The Chisum Memo

My friend just sent me a memo dated February 9th, 2007, penned by Republican Representative Warren Chisum of Texas (SHOCKER!) that outlines how "evolution science" has a religious agenda and is therefore illegal in the public school system. I kid you not.

It's the obvious next step in the argument for Intelligent Design: accuse evolution of being exactly what ID is accused of being. At this rate, the only thing our kids are going to learn in school is how to poke rocks around with sticks.

After all, our Arabic numerals were based on Buddhist inscriptions. Many theories in mathematics came from those who followed Egyptian and Greek mythology. History has a lot to do with religion, obviously, and I can think of a a few books we read in English class that made mention of God, or were at least written by Christians, Jews, Atheists, and everything in between.

Of course, there's a difference between public schools exposing kids to different religions and telling them which religion is right. We need to trust our kids to take it all in and form their own views, thoughts, and opinions. It's the parents' jobs to set the moral, religious, and ethical compass. That heavy responsibility belongs to no one else but you, Mom and/or Dad.

I'm tempted to go off on a tangent here about censorship to "protect the children!" But we'll stay on task. Getting back to the memo...

Indisputable evidence--long hidden but now available to everyone-- demonstrates conclusively that so-called "secular evolution science" is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate "creation scenario" of the Pharisee Religion.

Holy Hell! Indisputable evidence! Well, shit, I love indisputable evidence! And it's conclusive, too! Hot damn!

This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic "holy book" Kabbala dating back at least two millenia.

Whoa. Holy book is in quotations. That denotes sarcasm. So this so called book of "holiness" is not to be believed at all! Neat.

The memo goes on to provide three links to this conclusive proof which, strangely enough, all come from one website. Hm. Well, since this is conclusive proof, I'm certain that these links will also cite sources and further proof to back up the claims. It's conclusive and indisputable, after all. Let's take a look see.

This first link gives the purpose of the Bill in a generic form useful to other Legislators and BOE members:

http://www.fixedearth.com/HB%20179%20PART%20I%20MODEL.htm

The second link provides the court cases and Kabbala-related evidence to support the Bill:

http://www.fixedearth.com/HB%20179%20PART%20II%20ATT.EVIDENCE.htm

This third link is optional. It is included to supply more evidence for those who want it.

http://www.fixedearth.com/HB%20179%20PART%20III%20ADDENDUM

Just for shits and giggles, let's pretend Kabbalah's (wth an H) teachings aren't rejected by most Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jewish circles.

Link #1 pretty much just spells out what the memo does. Evolution is not at all secular, and we have indisputable proof. Marvy. Moving along to this proof.

Link #2, aka, the Evidence, has all sorts of pretty colors. Section 2 on this page lists all the various times that creation was ruled inappropriate to be taught in a public school. Section 3 pretty much says, "Now we're going to show you proof." Okay, get on with it.

Finally in Section 4, we get to the meat.

“Nechunya ben HaKana, a 1^st century Kabbalist asserted that if you know how to use the 42 letter name for God you could decipher a lengthy time between the creation of the universe and man. He estimated the age of the Universe at 15.3 billion years, some 2000 years ago, the very age modern astrophysics have just arrived at….”

Thankfully, they have provided a source for this. It is a Harvard scholar of world religions? Perhaps a Doctor in Jewish Mysticism? Well, we'll never know. As you can see by clicking, the link goes no where. Googling "Nechunya ben HaKana" and "creation of universe" turned up only this statement made by this website and nothing more. Can anyone else verify this claim?


That's all assuming that our man HaKana's deciphering is right. Which... well.. it's not. While the estimates are anywhere between 10 and 20 billion years, the general consensus is 13.7 billion years, give or take 20 million. Sorry, Nechunya.


Moving on...

“I show in my book (The Heavenly Time Machine: The First Six Days) procedures and commentary that lead to a universe age of between 14 and 16 billion years, depending on which procedure one chooses to follow. Some of these numbers can be traced back to the first century almost 2000 years ago. There is a deeply hidden knowledge in the Torah that yields these numbers….”

I don't have this book, sadly. The estimates here are a bit closer. Luckily, the web page provides a link to the essay this is quoted from! But don't bother clicking. Another mysteriously missing nugget of evidence. On the bright side, peez.com is for sale.


Luckily, I'm not a complete idiot. A bit of Googling uncovered a glaring typo in the provided link! It's not peez.com! It's pcez.com! The funny thing about this site is it doesn't pull evidence from any Kabbalic text. It pulls evidence from the beginning of Hebrew Bible. Also known as the Christian Bible's Genesis and Old Testament.


The quote above is cut off. But actually reading the whole article points out that many Jewish scholars interpreted the creation of the universe in the Torah, aka Genesis, in many different ways.

I show in my book procedures and commentary that lead to a universe age of between 14 and 16 billion years, depending on which procedure one chooses to follow. Some of these number can be traced back to the first century, almost two thousand years ago. There is a deeply hidden knowledge in the Torah that yields these numbers. But the truth is that I do not really understand it, and all I can do is report what others have done. I noted before why ordinary people, like this writer, are not privy to this knowledge. Here is one example, connected to the 974 generations that I mention earlier.

So some scholars came to this figure, others did not. The old "monkeys at typewriters" line of thinking. Engelson even closes his essay with:

How old is the universe? I do not know, precisely, and neither does anybody else. Except perhaps the "wise kabbalists" that Nachmanides refers to. But they and the angels, who know the deepest secrets of Torah, are not telling.

Nachanides? Kabbalah? Aha! Is this the evidence we're looking for? Not exactly. Earlier in the essay:

Here is how 13th century Kabbalist and Torah commentator, Nachmanides explains it. "Know that the term 'day' as used in the story of creation was, in the case of the creation of heaven and earth, a real day, composed of hours and seconds, and there were six days like the six days of the workweek, as is the plain meaning of the verse. " He then goes into a kabbalistic explanation involving sayings and emanations, known as sefiroth, because "Emanations issuing from the Most High are called 'days,' for every Divine Saying which evoked an existence is called 'day.'" But he can not tell us very much because these matters involve secrets. And even that which he tells us is shrouded in mystery and "I do hereby firmly make known to him [the reader] that my words will not be comprehended nor known at all by any reasoning or contemplation, excepting from the mouth of a wise Kabbalist."

In the old days before Madonna and red string bracelets, Kabbalah was reserved for only the chosen Rabbis who studied the Torah with the intent of figuring out life's secrets. So this essay is far from evidence. Even Christians can interpret the same exact writings in different ways to come up with an age of the universe.

“…Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan quotes R Yitzchak of Akko (a student of Ramban, late medieval) who concludes from the Zohar that the first creation was 15.8 billion years ago—the age astronomers and physicists seem to be converging on, given multiple ways of measuring the age….”

For the sake of expediency, again, lets assume the Rabbi of Akko came up with this figure. It's still wrong. This evidence comes from a FAQ about Jewish culture. Scroll down to question 12.3 which asks "Does modern science (e.g., "big bang" theory, evolution, the age of the world) contradict traditional readings of the Torah?" It's a question all people of faith should be asking themselves.

And how does this collection of Jewish scholars and rabbis answer this question?

Probably, but science is getting better all the time and one can expect agreement eventually...

Seriously, there are numerous neo-traditional readings that put new interpretations on various commentaries and are allegedly compatible with Orthodoxy.

Judaism has a long tradition of not interpreting the creation narrative of Genesis 1 literally. Rambam [Maimonides], for example, warns at the beginning of his [5]Mishneh Torah that the literal reading of the opening of Bereshis [Genesis] is for the masses. [The non-literal reading he had in mind was metaphysical, not scientific. See [6]The Guide for the Perplexed.] Both literalism and non-literalism have a long history, yielding a variety of resolutions of the problem of creation and science.

Once again the answer is "it depends on who you ask," not "OMFG WE INVENTED EVOLUTION TO RUIN X-IANITY AND AMERICA LOLZ!!1!" No conclusive evidence here, either. This is looking bleak. And increasingly anti-Semitic.

“Let’s look at the development of time, day by day, based on the expansion factor [1 million times 1 million from start till now]. The calculations come out to be as follows:

• The first Biblical day lasted 24 hours…But…from our perspective it was 8 billion years.

• The second day of 24 hours…was 4 billion years.
• The third day of 24 hours…was two billion years.
• The fourth day of 24 hours…was 1 billion years.
• The fifth day of 24 hours…was ½ billion years.
• The sixth day of 24 hours…was ¼ billion years.

Then you add it up [Kabbalist physicist Schroeder continues] and you get 15 ¾ billion years…the same as modern cosmology allows….”

Once again, the magical and wrong number of 15. And even then, it says right there "from our perspective." Still no evidence. Once more, this "perspective" can be achieved with Christian text as well. A way of interpreting religion to fit with science. While they don't provide the source, it's clear that this is a modern scholar who didn't invent evolution. Dr. Schroeder had both the Torah and evolution in front of him when he came up with his theories. Further evidence that this is NOT evidence of evolution being invented by Kabbalists.

Let's skip ahead a bit. This "conclusive evidence" is getting us no where.

It is now known that the Kabbala, the most holy book the Religion of the Pharisees, is the source of all the concepts which make up today’s Big Bang "Origins Scenario", and it is that Scenario which provides the billions of years required by the “theory of evolution” which the Courts have heretofore viewed as “secular evolution science”.

Glossing over the fact that no, no there is no evidence that "Kabbala" is the source of evolution, let's just tackle that first chunk, "Kabbala, the most holy book in the Religion of the Pharisees."

Once more. Quoth the Wiki: "Kabbalah esoterically interprets the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and classical Jewish texts (halakha and aggadah) and practices (mitzvot), as expressing a mystical doctrine concerning God's simultaneous immanence and transcendence."

There is no book "Kabbala" or Kabbalah. Let's assume they meant the Torah. Another typo. Kabbalah is studying the Torah for hidden meaning, right? Right, let's assume they meant the Torah.

Now, the Christian view of the Pharisees isn't a very positive one.

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in." (Matthew 23:13 RSV).

And then the Pharisees got Jesus killed. Yeah, the Christians don't like the Pharisees too much.

But wait! We already established there isn't any Holy Book called the Kabbala. No, it's the Torah. And sure, the Pharisees followed the Torah along with what was called the Oral Torah. The Pharisees eventually becamed the Rabbinic Jews whose views and philosophies are still practiced today by orthodox and conservative Jews.

So... basically what we're getting as is that evolution is all a sham invented by the Jews.

Link #3 gets only more disturbing.

What kind of “Jewish physics” is it that has garnered 26% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to all the Physicists in the world when the total Jewish population is only ¼ of 1 percent of the world’s population? That means that a Jewish physicist is 104 times as likely to win a Nobel Prize in Physics as any other physicist. When other prestigious international awards in physics are counted in (e.g.,the Wolf Prize; the Max Planck Medaille; the Dirac Medal; the Dannie Heineman Prize; the Enrico Fermi award; the Atoms for Peace Award) the percentage of Jewish physicists who win is over 43%. This makes a Jewish physicist 172 times as likely to win as any other physicist. Interesting, isn’t it?

Jesus. That's really scary. No, not the part about the Jews taking over "science," but the fact that someone believes that the Jews are taking over science. I don't even know if the math is right here, anyone want to tackle that?

What's interesting to me is that Jews are more often able to fit their faith into science than Christians are. Throughout history, Jewish people have been able to look beyond their Holy Book while, as all this "evidence" shows, Christians, historically, have not. Early Jewish scholars were able to view beautiful old language as metaphors, studied beyond the black and white text to discover much more about this world than what was just in the pages of an old book.

The evidence for evolution has always been here. It didn't pop up all of a sudden when Darwin started looking at it. These scholars didn't see the evidence for evolution, blame it on devils and ignore it completely. These scholars saw it and fit it into what they knew: religion.

Katherine Harris is Wrong, Pt. 1

“We have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers. And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women and if people aren’t involved in helping godly men in getting elected than we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that’s certainly isn’t what God intended. … we need to take back this country. … And if we don’t get involved as Christians then how could we possibly take this back? …If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong.”

You remember Katherine Harris, right? Those words are hers, fom The Florida Baptist Witness, first published August 24, 2006. We know she lost the Florida Senate bid in 2006, and that even Republicans were distancing themselves from her when it came down to the wire.

We'll be coming back to her to debunk more of bullshit. For now, let's just tackle this single, insane rant. Why bother? She lost the election after all. The fact remains that there are people who believe her, and voted for her. So if ever you need to argue with people who share her view, I'm going to give you some ammo.

Let's go through some of the nuggets I've put in bold.

...that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state... -Katherine Harris, 2006

This is a common one from conservative Christians with a political agenda. So what, exactly, is this term? We've all heard it, but what does it mean? Where does it come from?

The concept of separation of church and state is outlined somewhat vaguely in the first amendment of the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Like any other old-timey documents, (the Bible for example,) this is open to interpretation. Respecting can have a few meanings. It's very carefully worded. It could mean that Congress can make no law in regards to the establishment of a religion. Or maybe Congress can make no law preferring a single religion over another.

The next part is easy, the government can't tell you that you can't practice your religion. If you want to dress up as a pirate and worship a Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's your right and you have the freedom to do so. Other people might not like it and try to stop you, but the government cannot.

Now with any great writings, this one went through a few drafts first. It's true! After all, even the Bible has been edited over time, but that's something we'll tackle later. Here are some highlights of the earlier drafts of the Bill of Rights, starting with James Madison's original proposal:

“The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed.”

The language was altered in the House to read:

“Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience.”

In the Senate, the section adopted read:

“Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, . . .”

This is some fascinating stuff, and there's even more information out there. I highly recommend reading it all. Here's a bit more from Cornell's Annotated Constitution.

It was in the conference committee of the two bodies, chaired by Madison, that the present language was written with its somewhat more indefinite “respecting” phraseology.4 Debate in Congress lends little assistance in interpreting the religion clauses; Madison’s position, as well as that of Jefferson who influenced him, is fairly clear,5 but the intent, insofar as there was one, of the others in Congress who voted for the language and those in the States who voted to ratify is subject to speculation.

So the intent of our founding fathers is pretty clear. In fact, it was Jefferson himself who coined the phrase "separation of church and state."

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

So that debunks another of Harris' quotes, "That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that’s certainly isn’t what God intended." It's exactly what our founding fathers intended.

I love researching the religious views of Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and the gang. I could go on forever about what exactly they thought of Christianity, but there's lots out there for you to read yourself. Another fun point you should keep and use if this debate ever pops up? Any American governmental document, money, or pledge that makes mention of God does not mention Christ.