November 20, 2007 | 5:18 pm

Is there really a superior race?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn’t “the same as ours.” “Racist, vicious and unsupported by science,” said the Federation of American Scientists. “Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence,” declared the U.S. government’s supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied “that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn’t a scientific leg to stand on.”

I wish these assurances were true. They aren’t.

Gulp. Those are two powerful yet common words. And, man, Slate’s William Saletan has some chutzpah for being able to write such a politically uncomfortable, if not incorrect, article. But facts are facts. And Saletan has sort of been down this road before with ‘Jewgenics.’

More importantly, he isn’t using this as a platform to bash blacks.

Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern, and there’s strong preliminary evidence that part of it is genetic. It’s time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true. If this suggestion makes you angry—if you find the idea of genetic racial advantages outrageous, socially corrosive, and unthinkable—you’re not the first to feel that way.

He relates the mental-visceral struggle over racial genetics to the challenges Christians faced a century ago as Darwin’s theory of evolution became the scientific standard.

Evolution forced Christians to bend or break. They could insist on the Bible’s literal truth and deny the facts, as Bryan did. Or they could seek a subtler account of creation and human dignity. Today, the dilemma is yours. You can try to reconcile evidence of racial differences with a more sophisticated understanding of equality and opportunity. Or you can fight the evidence and hope it doesn’t break your faith. I’m for reconciliation. Later this week, I’ll make that case. But if you choose to fight the evidence, here’s what you’re up against. Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70.

The article continues with more studies, more evidence and an explanation. It gets a bit boring at that point, especially because I couldn’t stop wondering whether God would actually not create all men equally. Maybe. The Bible states that we are made in God’s image, but we are all different—physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.—so clearly there is no standard. I just don’t know the answer to this. Today, Saletan offered his third article on this topic, a breakdown of what the evidence of intellectual inequality teaches us and what we can do to close the gap.

Don’t tell me those Nigerian babies aren’t cognitively disadvantaged. Don’t tell me it isn’t genetic. Don’t tell me it’s God’s will. And in the age of genetic modification, don’t tell me we can’t do anything about it.

No, we are not created equal. But we are endowed by our Creator with the ideal of equality, and the intelligence to finish the job.

November 20, 2007 | 3:58 pm

Kosher clothing

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

My colleague, Jay Firestone, aka Video Jew, has this short on a sweatshop-free fashion show. Yeah, that’s his broadcast voice.

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November 20, 2007 | 2:35 pm

A controversy-free form of cloning?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Not likely. But look alive stem-cell-research foes, the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep has abandoned the widely used cloning method for one that creates stem cells without an embryo. This would, it seems, weaken the ethical argument against stem-cell research.

How do I know about embryologist Ian Wilmut‘s change of heart? Because I read about it on FaithWorld, a fantastic new blog from the Reuters religion desk that I added yesterday to my still-small blog roll. Here’s the FaithWorld post:

I was intrigued by a line high up saying: “Most of his motivation is practical but he admits the Japanese approach is also “easier to accept socially.” If I read that correctly, it means that science — which helped create this moral dilemma by developing the embryonic stem cell technique — may solve it eventually with another breakthrough that looks equally (or more) interesting to the scientist. That could take care of this issue, but others are bound to pop up that cannot be solved with a technical fix. Wilmot discusses this on a linked page publishing an extract from a book that he and Highfield wrote called After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Human Cloning. He believes an embryo cannot be considered a person until it is about 14 days old because it has no nervous system. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, counts personhood from the moment of conception, since it considers the potential in the embryo just as important as the cells that are already there. It’s hard to see how a technical breakthrough can bridge that gap.

Science writers like Highfield can explain the details of the procedure far better than I, so please look their way (here’s a quick Google News search) for more. What interests me is the impact this may have on opponents of embryonic stem cell research. Will they embrace this as the moral alternative, or oppose this as well as “playing God”? Would those who say they want the often-mentioned benefits of stem cell research but oppose public funds for the embryonic type on moral grounds now campaign to have this new method bankrolled with taxpayers’ money?

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November 20, 2007 | 1:14 pm

Sleeping with his brother’s wife

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A colleague just sent me an email with this subject: “Pastor in Atlanta fathers child of his brother’s wife ‘His nephew is his son!’ OY VEY.” I did a Google News search and found this story from the Associated Press last night.

DECATUR, Ga.—The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her.

Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk‘s family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test.

In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair.

The living proof of that lie is 34-year-old D.E. Paulk, who for years was known publicly as Earl Paulk’s nephew.

“I am so very sorry for the collateral damage it’s caused our family and the families hurt by the removing of the veil that hid our humanity and our sinfulness,” said D.E. Paulk, who received the mantle of head pastor a year and a half ago.

D.E. Paulk said he did not learn the secret of his parentage until the paternity test. “I was disappointed, and I was surprised,” he said.

 

Disappointed? Surprised? How about enraged and pondering violence against your birth father?

(Bonus: A snarkey piece from Wonkette)

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November 20, 2007 | 9:36 am

Evangelicals ‘over-committed to the Bible’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Ted Olsen writes about a talk by Biola’s J.P. Moreland at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Diego:

In short, to accuse evangelicals of over-commitment to the Bible at ETS would be like accusing environmentalists of talking too much about climate change at a Sierra Club meeting. But Moreland, who has gained some prominence as a philosopher and apologist, wasn’t pulling any punches.

“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.”

Suppose an archaeologist discovered a portion of the ancient city of Jerusalem that was specifically described in the Old Testament, Moreland said:

 

Could the archaeologist have discovered the site without the use of the Old Testament? Once discovered, could the archaeologist learn things about the site that went beyond what was in the Old Testament? Clearly the answer is yes to both questions. Why? Because the site actually exists in the real world. It does not exist in the Bible. It is only described in the Bible and the biblical description in partial.

 

Likewise, Moreland argued, “because the human soul/spirit and demons/angels are real, it is possible, and, in fact, actual that extra-biblical knowledge can be gained about these spiritual entities. … Demons do not exist in the Bible. They exist in reality.”

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November 20, 2007 | 12:15 am

This is parenting?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This is one of the saddest stories I’ve heard in a long time. I’ve had friends who have lost a child, and for some it has been an absolute breaking point in their life. It’s no wonder Megan Meier’s parents are separated and seeking a divorce.

But the worst part about the Meier family losing their daughter to suicide has got to be the complicity of an adult neighbor in the harassment of 13-year-old Megan. The neighbor helped create a fake MySpace account belonging to “Josh Evans” that was used to torment Megan with promises of attention and affection and then to deliver devastating messages.

Suburban Journals has a powerful narrative of the end and aftermath of Megan’s life. Here are her final moments.

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006, was a rainy, bleak day. At school, Megan had handed out invitations to her upcoming birthday party and when she got home she asked her mother to log on to MySpace to see if Josh had responded.

Why did he suddenly think she was mean? Who had he been talking to?

Tina signed on. But she was in a hurry. She had to take her younger daughter, Allison, to the orthodontist.

Before Tina could get out the door it was clear Megan was upset. Josh still was sending troubling messages. And he apparently had shared some of Megan’s messages with others.

Tina recalled telling Megan to sign off.

“I will Mom,” Megan said. “Let me finish up.”

Tina was pressed for time. She had to go. But once at the orthodontist’s office she called Megan: Did you sign off?

“No, Mom. They are all being so mean to me.”

“You are not listening to me, Megan! Sign off, now!”

Fifteen minutes later, Megan called her mother. By now Megan was in tears.

“They are posting bulletins about me.” A bulletin is like a survey. “Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat.”

Megan was sobbing hysterically. Tina was furious that she had not signed off.

Once Tina returned home she rushed into the basement where the computer was. Tina was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back at people.

“I am so aggravated at you for doing this!” she told Megan.

Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, “You’re supposed to be my mom! You’re supposed to be on my side!”

On the stairway leading to her second-story bedroom, Megan ran into her father, Ron.

“I grabbed her as she tried to go by,” Ron says. “She told me that some kids were saying horrible stuff about her and she didn’t understand why. I told her it’s OK. I told her that they obviously don’t know her. And that it would be fine.”

Megan went to her room and Ron went downstairs to the kitchen, where he and Tina talked about what had happened, the MySpace account, and made dinner.

Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence.

“I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet.”

Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday.

Later that day, Ron opened his daughter’s MySpace account and viewed what he believes to be the final message Megan saw - one the FBI would be unable to retrieve from the hard drive.

It was from Josh and, according to Ron’s best recollection, it said, “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.”

Read the rest of the story and you will be dumbfounded regarding how the idiot mother who helped her daughter taunt Megan can still live just a few doors down from the Meiers. I know what you’re not thinking, but in case you are—yes, God commands us to forgive. That’s a lot easier in the abstract, I’m sure. But, more importantly, this neighbor hasn’t apologized or asked for forgiveness. So should it be expected?

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November 19, 2007 | 5:20 pm

Silverman on Silverman on blacks and Jews

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Jewish Journal‘s cover story this week was an essay about Sarah Silverman by her sister, Rabbi Susan Silverman.

“Bitch, bastard, damn, s—t.” Okay, her menschiness has never taken a traditional form. But the crowds roared. The performer was 2-year-old Sarah. The stage was our living room. The set was our father’s lap on one of our giant round sponges—1970s artsy chairs—in orange and beige stripes, upon the bright green carpet of our living room. The audience was our house full of volunteers for the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, home at the end of a long day before the general election.

Sarah’s ear-length, jet-black hair and pale skin emphasized her big brown eyes, and she smiled so that every tiny tooth sparkled. Who wouldn’t laugh when this beautiful toddler—all eyes and smiles—swore like a longshoreman? A recipe for success? Our mother didn’t seem to think so. She rolled her eyes in mock disapproval as our father beamed. We, her big sisters, couldn’t believe our luck—this juxtaposition of adorable and crude. It was genius. We couldn’t get enough of it.

We had her perform for everyone. At large family gatherings, our Nana would say, “don’t let her say that,” but stood—transfixed, smiling—like the rest of us. Nana didn’t always love what came out of Sarah’s mouth and knew exactly whom to lay into when she went “too far”—her son, our father. One Saturday afternoon, Sarah sat in the family room, tush on heels, her elbows leaning on the yellow plastic coffee table. Nana stood in the doorway and said, “Sarah, what are you coloring?”

Sarah (focused on her work): “A house.”

Nana: “Guess what? I brought some brownies for you.”

Sarah (still focused on her work): “Shove ‘em up you’re a—, Nana.”

In light of that, I went searching on YouTube for the funniest Silverman moments. None of them were really God Blog, or even work, appropriate. But in the video above Silverman tells us the similarities she sees between elderly Jewish people and young black men.

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November 19, 2007 | 3:55 pm

Double the lashings for gang-rape victim

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You read that headline twice, right? I must have made a mistake. Judges don’t punish the rape victim. Right? Well, they do in Saudi Arabia. From Mere Rhetoric:

As predictable as it is infuriating as it is surreal:

The General Court in Qatif yesterday doubled the number of lashes for a rape victim… TA year-and-a-half ago in the Eastern Province town of Qatif, a seven men gang-raped a 19-year-old girl 14 times. Three judges from the Qatif General Court sentenced the rape victim to 90 lashes for being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape. The sentences for the seven rapists ranged from 10 months to five years in prison. The Appeals Court sentenced the victim to 200 lashes and six months in prison… A source at the Qatif General Court said that the judges had informed the rape victim that the reason behind doubling her punishment was “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”

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November 19, 2007 | 1:36 pm

Open thread: Anti-Semitic or uncomfortably honest?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Is this cartoon by Zapiro, who is Jewish, anti-Semitic or uncomfortably honest?

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November 19, 2007 | 11:15 am

Israeli commandos stalk Hollywood paparazzi

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rebecca Spence, The Forward‘s new reporter in town, had an interesting piece last month about former Israeli commandos serving security for Hollywood celebrities and oddities.

When Kevin Federline’s lawyer wanted to serve Britney Spears’s closest associates with subpoenas during the ill-fated duo’s recent custody battle, he hired a former Israeli commando to get the job done.

While this service may not have necessitated counter-terrorism expertise, the ex-Israeli operative who carried out the mission, Aaron Cohen, has built a career on the premise that protecting celebrities has more in common with nabbing Islamic radicals than may be apparent. Cohen, 31, is the founder of IMS Security — short for “Israeli Military Specialists” — a Los Angeles-based private security firm operating in the hostile territory of Hollywoodland.

(skip)

Guarding the likes of Brad Pitt, Jackie Chan and Eva Longoria, to name but a few, Cohen — with a minimum retainer fee in the range of $20,000 and a day’s work costing up to $1,000 — has applied the principles he learned detaining terrorists to keeping aggressive paparazzi and the occasional celebrity stalker at bay.

“Stalking is a form of terror,” Cohen explained in an interview in Los Angeles’s Fairfax district, sipping a cup of strong black coffee. “The formula is a lot like counter-terrorism, because you need to see who you’re dealing with before you freak out.”

Indeed, Cohen called the Spears subpoenas, carried out in mid-August, “pure counter-terrorism.”

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November 19, 2007 | 8:26 am

Evangelicals takeover America

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

D. Michael Lindsay, a sociology professor at Rice University, interviewed some 360 evangelicals for his new book, “Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite,” which seems to have inspired Christianity Today to interview him.

You examined four areas: politics, media, academia, and business. Where did you find evangelical leadership strongest, and where is it weakest?

The largest accumulation of evangelicals is clearly in the business world. And regarding their ability to make a difference, there is a pretty big difference between public companies, traded on the stock exchange, versus private companies. If you are the CEO of a private company run by you and your family, you have a lot of latitude.

The area with the least amount of influence would probably be in Hollywood. There’s really only one evangelical in the country who has the resources to “greenlight” a project, and that’s Phil Anschutz.

And he’s not in the traditional power structure there.

You got it. He’s an outsider who has clout; he’s not working through the existing structures. The existing structures are dominated by secular people. That said, there are more entrepreneurial energies devoted to Hollywood than I see even in the political domain. So I fully expect we will see some dramatic changes.

You infer a palpable distaste among the elite for evangelical culture—for its music, for its Thomas Kinkade artwork, for its suspicion of intellectualism and science.

That’s right. I would say two things go hand in hand that have the potential to cause deep divisions. One is the divide between mainstream cultural consumption and subcultural consumption—only listening to Christian radio, only buying your books from Christian bookstores. And then the other track is church versus non-church spiritual nourishment. Both of those have the potential to create deep divides in evangelicalism.

I think it’s too early to decipher what is going to happen. I don’t notice, for example, that this distaste for evangelical kitsch goes to a deeper level where there is distaste for fellow Christians. Many of the evangelical leaders would couch their comments in saying, “You know, these folks are so sincere about their faith.” They talk about going to Christian conferences where there are the Peter and Paul salt and pepper shakers, and they are dismissive about it. Later on they’ll come back to that as though their conscience is working on them. They’ll say, “You know, I went to one of those conferences and the couple told me about how those salt and pepper shakers meant something very important to them.”

What do you hope people will take away from your book?

There’s been a lot of attention on the stewardship of financial resources, but practically nothing on the stewardship of power. I hope my book will stir greater understanding of how to deal with the issues of power. At this point, the evangelical movement desperately needs more thoughtful reflection on Christians’ exercise of power. Because evangelicals have arrived. They have power that they didn’t have 30 years ago.

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November 16, 2007 | 12:31 pm

What’s so good about Judaism and the Boy Scouts?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“I see them as human values, not to say those aren’t Jewish values also. But I think it would be unfair to credit them to a certain sect of humanity. Listen, I think there is great stuff in Judaism; I think there is great stuff in Christianity; I think there is great stuff in the Islamic faith. I think there is great stuff in the Boy Scouts and Little League, all these different manifestations of these value sets. At the end of the day, I think they are just logical principles that one would arrive at if one didn’t know who they were going to be. It’s like ‘Alright, this is a basic set up for how to do right.’ Which you could say is a stronger word than good.”

Ben Goldhirsh, the 27-year-old millionaire behind GOOD magazine, told me that when I asked him if his company, which is aimed at people with a strong social conscience—like Mother Jones or Sojourners from a more humanistic perspective—was rooted in the Jewish values he learned as a kid. I profiled him in this week’s Jewish Journal:

Goldhirsh sees the GOOD brand, which also includes Reason Pictures, a film company he started in 2004, as much more than a media organization. It’s “a meta-company,” he said, “a lifestyle brand” that appeals to the “reason-based sensibilities” of people like him. People who know privilege and yet want to change the world in a big way.

“It is a revolution of self-interest,” said publisher Max Schorr, a prep school friend of Goldhirsh’s who skipped law school to help start the magazine. “In the past, if you pursued your self-interest, it was considered selfish. For us, the process of pursuing our self-interest leads to more than ourselves. If we just pursued ourselves all the time, it would lead to a lousy life.”

The timing for GOOD was not a month too soon. Not long before the first issue was published in September 2006, Al Gore (whose son, Albert Gore III, happens to be associate publisher) and “An Inconvenient Truth” made combating climate change fashionable; going green and being eco-friendly got downright trendy. Suddenly, it was cool to care not just about the environment but societal issues and the whole world around you.

“If doing good used to be a pejorative and kind of lame, or somehow was characterized that way by culture, which I don’t know how the hell that happened, then certainly being ignorant and living an irrelevant life is now that way,” Goldhirsh said. “An engaged life is where it is at, which is thrilling to me.”

Personally, Goldhirsh is “cause agnostic,” so he didn’t want to encourage some passions and stifle others; he simply wanted to celebrate a social awareness, which is why the magazine’s debut cover featured in white block lettering “_____ LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN.”

“If this doesn’t become the dominant sensibility,” Goldhirsh said, “we are f—-ed.”

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