Other Religions – Page 14

Interracial Marriages

A correspondent writes:

when i see inter-racial couples my spirit tells me that this is not natural. i have seen the child of an inter-racial marriage. the child had a black skin, had a white scalp with bright red hair. the child looked like a freak

I can’t agree with you, nor does the Church. From a moral perspective, differences in skin color are no more significant than differences in hair color or eye color. Neither are other racial characteristics. The human race is already one big family; it’s simply that certain characteristics have come to predominate in different parts of that family.

From the perspective of intrinsic morality, there is no more reason for people with different skin colors not to marry than for people with different hair colors or different eye colors. That may lead to uncommon combinations, but hey, I always thought Storm from the X-Men looked cool.

There can be extrinsic reasons why individuals of different racial backgrounds ought not marry. E.g., two hundred years ago in America a mixed-race couple would face an extremely hard life, including in some places imprisonment or worse. For example, in early Utah Brigham Young decreed that any white man who had conjugal relations with a black woman was to be put to death:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so [Journal of Discourses 10:109].

Fortunately, in the developed world, the attitudes creating such factors have virtually disappeared.

Let me share with you the Bible’s perspective on interracial marriages. First, they are not at all unusual in Scripture. Palestine is located at a major junction between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and so mixed race marriages were far from unknown. They occasionally crop up in the Bible. For example, two of the tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Manasseh) resulted from the union of the patriarch Joseph (a Semite) with the daughter of Pharoah’s high priest (an Egyptian, and thus a Hamite).

Scripture also records God’s intense displeasure at the criticism of one particular interracial marriage. In Numbers 12 we read that Moses’ brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, criticized Moses for marrying a black woman (she is described as a Cushite, meaning she was probably of Ethiopian ancestry):

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.

And the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the door of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them, and he departed; and when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.

And Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. And Moses cried to the LORD, “Heal her, O God, I beseech thee.”

But the LORD said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut up outside the camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again.” So Miriam was shut up outside the camp seven days; and the people did not set out on the march till Miriam was brought in again [Num. 12:1, 5, 9-11, 13-15].

In this passage the text notes that Miriam, who had been criticizing Moses for marrying a black woman, was turned “as white as snow” by her leprosy. It is as if God is saying, “You want white? I got yer white! I got yer white right here!”

The Vacation From Hell

This is a picture of a person suffering in hell. He (?) is swimming in a pond of blood. The surprising thing is, this is an exhibit that you can go see in a museum. A whole museum full of images of people suffering in hell. Children go to this museum with their parents.

You might be thinking, “What kind of sick-o Fundamentalist thing is this? This is like what Jack Chick would do if he decided to turn one of his comic tracts into a museum! Such a bizarre ‘educational effort’ could only contemplated by the most hardcore Fundamentalist!”

Wrong! It isn’t Fundamentalist at all.

It’s Buddhist.

Yes, that’s right. I know that the media loves to portray Buddhists as peaceful and calm and serene and enlightened, the kind of people whose faith would never believe in something as offensive as hell, but those media reports give you about as much of a sense of what Buddhism is actually like as Taco Bell gives you a sense of Mexican food is like.

In reality, Buddhists have all kinds of ideas about what hell is like, who goes there, what specific punishments are meted out for what sins, etc. To be fair, Buddhist hell is more like purgatory since you can get reincarnated and try again after suffering in hell. It’s still gruesome as anything, though.

What is fascinating is that Buddhists would build museums and theme parks with hell exhibits. If that were done here in America, it’s would be regarded as kitchy at best and offensively revolting in all likelihood. Yet it’s something apparently is an established trend over there. The photo above is from this hell museum in Singapore. There’s also an amusement park with a hell exhibit in Vietnam. And yet another hell museum in Japan. WARNING: Not for the faint of heart! Some material definitely offensive to Western sensibilities.

A Hard Spanish Lesson

As I’m sure y’all know, the Spanish recently suffered the tragedy of a terrorist attack on their rail lines, killing hundreds of people. As a result, some are now referring to the event as "Europe’s 9/11," though the comparison is somewhat inappropriate. The American 9/11 was larger by a factor of ten. As tragic as the Spanish event was, it is not on the same plane. Let’s hope that Europe doesn’t have to feel the pain of a true 9/11-size event.

As I’m sure y’all also know, the Spanish then responded very inappropriately in the wake of their attack, when came just before a national election. The Spanish electorate kicked out their incumbent government, which had supported the War on Terror and the liberation of Iraq, and chose an appeasement-oriented government whose prime minister-elect promptly took to scolding the U.S. and promising the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq.

This was criminally stupid for all kinds of reasons.

What did the Spanish get for their efforts in sending appeasement signals to the terrorists? More terror. How they could have expected anything else? Did they think that the terrorists would say, "Oh, now that the Spanish have turned tail and shown their cowardice, we’ll leave them alone"? Couldn’t they see that instead the terrorists would say, "Now that the Spaniards have shown they are cowards, let us press the advantage"?

You can’t play appeasement games with such people. All it does is embolden them. They want you to be afraid. That’s why they’re called terror-ists. If you give in to the terror then all you do is turn them into successful terrorists, and that will encourage them to keep going after you so that they can get more concessions from you.

What is jaw-dropping about this situation is how the Spanish, of all Europeans, thought appeasing Islamic terrorists would work. Don’t they know their own history? Don’t they know that their land was under Muslim rule for centuries until it was taken back shortly before the discovery of the New World? Don’t they know that Usama bin Laden has referred to "the tragedy of Andalusia"–by which he means the fact that the Spainiards’ ancestors kicked out the Muslims occupying the country–as one of the things stuck in his craw about the way the world is right now?

Spain, of all places in Europe, is the part Muslim Fundamentalists most want back in their hands, because it is an embarrassment to them. They had it, and they lost it. In their view, it is by rights part of Muslim territory, currently occupied by Christian infidels. As a result, the Spanish need to show more strength and resolve of will in dealing with Muslim Fundamentalists than other Europeans.

But apparently the Spanish do not realize this. They have been lulled into the same lazy stupor of fear and appeasement as the rest of Europe.

This creates problems, and not just for them. For us. The reason is that the terrorists don’t understand the difference between Europeans and Americans, and they are likely to try the same tactics on us that they tried on the Spanish. These won’t work. Americans have more resolve in dealing with the problem than Europeans, and attacks on us will only serve to further enrage us and redouble our efforts against the terrorists. But the fact is that the terrorists aren’t very bright guys. If they were, they would realize that there are better ways to get what you want in life than what they’re trying. Terrorists are just violent criminals with an ideology, and criminals in general aren’t a bright sort. As a result, terrorists are likely to try the tactics on us that worked on Spain.

We must now be extra vigilant.

Thanks for nothing, Spain.

Muhammad Was No Astronomer

After yesterday’s discussion of the pope’s role in modifying the leap year rule to keep the calendar astronomically accurate, it may be worth noting an enormous problem that exists in the calendar of another world religion: Islam.

You probably know that in the Muslim calendar the holy month is Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during daylight hours (approximately). But do you know when Ramadan falls during the year?

After recent events in the War on Terror, you might guess that it occurs in the winter on our calendar (remember that there was a question of whether we should use military force in Afghanistan during Ramadan, shortly after 9/11?). That, however, is true only right now. The truth is that Ramadan–like every month in the Islamic calendar–wanders throughout the full range of the year.

The reason is that Muhammad set up a calendar of 354-355 days, almost eleven days shorter than the solar year (which is 365.2422 days). This means that Ramadan is free-floating. Every thirty two and a half years it wanders through the full circuit of the solar year. If a child is born in a year when Ramadan is in the winter then when he is eight years old it will occur in the fall. When he is sixteen it will occur in the summer. When he is twenty-four it will occur in the spring. And when he is thirty-two it will be in winter again.

The same is true not just for Ramadan but for every month and every day of the Muslim calendar. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and every other day of the calendar wanders through the course of the solar year. By contrast, geophysical days–equinoxes, solstices, and dates to plant your crops–wander around the calendar.

This virtually destroys the purpose of having a yearly calendar.

The concept of the year is inescapably tied to the motion of the earth around the sun, and to have a calendar that gets the solar year so wrong (by more than three percent!) is useless for periods of more than a handful of years. After that, geophysical considerations make it obsolete, and people have to fall back on something other than the calendar to figure out when to plant their crops and so forth.

(Another problem–which I won’t really go into–is that Muslim countries are not even all agreed on when precisely different months begin. Ramadan, or any other month, may begin on one day in one nation but on nearby day in a different nation. It depends on what the clerics say.)

As a result, the Muslim timekeeping system is not suited to the modern age or to a global economy. It is destined to become a liturgical calendar that is detached from the realities of global life. Since the business world today uses the Gregorian calendar set up by Pope Gregory XIII, Muslims will increasingly use that calendar to the extent that their nations develop. This will only inflame the passions of Muslim radicals who want everyone in the world to use the calendar their faith employs. Seeing the West further exalted as Muslim countries increasingly use the Western calendar–seeing that being successful today means being Western–will not be good for future relations.

The ultimate reason for this is not that when the Muslim calendar was set up that people knew less about the solar year. At that time in the west the Julian calendar, which is far more accurate, was already in use. When in the 1500s the Julian calendar got ten days out of synch with the solar year (less than the Muslim calendar slips out of synch with it each year), Westerners considered it intolerable and fixed the calendar so that it would stay accurate for millennia. People have known the length of the solar year to within a day for thousands of years. The reason the Islamic calendar is so problematic, simply put, is that Muhammad was no astronomer.