Fundamentalist Nutbags Come In All Flavors!
The ultra-orthodox rabbis are out to get Rabbi Slifkin, signing a letter denouncing him for, among other things, suggesting that the world is a mite older than 5,765 years. The New York Times' Alex Mindlin covers the controversy over the books written by Slifkin, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli scholar and science writer:
(Slifkin) gently debunked the claim, found in a medieval text, that geese grow on trees, explaining that it was "based on the peculiar anatomy of a certain seashell." And he examined the Talmudic doctrine that lice, alone of all animals, may be killed on the Sabbath because they do not sexually reproduce - a premise now known to be false.In "The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax," Rabbi Slifkin examined the difficult separation of animals into kosher and nonkosher, and discussed apparent exceptions and contradictions to the claims of Jewish law. (The aardvark and the rhinoceros, for example, meet one test for being kosher but not another.)
And in "The Science of Torah," he took a scientist's eye to the Torah. Evolution, he wrote, did not disprove God's existence and was consistent with Jewish thought. He suggested that the Big Bang theory paralleled the account of the universe's creation given by the medieval Spanish-Jewish sage Ramban. And Rabbi Slifkin wrote, to quote his own later paraphrase, that "tree-ring chronology, ice layers and sediment layers in riverbeds all show clear proof to the naked eye that the world is much more than 5,765 years old."
The latter statement was particularly galling to the rabbi's critics, who support a literal reading of Genesis that they say puts the earth's age at 5,765.
Well, Duh.
Everyone knows that a day is a day, and even before the LORD created the sun and separated the night and the day, that there could only be 24 hours to the first "days" mentioned in Genesis.
The works of the LORD are completely ruled by human convention-- of course they are! If the LORD couldn't be confined in book form, we might actually have to think for ourselves.
Deirdre B. at March 23, 2005 3:44 AM
Shouldn't he be denounced here in principle for holding a belief in something that is supernatural, that is God?
RKN at March 23, 2005 9:03 AM
I'm glad someone out there is grappling with the issue of the aardvark's kosher-ness. The mere mortals among us can continue worrying about the price of gas.
Lena-doodle-doo at March 23, 2005 10:26 AM
Don't I flog that issue enough for you, RKN?
Amy Alkon at March 23, 2005 1:47 PM
Lena, if you're worried about the price of gas in the US, you should come to Germany. (Hint: We currently pay about two and a half as much for gas as you do, mostly due to much higher taxes.) If they would only use more of it to save the rainforest... :-(
Amy, I think your flogging comes along nicely...
Rainer at March 23, 2005 1:54 PM
If only the price of gas here were raised in accord with the damage done by the product...the companies who sell gas should be paying for the damage to the environment and our lungs, and it should be factored into the price. There's an old Spanish proverb: "Take what you need and pay for it." Well, we're paying for their profits...that should be their job.
Amy Alkon at March 23, 2005 2:42 PM
"If only the price of gas here were raised in accord with the damage done by the product..."
Absolutely true. I guess no country in the world currently collects taxes for gas that are high enough to do a lot about the damage done.
It's not sufficient to raise the taxes, though: The more money politicians get to spend, the more likely they are going to spend it for, well, whatever.
I really don't know how much of it will go into environmental protection.
Rainer at March 23, 2005 4:45 PM
But I think the gas and oil companies should be made to pay for the detriment their product does to the environment. They can then take a smaller profit and/or pass it on to the consumers. But the consumers and public shouldn't be forced to pay the price when the companies are making the profit.
Amy Alkon at March 23, 2005 8:06 PM
Good idea, I think. Do you know whether this idea has been tried before?
Rainer at March 24, 2005 7:05 AM
Amy - and others - I hate spank you about this, but I must.
You have forgotten that a corporation is a legal fiction established to coordinate effort - and nothing more. While it makes a nice sound bite when a pol promises to tax those eee-vil! corporations, every tax penny appears as a cost of doing business which is directly and immediately passed on to the consumer. People forget: a corporation handles money. It does not create it and never has. Individuals pay for everything we do. To summarize: Gas and oil companies *cannot* be made to pay for anything.
In the US there has been and is extensive effort to regulate auto fuels. The excise tax is around 25 cents/gallon at least - and have you noticed the abolishment of tetraethyl lead in fuel, the ongoing debate about its replacement (methyl tertiary butyl ether), the mere existence of CAFE, catalytic converters, evaporative recovery systems, and the provision of economical cars for those with sense?
There is a good argument about European fuel pricing which has never been advanced, possibly because we find ourselves asserting that being European is somehow superior. American and British petroleum interests developed the bulk of non-Russian oil fields and delivered that market first to American consumers, who became the most convenient and profitable market after WW2 because of production excesses and highway construction. We were a big, flat country without checkpoints every few miles, and before Japan and Germany recovered, we had all of the automotive production plants.
Geography and history account for fuel pricing in Europe. It isn't nobility or concern for the environment.
Radwaste at March 24, 2005 7:56 AM
I remember, in the early 90s, when it took us a $50 tank of gas to drive my friend's Ford Fiesta (they all have small cars in Italy) round trip Rome to Tuscany (Pontremoli area specifically, which, I believe, is maybe 100 miles away? Please correct me if I'm wrong). On the hightway, my Honda Insight gets about 60 mpg. Sooo...that trip for me, even these days, with gas at about $2.30...would cost me, what...about $2? Imagine if our gas prices matched Italy's...don't know what they are now, but I can only imagine. People's SUVs would be turned into planters.
Amy Alkon at March 24, 2005 8:06 AM
Sorry, mathematically retarded. $4. Woooo.
Amy Alkon at March 24, 2005 8:06 AM
Blogging is neat. I threw out "price of gas" in that earlier entry just off the top of my head. I probably almost said "the price of Pampers." And look what happens! A lot of intelligent people run with the ball, and interesting things get said. I like it.
Lena-doodle-doo at March 24, 2005 10:22 AM
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