Severed Hand, or Not?

In Ki Teitze (Devarim 25:11-12) we read:

"When there will be men fighting together, a man against his brother, and the wife of one gets close to rescue her husband from the hand that is striking him, and she extends her hand and grabs tightly his embarrassing place (genitals), you will cut off her hand- there shall not be pity in your eye."

Rashi quotes the Gemara (Bava Kamma 28a) which is a page about taking the law into your own hands, and using excessive force and when or not it is appropriate.

"Come and here: (Devarim 25:12) 'You will cut off her hand.' MAMON (financial). Does not this ruling apply even if she cannot do anything else to save [her husband]? No, [the punishment] only applies if she could have saved him some other way, and she is exempt from punishment. But if so, why does it say "and she extends her hand", rather than that of the beit din (court)? Could not this argument be made in a subsequent clause [by adding] she is treated like an officer of the court, and that she could not have saved him any other way - so she is exempt from punishment.

Now several things bother me about this Gemara.

1. The first word, "mamon", if removed, reads equally well.
2. Why quote "You will cut off her hand" rather than "If she extends her hand" unless "You will cut off her hand" was assumed, and the discussion goes on about "and she extends her hand".
3. At no point do we find any financial wording ("she will pay", etc.).
4. At no point does it question the use of "you shall sever". This is the only place in all of the Talmud that this sentence is quoted, and one would think that "Do not read it as..." or some such thing to clarify the source of thinking "you will sever means something else", even "Halacha l'mMoshe m'Sinai" is missing.
5. Payment is to compensate for a loss. At no point is a "loss" ever discussed, while in all other cases around it, loss or potential loss are discussed.
6. It appears that the discussion is how to lighten the punishment, based on her point of view that she had no choice.

So I am wondering if is it likely that the word "mamon" was an editorial insert because the idea of chopping off a woman's hand was unacceptable. If so, that certainly is a good thing!

It is something to ponder.

Objective Morality

Having working in nearly a dozen different computer languages over the past 40+ years, a couple that come to mind are Lisp and Prolog, which were both considered AI languages of their day. In using them, you would define parameters and let the program produce a result, determining the most effective pathway based on the parameters given. It was a completely different way of looking at a problem, but one that is worth noting because of a problem we have in defining Morality.

If I were to define the parameters for an Objective Morality (OM), we would have a linear model, where a "+" (good) is at the very end of the horizontal line, and a "-" (bad) is put at the opposite end, with a "0" (neutral) is placed right in the middle of it. We now need to define direction and magnitude. Let's start with magnitude.

The magnitude will be defined by the quantity of the effect multiplied by the duration, which will always be a whole number raised to the next integer value. If the number of people (quantity) affected is zero, or if the duration of the effect is zero, then there is no magnitude and the event will be treated as neutral. A repeated event will cause a linear addition of the magnitude, and the time form (seconds, hours, etc) will be based on the highest form in the addition.

Now for the direction, which you can visualize as an arrow sitting on top of the "0" in the middle of the line, will either be pointing to the left (bad), to the right (good), or straight up (neutral). We now need a measurement to cause this directional setting to occur. Using freedom/oppression as the general concept as applied in a great number of papers on Well-Being and related topics, I chose to use that as the general director.

For example, if a husband slaps his wife in the face for not bringing home any beer, that is considered oppressive. She has no freedom from pain, both emotional and physical. This occurs at least a couple of times a week, so we would double the magnitude of "bad". And it has been going on since he lost his job a year ago, which would extend the magnitude of 2*52 (duration) times 1 (quantity). Now if there are two children at home who see this happening, who have their freedom to feel security threatened, then we would triple the quantity, making this a very bad thing indeed.

In a real example, a girl was trying to learn to read, and a man came by and shot her in the face as an example to the other girls in the village, so that they should not be learning to read. The magnitude to the minus is quite long. When she is taken to another country, where a plastic surgeon restores her face, and she is brought back to a point where her physical and emotional oppression are eliminated, then the direction arrow sways to the other direction, as a good thing. She now can return to her village where she had become a symbol for freedom. If she does nothing more, it is neutral. But if she seeks to encourage freedom for others, to free girls from the oppression of the village bullies, then that is a good thing.

But we are basing this one freedom versus oppression.

This works fine until we do just one more thing - once we add religion into the mix, then the entire enterprise falls apart. If the holy text tells you that a man is free to hit his wife or that females learning to read is forbidden by God, then, according to those who give credence to such things, you cannot label it as bad.

My wife brought up an example that provides a minor expression of that.

If you are Jewish and you hand over your baby son to the mohel to be circumcised, is this good or bad? After all, the man will hand the child over to someone, who will make sure that if the child squirms, he will be kept in place while the mohel takes his knife, causes pain, daubs the bleeding point of flesh with a gauze, and puts a bit of cloth that was soaked into the baby's mouth to dull the pain.

Certainly, on our scale, the arrow would be pointing to the minus side, as bad, although the magnitude would not be so great unless there was a problem during the procedure or during the time that follows. But it is still bad, using this programming logic. But we cannot call it bad because God said that we have to do it, and once you apply religion to the mix, the formula falls apart, because religion overrules everything else.

So in the world, where there is religious violence, religious intolerance, and religious indifference, so long as we give "religion" the ability to overrule any logical application of what is right or wrong, then it is valid to say "who are you to apply your morals to another society"? This was true in the USA when it came to slavery, as Andrew Jackson held up the Bible and proclaimed that "God is on our side, for we follow His word!" From that view, slavery could not be judged as bad, because God told Moses that it was OK.

I bring this up because the faithful cannot say "without our book, there is no such thing as objective morality". As you can see, we can define an objective morality that is not associated with any holy text. However, our global problem is that we give all religions a free pass, resetting the arrow from "-" to some other direction, saying "wife beating in that culture is supported by the Koran, and so it isn't bad" or "slavery is approved by God, and so it isn't bad".

Religious morality is not objective morality. Is that good?

A Final Geocentric Wrap-Up

Here is the last email that I sent on the subject, and will most likely be the last thing I am going to say about it. One note before pasting it here: Saying that the sun goes around the Earth is no different than driving a car and saying that the car is still, but the Earth is spinning under you. Read further and see why some hold:

Dear Listmates,

There have been some nice points on this topic, and while an earlier post of mine somehow fell into that “black hole" we call the Internet, I thought it would be good to summarize the 5 items rather than just re-send it.

1)      RELATIVITY: The example given by Einstein was a train moving quickly and a person dropping a ball, and the person on the train sees it as falling straight down while the person outside, looking through the glass walls sees it curving. However, this comparison falls apart for the geocentrist because, like this example, we have two data collecting and reporting satellites, one approaching the edge of the SOLAR system (not GEO-system), and one that is nearly so, which, like the observer outside of the train, can validate that the view of an earth-centered SOLAR system is not what is going on in reality, even though it is a comfortable view for some non-scientists.

2)      TIME: Since the earth is still, to the geocentrist, and slanted at 23.5 degrees, according to science, the Earth will have no seasons to speak of (about every 6 hours it will change, which is the same as none at all) as the sun whizzes around the Earth every 24 hours.

3)      SPACE: If you hold the Earth as the center, and have the moon, Venus, Mercury, and the sun (pick whatever order suits you) whizzing around the Earth, the distance of the Earth from Mars will increase by about 800%, taking about 6 years to fly there from Earth, rather than the current REAL time of less than a year. I have seen very complicated models trying to set up the GEO system, but they all fail on keeping the current verified measured distances (confirmed by external crafts hurtling through space – the external observer with advanced measuring equipment).

4)      TRUE: I asked a week ago if someone could draw a picture of a GEO System (versus a Solar System) where time and space will match externally confirmed reality. If one can be made where the sun and all of the planets are the same size and the same distances from one another with the same orbiting speeds that have been externally verified, I am willing to accept that there is a plausibility (within religion and philosophy) that the GEO-System model has some sort of merit. Until then, I withhold that.

5)      FALSE: Some have said that just because something is unlikely, it doesn't make it untrue. It is more correct to say that, with theories, they express the greatest plausibility and possibility of truth until proven wrong, and then, they are not true at all. There are many examples of failed theories. With NON-theories, (such as Young-Earth-Creationism, Flat Earth, and Geocentrism, to name a few), they are considered false unless there is evidence to justify their consideration, and if they fail peer review, they fail and are false, not simply “less true”.

The difference between religion and science is that, with religion, you can interpret something in unique ways, and while it may not be accurate, it will have validity in its application. This is true in Midrash, for example, and that is a good thing.

In science, while there are areas where one speaks of plausibility, some things are more or less plausible, but there is no such thing as more or less true, just more or less plausible. For once it is disproved, it is false, in science (and that process may take a long time), while in religion, it remains. So it is incorrect to say that Geo-Centrism is “not AS true as heliocentrism”, but, rather, it a false concept of the universe that we long discarded once we invented the telescope that can be used on this world, as well as ones that hurtle among the vast reaches of our SOLAR system.

I don’t think that I can add anything else to the topic. I updated my blog to reflect this. I leave the rest to you.

UPDATE

The list manager responded with a few points. I will not post the long reply, but it comes down to this.

1) Quotes a paper that he never read. The paper is how you can use, in science, a Geocentric model for satellites that are close to the earth rather than a standard one, providing that adjustments are made. No argument there, but we were discussing planets that are not near the Earth, which the authors were not proposing.

2) He claims that the sun wobbles as it travels around the Earth, so there will still be seasons.

3) This answer was short, so I repeat it in full:

"And again there is a second motion of Mars, which matches the sun's (above) and a third order one around the sun."

Which made no sense in reference to how Mars would be incorrectly measured at a six year difference.

4) In requesting him to draw a map of his solar system that would have matching values of our existing reality, he wrote:

"But the distances and time won't be exactly the same -- relativity includes lorentz contractions of both."

 Which is saying that our measurement will only appear to lengthen, while ignoring that if a ship leaves the Earth and arrives on Mars 10 months later, which model is that reality representing?

5) Skipped it.

I had to finally quit that list. I can only deal with Flat Earthers, Young Earth Creationists, and Geocentrists for only so long. Life is too short to try to convince the deluded.