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Faceoff: the New New Atheists vs. Maimonides

The New New Atheists (present day)

... from the vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. "

Versus

Moses Maimonides, aka the Rambam (רמב"ם)

(1135-1204)

"... Maimonides suggests . . . that, rather than talk about God, and give the impression that we understand what we are talking about, it might be wiser to contemplate His perfection in silence.  In this instance, silence would be the mark of learned ignorance."

In the July 16th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz, a law Professor at George Mason University who is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, writes an interesting though necessarily superficial critique of the 'New New Atheist' troika-- Messrs. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins (pictured above, respectively).  This being The Wall Street Journal, the article first notes how much money these gentlemen are making on "today's fashionable  disbelief."  Getting to the theological point of the New Atheist argument, Berkowitz concludes that "the disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing."

Berkowitz focuses on debunking Hitchens and notes many inconsistencies in his various writings.  In particular, he blasts Hitchens' assertion that "all attempts to reconcile faith with science are consigned to failure and ridicule."  Citing Alistair McGrath, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from Oxford, his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, who is currently a lecturer in the psychology of religion at the University of London, and the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, whom Hitchens respects, Berkowitz notes:

"According to the McGraths, Gould was correct to think that both conventional religious belief and atheism are compatible with natural science, in part because "there are many questions that by their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method." 

Berkowtiz continues, "The literalness of Mr. Hitchen's readings [of the Bible] would put many a fundamentalist to shame."

Which brings me to Maimonides, a man of science and of faith, who happened to live 800 years ago and spent many years addressing these questions in a far more comprehensive manner (writing the Mishneh Torah, for example, while being persecuted and hiding in a cave for close to ten years) than any of the people mentioned above.

Maimonides, who wrote many of his manuscripts in Arabic, completely rejects the literal interpretation of scripture.  He also keenly grasps the battle between faith and reason from the standpoint of man's intellectual limitations.

Kenneth Seeskin's outstanding book, Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed should be required reading for the New New Atheists because the story they are telling is an old one.

Maimonides starts developing his thesis at a place that the New New Atheists probably don't spend a lot of time visiting: asserting the concept of God's unity and transcendence and deriving the practical implications of what this means to man:

"The passages in the Bible which depict God as sitting on a throne or descending on a mountain cannot be true in a literal sense.  If we are to understand the truths such passages contain, we must go beyond the anthropomorphic language to the philosophic point they are trying to make.  ... In the Middle Ages, philosophers like Maimonides claimed that God's consequences or effects emanate from him.  It is as if God were like an eternal and inexhaustible source of light whose energy is so vast that it nourishes and illuminates everything around us.  But even the best scietific theories cannot explain how that light is generated....

When most people think about God, they try to imagine what it would be like to have infinite power or infinite knowledge.  They picture themselves being able to move mountains or see through walls.  Does this sort of conception help us to know God?  Maimonides is convinced that it does not, that it is no more than a ticket to incoherence. ...

One can almost hear Maimonides saying: Do not focus your effort and attention on what you cannot comprehend....  Recognize that God is completely transcendent; no earthly force or entity can be compared to him.  When dealing with God as He is in Himself,all we can do is admit ignorance and contemplate God in awe.  On the positive side , we must focus our effort and attention on the qualities which flow from Him.  Think about justice. mercy, feeding the poor, healing the sick, observing the Sabbath, following one's obligation to parents, friends, and civil authorities, respecting the dignity of other parts of God's creation, living  in knowledge of and harmony with  the forces in one's environment.  What is God? He is the one who bids us to perfect our souls and insures that such perfection is possible."

I am a rational person of faith. In my view, Maimonides posesses a far firmer grasp on the complexities of the universe and of the debate between faith and reason than anyone else I have encountered in my studies of religious philosophy. 

One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor

There aren't a lot of positive stories about the rippling fall-out from the sub-prime lending disaster.  But it is a fact of capitalist life that macro capital flows define the ebb and flow of large trends in  markets.

Multi-year over-investment in popular sectors driven by good old irrational exuberance inevitably leads to collapses in those sectors-- notable examples of this include the junk bond mania of the late '80's, the Savings and Loan scandal of the late 80's, the tech bubble of the late '90's, the LBO boom of the past several years, and now the residential real estate meltdown which, combined with the bulge of $200 billion+ in unspoken-for LBO debt, has led to the still-in-process 'Panic of '07'. 

This latest combination of events has caused many investors to re-evaluate risk/reward equations yet again, with the potential for an emerging positive trend for Venture Capital and for technology investing. 

My partner, Keith Benjamin, has recently written about the notion that  risk capital may find the VC sector to hold renewed appeal on his blog www.sfventure.com, and as a guest columnist on the popular technology blog VentureBeat.

Levensohn Venture Partners also had a big day in The New York Times today.  Keith is featured in the article “Sub-Prime Fallout Could Help Venture Capitalists”, and our portfolio company, BigFix, is featured in another article “Campaigning, Not for Your Vote but for Your Dollar”. 

The BigFix article details the success of the company’s viral advertising campaign, led by the redoubtable Ray Hopewood (of Software Truth Commission Hearings fame). 

My Summer Reading

I admit to having a particularly eclectic reading list this summer.  Here it is, in no particular order:

Al Gore's The Assault on Reason is an important, factually supported indictment of the Bush Administration.  A must read, regardless of your political affilation.

Three books on Maimonides:

Kenneth Seeskin's Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed, is a clearly written, relatively short monograph that ties together some of the key themes in The Guide for the Perplexed-- such as why literal iinterpretation of the Bible is not only senseless, but is contrary to G-d's intention.  Yeshayahu Leibowitz's The Faith of Maimonides, and David Bakan's Maimonides on Prophecy.   If you are into Maimonides (yes, there are a few of us who aren't Rabbis), philosophy, or general deep thinking, you will enjoy these books, which were recommended to me by a new friend who is a Maimonides expert.

In the "I wish it really was fiction" category, I read, in one extremely long sitting (while flying across the country) Khaled Hosseini's powerful A Thousand Splendid Suns.  This novel takes you through 30 years of Afghanistan's chaotic history, as experienced through the personal tragedies of several families.  The novel combines factual historic detail with an emphasis on the abrogation of women's rights under Shar'ia as applied by the Taliban.  I agree that it is better than The Kite Runner, which I also devoured and found disturbing and enlightening.

On the lighter side, for the fisherman in you, there is Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing, by John Gierach, who is the great scribe of all that makes trout-fishing a religion, as opposed to a recreational sport.  What do I mean by that?

"The wool sweaters and millar mitts came off shortly aftrer the sun was up, and we were squinting and sweating by nine-thirty when the Callibeatis mayfly spinner fall should have started,  but wouldn't.  Not in that heat and piercing sunlight.  That's why we were up so early in the first place."

Comprende?  If not, don't read this book.

And finally, for paperback Ludlum-style mystery lovers who also enjoy a religious conspiracy that ties together the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII, professional assassins, the Mossad, Bernini, and the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, read Daniel Silva's The Confessor-- it's actually quite good.

Looking back at this reading list, I can see why I don't feel that I rested much this summer.

Beldock on Bigots and Irshad Manji

James Beldock, whom I have known for years from the Aspen Institute's Socrates Society and, more recently, from our investment in ShotSpotter, has posted on his blog about the thread in On Faith's Guest Voices about Irshad Manji and Project Ijtihad-- his comments are worth reading.

Dialogue on Irshad Manji and Project Ijtihad in 'On Faith'

Irshad Manji is a featured Guest Voice on the Washington Post's Blog, On Faith, where she writes about Ijtihad-- the process of critical thinking in Islam which thrived for several hundred years until the end of the 12th Century-- in the context of Islamic inter-faith marriage and women's rights.  The comment stream, 187 at last count, and my comment hasn't made it on to the thread yet, runs the gamut from knee jerk rejection of critical thought in Islam to thoughtful questioning of how the concept can be re-introduced into the mainstream of today's Islamic theological debate.

What is Ijtihad? Ijtihad (Arabic اجتهاد) is a technical term of Islamic law that describes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources, the Qu'ran and the Sunnah.

Based on my own research and thinking on this subject for the past five years,  Ijtihad presents the only viable solution to the conflict between faith and reason that prevents many Muslims from embracing modernity and is at the root of the crisis in Islam today.  There is historic justification in Islam for the validity of Ijtihad dating back to the Golden Age of Islam-- which happens to coincide with the Dark Ages of Western thought and the ascendancy of the Iberian Peninsula.

One commenter on the Post blog asks how do you "undoctrinate the indoctrinated"?  The answer, in my view, is that you have to start with a process, and you have to capture the minds of progressive thinkers who are willing to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.  It takes brave, committed people to get there.  Thankfully Irshad Manji is one of them.

To learn more about Project Ijtihad: click here

   

Bedouin Update: Civil Protests in Front of the Knesset Draw Attention to Negev Home Demolitions

I've been writing for a couple of years about the disturbing sequence of events in the Bedouin communities of the Negev, as home demolitions incite greater frustration among the Bedouin communities and their leaders.  Recent protests at the Knesset seem to be getting more attention from the Israeli authorities (I received this message July 23 from Faisal Sawalha, spokesperson for the RCUV, whom I met with Hussein Al-Rafay'a on a trip to the Negev in 2005):

Thanks to the RCUV's [Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages] pressure: the evacuation and home demolition in Um Al-Hiran Stopped

Mr. Hussein Al-Rafay'a, the RCUV's chairperson, and the RCUV leadership who are in the Refugee Camp for the Victims of Home Demolition in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem since July 16 got information this morning that a large number of policemen with their vehicles and bulldozers were near Omer on their way to demolish homes in the village of Atteer Um Al-Hiran, where 20 homes were demolished three weeks ago. Mr. Al-Rafay'a called people in the relevant ministries and governmental offices asking them not to demolish homes. After that, they received a call from the Ministry of Housing saying that the forces will not demolish homes today.

Mr. Al-Rafay'a sad, "We started the Refugee Camp last week to protest against home demolition. After that, we talked to people from different governmental ministries. The Ministries of Interior and Housing said that they will stop home demolition if the Legal Counselor of the government approves this agreement. We are still waiting for his decision. There are people in the governmental offices in the Negev that do not want this agreement. When I called the ministries this morning, they did not know about the home demolition that was planned today."

المجلس الاقليمي للقرى غير المعترف بها في النقب
המועצה האזורית לכפרים הבלתי מוכרים בנגב
The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev
tel: 972-8-6283043
fax: 972-8-6283315

There are two sides to every story, of course, but, in my view, the Bedouin community issue will not be resolved through government stonewalling.

The Gypsies of Jerusalem: The Forgotten People

What do you do when you live in Jerusalem, are rejected by both the Palestinians and the Israelis, are dirt poor, and come from an ethnically mixed heritage?

Below is an excerpt from an article written by Amoun Sleem and published in the July 28th issue of This Week in Palestine:

The Gypsies of Jerusalem remain a community infused by musical rhythms and song in keeping with Gypsy tradition, but have abandoned their nomadic habits in favour of a more sedentary lifestyle. They have made their home in Jerusalem for over 400 years. Originally settling in an area outside the Old City called Wadi Al-Joz, the Dom later moved to a small neighbourhood called Burj Al-Laqlaq within the walls of the Old City. An ethnic minority, the Dom community has suffered in silence throughout the decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Their numbers dwindled significantly during the battles surrounding the foundation of the State of Israel. The greatest exodus occurred during the war of 1967, which caused nearly half of the Dom population to seek refuge in Syria, Lebanon, and even India.

Despite a deep-seated identification with Middle Eastern culture, the remaining two hundred families endure severe discrimination at the hands of Israelis and their Palestinian neighbours. Once lauded in Persian poetry as unparalleled entertainers, a series of cultural, political, and economic shifts have led the Dom to be regarded as despicable beggars. The shame of being a Gypsy is instilled at an early age when children enter school. Although the Dom consider themselves Palestinian, their non-Arab ethnicity elicits such intense abuse that nearly 60% of the Dom community has failed to complete elementary school. Unskilled and uneducated, the Dom are locked into a cycle of dire poverty and derision. The younger generation now prefers to assimilate fully into the surrounding Arab culture, spurning traditional dress, the Domari language, customs or anything else that might distinguish them as Gypsies.

I've also attached the latest edition of the Gypsy Wheel, the Domari Society newsletter:

Download domari_newsletter_summer_07.pdf

The good news is that the Domari Society, whose website is sadly out of date but at least active, has recently received some funding that brings them in off of the ledge of closing down their community center.  But the Domari remain very much in need of assistance-- unfortunately, they are largely forgotten in the heat of the ethnic strife and intolerance that blights the wonder of Jerusalem and rivets the attention of the entire world.