Mendacious Commandments
We do no disservice to reason when we choose to believe that a man named Moses actually existed, that he led the Hebrew people out of Egyptian bondage, and that he became to them a great law-giver. We cannot, however, be certain that any of those things actually happened; Egyptian history says nothing of the exodus, suggesting that, if it did occur, the devastating events surrounding the Hebrew departure described in Exodus did not. Nevertheless, stripped of its obvious exaggerations, the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, their 40 years of wandering, and their eventual conquest of the Caananites involve the believer in nothing contrary to reason. The exodus may have happened just that way.
If it were not that some of the fabulous embellishments added by the writers of the Pentateuch have been made cornerstones of modern faith, the exodus story could be filed as a suspect description of a slice of ancient middle-eastern history, to be studied like any other for its relevance to a factual understanding of the place and time. Unfortunately, the fabulous aspects of the stories have been believed verbatim. The crossing of the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 14), the manna from heaven, the trumpets at Jericho, even the plagues inflicted upon the innocents of Egypt are still seen in some quarters as actual demonstrations of God's participation with the human race. Those fables, absolutely alien to reason, have been given a higher place in the heirarchy of truth than the believable events of the exodus. And people are still dying in Caanan.
The recent history of the United States has brought into sharp focus the previously muddled consequences of faith in the supernatural. Believing himself the "born again" intrument of God's will and our nation the modern "Chosen of God," the Current Occupant has embarked us on a worldwide crusade against the "Evil One." He apparently has seen the hand of Satan at work in the misguided antics of certain Islamic madmen, and laying aside the guidance of reason, has chosen to escalate the cause of justice to a "war on terror." How else justify -- other than as a departure from reason -- his attack of the secularist regime in Iraq when the seat of Wahhabi fanaticism was next door in Saudi Arabia? How else explain -- as other than a departure from reason -- the minimalist deployment in Afghanistan -- where abode the perpetrators of the crimes against our nation -- in favor of a full scale attack where they were not?
It would be fruitless to continue much further along the trail of Bush-bashing. Logic cannot produce useful conclusions from premises so completely obscured by supernatural beliefs. Better perhaps to revisit one of the incidents from the exodus, Moses' conversation with God upon Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-20) during which the laws now referred to as the "ten commandments" were given. There, by a tactic surely learned in Egypt, the supernatural power of God was conflated with the power of government to bring about a level of obedience secular enforcement could never alone have achieved. Moses enlisted God in the service of the law.
By surrendering any claim to reason, we might believe that Moses actually had a face-to-hindparts discussion with God, but given the foolishness of such a belief, we are left to believe either that Moses was schizophrenic (which I doubt) or that Moses (like the latter day prophet Joseph Smith three millenia later) dictated the "laws of God" to himself. After all, it could not have been God who told Moses to rope off Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:12-13) so that no one but Moses could hear what God spoke. God would have had better sense than to hide his presence from the people, knowing as he surely must have, that the authority of his laws would be more respected if the people heard him speak with their own ears. As it was, the people's belief waivered off and on for the next 1300 years between fervid obedience and defiant heresy.
In any case, the deed was done. The Jewish theocratic state was born. Laws written by men were elevated to the Godhead, as if, God being God, he would make laws that might be disobeyed. The union of God and government was not broken until the founding fathers of this nation wrote a constitution enabling men to govern themselves by the power of their own minds. True, they attributed their ability to reason to their creator, but in no way did they claim that the laws of this nation were laid down by God. We make our laws by the deliberations of ordinary people, not (until lately) on the tops of forbidden mountains, but in the clear light of day.
To make more visible the distinction between the laws of God and the laws of men, consider the difference between the two words freedom and liberty. By their nature, all men are free, made so either by God or by Nature. Our freedom is limited by nothing other than those of our qualities that inhibit our freedom to act. We can do whatever we desire and have the power to do. We can break, if we choose, all the laws laid down by men, and do so with a frequency that clearly evidences our innate freedom.
It is and was our understanding of the ill effects of absolute freedom that led us (and the ancients) to seek ways to regulate human action. Tyrants murdered to achieve those ends (and others less noble). Monarchs ruled by fiat and threat, oligarchies by economic and social pressure, philosopher-kings (when and if there ever were such) by the power of reason augmented by noble lies. Theocratic governments -- the subject here -- ruled (and rule) by the sorts of clever deceptions patented by the Pharoahs, borrowed by Moses, and perpetuated today by Islamic regimes. Like any "noble lie," theocratic illusions succeed only so long as they are not seen for what they are. They do not appeal to reason, but rather to its suspension.
Liberty is what we the people have left of our power to act (with impunity) after our innate freedom has been trimmed of its rough edges by the minions of law. We naturally prefer that our liberty match our freedom as closely as possible. We wish to be absolutely free to satisfy our desires, the more powerful among us being the more anxious to obtain a perfect match with freedom. The problem we in the United States face has not so much to do with our native freedom as with the meaning of two words in Section 8 (and the preamble) of our constitution. We're not altogether sure what the founders meant by "general welfare." To what extent is the congress empowered to raise taxes for the implied purposes of the "general welfare"? Obviously, those who are to be taxed are of a different opinion from those who are to benefit, and it is implied in the notion of liberal democracy -- at least insofar as it applies itself to obtaining the general welfare -- that a means be sought to balance the demands of both parties by a means contributing to social stability -- no easy task by anyone's measure.
And that in a nutshell is one reasoning man's understanding of the dichotomy of left and right. Strident voices on the right, believing correctly that human freedom is the natural state of affairs, but confusing the meanings of freedom and liberty, see any and all actions of a leveling nature as offenses against -- yes, even against God. The voices on the far left, screaming just as loudly, and voicing the shibboleths of "liberal religion," demand that the mighty hand of the law be used to unzip the purses of the wealthy and empty them on the altars of the poor until the distinction between rich and poor vanishes. Both sides preach foolishness, their "solutions" being in effect an easy way out of the difficulties imposed by those two confusing words, "general welfare."
And that, in another nutshell, is the difference between reason and imagination. We imagine ourselves as "a little lower than the angels," susceptible to moral and rational persuasion, when in fact the hard choice of the reasonable man is exactly that: to choose to be a reasonable man. We do not move closer to making that choice an easy one by claiming that out ideas are ordained by God. We are ordained only to have ideas, their goodness being not a function of our merely having them. We may imagine ourselves and our Gods to be perfect and above doubt, but then, so must the next fellow. The test of ourselves (God needs no test) has nothing to do with the reality of our relationship to God, but rather relates to the reasoning power we apply to the problems facing us as human beings and human nations. We know how Moses solved his and his nation's problems, and we know how poorly that solution worked. We do not yet know how a world governed by reason would work out, since that approach has never been tried (though the instrument is here in the Constitution of the United States).
To those who might trot out the objections of Wittgensteinian post-modern skepticism, I ask them to "imagine" first a world governed by the notion that nothing can possibly be true, and second, whether that world would be improved by the assumption that at least our desire to survive as a species and as individuals seems to be the truth.
Then to those not so beset by illusion as the Wittgensteinians, I ask that you simply look around and see what, if any, of what you see appears to be consistent with the truth the skeptics must finally admit. If you see anything like that . . . well, I cannot say it any better than St. Paul said it in Phillipians 4:8. "Whatsover things..." [Go read.]
If it were not that some of the fabulous embellishments added by the writers of the Pentateuch have been made cornerstones of modern faith, the exodus story could be filed as a suspect description of a slice of ancient middle-eastern history, to be studied like any other for its relevance to a factual understanding of the place and time. Unfortunately, the fabulous aspects of the stories have been believed verbatim. The crossing of the Sea of Reeds (Exodus 14), the manna from heaven, the trumpets at Jericho, even the plagues inflicted upon the innocents of Egypt are still seen in some quarters as actual demonstrations of God's participation with the human race. Those fables, absolutely alien to reason, have been given a higher place in the heirarchy of truth than the believable events of the exodus. And people are still dying in Caanan.
The recent history of the United States has brought into sharp focus the previously muddled consequences of faith in the supernatural. Believing himself the "born again" intrument of God's will and our nation the modern "Chosen of God," the Current Occupant has embarked us on a worldwide crusade against the "Evil One." He apparently has seen the hand of Satan at work in the misguided antics of certain Islamic madmen, and laying aside the guidance of reason, has chosen to escalate the cause of justice to a "war on terror." How else justify -- other than as a departure from reason -- his attack of the secularist regime in Iraq when the seat of Wahhabi fanaticism was next door in Saudi Arabia? How else explain -- as other than a departure from reason -- the minimalist deployment in Afghanistan -- where abode the perpetrators of the crimes against our nation -- in favor of a full scale attack where they were not?
It would be fruitless to continue much further along the trail of Bush-bashing. Logic cannot produce useful conclusions from premises so completely obscured by supernatural beliefs. Better perhaps to revisit one of the incidents from the exodus, Moses' conversation with God upon Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-20) during which the laws now referred to as the "ten commandments" were given. There, by a tactic surely learned in Egypt, the supernatural power of God was conflated with the power of government to bring about a level of obedience secular enforcement could never alone have achieved. Moses enlisted God in the service of the law.
By surrendering any claim to reason, we might believe that Moses actually had a face-to-hindparts discussion with God, but given the foolishness of such a belief, we are left to believe either that Moses was schizophrenic (which I doubt) or that Moses (like the latter day prophet Joseph Smith three millenia later) dictated the "laws of God" to himself. After all, it could not have been God who told Moses to rope off Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:12-13) so that no one but Moses could hear what God spoke. God would have had better sense than to hide his presence from the people, knowing as he surely must have, that the authority of his laws would be more respected if the people heard him speak with their own ears. As it was, the people's belief waivered off and on for the next 1300 years between fervid obedience and defiant heresy.
In any case, the deed was done. The Jewish theocratic state was born. Laws written by men were elevated to the Godhead, as if, God being God, he would make laws that might be disobeyed. The union of God and government was not broken until the founding fathers of this nation wrote a constitution enabling men to govern themselves by the power of their own minds. True, they attributed their ability to reason to their creator, but in no way did they claim that the laws of this nation were laid down by God. We make our laws by the deliberations of ordinary people, not (until lately) on the tops of forbidden mountains, but in the clear light of day.
To make more visible the distinction between the laws of God and the laws of men, consider the difference between the two words freedom and liberty. By their nature, all men are free, made so either by God or by Nature. Our freedom is limited by nothing other than those of our qualities that inhibit our freedom to act. We can do whatever we desire and have the power to do. We can break, if we choose, all the laws laid down by men, and do so with a frequency that clearly evidences our innate freedom.
It is and was our understanding of the ill effects of absolute freedom that led us (and the ancients) to seek ways to regulate human action. Tyrants murdered to achieve those ends (and others less noble). Monarchs ruled by fiat and threat, oligarchies by economic and social pressure, philosopher-kings (when and if there ever were such) by the power of reason augmented by noble lies. Theocratic governments -- the subject here -- ruled (and rule) by the sorts of clever deceptions patented by the Pharoahs, borrowed by Moses, and perpetuated today by Islamic regimes. Like any "noble lie," theocratic illusions succeed only so long as they are not seen for what they are. They do not appeal to reason, but rather to its suspension.
Liberty is what we the people have left of our power to act (with impunity) after our innate freedom has been trimmed of its rough edges by the minions of law. We naturally prefer that our liberty match our freedom as closely as possible. We wish to be absolutely free to satisfy our desires, the more powerful among us being the more anxious to obtain a perfect match with freedom. The problem we in the United States face has not so much to do with our native freedom as with the meaning of two words in Section 8 (and the preamble) of our constitution. We're not altogether sure what the founders meant by "general welfare." To what extent is the congress empowered to raise taxes for the implied purposes of the "general welfare"? Obviously, those who are to be taxed are of a different opinion from those who are to benefit, and it is implied in the notion of liberal democracy -- at least insofar as it applies itself to obtaining the general welfare -- that a means be sought to balance the demands of both parties by a means contributing to social stability -- no easy task by anyone's measure.
And that in a nutshell is one reasoning man's understanding of the dichotomy of left and right. Strident voices on the right, believing correctly that human freedom is the natural state of affairs, but confusing the meanings of freedom and liberty, see any and all actions of a leveling nature as offenses against -- yes, even against God. The voices on the far left, screaming just as loudly, and voicing the shibboleths of "liberal religion," demand that the mighty hand of the law be used to unzip the purses of the wealthy and empty them on the altars of the poor until the distinction between rich and poor vanishes. Both sides preach foolishness, their "solutions" being in effect an easy way out of the difficulties imposed by those two confusing words, "general welfare."
And that, in another nutshell, is the difference between reason and imagination. We imagine ourselves as "a little lower than the angels," susceptible to moral and rational persuasion, when in fact the hard choice of the reasonable man is exactly that: to choose to be a reasonable man. We do not move closer to making that choice an easy one by claiming that out ideas are ordained by God. We are ordained only to have ideas, their goodness being not a function of our merely having them. We may imagine ourselves and our Gods to be perfect and above doubt, but then, so must the next fellow. The test of ourselves (God needs no test) has nothing to do with the reality of our relationship to God, but rather relates to the reasoning power we apply to the problems facing us as human beings and human nations. We know how Moses solved his and his nation's problems, and we know how poorly that solution worked. We do not yet know how a world governed by reason would work out, since that approach has never been tried (though the instrument is here in the Constitution of the United States).
To those who might trot out the objections of Wittgensteinian post-modern skepticism, I ask them to "imagine" first a world governed by the notion that nothing can possibly be true, and second, whether that world would be improved by the assumption that at least our desire to survive as a species and as individuals seems to be the truth.
Then to those not so beset by illusion as the Wittgensteinians, I ask that you simply look around and see what, if any, of what you see appears to be consistent with the truth the skeptics must finally admit. If you see anything like that . . . well, I cannot say it any better than St. Paul said it in Phillipians 4:8. "Whatsover things..." [Go read.]
posted by Benedict S. at 12:02 PM
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