No, really. Who is Steiner? Word choice is EVERYTHING. (Proxy traffic doth vex me! This would have been a much longer post but it keeps timing out.)

What I loved about the exchange was that at no point in time did it address the actual problem -- if everyone living in Israel stopped eating dead cow tomorrow, that pile o' poo isn't going anywhere. Might smell a little nicer after it'd been drying a couple of days, but moo dookie just gets crunchy on the outside when it dries, leaving the inside creamy or chewy at best. Which brings me to my own solution to the problem, which would be to package it up and market it as a meat-substitute to vegetarians. When every human being is treated with a modicum of decency and respect for their well being, I'll start feeling guilty about my food, `kay? Until then, the only reason I don't eat people is that they're a bitch to poach.

Is God still relevant?

As a Jewcomer and Jewtard on the subject of Jewish Identity* and a self-hating atheist, I'm amused by how often the subject deteriorates (particularly among trolls, hecklers in the peanut gallery, and the self-identified 'differently Jewish' of specific, yet-quantifiably-superior or authentically differentiated Jewishness), how often all roads lead to an "I'm more Jewish" pissing-match. *My catch-all expression for a subject related to such pissing contests and shares a common phrasing with a subject best understood and explained by Jews who know something about being Jewish, i.e. the opposite of me. Join the conversation and STFU. ^6^, 1. Atheism versus your Mom is NY-Grade, G-d versus Jeebus-class Holiday Filler, and don't think all the little trailer-park Babtists and midwestern all-you-can-eat evangelists aren't playing the home version of the televised game show themselves this season. Let the Jones' keep up with the Jones', but capitalizing on a seasonal editorial bandwagon? If, like the three-story hockey stick at Expo 86 that the Vancouver papers declared was "a national symbol of how desperate we are for national symbols", if the subject of Jewish identity is so dire that even who one screws is a branded subject of concern for one's faith, can Jewish Identity(tm) truly afford to snub it's most venerated stereotype? 2) The Prager-Harris Exchange was Jewish only to the extent that that Prager dude seemed to be wearing one of those little hats and used some different words than like what they got on Trinity Broadcast Network (Proud Sponsor of Team Christ NASCAR racing). Sheket Bavakasha, Seattle

As a flame, that was pretty limp, as any kind of serious contention, you've successfully identified yourself as the site's second, live anti-Semite. As it happens, things are tough all over, but if adaptation icks your wow, blame yourself when you become extinct. Please step into the door to accept your Darwin, but don't let it hit you on the way out.

David: Mike largely beat me to the rebuttal, in this instance, but I'll second the notion of having reached an impasse.

"You're effectively asserting that no one who is truly religious would hold a position you consider to be antithetical to it" Yup.

Then you're wrong. ;) What I see is that you're being very selective about the precision of your language. In this instance, you're not disagreeing with my personal opinion, you're disagreeing with the dictionary. Hopefully you understand that this isn't an attempt to play gotcha -- consider that, having no spiritual faith, I HAVE to rely on literal definitions in order to talk about some subjects. Consider, having mentioned Russell, you've touched on a philosopher whom I think quite highly of -- to me, he's the math guy who wrote three volumes about symbolic logic in order to conclude that we can be reasonably certain that the product of one and one is two. And then had some jerk come along and blow holes in his logic afterwards. Thing of it is, I'd completely agree that I look at the statement you quoted and recognize that we might both infer and agree that it seems possible, if not probable, that there IS an absolute morality. What neither of us could do, however, is claim any certainty that we were correct in the assumption. From personal experience, I'd caution that the word "absolute" comes with substantial baggage, and can only be applied correctly in a few cases. Much of the time, it's used when what is intended is to say that something is necessarily true -- that it can be assumed that the idea does not rest on any immediately obvious false premises and that most reasonable people would not disagree with the premises it does rely on, or at least not without great difficulty or simple obstinacy. In a broad sense, we're both applying very basic, informal logic -- this is simply how arguments are constructed. If I were to generalize about atheists in any particular, it's that most have an instinctive tendency to be wary of logical fallacy. In fairness, I also haven't encountered a theist argument that did not involve one. For most, argumentum ad ignoratum, the inability to demonstrate the existence of God, is the killer. For myself, personally, it's the inability to demonstrate the existence of spiritual faith. Again with the weasel words, but it remains that there are countless instances where we share empirical faith -- objects unsupported tend to fall towards the nearest center of gravity, for example -- things that can claim, by consensus, as inductively provable. Here's a question for you, though. Do you believe that my claiming to be an atheist is a matter of what I can honestly say about the subject of theism, rather than something I simply choose to believe, or something I refuse to acknowledge? I don't want to make any assumptions on your behalf, rather to say that this is why I've avoided attempting to dispute anyone's claim to spiritual faith. Whether or not it is a real thing is wholly academic -- what I would not dispute is anyone's belief in it. The claim might be a product of dishonesty or simply reflect something they want to believe for personal reasons they won't acknowledge but I can say with clear conscience that I've never drawn that conclusion. It's kind of a strawman to suspect that anyone would consider you unintelligent or crazy for being an observant Jew -- intelligence isn't a factor in determining one's faith, and from my own experience, I've spent more time wondering if I was the one who was nuts. Perceptually, the experience is the reverse of the argument from design. Where people tell me they perceive God, I don't even register the absence of one. To conclude, I'd suggest that whatever it is you wanted to say about absolute morality, you volunteer it as opposed to begging the question of someone else. What needs to be said is that you've pretty much defeated the purpose of whatever point you were hoping to make. The definition you've attempted to assert is literally wrong, which makes your attempts to persuade someone to agree with you suspect, since it'd be an insult to your intelligence to ask if you really don't understand the meanings of the words in question. It might not seem like that big a deal, but in the context of this debate, it's fatal.

Catholics, like Jehovah's Witnesses, remain a subject that require I spend significantly more time on the bias-elimination phase of critical thinking to feel I have any hope of considering objectively. In this instance, however, it's wholly unnecessary -- not only is who the Catholic Church gives a gold star and a cookie too their choice, exclusively, the attempt to pick that particular fight lends the institution a credibility I don't personally think it merits. I can't decide if the whole thing with Prager and Ellison was a publicity stunt or what, but stupid is stupid and loyalty shouldn't trump fairness or basic considerations of civility. Since I'm not in danger of being elected, it's a non-starter, but I couldn't swear an oath on a Bible, either -- it'd be hypocritical. It strikes me that you say that "both sides are trying to apply logic", though. I disagree. Both sides are attempting to apply logic to the extent that it supports their specific agenda and disregarding it when it does not. Good stuff, as always, though. The site has an awesome consortium of writers as a whole, but Faithhacker is the more substantial part of the reading to me. It's ironic that my interest is purely academic, but religion is also the sole public exercise in the exploration of philosophy as an adjective. While Storahtelling has required that I do a little extra reading to make sense of it, for example, it's focus on symbolism and meaning apply as universal concepts, the same way it's possible to appreciate drum circles as an exercise in the power of ritual.

I agree that it's cynicism, but I don't believe that the view represented carries sufficient influence to represent the potential threat it might have. Ignore the religious trappings a moment and this becomes the declaration of a political/lobbying body whose limited mandate has been revoked. Religious observance, particularly among the more traditional and storied sects, has been declining steadily over the last three generations and has given no indication of slowing. While various protestant evangelical sects have increased membership somewhat, overall the net gain is negligible due to an inability to retain membership and has no impact to the overall total, since much of the new membership derives from people switching churches. Depending on whose statistics one accepts, all of the growth is within the "unchurched" demographic -- but there are studies that suggest as much as ten percent of the population is, in fact, secular, and almost four percent of those consider themselves atheist. Still. Looking around Jewcy and not noticing a fairly pronounced and radical change in the expression and cultivation of faith is like standing around on a melting glacier, watching the polar bears mill around looking for a place to stand without falling in the water, and not noticing that the temperature seems to have gone up a little lately. Historically, organized religion enjoyed a degree of public deferral to it's authority as a whole that limited most major challenges to internal politics among the leadership. The enlightenment and reformation have been catching up with us at a glacial pace for some time, however, and the progressive liberalization of social attitudes, shifts in cultural exposure and individual experience and a number of other factors have diminished the degree of power held by sectarian authorities substantially. Faith has ceased to be wholly synonymous with obedience to the leadership of one's sect. Ironically, Archbishop Chaput is, himself, a greater threat to his own office than the secularists he's railing against. While confidence in leadership is at an all time low across the board, Catholicism has taken a much deeper hit than many because it was both self-inflicted and because the weakening of institutions like assumptions of inerrancy have a cascade effect in terms of undermining the authority of leadership. Beyond merely adapting, religion is discovering that there is no alternative to embracing basic philosophy and attempting to demonstrate it's cultural and social value. Ultimately, this is a much more difficult proposition than it would appear on the face of it, since the disconnect between secular and religious philosophy has always been religious philosophy requires it's conclusions support what are considered it's religion's own inerrant truth(s). On average, even atheists who never make any effort to consider a particular faith generally spend some reasonable length of time learning about it's precepts. But consider that it's possible to make a strong argument suggesting that people overwhelmingly fail to spend a fraction of that same period of time studying epistemology, and of those a fair number have no idea what it is much less why it'd be necessary. And for this reason, I'd admit that I'm not exactly dancing around waving the last couple of coffin nails and getting jiggy at the prospect of, at last, burying God. As an atheist, issues like this are "religious" to me solely because they involve someone claiming that they are. Otherwise, they're simply policy disputes that, by necessity, must be decided by examining the positions involved and the arguments that support them. While one's personal philosophy and ethical sense are paramount to the content of one's character, I don't believe atheism or theism motivate personal behavior or reasoning to any measurable degree. Though I wouldn't oppose such a development, whether people embrace one or the other from the larger vantage is immaterial -- if the world woke up Godless tomorrow I'd still be part of a nearly infinitesimal minority that did not observe the Judaeo/Christian ethic as it's most influential intellectual influence. But the possibility that we're going to see an outbreak of actual violence owed to religious intolerance in the near future? I don't think the people who'd go that route have sufficient influence to persuade enough people to take part in it.

Nor do I contest the history at all. I read Ahmadinejad's blog -- it's remarkably poor quality propaganda. He's not an intellectually stupid man -- it's not having the sense to avoid people recognizing the rhetoric as the same caliber as a pasty, fat punk in doc martins his mother purchased at Nordstrom's. White flour, bro! White flour! But I think it's great this is getting done. The sooner they get their BS out in public, the sooner it can be refuted. Easy slam dunk -- and nothing gets broken, invaded or occupied in the process. It remains that Israel's problems will be, for the foreseeable future, compounded by their association with the US and as such, it's to be expected that the opportunists will scuttle out from behind the fridge to make the most of the situation. Better all the shit hits the fan all at once than incrementally.

I'm generally pretty earnest, too. Compassion and empathy for what? Not getting off the couch? Can't do it. It's not the money or the lack of intellectual BTUs, it's that the circumstance is entirely of her own design and she could as easily slip out of it the same way she got there.

Or does anyone else find it disturbing that she looks like she's trying to win a Tim Curry look-alike contest by doing her makeup the same way as Dr. Frankfurter in Rocky? Yep. ENTIRELY too well-behaved. Just the sort of girl I want to see cast opposite Rocko Siffridi in a remake of Caligula.