timeimmortal

Predictably, Shaukat Khawja is not pleased about this, and blames it all on “Zionist” media spin.

Like the US — the Zionist-contrlled mass-media in Britain also tells the public that Muslims are becoming a threat to the so-called “Western values”, refuse to integrate with local non-Muslim societies and don’t accept national practices of “liberalism” and “freedom of speech”.

That sounds about right. Shall we review?

First, there’s the issue of no-go areas, communities of predominantly Islamic immigrants into which non-Muslims venture at their own peril (Denmark has them too!). Then there’s the widespread support of things like Sharia law and legal disparity between men and women among younger Muslims in Britain (whose voices will be a part of what shapes what is to come for that country). The incitement to violent murder that is often preached in mosques in the United Kingdom is also concerning, as is the rampant and well-documented misogyny that accompanies Islam — and, in particular, Sharia law — wherever it spreads.

As to freedom of speech? Don’t. Get. Me. Started.

Not to be deterred by anything so inconvenient as the truth, however, Shaukat (a.k.a. Rehmat) continues:

Now, how idiotic these blames are, can be found from a speech given by professor Martin Amis of Manchester University — “Muslims are gaining on us demographically at huge rate. A quarter of humanity now, and by 2025, they will be third. ….Muslim community will has to suffer until it gets its house in order….I don’t hear from moderate Muslims, do you?….Strip searching Muslim people. Discreminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole Muslim community and they start getting tough with their children.”

Now, just imagine someone make the same statement with replacing the world Muslim with “Jews” — and find out how much “freedom of speech” exist in UK or the US or in UE countries. Mind you, it was in Europe that Jewish communities were expelled from almost every country — England being on the top of the list — for 350 years!

This is called shooting yourself in the foot, methinks; to at once demand proof that one can’t say unkind things about Jews and then follow it up with the observation that Europe has a massive, lengthy history of anti-Jewish bigotry is a textbook case of a self-defeating statement.

Not that I would expect any less from my good friend in Pickering, Ontario.

Of course, what’s even more amusing is how the quote from Amis and follow-on “thought experiment” actually do nothing to prove “how idiotic these blames” that Shaukat highlights are. The dispute over whether the media in Britain is or is not reluctant to print unkind things about Jews is irrelevant to whether or not the fears of the British populace are warranted or “idiotic.” It may well be that every media outlet in Britain is controlled by the Zionists…but if Muslims in Britain are something worth fearing, then the rest of the British people are still right to fear them, aren’t they?

British folk see Muslims as a growing threat in their midst. Is this really the fault of the distorted lies propagated by the Zionist-controlled media? Could there possibly be a more tangible reason? Could people possibly have a very real, true-to-life reason to be uncomfortable with their new Muslim neighbours?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

George Jonas muses on this subject in light of the recent fatal shootings which took place in Finland. I saw the newsbit about the shootings back when they happened, but didn’t really follow the story. Mr. Jonas, however, has taken his analysis in the same direction that my own thoughts went, at least initially. Whatever might have prevented the massacre at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, Gun control was not it: the Finns already have comprehensive gun control.

And in this particular case especially, it was the gun control apparatus of the Finnish state that contributed to the problem.

Note: per site policy and the excellent suggestion of Mark Shea from way back when, the name of the shooter has been removed from the excerpt below. May his name be blotted out!

One of [the shooter]’s two faces conveyed enough reassurance to make him the legal owner of a Walther .22 pistol, even after he featured himself on a Web site discharging his weapon in the direction of whoever was filming him, snarling at the camera in near-flawless English: “You will die next.” The video appeared on a local social networking site, causing the police to request an interview with him, but not to withdraw his permit. As police spokesman Mintala Urpo put it: “The officer made his decision — he thought there was no reason to take the gun off him.”

The officer probably let other people keep their guns that day who subsequently did nothing. [The shooter] did, though. The next day at around 11 a.m., he entered a classroom at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality. He carried some Molotov-cocktails — initial British press reports described them as “petrol-bombs” — along with his Walther .22. The pistol probably had a five-inch barrel as the original 3.4-inch barrel made the model a concealable weapon, unavailable for recreational use in Finland. This wise regulation didn’t prevent [the shooter] from reaching the classroom with his gun concealed — until he put it to what he may have regarded as recreational use.

Having shot seven women and two men in the classroom, the apprentice chef set off his gasoline-filled bottles, broiling his nine victims beyond recognition. Another young woman was shot in the hallway, and died later in the same hospital to which [the shooter] himself was taken after shooting himself in the head. By around 12:30 p.m., it was all over.

What could have prevented the tragedy? Gun control? Finland has gun control. [An e]ighteen-year-old…who last year killed six fellow students, a headmistress and a school nurse in the Finnish town of Jokela before turning the gun on himself, had to do it with a wimpy .22, a SIG Mosquito, as police wouldn’t let him buy a 9 mm Beretta. They thought [the shooter] wasn’t experienced enough. Presumably, after his shooting spree, he would have been.

Of course, in the wake of such tragedies as this, people look for something to blame. Some call for a ban on handguns, as though this would have a deterrent effect on would-be mass-murderers. The kid also had Molotov cocktails — shall we ban petrol and glass bottles along with handguns? Could not the shooter have obtained a handgun illegally, or simply gone about the task of murder using a rifle instead? George Jonas glibly suggests that the Finns should blame America (he is obviously joking, but his point is not one of humour).

Nobody would ever think to blame gun control or the chances in social attitude toward personal protection and firearms that has taken place in recent decades, would they?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Responding to this article, reader Bob Devine sends in his thoughts on my (very low) opinion of Britain’s implementation of Sharia courts.

Short and to the point. Except for Margaret Thatcher and a couple more (only a couple) the rest of those left wing kooks over there deserve exactly what they are doing to themselves.

I’m not so sure I’m ready to write off the United Kingdom just yet, but I will agree whole-heartedly that affording Islamic law any kind of legal recognition, especially binding legal authority can only lead to trouble, and then a lot of it. Britain stands upon the edge of a knife.

As I noted then: the Left has been having a spastic fit over Sarah Palin’s nomination as John McCain’s running mate, and more than a few commentators have said — apparently without irony — that the nomination of Palin will set women back X number of years or downgrade their social status to that of “uterus with feet.”

Meanwhile, over in Britain, the social status of women is now actively being degraded in just that way with the implementation of these sharia courts. And do you think Heather Mallick and her ilk have uttered so much as a peep about this issue?

[cue crickets chirping]

Anyhow, Bob also offers his comments on this article, concerning the cultural emasculation of men that has become so very prominent in many Western societies.

Feminism has affected more than the men in our society. Here is a link to ProWomanProLife that shows how it can affect women also. http://www.prowomanprolife.org/?p=654

I am glad I grew up in the time period I did (born 1939) I really do not care for the direction society today seems to be heading.

I find I agree. Modern feminism — as evidenced in the very harsh treatment the daughter of feminist icon Alice Walker received from her own mother, after deciding to marry and have a child — has parted ways with the ideals that began the feminist movement, which were genuinely concerned with equality and equitability. What remains is a truly horrifying thing indeed, infused as it is with eugenic and censurious sentiments.

I’ll come right out and say it: I hope that none of my Readers take the Book of Genesis 100% literally.

I mean that. But I should also clarify.

I hope, for instance, that my Readers take Genesis literally where the messages of faith it delivers are concerned. I hope that my Readers believe what is taught in Genesis about how all the world, and all the Universe, is the creation of God, and that life arose on Earth through the ordination and sustenance of God. I hope that my Readers believe that creation is “very good,” and that human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation, made in His image and likeness. I hope my Readers believe that the complementarity of male and female, of men and women, is a part of the design of God, and is intended to give image to His love for the world by the unique unity it is designed to evoke.

I hope that my Reader derives very strong affirmation for his or her faith from Genesis, in other words, and that the book itself imparts important messages of faith to the Reader.

On the other hand, I do not hope that the good Reader looks to Genesis as a historical account. In fact, not only do I not hope this, I actively hope against it. I hope that none of my Readers thinks the world is only a few thousand years old, that humanity preceded all the other creatures, or that dinosaurs and humanity co-existed for a time. And I hope that my Readers do not look to Genesis for their cosmological model of the Universe.

The Cosmological Model of the Ancient Hebrews

It’s this last point that I’m going to focus on in today’s discussion, because it serves as an example of a few things. First, by looking at the cosmological model presented in Genesis, and by comparing it against what we know today about the structure of the heavens, we can see that the descriptions of the structure of the world, and of the Universe, that appear in Genesis are not meant to be taken literally, as they are reflective of an Ancient Near Eastern understanding of such things only. Even more importantly, however, we will see that even most Christians are not total Biblical literalists, not even the most ardent Young Earth Creationists.

Because if they were completely, totally, 100% literal in their interpretation of the text of Genesis and the cosmological model presented therein (and through the whole of the Bible, as well), they would assert that the Universe is structured like this:

This is an earlier draft of an image I re-constructed in Photoshop for Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. The published version is a bit different, but this version contains all the important elements, and so will suffice. Let’s review what we see in this image.

First off, we have the firmament (Genesis 1:6-8,14-17,20, Psalm 19:1, Psalm 150:1, Ezekiel 1:22-26, Ezekiel 10:1, Daniel 12:3, Sirach 43:1,8), which separates the waters above it from the waters below it (Genesis 1:7).

Embedded in the firmament are the Sun, Moon, and all the stars — the lights of the heavens which separate day from night (Genesis 1:14-15,17). And the heavens are contained within the firmament; they are of the firmament (Genesis 1:20, Psalm 19:1).

This firmament, incidentally, is a hard dome, a fixed cosmological structure. The very word — firmament — implies (and, in Hebrew, actually means) something solid, something fixed. If one is completely literal in one’s interpretation of Genesis, there is no room whatsoever to argue that the firmament can be explained away as the great expanse of space; the word itself has a different meaning.

Excursus: What is the firmament? As noted previously, this is a cosmological structure which appears all through Scripture. The word is rooted in the Hebrew word raqa, which means “to flatten,” “stamp down,” “spread out,” or “hammer out.”

Notice a common theme there? Flattening, stamping, spreading, and hammering are all actions one applies to a physical object, and then a solid one. This is especially true of hammering and stamping. The nuance of the Hebrew word raqia (which we translate as “firmament”) is thus one of something solid, rather than of something expansive.

We see this elsewhere in Scripture, it should be noted.

“Exodus 39:3 and Isa 40:19 use raqa for pounding metals into thin plates, and Num 16:38 employs riqqua (broad plate) in a similar context. The verb raqa is even found in a passage referring to the creation of the sky, which is understood to be a firm surface like a metal. Job 37:18 asks, ‘Can you join God in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?’ (c.f. Exod 24:10, Job 22:14, Ezek 1:22)” (taken from: Denis O. Lamoueux, Evolutionary Creation, pp. 123)

Let us also remember: “firmament” is an English translation of the Hebrew term. Its root, ‘firm,’ implies solidity and hardness. The very word itself implies a solid structure. Something like is all well and good for referring to the firmament as “an expanse,” but that simply goes to show that Strong’s Concordance is hardly infallible: the Hebrew word which translates into “firmament” — raqia, implies something solid, and has always (until relatively recently) been understood as such by the Church.

And this same principle, it should be noted, can be applied to Strong’s treatment of “foundations” — in which the Concordance attempts to whitewash the solidity implied by the Hebrew words that we translate as such. Job 26:11 and 2 Samuel 22:8 refer to the pillars or foundations of the heavens, while other passages (Deuteronomy 4:32, to name but one) refer to the “ends of the heavens”. Likewise, well over a dozen references to the Earth having solid foundations can easily be found in just a few books of the Old Testament, as will be seen shortly.

What else is present, then, in the diagram?

We see the foundations of the heavens (2 Samuel 22:8,16) and the foundations of the Earth (Job 38:4, Psalm 18:15, Psalm 82:5, Psalm 102:25, Psalm 104:5, Proverbs 8:29, Isaiah 24:18, Isaiah 40:21, Isaiah 48:13, Isaiah 51:13,16, Jeremiah 31:37, Micah 6:2, Sirach 10:16, Sirach 16:19). The sea is also present, as is the land of the world (Genesis 1:9-10). Hades, the underworld, is also depicted (Tobit 13:2, Wisdom 1:14, Wisdom 2:1, Wisdom 16:13, Wisdom 17:14, Matthew 11:23, Luke 10:15, Luke 16:23, Acts 2:27, Revelation 1:18). The “Heavens of the Heavens” — the Highest Heavens (Psalm 148:4) — are represented, as is the dwelling of the Lord in the Highest Heavens.

This, then, is the view of the Universe of the people of the Old Testament, and would have been shared by all the Hebrews. It is also the cosmological model that the writers of the Old and New Testaments would have used when speaking about the Universe in any capacity. And if, O Reader, you profess the belief that Genesis is meant to be taken as a completely literal historical account, then this must be the cosmological model you profess as well…or else, you’re not a complete literalist.

You can’t profess this view of the solar system:

You can’t profess this view of the galaxy:

You can’t profess this view of the Universe:

If, O Reader, you are a Young Earth Creationist who insists on treating Genesis as a literal account of history, you must profess the belief that the Universe is structured as depicted in the first image in this posting, the image I drew. And, if you profess the doctrine of sola scriptura, you are especially obligated to reject the cosmological model presented in the latter three pictures, which is (more or less) the cosmological model presented to us by modern astronomy.

Reciprocally, if you argue that the cosmological model presented by modern astronomy is correct, you are not in adherence to the doctrine of sola scriptura, nor are you interpreting Scripture 100% literally. You are, in fact, augmenting your understanding of Scripture with scientific evidence, and shifting your interpretation of Scripture to match the empirical evidence that scientific inquiry into the structure of the Universe has discovered.

Either way, something must here be acknowledged: there exists a discrepancy between the description of the Universe, as presented in Scripture, and the shape of the Universe as has been observed by mankind.

Implications of this Discrepancy

The difference between the cosmological model presented in the Bible and the observed shape of the Universe is profound. They are not, in any significant way, similar.

On the face of it, at least, Scripture is simply incorrect about the shape of the Universe. That’s the main implication of this massive discrepancy: that Scripture is not inerrant and infallible.

So how, as Christians, do we address this problem, if in fact we believe that Scripture is inerrant and infallible? Well, if we believe that the Book of Genesis contains a literal account of creation, and that it is intended to be read as a historically/scientifically accurate work, we can’t address this problem. And in fact, this problem is one of many that utterly defeat our viewpoint. Faced with the overwhelming evidence that the shape of the cosmos is vastly different than is described in Scripture, there are only two options left open to a literalist:

1. Admit that Scripture is in error, OR
2. Denounce science, research, and empirical study as demonic

It should be obvious to the Reader, I hope, that the second option — though often indulged in by Christians — is fundamentally irrational, and also out of alignment with Scripture. The Bible tells us, quite plainly, that the natural world reveals the glory of God (c.f. Psalm 19, Job 12), and so shall be for humanity a source of truth and revelation. God Himself is not revealed in the study of the world and of the heavens, because God is not empirically observable. But the heavens and the Earth tell His glory and are a testament to His might and his ordinance of creation. So we cannot dismiss the study of the world and the heavens — science, essentially — as demonic, for God Himself, through the Spirit which inspired the authors of Scripture, assures us that this is not the case.

The strict literalist, then, is left with no choice but to admit that Scripture is in error.

Moving Past Literalism

To this point, we’ve only looked at the interpretation of Scripture from a strictly literal perspective, which Young Earth Creationists claim to do. Of course, in making such a claim, Young Earthers commit a hypocrisy of sorts, since it is clear that most Young Earthers accept a non-Biblical cosmological model to be valid. Were they really literalists, 100% of the time, their cosmological model would be the same as was used by the ancient Hebrews, which was also reflected in other cultures of the ancient world.

Let’s be realistic: ancient cultures did not have the sophisticated tools and rigorous methods that modern researchers employ. They did not have the means to analyze the world and the Universe in as much detail as we do in this modern era. Indeed, they had only their eyes, and what could be observed with them.

We see this reflected in Scripture. Every aspect of the ancient cosmological model presented at the beginning of this writing is explicable when one considers the ancient context of its promulgation. It made sense for ancient scholars to assume that the position of the Earth was fixed, and that the world was set upon firm foundations; can any of us feel the Earth orbiting around the Sun, and can any of us topple the Earth from its position in the heavens? Of course not.

Likewise, it made sense to assume that the sky was a fixed dome, in which the Sun, Moon, and all the stars were fixed — or, at least, it was a reasonable conjecture that this was the case. Likewise, it made sense to assume that a great sea was held back by the great dome of the sky, for how else might it come to pass that water should precipitate down from on high? And why else would the sky have such a sea-like blue hue?

This was the ancient understanding; the early Hebrews knew nothing of the vast distances that separate the stars, or of the nuclear fusion that drove the Sun, or of the fact that it was the rotation of the Earth — and not the movement of the Sun — which caused the cycle of days and nights. And the authors of Scripture — especially Genesis — would have understood the world and Universe through the cosmological model of their day. Their scientific understanding of things, if it can be called that, was an ancient one.

Is it possible, then, that we are meant to interpret Scripture in a less-than-completely literal way? Is it possible, then, that when we interpret Scripture, we must do so in the understanding that the science contained therein is the science “of the day,” and that it may not have been intended, by the Spirit, to be understood as a literal explanation of the ordering of the world and Universe? Is it not also possible, then, that we are not meant to interpret as literal what appears, at first glance, to be a historical account in Genesis?

As to a Child

When we explain complicated things to small children, we often have to use simpler examples drawn from the realm of the child’s understanding in order to illustrate our lesson to them. And additionally, we have to obfuscate. Think for a minute of, say, a song that is sometimes taught to children:

…the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone’s connected to the shin bone.
The shin bone’s connected to the ankle bone…

It’s not a bad learning tool, and a decent introduction to basic skeletal biology. And yet: which thigh bone? Which ankle bone? In both cases, there is more than one bone present in the actual human skeleton. But how do you explain that to a small child? The ankle more or less looks like it’s made of one bone, and feels as though it is — how do you explain to a small child, in a way that the child will understand, that there are actually many bones in the ankle?

And also: is it even important, for the purposes of the basic lesson you are attempting to impart to the child, to do so?

Accommodation

When we speak to children, we accommodate to their level of knowledge. We don’t bombard them with facts (or, at least, we shouldn’t) and precise details. We teach by using simpler examples, and by simplifying the concept being taught…for the moment. As children get older, we can teach them the finer details and more complex aspects of the lesson.

Is it possible, then, that God took this approach with humanity, his children? When the Spirit sought to inspire the ancient authors of Scripture to communicate a message of faith — that God is creator of all things — is it possible that instead of bombarding the authors with exhaustive explanations of atoms, amoebas, and astronomy, that the Spirit instead opted to accommodate to the ancient understanding of the author, and use the extant cosmological model of the day as a metaphorical vehicle for a theological teaching?

Could God not have opted to keep the Bible simple for us, that we might come to discover the more complicated aspects of the world and of creation when we were ready to do so…when we were older?

I don’t just think this is possible; I think it’s likely.

Humanity, at the time that many of the books of the Old Testament were written, was as a child in its understanding of the world and Universe. Humanity “thought like a child…reasoned like a child.” And even into the time of the New Testament, that understanding of the natural world had not advanced very much; still, we only understood as a child does.

Now, though, we have become something else. Humanity has grown; is it possible that we should begin to “put away childish things,” including the ancient understandings of the world and its origins?

The purpose of the Bible is not to tell us about the structure of the heavens, but to tell us about Heaven itself, about God, about humanity’s need for God, and about the glorious plan of salvation that God has effected and made manifest in Christ Jesus. The Bible, as Galileo so ably put it, tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.

Perhaps it is time that we respected the Bible enough to admit this.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

…but some commenters are…crazy.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/09/11/mtl-turcotte0911.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r4:c0

Two in a row say that Jean-Claude Turcotte either should not have been given the award (if so, then so should not evry other person appointmed by that committee) or should have been stripped of it.

Another argues that human babies in the womb are not more important than born humans (they are not — all humans are of equal, high dignity) and goes on to claim that they are not as important as those killed in ‘back alley abortions’¹. The poster mentions ‘hundreds’ of such women while neglecting the fact that over 100 thousand babies are killed due to abortions. I say killed only because I wish to speak within the current legal framework, although each direct abortion is morally akin to murder, with certain mitigating factors such as compulsion lessening but not eliminating culpability. As a result, the poster is claiming that unborn babies are worth, AT MOST, 1% of a born woman. Even giving generous numbers for back alley victims — in the 10 thousand range — would yeild a value of one tenth. If one thinks an unborn child is worth, say, half as much as an adult, abortion on demand is a moral tragedy, let alone if one thinks mother and baby are of equal worth. Henry Morgentaler apparently saved countless Canadian lives (the ‘hundreds’ or even ‘thousands’ of women from back alley abortions) but since there are a finite number of women in Canada, they can be counted, as can the number of Canadians killed because of abortion (to the tune of 100 thousand unborn Canadians a year).

As to the Church wanting ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ women, that does not follow from an apreciation for the feminine genius and for, arguably, the only thing which one sex (female) can do that the other cannot — carry children in pregnancy. (I think that everything else has at least an analogue in both sexes — competition in sports, management of organizations, contribution of gametes — and any differences are only of degree, not kind (lifting 700 pounds versus 400 pounds, for example)). Just because the Church promotes that which is unique to femininity (and to masculinity) and the particular ways in which, aside from pregnancy, one sex has greater ease or proclivity with certain aspects (say, empathy or spatial orienteering), but not the monopoly on said aspects (men can be very empathetic, women great in spatial thinking, even if women tend to have greater empathy and men spatial ability (whether they do is an empirical question which I do not have an answer for, but I am using these as illustrative exampels only)), does not mean that She wishes to determine the life course of individual people. (Holy run on sentence, batman)

That She prescribes and proscribes various actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy does circumscribe an area in which our actions can describe a moral life or not. But, I would think that the church would say that a couple comprised of a wife who was a successful lawyer, say, and a husband who was quite nurturing and worked part time in a school to help children with early literacy and was otherwise a househusband would be perfectly alright. That the woman would have to take some time off of work for children is not the Church’s fault and the Church would actually ask that her employer support her in her journey of motherhood with leave and employment guarantees. That is the way She would approach mothers-to-be, not by admonishing them to return to the kitchen and their husbands to ‘man up’ and get ‘real’ jobs. The Church supports the uses of the gifts of the husband and wife to the betterment of their family and of society, however that may come about. She simply reminds us that there are some things which nature imposes on us and which we must respect, lest we, say, birth control our fish to death by lack of reproductive ability through our abuse of our own nature and that of the rest of the world.