david f,
As with 'natural selection', I think there is the danger for us to generalise too easily – our comments can be cheap, as they do not often require difficult thought. The clam article was interesting. The covert, or “kinky” asexuality, the article speaks of is short-lived, where “..traditional, female-only asexuality typically leads to a swift extinction.. [and].. Male-only asexuality is likely to lead to extinction too, but faster..." The generalisation it does make (and perhaps a good one) about all sexuality, however, is almost biblically intricate, “Genes are inherited only from the father, via his sperm (or pollen, in the case of the tree).” This is suggestive of an ‘order’ existing outside the bounds of mere ‘random selection’ – the generalisations we make about this ‘order’ are perhaps more the problem.

The reality you advocate, I’d enjoin and say all races, religions and cultures are a part of humanity. The Merchant (or Jew) of Venice is an example of Shakespearian complexity - from where you drew your quote. It is one of his so called ‘problem plays’. Is Shylock's forced conversion to Christianity a "happy ending" for the character? This ‘conversion’ redeems Shylock both from his unbelief and his specific sin of wanting to kill Antonio? This reading certainly fits in with the anti-Semitic trend of Elizabethan England, but a conversion translating to an ethos of “not to kill” cannot be all bad but even 'redemptive'.

I trust you don’t refer to the 'dark' Zionism of Theodor Herzl, the movement he founded by in 1896 whose goal was the return of Jews to Eretz Yisrael, or Zion, who also wrote is his diary, “So anti-Semitism, which is a deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character, education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt.” And written in the same vein, “one cow in Palestine [is] worth more than all the Jews in Poland.” - Yitzchak Greenbaum

Dear Relda,

Look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman. He argues that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result to some extent from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics.

If that is true evolutionary development is not random. I intend to read “Investigations” which he wrote describing the idea.

A Jew does not have to turn to Christianity to find an ethos not to kill. It is a trick of language to call not believing in Christianity unbelief. It is common usage to define believing in another religion as unbelief. Shakespeare could not ignore the prejudices of his time and place, but his Shylock is more complex and many sided than Marlowe’s Jewish creation. George Eliot almost three centuries later was attacked for “Daniel Deronda” in which an upper class Englishman became a Jew.

I find the mission of being a ‘light unto the nations’ not too different from the ‘white man’s burden’ and other constructs which assume one group of humans has a superior outlook which others should follow. Look up http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/opinion/25Cohen.html?ref=opinion for American exceptionalism.

A factor molding our character is the belief in an invisible God. More than belief in a God incarnate an invisible God promotes speculation and abstract reasoning. The pages I cited from “The Death of Sigmund Freud” promotes that idea. The resulting respect for learning has been a factor in producing Einstein and other thinkers.

Dear Relda,

Herzl founded the Zionist movement, and I did refer to him. I have never heard it called ‘dark’ Zionism. I am not a Zionist, but I think I would have been one if I had been living in Herzl’s time. It’s easy to be right using hindsight. I used to be a Zionist and gave it up when I saw the incompatibility of ethnic nationalism and democracy. At one time I thought they could be compatible.

Vladimir Jabotinsky foresaw the Holocaust and thought Jews could escape it by going to Israel. In retrospect he was right.

Zionism like any other nationalism contains a spectrum of views. Some like Martin Buber and Ahad Ha-am were very concerned over relations with the indigenous population of Palestine. Others saw a land where Jews could be free from the restrictions in the rest of the world. When serfs were fred in Russia Jewish farmers were forced off their land which was given to the former serfs. Occupations that were forbidden to Jews in parts of Europe could be practiced in Israel. That was possibly the main motivation for Zionism at the time. A Jew would be free to be anything he or she was capable of being.

The Dreyfus trial where a Jew was framed as a spy in democratic France inspired Dreyfus to advocate Zionism. In the democratic United States Leo Frank was lynched for a crime he didn’t commit. In Russia a czarist functionary saw Russia ridding itself of Jews by 1/3 converting, 1/3 emigrating and 1/3 being killed.

It is common for politicians to use threats, real or imagined, to unite their constituency. One of the factors in preserving the Jewish people, in my view, is antisemitism. An outside enemy which threatens but is not virulent enough to destroy promotes unity. In English speaking countries Zionism has been turned on its head. With the decline of antisemitism assimilation is regarded as a threat that Zionism counters. At present I feel that if our survival has a point we should be able to survive in a non-threatening democratic society

david f,
The morality in “not killing” certainly doesn’t need Christianity to uphold it (or invent it) – and especially not Pauline Christianity, whose teachings demonstrate a "long battle against Judaizing." Judaism, however, is equally disparate amongst itself (as you note) as are the many forms of Christianity, and morality is often more reflective of the age in which a religion is practiced, irrespective of belief. Shakespeare, for instance, may or may not have been anti-Semitic but he used the historical backdrop of anti-Semitism in Venice during the Elizabethan era to create a play with historical validation. He was probably quite careful to neither endorse nor subvert Elizabethan anti-Semitism – the latter, in particular, was certainly a precaution for self-preservation. I find any idea of eradicating the Jewish identity through assimilation, or a covert conversion (e.g. Jews for Jesus) to other forms of belief pretty unacceptable.

The Gaia theory contends ‘self-organisation’ operates through the coevolving diversity of living organisms - the most extreme form of this theory is that the entire Earth is a single unified organism; in this view the Earth's biosphere is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life. Many scientists deny the possibility of this view, however, such a view is certainly considered within scientific possibility. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and geologist, through his belief that evolution unfolds from cell to organism to planet to solar system seems to find a similar parallel.

I probably sounded a little tough calling the Zionism of Herzl “dark”, for he believed that the Jews, once settled in their own State, would probably have no more enemies. And it was quite a reasonable belief, given the virulent anti-Semitism of ‘Christian’ Europe - Herzl pessimistically came to believe that this would never change. The only redemption for the Jews, he thought, was to establish their own nation. The Jewish people would be sovereign, with a seat in the council of nations and be able to relate to other people as the separate nations they apparently were.
cont’d..

..cont’d
Eastern European Jews were inspired by Karl Marx, and the idea of the equality of all humanity. Moreover, Jews had always been prohibited from owning or working the land in Christian Europe, the only way truly to make a living. Most Jews, however, saw their future as Europeans and until the rise of Nazi Germany, Zionism was supported by only a small minority. Many Jews, especially in Britain and in Germany, were confident that "progress" and democracy would eliminate the need for a national home or refuge for the Jews, and that Jewish nationalist agitation would only exacerbate anti-Semitism (which, I guess, it did).

It’s ironic, the seed of religious intolerance has led to the formation of Israel as a secular Nation State. In 1961, the U.S. liberal and conservative rabbis alike condemned Ben-Gurion's theology as "erroneous." The American Jewish Committee declared itself "grieved and shocked" by the suggestion that Jews have an obligation to emigrate to Israel. The anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism said, "Our nationality is American; our religion is Judaism. Our homeland is the U.S., and we reject the concept that all Jews outside Israel are in exile." The spirit of this is, “We are a people, one people "— whether in Israel or the U.S.

On reflection, I find it a little ironic that the formation of Israel had it genesis in a messianic and Triumphal Christianity, demanding a total conversion, and the Zionist Jews needing a haven in finding for themselves a piece of real estate on which to retreat. In the midst of the deepest degradation of the Jewish people and at a time of the most disgusting anti-Semitism, they made a flag out of a rag and a people out of a decadent rabble, and were able to rally this people around such a flag.

Relda, you've lifted that second paragraph of your post from the page www.crystalinks.com/gaia.html, and I can't see what relation it has to the topic or the rest of your post. You appear dishonest by not putting it in quotation marks.

Also, James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis, was disappointed that his idea was misrepresented by hippies as evidence of a sort of intelligent earth-mother god. The hypothesis simply states that all natural systems on the earth are interlinked and interdependent, in the same way systems are in a living organism.

It's a premise that is now fundamental to natural and environmental sciences.