Sympathy for the Jews and Arabs

I've always had some sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs.

After World War I, Europeans had good news and bad news for the Palestinians. The good news was that we freed them from the oppressive Ottoman Empire. The Bad news was that the Jews were returning by the million.

How would we in the U.S. have responded if one day, millions of Native Americans showed up on our doorstep, with both the intention of taking their land back, but also the means to do it?

Displaced European Americans, crowded into concentration camps in Canada and Mexico would surely plot their revenge, including a fair amount of terrorism against the returned natives. Governments in Mexico, Canada and European countries would be tempted to support the terrorists as local sympathies go to refugees.

That would never happen, of course. Unlike the Jews, displaced Native Americans didn't flourish in foreign countries to return centuries later, much stronger than when they left.

If I were a Palestinian Arab, I would probably be a big time terrorist.

I have sympathies for the Jews too.

After nearly two thousand years in exile from their homeland, they survive as a unified culture. That's never happened in the recorded history of man. It gives some credence to the idea that they just might be God's chosen people.

It happened, in part, because they passed down the hope of returning to their homeland from generation to generation. The Jews were prepared to survive in exile by their much shorter exile in Babylon before the first century C.E.

You can't blame the Jews for wanting to return to Judea. Always an outsider and often persecuted, life in permanent exile is no walk in the park.

If I were a Jew I would probably be a big time Zionist.

It doesn't help that Jews, Christians and Muslims all hold as a key element of their religious culture that one day, God himself will put one of them in charge of Jerusalem and condemn the other two to hell.

It's amazing to me that this small spot of land, smaller than the state of Mississippi, would spawn three huge cultures. I have to believe that there is some superior force guiding the destiny of men. Perhaps that force intends that Jews, Christians and Muslims learn to live in peace and use that peace as a structure to build a true, world-wide peace.

What is Random?

The concept of Random chance is one of the cornerstones of atheism. It presumes that our existence comes as the result of random events impacting other random events rather than some sort of conceptual direction. The only problem is, random doesn't exist.

When we say "random" what we mean is that the outcome of an event is unknowable because it results from processes either unknown or so complex that they are virtually unknowable. That's a far cry from saying "stuff just happens". Stuff doesn't just happen, stuff happens as the result of other stuff.

Computers are really good at complex calculations, and among computers there is no such thing as random. For programs where we wish to introduce a random element, computers use a random number simulator because they cannot calculate random numbers on their own. It is just a simulation though, if you know how the random number generator works, then the outcome is completely predictable.

Now, saying there is no such thing as random is a long way from proving an anthropomorphic, paternalistic "God" who punishes sins and runs our lives like some sort of giant puppeteer, but knowing that nothing is truly random and that all things have a rational cause makes the existence of a higher power of some sort logical.

Mr & Mrs Caveman For Dinner

Having fallen hopelessly, passionately, in love in middle age, what do Boyd and Mrs. Boyd talk about during dinner?

Last night it was cavemen with Mexican food. Carla picked my feeble mind about the links from our chimpanzee-like ancestors to modern man.

LiveScience gives a great run-down of the top ten hominids to work with.

From Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) to my personal favorite, the Neanderthals and why some people have big noses, we covered the fabled path from monkey to man.

For the record, we're both deeply christian, but also happen to believe in evolution.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Law

This same sex marriage thing is a no-brainer.

There are social and religious issues surrounding this subject but the only one we can decide with any stability is legal issues. It really is a legal issue, not a religious one, and as a legal issue there can be only one answer--to make homosexual and heterosexual marriages legally equal.

In our culture we define marriage as a mutually agreed on union of two people and only two people. No outside person can intrude into this union so my marriage is different from every other marriage as they are different from each other. Each one is a unique and isolated case with no tangible impact on any other marriage.

It would be different if homosexuals wanted to horn into other marriages or force people to enter same-sex marriages but they don't. They want to form their own mutually agreed upon marriages, completely separate from every other marriage.

The question of whether homosexuality is a sin is moot in this argument. In our country sin and law are completely separate as described by the the constitution. For instance: there is no law regarding keeping the sabbath or worshiping idols, both of which are listed in the ten commandments. If we were going to incorporate sin into law you'd think these would be first on the list.

We can and do allow religious groups to make their own determinations about marriage independent of the law. For instance: catholics don't recognize legal divorces. If a divorced person gets remarried but doesn't have their first marriage annulled, then the Catholic church doesn't recognize their new marriage, but it has no impact on the legal status of the marriage.

This could be a model for same-sex marriages. Some religious groups would recognize them and some wouldn't based on their own interpretation, but before the law they would be the same as all other marriages.

There is also the constitutional issue of equal protection to consider. If the state doesn't recognize same-sex marriages then how can they say they offer equal protection to homosexuals?

Trying to decide issues of law based on the concept of sin is a very slippery slope and one our founders provided us an escape from by separating church and state.

There are social repercussions to this legal issue but the social concept of marriage and family were experiencing huge changes long before we brought the issue of homosexuality into it.

We passed the point of no return a long time ago when circumstances made it possible for women to survive without marriage. Marriage used to be a matter of survival, now it's a matter of choice and the only question is how we define it in the future, and like-it-or-not, that future includes the social, and more importantly, legal rights of homosexuals.