Passover

If we embarrass the god of in-group morality, the god of Zionism, the god who commands many of us to be terrorists and offers even more of us go-to-heaven points for supporting Zionism, we could stop subliminally excusing our most barbaric behavior, and so stop generating terrorism against us. That combination of moral obligations and cosmic possibilities might enable us to metaphorically “take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” because it may be the case that real gods will be born—and that all of us could become their ancestors, if we make that our objective. Because we can, we should aspire to evolve into celestial beings instead of devolving into celestial dust.

Notes & References

1. I thank Noam Chomsky, Jens Alber, John Hellegers and Jeremy Hammond for encouragement and advice.
2. Twain, M. (1899) “Concerning the Jews.” Harper’s Magazine, September 1899. Facsimile available at: http://www.s4ulanguages.com/twain1.html.
3. Hartung, J. (1995) “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality.” Skeptic 3(4):86-98. http://strugglesforexistence.com/?p=article_p&id=13.
4. With three exceptions (see notes 12-14 below) all biblical quotes are from the 1965 Oxford Press Revised Standard Version. Holy Bible, The (1965): Revised Standard Version. The Oxford Annotated Bible With The Apocrypha, H.G. May and B.M. Metzger (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. Perhaps best documented by Bernard Weinryb for 12th to 19th Century Poland [Weinryb, B.D. (1972) The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America] and by Yitzhak Baer for 11th to 15th Century Spain [Baer, Y. (1961) A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vols. I & II, trans. L. Schoffman. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America] as detailed by Kevin McDonald [MacDonald, K. (2002) A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples. Lincoln, NE, Writer’s Club Press]. For the United States’ entanglement with Zionism since 1947, see Mearsheimer and Walt [Mearsheimer, J. J. & Walt, S. (2007). The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy)].
6. Approximately the size of today’s Israeli Defense Force, including reservists (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/army.htm), which receives a 30 billion dollar gift certificate from the United States each decade to spend on U.S. military equipment (http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.583812).
7. There were two sets of sacred weights. A sacred talent equalled either 48 or 33 kilograms and a shekel equalled either 16 or 10.8 grams.
8. The concoction of the Nicene Creed in 325 A.D. notwithstanding, when Jesus prayed “Our Father who art in heaven …” he was not talking to himself. If one of Jesus’ disciples had asked him “Are you the god that you pray to?” … Jesus would have thought the question to be blasphemous. Western civilization is dominated by Christians and Christianity is theologically a form of Judaism. The central theological difference is that Christian Judaism holds that the messiah prophesied in The Bible (to Christians, The ‘Old’ Testament) came and left and is coming back, while traditional Judaism perceives that messiah as yet to come. Many of the approximately 30,000 followers of Menachem Schneerson in Brooklyn, New York, also believe, like Christians in reference to Jesus, that Schneerson (1902-1994) was the messiah and will be coming back [http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.602359]. Each of these groups, ranging in size from about 2.2 billion to 16 million to 10 thousand, is waiting for the biblical messiah … two of them for his return and one for his debut. All of that is too fantastic to warrant further comment, but the fact that Christians worship the same god that traditional Jews worship (Our Father who art in heaven)—and the fact that two thirds of the Christian Bible is the Jewish Bible in its entirety—has serious consequences. It means that reverence for some form of Zionism is inherent to Christianity—right wing, left wing, and every Christian persuasion in between.
9. Zeev Sternhell has accurately perceived the Israeli demand for recognition of Israel as ‘The Jewish State of Israel’ as a demand for “Unconditional Palestinian Surrender.” Sternhell, Z. (2014) “Unconditional Palestinian surrender.” Haaretz, April 18, 2014. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.586127.
10. For additional examples of the commandment to commit genocide against out-groups and boasts of having done so, see: Numbers 21:2-3; 21:34-35; 24:8; 24:19-20; Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:2-6; 3:21; 7:1-2; 7:16; 7:23-24; 9:3; 11:24-25; 31:3-5; 33:27; Joshua 2:10; 6:21; 8:2; 8:24-26; 10:1; 10:28; 10:35; 10:37; 10:39-40; 11:11-14; 11:21; Judges 1:17; 3:29; First Samuel 15:8; 15:15; 15:18; 15:20; First Chronicles 4:41; Ester 9:5-9; 15-16). See also: Rabbi Dove Lior on Israel’s right to totally destroy Gaza at http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Rabbi-Lior-Jewish-law-permits-destruction-of-Gaza-to-bring-safety-to-Israel-368605 … and “When Genocide is Permissible” by Yochanan Gordon at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/yochanan-genocide-permissible.html. See also Michael Prior, “Confronting the Bible’s Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine.” The Link, December 2000.
11. For additional accounts of enjoying the rape of female spoil of an enemy after partial genocide [sparing girls (“the little ones”) and virgin women], see Hartung, J. (2012) “Chastity, Fidelity and Conquest: Biblical Rules for Women and War.” In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War (pp. 77-90). Oxford University Press.
12. The Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text [circa 600-1000] (1917). The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia.
13. The Holy Bible: Old and New Testaments in the King James Version (1976). Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc.
14. TANAKH, A New Translation of The Holy Scriptures according to the Traditional Hebrew Text (1985). The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia.
15. “Nothing” in the sense that every particle and ray will eventually be beyond the light horizon of every other particle and ray such that there will be no interactions that could mark time. For a unique and perhaps notable contrarian perspective, consider Wetterich’s “variable gravity universe” at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212686413000332.
16. For example: Dyson, F. (1979) “Time without end: physics and biology in an open universe.” Reviews of Modern Physics, 51:447-460; Dyson, F. (1979). Disturbing The Universe. Harper & Row, New York; Frautschi, S. (1982). “Entropy in an expanding universe.” Science 217:593-599. Page, D.N. & McKee, M.R. (1983). “The future of the universe.” Scientific American, January- February. Frautschi, S. (1988). “Entropy in an expanding universe.” In Weber, Depew & Smith (eds.), Entropy, Information and Evolution, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Linde, A.D. (1988). “Life after inflation.” Physics Letters B 211:1, 2:29-31. Davies, P. (1994). The Last Three Minutes. Basic Books, New York. Linde, A. (1994). “The self-reproducing inflationary universe.” Scientific American, November, 48-55. Guth, A. (1997). The Inflationary Universe. Addison-Wesley, Reading. Kaku, M. (2005). Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos. Doubleday, New York.
17. Hartung, J. (1996). “Prospects for Existence: Morality and Genetic Engineering.” Skeptic 4(2):62-71. http://strugglesforexistence.com/?p=article_p&id=12
18. For an examination of ancient Israelite polytheism, henotheism and monolatry, see note 17 above.
19. Darwin, C. (1876). Charles Darwin’s Autobiography. (ed., N. Barlow, 1969), Norton, New York.
20. Darwin, E. (1794). Zoonomia, vols. 1&2. J. Johnson Company, London. See also King-Hele, D. The essential Writings of Erasmus Darwin, p 87. Trinity Press, London.