Nature, Nurture and the Epigenome

Philosophers, psychologists and scientists have long debated whether our behavior is largely the product of environmental influences (nurture) or mostly the consequence of our genetic make-up (nature). Modern discoveries in biology have confirmed the suspicion of many that it's probably a combination of both.

Research on rats suggests that environment can actually change an animal's genome (the genetic composition of an organism) and thus influence much of its behavior.

The part of the genome that appears to be affected by environmental factors is not the actual DNA, which is the chemical basis for our genes, but rather molecular tags (called methyl groups) that attach along the DNA and act as switches turning certain genes on and off.

These tags are collectively referred to as the "epigenome," and this five minute video explains how it's believed that the environment affects these elements of our genetic make-up.

The mystery, at least it's a mystery to me, still remains how the proteins coded for by our genes translate into behavior. How do strings of amino acids generate a behavior like licking the young, building a specific type of nest or migrating to a specific tree thousands of miles away (as Monarch butterflies do)?

There must be some connection between physical proteins and an organism's behavior, but if it's known I've never seen it explained.

Another mystery is how strings of amino acids can tell cetain types of cells to move to distant parts of the body, or tell certain chemicals in the cell to move to other parts of the cell. To compound the mystery why should anyone think that all these things and many, many more all evolved by chance through a blind, undirected process like Darwinian evolution.

If the Darinians expect us to believe it they ought to give us a possible explanation rather than vague promises that someday the explanations will all be forthcoming.

Champion Prevaricator

Congressman-elect George Santos, a Republican from New York, has a problem, or rather several problems. He's currently being investigated for what amounts to a financial miracle, having become a millionaire virtually overnight.

He's also, it appears, a pathological liar having lied about almost everything of importance in his background. You can read the details here.

His political opponents are enjoying the scandal, of course, but it is amusing to read tweets from very liberal people like Sam Stein, who tweeted on December 22: "Is there any precedent at all to this George Santos situation? Has Congress ever had someone with so many remarkable biographical holes?"

Now this question is amusing because although Stein thinks that Santos' prodigious talent for lying is unprecedented, it's clearly not. The answer to his question is, why, yes, there is precedent. Tom Elliot on his Twitter page lists about thirty biographical lies told by a single politician over the course of his career.

The politician who has amassed this astounding record of mendacity is, of course, the current President of the United States.

Jim Geraghty mentions just seven of the lies Elliot documents in his Morning Jolt column. He writes: A few days ago, Tom Elliott listed all of the tall tales, sketchy claims, likely hallucinations, and outright lies offered by Joe Biden over the years. Among the highlights were Biden’s claims that:

• he was arrested during a civil rights march;
• he spent part of a summer working as a tractor-trailer driver;
• he was arrested while trying to meet Nelson Mandela;
• his son, Beau, was killed in Iraq (Beau Biden passed away after battling brain cancer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.);
• he graduated “top of his class” in college (he in fact graduated “near the bottom”);
• he hit a 368’ home run in one of the congressional baseball games;
• his first job offer was from an Idaho timber company.

Geraghty provides links to all of these confabulations at his column, and you can find more at the link to Elliot's Twitter page. Reading Elliot's list and comparing it to Santos' record, it's really hard to pick out a champion prevaricator between the two.

Anyway, most politicians lie, of course, but lying on the scale Santos did should disqualify him from serving in a position of public trust. But if that principle applies to Santos, if lying about one's biography is grounds for removal from office, it should also apply to everyone in public office, and especially to the President of the United States.

Repressive Tolerance

There's lots of talk nowadays about "tolerance," although the conversation has morphed quite a bit from what it was just a couple of years ago. It used to be that we were enjoined by progressives to be tolerant of those who disagreed with us, who held political or religious opinions at variance with our own or who adopted a lifestyle that others may have thought immoral.

Now the talk in progressive circles is all about what Herbert Marcuse back in the 60s was promoting as "repressive tolerance." Marcuse argued that tolerance and freedom of speech should not extend to those who hold retrograde political views, views that other groups find offensive or harmful. He insisted that freedom of speech was a subterfuge that elites employed to enable them to maintain power and as such should not be accorded the cherished status that has traditionally been conferred upon it.

In the educational sphere, in particular, Marcuse wrote that measures of repressive tolerance,

...would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.

In other words, if you believe in maintaining a strong military defense, if you believe that America is the greatest country ever to grace the planet, or if you disagree that social security should be increased or perpetuated, you should be denied the ability to voice your views.

This, in good Orwellian fashion, Marcuse labels genuine freedom of thought. He goes on to write that,

When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted. And when this perversion starts in the mind of the individual...the efforts to counteract his dehumanization must begin...with stopping the words and images which feed his consciousness.

To be sure, this is censorship, even precensorship, but openly directed against the more or less hidden censorship that permeates the free media.

So, if tolerance means that people should be allowed to argue against what Marcuse thought to be a better form of life, in his case Marxism coupled with sexual freedom, then those arguments should be repressed. People must not be exposed to well-reasoned arguments if those arguments may be so cogent as to persuade the hearer to reject the ideology of the left.

Marcuse made this case in 1965 in an essay titled Repressive Tolerance, but it's bearing fruit today in social media, the academy, and news organizations like the New York Times where any opinion that wanders beyond the bounds of acceptable progressive orthodoxy is quashed.

One of the arguments that the progressive left makes in support of "repressive tolerance" - which is, ironically, a fascist notion - is based on a misuse of a footnote in philosopher Karl Popper's famous 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies. John Sexton at HotAir.com explains that the footnote, which some leftists have seized upon to promote repression of deviant ideas and street violence, is being abused:

[Popper's] idea was pretty simple: If society is completely tolerant, then the intolerant will rule society because there will be no one willing to stand up to their intolerance. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary for a tolerant society to be intolerant toward those who are themselves intolerant.... You can probably see how this plays into certain Antifa arguments about “punching Nazis” and using street violence against the intolerant.

Popper called this the paradox of tolerance: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

Popper added, however, that,

In this formulation, I do not imply...that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

In other words, as long as people are willing to debate and discuss and have conversations about their disagreements, as long as they don't seek to impose their views by violent means, we must insist on tolerance and the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. It's only when people opt for violent coercion that tolerance comes to an end.

Here's Popper:

But we should claim the right to suppress them [those who eschew dialogue and resort instead to force] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

The fascist left, including Antifa, seizes on this as a justification not only for suppressing contrary ideas but also for violence, yet it's pretty clear that Popper was claiming that resort to violence is justified only when the other side refuses to engage in fair debate and chooses instead to substitute "fists and pistols" for reason and logic. It's also pretty clear that it's the extremists on both left and right in our current social landscape who fit the profile of those of whom Popper was speaking.

The extremist rejects argument because at some level he knows that neither facts nor reason are on his side. He senses the rational inadequacy of his position so he rejects reason and rationality rather than give up his position or subject it to rational scrutiny.

The only truth he recognizes is whatever he feels most strongly to be true, and since his feelings are self-authenticating and self-validating there's no point in debating them. He needs only to force you to accept his "truth," and if you refuse then you must be compelled, with violence, if necessary, to submit.

After all, if you disagree with the progressive left then you must be a racist bigot, and you should be silenced or have your face smashed. If you disagree with the extremist right then you must be part of the conspiracy to undermine America and you deserve to get stomped on.

That's unfortunately where we are today in America.

Antony Flew's Conversion

Antony Flew (1923 – 2010) was an atheistic British philosopher, perhaps the most influential atheist in the 20th century. He insisted that one should presuppose atheism until evidence suggesting a God was adduced, but he didn't think any such evidence existed. 

However, Flew was serious about following the evidence, and in 2004 he changed his position, and stated that he now believed in the existence of an Intelligent Creator of the universe. This conversion shocked fellow atheists.

Flew never publicly embraced any particular religion and claimed to be a deist, but keeping with his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believed in the existence of a creator God.

In 2007 a book outlining his reasons for changing his position, There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind was written by Flew in collaboration with Roy Abraham Varghese.

In the book Flew says this:

I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this Universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source.

Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science.

Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.

When I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist: “We must follow the argument wherever it leads.”

The leaders of science over the last hundred years, along with some of today’s most influential scientists, have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine Mind. As it happens, this is the particular view of the world that I now find to be the soundest philosophical explanation….

The French polymath Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) said four centuries ago that there's enough evidence to convince anyone who's not already dead set against it. Unfortunately, a lot of people today are ignorant of the evidence, in some cases, perhaps, culpably so, and some really are dead set against it.

Fantastic Design (Pt. 2)

Yesterday I posted an excerpt from Your Designed Body, a book that grows more fascinating the deeper I get into it. Today I'd like to post another excerpt in which the authors raise a number of questions that highlight the incredible complexity of bone formation in the human body:

Since bones are made by many individual (and independent) bone cells, building a bone is an inherently distributed problem. How do the individual bone cells know where to be, and where and how much calcium to deposit? How is this managed over the body's development cycle, as the sizes and shapes of many of the bones grow and change?

Surely the specifications for the shapes, their manufacturing and assembly instructions, and their growth patterns must be encoded somewhere. There must also be a three-dimensional coordinate system for the instructions to make sense.

Is the information located in each bone cell, or centrally located and each individual bone cell receives instructions? If each bone cell contains the instructions for the whole, how does it know where it is in the overall scheme? How do all those bone cells coordinate their actions to work together rather than at odds with each other?

As yet no one has answers to these questions. One thing we can expect, though: whoever solves these mysteries will likely win a Nobel Prize - which invites a question: If it takes someone of a Nobel-caliber brilliance to answer such questions, why wouldn't it have taken similar or greater intelligence to engineer it in the first place?

Here's another question: How do bones know when to stop growing? Where is the information located that tells each bone to stop? How is that information turned on and off and how is it translated into chemical signals and how do those signals work?

Furthermore, why is it that the ossicles in the middle ear, the "hammer," "anvil" and "stirrup," are full-size at birth and are the only bones in the body that don't grow as the body grows? How is that unique specification coded and transmitted only to these bones and no others?

And how is all of that produced by an unguided, mindless process like naturalistic evolution?

Fantastic Design

I'm currently reading Your Designed Body by Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman, MD and came across an excerpt from the book at Uncommon Descent that I thought would be worth sharing.

The book is an impressive catalog of the innumerable design problems that the human body overcomes in order to function. Reading it with any degree of objectivity makes it very difficult to think that the body is merely the result of a long chain of fortuitous accidents over a billion or so years of genetic mutation and natural selection.

Indeed, it takes an enormous effort of blind faith in the ability of impersonal mechanistic processes to convince oneself that the human body came about without any input from a super-intelligent bio-engineer.

Of course, some might reply that it takes an enormous exercise of blind faith to believe that such an engineer exists, but if the preponderance of evidence points to intelligence as the cause of what we see in the human body, if the preponderance of evidence is best explained by an intelligent cause, then the only reason we have for ruling out such a cause is an apriori commitment to metaphysical naturalism.

Setting such commitments aside, the probability that any complex, information-rich mechanism (like the human body) would exhibit the features it does is greater if it is intentionally designed than the probability that these features arose through purely undirected and random natural processes, and since we should always believe what's most probable over what's less probable, the belief that the body was intentionally designed is the most rational position to hold.

Here's the excerpt from pages 49-50:

To be alive, each cell must perform thousands of complicated tasks, with both functional and process coherence. This includes…containment, special-purpose gates, chemical sensing and controls (for many different chemicals), supply chain and transport, energy production and use, materials production, and information and information processing.

What does it take to make these work? Designing solutions to problems like this is hard, especially given two additional requirements.

The first, orchestration, means the cell has to get all the right things done in the right order at the right times. The activities of millions of parts must be coordinated. To this end, the cell actively sequences activities, signals various parts about what to do, starts and stops various machinery, and monitors progress.

The second requirement is reproduction. As if being alive weren’t difficult enough, some of the body’s cells must be able to generate new cells. This imposes a daunting set of additional design problems. 

Each new cell needs a high-fidelity copy of the parent cell’s internal information, all the molecular machines needed for life, and a copy of the cell’s structure, including the organelles and microtubules. And it needs to know which internal operating system it should use.

Once these are all in place, the cell walls must constrict to complete the enclosure for the new cell, without allowing the internals to spill out.

Somehow cells solve all these problems. Each cell is a vast system of systems, with millions of components, machines, and processes, which are coherent, interdependent, tightly coordinated, and precisely tuned—all essential characteristics of the cell if it’s to be alive rather than dead.

There remains no plausible, causally adequate hypotheses for how any series of accidents, no matter how lucky and no matter how much time is given, could accomplish such things. 

Presently it even lies beyond the reach of our brightest human designers to create them. Human engineers have no idea how to match the scope, precision, and efficiencies of even a single such cell, much less organisms composed of many cellular systems of systems, each system composed of millions or billions of cells.

One has to be extremely uncurious and intellectually indolent not to be astonished at the incredible complexity and information-level of even the simplest cells in our bodies. And one must be intellectually negligent not to ponder whether it's within the power of unguided and unaided physics and chemistry to produce such a marvel.

I'll have another excerpt tomorrow.

Two Noels for Christmas Eve

I thought it fitting on Christmas eve to post what is perhaps my favorite Christmas hymn. Christmas hymns, or carols, came to be called "noels" by the French based on the Latin word natalis, which can mean "birthday" or "of or relating to birth."

Eventually the word found its way into English in the 1800s and is frequently used today either as a synonym for Christmas carols or for Christmas itself.

As sung by Dave Phelps this noel captures some of the magic, mystery and power of Christmas. I hope you enjoy it and hope, too, that each of you has a wonderful, meaningful, magical Christmas filled with the love, peace and blessings of God:

After you watch, I highly recommend listening to the Bonner family sing O Holy Night. It's spectacular:

Reply Reply All Forward

Christmas Magic

Christmas is a magical time, but it's not the trappings of the secular world that make it magical - except maybe for very young children - rather it's the sense of mystery surrounding an incomprehensible idea, the idea of the Incarnation.

The magic is a by-product of the belief that Christmas celebrates a miracle, the Creator of the universe deigning to become one of His creatures so that in the fullness of time He and we could enjoy each other forever.

It's that belief, that hope, affirmed by Christians for 2000 years, that's so awe-inspiring and which fills us on Christmas with an ineffable sense of love and being loved, a sense that makes the whole experience of Christmas Eve tingle with mystery and magic.

The secular, commercial world has drained much of that excitement from the night by pretending that the real source and traditional meaning of the night are irrelevant or that they're something other than what they really are.

People feel they should be joyful at Christmas, but they can't say why. They seem to be trying to manufacture some sort of artificial "Christmas spirit," just like they try to gin up a feeling of near-delirium on New Year's eve.

An analogy: Picture the celebrations of players and fans after winning the Super Bowl or the World Series, but imagine the revelry and rejoicing even though the game hadn't yet been played. It'd certainly seem nonsensical and strange, but this is pretty much what a secular Christmas is like. No "game" has been played, nothing has been won, there's really nothing to celebrate, but the merriment and partying goes on nonetheless. Why?

All the talk of reindeer, ads for cars, beer, and phones, all the insipid "holiday" songs and movies - none of these do anything to touch people's hearts or imaginations. They don't inspire awe. The "joy" seems phony, empty and forced.

Indeed, Christmas Eve is hollow without the message of the Gospel and the conviction that this night is special, not because of the office Christmas party, last minute shopping, or Home Alone reruns, but because it's a night haunted by the presence of God and set apart for the delivery of the greatest gift in history.

One of the things that makes Christmas "good news that will cause great joy for all the people," is that the One who came to dwell among us has made it so that we can break out of the prison-house of meaninglessness and hopelessness that enchains us if all there is to life is being born, enjoying a few good meals, suffering and dying.

Christmas represents the possibility that we can throw off the crushing weight of purposelessness, emptiness and despair that plague modern life. It reminds us that our lives can matter for eternity.

Lovely thought, that, and one of the good things about it is that it's never too late for the transformation to begin. One of my favorite Christmas songs is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version of What Child Is This on their album Lost Christmas Eve.

The line that I find most poignant and hopeful is when an older man, though dying, finds his life transformed by reflecting on the Christmas story and cries out, "To be this old and have your life just begin!"

Here's Rob Evan of TSO performing the song.

Three Symbols of Christmas

Some people get a little miffed during the Christmas season over the use of Xmas rather than Christmas, because it seems like an attempt by non-Christians to have the celebration without having to acknowledge the historical reason for it.

Every year there are signs and bumper stickers saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas” as a response to the substitution of the letter X for the name of Christ, but historically it's not the letter X that's being substituted for Christ. Actually, the X is a shorthand for the Greek name for Christ (Christos).

The first letter of the Greek word Christos is Chi which looks like our letter X. There’s a long history in the church of the use of X to symbolize the name of Christ, and from the time of its origin, it has signified the opposite of any attempt to avoid naming Christ.

Gr: Christos

The irony is that probably a lot of people do use Xmas to exclude Christ from Christmas and have no idea what the origin of the word is.

-------

A popular Christmas tradition is to decorate one's home with a "Christmas" tree.

Painting by Marcel Reider (1898)

Modern Christmas trees originated during the Renaissance of early modern Germany. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with protestant reformer Martin Luther, who is said to have first added lighted candles to an evergreen tree. The practice is believed to have spread among Luther's followers in Germany and eventually throughout Europe.

-------

No doubt the most popular Christmas myth is that of Santa Claus. There's a rich ancient heritage behind the Santa Claus story. The secularized, sanitized, contemporary version has its origin in Christian history, and specifically in a man named Nicholas.

Much exaggerated legendary material is connected with his life and ministry, but if nothing else, the legends tell us what values and beliefs the church held as important as they were projected onto Nicholas. To the bare minimum of facts, legend has supplied intriguing details through such writers as St. Methodius (patriarch of Constantinople in the 850s) and the Greek writer Metaphrastes in the 10th century.

The story goes that Nicholas was born in Lycia in southern Turkey in A.D. 280 to pious and wealthy parents who raised him to love God and taught him the Christian faith from the age of five.

However, his parents died suddenly when he was still young, and Nicholas was forced to grow up quickly.

Inheriting his family's wealth, he was left rich and lonely, but he desired to use his wealth for good. The first opportunity to do this happened when he heard about a father of three daughters who, through an unfortunate turn of events, was left destitute.

Without marriage dowry money, the daughters could be quite likely condemned to a life of singleness and prostitution, so Nicholas threw some small bags of gold coins into the window of the home (some traditions say down the chimney), thereby saving the children from a life of misery.

Later, Nicholas made a pilgrimage to Egypt and the Holy Land and upon returning home felt called to ministry. He was subsequently ordained and spent time at the Monastery of Holy Zion near Myra in Turkey until an old priest had a vision that he was to be the new bishop.

The congregation overwhelmingly approved him, and he became known for his holiness and passion for the Gospel, becoming a staunch defender of Christian monotheism against the paganism that prevailed at the temple to the goddess Artemis in his district.

Nicholas was imprisoned during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Diocletian, savagely beaten, and later released under Constantine's Edict of Milan (313 A.D.). Those who survived Diocletian's purges were called "confessors" because they wouldn't renege on their confession of Jesus as Lord.

When Bishop Nicholas walked out of the prison, the crowds called to him: "Nicholas! Confessor!" He had been repeatedly beaten until he was raw, and his body was covered with deep bruises.

Bishop Nicholas was said to have intervened on behalf of unjustly charged prisoners and actively sought to help his people survive when they had experienced two successive bad harvests.

There was a widespread belief in those days, promoted by a theologian named Arias, that Jesus was actually a created being, like angels, and not divine. The Council of Nicea was convened by Constantine in 325 A.D to settle this dispute, and the Nicene creed, recited today in many Christian worship services, was formulated to affirm the traditional teaching about Jesus' deity and preexistence.

Nicholas and Arias both attended the council and the story goes that the two got into such a heated dispute over the true nature of Christ that punches were actually thrown. This may be a legendary embellishment, but whether it is or not, it certainly seems inconsistent with our normal image of jolly old St. Nick.

In any case, the actual story of St. Nicholas (Say the words "Saint Nicholas" quickly with a European accent and you'll understand how we got the name Santa Claus) is a lot different, and much more interesting, than the popular modern "fairy tales" surrounding him.

One Solitary Life

Perhaps you've heard the vignette about the enormous historical impact made by the life of Jesus titled "One Solitary Life." It originated in a sermon delivered on July 11, 1926 by pastor and author James Allan Francis who was speaking to the Baptist Young People's Union in Los Angeles.

His message finished with a description of Jesus' impact on the subsequent history of the world, and the concluding excerpt went viral. It received global circulation and is still a powerful yet concise statement of the world-changing effect Jesus' short life has had over the last two millenia.

As we approach the Christmas season it's perhaps fitting that we share this three minute film adaptation of Francis' words produced by Illustra Media:

It's a Wonderful Life (and Telescope)

The John 10:10 Project has produced a beautiful short video on the James Webb Space Telescope, and make a connection in the video between the Webb and the famous Capra Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life.

They introduce the video with this:

On Christmas Day 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched into an orbit that would position the instrument more than a million miles from Earth. It was a banner achievement in the history of astronomy for this extraordinary tool of exploration is at least 100 times more powerful than any telescope ever constructed.

Celebrate the holiday season with stunning views of the Webb's first images of deep space--each a breathtaking glimpse at the incomparable power and creative brilliance of God.

Here's the video:

That Hideous Strength

C.S. Lewis was an Oxford scholar of medieval literature, prolific writer and a famous Christian apologist (i.e. defender of the faith). He died in 1963 on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

In his novel That Hideous Strength (1945) Lewis writes a "fairy tale," as he calls it, that's a prophetic allegory of the cultural battle we see raging in our own day between the forces of left-wing progressivism/scientism and those who struggle to hold on to the traditional values of family and religious commitment.

In THS Lewis illustrates this struggle by means of a plot by the progressive National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) to take over, first a part of England, and ultimately the whole country and the world. N.I.C.E. is led by men who have embraced a scientistic worldview - naturalistic, atheistic, materialistic, reductionistic, objectivist and purely rational.

As Lewis describes them in a classic work, The Abolition of Man, they're men without chests. They have no heart, no passions. They're men bereft souls who can be pictured as disembodied heads, which is, in fact, how Lewis symbolically represents the leader of N.I.C.E.

N.I.C.E. and the men who run it may seem like fantastically implausible caricatures, but the story should be read as a bi-leveled allegory. On one level it's Lewis' portrayal of the spiritual nature of the battle and on another level it's a portrait of the left's program for crushing their opposition and gaining power, a program that has been employed consistently by the left ever since the days of Karl Marx in the 19th century and perhaps since the French Revolution in 1789 and the ensuing terror.

The Marxists and their progressive allies have throughout this era sought to advance along three fronts. These can be summarized as follows (the summary is taken from Faith and the Arts):

The Four Stages of Cultural Revolution – As described by former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov in the 1970s, these are the stages by which Soviet agents worked to infiltrate and undermine America and other western societies.

1. Demoralization – using pornography and other methods through media, entertainment, education, etc., to break down the moral courage of the people. 
2. Destabilization – By undermining police, courts, borders, etc., to overwhelm public safety and further demoralize the people.
3. Crisis – Build 1 and 2 to the point of a crisis where people resort to rioting or to civil war.
4. New Normal – Declare emergency powers and install the administrative state as a solution for all of the problems which the revolutionary forces have themselves caused.

The Long March through the Institutions – This is a central concept of cultural Marxism. It concerns the strategy of neo-Marxists in America and in other Western societies to overcome the resistance of successful middle-class cultures to the Marxist rhetoric of revolution. Middle-class people tend to be somewhat satisfied with their lives and tolerant of income differences with others.

Cultural Marxists therefore target all of the institutions of middle-class society—church, family, public education, media, the press, entertainment, business, academia, science, law, etc.—in order to create the problems and crises that lead to the imposition of emergency powers and the administrative state. 

Mass Formation – This is an academic concept that has been used for many years to try to understand the mass psychology that appears to be at work in societies like Bolshevik Russia, Nazi Germany, and Mao’s China, where thousands of ordinary citizens either turned a blind eye to the suffering of their fellow citizens or, in some cases, joined the forces that shamed and tortured them.

The process is based on fear and the desire to survive or escape the threat of suffering. Under these conditions, “normal” people may become callous to the suffering of others. They “go along to get along.” But the result is a complete collapse of genuine religious and moral civilization.

All of these corrosive strategies certainly seem to be experiencing alarming success in our contemporary culture, and Lewis shines a light on them in his depiction of the machinations of N.I.C.E. and the spiritual barrenness of those employed in advancing its cause.

For those who may never have read That Hideous Strength, I'd recommend first reading Abolition of Man and perhaps then perusing brief summaries of the first two novels in Lewis' "space" trilogy Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra before tackling That Hideous Strength.

The story will make more sense if you do.

Why Christians Celebrate Christ's Birthday

In this season of shopping and feasting it's easy to lose sight of why Christmas is a special day. The following allegory, which we've posted on Viewpoint several times in the past, is a modest attempt to put the season into perspective [Some readers have noted the similarity between this story and the movie Taken, however, the story of Michael first appeared on Viewpoint over a year before Taken was released so the similarities with the movie are purely coincidental, although the similarities with my novel Bridging the Abyss, are not.]:

Michael, a member of a top-secret anti-terrorism task force, was the father of a teenage daughter named Jennifer, and his duties had caused him to be away from home much of the time Jen was growing up. He was serving his country in a very important, very dangerous capacity that required his absence and a great deal of personal sacrifice. As a result, his daughter grew into her late teens pretty much without him. Indeed, his wife Judith had decided to leave him a couple of years previous and took the girl with her.

Finally, after several years abroad, Mike was able to return home. He longed to hold his princess in his arms and to spend every possible moment with her to try to make up for lost time, but when he knocked on the door of his ex-wife's house the girl who greeted him was almost unrecognizable. Jen had grown up physically and along the way she had rejected everything Michael valued. Her appearance shocked him and her words cut him like a razor. She told him coldly and bluntly that she really didn't want to see him, that he wasn't a father as far as she was concerned, that he hadn't been a part of her life before and wouldn't be in the future.

Michael, a man who had faced numerous hazards and threats in the course of his work and had been secretly cited for great heroism by the government, was staggered by her words. The loathing in her voice and in her eyes crushed his heart. He started to speak, but the door was slammed in his face. Heartbroken and devastated he wandered the streets of the city wondering how, or if, he could ever regain the love his little girl once had for him.

Weeks went by during which he tried to contact both his ex-wife and his daughter, but they refused to return his calls. Then one night his cell phone rang. It was Judith, and from her voice Mike could tell something was very wrong. Jennifer had apparently run off with some unsavory characters several days before and hadn't been heard from since. His ex-wife had called the police, but she felt Mike should know, too. She told him that she thought the guys Jen had gone out with that night were heavily into drugs and she was worried sick about her.

She had good reason to be. Jen thought when she left the house that she was just going for a joy ride, but that's not what her "friends" had in mind. Once they had Jen back at their apartment they tied her to a bed, abused her, filmed the whole thing, and when she resisted they beat her until she submitted. She overheard them debating whether they should sell her to a man whom they knew sold girls into sex-slavery in South America or whether they should just kill her and dump her body in the bay. For three days her life was an unimaginable hell. She cried herself to sleep late every night after being forced into the most degrading conduct imaginable.

Finally her abductors sold her to a street gang in exchange for drugs. Bound and gagged, she was raped repeatedly and beaten savagely. For the first time in her life she prayed that God would help her, and for the first time in many years she missed her father. But as the days wore on she began to think she'd rather be dead than be forced to endure what she was being put through.

Mike knew some of the officers in the police force and was able to get a couple of leads from them as to who the guys she originally left with might be. He set out, not knowing Jennifer's peril, but determined to find her no matter what the cost. His search led him to another city and took days - days in which he scarcely ate or slept. Each hour that passed Jennifer's condition grew worse and her danger more severe. She was by now in a cocaine-induced haze in which she almost didn't know or care what was happening to her.

Somehow, Michael, weary and weak from his lack of sleep and food, managed to find the seedy, run down tenement building where Jennifer was imprisoned. Breaking through a flimsy door he saw his daughter laying on a filthy bed surrounded by three startled kidnappers. Enraged by the scene before his eyes he launched himself at them with a terrible, vengeful fury. Two of the thugs went down quickly, but the third escaped. With tears flowing down his cheeks, Mike unfastened the bonds that held Jen's wrists to the bed posts. She was weak but alert enough to cooperate as Michael helped her to her feet and led her to the doorway.

As she passed into the hall with Michael behind her the third abductor appeared with a gun. Michael quickly stepped in front of Jennifer and yelled to her to run back into the apartment and out the fire escape. The assailant tried to shoot her as she stumbled toward the escape, but Michael shielded her from the bullet, taking the round in his side. The thug fired twice more into Michael's body, but Mike was able to seize the gun and turn it on the shooter.

Finally, it was all over, finished.

Slumped against the wall, Mike lay bleeding from his wounds, the life draining out of him. Jennifer saw from the fire escape landing what had happened and ran back to her father. Cradling him in her arms she wept bitterly and told him over and over that she loved him and that she was so sorry for what she had said to him and for what she had done.

With the last bit of life left in him he gazed up at her, pursed his lips in a kiss, smiled and died. Jennifer wept hysterically. How could she ever forgive herself for how she had treated him? How could she ever overcome the guilt and the loss she felt? How could she ever repay the tremendous love and sacrifice her father had showered upon her?

Years passed. Jennifer eventually had a family of her own. She raised her children to revere the memory of her father even though they had never known him. She resolved to live her own life in such a way that Michael, if he knew, would be enormously proud of her. Everything she did, she did out of gratitude to him for what he had done for her, and every year on the day of his birth she went to the cemetery alone and sat for a couple of hours at his graveside, talking to him and sharing her love and her life with him.

Her father had given everything for her despite the cruel way she had treated him. He had given his life to save hers, and his love for her, his sacrifice, had changed her life forever.

And that's why Christians celebrate Christmas.

A Sampling of Good Books (IMO)

I'm always wary of recommending books, music or movies because what appeals to me is not likely to appeal to others. In fact, it's been my unfortunate experience that it definitely does not appeal to others.

Nevertheless, I thought for this post I'd list just a few of my favorite non-fiction reads from the last couple of years.

Of the hundred or so books I managed to digest over that span, a couple dozen or so stood out. Some of them were books I had read before and wanted to reread, following the advice that one should always alternate between reading a new book and rereading an older one.

From the many that I thought especially worthwhile it was difficult to select those I wanted to mention on this list. Even so, here are a baker's dozen I particularly enjoyed reading or rereading:

The World's Religions - Huston Smith: This is a classic in the field of religious studies. It's perhaps the best explanation of the beliefs and teachings of the world's major religions.

Return of the God Hypothesis - Stephen Meyer: Meyer is a philosopher of science who composes a compelling case for the existence of God or something very much like God. He takes his evidence from the origin of the universe, its astonishing fine-tuning and the origin of life.

The Miracle of Man - Michael Denton: An accessible account of how the laws of physics and chemistry are just what they must be to permit the emergence of intelligent beings like humans. Had any of the properties of matter, such as the viscosity of water, been even slightly different no higher life forms would exist.

Non-Computable You - Robert Marks: Marks is a computer expert who argues in a very entertaining way that artificial intelligence will never be able to do what the human brain can do.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self - Carl Trueman: Trueman outlines the philosophical history of ideas that has produced our contemporary attitudes toward sex and gender.

Kierkegaard - Stephen Backhouse: A very lucid introduction to the life of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.

Sword and Scimitar - Raymond Ibrahim: Ibrahim describes the history of seven major battles between the armies of Islam and those of the West culminating in the siege of Vienna in 1683. It's a fascinating account and one that helps the reader understand the contemporary conflict between Islam and the West.

Animal Algorithms - Eric Cassell: Cassell writes breathtaking descriptions of the ability of animals, particularly insects, to accomplish incredible behaviors despite having brains the size of a pinhead.

I'm Not a Racist, But ... - Lawrence Blum: One of the best books on race that I've come across.

Dominion - Tom Holland: Historian Tom Holland takes us on a tour of the history of Western civilization and argues implicitly that the accomplishments of the West were made possible by the Christian worldview that permeated the thinking of its people.

Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War - Peter Maas: An account of the stupidities and horrors of the Bosnian war in the 1990s by a journalist who lived through it.

A Fortunate Universe - Lewis and Barnes: Two cosmologists team up to explain the fine-tuning of the atom and how had any of the properties of the atom been different by the tiniest amounts the universe wouldn't and couldn't exist.

Lone Survivor - Marcus Luttrell: Luttrell was a Navy SEAL who recounts his SEAL training, a mission in Afghanistan that went horribly bad and his eventual rescue. Only he survived the mission. It's a remarkable story of endurance and heroism.

The Twitter Affair

Gerard Baker at the Wall Street Journal (paywall) puts his finger on what is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the "Twitter Files" revelations:

He writes:

[The documents] provide a valuable picture of the minds of those who make decisions about what gets amplified and what gets suppressed in our public discourse. While there were some dissenters at the company, the key decisions almost all went the way you would expect.

What we get is an unsettling insight into the approach to knowledge by which our cultural elites operate—what we might call an epistemological asymmetry between progressive ideologues and the rest of us.

It’s not that executives, editors, reporters and algorithm-writers at big media and tech companies consciously promote their ideological nostrums, mindful of and striving to overcome competing ideas. It’s much worse.

If you’re an executive at Twitter with the Orwellian title of “head of trust and safety” or a “disinformation” and “extremism” reporter at NBC News, or an executive at the New York Times charged with enforcing intellectual homogeneity, you’re not simply promoting a view of the world that you espouse.

You are doing something much more important, which compels compliance and tolerates no alternatives: promulgating the One True Faith, a set of orthodoxies from which there is no legitimate dissent.

Here is the asymmetry: Most conservatives, or intellectually curious people, don’t think like this. They don’t think that someone with differing opinions on say, immigration restrictions, the right level of taxation, or the case for affirmative action is voicing a provably false and intrinsically illegitimate view that amounts to misinformation.

They think their opponents’ beliefs are wrong and reflect flawed analysis or erroneous evidence. But they don’t think there is only one acceptable belief and that dissent from it is analytically impossible, intellectually dishonest and morally contemptible.

But this is the left’s mindset. It is why they don’t need instructions from government officials or public censors to determine access to information. They are themselves the controlling authority.

They act in ways that are reminiscent of the pre-Enlightenment certitudes of the clerisy. They have a moral and normative view of knowledge that seeks to disfavor, suppress and ultimately extirpate heresy.

Twitter occupies an absurdly inflated amount of space in the minds of people in the media, myself included. While the decisions it makes about who or what to promote or suppress obsess us, its actions impinge little on the deliberations of most Americans. It is a private company and, in accordance with the principles of a free market, should be free to do what it wishes.

These revelations matter, however, not because of anything they tell us about Twitter. They matter because they show the way an entire generation of people who occupy positions of influence think about knowledge, truth and opinion.

It's a characteristic of the young, and also of older folks who are not too well-informed, to be much too certain that they're in special possession of the truth and that anyone who disagrees with them must be either ignorant, perverse or malevolent. It never seems to occur to them that maybe they don't know as much as they seem to think they do.

A few days ago I posted a piece by John Stuart Mill concerning intellectual virtues. The arrogant young censors at Twitter (and Google, and Facebook, and Instagram, etc.) would do well to read Mill's masterful essay On Liberty upon which that post was based.

They might actually benefit from it.

Penciled Out of the "Old" Category

R.R. Reno at First Things (subscription required) writes about an observation made by Rob Henderson on his Substack Newsletter (ditto). Henderson remarks on...

...the peculiar deference baby boomers give to young people: “Older adults crave validation from the youth, which is one reason they are mocked. Young people sense their desire to be seen as cool and deprive them of this by taunting them.”

Worse, “energetic young conflict entrepreneurs” seize the initiative and intimidate baby boomer leaders of institutions and companies, driving the woke agenda into a commanding role in the marketplace and government. Henderson doesn’t see any relief on the horizon.

“Older adults want to be on the side of youth. [They are] desperate to pencil themselves out of the ‘old’ category. Every parent wants to be the ‘cool parent’; every professor wants to be the ‘cool professor.’”

Henderson appends this quote from another writer:

In the old days young people went to university to learn from people who were perhaps three times their age and had read an enormous amount. But nowadays they go in order to tell those older people what they should be thinking and what they should be saying.

What Reno notes here about older people in general is, in my experience, true in particular of not a few high school teachers, college professors and parents. Although with parents the young aren't so much antagonistic toward them, though they may be, as they are embarrassed by them.

Anyway, perhaps I should count myself fortunate that there's just no way I can be penciled out of the "old" category, either by my students or my grandkids.

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

One of the problems faced by those who are researching the potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source is that heretofore it has taken more energy to get atoms to fuse together than what's gotten out of the fusion.

The difficulty is this. The fuel for fusion is an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium. Deuterium contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Because protons are positively charged and because like charges repel, it's exceedingly difficult to get two deuterium nuclei to be pressed close enough to each other for the strong nuclear force to take over and bind them together.

Only the pressures generated in the interiors of stars or in a nuclear explosion or by the focused beams of multiple high-powered lasers can force these deuterium nuclei to "smoosh" together.

And if they can be forced together a small amount of the matter in the nucleus is converted into energy according to Einstein's equation E = mc^2 where E is the energy produced, m is the mass that's converted and c is the speed of light. The speed of light is 3x10^5 km/s. That number squared is 9x10^10 so even a small amount of mass (m) multiplied by such a huge number results in an enormous amount of energy (E) being produced.

Which is why recent work done at Lawrence Livermore National Labs is so significant. Jim Geraghty fills us in at NRO:

Across the bay from San Francisco, the Lawrence Livermore National Labs have been conducting fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility, a giant lab the size of a sports stadium, where the equipment “precisely guides, amplifies, reflects, and focuses 192 powerful laser beams into a target about the size of a pencil eraser in a few billionths of a second, delivering more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy and 500 trillion watts of peak power.”

If you smash two atoms together at exceptionally high speeds, they merge, and in the process release energy; for decades, researchers have been stymied by the challenge of generating a reaction that releases more energy than it consumes.

That, reportedly, is what the Department of Energy has done for the first time.

This is, however, just a first step. There are lots of hurdles to be surmounted. Geraghty quotes the Washington Post:

Creating the net energy gain required engagement of one of the largest lasers in the world, and the resources needed to recreate the reaction on the scale required to make fusion practical for energy production are immense.

More importantly, engineers have yet to develop machinery capable of affordably turning that reaction into electricity that can be practically deployed to the power grid.

Building devices that are large enough to create fusion power at scale, scientists say, would require materials that are extraordinarily difficult to produce. At the same time, the reaction creates neutrons that put a tremendous amount of stress on the equipment creating it, such that it can get destroyed in the process.

There’s a long way to go, and this is just the first step, but it is a key first step. The potential of this breakthrough is spectacular.

Fusion has numerous advantages over every other power source - fossil, green or nuclear - currently on the horizon. There's no radioactive waste or threat of a nuclear meltdown, no carbon footprint, and the fuel, deuterium, is found in water and is almost inexhaustable.

Geraghty has more about this development at the link, but however exciting this breakthrough is we're still a long way from being able to use fusion to produce commercially marketable electricity. Even so, the Lawrence Livermore people have taken a giant first step.

Two Intellectual Virtues

One of my favorite works in philosophy is a book by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) titled On Liberty. Throughout this elegantly written essay Mill offers excellent advice on how to think clearly about the proper limits of state coercion and the freedom of the individual citizen.

In chapter two he takes up the related topic of a citizen's responsibility to inform him or herself on important matters like "morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life". In these, Mill suggests, we should make it our practice to follow the example of one of the greatest rhetoricians in history, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Mill writes:

The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.

How many people know, for example, the arguments on the other side of the issue from their own on matters like the existence of God, evolution, immigration, climate change, abortion, gay marriage, etc.? If we don't know what the opposing arguments are on such questions how are we justified in dogmatically declaring or believing that our opinion is the only one that it's reasonable to hold?

Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.

He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

In other words, if we only hear opposing views from those who agree with our position then we're probably not hearing those views presented as cogently as they would be by someone who really believed them. We shouldn't be afraid to read books and listen to lectures by people with whom we disagree. It'll either sharpen our own views or lead us closer to the truth.

Those on college campuses today who seek to shout down speakers they disagree with, or to prevent them from even appearing on campus, are, in addition to revealing their own intellectual primitiveness, doing both the truth and their fellow students a grave disservice.

John Stuart Mill

Most people, even educated people, Mill laments, don't really know the arguments against the positions they hold:

Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.

They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred.

All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in the strongest light.

Of course, few people have the time, let alone the inclination, to thoroughly explore all sides of all important issues, but if we don't then we certainly have no justification for being dogmatic in expressing our opinions. It would be better instead to display a genuinely open-minded intellectual humility which, so far from communicating the message, "I'm right and you're wrong", says instead that, "I might well not know all that I should about this matter, but here's what I think based on what I do know...."

Unfortunately, just as in Mill's time, open-mindedness and humility are two intellectual virtues not conspicuous among those participating in debates on the issues of our day.

How Did Life Begin?

Josh Anderson at Quora responds to the question whether it's "possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that intelligence was required to create life."

His reply is quite interesting. Here it is in full, slightly edited:

Yes, it is. Here’s the question you should ask yourself: Is symbolic code something that blind, intelligence-free physical processes could create and use? Or is mind alone up to the task?

The legendary John Von Neumann (1903-1957) did important work on self-replicating systems. A towering giant in the history of mathematics and pioneer in computer science, he was interested in describing machine-like systems that could build faithful copies of themselves.

Von Neumann soon recognized that it would require both hardware and software. Such a system had to work from a symbolic representation of itself. That is, it must have a kind of encoded picture of itself in some kind of memory.

Crucially, this abstract picture had to include a precise description of the very mechanisms needed to read and execute the code.

Makes sense, right? To copy itself it has to have a blueprint to follow. And this blueprint has to include instructions for building the systems needed to decode and implement the code.

In order to replicate itself, Von Neumann is asserting, a computer would have to be programmed with a complete set of instructions to direct the replication process. But how could a computer program itself to replicate itself?

Here’s the remarkable thing: Life is a Von Neumann Replicator. Von Neumann was unwittingly describing the DNA based genetic system at the heart of life. And yet, he was doing so years before we knew about these systems.

The implications of this are profound. Think about how remarkable this is. It’s like having the blueprints and operating system for a computer stored on a drive in digital code that can only be read by the device itself. It’s the ultimate chicken and egg scenario.

Again, how would a computer ever "know" how to program itself to produce a copy of itself without input at some point from a mind?

How might something like this have come about? For a system to contain a symbolic representation of itself [there has to be an] actualization of precise mapping between two realms, the physical realm and an abstract symbolic realm.

In view here is a kind of translation, mechanisms that can move between encoded descriptions and material things being described. This requires a system of established correlations between stuff out here and information instantiated in a domain of symbols.

Here’s the crucial question: Is this something that can be achieved by chance, physical laws, or intelligence-free material processes? The answer is decidedly NO. What’s physical cannot work out the non-physical. Only a mind can create a true code.

Only a mind can conceive of and manage abstract, symbolic realities. A symbolic system has to be invented. It cannot come about in any other way.

Another way to say this is that there's a vast chasm between immaterial, abstract information (symbols) and physical machines. The only way to bridge that chasm, whether in computers or human beings, is through a mind. But on naturalism there was no mind present when the first cells evolved the ability to replicate.

So how did they?

If you think something like this - mutually interdependent physical hardware and encoded software - can arise through unguided, foresight-less material forces acting over time, think again.

If I were to ask you to think of something, anything that absolutely requires intelligence to bring about, you’d be hard pressed to think of a better example. It’s not just that no one understands how it could be done, it’s that we have every reason to believe that it is impossible in principle.

No intelligence-free material processes could ever give you something like this. (i.e. a complex, self-replicating entity like a living cell)

But wait, how can we be so sure this feature of life was not forged by evolution, built up incrementally by the unseen hand of natural selection? What’s to say this is beyond the ability of evolution to create?

The question answers itself. In order for evolution to take place you have to have a self-replicating system in place. You don’t evolve to the kind of thing we’ve been describing. That is, necessarily, where you begin.

Evolution cannot get started until the first self-replicating system exists, but how does that first system come to exist? How, in other words, does life begin apart from a mind?

The DNA and the dizzyingly complex molecular machinery that it both uses and describes did not evolve into existence. This much is clear.

Any suggestion that it did is not based on a scintilla of empirical evidence or any credible account of how it could have come about in this way.

The conclusion is clear: The unmistakable signature of mind is literally in every cell of every living thing on earth.

Every living thing is comprised of millions if not trillions of self-replicating biological factories called cells. Naturalists insist that this ability to self-replicate evolved without any help from a mind, but they have no answer to the question of how that would've even been possible.

The claim that it did is no more than an assertion of blind faith.

Good News, Bad News

One can be happy for Brittany Griner and her family that the Russians have finally released her from prison while at the same time be dismayed at the Biden administration's priorities.

While Griner had been in prison since last February other Americans have languished in the Russian prison system for much longer.

Fifty two year-old Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive, traveled to Moscow in December 2018 for a wedding and was detained by Russian authorities on espionage charges.

In 2020, the former Marine received a 16-year prison sentence in what the U.S. has called a sham trial.

Whelan was ordered to serve time at a prison labor camp in the province of Mordovia.

Last month, Whelan was moved to a prison hospital for undisclosed reasons.

Marc Fogel, a history teacher from Pittsburgh who taught the children of U.S. diplomats abroad, was detained in Moscow in August 2021. He had with him a small amount of medical marijuana he used for chronic back pain.

In June, Fogel was sentenced to 14 years at a labor camp. He's sixty-one years-old.

Sarah Krivanek, 46, moved to Russia from Fresno, California, five years ago to teach at a Russian private school.

Last year, Krivanek was involved in a domestic abuse situation with her boyfriend and allegedly grabbed a knife to defend herself, nicking him slightly. Krivanek was arrested by Russian authorities and detained for roughly a year despite her boyfriend retracting the charges.

She was released last month but detained again at a Moscow airport when she tried to leave the country. Krivanek is not incarcerated but is also not authorized to return home. She is waiting in a holding facility while she figures out how to leave Russia.

So, why was the Biden administration so determined to get Griner back that they were willing to overlook the plight of these other Americans and release to Russia Viktor Bout, a former Soviet military officer serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, acquire and export anti-aircraft missiles, and provide material support to a terrorist organization?

Is it because Griner is a celebrity - an African American, lesbian professional basketball player? It's hard to see what other reason Mr. Biden would've had to prioritize her release over that of Whelan, Fogel and Krivanek. She's famous and they're not.

It says a lot about both the U.S. and Russia that we prioritized the release of a celebrity over a former Marine and that the Russians were eager to have us release to them a man dubbed by our intelligence agencies "The Merchant of Death."

I wonder if the American negotiators played all their cards before acceding to Russia's demands to release Bout from Griner. Did they think to tell the Russians that either they release all four Americans post haste or the U.S. will stop reconfiguring the HIMAR missiles we're sending to Ukraine to limit their range to only fifty miles?

If the Americans are not released, our negotiators could've stipulated, the missiles we send the Ukrainians will be able to achieve their maximum range and reach Russian bases and troops inside both Crimea and Russia.

Maybe our negotiators could've thrown Bout in to sweeten the deal since he'd already served fifteen years of his sentence anyway.

The Russians could then be left to ponder whether holding on to innocent Americans was worth the humiliation and demoralization that would result from the loss of officers, men and material the rejiggered HIMARs would cause.

Did our people play this card? If not, why not?

Digitized Immortality

There's been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about the possibility of gaining immortality by downloading one's consciousness into some information-storing medium like a computer chip which could then be implanted into another body of some sort.

It sounds interesting given the technological advances in computer power that've been made in recent years, but as the following 11 minute video points out the obstacles to downloading the contents of one's brain in such a way that the self remains intact are more than daunting.

The narrator of the video, which was recommended to me by one of my students, seems to have a tongue-in-cheek optimism about the prospects of digitizing the brain. There's no reason to think it can't be done, he seems to imply, but as the video proceeds the viewer realizes that the whole point of the video is to show that, in fact, it could never be done.

One wonders, watching this video, how something as astoundingly complex as a brain could have ever evolved by chance, but set that very important questions aside. In addition to all the fascinating technical difficulties that preserving one's consciousness involves there's another major problem that the video doesn't address. The video assumes that the brain is all that's involved in human consciousness, but it's by no means clear that that's so.

Many philosophers are coming to the conclusion that, in addition to the brain, human beings also possess a mind that somehow works in tandem with the brain to produce the phenomena of conscious experience. If this is correct then the problems entailed by downloading the data that comprise the physical brain are child's play compared to the difficulties of downloading an immaterial mind.

Maybe the only way to gain immortality is the old-fashioned way, the way that involves the God that your grandparents told you about.

The Language Chasm

Last week I put up a post in which I noted that many researchers have concluded that the ontologicsal chasm separating humans from apes is greater than the chasm separating apes from viruses. That post reminded me of one I did several years ago on the last book written by the late Tom Wolfe and thought I'd repost it.

Here it is:

I've been enjoying Tom Wolfe's new book, The Kingdom of Speech, and heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the theory of evolution and/or the history of the study of linguistics. Michael Egnor at Evolution News concurs with this commendation, and goes even further. Rather than me telling you what the book is about, I'll quote Egnor:

Tom Wolfe has a new book, The Kingdom of Speech, and it's superb. Wolfe's theme is that human language is unique and is not shared in any way with other animals. He argues forcefully that evolutionary stories about the origin of human language are not credible.

In the first chapter of his book, Wolfe describes an article in the journal Frontiers of Psychology from 2014, co-authored by leading linguist Noam Chomsky and seven colleagues. Wolfe declares that:

"The most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever," [researchers] concluded. Not only that, they sounded ready to abandon all hope of ever finding the answer. Oh, we'll keep trying, they said gamely... but we'll have to start from zero again.

One of the [researchers] was the biggest name in the history of linguistics, Noam Chomsky. "In the last 40 years," he and [others] were saying, "there has been an explosion of research on this problem," and all it had produced was a colossal waste of time by some of the greatest minds in academia....

One hundred and fifty years since the Theory of Evolution was announced, and they had learned...nothing....In that same century and a half, Einstein discovered the ...the relativity of speed, time and distance... Pasteur discovered that microorganisms, notably bacteria, cause an ungodly number of diseases, from head colds to anthrax and oxygen-tubed, collapsed-lung, final-stage pneumonia....Watson and Crick discovered DNA, the so-called building blocks genes are made of...and 150 years' worth of linguists, biologists, anthropologists, and people from every other discipline discovered...nothing...about language.

What is the problem? What's the story?...What is it that they still don't get after a veritable eternity?

Wolfe provides a précis of his argument:

Speech is not one of man's several unique attributes -- speech is the attribute of all attributes!

Yet despite almost two centuries of speculations and hypothesizing we're no closer today to being able to explain what language is or how we come to have it than we've ever been. Indeed, Darwin and his votaries tried to come up with a plausible explanation and failed so utterly that scientists gave up for almost eighty years trying to explain it. Says Wolfe:

It is hard to believe that the most crucial single matter, by far, in the entire debate over the Evolution of man - language - was abandoned, thrown down the memory hole, from 1872 to 1949.

It's also hard to believe that it's been 72 years since 1949 and still no progress has been made on this question. Egnor writes:

And yet, as Wolfe points out, Darwinists are at an utter loss to explain how language -- the salient characteristic of man -- "evolved."

None of the deep drawer of evolutionary just-so stories come anywhere close to explaining how man might have acquired the astonishing ability to craft unlimited propositions and concepts and subtleties within subtleties using a system of grammar and abstract designators (i.e. words) that are utterly lacking anywhere else in the animal kingdom.

Egnor, who is himself a neuroscientist, closes his piece with these words:

I have argued before that the human mind is qualitatively different from the animal mind. The human mind has immaterial abilities -- the intellect's ability to grasp abstract universal concepts divorced from any particular thing -- and that this ability makes us more different from apes than apes are from viruses.

We are ontologically different. We are a different kind of being from animals. We are not just animals who talk. Although we share much in our bodies with animals, our language -- a simulacrum of our abstract minds -- has no root in the animal world.

Language is the tool by which we think abstractly. It is sui generis. It is a gift, a window into the human soul, something we are made with, and it did not evolve.

Language is a rock against which evolutionary theory wrecks, one of the many rocks -- the uncooperative fossil record, the jumbled molecular evolutionary tree, irreducible complexity, intricate intracellular design, the genetic code, the collapsing myth of junk DNA, the immaterial human mind -- that comprise the shoal that is sinking Darwin's Victorian fable.

The charm of Wolfe's book is that it reads like a novel, which is the metier for which Wolfe is famous. It's free of scientific jargon, it's funny and contains some fascinating insights into several of the major figures in the history of the search for an explanation for the origin and nature of language. Plus, it's only 169 pages long.

All in all a great read.

Three Options

The book A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely-Tuned Cosmos by cosmologists Luke Barnes and Geraint Lewis discusses the incredibly precise fine-tuning of the forces, parameters and constants that comprise the structure of the universe.

Here's a video trailer that introduces the theme of their book:

The trailer suggests that there are four possible explanations for this incomprehensible level of precision, but for reasons I'll explain in a moment, there really are only three.

The first is that something about the universe makes it a logical necessity that the values cosmologists find are in fact the only possible values a universe could have. There is no reason, however, to think this is the case. There's nothing about the universe, as far as we know, that makes it impossible for gravity or the strong nuclear force, to take just two examples, to have slightly different strengths.

The second explanation is that even though it's astronomically improbable that any universe would be so fine-tuned that living things could exist in it, if there are other universes, all with different parameters, universes so abundant that their number approaches infinity, then one like ours is almost bound to exist. This option goes by the name of the multiverse hypothesis.

The difficulty with this idea is that there's no good reason to believe other universes actually do exist, and even if they do why should we assume that they're not all replicas of each other, and even if they're all different whatever is producing them must itself be fine-tuned in order to manufacture universes, so all the multiverse hypothesis does is push the problem back a step or two.

The third explanation is that our universe is the product of a very intelligent agent, a mathematical genius, which exists somehow beyond the bounds of our cosmos.

There are actually two varieties of the third option. One is to say that the designer of the universe is a denizen of another universe in which technology has advanced to the point that it allows inhabitants of that world to design simulations of other universes.

The trailer treats this as a fourth option but since it posits a designer who resides in some other universe it's actually a combination of the second and third options and suffers some of the same difficulties as the multiverse hypothesis. It also assumes that computer technology could ever simulate not only an entire cosmos but also human consciousness, which is certainly problematic.

The other version of the third explanation is to assume that the designer of our universe is not some highly accomplished computer nerd in another universe but rather that it is a transcendent, non-contingent being of unimaginable power and intellectual brilliance who is the ultimate cause of all contingent entities, whether universes or their inhabitants.

Which of these options is thought most attractive will vary from person to person, but philosophical arguments won't settle the issue for most people. Human beings tend to believe what they most fervently want to be true, and what they most want to be true is often whatever makes the fewest demands upon their autonomy and their lifestyle.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Like many great artists, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow experienced a lot of tragedy in his life. At the age of fifty seven (1863) he wrote to a friend, “I have been through a great deal of trouble and anxiety.”

Indeed he had. His first wife died in 1835 from complications from a miscarriage:

28-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was devastated by the death of his beloved young wife, Mary. The couple had been traveling in Europe as the poet prepared to begin teaching literature at Harvard.

The distraught Longfellow gave vent to his grief, resolving to dedicate himself to a life of "goodness and purity like hers." He vowed to abandon "literary ambition . . . this destroyer of peace and quietude and the soul's self-possession," but by the time he returned to Cambridge in 1836, he had begun writing again and eventually remarried.

Suffering from grief, Longfellow plunged into study and spent the following winter and spring in Heidelberg perfecting his German.

Henry met Fanny Appleton eight months after Mary died, while summering in Switzerland. Fanny captivated Longfellow, but she did not show the same interest in him.

Longfellow proposed marriage in 1837 but Fanny refused him.

The young professor left soon after for America and his duties at Harvard. Longfellow persuaded Elizabeth Craigie to accept him as a boarder at her home overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first writings were published during these years.

Resuming his friendship with Fanny Appleton, Longfellow was crushed by her rejection of his marriage proposal in 1837, but he was determined to win Fanny’s heart.

In July 1839, he wrote to a friend: “[V]ictory hangs doubtful. The lady says she will not! I say she shall! It is not pride, but the madness of passion”. His friend George Stillman Hillard encouraged Longfellow in the pursuit: “I delight to see you keeping up so stout a heart for the resolve to conquer is half the battle in love as well as war.”

After seven years of courtship, Fanny married Longfellow on July 13, 1843. Her father purchased the Craigie House later that year, and presented it and the surrounding grounds to the Longfellows as a wedding gift.

Well-educated, Fanny was a perceptive critic of art and literature who happily shared her husband’s pursuits. Henry and Fanny were seldom apart.

The home, well-known even then as George Washington‘s headquarters during the early days of the American Revolution, would be their residence for the rest of their lives. Fanny never changed the room where George and Martha had celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary amid the sorrows and uncertainties of war.

The family home was a favorite gathering place for artists, philosophers, writers and reformers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens and Charles Sumner. An active abolitionist, Longfellow contributed money to help freedom-seeking and former slaves and to support the anti-slavery cause.

The Longfellows were blessed with the birth of six children – Charles (1844), Ernest (1845), Fanny (1847, who died in childhood), Alice (1850), Edith (1853) and Allegra (1855). Alice was delivered while her mother was under the anesthetic influence of ether – the first time it was used in North America.

Fanny was a skilled artist, art collector and insightful commentator on 19th-Century Boston literary culture, well-traveled, and well-read in many subjects. She was a loving and attentive mother and had much influence on the intellectual growth of the Longfellow children.

At Craigie House they formed the warm family circle that became a kind of national symbol for domestic love, the innocence of childhood and the pleasure of material comfort.

By 1854 Longfellow was able to resign from Harvard. He had become, at age forty-seven, one of America’s first self-sustaining authors.

For the next seven years, Henry was able to pour his energies into his writing, unimpeded by teaching duties and supported by the love of his family.

But tragedy was to strike again: On July 9, 1862 after trimming some of seven year old Edith’s beautiful curls, Fanny decided to preserve the clippings in an envelope. While she was melting a bar of sealing wax with a candle to seal the keepsake in the envelope, a few drops fell unnoticed in her lap. A breeze came through the window, igniting Fanny’s dress – immediately wrapping her in flames.

In her attempt to protect Edith and Allegra, Fanny ran to Henry’s study in the next room, where Henry frantically attempted to extinguish the flames with a throw rug. Failing to stop the fire with the rug, he tried to smother the flames by throwing his arms around Frances – severely burning his face, arms and hands.

Fanny Longfellow died of her injuries the next morning, July 11, 1861, at the age of 43, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

Too ill from his burns and grief, Henry did not attend her funeral. His facial scars and the difficulty of shaving caused him to grow the beard that gave him the sage and distinguished look reproduced in so many paintings and photographs.

A month after Fanny’s death, on August 18, 1861, Longfellow wrote about his despair in a letter to his late wife’s sister, Mary Appleton Mackintosh:

"How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, I know not. I am at least patient, if not resigned; and thank God hourly – as I have from the beginning – for the beautiful life we led together, and that I loved her more and more to the end."

Longfellow continued to reside in the house they had shared and served as both father and mother to the children. The first Christmas after Fanny’s death, he wrote, “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays.” The entry for December 25, 1862 reads: “A merry Christmas’ say the children, but that is no more for me.” The Christmas of 1863 was blank in his journal.

His troubles weren't over. Justin Taylor recounts that in March of 1863 his oldest son Charles ran off to join the Union army without his father's permission. In November he suffered a severe shoulder wound – the bullet passing within an inch of his spine.

His father traveled to Washington, D.C., to consult with doctors. Charles' survival was in doubt.

One doctor said the wound could result in paralysis. Another surgical team provided more promising news, saying the young soldier would survive but would require months of healing.

They returned to their home in Cambridge by Christmas 1863. That morning Henry listened to the bells ringing. Taylor writes:

He heard the Christmas bells that December day and the singing of 'peace on earth (Luke 2:14),' but he observed the world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.

At this moment in which the widower with six children was languishing in the midst of a terrible war and a life of grief and suffering, he found hope in those bells and penned a wonderful poem titled "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." The poem has been recited and set to music ever since.

It closes with these stanzas (You can read the whole poem here):

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

That last stanza should be bring hope to those suffering today in China, Iran, Ukraine, North Korea and everywhere that men of blackened and hate-filled souls are torturing and murdering the weak and the helpless.

Watch and listen: