gth@erc3ba.UUCP (A.Y.Feldblum) (06/13/85)
The postings by Rosen and Samet, and the recent comments posted by Kahn
and others, have touched on some interesting issues, although they are
sometimes buried under the antagonistic potshots the two have been
taking at each other. One of the basic issues underlying the entire
discussion is: what is the basis for a given set of societal norms. Rich
in particular appears to believe that his basis for behavior is in some
way "self evident" while religion is arbitrary, and has equal validity
as Nazism. (Is there some rule that all extended issue on
net.religion.jewish invoke Nazism at some point?). The main contention I
wish to make is that there is no self evident basis for societal norms.
All such systems make assumptions as to the ultimate purpose of society,
and assumptions as to how to best achieve those purposes. One class of
such systems are defined(?) as religions. They generally assume the
existence of a Supreme Being, usually the creator, who in some way has
interacted with humankind and the result is a set of societal norms
and/or behaviors. I will deal with Judaism in a little while. First I
would like to examine Rich's position.
From what I have been able to extract from his postings, his ultimate
purpose of societal norms is to maximize the probability that the human
population as a whole continue to survive (with a minimum of human caused
deaths to other humans). Second, his assumption as to the best way to
achieve this goal is through a policy of tolerance. He runs into
problems that a societal norm based on absolute tolerance can be
counter-productive to his ultimate goal. Being tolerant of murder does
not maximize survival probability. So he adapts a modified tolerance
policy, only behavior which does not "harm" another human being is to be
tolerated. The problem here is how is the decision of what "harms"
another human being made, and who makes it. This issue is far from
clear. In the case of Rosen, clearly Rosen has behaviors that he views
as "harmful" and others that are not. However, besides for the
fundamental assumptions that underly his societal norms, the deciding of
what behaviors to tolerate and what not is totally (from a basic
philosophical viewpoint) arbitrary. Actually, if he wants to compare
anything to Nazism, his assumptions are the ones that are closer. The
basis for Nazi philosophy is that the ultimate purpose of societal norms
is to maximize the probability that the Aryan race will survive and
flourish. Killing Jews was a behavior to be tolerated because it did not
harm another Aryan, and actually furthered the ultimate purpose of
society.
Let me know look at Judaism. Our most basic assumption, which we accept
as a matter of belief, is that there exists a G-d (I will deal with the
question of writing out G-d's name in a posting in the near future) who
made his presence known to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai after taking
them out of slavery in Egypt. At that time he gave us the Torah, which
is our basis for societal norms. I do not see that Rosen's basis for
society is any more valid or less arbitrary than that of Judaism. If one
wants to claim that there is no basis for belief in G-d, then the two
are equally valid or invalid. (See Dave Kahn's posting for some of the
issues related to the basis for belief and validity of history.) Based
on the Torah, one can try to understand what is the purpose of man and
society on this world, and what is the best way to achieve this goal.
However this understanding is not the basis for the societal norms.
What I see, is a purpose and set of goals that are not the same as
Rosen's. First, the simple continued existence of humanity is not the
ultimate purpose of man and society. Rather, it is to live in a manner
so as to bring man closer to his creator, and the Torah is the guide as
how to do this. Thus I may agree with Rosen that one should not murder
someone else, but for different reasons.
To summerize, no basis of societal norms has inherent validity, and thus
I totally reject Rosen's claims that Judaism's basis is any more
arbitrary than his. An issue I will try to address in a future posting
next week is that of relative tolerance. Aside from the basic issues in
the above posting, I would like to look at what actions "harm" other
people, both from Rosen's viewpoint (as I understand it), and from the
Torah viewpoint.
Avi Feldblum
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