, and dissention was rife. Internecine fighting became rather vicious, with about 3,000 killed in a single episode (Exodus 32:26-28).3 Most of the troops wanted to "choose a [new] captain and go back to Egypt" (Numbers 14:4). But their old captain, Moses, preferred group cohesion.
If we want to know who Moses thought his god meant by neighbor, the law must be put into context, and the minimum context that makes sense is the biblical verse from which the love law is so frequently extracted. Here are four translations of Leviticus 19:18:
• Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.-First Jewish Publication Society translation (JPS '17) and the King James Version (KJV).
• You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.-Revised Standard Version (RSV).
• You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself. -TANAKH (JPS '85).

Thou Shalt Not Kill Who?
In context, neighbor meant "the children of thy people," "the sons of your own people," "your countrymen"-in other words, fellow in-group members. Specific laws which follow from the love law can be better understood by keeping the in-group definition of neighbor in mind. Consider the proto-legal portion of The Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:17-21; JPS '17 & KJV):
Thou shalt not kill.
Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
Neither shalt thou steal.
Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.
And add the realization that the scrolls from which these words were translated have no periods, no commas, and no first-word capitalization. (Decisions about where sentences and paragraphs begin and end are courtesy of the translator.) Accordingly, instead of being written as five separate paragraphs of one sentence each, without changing any of the words, Deuteronomy 5:17-21 could be translated:
Thou shalt not kill, neither shalt thou commit adultery, neither shalt thou steal, neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.
Here the question, "Thou shalt not kill who?" is answered "Thou shalt not kill thy neighbor-the children of thy people, your countrymen, your fellow in-group member."
How unconventional is this interpretation? Not very. The rabbis of the Talmud determined that an Israelite was not liable for murder unless he intentionally killed a fellow Israelite. Indeed, if an Israelite intended to kill a non-Israelite, but killed an Israelite by mistake, he was not guilty of murder. The law (Mishna) is explicit in this regard (Sanhedrin 79a):
If he intended killing an animal but slew a man, or a heathen and he killed an Israelite…he is not liable.
And the discussion (Gemara) of this law gives a clear example:
This excludes [from liability] the case of one who threw a stone into the midst of a company of Israelites and heathens. How is this? Shall we say that the company consisted of nine heathens and one Israelite? Then his non-liability can be inferred from the fact that the majority were heathens.
So if a defendant admits to having killed a fellow in-group member by throwing a stone, his plea of innocence should be accepted if there is reason to believe that he was aiming at an out-group member. In this regard, the rabbis of the Talmud, who are traditionally designated the Sages, took an extraordinarily lenient view of what would constitute evidence of intent, extending credibility to a perpetrator even if there was only one out-group member in the company of nine in-group members (Sanhedrin 79a, Baba Kamma 44b):
And even if half and half, when there is doubt in a capital charge, a lenient attitude must be taken!…if there were nine Jews and one heathen…still, since there was among them one heathen, he was an essential part of the group, and essential part is reckoned as equivalent to half, and where there is doubt in a criminal charge the accused has the benefit.
As one might expect, the law for inadvertent killing was not symmetrical. If an out-group member accidentally killed an in-group member, he was guilty of murder one. Maimonides, whose summarizations and condensations of the Torah and the Talmud are generally accepted as authoritative, put the point succinctly (Book of Torts 5:5:4): "If a resident alien slays an Israelite inadvertently, he must be put to death in spite of his inadvertence." The Book of Judges (5:9:4) confirms this:
A Noahide [non-Jew] who kills a person, even if he kills an embryo in the mother's womb, is put to death. So too, if he kills one suffering from a fatal disease…he is put to death. In none of these cases is an Israelite put to death.

Who Is Human?
The Sages perceived their god as having given his people a special fierceness. As explained by Rabbi Simeon, "There are three distinguished in fierceness: Israel among the nations, the dog among animals, and the cock among birds" (Bezah 25b). The Yanomamo Indians, who inhabit the headwaters of the Amazon, traditionally believe that they are fierce, and that they are the only fully qualified people on earth. The word Yanomamo, in fact, means man, and non-Yanomamo are viewed as a form of degenerated Yanomamo (Chagnon, 1992). A similar theme runs throughout Judeo-Christianity. Although many Jews have been killed by Christians who perceived their god to have changed his choice, the original theme of God's chosen people was developed in the Torah and promoted a not-fully-human perception of out-group members.
Maimonides had a penchant for omitting rulings and opinions that were not politically correct by 12th-century standards, yet he was often more explicit than the Talmud, especially when stating rules that the Sages assumed would be taken for granted. Consider his exegesis of the intent of the commandment against murder (Torts 5:1:1, 5:2:11):
If one slays a single Israelite, he transgresses a negative commandment, for Scripture says, Thou shalt not murder. If one murders willfully in the presence of witnesses, he is put to death by the sword…Needless to say, one is not put to death if he kills a heathen.
In most recent translations of Maimonides' Codes, the words "single Israelite" are replaced by "human being" in the above passage (e.g., translation by Klein, 1954, p. 195 and note 1, p. 273), and the clarification regarding heathens is relegated to the editing room floor (e.g., Chavel, 1990). This suggests an effort to convert in-group morality into general morality by strategically mistranslating and editing original documents. However, in one of Maimonides' hand-written manuscripts, referred to as The Oxford Codex, the text reads "single Israelite" as distinct from "human being" and cannot be translated otherwise unless a translator accepts the Talmudic argument that only in-group members qualify as human beings. Even then, such an ideological translation requires taking the liberty of inserting this understanding without putting readers on notice that the translation is not literal.
The Sages were quite explicit about their view that non-Jews were not to be considered fully human. Whether referring to "gentiles," "idolaters," or "heathens," the biblical passage which reads "And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God," (Ezekiel 34:31; KJV) is augmented to read (italics in original): "And ye my flock, the flock of my pastures, are men; only ye are designated 'men'" (Baba Mezia 114b). Or: "And ye My sheep the sheep of My pasture, are men; you are called men* but the idolaters are not called men." [Footnote in original: *…only an Israelite, who as a worshipper of the true God, can be said to have been like Adam, created in the image of God. Idol worshippers, having marred the Divine image, forfeit all claim to this appellation (Yebamoth 61a).] Or, again with explanation from a footnote (parentheses and italics in original):
…in the case of heathens; are they not in the category of adam?-No, it is written: And ye my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are adam (man).* Ye are called adam but heathens are not called adam. [Footnote reads: *…The term adam does not denote 'man' but Israelite. The term adam is used to denote man made in the image of God and heathens by their idolatry and idolatrous conduct mar this divine image and forfeit the designation adam (Kerithoth 6b).]
Indeed, the Hebrew word adam appears 106 times in the Torah, referring to the character Adam only 14 times. The other 92 occurrences of the word adam translate as man or men, usually referring to Israelites generally, as distinct from designating gender.

East of Eden
According to the distinction made in the Talmud between adam and other terms for humans, the original conceptualization appears to have been that the god of the Israelites created them in his own image. This explains how it could be the case that their god created man (adam) in his own image while other people (non-adam) were simultaneously alive east of Eden in the land of Nod-where Cain went after killing Abel, found a wife, and founded a city (Genesis 4:16-24). The word adam is not used for man when referring to persons in Nod (Genesis 4:23).
In fact, the most frequently used biblical Hebrew words for man/men are 'iysh and 'enowsh, occurring 428 times in the Torah. All occurrences of man being created in the image of god occur as adam, but people who were conquered by the Israelites are not referred to as adam, with the exception of two passages which also involve cattle. These exceptions are rhetorically questioned in the Talmud, where the Sages explain that "This is used in opposition to cattle," by which they meant, "In contrast to cattle, idolaters also may be described as adam (men)" (parentheses in original, Kerithoth 6b, Yebamoth 61a).
A strained and self-serving defense of these passages is presented by the 20th-century editors/translators of the Soncino Press edition of the Talmud, asserting that the restricted use of adam only applies within the context of ritual defilement, and that distinguishing "gentiles," "heathens" and "idolaters" as not in the category of adam, "loses all harshness when it is remembered that it is simply a Talmudic idiom denoting 'inhuman,' and that its author was Rabbi Simeon, who had been so bitterly persecuted by the Romans" (Baba Mezia 114b, p. 651, n. 7).
There are a number of difficulties with this explanation. Among them is the fact that Rabbi Simeon, son of Yohai, was among the most authoritative, most cited (over 700 times just within the Talmud), and most respected Sages of Judaism; rabbis at large accepted and promulgated his view on this point; non-Jews are referred to as not fully human in contexts other than ritual defilement; and designating one's victims as "inhuman" is not "simply an idiom"-on the contrary, such designation has been a critically important propaganda accomplishment for most of the world's most immoral military enterprises and by in-groups of all stripes. Aldous Huxley said it succinctly on the eve of World War II (1937, p. 101): "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that the other set is human. By robbing them of their personality, he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation."

The Evolution of Cooperation
Have you ever watched a flock of birds dart across the sky like an animated cloud, turning on a dime, in unison, through three-dimensional space? Before the mid-1960s we knew what flocking birds were up to-they were surveying their breeding territory in order to assess its nutritional abundance. That way each female could adjust the number of eggs that she would lay, her objective being to prevent over-exploitation of the environment. How could natural selection produce such a morally sound arrangement? Simple, by group selection-birds that overcrop their territory would eat themselves into oblivion, leaving only environmentally conscientious groups to perpetuate their kind. Domestic sheep are a counter example. If not herded along, sheep will crop all edible plants beyond recovery. That's the main reason that shepherds have jobs-because left to their own devices, or lack thereof, sheep would decimate otherwise renewable resources.
In 1966 George Williams published a book that initiated the demise of the notion that organisms evolve by group selection. Williams perceived three main problems: First, what would happen if a mutation caused an individual female in an environmentally-conscientious group to have as many offspring as she was able? Answer: that mutation would spread. Second, what would happen if there were any appreciable amount of migration between less conscientious groups and more conscientious groups? Answer: conscientious groups would lose their conscience. And third, if the mutation and migration problems could be solved, how long would it take for a gene to go from a low frequency to a substantial frequency by group selection? This depends upon the rate at which whole groups fission and become extinct. Proper models show that both rates need to approach the rate at which individuals are born and die. For whole groups, such rates are orders of magnitude beyond realistic.
Nevertheless, people like the idea of group selection. It could, if it worked, create natural harmony, and even imply that humans in a natural state will naturally cooperate-sacrificing self interest for the good of the group. Accordingly, wishful thinkers have been jerrybuilding group selection models ever since Williams found the idea to be theoretically untenable (e.g., Wilson and Sober 1994). But skeptics continue to dash group-selection hopes with clearer logic and empirical evidence of individual selection (cf Alroy & Levine, 1994; Cronk, 1994; Dawkins, 1976, 1994; Nesse, 1994; Smith, 1994; Williams, 1992).
The cleanest tests have come from ornithologists. Birds, having bird brains, are not good at knowing which eggs are their own and which came from somewhere else (that's why mockingbirds and cowbirds can make a living as brood parasites-laying eggs in other birds' nests). This means you can put a fifth egg in a nest of four eggs and see what happens. The birds will hatch and try to feed all five chicks, but more often than not, they will only fledge three, while nests left with four eggs fledge four chicks. Flocking aside, individual birds lay the number of eggs that will maximize their reproductive success (for a review see Trivers, 1985).
So why do individuals cooperate if there is no group selection? Two answers helped filled the gap and form the foundation of contemporary evolutionary theory: inclusive fitness (Hamilton, 1964) and reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971). For the purpose of calculating how fast a gene can spread, inclusive fitness is the realization that an individual's total reproductive success should include his or her effects on the success of individuals who also carry the gene in question-i.e., relatives. So we expect relatives to cooperate. In humans, this covers everything from mothers nursing infants to nepotism in politics and industry.
Reciprocal altruism is "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." In humans this covers everything from two individuals sharing a load, to groups of individuals hunting Woolly Mammoths, to groups of people hunting other groups of people. The key ingredient here is payoff-reciprocal altruism works if each individual's share of benefits is more than could have been obtained by not cooperating. A great hue and cry has gone up that inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism are not real altruism-not really moral behavior. That is absolutely correct. As put by Trivers (1971, p. 1, emphasis added): "Models that attempt to explain altruistic behavior in terms of natural selection are models designed to take the altruism out of altruism."
Unfortunately, cooperation based on kin selection and reciprocal altruism can be difficult to distinguish from cooperation based on group selection-but there are telltale signs. Large-scale reciprocal altruism usually entails hierarchies (pecking orders, dominance ranks), markedly unfair distribution of group-derived benefits (according to rank), and in humans, rules and laws that compel cooperation. Indeed, human systems of reciprocal altruism often include individuals, like slaves, who would do better on their own but who do not have that option.
Like most ancient peoples, the Israelites had stringent hierarchies, vastly disproportionate distribution of wealth, many slaves, and many laws that compelled cooperation. Some of those laws were simply tests of loyalty, as distinct from enforcing cooperation per se, but they were taken very seriously. Consider the punishment for working on a Saturday (Numbers 15:32-36):
While the people of Israel were in the wildemess, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had not been made plain what should be done to him. And the LORD said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." And all the congregation brought him outside the camp, and stoned him to death with stones, as the LORD commanded Moses.
More severe decrements to inclusive fitness were reserved for low-ranking individuals who took a larger slice of the pie than they had been allotted, especially if that slice had been allotted to a dominant male. When Achan, one of Joshua's soldiers, put a captured 50-shekel bar of gold into his tent instead of putting it in the collection plate (Joshua 7:24-25, italics added): "Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan…and his sons and daughters…and all Israel stoned him with stones; they burned them with fire, and stoned them with stones."
These are not the hallmarks of a group that evolved its ability to cooperate through group selection.

Evolutionary Ethics
Moral behavior can be active or passive. If you refrain from stealing when you could get away with it, you have been passively moral. When you help someone at a cost to yourself, you have been actively moral. If natural selection proceeded by differential reproduction of groups, as opposed to differential reproduction of individuals, individuals within replicating groups might treat each other as if r=1 were their default program. But unfortunately, genes that cause self-sacrifice are sacrificed by natural selection.
That is not to say that groups have no effect. Imagine a gene for the ability to shoot straight-whether a sling shot or a gun shot. A gene like that could spread within a breeding group by individual selection and give that group a serious advantage in competition against other groups. So it is that gene frequencies can change in consequence of group-group competition, but only because the winning group already had more of the genes which caused more of its individual members to compete successfully within that group, and they engaged in sufficient reciprocal altruism to generate cooperation. That is, natural selection can generate individuals who behave against their short term self-interest in consideration of other group members if the cost to such in-group moralists is more than compensated by their share of benefits obtained from successful competition with other groups. For example, in-group morality can evolve if cooperation enables a group to wage war against other groups at a net profit. This is not a consequence of group selection as the term has been properly understood, nor is it a foundation for morality as that term is properly understood.
In addition to requiring laws that compel group members to cooperate, the viability of in-group morality is functionally completed when the converse of those laws is applied, implicitly or explicitly, to out-groups-when "within-group amity" serves "between-group enmity" (Alexander, 1987, p. 95)-i.e., when "Thou shalt not kill or steal from in-group members" is balanced by "Thou shalt kill and steal from out-group members."
Such evolutionary ethics apply to races and nations as well as religions. In 1942, Keith perceived this complementary relationship to be implicit in Hitler's term National Socialism (1947, pp. 10, 14):
Hitler uses a double designation for his tribal doctrine-National Socialism: Socialism standing for the good side of the tribal spirit (that which works within the Reich); and Nationalism for the ethically vicious part, which dominates policy at and outside the German frontiers…Hitler is an uncompromising evolutionist, and we must seek for an evolutionary explanation if we are to understand his action.

Genocide
Moses may not have known about natural selection, but he transmitted his god's explicit commandment to kill and steal from out-group members as a recurrent major theme.4 Two distinct policies were put into effect. First, all members of nations located in the land that was to become Israel were to be killed outright. Subsequently, people in surrounding nations were to be killed unless they agreed to become subservient to Israel. Both policies are given in one passage of Deuteronomy (20:10-18; RSV), with instructions regarding people outside of Israel given first:
When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here.
But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their Gods, and so to sin against the LORD your God.
For prior occupants of the promised land, there can be no doubt that this meant genocide according to the word's modern definition (RSV): "They should be utterly destroyed,5 and should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the LORD commanded Moses" (Joshua 11:20)…Utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling" (I Samuel 15:3). And, as if they had a sense of Hamilton's (1964) inclusive fitness:
You will make them as a blazing oven when you appear. The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath; and fire will consume them. You will destroy their offspring from the earth, and their children from among the sons of men (Psalms 21:9-10).
There can be no doubt that this commandment was mandatory, as Maimonides explained (Judges 5:4, cf Elba 1995; Lior 1994):
It is a positive commandment to destroy the seven nations, as it is said: Thou shalt utterly destroy them. If one does not put to death any of them that falls into one's power, one transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said: Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.

Moral Fallout
The Israelites' campaign to carry out their god's commandment to commit genocide against the native inhabitants of Canaan-cum-Palestine took several generations. It began with Joshua's massacre at Jericho. Contrary to the Christian song "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho," according to scripture there was no battle at all. It was a siege, at the end of which all of the city's inhabitants were killed except Rahab the prostitute (she and her family were spared in exchange for helping Joshua plan his strategy, Joshua 6:16-17, 19, 21, 24, RSV):
Joshua said to the people, "Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction…But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD."…Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword…And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.
The half-life and penetrance of such cultural legacies are often under-appreciated. Some 3,000 years after the fall of Jericho, Israeli psychologist George Tamarin (1966, 1973) measured the strength of residual in-group morality. He presented Joshua 6:20-21 to 1,066 school children, ages 8-14, in order to test "the effect of uncritical teaching of the Bible on the propensity for forming prejudices (particularly the notion of the 'chosen people,' the superiority of the monotheistic religion, and the study of acts of genocide by biblical heroes)." The children's answers to the question "Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?," were categorized as follows: "'A' means total approval, 'B' means partial approval or disapproval, and 'C' means total disapproval." Across a broad spectrum of Israeli social and economic classes, 66% of responses were "A," 8% "B," and 26% "C." The "A" answers tended to be as straightforward as they were numerous (Tamarin, 1966):
• In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the "Goyim."6
• In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.
• Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.
Tamarin (1973) noted that:
"C" classification [total disapproval] was accorded to all answers formally rejecting genocide, either on ethical or utilitarian grounds. This does not mean that all "C" responses reveal non-discriminatory attitudes. For example, one girl criticized Joshua's act, stating that "the Sons of Israel learned many bad things from the Goyim."xAnother extremely racist response is that of a 10 year old girl disapproving the act, stating, "I think it is not good, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse."
Other misgivings included (1966):
• I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.
• I think Joshua did not act well, as he should have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.
In contrast to the established difference between boys and girls in propensity toward violence and approval of violence in general, with regard to biblically commanded genocide Tamarin found that "Contrary to our expectation, there was no difference, concerning this most cruel form of prejudice, between male and female examinees" (1973). Less surprising, but more alarming, nearly half of the children who gave "total approval" to Joshua's behavior also gave "A" responses to the hypothetical question: "Suppose that the Israeli Army conquers an Arab village in battle. Do you think it would be good or bad to act towards the inhabitants as Joshua did towards the people of Jericho?" Tamarin (1966) received such responses as these:
• In my opinion this behavior was necessary, as the Arabs are our enemies always, and the Jews did not have a country, and it was necessary to behave like that towards the Arabs.
• It would have been good to treat the Arabs as Joshua and his soldiers did, as they are Arabs; they hate and retaliate against us all the time, and if we exterminate them as Joshua did, they won't be able to show themselves as greater heroes than we.
• I think it was good because we want our enemies to be conquered, and to widen our frontiers, and we would kill the Arabs as Joshua and the Israelites did.
Some respondents disapproved of Joshua's campaign (answer "C"), but approved of similar acts if committed by Israeli soldiers. One girl disapproved of Joshua "because it is written in the Bible, 'don't kill'," but she approved of the conjectured Israeli Army action, stating "I think it would be good, as we want our enemies to fall into our hands, enlarge our frontiers, and kill the Arabs as Joshua did."
As a control group, Tamarin tested 168 children who were read Joshua 6:20-21 with "General Lin" substituted for Joshua and a "Chinese Kingdom 3000 years ago" substituted for Israel. General Lin got a 7% approval rating, with 18% giving partial approval or disapproval, and 75% disapproving totally.

The Evolutionary Point
Over 400 cities are detailed by name as having been "utterly destroyed" by the Israelites. The campaign lasted some 170 years and ended with David's victory at Jerusalem, where the Jebusites had managed to defend their city against every Israelite leader from Joshua to Saul. The account of the second city to fall, Ai, poignantly juxtaposes the distinction between in-group sanction against, and the out-group sanction of, homicide. According to scripture, after a moderately heavy day of killing 12,000 people, Joshua carved the Ten Commandments in stone, including "Thou shalt not kill," while his troops were gathered around a campfire (Joshua 8:24-25, 30-32; RSV):
When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai…and all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword…all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand, all the people of Ai…then Joshua built an altar and they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord…And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses.
These verses are not generally focused upon in Bible classes, but when inquiries are made about Jericho, Ai, or Jerusalem, Jewish and Christian theologians stress the view that their heroes were far from perfect, but their ideals were close to perfect (or perfect, having come from their god), and it is those ideals that constitute the take-home message. This is plain wrong. Joshua was not even guilty of contradiction, much less hypocrisy, because the law that applied to out-group members was the antithesis of the law that applied to in-group members.7
The point, however, is not that such phenomena were unique to the ancient Israelites. Far from it. Indeed, given the ubiquity of in-group/out-group double standards around the globe and throughout history, the propensity for in-group morality appears to be an attribute of human nature.
A Light Unto The Nations
Israel's glory-days reached their apex during the reign of Solomon, David's son, who inherited "all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt" (I Kings 4:21). Solomon spent most of his time enjoying the spoil of his enemies (Deuteronomy 20:14), including "seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines" (I Kings 11:3, RSV)xand massive protection payments (I Kings 10:14-15):
Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, besides that which came from the traders and from the traffic of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and from the governors of the land.
Since 666 talents is about 60,000 pounds of gold, this is almost certainly an exaggeration, but is still three times the amount that Attila the Hun was able to extort from Rome per annum prior to sacking it for late payment. After Solomon's reign the Kingdom of Israel split in two. Civil war between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms so weakened Jerusalem that nations which had been sending tribute began to send troops instead. During a siege of the city by Syria, in-group morality fell to its nadir. Everyone is familiar with the story of Solomon's wisdom-how he threatened to chop a baby in half in order to discover which of two claimants was its real mother (I Kings 3:16-28)-but like the story of Ai, Bible study classes seldom focus on a similar dispute that was brought to one of Solomon's successors (II Kings 6:26-30):
Now as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, "Help, my lord, O king!"...And the king asked her, "What is your trouble?" She answered, "This woman said to me, 'Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.' So we boiled my son, and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, 'Give your son, that we may eat him'; but she has hidden her son." When the king heard the words of the woman he rent his clothes.
The picture became so bleak for so long that a most desperate hope grew among the faithful. Israel's god would send a messiah. That man would restore the Kingdom, and Israel would reign over all the nations on earth. Perhaps the best disguised theme in the Bible, the most spun by both Christian and Jewish exegetical spin-doctors, is the Light Unto the Nations. The light was to be Israel, and nations outside of the genocide zone were to be caused to see the light in consequence of being conquered by Israel. Those nations would then realize that the god of Israel is stronger than their gods, and, most important, they would then worship Israel's god through Israel-that is, once again, by paying tribute to Israel.
This ultimate in-group fantasy is explicated throughout the Bible, but is put most pointedly in Psalms and Isaiah (RSV):
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel [Psalms 2:8-9]. And the [diaspora Jewish] peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the LORD's land as male and female slaves...[Isaiah 14:2]. Thus says the LORD: "The wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over to you and be yours, they shall follow you; they shall come over in chains and bow down to you. They will make supplication to you, saying: 'God is with you only, and there is no other, no god besides him [Isaiah 45:14]. I will give you as a light unto the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth [Isaiah 49:6]. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising....Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to youxyour gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut; that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste (Isaiah 60:1-12).8
And when was this to happen? As soon as Israel could stop internecine fighting-as soon as it could get its in-group morality back on course. Then the Messiah would come and bring The Kingdom of God to earth. The objective was not to leave earth for heaven, it was to have heaven on earth-to restore the kingdom of David.

Onward Christian Soldiers
There is a tendency for Judaism's recusant evangelical sect, Christianity, to perceive its renegotiated contract with its god-the New Testament or New Covenant-as morally superior to the original covenant. Two thousand years of history suggest that this delusion has served military and colonial ambitions well. Thomas Paine perceived a "wretched contrivance" (1794, pp. 12,180,183):
Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too…Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches.
Indeed, for a religion that prides itself on its contradictions and imponderables-like a Holy Ghost who is indefinable by definition and simultaneously one and the same entity as the god of the Israelites and that god's son-Christianity might have done a better job at disguising its own savior's antipathy toward out-group members, especially since the vast majority of Christians would have qualified as out-group members by Jesus' reckoning. Consider the attitude displayed in the following account of an encounter with a left-over Canaanite (Matthew 15:21-28; RSV):
And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon." But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, "Send her away, for she is crying after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." And he answered, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire." And her daughter was healed instantly.
The assumptions that lie behind the miracle are revealing. They suggest that native inhabitants were tolerated if they perceived themselves as dogs compared to in-group members.9 This made sense because Jesus wanted to restore the Kingdom of David, and it would not do to have thousands of pounds of gold flowing in from foreign nations if in-group members had to sweep their own streets and empty their own bed pans. Day labor would be needed and the option of importing Romanians, Thais, and Filipinos was not yet available (Goell, 1994). Local domestics, satisfied with crumbs that fall from their masters' tables, would be perfect.
Essentially the same story is told in Mark (7:24-30), with the Canaanite changed to a Greek, suggesting that Jesus discriminated against out-group members on an equal opportunity basis.

The New In-Group Judaism
According to the Gospels, Jesus' declared mission was to reform Judaism, to bring back the spirit of in-group morality that seemed to have given way to sanctimony, observance of rituals, and rigid class distinctions in the face of Roman domination. He stated this repeatedly, even instructing his disciples to avoid out-group members when taking his message to in-group members (e.g., Matthew 10:5-6; RSV): "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Jesus often used the words neighbor and brother without explicitly indicating that he meant fellow Jews whom he sought to unify. (For a sympathetic and particularly well informed perspective on Jesus and his mission within the context of 1st century Israel, see Vermes, 1973). Ironically, gentile Christians generally infer themselves to be included by these terms, even though many passages make it clear that they were not. For example, consider Matthew 18:15-18, in which Jesus explained to his disciples that Jews who sin against fellow Jews and cannot be made to see the error of their ways should be considered as gentiles because, like gentiles and tax collectors (Jews who collected taxes for the gentile government), they were going to be rejected from heaven (RSV, see also Matthew 5:47; 6:7; 6:32; 10:16-21):
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
The purpose of re-forming Judaism was stated over and over by Jesus. It was to bring his god's kingdom to earth-to either be the Messiah himself, or to usher him in (see Vermes, 1973, regarding both the strength of the former conviction and the ambivalence of the latter). After so many centuries of foreign domination, Jesus wanted to bring his group back together, to forge them into a unit even more cohesive than that formed by Moses, primarily by emphasizing the need for active morality between in-group members, as distinct from the earlier emphasis on passive morality. This active in-group morality extended to nine repetitions of "love thy neighbor," to the Golden Rule (Jesus' twice-used paraphrase of "love thy neighbor"-"Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them"),1 and even to "turning the other cheek" to fellow Jews who might thereby be persuaded to join the cause (Matthew 5:39).
The cause was the plan, or the word, and the word was holy. Jesus was very concerned that the holy plan not become apparent to out-group members, so again he instructed his disciples (Matthew 7:6; RSV): "Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine." In this case "dogs" referred to left-over Canaanites and Samaritans (e.g., Matthew 15:21-28 above) and "swine" referred to people who eat pork-that is, gentiles. Pearls were the pearls of wisdom about how to treat in-group members. As such, Matthew 7:6 was the 1st century equivalent of saying in America today "Go tell the plan to the White people, but what ever you do, don't tell the niggers and the spics." Ugly language indeed, but it is commonly sold and bought among Christians as some kind of poetry, not the least of all by those who are upset about the coarseness of lyrics in rap music.
Jesus' prospects for accomplishing the plan were buoyed by the claim that he was the direct descendant of King David "according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3), the underdog who extended the borders of Israel throughout the Middle East (Luke 1:31-33; RSV):
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob [Israel] for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.
Jesus' appeal was effective among the hopeless because he held out their greatest hope-the ultimate in-group aspiration (Acts 1:6-8; RSV; see also Luke 2:32; 24:21; 24:44; 24:49; and Revelations 1:5-7; 11:17-18):
They asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."
He wanted to make Isaiah's dream come true (see Matthew 3:3; 4:4; 8:17; 12:17; 13:14; Mark 1:2; Luke 3:4-6; John 1:23; 12:38-41), to bring the Kingdom of God to earth, to fulfill his god's promise to Abraham, a less innocent promise than it is generally interpreted to be because the word "bless" in Genesis 26:4 is euphemistically translated. The transliterated Hebrew word is "barak" which is a primary word meaning to kneel (for barak translated kneel down or kneel, see Genesis 24:11; II Chronicles 6:13; Psalms 95:6; for barak translated as curse or cursed, see Job 1:5; 1:11; 2:5; 2:9).
A person, or nation, is blessed consequent to acknowledging subordination, by kneeling before the god, person, or nation that confers the blessing (italics and brackets added, RSV; see also Genesis 12:2-3; 18:18; 22:18; 28:14 and 26:4): "I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give to your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall bless [kneel] themselves."
But under the requirement of having to kneel before Rome, Kingdom Come was not a practical idea for 1st-century Jews. Nor was it, in any moral sense, a good idea. Indeed, it was a dangerous idea for Jesus' own in-group. It especially threatened those who had made an accommodation with the Romans-those who had knelt before Rome and were receiving the bulk of the blessings-and they had Jesus crucified for promoting it.

Rewriting the Script
So where did Christian universalism come from? It came from the Israelite Saul, who changed his name to Paul, and pronounced himself to be his Messiah's apostle to the gentiles. Like Paul's name change, his universalization of Jesus' message was more than a little convenient, since Paul had been kicked out of Israel and found himself irretrievably among gentiles. In addition to being an exigent personal accommodation, Paul's offer of honorary in-group status to out-group members was inextricably linked to the message that Israel's Messiah would be back very soon-certainly within a couple of years, probably within a few months, and quite possibly within a few weeks. In other words, the offer was good for a limited time only.
Paul's message, and that of his colleague Peter, included: don't get married; if you are married, don't have children…maintain the status quo even if you are an oppressed slave or an oppressed woman, even if you suffer beatings, behave submissively, because Jesus will be back any day and everything will change…withstand your suffering, no matter how unjust, be good, and he will take care of you when he gets here…etc. For example (I Peter 2:18-21; see also I Corinthians 7:24-40; Timothy 6:1-2; Titus 2:9-10; and I Peter 3:1-6):
Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing. For one is approved if, mindful of God, he endures pain while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for it you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God's approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
That is, if your master beats you for an offense that you did not commit, this is your opportunity to be Christ-like. Just take it, have faith, and you will soon be rewarded.
Peter and Paul were the characters who appear in modern cartoons as bedraggled nay-sayers holding signs that warn Repent! The End Is Near. Reading these injunctions in the context of the perceived immediacy of the pending apocalypse suggests that if one could go back in time to tell gentile converts that the returning Messiah would be late by at least 2,000 years, they would have put these prototype Christian missionaries on the first boat back to Israel.

It All Comes Out In The End
Paul's historical revisionism aside, Jesus' plan, his message, and his prophecy are reissued in the Revelation to John (RSV):
He who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I [Jesus] will give him power over the nations and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received power from my Father (2:26-27)…And I [John] heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed, out of every tribe of the sons of Israel (7:2-4)…they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads; they were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them (9:4-5).
Jesus' angels could not kill the goyim because they were needed to occupy the countries that would pay tribute to Israel when the Kingdom of David was restored. But apparently, in contrast to the Canaanite woman who was on her knees to save her daughter, the goyim would need a bit of softening up. Jesus was to have his own rod of iron, and because his hands would be occupied with that, a sort of stiletto sword would come out of his mouth (19:14-16) :
From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords.
It is the miracle of the holy trinity-Jesus' ability to be both a god and a man-that enabled him to be simultaneously David's heir on earth (King of kings) and the ascendant god in heaven (Lord of lords). The difficulty of where this would leave him vis-a-vis his father is resolved by the article of faith that they were one and the same.
More than a few men of the cloth have been bothered by parishioners who take it upon themselves to engage in unsupervised reading of the Book of Revelation. The forward-looking concern is this: 144,000 may have looked like a hefty number 2000 years ago, but haven't all of those slots been filled by now? Is there still room in Kingdom Come? Unfortunately, this question completely misconstrues Jesus' message. The Kingdom is not taking reservation from gentile Christians, or even from Jewish Jews. All slots are reserved for a small subset of original in-group members-Jews for Jesus. The Good News is that many seats are still available, probably about 143,000.
The original covenant was an exclusive contract. Although he occasionally threatened to destroy them for insufficient fealty, the god of the Israelites never wavered in his insistence that they were his chosen people. The new covenant was for Jews who would follow the messiah and recreate the empire of the original chosen people. Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had known that Paul would be taking his plan to the pigs.

If You Can't Enjoin 'em, Beat 'em
As it happened, Paul's rendition of Jesus' message was like Elvis Presley's rendition of Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes"-it took over. Paul's new target audience, gentile Christians, became an inordinately powerful in-group. Unlike Judaism, out-group members were encouraged to join, or were compelled to join, but payback for following the rules was to be reaped in heaven. Pie in the sky was Paul's hook. Meanwhile, in this life, the proceeds of wars and tithes to the Church were shared disproportionately by supportive government officials and Church dignitaries, who were often one and the same persons. Keith put his finger on this modus operandi (1947, p. 65; cf Alexander 1987:175): "[T]he area of the world over which the Prince of Peace is alleged to preside is the most nationally minded part of the world-the part where fierce war is endemic. Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case-nationalism has made Christianity its footstool." Ironically, being a good Christian, Keith did not understand that nationalism's footstool was built for just that purpose by its original carpenter, albeit for a different in-group. Contemporary Christians tend to be aware of this footstool effect in reference to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but Americans tend to forget that their forefathers thought of the United States as God's New Israel (Cherry 1971, p. vi, original caps):
It has been often remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence OUR AMERICAN ISRAEL is a term frequently used; and common consent allows it apt and proper (Abiel Abbot, Thanksgiving sermon, 1799).10
Reverend Abbot's analogy was as functional as it was apt, leading to a colonial high-water mark for in-group morality. Consider the following account of Sagoyewatha's words ("Red Jacket," Chief of the Seneca) to the Reverend Cram from the Boston Missionary Society, at a meeting between the chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations and missionaries from the Great Awakening, at Buffalo Creek, in 1805 (Stedman and Hutchinson 1889, pp. 36-38):
You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind, and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people? Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?
Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all...we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own...you say you have not come to get our land or our wealth but to enlighten our mindsxyou have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.
Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey and return you safe to your friends.
Stedman and Hutchinson describe what happened next:
As the Indians began to approach the missionary, he rose hastily from his seat and replied that he could not take them by the hand; that there was no fellowship between the religion of God and the works of the devil.
This being interpreted to the Indians, they smiled, and retired in a peaceable manner.

Deuteronomic Deja Vu
The strategic practicality of killing locals and bringing slaves from afar was not lost upon God's New Israelites. Because they were already there, Indians could not be pulled out by their roots, transported halfway around the world, and terrorized into servitude as thoroughly as Africans. Once again, in-group morality worked its magic. African slaves were difficult to manage before they were converted, but upon seeing the light, their spirit was chained to the bottom rung of an in-group ladder (Maier, 1993):
American-born masters took greater interest in American-born slaves than in Africans, who seemed to them wild, and controllable only by the threat of harsh punishments. Gradually a new paternalism developed among owners that softened their relationships with slaves, increased their attention to slaves' material welfare and helped undercut an older opposition to the Christianization of slaves. It also led masters to intervene in the lives of their slaves to an extent unknown in other similar systems of servitude, and fostered an extreme hostility toward signs of independence in their slave "children."
Patrick Buchanan would have felt at home in God's New Israel and his forthrightness would have been appreciated by slavers and the Reverend Cram alike: "Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free" (1993).

Freedom, Fidelity, and Evil
Discussing religious freedom, comedian-cum-exegete Steve Allen (1990, p. xxix) quipped, "my freedom to swing my arms about stops at the point of another's nose." Allen is right, but naive advocates of religious freedom ignore "the ethically vicious part" (Keith, 1947, p. 10), pretend that it does not exist, and/or suggest that believers will pick out the good and leave the bad. This too is plain wrong, and it houses a Judeo-Christian self-deception that Thomas Paine warned us about (1794, p. 8):
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief [belief professed] to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
By "believing what they do not believe," or professing "to believe it deeply, even if they cannot describe the it that they believe" (Williams, 1994), most contemporary Christians and Jews unwittingly support in-group morality. They do so by revering the Bible as a source of universal moral values, even though few have actually read it-as distinct from having actually read it and in consequence lending it credence as a source of moral values. This is backwards, and for the few believers who have read the Bible, it is not enough to simply assert that true Judaism and Christianity are other than what is stated in their book.
There is a stark contradiction between abhorring genocide and paying homage to a god who commanded his followers to commit genocide. There is a deep structural discrepancy between outrage over persecution of people because of their religious beliefs and simultaneous reverence for scriptures that condemn non-co-religionists to death and damn them to hell. But humans have a unique ability to be evil. If evil is bad put forth as good, wrong put forth as right, injustice put forth as justice, and hate disguised as love, then institutions of religion that perpetuate in-group morality, whether up front or in the guise of "they're OK but don't marry one," are evil. And those who decry in-group morality while holding on to the self-image of being Protestant, or Catholic, or Orthodox, or Conservative, or Reformed, give overt in-group moralists the very fibre that sustains them.
The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, complete with instructions for genocide, enslavement of out-groups, and world domination. But the Bible is not evil by virtue of its objectives or even its glorification of murder, cruelty, and rape (Hartung, ms2). Many ancient works do that-The Iliad, the Icelandic Sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians and the inscriptions of the ancient Mayans, for example. But no one is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality. Therein lies the problem. The Bible is sold, and bought, as a guide to how people should live their lives. And it is, by far, the world's all-time best seller. But the effort to make the Bible a universal guide to morality is impossible, because although orally transmitted myths can make 180 degree turns across a series of generations and get away with claims to authority based on antiquity, distortions and selective dismissals of written myths can only, at best, fool most of the people most of the time.

Where Will It End?
History is replete with in-groups that have disintegrated from within after running out of enemies to parasitize and defend against. Like a full balloon in a vacuum chamber, as outside pressure is reduced, they burst. Avraham Burg, chairman of the Jewish Agency, has perceived this problem and put it bluntly (Haberman, 1995): "And if real peace does come to Israel, the question will be asked: Can we, and how do we, survive without an external enemy?"
Evolutionists have not been able to devise a model for converting in-group morality into general morality. Because in-group morality does not evolve by group selection, it does not involve selfless altruism. As put by Irons, "All forms of evolved altruism must be discriminate in terms of costs and benefits. The benefits must outweigh the costs, and both must be measured in terms of reproduction of the altruist's genes" (1991). If a group loses in competition with other groups, its members lose the advantage of having been in-group moral. Similarly, and somewhat paradoxically, if a group wins against all competing groups, its members lose the advantage of continuing to be in-group moral, because in-group morality can only be maintained at the expense of out-groups. As put by Alexander (1987, p. 261):
Only in humans are war and other forms of intergroup competition the central aspects and driving forces of social existence. Only humans have embarked upon a virtually unchecked arms race involving cooperative efforts of millions of individuals on the opposing sides.
Only these facts, I believe, can explain why individual people more or less continually treat their fellows as adversaries and competitors, to be manipulated and deceived and used when possible. Only these facts can explain the particular ways in which humans cooperate-within groups of expanding sizes and complexities, and so intensively as to deny even to themselves their manipulations and deceptions.
This lose-lose situation could be salvaged by an invasion from outer space, a favorite theme of fiction writers, because the world could unify to defend against a common out-group, but short of that, we must devise artificial foundations for morality.
Of course, our ability to self-destruct through nuclear war and ecological disaster may be the equivalent to an invasion from outer space. Whether we can collectively realize the urgency of this threat, and unify to save ourselves from ourselves, is a question that historians and environmentalists ponder without optimism. Nevertheless, humans are the first species with enough foresight to apprehend their own extinction and its probable cause. We are also the first species capable of conceptualizing everyone who is alive, and everyone who is yet to be born, as our neighbors. This makes hope a not entirely irrational emotion. From Moses to Jesus to Jim Jones, the phenomenon of religion proves that humans are capable of being unified by irrational beliefs. Substituting rational beliefs may even strengthen our ability to unify.

The Good News-Bad News
Humans are also capable of judging when relationships and circumstances are fair and just-in the abstract. That is, as an epiphenomenon of reciprocal altruism and intense selection for the ability to assess our self-interest in deals that we make with each other (Trivers, 1971), we are naturally rather good at judging the fairness of relationships in which we have absolutely zero self-interest. That ability enables us to make, and determine the justice of abstract rules and laws. This "knowing good and evil" was recognized by the authors of the creation story as a unique human attribute-attributed to Eve's daring defiance of her god's order to not eat of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 3:22; 2:9).
In addition, in order to present an effective social self (cf. Hartung, 1988), each of us has been selected to maintain the self-deception that I am inherently fair and just but other people need to be regulated in that regard. Accordingly, and most fortunately, most of us are willing to support systems of justice that catch and punish those other people who break fair laws. And of course, when we do that, we set a trap for ourselves-because each of us is other people to other people, and our self-deceptions about our own behavior will not withstand their scrutiny. This is the good news trap. Unfortunately, our propensity to be scrupulous when it pays self-image dividends invariably causes some clerics, some philosophers, some modelers (e.g., Frank, 1988, 1994) and some muddlers (e.g., Wilson & Sober, 1994) to argue that humans are inherently moral, and that if we could just create the right environment, our natural moral propensities would flourish independent of the rule of law and the threat of punishment. This is the bad news trap. Hume (1750) would have had it right if he had argued that is cannot be derived from ought, rather than the other way around.
Moralistic wishful thinking endangers our ability to take advantage of those few serendipitous epiphenomena of natural selection which, when properly organized, can cause us to behave as if we were inherently moral. Fair laws fairly applied are the key. That is, the effectiveness of laws can be enhanced by severe punishment and a high probability of being caught, but only fairness appeals to our "knowing good and evil"-and only fairness gives laws the practical force to create an environment that makes moral behavior adaptive.
Nevertheless, the question remains, why bother?
An answer will be proffered in the next issue of Skeptic, where an exploration of the enlightened animism of modern physics and cosmology will be used to derive the premise that existence is contingent upon continuing consequence, such that life does not meaningfully exist if the universe unfolds in a manner that leaves no evidence that living matter did exist. It follows from that premise that we meaningfully exist only if we contribute to the evolution of life forms that continue to contribute to the evolution of life forms, forever. Because that is possible and inherently desirable, the struggle for existence derives values from knowledge-what ought to be from what is, and why we ought to bother.

Notes
1. Leviticus 19:18; see also repetitions by Jesus in Matthew 5:43;19:19; 22:39, Mark 12:31; 12:33 and Luke 10:27, other repititions in the New Testament (Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14; and James 2:8), and Jesus' twice-used paraphrase in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31.
2. Many archeologists doubt that the Israelites were even in Egypt, that the Exodus ever occurred, that Moses even existed let alone wrote or dictated any part of the Old Testament (Stiebing; Redford). Likewise, biblical scholars and historians are not agreed about the existence of historical Jesus, let alone which (if any) parts of the New Testament accurately reflect his message (Mack; Funk, Hoover and the Jesus Seminar). However, the empirical veracity of biblical stories, or of any story told in earnest, is independent of the messages, both implicit and explicit, that they convey. Throughout this article, those messages are considered valid information.
3. References to biblical passages are given by book, chapter, verse, and, where relevant, translation. References to talmudic passages are given by tractate and folio (page) number. References to The Codes of Maimonides are given by book, treatise, chapter and section. Full references for biblical, talmudic, and Maimonidean citations are given at the end under "Primary Sources."
4. For examples of the commandment to kill out-group members, and boasts of having done so, see: Numbers 21:2-3; 21:34-35; 24:8; 24:19-20; Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:2-6; 3:21; 7:1-2; 7:16; 7:23-24; 9:3; 11:24-25; 20:16-17; 31:3-5; 33:27; Joshua 2:10; 6:21; 8:2; 8:24-26; 10:1; 10:28; 10:35;10:37; 10:39-40; 11:11-14; 11:20-21; Judges 1:17; 3:29; I Samuel 15:3; 15:8; 15:15; 15:18; 15:20; and I Chronicles 4:41, any major translation.
5. Tanakh (JPS '85), although quite similar when not identical to JPS '17 and RSV, and occasionally more clear, often contains subtle differences which de-emphasize the negative, employing euphemisms when a more straightforward translation would be less obfuscating. For example, in every major English translation of the Bible except TANAKH, the Israelites are frequently commanded by their God to "utterly destroy" another people. Tanakh differs in that it usually translates the Hebrew word charam as "proscribe" rather than "utterly destroy" in this context (e.g., "you must proscribe them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and…," instead of "you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and…" Deuteronomy 20:17). When this is done the word "proscribe" is footnoted to Leviticus 27:29, which reads, "No human being who has been proscribed can be ransomed: he shall be put to death"-which amounts to the same thing (compare, e.g., RSV, JPS '17 and JPS '85 for Numbers 21:2-3; Deuteronomy 20:17; Joshua 10:1; 10:28; 10:35; 10:37; 10:39-40; 11:11-12; Judges 1:17; I Samuel 15:8; 15:15; 15:20). Nevertheless, Tanakh is inconsistent in this regard, perhaps due to conflicting decisions from the translation's six editors. Accordingly, charam is translated "exterminate" in three cases (Joshua 6:21; 8:26; I Samuel 15:18), and "wipe out forever" in one case (I Chronicles 4:41).
6. For more on the intensity of the fear of assimilation, see Hartung ms1.
7. The passage: "When a man causes a disfigurement in his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to himxlife for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Leviticus 24:19-20 and Exodus 21:23-24; RSV), was just meant to keep revenge from escalating among in-group members. In distinction to an eye for an eye, the rule for out-groups was simply 'everything for nothing' (for an analysis of the history of reactive racism that the in-group nature of Judaism has fomented among diaspora host populations, see Shahak, 1994 and MacDonald, 1995 (and a review of MacDonald 1995 by Hartung 1995).
8. To trace the development of this theme, see: Genesis 18:18; 18:22; 26:4; 27:29; 28:14; Exodus 23:31; 33:16; 34:24; Deuteronomy 7:14-24; 10:15: 14:2; 15:6; 12:18-19; 28:1; 28:10-13; 32:43; 33:17-29; Joshua 1:3-4; 23:4-5; Second Samuel 8:2-14; 10:19; 12:30-31; 22:44-47; I Kings 4:21; 4:24; 10:14-15; II Kings 3:4; I Chronicles 16:35; 17:21; 9:25-26; 20:29-30; Psalms 2:4-9; 61:6; 89:27; 105:44-45; 110:5-6; 111:6; Isaiah 11:11-15; 14:1-2; 17:12-14; 19:17; 34:1-8; 40:15-17; 41:8-11; 45:14; 45:22-25; 49:1-7; 49:22-23; 54:1-3; 55:5; 59:20-21; 60:1-16; 61:5-8; 66:10-16; Jeremiah 12:16-17; 30:11; 33:9; 46:28; Ezekiel 28:24; -26; 36:6-11; 39:17-22; Daniel 2:44; 7:13-14; 7:27; 10:13-14; 12:1-3; 12:7; Joel 1:12-14; 3:2; Obadiah 1:15-17; Micah 4:12-13; 5:5-18; Zephaniah 2:7-9; 2:12-13; 319-20; Haggai 2:6-9; Zechariah 1:14-21; 2:8-9; 8:22-23; 9:11-15; 12:5-6; 12:9; 14:1; 14:9-12; 14:16-19; and Malachi 1:2-5.
9. For additional examples, see Matthew 5:47, 6:7, 6:32, 10:5, 10:18, 18:17, 20:19, 20:25, Mark 10:33, 10:42, and Luke 18:32, 21:24, 22:25. Jesus' view of the Canaanites as dogs was unwittingly echoed by the father of militant Zionism, Ze'ev Jabotinsky: "the human inhabitants of the district…the rabble of the town-laborers…the fragments of indigenous tribes…resembled homeless dogs…all looked alike, lacking the characteristics of any known breed," in his novel Samson (1926), which was made into a movie, Samson and Delilah, by Cecil B. DeMille in 1950.
10. This view is very much alive today. Consider Christian ex-Senator Bob Packwood's tendency to use "we" when discussing Jewish or Israeli history in fund-raising literature, as in (referring to events of 72 BCE), "We were forced out of our own land, forcibly ejected…I don't regard them as occupied territories. I regard them as legitimately Israel's" (Noakes, 1992), or the opening lines of a 1992 speech by then Vice President Dan Quayle to the American-Israel Political Action Committee, "Fellow Zionists, Israel and the United States need each other. We benefit from each other and our alliance is unshakable because it rests on two firm pillars-strategic interests and common values" (WRMEA, 1992a), or from Governor-running-for-president Bill Clinton's address to the Jewish Leadership Council, "If I ever let Israel down, God would never forgive me" (WRMEA, 1992b).

Primary Sources
Babylonian Talmud, The (circa 200-500) Epstein, 1. (ed.). Quincentenary ed., 1978. London: Soncino Press.
Book of Judges, The: The Code of Maimonides (circa 1195) Hershman, A.M.( ed.) 1949. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Book of Torts, The: The Code of Maimonides (circa 1195) Klein, H. (ed.) 1954. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Holy Bible, The: King James Version. 1611, New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers (1976).
Holy Bible, The: Revised Standard Version. 1952. The Oxford Annotated Bible With The Apocrypha, H.G. May and B.M. Metzger (eds.), 1965. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holy Scriptures, The: According to the Masoretic Text. (circa 600-1000) 1917. The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia.
TANAKH, A New Translation of The Holy Scriptures according to the Traditional Hebrew Text. 1985. The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia.

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c1995 John Hartung, Ph.D. Author's note: I thank Noam Chomsky for nine years of insightful correspondence about issues raised in this essay, Richard Alexander, Napoleon Chagnon, Lalla Dawkins, Richard Dawkins, William Irons, Kevin MacDonald, Frank Miele, Robert Trivers, William Zimmerman, Matt Ridley, and especially Renata Hartung for steadfast encouragement and sage advice. Any errors of fact or interpretation are mine, and all criticisms, accusations, and assignations of bad karma that might be inspired by this work should be directed exclusively at me.
Dr. John Hartung is Associate Editor of the Journal of Neurosurgtcal Anesthesiology and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at the State University of New York. His Ph.D. is in anthropology from Harvard, where he was a student of, and teaching fellow for, Bernard D. Davis, Irven B. DeVore, Paul H. Harvey, William D. Hamilton, Melvin J. Konner, Robert L. Trivers, and Edward 0. Wilson. About half of Dr. Hartung's 80-some publications are in social science, with the rest in medicine. His articles on the sociobiology of inherited wealth have appeared in Current Anthropology, Behavioral and Brain Science, and Nature, His 1982 paper on "Polygyny and Inheritance of Wealth" is being reprinted by Oxford University Press in their forthcoming Evolution & Human Behavior (L. Betzig, editor). Dr. Hartung can be contacted via e-mail at: john.hartung@downstate.edu

John Hartung's article was originally published in Skeptic magazine. For subscription information contact: P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001; 818/794-3119; Fax: 818/794-1301; e-mail: skepticmag@aol.com
Published here with the permission of Dr. Hartung.

Shiksa: Biblical Roots of Racism
by John Hartung


n [Yiddish, fem. of sheygets fr. Hebrew, blemish, abomination] 1. A non-Jewish girl.(i)

The Silent Holocaust

Most of us would agree that a distinction should be maintained between Gentiles who fall in love with Jews and Gentiles who haul them off to concentration camps. But Rabbi Epharim Z. Buchwald has a special insight in this regard -- the net effect is indistinguishable, and it's the bottom line that counts.

In a letter, tape and book campaign decrying "The Silent Holocaust," Rabbi Buchwald's National Jewish Outreach Program has been reaching out to individuals who might be sympathetic. You can get on NJOP's mailing list by buying a copy of The Talmud, The Midrash Rabbah, the Codes of Maimonides, or Jewish Publication Society translations of The Bible. Then you will learn about "a study commissioned by Harvard University" which found that "by the American Tricentennial year of 2076, there could be as few as 10,000 Jews in America!"

That's down about 10 million because of "a life-and-death battle" with shiksas:
Concentration camps and gas chambers aren't the only ways to exterminate the Jewish people . . . intermarriage . . . can accomplish the same evil end. What you and I do in the next few years will make the difference between a thriving American Jewry and a tragedy truly beyond comprehension . . . Never before has the future of our people been so threatened. . . . Can we do anything to stop this 'Silent Holocaust?' The answer is yes . . . Please join us in this life-and-death battle today.(ii)


Rebekah's Lament

Rabbi Edwin Friedman is a therapist who specializes in Jewish-Gentile marriages. His chapter in the classic psychotherapy manual Ethnicity and Family Therapy is entitled "The Myth of The Shiksa." According to Rabbi Friedman:(iii)
For 1000 years, Eastern European Jews and their descendants have used the term shiksa to refer to a non-Jewish woman who lures Jewish men away from religion and family. This attractive will-o'-the-wisp, as folk imagination would have it, is seductive, immoral, ignorant, and insensitive to Jewish values. It is not just that she is unsuitable to the warmth of traditional Jewish family life - she will destroy it!


In fact, the myth of the shiksa goes back much further than Rabbi Friedman's reckoning. The first lament over shiksas was directed at Isaac (Abraham's Jewish son, as distinct from his non-Jewish son, Ishmael, who married many shiksas) by Rebekah, Isaacs' wife. She was worried about their son Jacob (as distinct from their disinherited son, Esau, who also married several shiksas):
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, "I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as
these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?" (Genesis 26:46)


31,968 Shiksas

Rebekah's concern was prescient. While en route to The Promised Land, shiksa trouble became both the cause and the consequence of the largest single influx of non-Jewish women on record (from Numbers 31:1-35):
They warred against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and slew every male . . . And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones . . . Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses [3 to 4 day march] . . . And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the
commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them, "Have you let all the women live? . . . now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves . . . Now the booty remaining of the spoil that the men of war took was . . . thirty-two thousand persons in all, women who had not known man by lying with him.


Only 31,968 of these virgins were made available as shiksas because 32 of them were given "to Eleazar the priest" as an "offering for the Lord" -- that is, for human sacrifice (see Numbers 31, RSV). The King James translation of the Bible specifies that these women were to be a "heave offering" (see Numbers 31:29 & 41) -- which means that after dismemberment, various body parts were "heaved up," or thrown in the air, in celebration.(iv)

The ostensible reason for killing all non-virgin Midianite women was "the LORD's vengeance" for involvement with a shiksa. Her name was Cozbi, and her affair with the Israelite soldier Zimri would not have been so threatening if he had not had the chutzpah to bring her home (Numbers 25:6-8 . . . 14,15):
One of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping at the door of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation, and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the inner room, and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman, through her body . . . The name of the slain man of Israel, who was slain with the Midianite woman, was Zimri . . . And the name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cozbi the daughter of Zur, who was the head of the people of a fathers' house in Midian.


Perks & Power

It would have been acceptable for Zimri to have sex with Cozbi if she had been a prostitute. Indeed, according to The Midrash Rabbah(v) (MR -- The Great Exposition, _ 400 BCE to 1200 CE), Phinehas gained entry to Zimri's tent by telling surrounding family members that he merely wanted to take a turn after Zimri finished (MR: Numbers 25):
He [Phinehas] was afraid of his [Zimri's] tribe who surrounded him. When he came near them they asked him: "Why have you come?" He said to them: "I have also come to indulge my desires." They gave him leave and he entered. If he had not said this they would not have allowed him to go in.


But Phinehas and Moses knew that Cozbi was the daughter of a major political figure, that involvement with her could lead to a substantive relationship with a woman who was not chaste by virtue of not being an in-group member, and that, in turn, could threaten the foundation of the Israelites' cohesiveness. This concern was explicitly confabulated in The Midrash Rabbah, where we learn that Cozbi was sent to cement an alliance with the Israelites by becoming Moses' fourth Midianite wife:(vi)
The woman [Cozbi] said to him [Zimri]: "I shall give myself to none but Moses, for so my father Balak bade me, not to yield to any one but to Moses your master, because my father was a king."(vii) Said he to her: "Behold, I am as great as he is! [as great as Moses] I shall bring you out before their eyes!" He seized her by her plait [her hair] and brought her to Moses. He said to him [to Moses]: "O son of Amram! Is this woman permitted or forbidden?" He answered him: "She is forbidden to you." Said Zimri to him: "Yet the woman whom you married was a Midianitess!" Thereupon Moses felt powerless and the law slipped from his mind. All Israel wailed aloud; for it says, They were weeping (Numbers 25:6). What were they weeping for? Because they became powerless at that moment. (MR: Numbers 23)


Coitus Interruptus

In order to bring back the power, Phinehas put on quite a show. He managed to give Cozbi the shaft, after a fashion . . . and the Lord God Almighty worked twelve miracles through an emissary (MR: Numbers20:25):
He pierced them both, as one lay on top of the other, through the unclean place of both of them . . . as he had been jealous in the cause of the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, He [God] wrought twelve miracles for him [Zimri].

The first miracle was that, though in the ordinary course they would have separated from each other [Zimri and Cozbi], an angel made them cleave to each other. The second miracle was that the angel shut their mouths so that they should not cry out. The third was that he directed the spear straight towards her belly so that his genitals might be seen inside the belly. This was done so that cavillers might not say that he [Phinehas] also had gone in to satisfy his desire [as he told Zimri's family].

The fourth was that the angel lengthened the iron so that it might pierce them both. The fifth was that He put strength in to his arm in order that he might lift them both up. The sixth was that He put strength into the helve [spear shaft] to sustain them both. The seventh was that the victims did not slide down from the weapon, but remained stationary. The eighth was that the angel turned them over at the top of the spear into proper position [man on top] in order to display their disgraceful conduct to all.

The ninth was that they did not drop any blood; this was in order that Phinehas might not be defiled. The tenth was that the Holy One, blessed be He, preserved their spirit, so that they might not die and Phinehas be defiled [as the pending highest priest, Phinehas could not be defiled by handling the dead, so God kept
the victims alive while on the spear]. The eleventh was that the angel raised the lintel [the entrance of the tent] so that both of them might pass out, carried aloft between his shoulders, before the eyes of all.

The twelfth was that when Phinehas came out the members of the man's tribe [Zimri's tribe, the Simeonites] stood ready to attack him, but an angel descended and commenced to strike them. When Phinehas saw that he sought to destroy them, he dashed the victims on the ground and, offering up a prayer, caused the angel to depart.(viii)


Heart & Soul

Clearly, shiksa-power was greatly feared. Moses' instruction regarding captured Midianite women, "Keep alive for yourselves" had to be curbed. So laws were established to curtail the threat posed by Israelite soldiers' propensity to bring women home (Deuteronomy 21:10-14):
When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will.


Writing in the late 11th Century, Maimonides summarized the elaborations and amendments to the law regarding captive women that are scattered throughout The Talmud:
If after the first coition, while she is still a heathen, she expresses her willingness to accept Judaism, arrangements are forthwith made for her ablution for the purpose of conversion. If she is unwilling to accept the Jewish religion, she remains in his house thirty days, as it is said: She shall bewail her father and her mother a full month (Deuteronomy 21:13). She weeps also for her religion and he may not stop her . . . He puts up with her, in the hope that she might accept Judaism. If she does, and he desires to marry her, she is converted and takes a ritual bath . . . If after the marriage [after resuming sexual intercourse] he no longer cares for her, he lets her go where she pleases.

If she refuses to be converted, she is put up with for twelve months . . . A captive woman who refuses, after the lapse of twelve months, to renounce idolatry, is put to death.(ix)


Filthy Lust

Anthropologists categorize societies according to their rules for marrying in (endogamy) or marrying out (exogamy). Endogamy is a strong force in many traditional cultures, and even within subdivisions of larger cultures. Accordingly, Rabbi Friedman reports that identical neuroses attach to marriages between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, none of which are more pathological than those which can ensue between Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Christians, or between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Indeed, the closer groups are in geography, economy, and the time of their initial separation, the fiercer the rules and the nastier the innuendos.

Having grown up among Protestant Christians, I remember hearing lascivious rumors about Catholic and Jewish girls -- primarily that they were 'easy'. Years of dogged adolescent research proved the rumors to be false, much to my chagrin, but they are still propagated. The message behind such tales is that other groups' women are not chaste, not clean, and certainly not fit for marriage. The Rabbis of The Talmud protected their flocks by spreading such rumors about non-Jewish women, though one wonders why they felt a need to go so far:(x)
One should not entrust cattle to a heathen shepherd . . . neither should we buy male cattle from [heathen] women, for fear of their having used them for immoral practice! . . . Why then should we not leave female animals alone with female heathens? Because heathens frequent their neighbours' wives, and should one by chance not find her in, and find the cattle there, he might use it immorally. You may also say that even if he should find her in he might use the animal, as a Master has said: Heathens prefer the cattle of Israelites to their own wives. When the serpent came unto Eve he infused filthy lust into her . . . when Israel stood at Sinai that lust was eliminated, but the lust of idolaters, who did not stand at Sinai, did not cease.


Herbie's Mother's Lament

Myths can defy reality for as long as they serve the interests of their believers, to wit the following complaint, unnervingly similar to Rebekah's, made some 4,000 years later, in a letter submitted by one of Rabbi Friedman's clients:(3)
Dear Herbie,

Well, if you want to commit suicide, I guess there is nothing I can do. But I can't tell you how much this shiksa business is hurting your father and me. I don't know if you realize that this will hurt us financially. We will probably have to leave town and I will certainly have to give up my job teaching Hebrew . . .

Your father is sick over this - you know he hasn't been well. All I can say is that if he dies, I will hold you responsible.

Mary may say that she loves you, but have you told her that we Jews think of Jesus as an illegitimate son?

Love,
Mother


Is Herbie's mother right? Wrong? Somewhere in between? Compared to Rebekah, she is only somewhat more loquacious. But compared to Rabbi Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program, she has the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon (who, according to First Kings 11:1-3, married several hundred shiksas).

How so? Herbie's mother did not equate Mary the shiksa with Adolf the fuhrer.

Rachel's Shaygetz

For NJOP, the only thing worse than rejection is the ultimate acceptance. To be loved is as bad as being hated, or worse. Indeed, compared to hatred that strengthens in-group solidarity, love that leads to exogamous marriage is a disaster. That is why NJOP has received financial support or letters of endorsement from Rabbi Dovid Cohen, Rabbi Elya Svei, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, the Novominsker Rebbe, the Squarer Rebbe, and Rabbi Zelig Epstein, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,the UJA Federation, AVICHAI, the Steinhardt Foundation, the Scheuer Foundation, the Gruss Fund, the Joseph Alexander Foundation, the Wolfson Family Foundation, the New Kalman Sunshine Fund, Inc., the Nelkin Family Foundation, the B.L. Manger Foundation, Inc. and the Fredman Family Fund.

Of course, those who wish to help the NJOP on a more modest scale can become an Associate, Supporting, Contributing or Sustaining Member for only $25, $50, $75 or $100. Even before checking off one's membership level and corresponding bonus entitlements, Rabbi Buchwald will share a letter that he received. It rounds out the exogamy problem by introducing the male counterpart of a shiksa, a shaygetz.(xi)

Across the letter's top, in hand-written script, Rabbi Buchwald explains that the letter tells "the story of the National Jewish Outreach Program better than I can myself:"
Dear Rabbi,

I have just received some of the worst news of my life.

I have two grown daughters, Miriam and Rachel. My husband and I sent them to Hebrew school and synagogue, and encouraged them to live Jewish lives.

But with Rachel, we have failed. Four years ago, she met a young man at work. They fell in love. He is not Jewish and he did not convert. They married anyway. Now Rachel has called to say she is expecting . . .

My heart is breaking . . . as a concentration camp survivor, I find this especially hard to accept . . .

Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]


Oblivion

In what must rank among the most demagogic analogies in the history of similitude, Rabbi Buchwald, Name Withheld and Herbie's mother demean all of us. They liken love to hate, romantic passion to cruel passion, marriage to murder, and giving birth to causing inconsolable despair. If you purchase NJO's introductory tape ($39), you will hear, more clearly, where these people are coming from:(2)
-- You see, we're engaged in a battle, what we are fighting today is a battle, it's a battle, it's a nuclear battle . . . One million American Jewish children are being raised as non-Jews . . . it's a silent holocaust ladies and gentlemen.

Just because we don't see the goose-stepping Nazi soldiers doesn't mean the end is not exactly the same. They are lost into oblivion . . . little Jewish children who never had a chance to live in the wealthiest, most sophisticated Jewish community in all of Jewish history . . . It's a silent holocaust!


Or you can read the perpetual plea of Morris Cohen from Brooklyn, as transcribed by Rabbi Buchwald from telephone calls to his NJO office:(xii)
Rabbi! How can we sit here when there is a Holocaust takng place all about us?! One million Jewish children are going up in flames!! We're not doing enough!! How much money do we need? One billion, two bllion, three billion dollars, let's go out and raise it and save them!!


Evil

Perhaps assimilation is even worse than "going up in flames." After all, those who assimilate draw the non-assimilated like a magnet. In a new twist on the old rallying cry "better dead than red," a final solution was clear to Mr. Kostner:
Hackensack, N.J., March 24, 1997 (Reuter) - A New Jersey jury Monday rejected the death penalty for a man who pleaded guilty to killing his two children because he feared his ex-wife would not raise them as Jews.(xiii)


If this were simply wrong, it would not have gone as far as it has. Evil is a pernicious kind of wrong, a sort of wrong that can be turned like a hologram until a very different, fleeting, almost subliminal picture appears. Evil is a kind of wrong that insinuates itself between layers of right.

In-groups sandwich an outline for animosity, an organizing principle for prejudice, between layers of social support. Whether Christian or Muslim or Jewish, every extremist is supported by a small number of less extreme admirers and each of those supporters is buoyed, in turn, by a larger group of sympathizers. These connections are continuous right down to the bottom of the pyramid, where vaguely sympathetic in-group members are offended by the very extremists who would have no base, and no basis, without them. It is that vague sympathy which needs to be examined.

Recognizing that "goose-stepping Nazi soldiers" and exogamy do not bring "exactly the same end" is too easy. The challenging continuum is the one that differentiates lovers whose marriage marks a small separation from lovers whose marriage marks a larger departure. In one third of the 486 societies classified by anthropologists for marriage preference, the first degree of separation is the family, with marriage between mates who are not first cousins bringing some level of disappointment. Then we have hand wringing over lovers who join from different local communities, then different sects within tribes, then different tribes, different nations, different religions . . . all the way up to different races. Ultimately, the challenge of where to draw the line resolves into the question of whether to draw a line, and why.

Line drawers promote two forms of evil -- hypocrisy and racism. Hypocrisy because although they renounce coercion, if members of a group are not free to leave, then members who stay can not be doing so of their own free will. And racism because despite explicit protestations to the contrary, one cannot disapprove of a marriage without disapproving of a person because he or she was born in a different group.

A wolf, no matter how big and bad, is not evil until it is dressed in sheep's clothing.

Ask any shiksa.

Notes & References

(i) Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. See also: Bermant, C. 1991. Some Carefully and Carelessly Chosen Words. Jewish Chronicle, May 17. [Back]

(ii) NJOP flyer, copy available on request. For a complimentary issue of Outreach, NJOP's Newsletter, call 212-986-7450, visit www.njop.org, or write to NJOP, 485 Fifth Avenue, Suite 70, NY, NY 10017. [Back]

(iii) E. Friedman, pp 499 & 501 in McGoldrick, et al., Ethnicity and Family Therapy [Back]

(iv) Human sacrifice of Canaanites and other non-Jews was common (for a poignant example see 1st Samuel 15:31-32), but sacrifice of Israelites by Israelites in order to appease or cajole their god was rare subsequent to recision of the commandment to sacrifice all first born children (cf. Exodus 13:2; 22:29-30 and Leviticus 27:28-29 with Exodus 13:13 and 34:20) -- a commandment for which the god of the Israelites eventually apologized (Ezekiel 20:26). Nevertheless, ritual sacrifice of a virgin Israelite woman was still well received and well rewarded (e.g., Judges 11:12 through 12:8). [Back]

(v) The Midrash Rabbah. Freedman, H and Simon, M. (eds). 1983. New York: Soncino Press. [Back]

(vi) According to The Bible, before marrying a Cushite, Moses spent his early adulthood among the monotheistic Midianites, where he gained his religious convictions and married three women -- Zipporah, a daughter of the priest Jethro, an unnamed daughter of Ruel, and an unnamed daughter of Hobab, Ruel's son (see Exodus 2:18-22, 3:1, 4:18-20, 18:2-5, Numbers 10:29, 12:1, Judges 1:16 and 4:11). [Back]

(vii) In the Bible, Balak is a Moabite and Cozbi is a Midianite, but as always, keeping the story straight was less important than making the story's point. [Back]

(viii) An even more eye-opening treatment of the Cozbi & Zimri story is supplied by Richard Friedman in his book Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Harper & Row,1987). Using his own translation of Numbers 25:6-8, Friedman infers that Zimri brought Cozbi into the inner sanctum of the Tent of Meeting, into the Israelites' Tabernacle (the movable holy of holies), to have sex:
And here was a man from the children of Israel, and he brought a Midianitess close to his brothers in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel. And they were weeping a t the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw, and he rose from the midst of the congregation, and he took a spear in his hand. And he came after the Israelite man to the Tent-chamber, and he thrust through the two of them, the Israelite man and the woman, to her stomach.


which provides a basis for the following apologia:
An Israelite man and a Midianite woman have gone into the Tent of Meeting "in the sight of Moses," but it is not Moses who acts, but Phinehas. He follows the man and woman inside the Tent. They are engaged in an activity whose arrangement makes it possible to thrust a spear through both the man and the woman, ending in the woman's abdomen. The execution without a trial is possible because death is the unquestionable fate of anyone entering the Tabernacle who is not a priest. Phinehas' reward is an eternal covenant of priesthood.

But non-ad hoc translations of the Bible (including all Jewish Publication Society translations, The King James Version, The Revised Berkeley Version, and the Revised Standard Version) have Zimri taking Cozbi to "his family," "his brethren," "his relatives" or "his companions," as distinct from into the Tent of Meeting, and in these translations Phinehas leaves the Tent of Meeting to go after them. The most recent JPS translation, Tanakh, reads as follows (Numbers 25:6-8):

Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and of the whole Israelite community who were weeping at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. When Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly.


It was also clear to both the Sages of the Talmud and the Midrash Rabbah, who could presumably read ancient Hebrew at least as well as Friedman, that these verses meant that Moses was at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting looking out while Zimri took Cozbi to the chamber of his own tent among the tents of his family. [Back]

(ix) Maimonides, M. 1195 (circa). The Book of Judges: The Code of Maimonides (Hershman, A.M. trans) New Haven: Yale University Press (1949). Treatise 5, chapter 8:2-9, pp 229-230. [Back]

(x) Babylonian Talmud, The. Epstein, I. (ed.). 1978 Quincentenary Edition. London: Soncino Press. Abodah Zarah, 22b. [Back]

(xi) The shaygetz problem did not exist before Jewish women gained a secular legal right to marry without their father's permission and began to do so in appreciable numbers, so this is a more recent phenomenon. When the Hebrew word 'shaygetz' was feminized into the Yiddish word 'shiksa', it still meant "an abomination" in Hebrew without a secondary meaning designating an non-Jewish male in particular. Accordingly, even though 'shaygetz' is a much older word, it did not take on its now familiar meaning of a male shiksa until after the word 'shiksa' had gained common parlance as a non-Jewish female abomination. [Back]

(xii) Outreach, the Newsletter of the National Jewish Outreach Program. 10:2, May 1997 (Iyar 5757), p 1. [Back]

(xiii) See also, The New York Times, May 17, 1997, p 24. [Back]

Maasai evicted and imprisoned to make way for safari hunting concession
20 August 2009


Maasai homestead burned down in July 2009
© Survival

Eight Maasai villages in the Loliondo region of Tanzania have been burnt to the ground, leaving 3,000 people without food, water or shelter.

On 4 July, heavily armed Tanzanian riot police set fire to Maasai homesteads and foodstores to evict them from their ancestral land. Thousands of Maasai are now destitute with their cattle in acute drought conditions. They were forced from their villages to create a game hunting area for the Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC).

One Maasai said, ‘Today our land is being taken for investment: luxury tourist hunting.’

Survival has also received disturbing reports that Maasai women have been raped and severely beaten during the evictions. Describing her ordeal, one woman said, ‘Two armed men chased me and forced me to lie down, at the same time another six men followed them and all raped me’.

Otterlo Business Corporation is reportedly linked with the United Arab Emirates royal families and has held exclusive safari and hunting rights in Loliondo, northern Tanzania since 1992. The area is traditionally Maasai land, but since obtaining the concession the company uses the area to hunt large game animals. The hunting concession has severely restricted the Maasai’s access to grazing land for their cattle, resulting in ongoing tension between the Maasai and OBC.

The recent atrocities show that the situation is now critical. Maasai women recently demonstrating in Loliondo against the violent evictions were told they had no right to protest. Anonymous threats have also been made to local community leaders.

The burning of villages has now stopped. But any Maasai herding cattle within the OBC hunting area are being arrested. Five people have already been tried without access to legal defence or bail, and have been imprisoned for six months. A further ten Maasai are due to appear in court on 24 August.

Powerful safari hunting companies have a history of impacting on the lives of tribal people in Tanzania. In 2007, the small hunter-gatherer Hadza tribe narrowly escaped eviction from part of their ancestral land following Tanzania UAE Safari Ltd’s withdrawal from its hunting concession in the Yaida Valley after pressure from Hadza, indigenous organisations and Survival.

“Alternativos”



Haverá por aí pessoal verdadeiramente alternativo empenhado na luta por uma alter globalização, mas que não coma parvoíces “místicas” e pseudo esotéricas, estilo comida rápida para ocidentais alienados, privilegiados, egoístas e fúteis?! Falo das tretas execráveis New Age; a astrologia; os calendários “Maia” e “Celta”; os “atlantes”, as fadas e os anjos – seres mitológicos todos com o aspecto de caucasianos que parecem ter saído de um catálogo de eugenia nazi (porra que até os seus gnomos canabinóides têm os olhos claros!)… Enquanto, não muito longe de nós, diariamente, em média, morrem 30 mil crianças devido à desnutrição e à nossa indiferença! Mas esses têm a pele escura e, como tal, são demasiado “inferiores” como para terem direito à guarda pessoal de “anjos”… Não é assim, rebanho cego?
E Misturam Vedas com citações filosóficas atribuídas a “índios estadunidenses” – que eles consideram culturas extintas, apenas se apoderando de imitações folclóricas e comerciais do seu misticismo.

Aliás, ao considerarem coisa do passado os povos tribais, ficam “escusados” de se envolverm na luta política (preferencialmente apartidária) em prol dos directos (constantemente atropelados!) de milhões de pessoas pertencentes a grupos étnicos que têm sido empurrados para debaixo do tapete desta civilização,onde “podem” ser espezinhados obscuramente.



Há ainda os “gurus” charlatães e manipuladores que debitam desbotados litotes e mantras embrutecedores (em workshops/oficinas de trabalho extorsionários e que prometem resultados imediatos aos neófitos…) sobre um oriente romantizado; os “leitores de áureas”; os que fodem com “extraterrestres”; os “iluminados” que promovem o consumismo esverdeado e sucedâneos reciclados das religiões abraâmicas ; a infantilidade (no pior sentido da palavra) estilizada e parasitária da cultura nórdica que foge do frio mantendo ares de “superioridade” decorada com arco-íris, unicórnios, duendes, girassóis, borboletas, colibris,… sem que consigam identificar no campo as verdadeiras espécies iconografadas.
“Adoram” a natureza sem se molestarem em tentar compreende-la verdadeiramente. Quando no campo, passam a maior parte do tempo com o olhar confinado aos seus brinquedinhos electrónicos, enquanto debitam um chorrilho de clichês imbecis das suas cartilhas urbano-utópicas, em que, hipocritamente, projectam na natureza valores morais dúbios; julgando os bichos pelo que mais detestam na nossa sociedade sob o peso ingente da cumplicidade. Querem fazer festinhas nos animais silvestres (os que tem um aspecto fofinho) e são tão egocêntricos e supersticiosos que acreditam que essas criaturas sabem reconhecer os humanos de “energia superior!” e mal podem esperar para lhes caírem nos braços, trocando afectos... já encontrei alguns (adultos!) que acreditam que os Flingstones são um retrato fidedigno da pré história!

os livros de merda que esta gente le só seriam úteis em cagatórios de apiadeiros indianos. Coisas como, por ex., «A Profecia Celestina»; os do Paulo Coelho; até «O Código da Vinci»; “ O Zen do seu Automóvel” e outros títulos possíveis do gênero:
“A Transumância da Alma no Alinhamento Cósmico da Era do Gambuzino”; “Meditação Transcendental para Impedir o Crescimento das Ervas Indesejáveis no seu Jardim & Horta”; “A Espiritualidade Monetária para Alcançar a Pan Sexualidade dos Bonobos ”; “Reinventar o Galo de barcelos no Contexto da Cultura Xamânica” ;
“Tratado Psicográfico de Magia Teúrgica Aplicado à Dieta Macrobiótica”; "Programe o Nascimento dos Seus Filhos de Acordo com o Mapa Astral dos Famosos"; “Guia das Viagens na Maionese (Chegando sempre a Tempo de ver o Thongdrol)”;"Reiki para Lavar as Partes Pudibundas (Sem Precisar de Tocar Nelas)"; "Oui Ja: Aprenda a Conjurar o Mestre Nostradamus e Ganhe nas Raspadinhas"; “O Portal Interestelar da Quinta da Conraria (com Ligação ao Ramal do Triângulo das Bermudas) e a Conspiração dos Illuminati para Devolver o Brinde ao Bolo Rei”; “Confissões do Anjo que Enrabou a Virgem Maria com um Ceptro Merovíngico”; “Como o Feng Shui @ Poderá Ajudar Reduzir o Peso da Sua Alma (de 21 para 19 gramas) em Apenas Uma Semana”;"Atinja o Nirvana Através de Trepanações e lobotomias "; "Os Mantras Rectais do Bonnacon"; “A Influência Emenagoga do Ninhal Lunar de Psicopompos”; “Como reencarnar num Golfinho Recorrendo aos Cristais Atlantes”; “Manual Devadasi para Neutralizar o Chupacabras ” etc,etc... Usem a Imaginação e divirtam-se! Até eu estou a pensar escrever um livro meio esotérico, ou não, intitulado “Blasphemare Absens Fides II : O Homem que Escarrou na Cara de Jeová e Sobreviveu para que o Seu Biógrafo Escrevesse a Estória.” Que tal, ein?...


Nem sei se ria ou se chore confrontado com as suas teorias (tão monolíticas quanto lamechas) sobre a visão “melhorada” da natureza, mais se assemelhando a um cruzamento entre zardins zoológicos e parques temáticos estilo Walt Disney. Testemunhas de Jeová e quejandos sentem-se igualmente confortáveis com estes conceitos controlados pela Megamáquina… Esse bando de velhinhas (mesmo que os seus documentos de identidades atestem o contrário) não raro forçam os seus cães e gatos a uma dieta vegetariana! E acham que ter tartarugas num tanque de quintal, ou passarinhos a esvoaçar esporadicamente dentro de casa, é um acto de bondade!...
Oh, e como irrita os ares de superioridade que exibem ao falar sobretudo da sua espiritualidade e das suas dietas – que tentam impingir com fúria doutrinária, mesmo quando se entregam ao consumismo fútil, apoiando as instituições/corporações com o pior historial de agressão à natureza...
E sonham com uma aliança entre o Greenpeace e Jesus Cristo (versão amaricada, com uma sedosa cabeleira cor-de-mel e olhos de um azul profundo) comandando um exército de anjos armados até aos dentes; apoiados por uma esquadra de fadinhas e ninfas lideradas por Peter Pan; O Sai Baba e o Michael Jackson de mãos dadas com crianças (que perderam a inocência da pior maneira); o Dalai lama e Buda (numa tanga de lutador de sumo), rodeados por monges de Shaolin; Gandalf e Merlin à frente de um grêmio de druidas e de bruxas (que mais parecem modelos da Avon, ou então dão azo à longa tradição dos estereotipados preconceitos anti-semitas ), respaldados pelos cavaleiros da Távola Redonda e pelo bando de Robin dos Bosques; o fantasma de Chico Mendes e de índios cujos nomes foram imortalizados por Hollywood – onde as estrelas nos enviarão os seus professores de ioga e de reiki para o confronto final entre o bem e o mal... haverá ainda naves espaciais, em que os alienígenas dividirão a sua mirabolante tecnologia com os hackers mais craques e ousados. Esses irão salvar o mundo in extremis.
Entretanto, vão-se entupindo com Coca-cola e Marlboro e luzem modelos XPTO de botas para trekking que a NASA desenhou a fim de que nunca percam a tracção nos pedais dos jipes (e a ninguém interessa que tenham sido fabricadas por crianças e adolescentes em condições deploráveis lá longe no Terceiro Mundo, que isso de ser fundamentalista certamente não nos conduz ao Nirvana...)



Não nos podemos esquecer dos discípulos do “mestre LSD” Timothy Leary que nutrem uma fantasia tecnófila e elitista. Mais do que Paracelso (que teve o duvidoso “mérito” de transformar grande parte dos europeus em antropófagos…)e a sua pretensão clínica de que a natureza foi criada para nos servir ( nomeadamente na fitoterapia, argumentando que morfología de diversas partes das plantas supostamente nos dá fáceis pistas sobre as suas propriedades medicinais de acordo com as semelhanças antropomórficas), estes arautos da Nova Era consideram-se a mente, a conciencia e o espírito do planeta vivo, a que gostam de chamar Gaia. Como agravamento de tais delírios de grandeza antropocêntricos , sentem a obrigação “moral”, assim como uma demanda “espiritual”, de pegarem no seu punhado de escolhidos e partirem para o espaço sideral, a fim de colonizarem outros mundos “sáfaros e sequiosos” da sua energia “superior”, pois consideram-se demasiado “evoluídos” para as limitações naturais deste planeta – o único a que podemos chamar o nosso lar. Na sua hierarquização da natureza, reservam um pedestal para a humanidade – na verdade, apenas para uma auto eleita elite em processo de deificação. (Quem ficará responsável pela selecção da alegada “nata da humanidade”? Em que critérios se basearão? A concretizar-se, não restam dúvidas que tal operação deverá ser coordenada por um “grande líder” que apenas tolerará junto de si, na nave espacial, os que tenham com ele uma sintonia política… )
Tão certo como esta ser uma versão de velhas utopias de cariz bíblico, é um facto que eles estão a fazer o jogo do complexo militar-industrial (e os seu verdadeiro deus – o capital), que pretende continuar a expandir-se, exaurindo os recursos das biorregioes que vão deixando para trás até que não haja o que predar para além da conquista espacial.
Alguns até são malta porreira, mas andam tão desorientados... Enquanto assim for, os poderes instituídos podem empanturrar-se – vampirando-nos e deixando um rasto de destruição ambiental – bem descansadinhos…
Muitos estão viciados na barulheira ensurdecedora, com as respectivas luzes mesmerizantes, velocidade vertiginosa e drogas de síntese química que levam para o campo molestando com gravidade tudo o que lá vive – e que não de dão ao trabalho de conhecer. Chamam a isto “música transe” e “comungar com a natureza”…Puta-que-os-pariu !!
Esse comércio de indigência intelectual e espiritual não me parece que tenha contribuído positivamente para o desenvolvimento e consolidação da ecologia e do respectivo activismo.
Precisamos de redescobrir e recrear uma espiritualidade telúrica e solidária, ou seja, um estado de encantamento radical (no verdadeiro sentido da palavra) perante a natureza, amando e respeitando todas as criaturas que habitam connosco este planeta maravilhoso, mas que já não reconhecemos como nossos parentes nem como garantes da nossa qualidade de vida e até da nossa mera sobrevivência.
Devemos olhar atentamente para as comunidades tribais que ainda subsistem tentando resistir à merda da nossa civilização – ao capitalismo rapace; ao urbanismo industrial; ao mercado de trabalho arregimentado e à tecnologia de exploração desumanizante; à corrupção completa da verdade; à competição desenfreada e às hierarquias injustas que o dinheiro impõe; ao Estado autoritário ao serviço das corporações; ao isolamento desesperante sob o fluxo suicidário das massas manipuladas; aos ambientes tóxicos (em termos físicos e intelectuais); à alienação aditiva e todas as dependências malsãs; ao hedonismo irresponsável; ao egocentrismo desenraizado; à passividade aliada à insaciável fome materialista que aborta sonhos envenenados; à homogeneização imposta das afirmações de “progresso” baseadas na destruição do que há de mais precioso; ao crime; às doenças e à iniquidade generalizada; às ideologias que justificam assimetrias sociais; à privatização da vida,…

Esses povos tribais são os guardiães dos valores redentores que nos poderão ajudar a criar comunidades sustentáveis, harmoniosas e tão felizes como é possível à nossa espécie – que assim viveu durante 99% da sua existência.

A propósito, aqui fica um excerto de uma entrevista a Jerry Mander (um autor altamente recomendável!):

INGRAM: Let's talk about virtual reality.

MANDER: I've never experienced virtual reality. I'm very skeptical about it. I think it's like every other technology in the sense that it has some entertainment value and maybe it has some interesting uses. I've heard that a new use for virtual reality programs is in training bomber pilots. Aside from such uses, which I find disturbing, what annoys me is the way virtual reality is embraced and celebrated by those who ought to be smart enough to see their way out of this technological maze.
INGRAM: You mean the new age crowd.

MANDER: Yes, it's such a sign that the new age has misunderstood something about itself. Proponents of the new age place primary value on the expansion of human consciousness toward some apparently higher level of understanding. They regard human beings as the ultimate expression of evolution, and they regard themselves as the explorers or the astronauts of human consciousness, trying to develop human abilities and live up to their maximum human potential. Such a view justifies any technological or even political development if it somehow is supportive of the drive toward expanding human consciousness. That's why the new age so favors space exploration and almost any other technology that offers new games, new ideas, new capabilities for human expression without any sense of the political or social consequences.

For example, a lot of new age proponents claim to celebrate Indians but they're truly celebratory only of what they think is Indian mysticism, without any appreciation of where that comes from, how that's rooted in community, in the earth, and in egalitarianism. Their interest in Indian spirituality attaches no importance to the political situation that native peoples face on the planet. If the knowledge of native peoples is going to be preserved, then you have to get involved politically to help them. And new age types are not interested in that; they're interested in skimming what they regard as the cream--the mystical aspects, the peyote rituals, or maybe the art. This is just personal aggrandizing, ego-oriented self- indulgence. It is politically right-wing and very counterproductive to the ideals of a survivable, sustainable world, and healthy human consciousness. It sustains a value system that is causing the problems. That kind of new age thinking is, to me, revolting.

The Catholic Doctrine and Reproductive Health
WHY THE CHURCH CAN’T CHANGE
by Stephen D. Mumford

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The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 21, Number 1.


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The anti-abortion movement in the United States was created in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion. However, it really owes its origin to a group of men in Rome 103 years earlier. This was 1870, the year of Vatican Council I, a conclave of great importance in recent church history. Why is this so?

Hans Küng, the renowned Swiss Catholic theologian, best summed up the problem accounting for its creation when he said, “It is not possible to solve the problem of contraception until we solve the problem of infallibility.” In his book, How the Pope Became Infallible, Catholic historian Bernhard Hasler describes in great detail what Küng meant: For more than a millennium, the Vatican had possessed temporal power that ensured its survival. With the loss of the Papal States in 1870, it appeared all but certain that a strong papacy would simply disappear. The Vatican urgently needed a new source of power.

A group of conservative and influential leaders, including Pope Pius IX, came up with a brilliant idea for a new source: an infallible pope. What is infallibility? According to Catholic dogma, when the pope formulates a doctrine, he is simply transmitting this dogma on God’s behalf. Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be in error.

Roman Catholics could be certain that the teachings of the pope and of God were one and the same, and, if strictly followed, one’s entrance into heaven was guaranteed. Communicants found this concept very attractive and were eager to behave in any manner required of them. Such an arrangement placed enormous control over individuals into the hands of the Vatican, extending across national borders and even to the other side of the world. It could no longer control the laity by means of its governance, as it had in the Papal States which would later become Italy. But the Holy See could exercise control directly by adopting a policy of psychological coercion founded on a new doctrine—that of papal infallibility.

Protection at all Costs
Papal infallibility was a brilliant concept—and it worked for a century. But at its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligentsia recognized that, at some point in the future, this principle would lead to the self-destruction of the institution. Times were certain to change and in unpredictable ways, but the Church would be locked on an inexorable course—teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of infallibility itself. These distinguished scholars foresaw that one day, encumbered by its unchangeable teachings, the Church would find itself down a blind alley from which there would be no escape and faced with inevitable self-destruction as a result of a grave loss of credibility. The blind alley turned out to be the issue of birth control—contraception and abortion.

Since the 1968 adoption of the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, there has been a hemorrhage in the Church’s credibility. Humanae Vitae ruled out any change of the Church’s position on birth control for all time.

The proponents of papal infallibility could not imagine the population explosion of the last half of this century. Just as critics had predicted, institutional self-destruction is now well underway. But, as it stands now, the Church cannot change its position on birth control without undermining all of its dogma.

The following are only three among scores of findings to indicate how the Vatican is destroying itself:

1. In 1965 there were 42,000 young men in American seminaries studying for the priesthood. Today there are fewer than 6,000, even though the number of Catholics in this country has nearly doubled.

2. The average age of nuns in the United States is 65 years. Only 3% are under age 40, while 35% are older than 70.

3. One-half of all American priests quit the priesthood before reaching retirement age.

Self-destruction as a result of loss of credibility is underway but progressing slowly. The pope remains hopeful that he can turn this around. He is convinced that, if he changes the Church’s position on birth control and destroys the principle of infallibility, self-destruction will be very swift. We know that this matter was the focus of his attention for several years in the 1960s.

The Threats of Legalized Birth Control and Abortion
In 1964, Pope Paul VI created the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control. It was a two-part commission and met from 1964 to 1966. One part consisted of 64 lay persons, the other, of 15 clerics, including the future Pope John Paul II, then a Polish cardinal. Pope Paul gave the Commission only one mission—to determine how the Church could change its position on birth control without undermining papal authority. After two years of study, the Commission concluded that it was not possible to make this change without undermining papal authority, but that the Church should make the change anyway because it was the right thing to do! The lay members voted 60 to 4 for change, and the clerics, 9 to 6 for change. Pope Paul did not act immediately. A minority report was prepared, co-authored by the man who is now Pope John Paul II. In this report he stated:

If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XlI’s address to the midwives), and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error.

This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved.

In this and other texts, the pope took the position that a change on the birth control issue would destroy the principle of papal infallibility, and that infallibility was the fundamental principle of the Church upon which all else rests. A change on birth control would immediately raise questions about other possible errors popes have made in matters of divorce, homosexuality, confession, parochial schooling, etc. that are fundamental to Roman Catholicism.

The security and survival of the papacy itself is on the line. The Church insists on being the sole arbiter of what is moral. Civil law legalizes contraception and abortion. Governments are thereby challenging the prerogative of the pope to be the ultimate authority on matters of morality. Most Americans look to democratic process to determine morality. In the simplest analysis, the Church cannot coexist with such an arrangement, which in its view, threatens its very survival as a world political power.

For this reason, the Vatican was forced to interfere in the democratic process in the United States by lobbying for the passage of numerous anti-abortion laws designed to protect its interests. There is a plethora of documentation to support these findings, relating mainly to Vatican and U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ sources, some of which I will discuss later.

Only legal abortion and legal family planning threaten the Church. It has shown very little interest in illegal abortion. For example, in Latin America, where abortion is illegal, abortion rates are two or three times as high as those seen in the United States. However, abortion is essentially ignored by the bishops there.

Political Action
Even before the work of the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control was completed in 1966, it was widely recognized in the Vatican that the Church faced a grave problem regarding birth control, including abortion. Vatican Council II, which ended in 1966, set the stage for the bishops to address this problem. One of the outcomes of this Council was the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Part two of the Constitution was titled, “Some Problems of Special Urgency.” In his book, Catholic Bishops in American Politics, published by the Princeton University Press in 1991, T.A. Byrnes observes, “This list of problems to which the Church was to turn its attention reads like a blueprint of the American hierarchy’s political agenda in the 1970s and 1980s.” The first was abortion:

God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life—a ministry which must be fulfilled in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore, from the moment of conception life must be guarded with the greatest of care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.

The Decree on the Bishops’ Pastoral Office in the Church, another Vatican Council II document, created the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), which was organized according to universal church law. It was created to serve as a political instrument of the Vatican. During a meeting of the American hierarchy in November 1966, the bishops formally established the NCCB as their official collective body and established the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) as their administrative arm and secretariat.

From the very beginning, there has been a common and correct perception that the Catholic hierarchy was primarily an anti-abortion political lobby. Byrnes summarizes his study of the history of Catholic bishops in American politics by saying:

Before I end, I want to address one final matter, namely the unique position that abortion occupies on the Catholic hierarchy’s public policy agenda. Abortion is not simply one issue among many for the bishops. It is rather the bedrock, non-negotiable starting point from which the rest of their agenda has developed. The bishops’ positions on other issues have led to political action and political controversy but abortion, throughout the period I have examined, has been a consistently central feature of the Catholic hierarchy’s participation in American politics.

On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion for Americans. According to Bishop James McHugh, “within twenty-four hours” of the court’s action, the bishops knew they would need to mount a political campaign in favor of a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion.

The Vatican wasted no time in responding. In 1974, the stage was further set to create a political machine to end legal abortion in the United States when Rome issued a document titled, Vatican Declaration on Abortion, which states:

A Christian can never conform to a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the licitness of abortion. Nor can a Christian take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in its application.

This statement is an unequivocal rejection of the legitimacy of our democratically elected government to pass laws legalizing abortion. The papacy had placed its authority on the line, pitting itself against the U.S. government. If the Vatican were to avoid the looming destruction of papal authority, it must minimize the number of abortions legally performed and ultimately succeed in reversing the effects of Roe v. Wade. The 1974 Vatican Declaration on Abortion follows the instructions set forth by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical on the Chief Duties of Christian Citizens:

If the laws of the state are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church or conveying injunctions adverse to the duty imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the Supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime.

The current abortion law in the United States is unquestionably “hurtful to the Church.” Minimizing the number of abortions done in the United States is obviously helpful to the Church.

The Bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-life Activities
On November 20, 1975, at its annual meeting, the American Catholic bishops issued the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, a frank and superbly detailed blueprint of the bishops’ strategy for infiltrating and manipulating the American democratic process at national, state and local levels. It maps out the creation of a national political machine controlled by the Vatican through the bishops. The plan is directed toward creating a highly sophisticated, meticulously organized, and well-financed local, state, and national political machine. The plan candidly states that the Church will undertake activities to elect officials from local to national levels who will adhere to Vatican-ordained positions; that it will seek to influence policy in ways that will eliminate the threat to the Church; and that it will encourage the Executive Branch to deal “administratively” with matters that are unfavorable to the Church.

The Plan, in part, reads:

The abortion decisions of the United States Supreme Court (January 22, 1973) violate the moral order, and have disrupted the legal process which previously attempted to safeguard the rights of unborn children. A comprehensive pro-life legislative program must therefore include the following elements:

a) Passage of a constitutional amendment providing protection for the unborn child to the maximum degree possible.

b) Passage of federal and state laws and adoption of administrative policies that will restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible.

According to the Pastoral Plan, there is to be in each state a State Coordinating Committee, functioning under the State Conference or its equivalent, which will include bishops’ representatives from each diocese in the state and will function to monitor political trends in the state. Diocesan Pro-Life Committees are to coordinate groups and activities within the diocese, particularly efforts to effect passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the unborn child. The diocesan committee is to rely for the information and direction on the Bishops’ Pro-Life Office and on the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment.

Noting that well-planned and coordinated political action at national, state, and local levels would be required, the pamphlet states that the activity is not simply the responsibility of Catholics and should not be limited to Catholic groups or agencies. This instruction was a clarion call by the bishops for the creation of the New Right movement.

Indeed, during the period 1976–1980, all of the organizations that became known as the “New Right Movement” were created, with one exception: The Christian Coalition was created later to replace the Moral Majority, which had fallen into public disrepute. Catholics were key players in the creation of all these organizations and influential in their leadership. This assessment of the creation of this movement and the influence in it of the bishops is well documented.

In 1980, Federal Judge John Dooling ruled on McRae v. HEW, a challenge to the Hyde Amendment, which prevented Medicaid payment for abortion. The judge had spent a year studying the anti-abortion movement in great detail, including the bishops’ Pastoral Plan. His findings showed that the anti-abortion movement was essentially Roman Catholic with a little non-Catholic window dressing.

In a 328-page ruling, Dooling, a practicing Catholic, makes short work of the anti-abortionists’ pretensions to be a spontaneous grass-roots movement that owes its political victories to sheer moral appeal. He confirms that the right-to-life’s main source of energy, organization, and direction has been the Catholic Church, and he describes in detail how the movement works to achieve its goals.

The Protestant face carefully put on the movement, first by the Moral Majority and then by the Christian Coalition, was called for in the Pastoral Plan. Richard A. Viguerie, a Catholic, is the man most responsible for the development and success of the New Right. He was also involved in the original discussions that led to the creation of the Moral Majority and, as its fundraiser, can be credited with its financial success. Paul Weyrich, a Catholic, claims credit for originating the idea for the group and the name itself. In their search for an attractive front man for the organization, they chose Jerry Falwell.

Much effort went into avoiding public disclosure of the role of the Catholic Church in the creation of the Moral Majority. Maxine Negri, in “A Well-Planned Conspiracy,” exposed involvement of the Catholic hierarchy in the Moral Majority.

The Christian Coalition replaced the Moral Majority with the bishops still in full control. The evidence supporting this statement is compelling. For example, Maureen Roselli, executive director of the Catholic Alliance, a branch of the Christian Coalition, claims that the Coalition has 250,000 Catholic members. Catholic Georgetown University political science professor Mary Bendyna told the Religious News Service that she was surprised to find, even before the creation of the Catholic Alliance, that all five staffers in the Christian Coalition’s Washington, D.C., office were Catholic.

Claims of autonomy by the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition should not be taken seriously. What is described here is exactly the organization contemplated in the Pastoral Plan.

What are some of the bishops’ successes on the three branches of our federal government? The February 24, 1992, issue of Time magazine showed that, with the election of anti-abortion Ronald Reagan in 1980, the views of the Vatican gained substantial influence within the administrative branch of the U.S. government in the area of population and family planning policy. Presidents Reagan and later Bush were arguably the most pro-Vatican presidents in American history.

This article was written by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein. He described what he referred to as the “Catholic Team”:

The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics—CIA chief William Casey, [Richard] Allen [Reagan’s first National Security Advisor], [William] Clark [Reagan’s second National Security Advisor], [Alexander] Haig [Secretary of State], [Vernon] Walters [Ambassador at Large] and William Wilson, Reagan’s first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their church combined with . . . their notion of American Democracy.

In a section of his article headed “The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control,” Bernstein includes two more revealing paragraphs:

In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the church’s teachings on birth control. According to William Wilson, the President’s first ambassador to the Vatican, the State Department reluctantly agreed to an outright ban on the use of any U.S. aid funds by either countries or international health organizations for the promotion of . . . abortions. As a result of this position, announced at the World Conference on Population in Mexico City in 1984, the U.S. withdrew funding from, among others, two of the world’s largest family planning organizations: the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.

“American policy was changed as a result of the Vatican’s not agreeing with our policy,” Wilson writes. “American aid programs around the world did not meet the criteria the Vatican had for family planning. AID [the Agency for International Development] sent various people from the Department of State to Rome, and I’d accompany them to meet the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and in long discussions they finally got the message. . . .”

However, the bishops may have had even greater success in targeting the judicial branch. In the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, these two presidents appointed five Supreme Court Justices and 70% of all sitting judges in the federal court system. All were anti-abortion, another goal of the Plan.

The legislative branch has been more difficult for the bishops, although they did achieve sufficient influence in Congress to the extent that pro-choice Congressmen could not override a presidential veto of family planning bills. As long as the anti-family planning interests controlled the White House, as they did during the Reagan and Bush years, this was sufficient for the bishops’ purposes.

One of the more profound accomplishments of this Plan is the capture of the Republican Party by the Vatican. This accomplishment was vital to the bishops’ legislative agenda described in the Plan. In a July 28, 1994, Los Angeles Times wire service story, Jack Nelson describes the maneuvers of the Religious Right so that this takeover is all but an accomplished fact.

On September 11, 1995, Bill Moyers gives his assessment of the influence of the Religious Right in remarks titled Echoes of the Crusades: The Radical Religious Right’s Holy War on American Freedom: “They control the Republican party, the House of Representatives and the Senate. . . .”

Outgoing Republican National Committee Chairman Richard Bond told the members of that committee on January 29, 1993, that it was time for the Republican Party to abandon the papal position on abortion. Bond said that the party should not be governed by “zealotry masquerading as principle.”

But who is the Religious Right? The Spring 1994 issue of Conscience, the journal of Catholics for a Free Choice, exploded the myth that the Religious Right is a Protestant movement. It was designed, created, and controlled by Catholics in response to the Pastoral Plan. These Catholics recruited opportunistic Protestants to give the appearance that Protestants were the instigators. The leadership is Catholic but the followers are often Protestant. The National Catholic Reporter predicted that the Bishops’ Pastoral Plan would lead to the creation of a new political party, an American Catholic Party. But instead, the Vatican simply chose to seize control of the Republican Party.

The outcomes of the Plan have been truly remarkable. And they have implications for all Americans.

The Vatican’s Bold Behavior
In April 1992, in a rare public admission of this threat, Cardinal John O’Connor of New York acknowledged:

The fact is that attacks on the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion—unless they are rebutted—effectively erode Church authority on all matters, indeed on the authority of God himself.

The Vatican claims the right to protect itself against “harmful laws”—even when democratically legislated. The central difficulty here, of course, is that what the Vatican considers “harmful” to itself and its authority often is exactly what patriotic American lay Catholic and non-Catholic men and women thoughtfully consider beneficial to themselves and their families. In a letter to American bishops from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the most powerful Vatican office—Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reminded the bishops that “The Church has the responsibility to protect herself from the application of harmful laws.” Obviously, if an institution has the “responsibility,” it also claims the “right.” The Vatican exercises its “right” to protect itself from the application of harmful laws in the autocratic way it defines harmful.

In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life). It frankly attacks the principles of liberal democracy and questions the legitimacy of the American government. He instructs Catholics to defy civil laws he deems illegitimate, and to impose papal teachings on all Americans through political commitment, even if it means that they must sacrifice their lives to do so. Evangelium Vitae is quite lengthy and contains 105 sections. The following passages, referenced by their section numbers, illustrate the pope’s message:

Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity [#72].

Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection [#73].

It is precisely from obedience to God—to whom alone is due that for which is acknowledgment of His absolute sovereignty—that the strength and the courage to resist unjust human laws are born. It is the strength and the courage of those prepared even to be imprisoned or put to the sword, in the certainty that this is what makes for the endurance and faith of the saints [#73].

Christians . . . are called upon under grave obligation to conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. . . . This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it [#74].

To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a moral duty; it is also a basic human right [#74].

Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a “system” and as such is a means and not an end. Its “moral” value is not automatic but depends on conformity to the moral law [#70].

In her National Catholic Reporter article, “Defending Life Even Unto Death,” Professor Janine Langan, of the University of Toronto assesses Evangelium Vitae: “John Paul leaves no room for ghetto Catholicism. Excusing our silence about matters of truth because ‘we should not push on other people our Christian God,’ as one of my students put it last year, is not acceptable.” Professor Langan does not acknowledge that this encyclical is extremist in nature but she describes it forthrightly: “In a situation as grave as the present one, Christians are bound to come into conflict. . . . Evangelium Vitae is thus a challenge to defend life even at the cost of martyrdom.” Langan quotes the pope, “Life finds its center, its meaning and its fulfillment when it is given up [#51].” In her view, and the pope’s, martyrdom is admirable: “Martyrdom is the one witness to the truth about man which every one can hear. No society, however dark, can stifle it.”

This chilling view of martyrdom held by the pope and Professor Langan is not shared by most Americans. When fanatical Muslim extremists resort to it, martyrdom is almost universally condemned as religious extremism. Why should it be admirable behavior when exercised by Catholics?

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, who spoke on October 3, 1995, on “Culture of Life, Culture of Death in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae,” makes it clear that the Church is at war with democratic America with its civil laws:

The Pope invites us with courage to the boycott of unjust laws which suppress the imperative of natural law carved into consciences by the Creator. And legislators, politicians, physicians, and scientists have the duty of conscience to be the defenders of life in the war against this culture of death.

This is an aggressive call to Catholics to impose papal law on all Americans through legislation.

On December 21, 1998, the American Catholic bishops brought this all even closer when they issued their statement, Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics. As to the role of the Church in the political process, the bishops state: “. . . at all times and in all places, the Church should have the true freedom to teach the faith, to proclaim its teaching about society, to carry out its task among men without hindrance, and to pass moral judgment even in matters relating to politics . . .”[#18]. In other words, no one should offer resistance as the Church goes about passing laws demanded by the pope, such as parental consent laws.

The bishops have concluded that it is their job to pass civil laws that will protect the Catholic faithful from abortions that they would otherwise procure.

Conclusion
Vatican assertions, proclamations, declarations, and decrees serve, above all, to exemplify its intense desperation on the matter of legal abortion and family planning. Its very survival depends on halting all legal family planning and abortion which are causing a hemorrhage in the credibility of this religious institution. In my opinion, this remarkable dilemma is entirely responsible for the Vatican’s behavior. The Church, faced with disaster, is behaving like a wounded animal.

Americans do not benefit from any law now being used to restrict abortion. On the other hand, as others have documented, because of innovations such as parental notification laws, young women are irreparably harmed. Some will die. Some will commit suicide rather than tell their parents. Many will suffer adverse consequences from which they will never recover. The question is: should this human sacrifice of young American women who are not even Catholic be permitted so that men in Rome will be able to “infuse democracy with the right values” in order to try to save a Church which finds itself down a blind alley just as predicted by the Church intelligentsia in 1870?

The political machine created by the Pastoral Plan has had far-reaching consequences for all Americans. The impeachment of President Clinton, the most pro-choice president in history, would not have been possible without the successful implementation of this plan in the House of Representatives. He has defied the pope, strongly supporting access to abortion. All 13 House prosecutors were anti-abortion Republicans and were led by the most rabid abortion foe in the House, Roman Catholic Henry Hyde. According to the October 1, 1998, issue of the New York Times, Hyde and the lawyer he chose to lead the Republican impeachment team, David Schippers, another Catholic and father of 10, were both knighted by the pope three years ago for their outstanding service to the Catholic Church. Each of these 13 men most certainly benefitted from the existence of the political machine created by the Pastoral Plan. There are many other such examples and they are negatively affecting us all.

O sexo inferiorizado

O medo da sexualidade feminina que se quer exprimir de forma libertária/emancipada é, obviamente, muito anterior às religiões abraâmicas, estando fortemente implantado, desde tempos imemoriais, nas sociedades patriarcais. Provavelmente advém da insegurança instintiva de os homens nunca saberem ao certo (pelo menos antes dos testes de ADN) se são os pais biológicos das crianças que ajudam a criar. Em termos evolutivos, parece desastroso investir tanto em seres que não carregam o nosso legado genético. ( Atenção que, racionalmente, sou 100% a favor da adopção de crianças!) O facto de as mulheres terem uma vida sexual mais longeva e serem potencialmente multiorgásmicas (sem que os seus orgasmos tenham grande influência no processo de fecundação) e poderem receber o sémen de muitos parceiros sexuais (sendo possível terem sexo, forçadas ou não, mesmo sem estarem excitadas sexualmente), faz com que muitos machos tentem “cortar o mal (dos apetites sexuais femininos) pela raiz”, tanto em termos culturais (coerção psicológica) como até físicos. É por isso que diariamente em cerca de 23 países africanos continuam a excisar (o clítoris) de umas 6 mil meninas - muitas das quais morrem de subsequentes infecções. Comummente este procedimento bárbaro é complementado com o corte dos lábios vaginais que de seguida são cosidos (com espinhos), de modo a deixar apenas uma abertura mínima que assegure a expulsão da urina e do fluxo menstrual (chama-se a isso infibulação). Assim fica garantida a virgindade!... Imagine-se as terríveis dores que as sobreviventes têm ao iniciar a sua vida sexual (em conformidade com alguns seguidores do Corão). Em países como a Etiópia e o Sudão, entre outros, um elevado número de mulheres acaba por perecer ao tentar “dar a luz” como resultado destas práticas que as autoridades de 16 países se comprometeram protocolarmente a combater, mas que insistem em fingir ignorar (…)
Em 2006 um tribunal estado-unidense condenou um cidadão de origem etíope (que reside com a sua família nos EUA) a 10 anos de cárcere por, na privacidade do seu lar, ter excisado o clítoris da sua filha quando esta era um bebé de 2 anos (na altura do julgamento a menina tinha 7 anos), segundo os preceitos em que fora educado. A inusual severidade desta pena certamente que se destina a fincar um exemplo de tolerância zero quanto a estas práticas em terras do Tio Sam, amedrontando todos os que ainda acreditam na necessidade de mutilar as meninas, comprometendo toda a sua vida sexual e desobedecendo as leis do império. (Por outro lado, poucos acreditarão que, se algum estado-unidense filho de um proeminente político ou industrial for apanhado a furtar num país muçulmano ultra conservador, a pena habitual para estes tipos de delitos – a amputação da mão – será aplicada….)
Na caça às bruxas medievais, ter os lábios vaginais e/ou o clítoris grandes, era considerado um comprovativo de que estavam a lidar com um estrigídeo ao serviço de Satã.
Estranhamente, ainda hoje o clítoris quase não é merecedor de figurar em tratados de medicina.
O clítoris é um órgão muito maior do que se supõe (estando quase todo oculto à volta da vagina) composto por mais fibras nervosas do que o pénis; a sua única função é a de dar prazer e, após o orgasmo, não é afectado por um relaxamento muscular acompanhado de uma diminuição do afluxo sanguíneo (como acontece ao pénis), o que lhe permite provocar orgasmos múltiplos (embora possa ficar excessivamente sensível como para continuar a ser estimulado, provocando um desconforto doloroso). Para algumas culturas misóginas, tal capacidade feminina (digna de admiração, digo eu!) apenas contribui para o mito da ninfomaníaca fora de controlo (masculino)…

Um dos principais precursores da medicina ocidental, Hipócrates, associava as mudanças de humor e as doenças femininas à sexualidade, conjecturando que o útero era um órgão maligno e errante, capaz de se deslocar do seu sítio certo no baixo ventre para errar pelo corpo, provocando doenças em cada órgão que embatia…
Milhares de anos depois, o pai da psicanálise, Sigmund Freud, tinha algumas ideias deste calibre em relação às mulheres; eis algumas delas: «o orgasmo clitoriano é infantil»; «as mulheres só ultrapassarão a sua ansiedade crónica e desequilíbrio emocional [constituídos por um rosário de fanicos e de caprichos] quando aceitarem a sua condição de inferioridade [inata] em relação aos homens»…
aqui vai mais uma pequena amostra do que proeminentes teólogos vaticinaram sobre as mulheres:

"A mulher está em sujeição por causa das leis da natureza, mas é uma escrava
somente pelas leis da circunstância...A mulher está submetida ao homem pela
fraqueza de seu espírito e de seu corpo...é um ser incompleto, um tipo de
homem imperfeito [...] A mulher é defeituosa e bastarda, pois o princípio
activo da semente masculina tende à produção de homens gerados à sua
perfeita semelhança. A geração de uma mulher resulta de defeitos no
princípio ativo. » - Tomás de Aquino (in Summa Theologica, Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj.
1)


No século XII, Graciano, especialista em direito canônico, afirmou: "O homem,
mas não a mulher, é feito à imagem de Deus. Daí resulta claramente que as
mulheres devem estar submetidas a seus maridos e devem ser como escravas.»


"Abraçar uma mulher é como abraçar um saco de esterco. » - (São) Odo de Cluny
(monge beneditino, 1030-1097)
De S.Clemente de Alexandria sobre as mulheres: "A exata consciência de sua
própria natureza deve evocar sentimentos de vergonha. » (Paedagogus II, 33, 2)

Santo Antonino, arcebispo de Florença no final do séc. XV, diz que as "imundas
regras" são simplesmente o espelho de uma "alma imunda"

(S.) Agostinho colocou o dedo na ferida da fraqueza masculina (heterossexual) na sua luta contra os instintos:
«As mulheres não deveriam ser educadas ou ensinadas de nenhum modo. Deveriam, na verdade, ser segregadas já que são causa de horrendas e involuntárias erecções. »


A reforma protestante, de início, trouxe poucas melhorias para a libertação das mulheres, já que o líder desse cisma religioso, Martinho Lutero também era profundamente misógino. Eis algumas das suas “pérolas de sabedoria” machista:


«Não há maior defeito numa mulher que o desejar ser inteligente. »
«Os homens têm tórax grande e largo, quadris estreitos e mais entendimento que
as mulheres, que têm tórax pequeno e estreito e quadris largos. Isto significa
que elas devem ficar em casa, sentar-se quietas, cuidar do lar, gerar e criar
crianças. »
A sua conclusão doutrinária (tida como um dogma) mais devastadora foi a de que «As palavras e actos de Deus são bem claros: as mulheres foram feitas para ser esposas ou prostitutas» ...

Até os protestantes utilizaram o manual de caça às bruxas conhecido como "Malleus maleficarum" ("Martelo das feiticeiras"), que foi encomendado pelo Papa Inocêncio VIII a dois tenebrosos teólogos académicos chamados Heinrich Kramer e Jakob Sprenger. A sua publicação data de 1486 e vigorou por 250 anos. O livro afirma, entre outras coisas, que: "Quando uma mulher pensa sozinha, ela pensa maldades . (...) «Elas
são mais fracas de espírito e corpo (...)As mulheres são, intelectualmente, como
crianças (...)As mulheres têm memória mais fraca e é um vício natural nelas
não serem disciplinadas mas obedecerem a seus próprios impulsos sem noção
do que é apropriado" «A mulher é uma mentirosa por natureza...Ela é uma
inimiga insidiosa e secreta. » (...) «Se uma mulher se atreve a curar sem ter estudado,
ela é uma bruxa e deve morrer. » (quando um homem curava, era pelo poder de Deus
ou dos santos; quando uma mulher curava, era obra do diabo) «Ninguém causa
maior dano à fé católica do que as parteiras" (porque conheciam métodos de
parto sem dor, o que contrariava o mandamento de Deus de que as mulheres
deveriam dar à luz com dor; se não doesse, o diabo estava agindo) «E convém
observar que houve uma falha na formação da primeira mulher, por ter sido ela
criada a partir de uma costela recurva, ou seja, uma costela do peito, cuja
curvatura é, por assim dizer, contrária à retidão do homem. E como, em
virtude dessa falha, a mulher é animal imperfeito, sempre decepciona e mente. »
O livro trazia instruções detalhadas sobre métodos de tortura para se
obterem confissões, terminando as vítimas totalmente estraçalhadas (mas com
o devido cuidado para que sobrevivessem para serem queimadas na fogueira, com a
língua cortada para que não blasfemassem diante do povo).


E está escrito no Talmud: «A mulher é um vaso cheio de imundícies com sua boca cheia de sangue e entretanto todos a desejam» (Shabbath 152) «Quando nasce um menino, todos se alegram mas quando nasce uma menina todos se entristecem» (Niddah 31)

Numa reza matinal que já foi muito popular entre os casais judeus, cabe ao homem dizer o seguinte: «Obrigado, Senhor, por não ter nascido mulher», ao
que sua mulher responde: «Obrigada, Senhor, por me terdes feito de acordo com
sua vontade. »

«Nunca duvide de que um pequeno grupo de cidadãos preocupados e determinados pode mudar o mundo. De facto, é só isso que o tem mudado.» - Margaret Mead (antropóloga)

Apesar de continuar a detestar o capital, tenho pensado em como é possível ganhar uma pipa de massa sem que isso signifique sujeitar outros seres a uma exploração indecente e causar danos graves ao planeta. Não é um problema com uma solução fácil, mas creio que encontrei uma resposta possível.
Recentemente descobriu-se que os cães conseguem detectar pelo olfacto células cancerígenas mesmo nos seus estágios iniciais – e com tanta ou mais precisão do que as mais sofisticadas e dispendiosas máquinas e o laboratórios de análises. Basta colocar uma pessoa de forma a que cães treinados (teoricamente qualquer cão saudável pode fazê-lo) a cheirem completamente. Simples, rápido, eficaz e barato.
Também está provado que os cães conseguem (de forma ainda não explicada pela ciência) prever (com uma antecedência de até 1 hora) quando é que os donos vão sofrer um ataque de epilepsia. Algumas pessoas que sofrem dessa enfermidade já não saiam de casa há anos e viviam em depressão. Tudo isso mudou radicalmente com a aquisição de um destes cães treinados.
Temos que considerar que em Portugal apenas existe uma escola profissional que treina cães-guias para cegos. A lista de espera é enorme…
Há ainda hospitais nos EUA que têm gatos a andar ao seu bel prazer (talvez não seja a expressão mais correcta) por todas as alas, pois aperceberam-se que, de alguma forma, a maioria dos gatos pressente quando é que os velhotes solitários estão prestes a esticar o pernil, e vão para junto dos moribundos fazendo-lhes uma preciosa companhia até ao momento fatal.
A apiterapia tem feito pequenos "milagres" onde a medicina convencional se mostra totalmente impotente, nomeadamente nos casos de esclerose múltipla.
Claro que a poderosíssima indústria farmacêutica, os que vendem máquinas para os laboratórios e a maioria dos médicos estão a envidar todos os esforços para desacreditar e boicotar o uso de animais nas situações supracitadas. Afinal, eles vivem mesmo da doença não da saúde…
Já imaginaram centros de terapia animal acessíveis a todos e eficazes que, simultaneamente, pudesse dar "emprego", reconhecimento social e donos extremosos aos bichos vadios?
Seria óptimo! Se ao menos tivesse o dinheiro para investir…