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word of the Week: 20/6/16 - Shabbat

19/6/2016

Jewish Day of Rest - Friday night until Saturday Night

The word ‘Shabbat’ comes from a word meaning to rest. It is one of the best known and least understood of all Jewish observances. It is a precious gift from G-d, a great joy eagerly awaited throughout the week, a time to set aside your weekday concerns and devote oneself to spiritual things.

It's origins lie in Genesis: When God creates the Earth in Genesis 1 he rests on the seventh day and so made the day Holy. Jews therefore echo what they regard to be a divine pattern of work. So by resting on the seventh day and making it special, Jews remember and acknowledge that G-d is the creator of heaven and earth and all living things.

The observance is also a Miztvot (a law) from the book of Exodus: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord you G-d; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20: 8-11).

Many people tend to think of Shabbat as day full of "don't do's" But far from simply being a day of restrictions, a Shabbat observed at home is a day immersed in an atmosphere of rest, relaxation, and rejoicing. At a time when most of humanity only ate two full meals a day, Jewish tradition called for a sumptuous three meals on Shabbat (between sundown on Friday and just after sundown on Saturday) to ensure that one could relax and celebrate with a full stomach. Shabbat is a day for which you purchase wine and food for a fitting set of meals.

In order to enjoy a Shabbat free of household chores, it is traditional to clean the house before Shabbat and prepare all meals in advance, so that the food only need be warmed up to enjoy it (rather than cooked, which would violate traditional Shabbat restrictions). Shabbat afternoon is a time reserved for reading, talking, or studying Jewish texts such as the Torah, all activities that people often claim that they never have enough time to do.

Having said all this there are lots of things one in not allowed to do as set out in the Torah and relates to many areas of life:

It relates to farming and includes: sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, shearing wool, trapping, slaughtering, curing hide.

It relates to cooking: grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, salting meat.

It relates to household chores: washing wool, beating wool, dyeing wool, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, untying, sewing two stitches, tearing.

It relates to work: writing two letters, erasing two letters, building, tearing a building down, hitting with a hammer, taking an object from the private domain to the public, or transporting an object in public.

It also relates to light and heat: extinguishing a fire and kindling a fire are not allowed.So in the modern era Orthodox Jews do not permit the use of electricity because it serves the same function as fire – to light or heat.

word of the week: 13/06/16 - Ali

12/6/2016

Islamic name meaning "high" or "exaulted".

The death of Muhammad Ali on June 3rd has raised a number of key issues that are of interest to Religious Studies students: most obviously issues of pacifism, racism and conversion. Cassius Clay, as Ali was originally known, was born into a Christian Family and was subject to all the “normal” prejudices that Black men and women were subject to at that time in the USA. In 1961 Ali was introduced to Islam and converted by 1964. At this time changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammed Ali citing that Cassius Clay was his “slave name”. This encapsulates the reasons for Muhammed Ali’s conversion and the political and racial campaigning that was to follow. Ali famously refuse to fight in the Vietnam War stating that “my enemy is the white people, not the Vietcong”.

So why the names Muhammad and Ali? Most people would recognise that Muhammad is the prophet of Islam and the most revered man in Islamic tradition. Many Muslims give their children his name out of respect and a wish for them to emulate him. But why Ali?

Well, Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. He was the son of Abu Talib, Muhammed's uncle, who protected and cared for Muhammad after the death of his parents. Ali is said to be the only person to have been born within the Kaba, the "Black box” at the centre of the Muslim world. Muhamed highly influenced and tradition has it that he became the first Muslim, migrating to Medina with Muhammad and being central to the developing religion. He fought alongside Muhammad against The Mecans, and was appointed as leader by Mohammed after his death.

He was arguably the first Caliph, the leader of Islam after the death of The Prophet. However this divides Islamic world; Sunni Muslims believe that the Caliph should be elected by other Muslims (and so Abu Bakr was the first Caliph) and Shia Muslims who believe that Caliph should be of the family of Muhammed and so it should be Ali. Ali lived during one of the most turbulent periods of Islamic history and died after an attack by other Muslims.

It would seem that Muhammed Ali had little to say as to why he so chose this name in particular but in 1964 when interviewed he said “Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it and I don't want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name - it means beloved of God, and I insist people use it when people speak to me." (1) I like to think that, like him, Ali was a convert and fighter, and that parallel was what drew him to it.

Word of the Week: 6/6/16 - Materialism

3/6/2016

The theory that nothing exists except matter and its movements. There is therefore no soul.

The views of the Materialists such as Richard Dawkins leave no room for an immaterial, separate soul. His commitment to the empirical method is presumed to provide the only true source of knowledge. ‘Soul one’, the Cartesian ghost in the machine, is an impossibility. I shall set out how he justifies this below, but is this a coherent view? This post will argue not.

Firstly, materialism says that all that exists conforms to physical laws, including causation, and so, using those laws, we can predict the future in an increasingly determinist way as we understand better the science. Liberty in our thought-life, and even of a separate self, is an illusion because in reality thought, feelings, ambitions and desires are all electro-chemical phenomena, increasingly observable through neuro-imaging. Thought is a complex neuronal activity of stimulated synapses responding to sense-data. “I” am an abstraction from this process, as we shall see below.

Now, for Dawkins it must be said that this makes our sense of an independent self and our ‘qualia’ (properties and experiences experienced by a person) into materially explicable brain responses, and so they can be examined and ultimately predicted: our brain is simply a data-crunching machine and our freedom is a useful illusion. Ultimately all behaviours will be predictable because they are determined by our brains and hence by our genes (and memes – see below).

However, if this is true, my reason for believing Dawkins can only be that I am genetically programmed to do so, it is predictable, I obey causal laws. So I do not believe him because he is right and has persuaded me, but because it was always going to happen, granted my biochemistry. Some argue that this circular argument invalidates a fundamental assumption of Dawkins’ and shows it to be incoherent: it does not make sense to adopt this position.

Secondly, many look at the computer model of consciousness he embraces and argue that it is flawed in its own terms. His view is known as Functionalist, namely, he believes that mental life is a product of the physical life of the brain and has no meaningful separation. It is ‘uncannily computer-like’ (River Out of Eden) because bytes of programmed self-replicating data have evolved to co-operate for the ‘survival machines’ that we are, even to the extent of creating the mind mirage as a useful fiction for planning our own survival. Our brain is hardware, our mind is software, a product of programmes set deep in our genes and playing out a virtual life of their own. Our brain is data-crunching binary-coded neurons that have learnt to survive together and in doing so now project a mind in order to handle their own functioning better. The mind and its sense of self or “I” has no real existence and no real influence, no more than an image on a screen – neuro-science has long since shown that the effects of a putative soul can be replicated by electrical charges, drugs and other biochemical research.

Many argue that this view does not add up, not just because it is contradicted by other evidence, but in its own terms it is incoherent because it ignores the very content of those thoughts and mind: qualia, perceived experiences, the individual sense of developing personhood and the indeterminacy always of being able to ‘change one’s mind’. In other words, what it is like to be me. The genome cannot give the content of our memory. In ignoring this Dawkins has shown a prior commitment to his theory, often eloquently expressed and using Biblical imagery (e.g. he starts River out of Eden by referring to Abraham), and then he attempts to squeeze the evidence into it. This is the very opposite of the empiricism he claims to follow, and so this is an incoherence in his argument

Thirdly, Dawkins has borrowed the idea of a ‘meme’ and developed it in order to fill in gaps in his argument. The meme is virus-like transmitter of culturally accrued understandings, fashions, preferences and behaviours which have been found to have survival advantages and so have survived and reproduced. Memes are bytes of cultural data which have worked with the genes in our evolution to produce increasing consciousness and even a sense of a separate self that can aid our survival better. One meme-myth is religion, another the soul. The Cartesian soul no longer has any survival value for us, though, and so should be rejected: neuro-science is now explaining our identity and functioning and providing improvements for our inner life much more than a separate soul could ever do. Soul two is this modern Functional soul, sometime also understood in terms of Identity Theory.

The perceived incoherence here lies in the old rhetorical problem: it is one thing to state a view and make a claim, it is something else to provide proper explanation. Proper explanation is not a matter even of listing one’s reasons for holding a viewpoint, it is instead a matter of persuading by well interpreted evidence and successful refutation – not mere mockery – of other views. Scientifically a ‘meme’ cannot and does not exist, and so it contradicts an empirically-based argument for a ‘soul two’ i.e. consciousness explained by neural networks.

In stating Functionalism and Identity Theory so loud and clear Dawkins has brought out into the open much important debate and has challenged those who prefer property dualism (Greenfield) or substance dualism (Hick, Swinburne, Ward) to fashion better arguments. But despite this important function in continuing debate over Body and Soul, many suggest that Dawkins’ own theory cannot stand as it is incoherent.