New Statistics Show How Religious Affiliation Supports Evolution

Bear with me on this somewhat Talmudic line of thought.

An op-ed in the Times claims children of the unaffiliated commonly become members of a religious group at a significant rate.

We consider this another proof of the theory of evolution.

Richard Dawkins eloquently argues (in The God Delusion) that religion is an accidental byproduct of evolution. Religious humans are more fit than the non-religious. Because of evolution, humans as a whole are genetically predisposed to be religious.

The fact that children of the unaffiliated, deprived of the nurture of religion, still gravitate towards affiliation with religion, confirms that indeed, religion is hard wired into our evolved human nature.

It's one way of looking at the data so concisely summarized by Charles M. Blow in his op-ed, "Defecting to Faith,"

“Most people are religious because they’re raised to be. They’re indoctrinated by their parents.”

So goes the rationale of my nonreligious friends.

Maybe, but a study entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.

(It should be noted that about a quarter of the unaffiliated identified as atheist or agnostic, and the rest said that they had no particular religion.)

So what was the reason for this flight of the unchurched to churches?

Did God appear in a bush? Did the grass look greener on the other side of the cross? Or was it a response to the social pressure of being nonreligious in a very Christian country?

None of those reasons topped the list. Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met. And the most-cited reason for settling on their current religion was that they simply enjoyed the services and style of worship.

For these newly converted, the nonreligious shtick didn’t stick. There was still a void, and communities of the faithful helped fill it.

While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.

We are more than cells, synapses and sex drives. We are amazing, mysterious creatures forever in search of something greater than ourselves.

Dale McGowan, the co-author and editor of the book “Parenting Beyond Belief” told me that he believes that most of these people “are not looking for a dogma or a doctrine, but for transcendence from the everyday.”

Churches, mosques and synagogues nurture and celebrate this. Being regularly surrounded by a community that shares your convictions and reinforces them through literature, art and ritual is incredibly powerful, and yes, spiritual.

The nonreligious could learn a few things from religion.

Correction: A previous version of this column misstated the percentage of Catholics and Protestant who later became unaffiliated. The correct percentage for Catholics is 14, not 4, and the correct percentage for Protestants is 13, not 7.

By the way, sheesh, that correction sure is significant. I paused a while in disbelief when I read the print version with the erroneously lower statistics.

Bottom line though, Mr. Blow apparently does not have a sophisticated Talmudic understanding of how this data set about religion-choices so eloquently supports the evolutionary approach to human biology.

Samuel Freedman in the Times Adores Michael Green's NBC Series "Kings"

Not only does Samuel Freedman of the Times adore the NBC Series "Kings" - he also writes a learned column about it, which includes a thoughtful sample of opinion from rabbis and Judaic scholars.

We love this beautiful dramatic epic of a series too and we wish that NBC had kept it in a predictable time-slot, not put it on hiatus, and renewed it for next year.

Here's a quote from the essay, On Religion, "In ‘Kings,’ Television Tackles the Conflicted Saul," by SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN,

Created and written by Michael Green, a writer with a Jewish day-school education and a Stanford degree in religious studies, “Kings” re-imagines the story of Saul and David as the present-day confrontation between Silas Benjamin, ruler of Gilboa, and David Shepherd, a soldier who will supplant him, thanks to the divine blessing conveyed by a minister named Ephram Samuels.

As those handful of names suggest, “Kings” often refers slyly to its source material. The biblical Saul was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, and he was anointed king by the prophet Samuel. David was, of course, a shepherd. And Saul died, falling on his own sword before the Philistine could kill him, on Mount Gilboa.

The resonance of “Kings,” though, goes well beyond that sort of trivial pursuit. As written by Mr. Green and acted by Ian McShane, Silas Benjamin emerges as a complicated, gifted, tormented man, temperamentally close to the biblical character.

Saul accepts anointment reluctantly, battles valiantly, and loses the divine blessing for what are arguably acts of mercy and faith — sparing the life of the defeated Amalekite king, Agag, and saving some of the captured sheep for a sacrifice to God. Only in the aftermath does Saul become the more familiar incarnation, the jealous and treacherous rival to David.

“Saul represents for me a more tragic figure than David,” Mr. Green, 36, said last week in a phone interview, “because he began with God’s favor and he lost it. Saul is the warning to David of what he one day may become, regardless of his better intentions. You can’t understand David without telling Saul’s story in tandem.,,more...”

Rothstein of the Times Firebombs the Jüdisches Museum Berlin

The Times' EDWARD ROTHSTEIN, as I recall his work, ordinarily does not write reviews that rip apart their subject in a gut wrenching fashion.

So I am willing to say that it was out of character for him to do just that in his Museums column, "In Berlin, Teaching Germany’s Jewish History" which opens with this straight from the gut upchuck:

BERLIN — There may be worse Jewish museums in the world than the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, which opened in 2001. But it is difficult to imagine that any could be as uninspiring and banal, particularly given its pedigree and promise. Has any other Jewish museum been more celebrated or its new building (designed by Daniel Libeskind) so widely hailed? Is any other Jewish museum of more symbolic importance? ...more...

The rest of the opinion essay (it is by no means a review) jumps around from one venue to another and makes disconnected points about this and that.

Rothstein thinks that some German memorials and museum are good and some are not. End of story. I learned little, and sure do wish I could have taken away more from the newspaper of record on this important topic.

Is US Supreme Court Justice David Souter Jewish?

No, US Supreme Court Justice David Souter is not a Jew. He is an Episcopalian.

According to published reports he plans now to retire from the court.

The religious make-up of the US Supreme Court is as follows:

John Roberts (Chief Justice) - Catholic
Stephen G. Breyer - Jewish
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Jewish
Anthony M. Kennedy - Catholic
Antonin Scalia - Catholic
David H. Souter - Episcopalian
John Paul Stevens - Protestant
Clarence Thomas - Catholic
Samuel Alito - Catholic

In addition to Ginsburg and Breyer, five previous justices have been Jewish:

Abe Fortas
Arthur J. Goldberg
Benjamin N. Cardozo
Felix Frankfurter
Louis D. Brandeis

Forward Sort of Reviews Princeton Professor Peter Schaefer's book about Jesus in the Talmud

First, the essay "Do Jews Have a Jesus Problem?" in The Polymath column of the Forward by Jay Michaelson is not a book review. It's a free association on a topic.

Second, even if you don't care that it is not a book review and that it is a free association, you ought to care that it at least be an accurate essay in its non-genre. But it is not. Take this crucial claim for instance,

The image of Jesus that one gets from the Talmud is that of an illicit, sex-crazed black magician who uses trickery to lead Israel astray. In BT Sanhedrin 103a, Jesus is depicted as a poor disciple who “spoiled his food,” which Schafer speculates may be a euphemism for sexual misconduct: “to eat the dish” being a recognized Talmudic euphemism known for the sex act itself. A later emendation adds that he “practiced magic and led Israel astray.” And the virgin birth is ridiculed as a cover-up of Jesus’ true parentage: His mother was an “illicit woman” (another Talmudic locution), perhaps even a prostitute.

Strong stuff — no wonder they don’t teach it in Sunday school...more...

(Huh?) I don't see how you can get away in this day and age with saying "strong stuff" about a Princeton professor's interpretation of euphemisms which may or may not be accurate, when the text itself is cryptic and miniscule and incidental to the Talmud as a great literature.

They don't "teach it in Sunday school," because they don't teach what is not there, what may not be true and what is a flea circus in a side show - when there are dramatic main events going on in the big tent.

So there we have a non-review of a speculative book by a Christian scholar writing about peripheral ephemeral texts which comprise a microscopic sample of the Talmud - itself a primary source of our sophisticated Judaic wisdom and learning. (Purchase the Schaefer book here?) (See David Klinghoffer's non-review of the same book here.)

Sorry, I must go now and return to the planet earth where I am working on my current research project - professional wrestlers in classical opera.

The Talmud Does Not Sanction Torture (It's the Bible that Sanctions Torture)

Not surprising - given the latest round of news revelations and the release of memoranda from the Bush administration - there are new posts about Jewish views on torture. It appears that it can be argued that the Talmud does not sanction torture in any way, shape or form.

For a good quick summary of the issue, see Benjamin Wiener's, Talmud v. Torture: The Jewish Case Against "Enhanced Interrogation":

Jewish legalism, at its best, is a means of actualizing the dictates of the prophetic voice through a regimented system of behavior: a code of conduct thoroughly imbued with an ethos and a morality. The most articulate condemnations of torture that Judaism has to offer are therefore presented most effectively as deeply spiritual legal analyses.

The best of these, in recent years, was composed by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub for Rabbis for Human Rights, an international organization focusing on a number of progressive issues both in America and Israel. Weintraub’s series of essays, published in 2005, outlined a case against torture, rooted in Talmudic teaching and Jewish collective memory.

In the Talmudic dictum ain adam mesim atsmo rasha (“a person may not incriminate himself”), she found the basis for traditions militating against self-incrimination that were even more extensive than the parallel American statutes, and included particular provisions against coerced confession. She followed this with a discussion of the overarching principle known as kavod ha-briot (“human dignity”), contrasting notions like tselem elohim (“creation in the image of God”) and hamalbin pnei heviro b’rabim (“whoever shames his fellow in public has spilled his blood”) with the depredations of Abu Ghraib.

Jewish law does clearly place preeminent value on the preservation of life, and articulates circumstances in which a rodef (a “pursuer”) may be harmed or killed to prevent his murder of another. But in her third essay, Weintraub demonstrated how the application of this principle to the kinds of practices then being sanctioned by the Bush Justice Department was a gross miscarriage of its meaning.

Finally, turning from the discursive to the evocative, and rooting herself in the Torah’s injunction against “abusing the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt,” she suggested that a history of slavery, martyrdom, discrimination, and genocide should predispose Jews against systematic policies of wanton abuse.

Weintraub's own "Jewish Values and Torture" page links to her essays on the topic, which are the product of a great deal of more sustained research and thoughtful analysis.

This conclusion that Jewish values in the Talmud do not sanction torture reassures us about the role of religion in preserving our humanity. But it does not make us ecstatic.

Why? Because we all can see justifications of inhumanity and cruelty on the top surface of some of the formative biblical narratives our major world's religions.

Obvious to anyone who reads the holy scriptures: God appears to torture his favorite people in the narratives of the Tanakh, the Hebrew bible, and then in the dramatic narratives of the Christian bible, God undeniably sets up the circumstances in which people torture and kill his son.

Okay - you can argue that sending an entire people into slavery in Egypt is not an exact analogue to the instances of torture that we are debating now in our current events. If you argue it, I will grant that forcing a nation into slavery is not analogous to specific cases of torture, like the ones sanctioned by the Bush administration. Overall we must argue that the slavery of an entire nation in Egypt is arguably much crueler.

Now how about a more analogous example.

Waterboarding is a form of torture wherein your torturer makes you think that you are drowning and you are going to die. And then the torturer stops the torture and doesn't kill the victim.

That seems to us a lot like when you, the ultimate authority, command your follower to go and kill his own son, as God does to Abraham in Genesis 22. Commanding a father to kill his own son - that's worse than making someone think they themselves are dying - isn't it? And then you go ahead in that biblical instance and stop the torture - you prevent the man from doing that act of killing.

Is that not a much crueler variation on the waterboarding torture?

And what about another instance - when you, God, send your only son to Israel to have him tortured by crucifixion and killed on the cross - as the Gospels narrate?

Doesn't that raise the issue, if God tortures people, and people were created in the image of God, then it is nothing unexpected that people in turn engage in torture of each other - is it?

Or is it really more analytical to say that we humans tell the biblical stories about the wishes and actions of our Creator to suit and reflect our own torture-and-cruelty-thirsty needs?

So, without belaboring the point any further, we will stop here and affirm in conclusion - this is why we mostly consider ourselves to be Talmudic and not Biblical.

Is Senator Arlen Specter Jewish?

Yes, Senator Arlen Specter is a Jew.

His biography (excerpted from Wikipedia) echoes some familiar patterns among American Jews.

He was born in 1930 in Wichita, Kansas to parents Lillie Shanin and Harry Specter who emigrated from Russia in 1911. His father served in the US infantry during WWI, and was badly wounded. During the Depression, Specter's father was a fruit peddler, a tailor and junkyard owner. Specter worked with him, learning the importance of hard work at an early age.

Specter graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. He served in the United States Air Force from 1951 to 1953 during the Korean War. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1956.

He is married to the former Joan Levy, and they reside in the East Falls section of Philadelphia. They have two sons, Shanin and Stephen, and four grandchildren, Silvi, Perri, Lilli, and Hatti.

Spector has served with distinction in the senate as a Republican from Pennsylvania since 1981. He switched to the Democratic party on 4/28/2009 and will stand for reelection in 2010 - as a Democrat.

Video - Is former NFL player Alan Veingrad Jewish?

Yes, former NFL professional football player Alan Veingrad is a Chabad Hasidic Orthodox Jew!

Times: A university department chairman who wants to dissolve all departments

In his times op-ed, "End the University as We Know It," author MARK C. TAYLOR opines that we need to, "Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs."

When Professor Taylor applied for the position of chairman of his department - he knew that the job description was to manage a unit within the parameters of the status quo of the university. Now it is possible that he will never get another administrative position in any university. Some will argue that it was professionally a bad idea for him to go make a public statement that universities, like the one that he works for, are all screwed up, and for him to call to "End the University as We Know It."

On his main points, the university as we know it - like all institutions - is a compromise between the ideal and the real. There's no evidence cited in his op-ed that any changes that Taylor recommends have the slightest chance of succeeding.

Taylor proposes that all universities, "Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure."

If universities ended tenure, for instance, then sure they would have the ability to make more progressive changes. But replacing your staff is never easy. And the temptation to follow fads could easily lead an institution down dead ends and to big losses instead of any gains. It's also been proven true that by granting tenure universities can pay and retain their most qualified and competent staff at much lower salaries and lock in a stable long term work force.

Taylor calls for us to, "Transform the traditional dissertation."

As far as graduate education goes, a PhD in the humanities was never meant to produce only dissertations that were useful or even interesting. Obtaining a PhD is a rigorous ordeal to determine who is equipped to pursue authentic research in a discipline, who has mastered the literature and the tools of that discipline and who can be trusted with the responsibilities of a professor. Do away with the vetting processes of the graduate school and you may well end up hiring a whole cadre of staff members who just don't get what a sustained academic enterprise is all about.

Of course if we, "Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs" we won't need to teach any disciplinary knowledge. Academic credentials in such a world would be superfluous.

Suffice it to say, for the good reasons we stated and for many more that we have not enumerated, we don't much agree with Professor Taylor's proposals.

Update: Letter writers to the Times clobbered the life out of the essay.

Tzvee's Law: In Your Comparative Religions Course - Teach Hinduism Last

It's one of our laws.

In Your Comparative Religions Course - Teach Hinduism Last.

Why? First off, we know a heck of lot more about Judaism, Christianity and Islam and chances are so do our students. Always teach from the greater known to the lesser known.

Second off, if comparative religions is indeed an endeavor in which we compare apples to oranges, Hindu religion is a prickly pineapple.

But really, good pedagogy says you should arm your students with as much content and as many critical tools as possible before dropping them into the thicket to strive with the interpretation and understanding of the complex of Hindu religions.

What reminded us of this pedagogical law that we observe?

The Times' review today of 'The Hindus: An Alternative History' by WENDY DONIGER - reviewed by PANKAJ MISHRA: "Wendy Doniger tries to remedy the enduring impression of a 'unified Hinduism' created in large part by the first British scholars of India."

Alas, the review is positive but not glowing.

Also of interest are two other reviews of religion books in the Times today.

One book reviewed today deals an alleged revival of religion in the world - but all it seems to discuss is a change of style in religious organization.

'God Is Back'

By JOHN MICKLETHWAIT and ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE
Reviewed by HANNA ROSIN

God is enjoying an international comeback with the help of a model made in America, argue two editors at The Economist.

The other review deals with a book that chronicles a man's waning interest in religion. Ho-hum.

'Losing My Religion'

By WILLIAM LOBDELL
Reviewed by MARK OPPENHEIMER

Bearing witness to the news had a decided effect on the beliefs of a writer who covered religion for The Los Angeles Times.

• Read the First Chapter