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clarification e.j.levin@stir.ac.uk Nov 12, 2004

I was very surprised to read the text (pasted below) on your website http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Morality.cfm

For the avoidance of doubt, I would be grateful if you would provide me with the references to Talmudic sources that prohibit Jews from saving the lives of endangered gentiles, that oblige the Jews to maltreat gentiles in commercial transactions, that make it permissible and even obligatory to deceive gentiles in certain cases, that permit Jews to appropriate the money and property borrowed from a gentile in the case of the latter's death, that forbid Jews to return objects lost by a gentile.

Thank you

Eric Levin

"Today these communities are permitted to save the lives of sick gentiles, to return the objects lost by gentiles, and to conduct honest business dealings with gentiles. As we know, classical Jewish sources beginning with the Talmud categorically rejected the very idea of equality between Jews and gentiles. For example, these sources impose an automatic death sentence on anyone they define as an idolater; in most cases they prohibit Jews from saving the lives of endangered gentiles, oblige the Jews to maltreat gentiles in commercial transactions, make it permissible and even obligatory to deceive gentiles in certain cases, and so on. Among other things, these sources (hereinafter referred to as "Halachah" for the sake of brevity) permit Jews to appropriate the money and property borrowed from a gentile in the case of the latter's death, and even to lie to his heirs regarding their financial relations with the deceased; forbid Jews to return objects lost by a gentile, and permit Jews to exploit a miscalculation made by a gentile, provided the mistake benefits the Jew."

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Some remarks regarding comparative morality

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Emergentism vs Reductionism ? Tremblay, Francois Oct 09, 2004

I have never seen emergentism and reductionism as opposites, and I didn't know this was a widely-held view. I see no contradiction between the idea that everything is reducible to simpler elements, and the view that qualities are emergent from the interaction of those elements. But if I had to choose, I suppose I would call myself a reductionist, since integrating all aspects of nature is primary to understanding their qualities.

Is this dichotomy a view that you share, and if so, why?

Francois Tremblay

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Rabbi Gottlieb Anon, Jul 20, 2004

One argument presented to Rabbi Gottlieb was as follows:

1. Aristotelian gravity should have produced expected evidence (heavier masses accelerating toward the earth faster than lighter masses) which were absent. & Aristotelian gravity was refuted before the actual experiment in a thought experiment (if you attach two balls together by a chain, when they would become tight, they should excelerate (being a total greater weight), which is absurd.

2. Santa Clause should produce physical evidence increased size of chimney, tracks on roof, actual location at North Pole.

The US engages in a known conspiracy including falsified weather radar reports, post office redirection of letters, appearances at malls.

At #2, we have a clear case of a parallel to the miracle of the manna concocted for cultural gain.

What gain could a nation of parents have in promoting a religion to their children?
The same.

3. The bible itself claims that knowledge of God was lost and so the chain of oral tradition was broken:

Judges 2
10 After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.

4. It is problematic that the Kuzari example is itself not sanctioned by tradition. You do not find it taught to the Orthodox (other than by Rabbi Gottlieb) as a *basis* for belief, at all. Orthodox Judaism does not set itself up to such a test, such that if it failed, it would surrender.

5. The Kuzari argument is a classic argument from ignorance: We do not conclude about the nuclear force anything more than what we can verify.

5b. There can be a force, but that does not justify / sanction specifically the Torah in toto.

6. In the Traditional is the belief that the world is actually less than 6000 years old (missing evidence: starlight only 6K, an earth only 6K ... That says something about our ability to believe anything.

7. The problem with the Kuzari principle is that it requires not only
1. satisfying the principle, but the geometrically more difficult step of
2. FINDING a counter example.

There may be examples out there, but *knowing* they are false beliefs requires a super position nobody claims to have.

The absense of evidence yeilds (only?) cases where we can not *know* that they were false.

Let's try to find a counter-example to the Manna:

Other cases:

They believe(d) X.
X should have produced evidence Y.
(end of Manna parallel)

We now know X did not occur because...?

If Y is missing, how can we - today - conclude that they were *wrong*?

Put another way, if there are other historical cases where evidence should have been produced, but was not, we now have no way to know that it was false.

We have no way to produce counter examples at all, by definition, we can only look at historical examples where there is no evidence. So we are limitted to cases where we can not know. There could be hundreds of cases.

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A new evolution theory Zhang , Jianyi Sep 21, 2004

Sir/Madam:

This is Jianyi Zhang.
Recently, I publish a new book, which brings a new mechanism of evolution. I put core idea in my website site (http://chickensfirst.net).

The book tells a simple mechanism of speciation. I have some discussion
in talk.origin, I answer major critiques in FAQ section.

Would you please let your reader aware of wesite and its contents, so interested readers have an opportunity to be exposed to it.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks

Jianyi Zhang

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Criticisms of Dembski's latest opus Wilson , David Aug 19, 2004

I was flattered, but rather taken aback, to see myself described by Mark Perakh as an "expert" in fields pertinent to the paper William Dembski recenty posted at the URL http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000533 . While I do have a sufficiently strong background in all the fields necessary to follow the mathematics of the paper, it would be an exaggeration to call me an expert in any of them.

It also not clear to me whether the errors I found in the paper are of any real importance. Although Dembski does refer to the property which my counterexample disproves as one of "the requisite properties we have come to expect from an information measure", he makes no use of it at all. Also, judging from Shalizi's criticism, the failure of Dembski's "variational information" to satisfy this property doesn't appear to have prevented it from having found wide application as the Rènyi information divergence of order 2. Finally, as far as I can see, there is no intuitively compelling reason why it should be required to have this property.

In short, while the errors are ones which I should be embarrassed to have made myself, they aren't any more embarrassing than some which I actually have made myself on occasions. Thus, athough it's certainly worth pointing them out, I shouldn't be inclined to make much of a fuss about them.

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