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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>From: "Michael Makovi" <A
href="mailto:mikewinddale@gmail.com">mikewinddale@gmail.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>>>Another comment: we are brought to the vexed question of why
G-d<BR>commanded the rational commands, if they are indeed
rational.<<<BR></FONT></DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent"
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>>>>>><BR>The answer to this is closely related to that
famous quote, "If there is no G-d, everything is permitted." Even if
people know that there is a G-d, but He has not clearly said what is permitted
and what is forbidden, then everything is permitted.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>Man is a rational animal who can rationalize away every crime. All
societies consider murder to be wrong, for example -- that's a very rational
commandment. Yet many people feel very comfortable with abortion, even
late term abortions and even when done in a very gruesome way (e.g., partial
birth abortions.) Many people feel comfortable with performing "abortions"
even a few days or weeks /after/ the baby is born, if it turns out to be
defective or if it's an unwanted girl in ancient Greece or modern China.
There is a famous Harvard professor of ethics (!), Peter Singer, who openly
advocates infanticide. Many Arabs feel very comfortable with honor
killings and have no qualms about killing a sister who has been raped, to save
the family honor. Lots of people favor euthanasia to get rid of old
people, sick people, "useless" people, comatose people. In the famous
Terri Schiavo case, where a woman was /not/ on life support but did need a
feeding tube, a Florida judge ruled that her life was not worth living and
ordered the removal of the feeding tube, and her slow death by starvation.
It took her days to die even without food and water, but the judge was
humane -- he ordered sedation for pain relief, on the off chance that a
brain-damaged person could feel pain. In this, he was more humane
than the people who carve up babies in their mothers' wombs without
anesthesia.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>To take another category of sin as an example, most societies throughout
history have considered laws against sodomy to be "rational." Only in
our generation did something that was always considered a mishpat turn into a
chok. Why can't a man marry a man? In the past, such a question
would have elicited laughter. Today people look at it and say, "Very
strange, the Torah is incomprehensible, but we just have to accept what we can't
understand because Hashem said so, hard as it is."</DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT></STRONG></FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial
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