Re: On the morality of evolution
Guess it was just me then lol. Spinoza’s modes or divine attributes and El’s children seem to perform similar functions in relation to God himself. I suppose the speculation was less literal and more a thought that Jewish doctrine would have the same objections to the idea as to polytheism (or the Christian trinity now that I think of it), so I’m surprised Spinoza’s God is in fact based on a common conception of God.Originally Posted by sumskilz
Ah ok. I was under the impression that the true identity of El as Yahweh or vice versa was initially a theological source of conflict between Judah and the other tribes. If memory serves, the earthquake in 760 BCE precipitated a clash between the cults of Baal and El precisely because El was considered impersonal and therefore inferior to Baal as a source of divine aid. I had thought the origin myth of a single nation of Israel under a single God El/Yahweh must’ve therefore come after that period, possibly as a result of the Assyrian conquest and the religious conflict with Baal.The historical narrative you’re piecing together here comes from various hypotheses I’m pretty sure are wrong in one way or another.
In the Late Bronze Age, El (whose name is simply God) was the head of the pantheon throughout Canaan. He was the father god, the creator god, who was wise, compassionate, and eternal. His consort was the mother goddess Asherah.
The earliest certain mention of Yahweh is a Ninth Century BCE stele commemorating Mesha the king of Moab’s victory against Israel during the reign of Ahab. In it, Yahweh is presented as the god of the Israelites. Inscriptions from Kuntillet ᶜAjrud and Khirbet al-Qom refer to “Yahweh and his Asherah”, “Yahweh of Samaria”, and “Yahweh of Teman”. Samaria is both the heartland and capital city of the Kingdom of Israel. Teman means the south.
The popular hypothesis is that the conception of the monotheistic God grew out of a fusion of El the Canaanite father/creator god and Yahweh the national god of the Israelites. However, Psalms 118:27 refers to El-Yahweh. This can be interpreted as “El [who] causes to be”, which suggests the possibility that name Yahweh simply began as one of El’s epithets. Likewise, we know from 2 Kings 23:6–8 that until sometime in the reign of Josiah (c. 640–609 BCE), Asherah (El’s consort) was venerated in the Temple of Yahweh, consistent with the extrabiblical sources mentioning “Yahweh and his Asherah”. Throughout the Bible, one of the most important Israelite shrines to Yahweh was at Bethel, that is Bēṯ ᵓĒl meaning “The House of El” or the “The Temple of El”.
If I recall correctly, Josiah was installed by the priesthood to reverse the polytheistic practices of his father and grandfather and codify certain oral traditions from the Torah into law. But I don’t think that yet meant other gods didn’t exist, only that they shouldn’t be worshipped. Perhaps I misunderstand that point though. My understanding of Ezekiel is to reassure a nervous Jewish diaspora that assimilation by Babylonian gods couldn’t succeed because those gods didn’t exist and the real God had a special covenant with the tribes of Israel, signaling the arrival of monotheism as Abrahamic religions know it today.The reforms under Josiah were wholly monotheistic before the Babylonian Exile. There were probably parallel versions of the Mesopotamian creation/flood myths in Canaan before the exile, and the Babylonian exile wouldn’t have been the first opportunity for Judahites to have been exposed to Babylonian literature. Nevertheless, several myths which appear in Genesis demonstrate clear engagement with Mesopotamian stories, as in the texts author(s) appear to expect the reader to be familiar with them, so that the way they were reworked can be seen as a polemic.
Nevertheless the concern was driven by the growing incorporation of Babylonian myths into Jewish oral tradition, like creation, Noah’s flood, tower of Babel, and the fear future generations of Jews would forget their heritage in such a way. I thought it was ironic that many of the myths in Genesis are supposed to be a byproduct of foreign influence seen as negative by some Jewish leaders at the time, so there might’ve been some dogmatic need to resolve the conflict and reconcile pantheistic stories to monotheism. If Jewish panentheism is a byproduct of Greek philosophical influence, my speculation on this point is irrelevant anyway, unfortunately. Is that a reference to the Septuagint?
I would say the idea of an absolute and superior moral code is not scientifically falsifiable, so Kaplan makes sense in that regard. I think there’s a fundamental difference in approach between the idea that only one moral code is correct, and natural observations which suggest certain behaviors humans generally consider moral vs immoral can be materially justified (disgust, anger, altruism, peer pressure, etc). These can be systems, yes, but the the assertion that a certain system is inherently correct and superior to all others is what science can’t explain, so it just seems to be a solution to a problem of its own making. One could argue that applies to religion in general, but even so, to describe it as something science can’t explain presupposes there ought to be an explanation. I’d wager there are any number of philosophical systems that explore the nature of consciousness without a God, but I don’t know that makes them inferior to ones with a God, descriptively or otherwise.The term “god of the gaps” refers to seeing God as the explanation for that which has not yet been explained by science, which leaves an ever shrinking space for the explanatory power of God. Kaplan was referring to those things that science simply cannot address. There is no scientific evidence for the existence of right and wrong, no scientific evidence for human rights, and there never can be. Science can offer explanations for why our species develops moral systems, but it can never confirm or falsify the inherent value or accuracy of any particular moral proposition.
Kaplan was writing in the 1950s, at that time, many of the Jewish movements had been moving toward embracing a worldview based on strict scientific materialism. Yet, the issue with that position is that it leads to the logical conclusion that there is nothing inherently better about Jewish traditions and morality than the beliefs espoused by the Nazis. But of course that isn’t what Jews believe, so the term transnatural theology was meant to be descriptive, not explanatory. It’s a description of a belief, not a justification for believing it, and a recognition that no justification can be found within the confines of strict naturalism.
My understanding is Kaplan’s goal was to divorce Judaism from the supernatural, because the latter is untenable under naturalist premises. But even if one assumes God ought to exist as a description, it doesn’t seem self-evident that the transnatural would have any more descriptive value than the supernatural, unless natural law and the existence of God inherently conflict on some level. The abrogation of natural law is only a problem worth solving if one needs to conform to naturalist premises in the first place, which themselves are informed by the kind of evidence deemed insufficient or otherwise invalid a priori.
Even if it really is the intangible virtues of [insert group] that contributed to their survival and success relative to others, I’m not sure how that would be able to describe other, contradictory value systems which nevertheless helped other group(s) in the same way. If God is goodness itself (Judaism?) and not the anthropomorphic deity which gave goodness to the people, what is the descriptive value of God as a mark of superiority, as opposed to other forms of exceptionalism - particularly if loyalty is more valuable than belief? I haven’t read enough of Kaplan to know if he talks about it, but perhaps it has more to do with Reconstructionist Judaism than with his views in particular.
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