We are now deep into the next election cycle in the United States. Campaigns for the 2020 presidential election are underway, the conventions have been held, money is being raised, debates will soon take place and positions are being staked out. It seems like the political season never ends, but even so, here we are.
This means that, as disputatious and ornery as the last three years have been, the next couple of months will likely be worse.
As we enter this period in our nation's political life it would be good for those of us who engage in the to and fro of political discussion with friends, family and acquaintances to keep in mind that there are more important things than proving ourselves right on this or that issue.
It would be good in the weeks ahead to keep in mind that those who disagree with us will not be won over to our way of seeing things if our demeanor is arrogant, scowling and angry. They certainly won't find our opinions compelling if we resort to insulting them or their ideas.
The most effective way to disagree in any discussion is with a humble attitude, acknowledging to ourselves and to the other person that we could be wrong about whatever it is we are debating. A winsome approach, seasoned with humility and humor, is likely to be far more persuasive than pummelling one's interlocutor with rhetorical body blows.
In almost every instance, it'll be more important that we respect the person we're engaged in conversation with than that we win an argument with them. After all, as an old aphorism has it, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."
If the other person gets angry and insulting then it's better that we change the subject to something less contentious. What good can come of continuing it under those circumstances anyway?
If we can respect and love those with whom we disagree, if we can say, "I don't think you're correct, but you're more important to me than my being right," I think we'll be much more attractive to those who differ with us and much more effective in presenting our views and gaining them a hearing.
Political, as well as religious and philosophical, differences are important, in many cases extremely so, but they're not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we treat each other with dignity, respect and kindness.
Our politicians probably won't treat each other that way, but we should.
Monday, August 31, 2020
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Best President for Minorities Since Lincoln
It's hard to see how the left can run against Donald Trump on policy. On two of their biggest issues, opposition to war and ameliorating the condition of the poor, especially African American poor, Trump has been extraordinary.
On the matter of war and peace, libertarian senator Rand Paul in his speech at the RNC the other night averred with good reason that President Trump has been the most antiwar commander-in-chief in a generation.
On the question of helping minority poor it can honestly be said that it's hard to think of any president since Abraham Lincoln who has done more to benefit African Americans.
Consider this from Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal (paywall): [I]t’s passing strange that the GOP president who has been relentless in promoting policies that benefit minorities is the one the media brands most racist of them all.
On the matter of war and peace, libertarian senator Rand Paul in his speech at the RNC the other night averred with good reason that President Trump has been the most antiwar commander-in-chief in a generation.
On the question of helping minority poor it can honestly be said that it's hard to think of any president since Abraham Lincoln who has done more to benefit African Americans.
Consider this from Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal (paywall): [I]t’s passing strange that the GOP president who has been relentless in promoting policies that benefit minorities is the one the media brands most racist of them all.
There was the First Step Act, which reformed [criminal] sentencing laws; more than 90% of those who have had their sentences reduced are black Americans. The president in 2018 made historically black colleges and universities a priority, putting new money into loans and funding. His tax law created opportunity zones that funnel private investment to inner cities.That last fact is perhaps the most significant of all. Next to strong families, having a job is the surest way to get out of poverty. Strassel points out that Trump's policies toward blacks and Hispanics may swing the election:
He has doubled down on school choice, an issue with 68% support among blacks and 82% among Latinos, according to a Federation for Children poll. His economic policies produced record-low black and Hispanic unemployment.
In 2016 he scored only 8% of the black vote, 28% of Hispanics, and 27% of Asian-Americans. Yet the polls also show a growing awareness and frustration among minorities that the Obama-Biden years didn’t deliver for their communities. Despite his putative lead nationally, Mr. Biden has less black and Hispanic support at this point in the race than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did.Whether all this translates into a Trump victory in November or not it's simply not credible for his opponents to accuse him or his administration of being "racist," not when he has done more to improve the state of black life in America than any president since Lincoln.
Does that softness translate into a giant Trump minority pickup? No. But it doesn’t have to. Democrats like to point out that Mr. Trump won the election by a margin of 80,000 votes across three swing states. The Trump campaign knows that increasing its support—even a little—among minority communities in those and other key battlegrounds could prove huge.
Take Michigan, one of the three, where Mr. Trump won an estimated 6% of the African-American vote in 2016. A recent Trafalgar poll showed his current support at nearly double that, which would translate into tens of thousands of votes. Recent polls have also shown Mr. Trump doing better with Latinos, with one Marist poll showing him up 11% over 2016. Consider what that might mean in Arizona or Florida.
Friday, August 28, 2020
Hitler the Darwinian
About eight years ago Richard Weikart published a study on the roots of the moral thinking of Adolf Hitler, a review of which is posted at Evolution News and Views. Here's an excerpt:
This step is inevitable since nothing else but such a being as described in the previous sentence could possibly provide a basis for objective morality, and once this step is taken it leads inevitably to moral arbitrariness and subjectivity. In other words, what's right is whatever feels right to me. Moral subjectivism in turn leads directly to egoism, i.e. the belief that one should put one's own interests ahead of the interests of others, and egoism leads ineluctably to the ethic of "might makes right".
Hitler's "morality" was completely consistent with his rejection of a belief in a transcendent moral authority, a God.
Indeed, Hitler was what every atheist would be if a) he or she had the power Hitler had and b) he or she were logically consistent.
Thankfully, few of those who reject belief in a transcendent moral authority are both powerful and consistent, but in the 20th century some were. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler all were atheists who had complete power within their sphere and acted consistently with their naturalistic, materialistic worldview. The horrific consequences were completely predictable.
One of the most controversial parts of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was the segment where Ben Stein interviewed the history professor Richard Weikart about his book, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany.It's a tragic historical fact, demonstrated repeatedly throughout the last two centuries, that once people reject the idea that morality is rooted in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and transcendent personal being the next logical step is to abandon the idea that there's any objective moral right and wrong at all.
Darwinists were apoplectic, deriding Stein and Weikart for daring to sully the good name of Charles Darwin by showing how Hitler, and German scientists and physicians, used Darwin's evolutionary theory to justify some of their atrocities, such as their campaign to kill the disabled.
Some critics even denied that the Nazis believed in Darwinism at all. Weikart challenges his critics to examine the evidence in his fascinating sequel, Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, which examines the role of Darwinism and evolutionary ethics in Hitler's worldview.
In this work Weikart helps unlock the mystery of Hitler's evil by vividly demonstrating the surprising conclusion that Hitler's immorality actually flowed from a coherent ethic. Hitler was inspired by an ethic based on the evolutionary history of man to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race. Hitler's evolutionary ethic underlay, or influenced, almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics (i.e., measures to improve human heredity, including compulsory sterilization), euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination.
This step is inevitable since nothing else but such a being as described in the previous sentence could possibly provide a basis for objective morality, and once this step is taken it leads inevitably to moral arbitrariness and subjectivity. In other words, what's right is whatever feels right to me. Moral subjectivism in turn leads directly to egoism, i.e. the belief that one should put one's own interests ahead of the interests of others, and egoism leads ineluctably to the ethic of "might makes right".
Hitler's "morality" was completely consistent with his rejection of a belief in a transcendent moral authority, a God.
Indeed, Hitler was what every atheist would be if a) he or she had the power Hitler had and b) he or she were logically consistent.
Thankfully, few of those who reject belief in a transcendent moral authority are both powerful and consistent, but in the 20th century some were. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler all were atheists who had complete power within their sphere and acted consistently with their naturalistic, materialistic worldview. The horrific consequences were completely predictable.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Being Intellectually Honest
The old adage is that in any social gathering it's bad manners to introduce either religion or politics into the discussion. It may be true that these two topics are unwelcome, yet it's hard to imagine anything that could be more important to discuss. That they're considered taboo says more, perhaps, about the shallowness of much of our social interaction than it does about the topics themselves.
In any case, those who do engage in serious conversation and debate, one would hope, are paramountly concerned with finding and sharing the truth about whatever it is that's being deliberated, but they're often tempted to adopt a number of less-than-helpful tactics that do more to bring discredit upon themselves and the views they advocate than they do to promote the truth.
Some years ago I came across a blog post titled Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty which listed ten good rules to follow when participating with others in dialogue.
Since the link to this post no longer works I'll take the liberty to list the ten rules along with some brief thoughts on them. They're very much worth heeding for anyone who wishes to participate in the conversations, especially those bearing on religion and/or politics, that are occurring in our public square.
Here they are:
1. Do not overstate the power of your argument. One's sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence that most people can assess. If someone portrays his opponents as being stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, intellectual dishonesty is probably in play. Intellectual honesty is most often associated with humility, not arrogance.
2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist. The alternative views do not have to be treated as equally valid or powerful, but rarely is it the case that one and only one viewpoint has a complete monopoly on reason and evidence.
3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one's own assumptions and biases. All of us rely on assumptions when trying to make sense of the world, and all of us bring various biases to the table. We should be open and honest about it.
4. Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak. Almost all arguments have weak spots, but those who are trying to sell an ideology will have great difficulty with this point and would rather obscure or downplay any weak points. Refusing to admit a weakness in your argument damages your credibility. People are more likely to warm to your view if you're honest about where it falters.
5.Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Just as we should be open about weak spots in our convictions we should be willing to acknowledge that we were wrong about something if, in fact, we were. Ideologues, especially, find this a very difficult thing to do because admitting to being wrong undercuts their rhetoric and the image they're trying to promote. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.
6. Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. We see this a lot in our news media and political debates. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues' allies.
7. Address the argument instead of the person making the argument. Ad hominem arguments are a clear sign of intellectual dishonesty. When someone resorts to insulting his opponent, often by relying on stereotypes, guilt-by-association, and superficially innocent-sounding "gotcha" questions, they're revealing the inadequacy of their own arguments and trying to deflect attention away from that inadequacy.
8. Be careful not to misrepresent your opponent's argument. Misrepresenting an argument in order to make it look weaker and easier to defeat is called the "straw man" fallacy. Straw man often occurs when people are quoted out-of-context or are paraphrased incorrectly. When critiquing an argument one should show that one has made a good faith effort to both understand it and to represent it in its strongest form.
9. Demonstrate a commitment to critical thinking. It's important that we assign a high level of importance to evidence. Someone who holds adamantly to their position but who can give no reason for their tenacity nor allow evidence-based reasons to count against their position, is not a critical thinker and will not be taken seriously.
10. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when one's opponent has made a good point or criticism. If someone is unwilling to admit that his opponent has made a telling point or an incisive criticism it demonstrates an unwillingness to honestly engage in the give-and-take of dialogue.
My own experience has been that even when I think I'm doing the best I can to abide by the rules described above I still sometimes find myself teetering close to the boundary. Luckily, I have friends and students among my readers who are not shy about calling me on it when they think I've transgressed. Sometimes I think they're wrong, but sometimes not.
I think it's wise to keep in mind that none of us is perfect and to watch carefully how we express ourselves in discussions on matters we feel strongly about. Years ago I printed out these Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty and have them posted over my computer.
Maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to do that.
In any case, those who do engage in serious conversation and debate, one would hope, are paramountly concerned with finding and sharing the truth about whatever it is that's being deliberated, but they're often tempted to adopt a number of less-than-helpful tactics that do more to bring discredit upon themselves and the views they advocate than they do to promote the truth.
Some years ago I came across a blog post titled Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty which listed ten good rules to follow when participating with others in dialogue.
Since the link to this post no longer works I'll take the liberty to list the ten rules along with some brief thoughts on them. They're very much worth heeding for anyone who wishes to participate in the conversations, especially those bearing on religion and/or politics, that are occurring in our public square.
Here they are:
1. Do not overstate the power of your argument. One's sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence that most people can assess. If someone portrays his opponents as being stupid or dishonest for disagreeing, intellectual dishonesty is probably in play. Intellectual honesty is most often associated with humility, not arrogance.
2. Show a willingness to publicly acknowledge that reasonable alternative viewpoints exist. The alternative views do not have to be treated as equally valid or powerful, but rarely is it the case that one and only one viewpoint has a complete monopoly on reason and evidence.
3. Be willing to publicly acknowledge and question one's own assumptions and biases. All of us rely on assumptions when trying to make sense of the world, and all of us bring various biases to the table. We should be open and honest about it.
4. Be willing to publicly acknowledge where your argument is weak. Almost all arguments have weak spots, but those who are trying to sell an ideology will have great difficulty with this point and would rather obscure or downplay any weak points. Refusing to admit a weakness in your argument damages your credibility. People are more likely to warm to your view if you're honest about where it falters.
5.Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Just as we should be open about weak spots in our convictions we should be willing to acknowledge that we were wrong about something if, in fact, we were. Ideologues, especially, find this a very difficult thing to do because admitting to being wrong undercuts their rhetoric and the image they're trying to promote. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial.
6. Demonstrate consistency. A clear sign of intellectual dishonesty is when someone extensively relies on double standards. We see this a lot in our news media and political debates. Typically, an excessively high standard is applied to the perceived opponent(s), while a very low standard is applied to the ideologues' allies.
7. Address the argument instead of the person making the argument. Ad hominem arguments are a clear sign of intellectual dishonesty. When someone resorts to insulting his opponent, often by relying on stereotypes, guilt-by-association, and superficially innocent-sounding "gotcha" questions, they're revealing the inadequacy of their own arguments and trying to deflect attention away from that inadequacy.
8. Be careful not to misrepresent your opponent's argument. Misrepresenting an argument in order to make it look weaker and easier to defeat is called the "straw man" fallacy. Straw man often occurs when people are quoted out-of-context or are paraphrased incorrectly. When critiquing an argument one should show that one has made a good faith effort to both understand it and to represent it in its strongest form.
9. Demonstrate a commitment to critical thinking. It's important that we assign a high level of importance to evidence. Someone who holds adamantly to their position but who can give no reason for their tenacity nor allow evidence-based reasons to count against their position, is not a critical thinker and will not be taken seriously.
10. Be willing to publicly acknowledge when one's opponent has made a good point or criticism. If someone is unwilling to admit that his opponent has made a telling point or an incisive criticism it demonstrates an unwillingness to honestly engage in the give-and-take of dialogue.
My own experience has been that even when I think I'm doing the best I can to abide by the rules described above I still sometimes find myself teetering close to the boundary. Luckily, I have friends and students among my readers who are not shy about calling me on it when they think I've transgressed. Sometimes I think they're wrong, but sometimes not.
I think it's wise to keep in mind that none of us is perfect and to watch carefully how we express ourselves in discussions on matters we feel strongly about. Years ago I printed out these Ten Signs of Intellectual Honesty and have them posted over my computer.
Maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to do that.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Is Math a Coincidence?
Earlier this month I posted on the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" (Nobel winner in physics Eugene Wigner) to explain the world. Today's post is something of a follow-up to that earlier post which I recommend interested readers to revisit.
We often take for granted that the operations of nature can be explained in terms of mathematical equations. We learned in high school physics (if we took physics) that all physical phenomena are describable mathematically.
Mathematical patterns are ubiquitous in nature from quantum mechanics to the Fibonacci sequence in the whorls of disc flowers of a sunflower to the trajectories of planets in their orbits around the sun. Indeed, it's hard to think of any scientific phenomenon that can't be described mathematically.
What few of us ever do, though, is stop and ask why this should be so. Why is mathematics able to so accurately describe the world?
As the following five minute video points out, naturalism has no good answer to this question. The only satisfactory answer is one that involves an intelligent engineer, a mathematical genius who designed the universe according to a mathematical blueprint.
If some wish to say that this is just the way the universe is and that there's no need of deeper explanation they have to acknowledge that they're essentially admitting that they have no answer to the question, that it's just a bizarre coincidence.
Perhaps, but that requires a lot of faith in blind coincidence.
We often take for granted that the operations of nature can be explained in terms of mathematical equations. We learned in high school physics (if we took physics) that all physical phenomena are describable mathematically.
Mathematical patterns are ubiquitous in nature from quantum mechanics to the Fibonacci sequence in the whorls of disc flowers of a sunflower to the trajectories of planets in their orbits around the sun. Indeed, it's hard to think of any scientific phenomenon that can't be described mathematically.
What few of us ever do, though, is stop and ask why this should be so. Why is mathematics able to so accurately describe the world?
As the following five minute video points out, naturalism has no good answer to this question. The only satisfactory answer is one that involves an intelligent engineer, a mathematical genius who designed the universe according to a mathematical blueprint.
If some wish to say that this is just the way the universe is and that there's no need of deeper explanation they have to acknowledge that they're essentially admitting that they have no answer to the question, that it's just a bizarre coincidence.
Perhaps, but that requires a lot of faith in blind coincidence.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
Can Trump Pull it Off?
As the Republicans begin their nominating convention this week the polls are showing incumbent president Donald Trump trailing challenger Joe Biden by double digits. Many Democrats are confident that they'll defeat Trump in November, but Wayne Allyn Root at Townhall writes that their optimism may be misplaced.
He gives several reasons for thinking that the November election is shaping up to be a Trump victory and begins his column with this:
1. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose calls to defund police, including 80 percent of black voters. This does not augur well for Joe Biden and the Democrats who have the defund anchor hanging around their necks.
2. Polls also show that 83 percent of Americans support the decision by President Trump and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson to end former President Obama's program designed to fill the suburbs with high-density, low-income housing, bringing crime and drugs to the neighborhoods of suburban families. This a good sign for Republicans.
Root asks:
This is another bad omen for Democrats who have expressed overt support for some of the radical movements responsible for the riots and who minimize or ignore the violence in our streets. The people fleeing deep-blue Democratic cities for the safety of red Republican suburbs, Root argues, aren't doing it just so they can vote for Biden and the Democrats.
4. Gun and body armor sales are up by over 80% in NYC compared to the same period in 2019, and in many cities gun stores are backlogged with orders. Those people seeking to protect themselves are unlikely to be voting for the party which refuses to condemn the riots, is in many cases coddling the rioters, and whose presidential and vice presidential candidates want to restrict their right to own the firearms they're buying.
5. Root claims that there was a 21 point shift among non-whites away from Biden when he picked Kamala Harris as his running mate. He doesn't cite where he got that statistic, nor have I seen it anywhere else, but if it's even half-true it would be a disaster for Biden and the Democrats.
6. Surprisingly, after the orgy of Trump-bashing at the Democratic convention, the president's approval rating, according to one poll (Rasmussen), actually went up from 47% to 51%.
Anyway, I'm not sure that Root's not being a bit pollyannish in this piece. It could be that all that he says is indeed happening, but it still may not be enough to produce a Trump win. Even so, Democrats would be wise not to be overconfident.
He closes his column with this reminder:
He gives several reasons for thinking that the November election is shaping up to be a Trump victory and begins his column with this:
Democrats behind the scenes are scared and getting more desperate by the day because there are so many signs of a coming Donald Trump victory. The signs are everywhere.Whether he's right or not about Democrats being scared and desperate I have no idea, but he does provide us with some interesting facts. Here are some of the signs Root thinks point to a Trump victory:
1. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose calls to defund police, including 80 percent of black voters. This does not augur well for Joe Biden and the Democrats who have the defund anchor hanging around their necks.
2. Polls also show that 83 percent of Americans support the decision by President Trump and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson to end former President Obama's program designed to fill the suburbs with high-density, low-income housing, bringing crime and drugs to the neighborhoods of suburban families. This a good sign for Republicans.
Root asks:
Do you think these millions of suburban American homeowners who don't want to see their home value destroyed or their neighborhood turned into war zones like Chicago, Detroit or Baltimore are going to vote enthusiastically for Joe Biden when Biden's presidential platform actually puts in writing his goal to supercharge Obama's "destroy the suburbs" program?3. People are fleeing Democrat-controlled cities to escape the crime and dysfunction of those cities. According to Rasmussen, 72 percent of likely voters are concerned about the growing violent protests nationwide. Sixty-two percent say it will affect their vote.
Trump wants to protect your neighborhood. I wonder who suburban moms and dads will vote for.
This is another bad omen for Democrats who have expressed overt support for some of the radical movements responsible for the riots and who minimize or ignore the violence in our streets. The people fleeing deep-blue Democratic cities for the safety of red Republican suburbs, Root argues, aren't doing it just so they can vote for Biden and the Democrats.
4. Gun and body armor sales are up by over 80% in NYC compared to the same period in 2019, and in many cities gun stores are backlogged with orders. Those people seeking to protect themselves are unlikely to be voting for the party which refuses to condemn the riots, is in many cases coddling the rioters, and whose presidential and vice presidential candidates want to restrict their right to own the firearms they're buying.
5. Root claims that there was a 21 point shift among non-whites away from Biden when he picked Kamala Harris as his running mate. He doesn't cite where he got that statistic, nor have I seen it anywhere else, but if it's even half-true it would be a disaster for Biden and the Democrats.
6. Surprisingly, after the orgy of Trump-bashing at the Democratic convention, the president's approval rating, according to one poll (Rasmussen), actually went up from 47% to 51%.
Anyway, I'm not sure that Root's not being a bit pollyannish in this piece. It could be that all that he says is indeed happening, but it still may not be enough to produce a Trump win. Even so, Democrats would be wise not to be overconfident.
He closes his column with this reminder:
Remember when then-President Jimmy Carter led Republican nominee Ronald Reagan by 10 points during the summer of 1980? Reagan won in a historic landslide.It's not beyond imagining that we could witness a similar reversal this November.
Remember when Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was up by 17 points over Republican nominee George H.W. Bush after the Democratic convention? Bush won the electoral vote 426 to 111.
Monday, August 24, 2020
How Obama/Biden Handled an Epidemic
The Democratic National Convention will doubtless go down in history for a number of things, but one of them won't be for setting a high standard of political honesty.
Particularly disappointing was the willingness of speakers to accuse Donald Trump of being a racist on the basis of an innocuous, and true, comment he made in the wake of the Charlottesville protest in which a woman was killed and several were injured and the blame they heaped on the president for the deaths of those who've succumbed to Covid-19.
Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reminds us that the Obama/Biden response to a similar challenge ten years ago was significantly less impressive than that of the Trump administration to the Covid plague and that for Democrats to scorn Trump while giving Biden a pass hardly engenders confidence in their rhetoric.
Strassel opens with a recap of some of the allegations:
Here's Strassel:
The H1N1 virus struck ten years ago and time and a complicit media have largely effaced it from our memory, but it's simply dishonest for the Democrats to try to make political hay over the alleged failures of the current administration while assuring us that a Biden administration would be much more competent. We saw what a Biden administration would do a decade ago and it wasn't encouraging.
She concludes with this:
Particularly disappointing was the willingness of speakers to accuse Donald Trump of being a racist on the basis of an innocuous, and true, comment he made in the wake of the Charlottesville protest in which a woman was killed and several were injured and the blame they heaped on the president for the deaths of those who've succumbed to Covid-19.
Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reminds us that the Obama/Biden response to a similar challenge ten years ago was significantly less impressive than that of the Trump administration to the Covid plague and that for Democrats to scorn Trump while giving Biden a pass hardly engenders confidence in their rhetoric.
Strassel opens with a recap of some of the allegations:
Is it reasonable to blame a single politician for the spread of a highly infectious virus, especially in a free country with 50 states and 330 million people? Joe Biden is lucky that wasn’t the standard a decade ago.The reference to Ebola is a feint. The Obama/Biden response to Ebola isn't the proper comparison to the Trump response to Covid. The relevant comparison is to a different disease, the H1N1 swine-flu outbreak of 2009-10. No one knew how deadly H1N1 would turn out to be, but the Obama administration's response to it was far more laid-back than the Trump approach to Covid-19.
If the Democratic convention produced one theme it’s that Donald Trump is personally at fault for every coronavirus death. The message is that crazy, that blunt. Kamala Harris: “Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives.” Barack Obama: “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe: 170,000 Americans dead.”
Democrats even claim Mr. Biden saved lives in 2014. Michelle Obama: “Our leaders had worked hand in hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.” Ms. Harris last week: “Remember that pandemic? Barack Obama and Joe Biden did their job. Only two people died in the United States.”
Ebola is a terrifying disease, but outbreaks tend to happen only in very poor nations, and if caught early the virus is difficult to transmit outside hospitals. Anthony Fauci said in 2014 that a U.S. outbreak was “very, very, very unlikely.” Mr. Obama told Americans to chill out: “Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu.”
Here's Strassel:
H1N1 began much like corona, with panicked stories in late April 2009 about a novel “hybrid” flu strain in Mexico that was popping up in the U.S. It was even more alarming, in that it especially affected children. Yet the new administration began with a muddled message. Mr. Obama encouraged calm, while Mr. Biden rambled a warning about staying off airplanes and public transport—prompting backlash. “Biden’s flu gaffe a headache for Obama,” read one headline.The Trump administration has been severely criticized for not having enough resources on hand to deal with the current plague in its initial stages, but its response was much more aggressive than the modest Obama/Biden response to H1N1:
Within days, some 30 states had suspected cases, and by April 27 the U.S. had its first death, a 23-month-old child. Other countries started shutting facilities, telling citizens to stay home, quarantining visitors.
The Obama administration still had no idea how deadly the disease was, though the World Health Organization called the outbreak a threat to “all humanity,” and health experts predicted hospitals would be overloaded.
The administration nonetheless took a resigned approach to its spread. Mr. Obama didn’t close the Mexican border, saying that would “be akin to closing the barn doors after the horses are out.” His officials did declare a health emergency (Mr. Obama was golfing that day) and distributed the national stockpile (which they never replenished).
The administration recommended schools “consider” closing if experiencing an outbreak, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief said this might not help with spread and warned about taking kids out of classrooms.
No one considered a national lockdown, especially not an administration focused on a fragile economic recovery. Mr. Obama promised to “control” the “impact” of the virus—not the virus itself. He asked Congress for all of $1.5 billion.
Team Obama promised 100 million doses of vaccine by mid-October. (A flu vaccine is easier to produce than a coronavirus vaccine). But government setbacks in production, manufacturing and dosing protocols resulted in only 11 million doses, prompting national outrage. By that point, the CDC estimated 22 million Americans had been infected, 36,000 children hospitalized, and 540 kids had died.It was just sheer luck that H1N1 wasn't as virulent as Covid-19:
Before Covid-19, Democrats were willing to admit they’d dodged a bullet. Former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain said at Texas A&M in 2019: “We did every possible thing wrong. Sixty million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time, and it is just purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass-casualty events in American history. [It] had nothing to do with us doing anything right; just had to do with luck.Strassel points out that had the H1N1 virus turned out to have the lethality of Covid-19 the death toll would have been catastrophic, approaching two million, considerably more than the 170,000 who have died thus far from Covid. And it bears repeating that no one knew at the time how lethal H1N1 would be.
If anyone thinks that can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918. Just go back to 2009, 2010. Imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math.”
The H1N1 virus struck ten years ago and time and a complicit media have largely effaced it from our memory, but it's simply dishonest for the Democrats to try to make political hay over the alleged failures of the current administration while assuring us that a Biden administration would be much more competent. We saw what a Biden administration would do a decade ago and it wasn't encouraging.
She concludes with this:
The Trump administration response has been flawed—in particular its initial testing delays. But let’s acknowledge (as Democrats once did) that there is only so much government can do to “control” a germ. As for distributing equipment, providing antivirals and developing a vaccine, the current response has so far met or exceeded 2009-10.Nor should Mr. Obama.
Mr. Biden is free to argue he’s a better man for the White House; he shouldn’t get to rewrite history, or virology.
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Bad Predictions
When scientists and others predicted a decade or two ago that global warming was going to make our planet uninhabitable by the year 2020 or so, many people took them at their word and were willing to support all sorts of economically destructive policies that would've ruined the lives of millions of people had they been enacted. Indeed, those who support the "Green New Deal" are still determined to foist those policies upon us.
Nevertheless, predictions about the future, even when coming from the lips of eminent scientists, should be understood as extrapolations based on the assumption that all the variables that are factored into the prediction will remain constant or on the same trajectory as when the prediction is made. In fact, however, the trajectory of those variables frequently fails to remain constant.
For instance, in 1968 ecologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford wrote a book titled The Population Bomb in which he predicted that global population would exceed food resources by the end of the century, and the world would suffer vast starvation and world wars due to mass migrations. It never happened.
In 1971 an organization of scientists called The Club of Rome predicted that the world standard of living would peak in 1990 and then decline inexorably.
Here's an excerpt from the link:
Similar predictions were made during the 70s and 80s that demand for paper would soon outpace paper production making paper exorbitantly expensive, but digital technology emerged that dramatically reduced paper use. Likewise, we were told back in those decades that we were rapidly running out of oil and that by the end of the century our standard of living would suffer serious decline because fuel would be so scarce. That was before the discovery of new oil deposits, the development of fracking and other technological advances opened up vast supplies of fossil fuels.
Currently, we're being told that global warming caused by the use of those fossil fuels will force multitudes of people to migrate from torrid climes to more temperate latitudes crowding masses of humanity into ever shrinking living spaces. However, if global warming occurs on the scale that folks like Al Gore have been predicting, which is doubtful, vast regions in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland will become habitable that aren't habitable now.
Examples of similarly failed predictions could be multiplied, but the point is that no one knows what the future will bring. Scientists are not prophets. No one knows what inventions will be developed in the years ahead.
History teaches, though, that doomsday predictions, especially when they forecast disaster several decades down the road, have a very poor track record for accuracy, and that it's wise to be skeptical of such predictions when they're thrust upon us by a sensationalist media and "experts" who should be more cautious.
Nevertheless, predictions about the future, even when coming from the lips of eminent scientists, should be understood as extrapolations based on the assumption that all the variables that are factored into the prediction will remain constant or on the same trajectory as when the prediction is made. In fact, however, the trajectory of those variables frequently fails to remain constant.
For instance, in 1968 ecologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford wrote a book titled The Population Bomb in which he predicted that global population would exceed food resources by the end of the century, and the world would suffer vast starvation and world wars due to mass migrations. It never happened.
In 1971 an organization of scientists called The Club of Rome predicted that the world standard of living would peak in 1990 and then decline inexorably.
Here's an excerpt from the link:
Their doomsday manifesto was translated into 30 languages and sold more than 12 million copies. Their solution to the impending economic collapse was for world governments to reduce the world supply of food by 20 percent so that people would be forced to have fewer children, or starve.In the 80s and 90s prognosticators were predicting either a shortage of photographic film or a shortage of silver because silver was being rapidly consumed in the production of photographic film. The shortage never came about because within a few years digital technology made film obsolete.
They simply assumed that the world’s supply of resources is fixed while the demand for resources grows at a compound rate—which guarantees that demand will exhaust resources. They completely ignored the fact that humans have been endlessly creative in thinking of ways to substitute more plentiful resources for less plentiful ones. We have figured out how to use nuclear fuels and solar energy in place of fossil fuels, e-mail in place of snail-mail, and plastic in place of wood, metal, and glass.
Similar predictions were made during the 70s and 80s that demand for paper would soon outpace paper production making paper exorbitantly expensive, but digital technology emerged that dramatically reduced paper use. Likewise, we were told back in those decades that we were rapidly running out of oil and that by the end of the century our standard of living would suffer serious decline because fuel would be so scarce. That was before the discovery of new oil deposits, the development of fracking and other technological advances opened up vast supplies of fossil fuels.
Currently, we're being told that global warming caused by the use of those fossil fuels will force multitudes of people to migrate from torrid climes to more temperate latitudes crowding masses of humanity into ever shrinking living spaces. However, if global warming occurs on the scale that folks like Al Gore have been predicting, which is doubtful, vast regions in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland will become habitable that aren't habitable now.
Examples of similarly failed predictions could be multiplied, but the point is that no one knows what the future will bring. Scientists are not prophets. No one knows what inventions will be developed in the years ahead.
History teaches, though, that doomsday predictions, especially when they forecast disaster several decades down the road, have a very poor track record for accuracy, and that it's wise to be skeptical of such predictions when they're thrust upon us by a sensationalist media and "experts" who should be more cautious.
Friday, August 21, 2020
Is it Possible to Know That God Does Not Exist? (Pt. II)
I ended yesterday's post on Gary Gutting's interview with UMass philosopher Louise Antony with the claim that there are dozens of good reasons for believing that God exists.
One such reason is the modern argument from design, but Professor Antony tries to anticipate that argument in the interview:
That's a concession that an atheist cannot afford to make. It puts her on a very slippery slope to theism since it'd be plausible to believe that any designer of the universe would have to have the minimal qualities of transcending space, time and matter, be unimaginably powerful and unimaginably intelligent. It might also be plausible to assume that this creator is personal, since it would've created personality embodied in beings like you and I. If so, we're getting pretty close to the God of traditional theism. Too, close, certainly, for the comfort of most atheists.
Even a less than perfect designer is still a designer that transcends this universe and possesses the traits listed in the last paragraph. Even a team of designers are still designers which possess those traits.
Such a designer is not the God of theism, to be sure, but the existence of a transcendent designer(s) of any sort is certainly much more compatible with theism than it is with the naturalists' claim that the universe is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. Moreover, if there's a plausible answer to the problem of an imperfect creation, theism becomes even more likely.
For an example of some plausible responses to this problem watch the following five minute video: Gutting's interview continues:
You can read a couple of very bright atheists admitting this themselves here.
The claim that theism is just wishful thinking is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways. As such it reminds me a little of mathematician John Lennox's retort to atheist biologist Richard Dawkins in a debate between the two. Dawkins averred that theists believe in God because they're afraid of the dark. Lennox responded by saying that atheists disbelieve in God because they're afraid of the light.
We'll conclude our look at Gutting's interview tomorrow.
Many theists think they’re home free with something like the argument from design: that there is empirical evidence of a purposeful design in nature. But it’s one thing to argue that the universe must be the product of some kind of intelligent agent; it’s quite something else to argue that this designer was all-knowing and omnipotent.The problem with this objection is that the concession that the designer exists but is a bit incompetent is that it concedes too much. Once we grant the existence of a designer (or a committee of designers), even if the designer(s) seems to be unable to create a perfect world, then the atheist has essentially lost the argument. She's conceding that something beyond this universe exists which is powerful enough and intelligent enough to create this universe, even though the creation is imperfect.
Why is that a better hypothesis than that the designer was pretty smart but made a few mistakes? Maybe (I’m just cribbing from Hume here) there was a committee of intelligent creators, who didn’t quite agree on everything. Maybe the creator was a student god, and only got a B- on this project.
That's a concession that an atheist cannot afford to make. It puts her on a very slippery slope to theism since it'd be plausible to believe that any designer of the universe would have to have the minimal qualities of transcending space, time and matter, be unimaginably powerful and unimaginably intelligent. It might also be plausible to assume that this creator is personal, since it would've created personality embodied in beings like you and I. If so, we're getting pretty close to the God of traditional theism. Too, close, certainly, for the comfort of most atheists.
Even a less than perfect designer is still a designer that transcends this universe and possesses the traits listed in the last paragraph. Even a team of designers are still designers which possess those traits.
Such a designer is not the God of theism, to be sure, but the existence of a transcendent designer(s) of any sort is certainly much more compatible with theism than it is with the naturalists' claim that the universe is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. Moreover, if there's a plausible answer to the problem of an imperfect creation, theism becomes even more likely.
For an example of some plausible responses to this problem watch the following five minute video: Gutting's interview continues:
G.G.: Would you say, then, that believers who think they have good reasons for theism are deceiving themselves, that they are actually moved by, say, hopes and fears — emotions — rather than reasons?When atheists allege that theism is an expression of wishful thinking it should be noted that if so - and I have little doubt that that's at least part of why many theists hold to their convictions - it must also be the case that atheism is also an expression of wishful thinking. If wishful thinking lies behind the faith of some believers then it also lies behind the lack of faith manifest in many unbelievers. In other words, many atheists disbelieve because they simply don't want there to be a God.
L.A.: I realize that some atheists do say things like “theists are just engaged in wishful thinking — they can’t accept that death is the end.” Theists are insulted by such conjectures (which is all they are) and I don’t blame them. It’s presumptuous to tell someone else why she believes what she believes — if you want to know, start by asking her.
You can read a couple of very bright atheists admitting this themselves here.
The claim that theism is just wishful thinking is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways. As such it reminds me a little of mathematician John Lennox's retort to atheist biologist Richard Dawkins in a debate between the two. Dawkins averred that theists believe in God because they're afraid of the dark. Lennox responded by saying that atheists disbelieve in God because they're afraid of the light.
We'll conclude our look at Gutting's interview tomorrow.
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Is it Possible to Know That God Does Not Exist? (Pt. I)
At the Opinionator philosopher Gary Gutting of Notre Dame interviews atheist philosopher Louise Antony, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The interview is interesting for a number of things Ms Antony asserts, including her claim that she knows there is no God:
Nevertheless, she doubles down on her claim a bit further on in the interview:
But the evil in the world is not the only evidence we have. It's only one element in what philosophers call our evidential set.
Imagine, for example, that every Chinese man you met on a trip to China was under six feet tall. If that experience was the only relevant evidence you had you might be justified in doubting that there are seven footers in China. But suppose you subsequently acquired several other bits of evidence. You learn, for example, that some Chinese play basketball, that some have even played in the NBA, and that some have even played center in the NBA. Perhaps you also read about a man named Yao Ming. As your evidential set expands, the force of the original piece of evidence begins to diminish.
Likewise with the argument from evil. Evil is only one element in our evidential set. There are dozens of good reasons for thinking that a God exists, and there are also ways of answering the argument from evil which greatly lessen its force. When considered as just one part of the entire body of evidence the existence of evil is not nearly as dispositive as Ms. Antony suggests.
We'll talk more about Gutting's interview with Professor Antony on tomorrow's Viewpoint.
The interview is interesting for a number of things Ms Antony asserts, including her claim that she knows there is no God:
Gary Gutting: You’ve taken a strong stand as an atheist, so you obviously don’t think there are any good reasons to believe in God. But I imagine there are philosophers whose rational abilities you respect who are theists. How do you explain their disagreement with you? Are they just not thinking clearly on this topic?With due respect to Ms Antony, I simply don't see how anyone can know such a thing. It's a bit like saying that one knows there are no living beings elsewhere in the universe. One can believe this, one can be skeptical or doubtful that there are any such beings, but how one can know that a transcendent mind does not exist is not at all clear, at least not to me.
Louise Antony: I’m not sure what you mean by saying that I’ve taken a “strong stand as an atheist.” I don’t consider myself an agnostic; I claim to know that God doesn’t exist, if that’s what you mean.
G.G.: That is what I mean.
L.A.: O.K. So the question is, why do I say that theism is false, rather than just unproven? Because the question has been settled to my satisfaction. I say “there is no God” with the same confidence I say “there are no ghosts” or “there is no magic.” The main issue is supernaturalism — I deny that there are beings or phenomena outside the scope of natural law.
Nevertheless, she doubles down on her claim a bit further on in the interview:
G.G.: O.K., .... But the question still remains, why are you so certain that God doesn’t exist?But a "definite tilt" to the evidence, even if such a tilt existed, hardly warrants a claim to knowledge. Gutting goes on to ask her what sort of evidence she has in mind:
L.A.: Knowledge in the real world does not entail either certainty or infallibility. When I claim to know that there is no God, I mean that the question is settled to my satisfaction. I don’t have any doubts. I don’t say that I’m agnostic, because I disagree with those who say it’s not possible to know whether or not God exists. I think it’s possible to know. And I think the balance of evidence and argument has a definite tilt.
L.A.: I find the “argument from evil” overwhelming — that is, I think the probability that the world we experience was designed by an omnipotent and benevolent being is a zillion times lower than that it is the product of mindless natural laws acting on mindless matter.Prof. Antony is surely speaking here of a psychological probability rather than a statistical probability since the latter is impossible to measure. Nevertheless, it's true that evil and suffering often make it difficult to believe that God exists, and if that were the only evidence we had then the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent deity would seem unlikely.
But the evil in the world is not the only evidence we have. It's only one element in what philosophers call our evidential set.
Imagine, for example, that every Chinese man you met on a trip to China was under six feet tall. If that experience was the only relevant evidence you had you might be justified in doubting that there are seven footers in China. But suppose you subsequently acquired several other bits of evidence. You learn, for example, that some Chinese play basketball, that some have even played in the NBA, and that some have even played center in the NBA. Perhaps you also read about a man named Yao Ming. As your evidential set expands, the force of the original piece of evidence begins to diminish.
Likewise with the argument from evil. Evil is only one element in our evidential set. There are dozens of good reasons for thinking that a God exists, and there are also ways of answering the argument from evil which greatly lessen its force. When considered as just one part of the entire body of evidence the existence of evil is not nearly as dispositive as Ms. Antony suggests.
We'll talk more about Gutting's interview with Professor Antony on tomorrow's Viewpoint.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Justice and Critical Theory, Pt. II
Yesterday's post summarized Tim Keller's analysis of critical justice theory. Keller goes on to discuss seven criticisms of this postmodern view of justice, but we'll mention just two. Keller, a prominent theologian, philosopher, writer and pastor in New York City, first points out how the notion that truth is a conditioned product of one's socio-economic status refutes itself. He writes:
Thus, if naturalism is correct, there's no compelling reason why anyone should listen to, much less give credit to, anyone else's moral pronouncements.
Many of the critical theorists in academia reject logic and rationality as a patriarchal manifestation of white privilege. Yet, their own claims cannot avoid relying on logic and rationality. They can't get away from it, and it's a peculiarity of critical theory that its advocates must employ reason in their attempt to debunk reason.
It's also ironic that they fancy themselves to be sophisticated intellectuals, but their repudiation of reason is in fact the signature characteristic of the barbarous anti-intellectual.
Keller's next criticism (which is actually the last of his seven) is that,
Like the mythological inn-keeper Procrustes, they found that the limbs of human nature had to be bent and severed to make them fit into the bed of their Marxist vision.
Tragically, their epigones in Antifa, Black Lives Matter and university faculty rooms, those who embrace critical theory, are cut from the same amoral cloth, and, if given the power, many of them would doubtless commit the same atrocities.
If all truth-claims and justice-agendas are socially constructed to maintain power, then why aren’t the claims and agendas of the adherents of this view subject to the same critique? Why are the postmodern justice advocates’ claims that “This is oppression” unquestionably, morally right, while all other moral claims are mere social constructs? And if everyone is blinded by class-consciousness and social location, why aren’t they?This is, by the way, a difficulty that afflicts just about every non-theistic (or naturalistic) account of justice and morality in one way or another. In the absence of God there's no basis whatsoever for objective morality and thus no ground for saying that we ought to treat our fellow man fairly or respectfully. Every moral claim uttered by naturalists, postmodern or otherwise, is nothing more than an expression of his or her emotional state. It's simply a verbalization of their feelings.
Intersectionality claims oppressed people see things clearly—but why would they if social forces make us wholly what we are and control how we understand reality? Are they less formed by social forces than others?
And if all people with power—who “call the shots” socially, culturally, economically, and control public discourse—inevitably use it for domination, then if any revolutionaries were able to replace the oppressors at the top of the society, why would they not become people that should subsequently be rebelled against and replaced themselves? What would make them different?
The postmodern account of justice has no good answers for these questions. You cannot insist that all morality is culturally constructed and relative and then claim that your moral claims are not.
Thus, if naturalism is correct, there's no compelling reason why anyone should listen to, much less give credit to, anyone else's moral pronouncements.
Many of the critical theorists in academia reject logic and rationality as a patriarchal manifestation of white privilege. Yet, their own claims cannot avoid relying on logic and rationality. They can't get away from it, and it's a peculiarity of critical theory that its advocates must employ reason in their attempt to debunk reason.
It's also ironic that they fancy themselves to be sophisticated intellectuals, but their repudiation of reason is in fact the signature characteristic of the barbarous anti-intellectual.
Keller's next criticism (which is actually the last of his seven) is that,
This theory sees liberal values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion—as mere ways to oppress people. Often this view puts these “freedoms” in scare quotes. As a result, adherents of this theory resort to constant expressions of anger and outrage to silence critics, as well as to censorship and other kinds of social, economic, and legal pressure to marginalize opposing views.This is precisely how totalitarians always see themselves. If only they could be given total control over what Kant called the "crooked timber" of human nature they'd be able to end all inequality and oppression. That's how they start out, but they almost invariably wind up as mass murderers. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Jung Un and many lesser thugs and butchers sought to establish economic justice and all ended up murdering thousands and millions.
The postmodern view sees all injustice as happening on a human level and so demonizes human beings rather than recognizing the evil forces–“the world, the flesh, and the devil”–at work through all human life, including your own.
Adherents of this view also end up being utopian — they see themselves as saviors....
Like the mythological inn-keeper Procrustes, they found that the limbs of human nature had to be bent and severed to make them fit into the bed of their Marxist vision.
Tragically, their epigones in Antifa, Black Lives Matter and university faculty rooms, those who embrace critical theory, are cut from the same amoral cloth, and, if given the power, many of them would doubtless commit the same atrocities.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Justice and Critical Theory, Pt. I
What are we to understand by the term "social justice"? How can we seek to achieve it until we can define it, and whose definition of justice are we tacitly adopting when we talk about social justice?
Tim Keller has written an interesting essay on justice in which, leaning heavily on the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, he notes that there are at least four ways to look at the term. He illustrates them with this diagram:
Activists on the progressive left usually think of justice as defined by postmodern critical theory in which, following the thinking of Karl Marx, society subverts the power of dominant groups in favor of the oppressed. Keller writes that this view of justice has at least six main elements.
To understand why people today often talk past each other, if they talk to each other at all, it's helpful to understand that these six elements are widely accepted among people on the left and they determine how they see the world. Here's Keller's description:
If you're not accustomed to thinking along these channels then you're probably not very progressive, but it's good to understand how so many of the more vocal people in our society do think. These are, after all, certainly the thought forms of many of those who have taken to the streets of our cities to protest and/or riot in recent weeks.
Keller goes on to offer a seven point critique of critical theory. We'll discuss two of his criticisms in tomorrow's post.
Tim Keller has written an interesting essay on justice in which, leaning heavily on the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, he notes that there are at least four ways to look at the term. He illustrates them with this diagram:
Activists on the progressive left usually think of justice as defined by postmodern critical theory in which, following the thinking of Karl Marx, society subverts the power of dominant groups in favor of the oppressed. Keller writes that this view of justice has at least six main elements.
To understand why people today often talk past each other, if they talk to each other at all, it's helpful to understand that these six elements are widely accepted among people on the left and they determine how they see the world. Here's Keller's description:
First, the explanation of all unequal outcomes in wealth, well being, and power is never due to individual actions or to differences in cultures or to differences in human abilities, but only and strictly due to unjust social structures and systems. The only way to fix unequal outcomes for the downtrodden is through social policy, never by asking anyone to change their behavior or culture.According to critical theory, then, a just society is one in which these thought forms dominate the thinking of the masses and are reflected in the institutions of the culture.
Second, all art, religion, philosophy, morality, law, media, politics, education and forms of the family are determined not by reason or truth but by social forces as well. Everything is determined by your class consciousness and social location. Religious doctrine, together with all politics and law are always, at bottom, a way for people to get or maintain social status, wealth, and therefore power over others.
Third, therefore, reality is at bottom nothing but power. And if that is the case, then to see reality, power must be mapped through the means of “intersectionality.” The intersectionality categories are race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity (and sometimes others). If you are white, male, straight, cisgender then you have the highest amount of power. If you are none of these at all, you are the most marginalized and oppressed–and there are numerous categories in the middle.
Most importantly, each category toward the powerless end of the spectrum has a greater moral authority and a greater ability to see the way truly things are. Only powerlessness and oppression brings moral high ground and true knowledge. Therefore those with more privilege must not enter into any debate—they have no right or ability to advise the oppressed, blinded as they are by their social location. They simply must give up their power.
Fourth, the main way power is exercised is through language—through “dominant discourses.” A dominant discourse is any truth-claim, whether grounded in supposed reason and science or in religion and morality. Language does not merely describe reality—it constructs or creates it. Power structures mask themselves behind the language of rationality and truth. So academia hides its unjust structures behind talk of “academic freedom,” and corporations behind talk of “free enterprise,” science behind talk of “empirical objectivity”, and religion behind talk of “divine truth.”
All of these seeming truth-claims are really just constructed narratives designed to dominate and, as such, they must be unmasked. Reasoned debate and “freedom of speech” therefore is out—it only gives unjust discourses airtime. The only way to reconstruct reality in a just way is to subvert dominant discourses—and this requires control of speech.
Fifth, cultures, like persons, can be mapped through intersectionality. In one sense no culture is better in any regard from any other culture. All cultures are equally valid. But people who see their cultures as better, and judge other cultures as inferior or even people who see their own culture as “normal” and judge other cultures as “exotic”, are members of an oppressive culture. And oppressive cultures are (though this word is not used) inferior—and to be despised.
Finally, neither individual rights nor individual identity are primary. Traditional liberal emphasis on individual human rights (private property, free speech) is an obstacle to the radical changes society will need to undergo in order to share wealth and power. And it is an illusion to think that, as an individual, you can carve out an identity in any way different or independent of others in your race, ethnicity, gender, and so on.
Group identity and rights are the only real ones. Guilt is not assigned on the basis of individual actions but on the basis of group membership and social/racial status.
If you're not accustomed to thinking along these channels then you're probably not very progressive, but it's good to understand how so many of the more vocal people in our society do think. These are, after all, certainly the thought forms of many of those who have taken to the streets of our cities to protest and/or riot in recent weeks.
Keller goes on to offer a seven point critique of critical theory. We'll discuss two of his criticisms in tomorrow's post.
Monday, August 17, 2020
What Gives Life Meaning?
A one minute excerpt from a discussion between Tucker Carlson and author Eric Metaxas dovetails so nicely with what my students and I will be talking about in class next week that I thought I'd share it.
The topic of their conversation was why Americans aren't having more children, and the whole six minute segment is worth watching, but at the 1:50 mark Carlson asks: “Then what’s the point of life [if people don't want to have children and families]? Going on more trips? Buying more crap? Clothes? I’m serious. What is the point?”
Metaxas' answer is, I think, exactly right:
Carlson responds to Metaxas' analysis with this,
Here's the video of the exchange: Metaxas is, of course, not the first person to say what he says here. Philosophers have been making this same observation about the emptiness of modern life for decades. Two twentieth century French thinkers, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, serve as examples.
Sartre wrote that, "Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal," and Camus declared that, "...for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."
If that's the way things are, multitudes of moderns have concluded, then why not just live for oneself and make the best of a bad situation. What sense does it make, they reason, to sacrifice the only life we have for other people, for kids and a family.
Their conviction is that matters is personal prosperity, power and pleasure and anything that interferes with the acquisition of those is best avoided.
The topic of their conversation was why Americans aren't having more children, and the whole six minute segment is worth watching, but at the 1:50 mark Carlson asks: “Then what’s the point of life [if people don't want to have children and families]? Going on more trips? Buying more crap? Clothes? I’m serious. What is the point?”
Metaxas' answer is, I think, exactly right:
Nobody really says this because it’s too ugly, but if you actually believe we evolved out of the primordial soup and through happenstance got here, by accident, then our lives literally have no meaning. And we don’t want to talk about that because it’s too horrific. Nobody can really live with it.In other words, given the lurch toward metaphysical naturalism in the Western world, there's really no reason to think it's wrong to just live for oneself, to put one's own interests first, to seek to squeeze as much personal enjoyment out of this otherwise pointless existence as possible before we die.
But what we do is, we buy into that idea and we say, “Well then, what can I do? Since there’s no God, I guess I can have guilt-free pleasure. And so I’m going to spend the few decades that I have trying to take care of Number 1, trying to have as much fun as I can. By the way, having kids requires self-sacrifice. I don’t have time for that. I won’t be able to have as much fun.”
Carlson responds to Metaxas' analysis with this,
But what a lie. What a lie. As you lie there, life ebbing away, you think, “I’m glad I made it to Prague.” Actually people don’t think that as they die.True enough, but when they're alive and in the full bloom of life people often do think that the more things they can accumulate, the more sights they can see, the more pleasure they can experience the more meaningful their life will be. Carlson says that they're believing a lie.
Here's the video of the exchange: Metaxas is, of course, not the first person to say what he says here. Philosophers have been making this same observation about the emptiness of modern life for decades. Two twentieth century French thinkers, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, serve as examples.
Sartre wrote that, "Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal," and Camus declared that, "...for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."
If that's the way things are, multitudes of moderns have concluded, then why not just live for oneself and make the best of a bad situation. What sense does it make, they reason, to sacrifice the only life we have for other people, for kids and a family.
Their conviction is that matters is personal prosperity, power and pleasure and anything that interferes with the acquisition of those is best avoided.
Saturday, August 15, 2020
Kamala Harris, Sarah Palin and Progressive Hypocrisy
Women's groups are preparing to counter what they think will be the inevitable sexist slurs and racial epithets that'll be directed at Kamala Harris, Joe Biden's choice to be his running mate. I wonder how many genuine slurs and epithets Harris will actually have to endure. Compared to, say, what Sarah Palin experienced I suspect Harris won't have much to bear on the matter of insults.
I wonder where these women's groups were when Palin was selected by John McCain as his running mate against Barack Obama in 2008 and was subjected by the progressive left to the most vile and vicious assault ever bestowed on a woman in politics.
Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson recounts the history of Sarah Palin's ordeal, and it's worth reading for anyone concerned that Kamala Harris might be called a naughty name by some internet troll.
What ensued after Palin's selection, Davidson writes,
The progressive media, Davidson avers, has sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind. He concludes with this:
Davidson has more at the link, including mention of a classy congratulatory note to Harris Palin posted on Instagram. Indeed, Palin has more class than do many of her erstwhile critics.
I wonder where these women's groups were when Palin was selected by John McCain as his running mate against Barack Obama in 2008 and was subjected by the progressive left to the most vile and vicious assault ever bestowed on a woman in politics.
Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson recounts the history of Sarah Palin's ordeal, and it's worth reading for anyone concerned that Kamala Harris might be called a naughty name by some internet troll.
What ensued after Palin's selection, Davidson writes,
was the greatest persecution of an American political figure in modern times. Palin, a mother of five who had recently given birth to a baby boy prenatally diagnosed with Down's Syndrome, became an object of hate for the media. Nothing has come close in its ugliness, its mendacity, its complete lack of restraint and, given Palin’s status as the second woman ever to appear on a major-party presidential ticket, the abject hypocrisy of a media establishment that purports to champion women’s rights and equality.Here's a partial list of the insults that were directed at Palin:
She has been called a ‘freak show,’ a ‘joke,’ an ‘extreme liability,’ a ‘turncoat b*tch,’ an ‘insult,’ a ‘fire-breather,’ ‘xenophobic,’ a ‘sitcom of a vice-presidential choice,’ a ‘disaster movie,’ a ‘shallow’ person, ‘chirpy,’ a ‘provincial,’ a ‘disgrace to women’ who was ‘as fake as they come,’ a ‘nauseating,’ ‘cocky wacko,’ a ‘jack in the box,’ ‘Napoleon in bunny boots,’ ‘extreme,’ ‘radical,’ a ‘vessel,’ a ‘farce,’ ‘Bush in drag,’ ‘not very bright,’ ‘utterly unqualified,’ a ‘bimbo,’ ‘Danielle Quayle,’ the ‘new spokesperson for bellicosity and confrontation,’ a ‘fatal cancer,’ ‘like a really bad Disney movie,’ ‘laughable,’ an ‘odd combination of Chauncey Gardiner from Being There and Marge from Fargo,’ ‘dangerous,’ a ‘bully,’ the ‘biggest demagogue in America,’ the ‘Paleolithic Princess of Parsimonious Patriotism,’ the ‘anti-Wonder Woman,’ ‘judgmental’… ‘dictatorial’ with a ‘superior religious self-righteousness,’ a ‘racist’ who was ‘absurd,’ ‘scary,’ and a ‘token,’ a ‘bantamweight cheerleader,’ an ‘airhead,’ an ‘idiot,’ a ‘librarian in a porn film,’ a ‘Jesus freak,’ a ‘man with a vagina’… a ‘Drama Queen,’ a ‘Republican blow-up doll’ who ‘ideologically’ is ‘their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread,’ an ‘opportunistic anti-female,’ a ‘true Stepford candidate, a cyborg,’ a ‘quitter,’ and—this list is by no means exhaustive—a ‘bonbon.’And these don't include the sundry obscene epithets to which she was subjected. Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic concocted a bizarre theory about Palin's Down syndrome child:
Sullivan, with the blessing of his editors at The Atlantic, descended to depths rarely seen in American political journalism: he helped hatch and then relentlessly pursued a sleazy conspiracy theory that Palin’s infant son with Down's Syndrome, Trig, was not her own, that he was really her teenage daughter’s, that the public presentation of Trig as Palin’s son was an elaborate political ruse, and that Sullivan could prove it by analyzing photos of a pregnant Palin and applying his apparently newfound expertise in obstetrics.Sullivan "repeatedly demanded that Palin’s doctors release medical records proving she gave birth to her son, Trig." The same media that waxed apoplectic at the suggestion that Barack Obama may not have been born in America both approved of, and heartily participated in, the vile attempt to destroy Sarah Palin. One writer, Joe McGinnis, even went to Alaska and rented a house next door to Palin so he could spy on her for a book he was writing to try to ruin her politically and personally.
The progressive media, Davidson avers, has sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind. He concludes with this:
Now they come forward under the guise of calling out sexism in politics with a thinly-veiled attempt to preempt all legitimate criticism of Harris. It won’t work. Republicans and conservative media are not likely to treat Harris the way Palin was treated, but when Democrats and the media inevitably cry out that Trump is being sexist, that conservatives are being unfair, and that in retrospect they regret how they treated Palin, no one will be able to hear them above the whirlwind.Davidson is correct. Everytime the media responds to some criticism of Harris with allegations of sexism or unfair treatment of a "woman of color" the response should be, "Do you remember Sarah Palin? Do you remember what you and your colleagues said and did to her?" Nothing that will be said about Harris will be anything near as revolting and as cruel as what was said about Sarah Palin and her family by progressive Democrats.
Davidson has more at the link, including mention of a classy congratulatory note to Harris Palin posted on Instagram. Indeed, Palin has more class than do many of her erstwhile critics.
Friday, August 14, 2020
How Modern Culture Dehumanizes Women
Scanning the news we're often confronted with stories of mistreatment of women in our culture. Stories about campus rape culture, sexually hostile workplaces, spousal abuse, and other examples of violence and degrading behavior perpetrated against women seem to abound, and the question this all raises is "why?". Why does it seem that more men today, more than in previous generations, hold women in such low esteem? Why are women so much more likely to be objectified and treated with disrespect today than in our grandparents' day?
I think a strong case can be made for the claim that the problem is a result of the moral revolution that took place in the 1960s and 70s concerning our attitudes toward sex and violence.
During those decades pornography was mainstreamed, and with the advent of the internet it became easily accessible to adolescents. Three generations of young men have thus been raised on ubiquitous pornographic images. This has likely had several undesirable effects.First, it has desensitized men to sexual stimuli. A hundred years ago a glimpse of a woman's lower leg was stimulating. It no longer is because now there's much more to be seen anywhere one looks than merely a shapely ankle.
Consequently, men require stronger and stronger stimuli in order to achieve the same level of arousal as someone who's not exposed to the constant barrage of sexual images. Because of this need for ever more erotic stimuli many men want their women to be like the women they encounter in movies, magazines, and online - they want their women to be sexually voracious playthings, and that desire often has a dehumanizing effect on women.
A lot of women simply don't feel comfortable in that role, and that incompatibility can create tension in their relationships. The man feels cheated, the woman feels cheapened and trouble results.
At the same time that pornography exploded, sex was disconnected from marriage and commitment. Many women were perfectly willing to live with men and give them all the benefits of marriage without demanding of them any kind of permanent commitment. This suited many men just fine. When men could have sex without having to bond themselves to a woman, women were more likely to be objectified and used by men who reasoned that there was no sense in buying a cow as long as the milk was free.
People who give us what we want may be popular as long as the benefits keep coming, but they're not respected. Respect may be feigned, of course, as long as the benefit is imminent but when the benefit no longer seems all that novel or exciting a diminution of respect often follows and results in the woman being treated accordingly.
Men are naturally promiscuous, they have to be taught to subordinate their natural impulses and to value instead hearth and family, but our entire culture has conspired in the last forty years to minimize and deride that lesson. So, when many a modern man, unfettered by any profound commitment to a particular woman and children, grows accustomed to the woman he's with she'll eventually begin to bore him, and it won't be long before his eye is cast elsewhere in search of another potential source of sexual excitement.
Along with the decline of traditional sexual morality in the 60s and 70s was the emergence of a radical feminism that castigated the old Victorian habits of gentlemanly behavior. It became quaint, even insulting, for a man to give a woman his seat on a bus or to open a door for her. Men who had been raised to put women on a pedestal - to care for them, provide for them, and nurture them - were told they were no longer necessary for a woman's happiness. In Gloria Steinem's famous phrase "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
The more vocal feminists also made it clear that women no longer appreciated being treated differently than men. Thus, our entertainment culture began depicting women in movies as just as raunchy, coarse, and proficient at killing and mayhem as men, and the idea of a woman being an object of special respect and courtesy because she needed male protection and care became risible. This, too, dehumanized women by eroding the esteem in which their gender had formerly been held among men.
As with sex, so with violence. The inclination to violence in the male population follows a bell curve distribution. At some point along the tail there is a line to the left of which lies the segment of the population which represents men who are violent. Most men sublimate and control their natural inclination to violence, but when they are exposed to it over and over as young men, when they amuse themselves with violent movies and video games, when they immerse themselves in violent imagery and themes, they become desensitized to it and tolerant of it. When they're no longer horrified by violence the population of males along the bell curve undergoes a shift toward that line, spilling more men onto the other side of the line than would have been there otherwise.
This affects women as much as men, if not moreso, because women are often the victims of male violence. As men become more inclined to violence, as they lose respect for women, as our culture portrays women as sexually insatiable playthings, women become increasingly the victims of male lust, anger and aggression.
It would be well for any young woman who is beginning to get serious about a young man to find out how much of his time he spends on violent movies and computer games and what he thinks about pornography. She'll learn a lot of very valuable information about him if she does.
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Fire-Maker
It's easy to take things for granted as we go through our everyday lives, but when we stop and think about some of those things it can just take our breath away.
Consider, for example, fire. When we reflect upon all the things about earth that have to be just right for fire to exist and then think about all the physical characteristics of an animal that have to be just right for that animal to be able to use fire, and then contemplate what that animal's culture would be like were the animal or the earth even slightly different such that fire could not be made or harnessed, it just leaves one shaking his head in amazement.
In this 21 minute video Australian geneticist Michael Denton walks us through the astonishing series of properties and characteristics of the earth, fire, and mankind that have to be precisely calibrated in order for humans to have developed the culture that we have today. Had any of those properties been other than what they are humans might never have survived at all, much less developed an advanced culture.
Someone hearing all this for the first time might well be astounded by the fortuity of it all.
The book on which the video is based is available here.
Consider, for example, fire. When we reflect upon all the things about earth that have to be just right for fire to exist and then think about all the physical characteristics of an animal that have to be just right for that animal to be able to use fire, and then contemplate what that animal's culture would be like were the animal or the earth even slightly different such that fire could not be made or harnessed, it just leaves one shaking his head in amazement.
In this 21 minute video Australian geneticist Michael Denton walks us through the astonishing series of properties and characteristics of the earth, fire, and mankind that have to be precisely calibrated in order for humans to have developed the culture that we have today. Had any of those properties been other than what they are humans might never have survived at all, much less developed an advanced culture.
Someone hearing all this for the first time might well be astounded by the fortuity of it all.
The book on which the video is based is available here.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
The Miracle of Metamorphosis
One of the most breath-taking feats of nature, a feat that occurs everyday in flower gardens in almost every neighborhood, is the metamorphosis of an egg to a caterpillar to a butterfly. It's an astonishing transformation, and it's remarkable that some people can go through their entire lives without giving it a second thought.
As you watch the beautifully filmed eleven minute video below, ask yourself how this process could have ever developed through undirected mechanisms like blind chance and fortuitous mutations. You might ask, too, why such a process would have ever occurred. After all, it certainly wasn't necessary for the caterpillar's survival, and, indeed, any chance development of any of the events that occur in metamorphosis would've been fatal to the insect unless the whole process was already in place.
And one more point to ponder: Why and how did the exquisitely beautiful patterns of butterfly wings evolve from a mindless series of random events?
It takes an extraordinarily tenacious commitment to a naturalistic worldview and an abundant supply of blind faith in the power of random chance to produce the astonishing organization of parts and the choreography of steps that occur in the transition from caterpillar to butterfly to insist that, however this all arose, intelligent agency played no role in the process.
As you watch the beautifully filmed eleven minute video below, ask yourself how this process could have ever developed through undirected mechanisms like blind chance and fortuitous mutations. You might ask, too, why such a process would have ever occurred. After all, it certainly wasn't necessary for the caterpillar's survival, and, indeed, any chance development of any of the events that occur in metamorphosis would've been fatal to the insect unless the whole process was already in place.
And one more point to ponder: Why and how did the exquisitely beautiful patterns of butterfly wings evolve from a mindless series of random events?
It takes an extraordinarily tenacious commitment to a naturalistic worldview and an abundant supply of blind faith in the power of random chance to produce the astonishing organization of parts and the choreography of steps that occur in the transition from caterpillar to butterfly to insist that, however this all arose, intelligent agency played no role in the process.
Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Some Scientists Are Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Creationists
An article by Michael Marshall at New Scientist discusses theories about how the first life originated (abiogenesis). His article is behind a paywall, but his lede sounds very much like what creationists have been telling us now for decades, although I'm sure both he and the scientists he mentions would be aghast at that suggestion.
Here's his opening:
It is astronomically improbable that each of these formed themselves by chance independently and spontaneously, much less that they all formed themselves simultaneously and at the same location (see the eleven minute video below).
Yet if one is a naturalist there's apparently no limit to the amount of credulity one is able to muster to maintain belief in undirected nature's ability to perform such miracles.
On the other hand, intelligent agents perform complex feats of creation every day, feats that chance would find impossible to achieve in trillions of years. Unfortunately, there's no room in a naturalist ontology for an intelligent agent to have been active in the creation of life, so, it's amusing that some origin or life researchers are coming around to the view that life was indeed created in a burst, just like creationists have always said, but that no Creator was involved.
The idea of a spontaneous origin of life calls to mind the much-quoted conclusion of Robert Jastrow's book God and the Astronomers in which Jastrow, an agnostic astronomer, famously wrote:
Here's his opening:
When Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, it was a sterile ball of rock, slammed by meteorites and carpeted with erupting volcanoes. Within a billion years, it had become inhabited by microorganisms. Today, life covers every centimetre of the planet, from the highest mountains to the deepest sea. Yet, every other planet in the solar system seems lifeless. What happened on our young planet? How did its barren rocks, sands and chemicals give rise to life?With due respect to these researchers, the probabilities of life arising solely by chance either gradually or especially spontaneously are so daunting, so miraculous, that it requires an enormous exertion of blind faith to believe that it happened. To have a "living" cell there must not only be a container for the cellular organelles, there must be a functioning metabolism, and most difficult of all a functioning genetic system that is able to create proteins as well as replicate itself and the cell.
Many ideas have been proposed to explain how it began. Most are based on the assumption that cells are too complex to have formed all at once, so life must have started with just one component that survived and somehow created the others around it. When put into practice in the lab, however, these ideas don’t produce anything particularly lifelike. It is, some researchers are starting to realise, like trying to build a car by making a chassis and hoping wheels and an engine will spontaneously appear.
The alternative – that life emerged fully formed – seems even more unlikely. Yet perhaps astoundingly, two lines of evidence are converging to suggest that this is exactly what happened. It turns out that all the key molecules of life can form from the same simple carbon-based chemistry. What’s more, they easily combine to make startlingly lifelike “protocells”. As well as explaining how life began, this “everything-first” idea of life’s origins also has implications for where it got started – and the most likely locations for extraterrestrial life, too.
It is astronomically improbable that each of these formed themselves by chance independently and spontaneously, much less that they all formed themselves simultaneously and at the same location (see the eleven minute video below).
Yet if one is a naturalist there's apparently no limit to the amount of credulity one is able to muster to maintain belief in undirected nature's ability to perform such miracles.
On the other hand, intelligent agents perform complex feats of creation every day, feats that chance would find impossible to achieve in trillions of years. Unfortunately, there's no room in a naturalist ontology for an intelligent agent to have been active in the creation of life, so, it's amusing that some origin or life researchers are coming around to the view that life was indeed created in a burst, just like creationists have always said, but that no Creator was involved.
The idea of a spontaneous origin of life calls to mind the much-quoted conclusion of Robert Jastrow's book God and the Astronomers in which Jastrow, an agnostic astronomer, famously wrote:
At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
Monday, August 10, 2020
Bet You Didn't Know This
It's almost certain you didn't know this if you get your news from CNN, MSNBC, or the New York Times.
Charles Fain Lehman at The Washington Free Beacon reports that Gallup polls show that over 80% of black Americans want the police to spend as much or more time in their neighborhoods as they currently do.
Asked if they would prefer police spend more, less, or the same amount of time in their neighborhoods, 61 percent of black respondents told Gallup the same, while a further 20 percent said more. Just 19 percent said less. Black respondents were more likely to want more police presence than white, Asian, and all adults overall.
The overwhelming support for current levels of policing even holds among black respondents who say they see the police often or very often. Two in three of those say they would like to see the police the same amount or more; 84 percent of black respondents who see the police "sometimes" responded that way, along with 92 percent of those who see the police rarely or never.
This is not at all consonant with what we've been hearing on progressive media outlets where the movement to defund or abolish the police has been getting a lot of airtime. Lehman reports that large majorities of Americans report trusting their local police departments and even in Minneapolis they oppose efforts to defund their police despite the views expressed by the majority white city council.
This is perhaps why Democrats, including Joe Biden, have muted their calls for defunding the police in recent days. They suddenly realized, it seems, that they were mistaken to think that parroting the demands of Black Lives Matter would ingratiate them with the black community.
There appears to be among blacks, just as among whites, a silent majority, and the silent majority of blacks is apparently wiser than the Democrats have given them credit for being.
Charles Fain Lehman at The Washington Free Beacon reports that Gallup polls show that over 80% of black Americans want the police to spend as much or more time in their neighborhoods as they currently do.
Asked if they would prefer police spend more, less, or the same amount of time in their neighborhoods, 61 percent of black respondents told Gallup the same, while a further 20 percent said more. Just 19 percent said less. Black respondents were more likely to want more police presence than white, Asian, and all adults overall.
The overwhelming support for current levels of policing even holds among black respondents who say they see the police often or very often. Two in three of those say they would like to see the police the same amount or more; 84 percent of black respondents who see the police "sometimes" responded that way, along with 92 percent of those who see the police rarely or never.
This is not at all consonant with what we've been hearing on progressive media outlets where the movement to defund or abolish the police has been getting a lot of airtime. Lehman reports that large majorities of Americans report trusting their local police departments and even in Minneapolis they oppose efforts to defund their police despite the views expressed by the majority white city council.
This is perhaps why Democrats, including Joe Biden, have muted their calls for defunding the police in recent days. They suddenly realized, it seems, that they were mistaken to think that parroting the demands of Black Lives Matter would ingratiate them with the black community.
There appears to be among blacks, just as among whites, a silent majority, and the silent majority of blacks is apparently wiser than the Democrats have given them credit for being.
Saturday, August 8, 2020
Precedent for Filling a SCOTUS Vacancy
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 87 and suffering from a series of maladies, most recently a recurrence of cancer. There's talk that she may have to retire although she herself vows to soldier on. Nevertheless, should she be unable to perform her duties and decide to retire before the November election the Republican leadership in the White House and Senate has promised to fill her seat expeditiously.
Democrats have complained that this would be hypocritical since when Antonin Scalia died before the 2016 election and Barack Obama sought to appoint Merrick Garland, the Republican Senate refused to move on his nomination, effectively killing it. Even a few Republicans think it would be wrong to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court this close to an election.
Dan Mclaughlin at National Review vigorously disagrees. He opens his piece with these words:
McLaughlin has much more detail in his article, and interested readers are urged to check it out.
Democrats have complained that this would be hypocritical since when Antonin Scalia died before the 2016 election and Barack Obama sought to appoint Merrick Garland, the Republican Senate refused to move on his nomination, effectively killing it. Even a few Republicans think it would be wrong to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court this close to an election.
Dan Mclaughlin at National Review vigorously disagrees. He opens his piece with these words:
Given the vital importance of the Court to rank-and-file Republican voters and grassroots activists, particularly in the five-decade-long quest to overturn Roe v. Wade, it would be political suicide for Republicans to refrain from filling a vacancy unless some law or important traditional norm was against them. There is no such law and no such norm; those are all on their side.President Trump is not only on solid legal ground, but also has precedent on his side in sending up a nominee as long as he's in office, even if he's a lame-duck after November:
Choosing not to fill a vacancy would be a historically unprecedented act of unilateral disarmament. It has never happened once in all of American history. There is no chance that the Democrats, in the same position, would ever reciprocate, as their own history illustrates.
...throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lame-duck session after the election, even after defeat.
Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic. Republicans should not create a brand-new precedent to deviate from them.
Twenty-nine times in American history there has been an open Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential election year, or in a lame-duck session before the next presidential inauguration. The president made a nomination in all twenty-nine cases. George Washington did it three times. John Adams did it. Thomas Jefferson did it. Abraham Lincoln did it. Ulysses S. Grant did it. Franklin D. Roosevelt did it. Dwight Eisenhower did it. Barack Obama, of course, did it.But should the Republican Senate use their legal power to seat a nominee the president sends them at this stage of Trump's presidency? Democrats argue that the Republican Senate refused to seat Merrick Garland before the 2016 election, and that it would be hypocritical of them to now seat a Trump nominee, but McLaughlan points out that the two situations are very different. In the case of Garland the presidency and the Senate were split with the former belonging to the Democrats and the latter to the Republicans. At present both belong to the Republicans.
Twenty-two of the 44 men to hold the office faced this situation, and all twenty-two made the decision to send up a nomination, whether or not they had the votes in the Senate.
So, today, Donald Trump has the raw power to make a Supreme Court nomination all the way to the end of his term. Senate Republicans have the raw power to confirm one at least until a new Senate is seated on January 3, and — so long as there are at least fifty Republican Senators on that date — until Trump leaves office.
Nineteen times between 1796 and 1968, presidents have sought to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in a presidential election year while their party controlled the Senate. Ten of those nominations came before the election; nine of the ten were successful, the only failure being the bipartisan filibuster of the ethically challenged Abe Fortas as Chief Justice in 1968.So, if a vacancy should occur, the Republicans have the right, both legally and in terms of precedent, to confirm Mr. Trump's nomination. Indeed, were the roles reversed the Democrats would certainly confirm a nominee sent them by a president of their own party regardless of when the vacancy occurred. For the Republicans to decline to do likewise would be a case of gross political malpractice that would alienate their voters for a generation.
McLaughlin has much more detail in his article, and interested readers are urged to check it out.
Friday, August 7, 2020
Millions Owe Their Existence to the Atomic Bomb
As I write this (August 6th) it is the 75th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic (or fission) bomb. John C. Hopkins has a very interesting and informative column on the bombing at the Wall Street Journal, but unfortunately it's behind a paywall. Nevertheless, I'd like to share some of what Mr. Hopkins, a nuclear physicist, writes.
He notes that the death toll of the two attacks (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in August of 1945, was horrific - somewhere between 129,000 and 226,000 men, women and children, but that, even so, it actually saved millions of lives.
The reason is that had the Japanese not been forced to surrender an invasion would eventually have been undertaken which, it was estimated, would cost the lives of 400,000 to 800,000 Allied troops and between five to ten million Japanese. The Japanese authorities had mobilized almost their entire society to fight to the death, and would have lost millions in the ensuing resistance to the invasion.
Had the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not induced the Japanese leadership to surrender, the war would've dragged on for at least another year and a half, which would've allowed time for the Soviet Union to invade the northern part of the country. A Soviet invasion would most likely have led to a partitioned Japan with a communist North and a free South. Vast numbers of Japanese would've found themselves living under a communist tyranny much as did the citizens of Eastern Europe.
Moreover, Japan faced a major famine shortly after the war that was partly mitigated by humanitarian shipments of more than 800,000 tons of food provided by the U.S. Had the bomb not been used the Allied invasion, the famine and the seizure of much of the country by the U.S.S.R. would've all occurred about the same time. The misery imposed on the Japanese people would've been catastrophic, far more catastrophic, even, than the devastation wrought by the bomb.
Although Hopkins doesn't mention it in his article, there's another incidental point that might be made about all this. Had the war continued into 1947 few military personnel would've been discharged before it was over. This means that almost none of those contemporary Americans who had a father, grandfather or great grandfather in the service during WWII would have been conceived. There are millions of Americans alive today who never would've been born had their ancestor not been discharged from the service when they were, setting them free to marry and start a family.
In other words, whether you think dropping the nuclear bomb was right or wrong, millions of Americans are alive today because President Harry Truman made the decision to drop the bomb on Japan in August 1945. If you're one of these individuals you might say that you owe your existence to the atomic bomb.
He notes that the death toll of the two attacks (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in August of 1945, was horrific - somewhere between 129,000 and 226,000 men, women and children, but that, even so, it actually saved millions of lives.
The reason is that had the Japanese not been forced to surrender an invasion would eventually have been undertaken which, it was estimated, would cost the lives of 400,000 to 800,000 Allied troops and between five to ten million Japanese. The Japanese authorities had mobilized almost their entire society to fight to the death, and would have lost millions in the ensuing resistance to the invasion.
Had the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not induced the Japanese leadership to surrender, the war would've dragged on for at least another year and a half, which would've allowed time for the Soviet Union to invade the northern part of the country. A Soviet invasion would most likely have led to a partitioned Japan with a communist North and a free South. Vast numbers of Japanese would've found themselves living under a communist tyranny much as did the citizens of Eastern Europe.
Moreover, Japan faced a major famine shortly after the war that was partly mitigated by humanitarian shipments of more than 800,000 tons of food provided by the U.S. Had the bomb not been used the Allied invasion, the famine and the seizure of much of the country by the U.S.S.R. would've all occurred about the same time. The misery imposed on the Japanese people would've been catastrophic, far more catastrophic, even, than the devastation wrought by the bomb.
Although Hopkins doesn't mention it in his article, there's another incidental point that might be made about all this. Had the war continued into 1947 few military personnel would've been discharged before it was over. This means that almost none of those contemporary Americans who had a father, grandfather or great grandfather in the service during WWII would have been conceived. There are millions of Americans alive today who never would've been born had their ancestor not been discharged from the service when they were, setting them free to marry and start a family.
In other words, whether you think dropping the nuclear bomb was right or wrong, millions of Americans are alive today because President Harry Truman made the decision to drop the bomb on Japan in August 1945. If you're one of these individuals you might say that you owe your existence to the atomic bomb.
Thursday, August 6, 2020
The Atheist's Conundrum
Barry Arrington at Uncommon Descent poses an interesting set of questions via an imaginary dialogue between a theist and an evolutionary materialist (atheist):
Consider an example: Suppose in some prehistoric society a belief arises that the more children one has the more richly they'll be rewarded in the afterlife. Suppose, too, that our doxastic inclinations are produced by our genes which are themselves the result of natural selection. If so, people who possess the genes for this belief are likely to have many more children, on average, than those who don't have those genes, and the genes that dispose toward the belief will spread rapidly through the population even though the belief is false.
In other words, evolution favors beliefs which have survival value, not necessarily truth value. If we believe ourselves to be solely the products of a natural process like evolution the most we can say about our beliefs about things like atheism and theism is that they must have survival value or they wouldn't have persisted.
A purposeless process like evolution which is geared to promoting survival is indifferent to the actual truth of beliefs. It's only attuned to their utility.
That being so, why should an atheist have any confidence that his reason is a reliable guide to truth? Indeed, the paradox for the atheist is that if atheism is true he can have no confidence that it is. His belief that it's true is the product of cognitive faculties shaped for survival, not for truth.
It's only the theist who believes that God designed humankind's cognitive faculties to lead to truth who can have any confidence that those faculties are in fact reliable.
Theist: You say there is no God.This is the point that philosopher Alvin Plantinga has been making for the last twenty years or so. If the cognitive faculties we currently possess have evolved so as to make human beings better suited for survival back in the stone age what grounds do we have for thinking that those faculties reliably lead to truth, especially truth about metaphysical beliefs like a belief in naturalism?
EM: Yes.
Theist: Yet belief in God among many (if not most) humans persists.
EM: I cannot deny that.
Theist: How do you explain that?
EM: Religious belief is an evolutionary adaption.
Theist: But you say religious belief is false.
EM: That’s correct.
Theist: Let me get this straight. According to you, religious belief has at least two characteristics: (1) it is false; and (2) evolution selected for it.
EM[looking a little pale now, because he’s just figured out where this is going]: Correct.
Theist: You believe the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis [NDS] is true.
EM: Of course.
Theist: How do you know your belief in NDS is not another false belief that evolution has selected for?
EM: ___________________
Our materialist friends are invited to fill in the blank.
Consider an example: Suppose in some prehistoric society a belief arises that the more children one has the more richly they'll be rewarded in the afterlife. Suppose, too, that our doxastic inclinations are produced by our genes which are themselves the result of natural selection. If so, people who possess the genes for this belief are likely to have many more children, on average, than those who don't have those genes, and the genes that dispose toward the belief will spread rapidly through the population even though the belief is false.
In other words, evolution favors beliefs which have survival value, not necessarily truth value. If we believe ourselves to be solely the products of a natural process like evolution the most we can say about our beliefs about things like atheism and theism is that they must have survival value or they wouldn't have persisted.
A purposeless process like evolution which is geared to promoting survival is indifferent to the actual truth of beliefs. It's only attuned to their utility.
That being so, why should an atheist have any confidence that his reason is a reliable guide to truth? Indeed, the paradox for the atheist is that if atheism is true he can have no confidence that it is. His belief that it's true is the product of cognitive faculties shaped for survival, not for truth.
It's only the theist who believes that God designed humankind's cognitive faculties to lead to truth who can have any confidence that those faculties are in fact reliable.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Why Is the Universe So Mathematical?
Physicist Sir James Jeans, contemplating the fact that the universe seems so astonishingly conformable to mathematics, once remarked that God must be a mathematician. It would indeed be a breathtaking coincidence had the mathematical architecture of the cosmos just happened to be the way it is by sheer serendipity.
Here's a lovely video that illustrates just one example of how mathematics seems to lie at the fundament of the universe. The video describes how the geometry of nature so often exhibits what's called the Fibonacci sequence:
Mathphobic students may wince at a statement like this, but it gets worse.
Physicist Max Tegmark has more recently claimed that the universe is not only described by mathematics, but is, in fact, mathematics itself.
To suggest that everything ultimately reduces to a mathematical expression is another way of saying that the universe is information. But if so, information doesn't just hang in mid-air, as it were. Behind the information there must be a mind in which the information resides or from which it arises. In either case, so far from the materialist belief that matter gives rise to everything else, it seems more likely that matter is itself a physical expression of information and that the information expressed by the cosmos is itself the product of mind.
In other words, it just keeps getting harder and harder to agree with the materialists that matter is the fundamental substance that makes up all reality. Materialism just seems so 19th century.
Here's a lovely video that illustrates just one example of how mathematics seems to lie at the fundament of the universe. The video describes how the geometry of nature so often exhibits what's called the Fibonacci sequence:
In 1959, the physicist and mathematician Eugene Wigner described the fact that mathematical equations describe every aspect of the universe as "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."
Mathphobic students may wince at a statement like this, but it gets worse.
Physicist Max Tegmark has more recently claimed that the universe is not only described by mathematics, but is, in fact, mathematics itself.
To suggest that everything ultimately reduces to a mathematical expression is another way of saying that the universe is information. But if so, information doesn't just hang in mid-air, as it were. Behind the information there must be a mind in which the information resides or from which it arises. In either case, so far from the materialist belief that matter gives rise to everything else, it seems more likely that matter is itself a physical expression of information and that the information expressed by the cosmos is itself the product of mind.
In other words, it just keeps getting harder and harder to agree with the materialists that matter is the fundamental substance that makes up all reality. Materialism just seems so 19th century.
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Has it Ever Worked Anywhere?
Polls show younger voters to be sympathetic to what is often called "Democratic Socialism" which is why socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are popular among the young.
Conservatives tirelessly point out, though, that socialism has never worked well anywhere and usually makes the middle class poor and the poorer classes even poorer. In fact, socialism is often a disaster as we've seen in countries like Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.
Progressives often counter this argument by declaring that those countries have misapplied socialist principles, and direct our attention instead to Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark as examples of socialist success stories.
A short piece in a Heritage Foundation pamphlet, however, explains why these counterexamples don't work:
First, these countries are not technically socialist....socialism entails a centrally planned economy with nationalized means of production. Although these countries have high income taxes and provide generous social programs, they remain prosperous because of their free-market economies.Denmark ranks as the 8th most economically free country in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which cites free-market policies and regulatory efficiency as reasons for the high standard of living. Sweden is ranked 22nd and Norway 28th, both with similar descriptions of thriving private sectors and open markets.These three countries are clearly not operating under centrally planned economies, or their economic freedom scores would be significantly lower.
Second, the success of these countries is clearly based on a capitalist foundation, and it predates the expansion of social programs. Sweden, for example, became a wealthy country in the mid-20th century under a capitalist system with low tax rates.Social programs and high tax rates were not implemented until the 1970s, which caused the economy to significantly underperform and unemployment to rise. In recent years, Sweden has been privatizing socialized sectors, such as education and health care, cutting tax rates, and making welfare less generous.Even though tax rates and government spending remains comparatively high, open-market policies generate the revenue to support the spending.
Finally, these countries are largely homogeneous and have a culture that is conducive to a large welfare state. Scandinavians are described as hardworking citizens with extremely high levels of social trust and cohesion.By contrast, America is a much larger country with lower levels of social trust, and therefore, a comparison is difficult to assess. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are not democratic socialist countries that the U.S. can be accurately compared with, and could be better described as “compassionate capitalists.”As such, the “democratic socialists”... are left with no successful examples of their vision, only disastrous ones.
The allure of socialism is hard to understand given the fact that 1) it has had such a calamitous effect on the economies of so many countries that have tried it, and 2) that countries in which it has been an unambiguous success have proven to be as elusive as the fountain of youth.
Monday, August 3, 2020
Voter's Guide for 2020
It's an unfortunate fact about our socio-political life that many people who vote don't really vote for the person who best represents their beliefs. Rather they vote on the basis of the candidate's looks, personality or simply because the candidate for whom they vote, whatever he or she stands for, isn't the other guy.
Whether we think a candidate is personable, or eloquent or virtuous the most important thing about him or her, aside from their integrity, are the policies they would implement. We should be primarily concerned not with their looks but with the direction they would take the country.
The choice in the next election is between candidates of one party which supports each of the following or makes each of the following more likely, and candidates of a party which opposes each of these. If you favor a majority of these measures then you should vote for Democratic candidates, if you oppose most of them you should not vote Democratic regardless of how attractive or otherwise appealing (or repugnant) a candidate is:
Whether we think a candidate is personable, or eloquent or virtuous the most important thing about him or her, aside from their integrity, are the policies they would implement. We should be primarily concerned not with their looks but with the direction they would take the country.
The choice in the next election is between candidates of one party which supports each of the following or makes each of the following more likely, and candidates of a party which opposes each of these. If you favor a majority of these measures then you should vote for Democratic candidates, if you oppose most of them you should not vote Democratic regardless of how attractive or otherwise appealing (or repugnant) a candidate is:
- Lowering the voting age to 16.
- Opposition to measures like voter ID and extending the voter franchise to non-citizens.
- Adding additional Justices to the Supreme Court to ensure that SCOTUS decisions go the way the left wants them to go.
- Appointment of judges and Supreme Court Justices who believe their role is to make law rather than objectively interpret the law and/or the Constitution.
- Abolition of the electoral college.
- Allowing felons to vote.
- Granting statehood to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico thus effectively giving Democrats four more senators.
- Allowing biological men to use girls' restrooms and locker rooms and compete against girls in scholastic athletics.
- Making it a hate crime to speak out against the LGBTQ agenda, even from the pulpit.
- Effective repeal of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
- Effective repeal of the Second Amendment guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms.
- Protecting and promoting abortion on demand and infanticide.
- Higher taxes and more government regulations on business and industry, stifling job growth and increasing unemployment among the poor.
- Making fossil fuel industries like coal, oil and fracking economically unsustainable.
- Abolition or deep curtailment of air and car travel.
- Exorbitant social spending and a shift away from a capitalist to a socialist economy.
- Providing subsidies for those who choose not to work.
- Open borders.
- Sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.
- Free health care and welfare for illegal aliens.
- Racial preferences and "reparations."
- A return to forced busing.
- Weakening the military.
- Abolition or weakening of police forces.
- Effectively permitting rioters to burn businesses, churches and public buildings and threaten citizens with physical harm.
- Obliteration of our historical heritage.
- Keeping schools and businesses closed until there's a vaccine for Covid-19.
- Making it more difficult for private schools to operate and for poor people to send their children to the schools of their choice.
- Hostility, or at least antipathy, toward Jews and Christians.
- Destroying the reputation and/or livelihood of anyone merely accused of sexual impropriety (except Joe Biden).
- Destroying the reputation and/or livelihood of anyone who holds views on race relations and/or sexuality at variance with those on the left.
Keep the list and see how many of them come to pass over the next four years if the Democrats win the White House and the Senate in November.
Saturday, August 1, 2020
The Incredible Ant
Tropical army ants display an incredible behavior. As a column of ants marches through the rainforest they encounter small ditches or other barriers across which they form a bridge with their bodies so that other ants can cross over:
And how does instinctive behavior evolve in the first place? According to the standard darwinian story, natural selection works on mutated genes to create novel structures, but if behavior isn't a function of an organism's genome how does it ever arise?
I wish that those who are so certain that all explanations are naturalistic, materialistic explanations would offer a plausible answer to these questions because they comprise what I think is one of the greatest mysteries about living things - the origin and transmission of instinctive behavior.
This is amazing. How do insects know to do this? The behavior is obviously inherited but how is it passed on? Genes code for proteins and proteins build structure. What is it that codes for behavior? If it's proteins then how do protein molecules in the teensy brain of an ant translate into behavior?
And how does instinctive behavior evolve in the first place? According to the standard darwinian story, natural selection works on mutated genes to create novel structures, but if behavior isn't a function of an organism's genome how does it ever arise?
I wish that those who are so certain that all explanations are naturalistic, materialistic explanations would offer a plausible answer to these questions because they comprise what I think is one of the greatest mysteries about living things - the origin and transmission of instinctive behavior.