Re: Moorad's comment is sound

In a message dated 6/23/2005 3:42:02 PM Eastern Standard Time,
rich.blinne@gmail.com writes:
If you can invoke Jewish theology why can't I quote a Jewish newspaper?
I'll tell you why. When I learned of Kevin MacDonald's trilogy on the
evolutionary strategy of Judaism I realized he had proven what I had written in an
essay titled Natural Selection and the Nature of God. I sent him my essay. He
replied that the conclusions in my paper were correct, in fact, the subtitle of
one book of his trilogy, "the evolutionary strategy of Judaism" was itself a
mirror image of my title (Natural selection=evolutionary strategy, the nature
of God=Judaism).

I joined the Human Behavior and Evolution Society just to attend a symposium
on his work at a conference in Amherst in 2000. Steven Pinker, Norman Wright,
Richard Dawkins, Robert Trivers, etc. were there but I was only interested in
the symposium on MacDonald with Tooby, Wrangman, Dan Kriegman and John
Hartung. I was able to see first hand Jewish professors talk about MacDonald's work
and see MacDonald defend it. One of them said he should be censored. But they
had no arguments and I see no argument against Harpending's work in the Jewish
Forward you quoted. Here is a quote from it:

"The only controversy among geneticists is how polite to be about this
study," said Montgomery Slatkin, a mathematician at the University of California,
Berkeley. Slatkin has written papers tracing the genetic history of sphingolipid
disorders, a cluster of four common diseases. "I don't know anyone who thinks
it's true."

Is that a reference? - "I don't know anyone who thinks its true."

He talks about struggling to be polite because THEY'RE ANGRY. THEY DON'T WANT
THIS IN THE NEWS!

Why is it so hot and in the Times and the Economist if there's no truth to
it? There are 3,500 scientists in the evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com

No one disputed the paper there, only the reasons for the high IQ. They
concluded in the Economist that Christian persecution caused the high IQ. The
headline was:
The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their persecuted
past

I know the high IQ is from self selection because of the preponderance of the
evidence and because they self select, they cannot say their high IQs are a
product of Christian persecution of Jews, which the Economist propounds. I've
argued on moderated evopsych that the Jews were self selecting because the
evidence is in the Bible and Jewish scholars themselves state that this is so! BUT
YOU WILL NOT FIND THAT IN THE NEWSPAPERS, especially Jewish newspapers.

Do you know that the growth of Jewish interest in the press began with the
Damascus Affair when after the disappearance of a Catholic priest a charge of
blood libel was brought against some Jews?
Benbassa and Rodrige in Sephardi Jewry (U of C Press, 2000, p.73) write: "The
Damascus Affair gave tremendous impetus to the expansion of the Jewish press.
A total of 18 Jewish newspapers were published between 1835 and 1840; between
1841 and 1846 their number rose to 53, with 13 in 5 European countries."

Jewish ownership of the press insures that public opinion never goes against
them, regardless of the circumstances. Their interest in the press waxed with
the Damascus Affair and has never waned.

I provided references from Jewish scholars earlier. If you respect the Jews,
how do you ignore their Torah scholars?

Please see this snip below from the Jewish Way in Love and Marriage:

The study of Torah is Judaism's highest ideal. Nobility in Jewish
society was limited to the wise men of the community who studied
Torah "by day and by night," not for the sake of gain or for
prestige, but *lishmah*, for itself. The very first petition to God
in the Silent Devotion prayed three times a day is a petition for
intelligence. The rabbis gave it such a high priority that they
declared,"A Torah scholar of illegitimate birth takes precedence over
a high priest ignoramus." Accordingly a priest's greatest achievement
is the marriage of a daughter to a *talmid chakham* (scholar) or a
son to a *bat talmid chakham* (the daughter of a scholar). The reason
for marrying a scholar is self evident in light of the hierarchy of
Jewish values. The Talmud says the reason for marrying a
scholar's daughter is "so that in case he dies or is forced into
exile, his children will be scholars" (because their mother as well
as their father, has espoused the ideal of Torah study).

Today one may add, the ideal wife *herself* be scholarly, not
necessarily only the *daughter * of a scholar.
The Talmud turns to hyperbole to emphasize the exalted goals one
should seek in a marriage mate: "All the prophets prophesied only so
that a person should marry his daughter to a Torah scholar"; and,
"whosoever marries his daughter to a Torah scholar, the Torah
considers him as though he cleaved unto the Shekinah (the indwelling
of God's presence)." This emphasis on scholarship, translated to a
secularized form, probably accounts for the disproportionate number
of Jews on the list of Nobel laureates and on faculties and campuses
of American colleges. Torah scholarship has thrived in all
the countries of the Jewish dispersion and in every century of the
Jewish millenial history despite the condition of the Jew, the degree
of persecution, the lure of alien temptations, or the abject
poverty of society.

The emphasis on learning, the selective genetics involved in marrying
the scholar - even to the extent of giving one's fortune for it- and
the insistence on having children imbued with that value is reason
enough for the superb development of the Jewish mind.

But what if there was no scholar to marry? The rabbis urge coming as
close to it as possible: "If one does not find the daughter of the
learned, he should marry the daughter of a *gadol ha-dor* [a man
great in wisdom and charity and leadership]. If one did not find
such, he should marry the daughter of a communal leader. And if not
her, the daughter of the keeper of the charity fund. And if not her,
then the daughter of the children's teacher. But on no account should
he marry the daughter of an *am-ha-aretz* [one ignorant of the law to
the extent that he is not sufficiently knowledgeable to be
careful with the observance of its details.
In sum, one should strive to marry as intelligent and intellectual a
person as possible, and to do so, it is proper to spend one's whole
fortune.
 
From the chapter Preferred Partners in Maurice Lamm's The Jewish Way
in Love and Marriage, Harper & Row, 1980 ppgs. 102-103

Maurice Lamm ackowledges his profound debt in writing his book to his
brother Dr. Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, Rabbi
ZviSchacter, Rosh Yeshiva, Head of the Kollel at YU, Rabbi David
Bleich, Rosh Yeshiva, faculty of Cardozo School of Law, Adaire Klein,
librarian at Yeshiva U of Los Angeles.

Note that the author rejects persecution as cause of the high
intelligence but actually calls it "selective genetics."

===================================

A quote from a Jewish newspaper is simply not reliable enough to argue
against a point that is well established (note the remark in the article that none
of the research is new).
They're practicing eugenics. They don't want it known. That's why Gould wrote
Non-overlapping Magisteria for Natural History magazine and said you couldn't
study religion from a scientific point of view, then he went ahead and wrote
The Mismeasure of Man to say there were no genetic differences in
intelligence. You CAN study religion from a Darwinian point of view and there ARE genetic
differences in intelligence and some human groups are breeding for
intelligence religiously - today - and it IS an evolutionary strategy as MacDonald has
coined it and it IS all in the Bible.

Even our American newspapers can't be trusted and you want to quote from the
Jewish Forward on Ashkenazi intelligence?

The sooner you all make a serious investigation into my arguments the sooner
I will let them lie. Kevin MacDonald's trilogy on Judaism completely changes
the Biblical perspective because his evidence substantiates the presence of a
Darwinian thread in the Bible that provides meaning that would otherwise remain
hidden in allegories.
Read one of his books. Visit his website. Send him an e-mail.

I have 4 papers you can read:
Natural Selection and the Nature of God.
True Religion: The Darwinian Interpretation of Biblical Symbols
HBES 2000: a journal entry on the MacDonald symposium
Bridging the Religion Science Divide, a review of DS Sloan's Darwin's
Cathedral
(on the web)

http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no2/rf-wilsona.html

Another is coming out soon in a book edited by the late paleoconservative
columnist Sam Francis and I hope at least the more adventurous of you get to read
it.

I just did a review of James C. Russell's Breach of Faith: The American
Churches and the Immigration Crisis for the Social Contract Press.

Why argue with me? Investigate my claims.

When someone has a secret, they try to keep it a secret, that's human nature.
Liberal Jews have been speaking out against eugenics for a long time. If
their orthodox groups are practicing eugenics, do you think they're going to put
it in press releases? No, they're going to deny it. They're not going to admit
it in the Jewish Forward!

That's why I can quote Jewish scholars like Gershom Scholem on Jewish
theology and scientists like Harpending on genetics and must rigorously object when
you quote Jewish newspapers in response.

rich faussette
Received on Thu, 23 Jun 2005 20:15:23 EDT