Giving It a Myth

My correspondent, cited in my previous piece, included this paragraph in her response:

I never claimed that the myth had to be true or it did not; I define the term "Myth" as such: a story that codifies the collective moral codes of the people they represent. All moral codes are arbitrary, as can be proven by the fact that Nazis did what they did (their moral code excluded Jews as human beings), why homosexuality was condoned in ancient Greece and Japan, and even why the Torah condones slavery and genocide (as in the case of Amalek). All a Myth does, regardless of the truth behind it, is codify beliefs in story form.

Rather startling, my friends, the spectacular moral blindness promulgated in the halls of "higher education" today. Not to mention the lack of willingness to reason from a premise. I can imagine the demolition job a G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis would do on this, but they are not here, so it falls to me to do my worst. This is a very lovely girl who essentially means well - I am permitted to be patronizing; I have daughters of my own - and is trying to sort out the world of ideas with, sadly, disappointing early results.

O.K. Let us count the ways:

1) Myth is a story that justifies the moral code of the people it represents.

Again, as I said earlier, this is a clever Orwellian construction designed disingenuously by anthropologists. By using a phrase that always historically meant "a story that is an expression of a fantasy, not a reality" to serve as the word to designate the central narrative of a given society, they undermine the notion of objective truth in either history or ideology.

My theory (offered in my role as public intellectual, without benefit of a degree in the specific discipline) better describes life and better predicts events. I said that the central narrative of a group or movement is the truth of its history and purpose. To the extent that falsehood creeps into the main recounting of events and presentation of ideas, to that extent is the society or grouping doomed.

Thus any effort to replace truth with a myth can only have staying power in direct proportion to the amount of objective verity that is inserted into the mix. Bill Clinton did not use his war contribution as a central theme of his candidacy, so his draft-dodging did not defeat him. John Kerry made his military service the centerpiece of his campaign, so when it turned out to be flawed that brought him down.

The reason why the Bible saved the people whose existence depended on it through 3300 years of ups and downs, including multiple defeats, destruction, dislocation, separation into small exilic clusters, and even a Holocaust, is simply because it is true. As such it always survives the temporary setbacks.

2) All moral codes are arbitrary, as can be proven by the fact that Nazis did what they did (their moral code excluded Jews as human beings).

Frightening, really. The proof that moral codes are arbitrary is from the fact that someone arbitrarily made a bad one. Can we prove that all marital vows are arbitrary from some commune which announced they are initiating communal free love as their form of marriage? Can we prove that all property rights are arbitrary from some dictator nationalizing everyone's businesses in his country? Grabbing the reins of power and proclaiming that your violation of universally accepted normative ethics is actually the introduction of a New Ethics is intellectually and philosophically meaningless. It proves nothing at first.

Later, when objectively awful damage is wreaked upon humanity by applying that code, it serves to prove the original code is the truth.

3) As to the Torah condoning slavery, that is true, but it does not promote slavery.

It accepts the fact that slavery exists in the economic reality of a pre-industrial world. It creates workplace protection for the slave, by revoking ownership if the master wounded the slave's body, even if he only knocked out a tooth. If a slave is killed, the murderer is culpable. These protections did not exist in secular or idolatrous societies.

Once the machine age replaces the slave, there is nothing in the Bible encouraging people to capture new slaves.

The genocide of Amalek is not condoned, it is commanded. This accepts the premise that the Creator can decide a particular nation has lost the right to live and may prophetically command another nation to administer that penalty.

The proof is in the pudding. If Jews took this as an invitation to wipe out infidels on their own volition, they would be a mean, aggressive society. Instead they have been gentler and less violent that any other nation of history. As the late philosopher-poet Abraham Elijah Kaplan, head of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary, wrote (On the Trail of Awe) circa 1925: "Where are our bloodbaths, where are our massacres, where are our genocides?"

To sum up, the modern "secularist" ideology is a religion of its own, the faith of anti-religion. To escape the strictures of being instructed, it will deny truth, logic, good faith, morals, ethics, reason, intuition, conscience and finally, even the very fact of our humanity.

The Torah says to live by its truth or be an animal; they answer that as animals they are not bound by any code. So, you see, in the most profound sense of things there is no disagreement at all. The lady or the tiger? Turns out the lady thinks she is a tiger.