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.
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Why Give Israel the Benefit of the Doubt But Not Hamas?
A good friend asked me recently why I seem to believe what the Israelis tell us about their war in Gaza and discount what Hamas tells us. It's a fair question. Here are eight reasons why I tend to give the Israelis the benefit of the doubt and distrust Hamas:
1. Hamas has repeatedly lied in the past. For example, it has lied about the use to which it was putting foreign aid. It lied about the damage done to the Al-Ahli hospital, claiming it was targeted by the Israelis when they knew it was bombed by their own errant artillery.
2. The Hadiths encourage Muslims to lie to infidels, especially in time of war. According to the authoritative Arabic text, Al-Taqiyya Fi Al-Islam: “Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream...Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”
Of course, it's possible that the Israelis are lying as well, but we have pretty conclusive proof that Hamas has lied about Israeli massacres. If we're to believe that the Israelis are dissembling, conclusive examples of it need to be offered. Moreover, we need to ask the common sense question, when Israel is accused of deliberately bombing a hospital or gratuitously opening fire on civilians trying to access food aid, what benefit there would be to Israel in doing so. There's considerable benefit to Hamas in trying to persuade the world that Israel has committed war crimes, but no benefit to Israel in actually committing those crimes.
3. Hamas uses its own people, including children, as human shields. Those who have so little regard for the lives of their own people can hardly expect the respect from others upon which trust is based.
4. Hamas, including many Gazan civilians, reveled in the slaughter of Israeli citizens. October 7th was an orgy of barbarism and savagery. People who would perpetrate such horror, and those who approve of it, do not deserve the trust of civilized people.
5. Hamas runs schools in Gaza, called madrasas, which inculcate into their children a hatred of Jews. The pronouncements of a society based on hate are not credible, at least not with me.
6. Repeatedly, journalists whose reporting from Gaza seems to favor Hamas have been found to be in the employ of Hamas.
7. Israel is an open, democratic society with a vibrant free press, a formidable political opposition, and a history of calling out its leaders when they transgress liberal values. Hamas, on the other hand, is a closed society with no free press, no history of permitting dissent, and no history of liberal values.
8. Hamas has sworn to destroy the state of Israel. Crediting anything Hamas says is like crediting anything Vladimir Putin says.
The question of credibility was put to me in the context of claims of famine in Gaza. Whether there's actually famine in Gaza or not, it's clear that any suffering could end today if Hamas would lay down their arms and leave the Gaza Strip. The miserable conditions that prevail in Gaza have come about because Hamas initiated a war with Israel on October 7th, 2023, and the misery persists because Hamas refuses to stop fighting and release their hostages.
Somewhat relatedly, there's more than a hint of a double standard in the world's willingness to condemn Israel for whatever misfortune befalls Gazan civilians.
After all, the world didn't much care when Hafiz al-Assad of Syria killed between 10,000 and 25,000 of his countrymen in the city of Hama in 1982. Nor was there an outcry against the Algerian government in 1991 when it slaughtered some 80,000 Algerians, most of whom were civilians. And where are the impassioned speeches at the U.N. and reports on our nightly news about the murders by Muslims of at least 52,250 Christians in Nigeria since 2009?
Is the salient difference that in each case the murderers were, or are, Muslims, but in the present case Israeli Jews are inflicting the damage?
A final thought: Imagine that the roles were reversed and Hamas had the military might of Israel and Israel was as weak as Hamas. How might we expect Hamas to behave toward starving Israelis? Would the world care? Would Hamas be careful to give warnings about their bombing? Would they go to the trouble of moving large populations around to keep them out of the line of fire? Would they go to the expense of shipping food to the hungry Israelis? Would they care what the rest of the world said? Would the rest of the world say anything?
Actually, their own rhetoric tells us what they'd do - they'd push every last Israeli into the sea. And many in Europe and the U.S., in our universities especially, would cheer.
1. Hamas has repeatedly lied in the past. For example, it has lied about the use to which it was putting foreign aid. It lied about the damage done to the Al-Ahli hospital, claiming it was targeted by the Israelis when they knew it was bombed by their own errant artillery.
2. The Hadiths encourage Muslims to lie to infidels, especially in time of war. According to the authoritative Arabic text, Al-Taqiyya Fi Al-Islam: “Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream...Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”
Of course, it's possible that the Israelis are lying as well, but we have pretty conclusive proof that Hamas has lied about Israeli massacres. If we're to believe that the Israelis are dissembling, conclusive examples of it need to be offered. Moreover, we need to ask the common sense question, when Israel is accused of deliberately bombing a hospital or gratuitously opening fire on civilians trying to access food aid, what benefit there would be to Israel in doing so. There's considerable benefit to Hamas in trying to persuade the world that Israel has committed war crimes, but no benefit to Israel in actually committing those crimes.
3. Hamas uses its own people, including children, as human shields. Those who have so little regard for the lives of their own people can hardly expect the respect from others upon which trust is based.
4. Hamas, including many Gazan civilians, reveled in the slaughter of Israeli citizens. October 7th was an orgy of barbarism and savagery. People who would perpetrate such horror, and those who approve of it, do not deserve the trust of civilized people.
5. Hamas runs schools in Gaza, called madrasas, which inculcate into their children a hatred of Jews. The pronouncements of a society based on hate are not credible, at least not with me.
6. Repeatedly, journalists whose reporting from Gaza seems to favor Hamas have been found to be in the employ of Hamas.
7. Israel is an open, democratic society with a vibrant free press, a formidable political opposition, and a history of calling out its leaders when they transgress liberal values. Hamas, on the other hand, is a closed society with no free press, no history of permitting dissent, and no history of liberal values.
8. Hamas has sworn to destroy the state of Israel. Crediting anything Hamas says is like crediting anything Vladimir Putin says.
The question of credibility was put to me in the context of claims of famine in Gaza. Whether there's actually famine in Gaza or not, it's clear that any suffering could end today if Hamas would lay down their arms and leave the Gaza Strip. The miserable conditions that prevail in Gaza have come about because Hamas initiated a war with Israel on October 7th, 2023, and the misery persists because Hamas refuses to stop fighting and release their hostages.
Somewhat relatedly, there's more than a hint of a double standard in the world's willingness to condemn Israel for whatever misfortune befalls Gazan civilians.
After all, the world didn't much care when Hafiz al-Assad of Syria killed between 10,000 and 25,000 of his countrymen in the city of Hama in 1982. Nor was there an outcry against the Algerian government in 1991 when it slaughtered some 80,000 Algerians, most of whom were civilians. And where are the impassioned speeches at the U.N. and reports on our nightly news about the murders by Muslims of at least 52,250 Christians in Nigeria since 2009?
Is the salient difference that in each case the murderers were, or are, Muslims, but in the present case Israeli Jews are inflicting the damage?
A final thought: Imagine that the roles were reversed and Hamas had the military might of Israel and Israel was as weak as Hamas. How might we expect Hamas to behave toward starving Israelis? Would the world care? Would Hamas be careful to give warnings about their bombing? Would they go to the trouble of moving large populations around to keep them out of the line of fire? Would they go to the expense of shipping food to the hungry Israelis? Would they care what the rest of the world said? Would the rest of the world say anything?
Actually, their own rhetoric tells us what they'd do - they'd push every last Israeli into the sea. And many in Europe and the U.S., in our universities especially, would cheer.
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Can We Be Good Without God? (Pt. II)
Yesterday we looked at an argument by biologist Jerry Coyne the gravamen of which was that morality is not contingent upon a transcendent moral authority such as God. I'd like to continue our critique of this argument in today's post.
Coyne writes that,
But what he says next merits a more thorough response:
As mentioned yesterday, we've also evolved the tendency to be selfish and mean and a host of other unsavory behavioral traits. Are these behaviors morally right just because they've evolved? Should we consider cruelty good because it's an evolved behavior?
Coyne concludes with this thought:
That may entail that I give people the impression that I care about them in order to get them to assist me in my own pursuit of happiness, but people who are of no use to me are of no value to me. Thus, it'd be foolish of me to sacrifice my comforts to help some starving child in some other part of the world who will never be of any use to me.
Indeed, why, on Coyne's view, is it wrong to refuse aid to victims of poverty and starvation?
Atheistic philosopher Kai Nielson stresses this very point:
In either case he should stick to biology.
Coyne writes that,
though both moral and immoral behaviors can be promoted by religions, morality itself — either in individual behavior or social codes — simply cannot come from the will or commands of a God. This has been recognized by philosophers since the time of Plato.Coyne here adverts to the classic Euthyphro dilemma which, contrary to what he thinks, has been discredited by philosophers for centuries (see here, and here). It's unfortunate that Coyne is unaware of this, but it illustrates the hazard of experts in one field speaking dogmatically on matters in other disciplines.
Religious people can appreciate this by considering Plato's question: Do actions become moral simply because they're dictated by God, or are they dictated by God because they are moral? It doesn't take much thought to see that the right answer is the second one.
Why? Because if God commanded us to do something obviously immoral, such as kill our children or steal, it wouldn't automatically become OK.
Of course, you can argue that God would never sanction something like that because he's a completely moral being, but then you're still using some idea of morality that is independent of God. Either way, it's clear that even for the faithful, God cannot be the source of morality but at best a transmitter of some human-generated morality.
But what he says next merits a more thorough response:
So where does morality come from if not from God? Two places: evolution and secular reasoning. Despite the notion that beasts behave bestially, scientists studying our primate relatives, such as chimpanzees, see evolutionary rudiments of morality: behaviors that look for all the world like altruism, sympathy, moral disapproval, sharing — even notions of fairness.Assuming this is correct what makes the behaviors he mentions moral or right? If a chimp acted contrary to these tendencies would we think the chimp immoral? Would we call its actions evil or wicked? Why, then - if we're nothing more than hairless apes - do we call humans evil when they torture people or abuse children? We have an aversion to such things, to be sure, but aversion doesn't make something wicked.
This is exactly what we'd expect if human morality, like many other behaviors, is built partly on the genes of our ancestors.
And the conditions under which humans evolved are precisely those that would favor the evolution of moral codes: small social groups of big-brained animals. When individuals in a group can get to know, recognize and remember each other, this gives an advantage to genes that make you behave nicely towards others in the group, reward those who cooperate and punish those who cheat. That's how natural selection can build morality.In other words we should be nice because we've evolved to be nice. This is fallacious. Philosophers since Hume have recognized that one can't derive an ought from an is. Because we've evolved a certain tendency, if indeed we have, it doesn't follow that we have an obligation to express that tendency.
As mentioned yesterday, we've also evolved the tendency to be selfish and mean and a host of other unsavory behavioral traits. Are these behaviors morally right just because they've evolved? Should we consider cruelty good because it's an evolved behavior?
Coyne concludes with this thought:
Secular reason adds another layer atop these evolved behaviors, helping us extend our moral sentiments far beyond our small group of friends and relatives — even to animals.This is silly. Secular reason says no such thing. What secular reason dictates is that I should look out for my own interests, I should put myself first, and use others to promote my own well-being and happiness.
That may entail that I give people the impression that I care about them in order to get them to assist me in my own pursuit of happiness, but people who are of no use to me are of no value to me. Thus, it'd be foolish of me to sacrifice my comforts to help some starving child in some other part of the world who will never be of any use to me.
Indeed, why, on Coyne's view, is it wrong to refuse aid to victims of poverty and starvation?
Atheistic philosopher Kai Nielson stresses this very point:
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view or that all really rational persons unhoodwinked by myth or ideology need not be individual egoists or amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me...pure reason...will not take you to morality.Secular reason and evolution have no answer to the question why we should help those who are in no position to help us, at least none that doesn't reduce to the claim that helping others just makes us feel good. It's an ugly fact about naturalism that its logic entails such conclusions, and either Coyne knows it's ugly and doesn't want his readers to know it, or he has no idea.
In either case he should stick to biology.
Monday, August 25, 2025
Can We Be Good Without God? (Pt.I)
Jerry A. Coyne is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago. He's also a prominent atheist who has written a book titled Faith Vs. Fact in which he tries to explain why theism is false.
A few years ago he wrote a column for USA Today in which he argued that belief in God is not necessary for one to live a moral life. He complains that:
There are at least four things wrong with Coyne's rejection of the belief that God is in some sense necessary for ethics. First, "God-given morality" is not incompatible with evolution. God could be the ground both of moral value and of evolutionary change.
There is a serious incompatibility, however, between "God-given morality" and Coyne's naturalism, i.e. his belief that the natural world is all there is. If naturalism is true then there is no God and thus no "God-given morality."
Second, no one argues that evolution could not, at least in theory, have bestowed upon us the sentiments Coyne lists. The problem is that if evolution is the source of these impulses then it's also the source of avarice, bigotry, cruelty, etc.
If we believe that evolution has produced all human behavioral tendencies, on what basis do we decide that one set of behaviors is good and the other bad? Are we not assuming a "moral dictionary", so to speak - a standard above and beyond nature by which we adjudicate between behaviors to determine which are right and which are wrong?
If so, what is that standard?
Third, if an impersonal, mindless, random process is the ultimate source of these behaviors it can't in any moral sense be wrong to act contrary to them. If moral sentiments are the product of natural selection and chance chemical happenstances in the brain there's no non-arbitrary moral value to anything.
Right and wrong reduce to subjective likes and dislikes, and that leads to moral nihilism.
Finally, in the absence of God in what sense are we accountable for our actions? And if we're not accountable, if there's no reckoning for how we behave, what does it mean to say that a given behavior is "wrong"? If there are no posted speed limits on a highway and no enforcement, what does it mean to say that one is "wrong" to go as fast as one wishes or thinks is prudent?
The most it can mean is that other people won't like it, but why should anyone care whether others approve of how he or she behaves?
We'll look at another aspect of Coyne's argument tomorrow.
A few years ago he wrote a column for USA Today in which he argued that belief in God is not necessary for one to live a moral life. He complains that:
As a biologist, I see belief in God-given morality as American's biggest impediment to accepting the fact of evolution. "Evolution," many argue, "could never have given us feelings of kindness, altruism and morality. For if we were merely evolved beasts, we would act like beasts. Surely our good behavior, and the moral sentiments that promote it, reflect impulses that God instilled in our soul."Coyne believes that human morality is a consequence of the evolutionary process coupled with human reason. God is unnecessary.
There are at least four things wrong with Coyne's rejection of the belief that God is in some sense necessary for ethics. First, "God-given morality" is not incompatible with evolution. God could be the ground both of moral value and of evolutionary change.
There is a serious incompatibility, however, between "God-given morality" and Coyne's naturalism, i.e. his belief that the natural world is all there is. If naturalism is true then there is no God and thus no "God-given morality."
Second, no one argues that evolution could not, at least in theory, have bestowed upon us the sentiments Coyne lists. The problem is that if evolution is the source of these impulses then it's also the source of avarice, bigotry, cruelty, etc.
If we believe that evolution has produced all human behavioral tendencies, on what basis do we decide that one set of behaviors is good and the other bad? Are we not assuming a "moral dictionary", so to speak - a standard above and beyond nature by which we adjudicate between behaviors to determine which are right and which are wrong?
If so, what is that standard?
Third, if an impersonal, mindless, random process is the ultimate source of these behaviors it can't in any moral sense be wrong to act contrary to them. If moral sentiments are the product of natural selection and chance chemical happenstances in the brain there's no non-arbitrary moral value to anything.
Right and wrong reduce to subjective likes and dislikes, and that leads to moral nihilism.
Finally, in the absence of God in what sense are we accountable for our actions? And if we're not accountable, if there's no reckoning for how we behave, what does it mean to say that a given behavior is "wrong"? If there are no posted speed limits on a highway and no enforcement, what does it mean to say that one is "wrong" to go as fast as one wishes or thinks is prudent?
The most it can mean is that other people won't like it, but why should anyone care whether others approve of how he or she behaves?
We'll look at another aspect of Coyne's argument tomorrow.
Saturday, August 23, 2025
A Late Summer Miracle
Those who spend time outdoors in the late summer are about to witness an annual "miracle."
Every year an estimated 100–200 million monarch butterflies migrate two thousand to three thousand miles between the United States/Canada and Mexico. While there are other populations of monarchs, including in western North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Australia, the population in eastern North America is the best known because of its amazing migration.
For example, they're the only butterfly species known to make a two-way migration.
They can travel between 50 to 100 miles a day during their 3000 mile journey to Oyamel fir forests in the Mexican mountains nearly two miles above sea level.
They roost in the trees in a dozen or so of these mountain areas from October to March, often returning to the same tree in which their ancestor roosted the previous year.
In late summer in northeastern North America dwindling food supply and shorter days trigger the Monarch's migratory impulse. A generation that has hatched after mid-August begins the trek south for wintering grounds they've never been to before. Most summering Monarchs live for about two to six weeks, but this migrating generation can live up to nine months.
The migrants travel during the day and roost at night, often in the same trees that previous generations used as roost sites during their migration.
During the summer their range covers close to 400,000 square miles, but when they finally arrive in Mexico they squeeze into territories of less than half a square mile.
One of the most amazing aspects of this is that these butterflies, with brains the size of a pinhead, can navigate so unerringly across thousands of miles of terrain. Researchers believe that they use a complex system which involves ultraviolet sunlight, a magnetic compass, the position of the sun and an internal clock.
Their internal clock tells them the time of day. In the morning when the sun is rising they navigate to the west of it. At noon they fly toward it and in the afternoon they fly to the east of it. This strategy keeps them flying due south as depicted in these figures:
Another amazing fact is that the generation that made the long trip from the northeast and over-wintered in Mexico is not the generation that returns to the northeast. This generation begins the trip back in the spring but they reproduce and die along the way.
The second generation continues the migration, but they, too, reproduce and die along the way. It's the third generation that makes it back to the summering grounds in the northeast, but they also reproduce and die, so it is their offspring that begin the cycle all over again in August.
There's an interactive feature here that shows the Monarch's pattern of migration. All of this raises questions:
How does each year's crop of butterflies "know" the route to take to get back to the same trees in Mexico that their ancestors left from when they've never done it before?
How do those butterflies born along the return trip "know" to continue the migratory flight and "know" which direction to take?
What is the source of the information needed for these insects to complete this astonishing journey?
And how would all this have come about through a blind, purposeless process like natural selection and genetic mutation?
Comparisons of migratory monarch genomes with the genomes of non-migratory monarchs have revealed that some five hundred and thirty genes are involved in migratory behavior so that means that on the Darwinian hypothesis there must have been a minimum of five hundred thirty genetic mutations in the history of the species, all of which were random but which somehow fortuitously produced the ability to successfully make this astonishing journey.
Moreover, Monarchs are believed to have evolved about two million years ago so the migrating variety must've split off from the ancestral stock sometime thereafter. Thus, at the most, those 535 mutations must've accumulated within the last two million years, a very short time for all that evolution to have taken place - at least it's a very short time if the evolution were unguided by any outside intelligence.
If this all came about naturalistically that would be almost miraculous, which is ironic since naturalism discounts miracles.
It's possible, of course, that this migratory behavior could've evolved by unguided, purposeless processes, in the same sense that it's possible that elephants could've evolved the ability to fly, but it takes a king-sized portion of blind faith to dogmatically insist that it did.
Every year an estimated 100–200 million monarch butterflies migrate two thousand to three thousand miles between the United States/Canada and Mexico. While there are other populations of monarchs, including in western North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Australia, the population in eastern North America is the best known because of its amazing migration.
 |
| Monarch Butterfly |
They can travel between 50 to 100 miles a day during their 3000 mile journey to Oyamel fir forests in the Mexican mountains nearly two miles above sea level.
They roost in the trees in a dozen or so of these mountain areas from October to March, often returning to the same tree in which their ancestor roosted the previous year.
In late summer in northeastern North America dwindling food supply and shorter days trigger the Monarch's migratory impulse. A generation that has hatched after mid-August begins the trek south for wintering grounds they've never been to before. Most summering Monarchs live for about two to six weeks, but this migrating generation can live up to nine months.
The migrants travel during the day and roost at night, often in the same trees that previous generations used as roost sites during their migration.
During the summer their range covers close to 400,000 square miles, but when they finally arrive in Mexico they squeeze into territories of less than half a square mile.
 |
| Monarchs roosting in Mexican Oyamel fir trees |
Their internal clock tells them the time of day. In the morning when the sun is rising they navigate to the west of it. At noon they fly toward it and in the afternoon they fly to the east of it. This strategy keeps them flying due south as depicted in these figures:
The second generation continues the migration, but they, too, reproduce and die along the way. It's the third generation that makes it back to the summering grounds in the northeast, but they also reproduce and die, so it is their offspring that begin the cycle all over again in August.
There's an interactive feature here that shows the Monarch's pattern of migration. All of this raises questions:
How does each year's crop of butterflies "know" the route to take to get back to the same trees in Mexico that their ancestors left from when they've never done it before?
How do those butterflies born along the return trip "know" to continue the migratory flight and "know" which direction to take?
What is the source of the information needed for these insects to complete this astonishing journey?
And how would all this have come about through a blind, purposeless process like natural selection and genetic mutation?
Comparisons of migratory monarch genomes with the genomes of non-migratory monarchs have revealed that some five hundred and thirty genes are involved in migratory behavior so that means that on the Darwinian hypothesis there must have been a minimum of five hundred thirty genetic mutations in the history of the species, all of which were random but which somehow fortuitously produced the ability to successfully make this astonishing journey.
Moreover, Monarchs are believed to have evolved about two million years ago so the migrating variety must've split off from the ancestral stock sometime thereafter. Thus, at the most, those 535 mutations must've accumulated within the last two million years, a very short time for all that evolution to have taken place - at least it's a very short time if the evolution were unguided by any outside intelligence.
If this all came about naturalistically that would be almost miraculous, which is ironic since naturalism discounts miracles.
It's possible, of course, that this migratory behavior could've evolved by unguided, purposeless processes, in the same sense that it's possible that elephants could've evolved the ability to fly, but it takes a king-sized portion of blind faith to dogmatically insist that it did.
Friday, August 22, 2025
Democrat Difficulties
An article by Scott Pinsker at PJMedia discusses the revelations in the New York Times of the desperate circumstances the Democrats currently find themselves in. The NYT article requires a subscription, but a free subscription may be available.
According to Pinsker's summary, what the Times article reports is that of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.
All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million.
The flight away from the Democratic Party is occurring in battleground states, and in both blue and red states.
Moreover, Republicans went from roughly one-third of newly registered voters under 45 to a majority in the last six years. They're also gaining among both men and women, as well as among Hispanics.
Pinsker has a lot more commentary at the link. He closes with a quote from the Times article which cites an election expert who believes the trend is not a temporary fluke:
According to Pinsker's summary, what the Times article reports is that of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.
All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million.
The flight away from the Democratic Party is occurring in battleground states, and in both blue and red states.
Moreover, Republicans went from roughly one-third of newly registered voters under 45 to a majority in the last six years. They're also gaining among both men and women, as well as among Hispanics.
Pinsker has a lot more commentary at the link. He closes with a quote from the Times article which cites an election expert who believes the trend is not a temporary fluke:
“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” said Michael Pruser, who tracks voter registration closely as the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, an election-analysis site. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”There's nothing permanent in political alignments, but at least in the near term (2026, 2028), things aren't looking good for Democrats.
Any hope that the drift away from the Democratic Party would end organically with Mr. Trump’s election has been dashed by the limited data so far in 2025. There are now roughly 160,000 fewer registered Democrats than on Election Day 2024, according to L2’s data, and 200,000 more Republicans.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Thursday, August 21, 2025
On Reading Well
I'd like to share a delightful post sent by a friend. It was written back in 2018 by a man named Bob Trube, and in his post he talks about reading, particularly what he calls "reading well." Trube writes:
I sometimes wonder if reading isn't becoming a lost art, like knitting. Our lives are so full of work and other obligations that we don't have much time to read.
Even during what leisure we may have we're constantly plugged in to some device or other that distracts us and makes reading seem boring by comparison. Yet good books are like vitamins and minerals for the mind. They nourish and enrich us in ways that last for a lifetime.
If you're one who would like to read more, but just can't seem to get into it, check out the tips that Trube gives at his blog. They're very good.
Among the resolutions people make each new year is some variant on “read more books.” That’s certainly a goal that I can applaud when the average number of books read by adults is twelve a year (a number skewed by avid readers; most people read about four a year). But I have a hunch that many of these resolutions fare no better than those of losing weight or exercising more, and probably for the same reasons: lack of specific goals that are realistic, forming a habit, social support and a good coach.Trube goes on to list four aspects of reading well:
I will come back to these but I want to address something I hear less about – reading well.
For a number who read this blog, I don’t have to convince you about the value of reading, and in many cases, you already have good reading habits and exceed that book a month average. And even if you don’t, you probably sense that reading isn’t about numbers of books but part of a well-lived life.
You read not only for amusement or diversion but to better understand your world and how to live one’s life in it. That can be anything from understanding the inner workings of your computer and how to use it better to a work of philosophy or theology or even a great novel that explores fundamental questions of life’s meaning, living virtuously, or the nature of God.
- Reading well is an act of attentiveness. We read well when we read without external and internal distractions. A place of quiet and a time when we are not distracted with other concerns helps us “engage the page.” It also helps to turn off the notifications on your phone or tablet, or better yet, put the electronics in another room.
Read on an e-reader without other apps if you prefer these to physical books. - Visual media often encourages us to passively absorb content. Books of substance require our active engagement–noticing plot, characters, and the use of literary devices like foreshadowing, allusions and more. Non-fiction often involves following an argument, and paying attention to the logic, the evidence, and whether the argument is consistent.
Reading well can mean jotting notes, asking questions, or even arguing with the author. Above all it means reflecting on what we read, and how the book connects with our lives. - Reading well over time means choosing good books to read. What is “good”? I’m not sure there is one good or simple answer. There are a number of “great books” lists out there and they are worth a look. You might choose one of those to read this year. One test of a book’s worth is whether people are still reading the book and finding value in it long after its author has passed.
Also, in almost any genre, there are reviews, websites, and online groups. Over time, you will find sources of good recommendations. - Finally, I’d suggest choosing something to read off the beaten path. Reading authors from other cultures, or a genre you don’t usually read can stretch your horizons. This year, I want to work in some poetry and get around to the Langston Hughes and Seamus Heaney that I’ve had laying around.
I sometimes wonder if reading isn't becoming a lost art, like knitting. Our lives are so full of work and other obligations that we don't have much time to read.
Even during what leisure we may have we're constantly plugged in to some device or other that distracts us and makes reading seem boring by comparison. Yet good books are like vitamins and minerals for the mind. They nourish and enrich us in ways that last for a lifetime.
If you're one who would like to read more, but just can't seem to get into it, check out the tips that Trube gives at his blog. They're very good.
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Does AI Understand?
One major controversy in the philosophy of mind is driven by the claim that computers can think, or will soon be able to. If that claim is true then it makes it a lot easier to assume that the brain is a kind of computer and that what we call mind is simply a word we use to describe the way the brain functions.
Or put another way, mind is to brain what computer software is to the computer's hardware. This view is called "functionalism."
In 1980 philosopher John Searle published an argument that sought to show that functionalism is wrong and that there's more to our cognitive experience than simple computation. His argument came to be known as the Chinese Room argument and neuroscientist Michael Egnor has a helpful discussion of it at Evolution News and Views. Egnor describes the argument as follows:
Searle's argument denies that computers "think." They simply follow an algorithm. Since humans do think, however, and do understand, either our brains are not computers or functionalism is not true.
Searle points out that the computation performed by the booth and its occupant does not involve any understanding of the questions and answers provided. His point is that computation is an algorithmic process that does not entail or require understanding, but since we do understand when we perform a computation, human cognition is something qualitatively different from mere computation.
This leads to the question of how a material chunk of meat, the brain, can generate something as mysterious as understanding. If all the material that makes up a brain were placed in a laboratory flask would the flask understand? Would it be conscious?
That human beings are capable of such marvels is evidence that there's more to our cognitive abilities than our material brain. Perhaps that something more is an immaterial mind or soul that's cognitively integrated with the material brain and which the brain cannot function without.
The dominant view throughout the 20th century and into the 21st is that everything reduces to matter and energy. This view is called philosophical materialism and it denies that there are immaterial substances such as souls associated with persons. Materialism, however, is a view in the throes of a terminal illness. It's dying. A preponderance of evidence is amassed against it, but it's nevertheless still breathing.
Its proponents won't pull the plug, though, because once they grant that immaterial souls or minds exist it becomes a lot harder to resist the conclusion that God exists, and that's a conclusion that terrifies most materialists.
Or put another way, mind is to brain what computer software is to the computer's hardware. This view is called "functionalism."
In 1980 philosopher John Searle published an argument that sought to show that functionalism is wrong and that there's more to our cognitive experience than simple computation. His argument came to be known as the Chinese Room argument and neuroscientist Michael Egnor has a helpful discussion of it at Evolution News and Views. Egnor describes the argument as follows:
Imagine that you are an English speaker and you do not speak Chinese. You've moved to China and you get a job working in a booth in a public square. The purpose of the booth is to provide answers to questions that Chinese-speaking people write on small pieces of paper and pass into the booth through a slot. The answer is written on a small piece of paper and passed back to the Chinese person through a separate slot.In other words, the computer, like the person in the booth, has no understanding of what it's doing. As Egnor says: "Thought is about understanding the process, not merely about mechanically carrying out the matching of an input to an output according to an algorithm."
Inside the booth with you is a very large book. The book contains every question that can be asked and the corresponding answer -- all written only in Chinese. You understand no Chinese. You understand nothing written in the book. When the question is passed through the slot you match the Chinese characters in the question to the identical question in the book and you write the Chinese symbols corresponding to the answer and pass the answer back through the answer slot.
The Chinese person asking the question gets an answer that he understands in Chinese. You understand neither the question nor the answer because you do not understand Chinese.
Searle argues that you are carrying out a computation. The booth is analogous to a computer, you are analogous to a CPU, and the information written in Chinese is analogous to the algorithm. The question and the answer written on the paper are the input and the output to and from the computer.
Searle's argument denies that computers "think." They simply follow an algorithm. Since humans do think, however, and do understand, either our brains are not computers or functionalism is not true.
Searle points out that the computation performed by the booth and its occupant does not involve any understanding of the questions and answers provided. His point is that computation is an algorithmic process that does not entail or require understanding, but since we do understand when we perform a computation, human cognition is something qualitatively different from mere computation.
This leads to the question of how a material chunk of meat, the brain, can generate something as mysterious as understanding. If all the material that makes up a brain were placed in a laboratory flask would the flask understand? Would it be conscious?
That human beings are capable of such marvels is evidence that there's more to our cognitive abilities than our material brain. Perhaps that something more is an immaterial mind or soul that's cognitively integrated with the material brain and which the brain cannot function without.
The dominant view throughout the 20th century and into the 21st is that everything reduces to matter and energy. This view is called philosophical materialism and it denies that there are immaterial substances such as souls associated with persons. Materialism, however, is a view in the throes of a terminal illness. It's dying. A preponderance of evidence is amassed against it, but it's nevertheless still breathing.
Its proponents won't pull the plug, though, because once they grant that immaterial souls or minds exist it becomes a lot harder to resist the conclusion that God exists, and that's a conclusion that terrifies most materialists.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Three Options on Creation
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 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. 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, both universes and their inhabitants.
Which of these options is 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.
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. 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, both universes and their inhabitants.
Which of these options is 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.
Monday, August 18, 2025
Clash of Civilizations
In a column in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) by Jon Shields and Yuval Avnur the authors quote the late Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), author of a 1996 book titled The Clash of Civilizations. Huntington, writing on the differences between Western and Islamic cultures, observed that, “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
It's been years since I read Clash of Civilizations, so I don't recall everything about it and don't want to impute what follows to Huntington, but that one quote sums up a very serious problem the world faces today. Here are three reasons why.
First, as Huntington says, it is not just radical Islam that's the problem. It's Islam itself. Muslims will tell you that there's no radical, or extremist, Islam and no moderate Islam, there is only Islam. Anyone who seeks to moderate Islam is considered by "true" Muslims to be a heretic.
Ben Shapiro lays out some troubling math in this six minute video: Second, a large number of Muslims are convinced not only of the superiority of their culture but also of the exclusiveness of their religion to the point that anyone who dissents from it deserves to be killed, especially if they convert from it to some other religion. There's no fault in believing one's religion to be true - many Christians believe that Christianity contains more truth than any other religion - but Islam holds that wherever Muslims have the power, Allah commands them to reduce non-believers to a subservient dhimmi status or be killed.
It might be replied that there are plenty of examples of Christians acting similarly in the Middle Ages, and although those examples are often not as dispositive as critics make out, nevertheless it's true that the Church has sometimes disgraced itself. The difference, however, is this: When Christians have oppressed and murdered they were acting contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and repudiating the message of Jesus. When Muslims oppress and murder, they're often following the instruction of the Koran and the example of Mohammad.
Third, the obsession with their inferiority - not only military but also cultural (compare the number of Arab Nobel Prize winners with the number of Jewish winners) - is a source of profound anger and hatred for all those kafirs or unbelievers in the West who seem to be thriving. It is that festering resentment and visceral hatred that is at the root of the Islamic obsession with destroying Israel and conquering the West.
As Ben Shapiro argues in the above video, there are an awful lot of Muslims in the world today who hold views in serious conflict with what Westerners generally hold, and as long as this is the case peace between Islam and the West will be very difficult to achieve.
It's been years since I read Clash of Civilizations, so I don't recall everything about it and don't want to impute what follows to Huntington, but that one quote sums up a very serious problem the world faces today. Here are three reasons why.
First, as Huntington says, it is not just radical Islam that's the problem. It's Islam itself. Muslims will tell you that there's no radical, or extremist, Islam and no moderate Islam, there is only Islam. Anyone who seeks to moderate Islam is considered by "true" Muslims to be a heretic.
Ben Shapiro lays out some troubling math in this six minute video: Second, a large number of Muslims are convinced not only of the superiority of their culture but also of the exclusiveness of their religion to the point that anyone who dissents from it deserves to be killed, especially if they convert from it to some other religion. There's no fault in believing one's religion to be true - many Christians believe that Christianity contains more truth than any other religion - but Islam holds that wherever Muslims have the power, Allah commands them to reduce non-believers to a subservient dhimmi status or be killed.
It might be replied that there are plenty of examples of Christians acting similarly in the Middle Ages, and although those examples are often not as dispositive as critics make out, nevertheless it's true that the Church has sometimes disgraced itself. The difference, however, is this: When Christians have oppressed and murdered they were acting contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and repudiating the message of Jesus. When Muslims oppress and murder, they're often following the instruction of the Koran and the example of Mohammad.
Third, the obsession with their inferiority - not only military but also cultural (compare the number of Arab Nobel Prize winners with the number of Jewish winners) - is a source of profound anger and hatred for all those kafirs or unbelievers in the West who seem to be thriving. It is that festering resentment and visceral hatred that is at the root of the Islamic obsession with destroying Israel and conquering the West.
As Ben Shapiro argues in the above video, there are an awful lot of Muslims in the world today who hold views in serious conflict with what Westerners generally hold, and as long as this is the case peace between Islam and the West will be very difficult to achieve.
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Why Bigotry Is Wrong
Insistent demands to end racism and bias against women and LBGTQ individuals are rife in our culture, but rarely, it seems, does anyone ask why these bigotries are wrong. On those occassions when it is asked it's sometimes replied that any form of discrimination is morally wrong, but what, exactly, is meant by this is unclear.
Here's what I'm getting at: Let's assume we've all adopted a secular perspective in which either there is no moral authority that transcends human society or, if there is, that that authority should be permitted no role in our secular affairs.
Given this assumption what does it mean to say that racism, misogyny and discrimination against LGBTQ folks are wrong? If there's no moral authority how can "wrong" mean anything more than "something some people don't like"? And if that's all we mean then what reason is there for all the outrage? Why not just accept that different people hold different values and let it go at that?
After all, something can be wrong in any meaningful moral sense only if there's an objective moral authority who promulgates an objective moral law and holds people accountable for living according to that law. If no such authority exists, or if any such authority is excluded from our public lives, then racism is little more than a behavior some people practice and some people don't like.
An example of the former is the famous 19th century British evolutionary biologist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895). Huxley was the man who coined the term "agnostic" to describe his own attitude toward God and was also a firm believer in the Darwinian doctrine of survival of the fittest.
His evolutionary convictions led him to believe that some races were superior to others, and he argued that emancipation of the slaves in the U.S. had doomed blacks who would now have to fend for themselves, a task for which he believed them poorly suited.
Huxley stated that, "no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man.”
Huxley's racism was little different from that of his hero Charles Darwin. Writing to the Rev. Charles Kingsley in 1862, Darwin stated,
One might answer that they're offensive because they're hurtful, but that answer assumes that it is objectively wrong to hurt others. But why is it? Is it wrong to hurt others because we wouldn't want someone to hurt us? It's of course true that we wouldn't want others to hurt us, but how does that make it wrong for us to hurt others? If we had the power to hurt others with impunity, in what sense would it be wrong to do so?
The secularist has no convincing answers to these questions. He or she has to assume that there is no relevant objective moral authority, that objective morality therefore doesn't exist and that all of our moral judgments are simply expressions of our own personal, subjective preferences, like one's preference for Ford trucks rather than Chevys.
If the secularist wishes to maintain that moral judgments are objectively meaningful then he's piggy-backing on a theistic worldview while all the while insisting that that worldview is either utterly false or irrelevant to morality.
In other words, the moral secularist must behave irrationally in order to assert that racism is wrong. On his own secular assumptions he has no grounds for claiming that anyone or anything is objectively wrong. All he can say is that he doesn't like it.
But how does a Judeo-Christian view of the world provide grounds for affirming that racism and other bigotries are morally wrong? It does so because according to that view all men are created by God in His image and are loved by Him. We are all equal in the sight of God, and God, the creator of the universe, demands that we treat each other with compassion and justice. Moreover, He will ultimately hold us accountable for whether we actually do or do not treat others this way.
To harm others is morally wrong because it violates the objective will, nature, and law of God who, being perfect goodness, is Himself the ultimate source of moral knowledge and the ultimate standard of right and wrong.
Only if this is true can racism, sexism and bigotry of any kind be objectively wrong. Only if this is true does our belief that human beings have rights and dignity make sense. If it's not true then Huxley and Darwin were probably right, and we should cease our pretensions of believing in moral right and wrong and the equality and dignity of men and just do whatever serves our own interests and desires.
Of course, the decision to follow that road leads to all the horrors perpetrated by the state atheisms of the 20th century.
Here's what I'm getting at: Let's assume we've all adopted a secular perspective in which either there is no moral authority that transcends human society or, if there is, that that authority should be permitted no role in our secular affairs.
Given this assumption what does it mean to say that racism, misogyny and discrimination against LGBTQ folks are wrong? If there's no moral authority how can "wrong" mean anything more than "something some people don't like"? And if that's all we mean then what reason is there for all the outrage? Why not just accept that different people hold different values and let it go at that?
After all, something can be wrong in any meaningful moral sense only if there's an objective moral authority who promulgates an objective moral law and holds people accountable for living according to that law. If no such authority exists, or if any such authority is excluded from our public lives, then racism is little more than a behavior some people practice and some people don't like.
An example of the former is the famous 19th century British evolutionary biologist Thomas Huxley (1825-1895). Huxley was the man who coined the term "agnostic" to describe his own attitude toward God and was also a firm believer in the Darwinian doctrine of survival of the fittest.
His evolutionary convictions led him to believe that some races were superior to others, and he argued that emancipation of the slaves in the U.S. had doomed blacks who would now have to fend for themselves, a task for which he believed them poorly suited.
Huxley stated that, "no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man.”
Huxley's racism was little different from that of his hero Charles Darwin. Writing to the Rev. Charles Kingsley in 1862, Darwin stated,
It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-Saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.Almost twenty years later he offered similar sentiments in a letter to Irish philosopher and political economist William Graham:
Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.People today would be aghast were they to hear preeminent thinkers voice such bigotry, but the question we should ask is why do we consider views like those of Huxley and Darwin to be morally offensive?
One might answer that they're offensive because they're hurtful, but that answer assumes that it is objectively wrong to hurt others. But why is it? Is it wrong to hurt others because we wouldn't want someone to hurt us? It's of course true that we wouldn't want others to hurt us, but how does that make it wrong for us to hurt others? If we had the power to hurt others with impunity, in what sense would it be wrong to do so?
The secularist has no convincing answers to these questions. He or she has to assume that there is no relevant objective moral authority, that objective morality therefore doesn't exist and that all of our moral judgments are simply expressions of our own personal, subjective preferences, like one's preference for Ford trucks rather than Chevys.
If the secularist wishes to maintain that moral judgments are objectively meaningful then he's piggy-backing on a theistic worldview while all the while insisting that that worldview is either utterly false or irrelevant to morality.
In other words, the moral secularist must behave irrationally in order to assert that racism is wrong. On his own secular assumptions he has no grounds for claiming that anyone or anything is objectively wrong. All he can say is that he doesn't like it.
But how does a Judeo-Christian view of the world provide grounds for affirming that racism and other bigotries are morally wrong? It does so because according to that view all men are created by God in His image and are loved by Him. We are all equal in the sight of God, and God, the creator of the universe, demands that we treat each other with compassion and justice. Moreover, He will ultimately hold us accountable for whether we actually do or do not treat others this way.
To harm others is morally wrong because it violates the objective will, nature, and law of God who, being perfect goodness, is Himself the ultimate source of moral knowledge and the ultimate standard of right and wrong.
Only if this is true can racism, sexism and bigotry of any kind be objectively wrong. Only if this is true does our belief that human beings have rights and dignity make sense. If it's not true then Huxley and Darwin were probably right, and we should cease our pretensions of believing in moral right and wrong and the equality and dignity of men and just do whatever serves our own interests and desires.
Of course, the decision to follow that road leads to all the horrors perpetrated by the state atheisms of the 20th century.
Friday, August 15, 2025
Hamas Bears All the Guilt
The Western media have been very vocal in condemning Israel for alleged starvation in Gaza, even to the point of using photos of children with Cerebral Palsy as instances of starving children, but an article in the Free Beacon by Andrew Tobin paints a much different picture of the situation in Gaza. Everyone who thinks Israel is to blame for hungry Gazans should read it.
Here's the lede:
Those critical of Israel in this war would be hard pressed to think of any other country in history that has done more in wartime to avoid civilian casualties and done more to try to ease the suffering of the very people (the Gazans) who have overwhelmingly supported their government (Hamas) in its efforts to annihilate the very people (the Israelis) who are coming to their aid.
Here's the lede:
Every day this week, hundreds of U.N. trucks stacked with pallets of humanitarian aid have exited Israeli-patrolled routes and rumbled into population centers across the Gaza Strip, where Israel has implemented daily pauses in military operations.Tobin goes on to explain how Hamas and the U.N. essentially work together in a way that results in the immiseration of the Gazan people. Contrary to what the antisemites in our media and universities want us to believe, the war, the thousands of casualties, and the suffering of the Gazans are all crimes perpetrated by Hamas, and it is Hamas who bears the guilt and the blame for them.
Many of the trucks, though traveling under enhanced Israeli protections introduced on Sunday, have not reached U.N. warehouses, according to Gazans on the ground. Once the trucks have arrived in the population centers, armed Hamas militants have hijacked the cargo, the Gazans said, and what aid has arrived at the warehouses has disappeared into a patronage system controlled by the Palestinian terrorist group.
Most Gazans have been forced to buy the aid at exorbitant prices from merchants handpicked and heavily taxed by Hamas.
"Fifty trucks arrived yesterday at warehouses in Gaza City, and Hamas stole all of the aid," Moumen al-Natour, a 30-year-old lawyer in the northern Gaza capital, said on Tuesday. "Today, the aid went on sale in the black markets at very high prices."
Al-Natour said a childhood friend, seeking to feed his family, joined a hungry mob trying to loot the trucks and was trampled to death along with a number of other civilians.
Gazans and Israeli military officers say this has been the reality in Gaza since fighting resumed in March. Hamas exerts near-total control over U.N.-led aid operations and seizes nearly all the incoming goods to feed and finance its terrorist regime, according to the people. Rather than confront the problem, the United Nations has effectively aligned with Hamas, prolonging the Gaza war and the suffering of Gazans, the people say.
"Hamas has unfortunately been able to infiltrate the mechanism of the United Nations for a long time," said Al-Natour. "They take all the aid for their own people and leave nothing for the civilians. This is how they maintain their criminal government while their popularity is collapsing."
Those critical of Israel in this war would be hard pressed to think of any other country in history that has done more in wartime to avoid civilian casualties and done more to try to ease the suffering of the very people (the Gazans) who have overwhelmingly supported their government (Hamas) in its efforts to annihilate the very people (the Israelis) who are coming to their aid.
Thursday, August 14, 2025
The Evil That Men Do
International Christian Concern (ICC) reports that of the five most populous nations in the world, in four of them either the government persecutes Christians or it tolerates persecution of Christians by other groups within the country.
Here are some excerpts from the report:
This is evil and the religion, in the case of Islam, and the ideology, in the case of communism, that spawn this evil are rooted in a profound hatred for anyone who refuses to accept the haters' belief system, but any belief system that's rooted in hatred and which gives rise to so much evil, is itself evil. What else could it be?
Here are some excerpts from the report:
Four of the five most populous countries in the world share a disturbing reality: Christians are systematically and harshly persecuted within their borders.They also face murder as in several countries in Africa where 62,000 Christians have been murdered by Muslims in Nigeria alone in the last two and a half decades, and any Christians caught practicing their faith in North Korea are subjected to horrific suffering.
China (1.41 billion people), India (1.46 billion people), Indonesia (285 million people), and Pakistan (255 million people) routinely strip Christians of fundamental human rights like worshiping freely and sharing their faith with others. The United States (347 million people) is the other country in the top five.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China is openly atheistic and continuously attempts to curb the religious expression of Christians within its nation. According to a 2023 report from Pew Research, the CCP’s religious restrictions “are part of a long-standing strategy by the Chinese government to align religion with communism and ensure loyalty to the…CCP, which espouses and promotes atheism.”
In May, Chinese authorities released a plan to incorporate lyrics that applaud communism into church worship music.
In India, Christians endure being evicted from their homes simply for following Christ. Evictions are often carried out by Hindu nationalists who want Indians to adhere to Hinduism only.
According to the European Center for Law and Justice, Christians were the targets of more than 160 violent attacks [in India] in 2024, including physical assaults and attacks on church meetings.
Indonesian authorities, functioning in a Muslim-majority nation, routinely condone the suppression of Christian rights. A prayer house was attacked in July, and Christian churches have been closed in recent years due to restrictive Indonesian law.
According to Christianity Today, “a 2006 law requires churches to secure signatures of approval from 60 Christians and 90 people from another faith” to build a Christian church. This allows those opposed to Christianity to stop the construction of churches.
In predominantly Muslim Pakistan, blasphemy laws are egregiously used to target and punish Christians for following Jesus. Christ followers are often discriminated against and not given equal opportunities in employment. Jobs like sewer maintenance and street sweepers are typically reserved for Christians, and believers are jailed for their faith if they are found to have violated the nation’s strict blasphemy laws.
Christians in these nations may face harassment, intimidation, and imprisonment for following Christ. The most basic human right, the liberty to follow one’s own conscience, is often out of reach for believers in these countries.
This is evil and the religion, in the case of Islam, and the ideology, in the case of communism, that spawn this evil are rooted in a profound hatred for anyone who refuses to accept the haters' belief system, but any belief system that's rooted in hatred and which gives rise to so much evil, is itself evil. What else could it be?
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
D.C. Crime
Democrats are attacking Trump for taking action to clean up Washington by federalizing the city's law enforcement, a move the D.C. police themselves support and the mayor doesn't oppose. Apparently, some on the left think it's racist to fight crime, which says a lot about who they think the criminals must be. Either that, or they think that black and brown people should be left alone to pillage, rape, and murder.
One of their arguments is that violent crime in D.C. has declined by 30% so there's no need to bring in the National Guard, but what they don't say is that the former police commander is under investigation for falsifying crime data.
In any case, what are the facts about crime in D.C.? Here are some from the White House via Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com:
One thing they should be concerned about is that once again they're going to find themselves on the wrong side of an 80/20 issue, but that doesn't seem to bother them. Maybe the Democrats' real concern is that they fear people will see that Republicans get things done that the people want done while Democrats do nothing but sit on their hands and fuss over pronouns.
One of their arguments is that violent crime in D.C. has declined by 30% so there's no need to bring in the National Guard, but what they don't say is that the former police commander is under investigation for falsifying crime data.
In any case, what are the facts about crime in D.C.? Here are some from the White House via Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com:
- In 2024, Washington, D.C. saw a homicide rate of 27.3 per 100,000 residents. That was the fourth-highest homicide rate in the country — nearly six times higher than New York City and also higher than Atlanta, Chicago, and Compton.
- If Washington, D.C. was a state, it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the nation. It's murder rate is roughly three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-run Havana, Cuba.
- The number of juveniles arrested in Washington, D.C. has gone up each year since 2020 — many of whom have had prior arrests for violent crimes.
- There were 29,348 crimes reported in Washington, D.C. last year, including 3,469 violent offenses, 1,026 assaults with a dangerous weapon, 2,113 robberies, and 5,139 motor vehicle thefts.
- So far in 2025, there have already been nearly 1,600 violent crimes and nearly 16,000 total crimes reported in Washington, D.C.
- There have been nearly 100 homicides, including the fatal shootings of innocent civilians like three-year-old Honesty Cheadle and 21-year-old Capitol Hill intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym.
- Vehicle theft in Washington, D.C. is more than three times the national average — ranking it among the most dangerous cities in the world. Carjackings increased 547% between 2018 and 2023. In 2024, there were triple the number of carjackings compared to 2018.
One thing they should be concerned about is that once again they're going to find themselves on the wrong side of an 80/20 issue, but that doesn't seem to bother them. Maybe the Democrats' real concern is that they fear people will see that Republicans get things done that the people want done while Democrats do nothing but sit on their hands and fuss over pronouns.
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
Beautiful Ugliness
The title of this post is an oxymoron, but it befits the subject of the following wonderful 8:00 minute video about vultures.
In eastern North America there are two species of vultures that can be commonly seen - the turkey vulture and the black vulture - and neither of them would ever win a beauty contest. Yet, they're graceful flyers and play a very important role in the ecosystem of which they're a part.
Moreover, vultures in general are impressively designed to accomplish all that they do. Their digestive features are unique among birds.
In the video, the turkey vulture is the one shown in connection with Darwin's observation in South America, and the black vulture is shown at the end flying along with the photographers. Enjoy:
In eastern North America there are two species of vultures that can be commonly seen - the turkey vulture and the black vulture - and neither of them would ever win a beauty contest. Yet, they're graceful flyers and play a very important role in the ecosystem of which they're a part.
Moreover, vultures in general are impressively designed to accomplish all that they do. Their digestive features are unique among birds.
In the video, the turkey vulture is the one shown in connection with Darwin's observation in South America, and the black vulture is shown at the end flying along with the photographers. Enjoy:
Monday, August 11, 2025
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 of 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-level 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 its 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.
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.
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 of 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-level 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 its 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.
- Demoralization – using pornography and other methods through media, entertainment, education, etc., to break down the moral courage of the people.
- Destabilization – By undermining police, courts, borders, etc., to overwhelm public safety and further demoralize the people.
- Crisis – Build 1 and 2 to the point of a crisis where people resort to rioting or to civil war.
- 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.
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.
Saturday, August 9, 2025
Orb Weaver Spiders
The following beautiful short film describes some of the amazing features of spiders in general and orb weaver spiders in particular. As you watch it you might ponder how such an astounding organism with such a tiny brain can "know" to do all that it instinctively does.
You might wonder, too, how its instinctive behaviors could've evolved through purely undirected, blind, and random processes, and not only its behavior but also all of the anatomical structures and functions necessary for the spider's mode of life.
If something looks like it was intelligently engineered, and if the alternative to intelligent engineering (undirected, unintelligent forces) is exceedingly implausible, then intelligent engineering should, at the very least, be considered a viable hypothesis.
In fact, the only reason one could have for not considering intelligent agency to be the most likely hypothesis is an apriori philosophical commitment to naturalism, but that's not a move based on science. It's not a move grounded in evidence, but is rather the intellectual expression of an irrational aversion to any suggestion that ultimate reality is immaterial and non-physical.
The video is produced by the John 10:10 Project and is about 8:00 minutes long:
You might wonder, too, how its instinctive behaviors could've evolved through purely undirected, blind, and random processes, and not only its behavior but also all of the anatomical structures and functions necessary for the spider's mode of life.
If something looks like it was intelligently engineered, and if the alternative to intelligent engineering (undirected, unintelligent forces) is exceedingly implausible, then intelligent engineering should, at the very least, be considered a viable hypothesis.
In fact, the only reason one could have for not considering intelligent agency to be the most likely hypothesis is an apriori philosophical commitment to naturalism, but that's not a move based on science. It's not a move grounded in evidence, but is rather the intellectual expression of an irrational aversion to any suggestion that ultimate reality is immaterial and non-physical.
The video is produced by the John 10:10 Project and is about 8:00 minutes long:
Friday, August 8, 2025
Gulliver in Washington, D.C.
In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Lemuel Gulliver is shown around the Grand Academy of Lagado in which all sorts of projects are being conducted to improve the lives of the citizens. These projects included the following:
I was reminded of his satire some time ago when reading about the some of the government programs the Trump administration has been keen on eliminating since his inauguration. Here are just a few examples:
There may be worthwhile programs that've been thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak, but the abuse has been so massive that there's little inclination to spend time drawing subtle distinctions. The government workers who've lost their jobs in the first six months of the current administration have only themselves and/or their colleagues to blame.
- Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers to warm the air in raw, inclement summers
- Reducing human excrement to its original food
- Learning to plow fields with pigs motivated by strategically placed acorns
- Extracting silk from spiders
- Developing a technique for building a house by starting at the roof and working down to the foundation
- A team of blind men learning to discern the color of paint by feel and smell
I was reminded of his satire some time ago when reading about the some of the government programs the Trump administration has been keen on eliminating since his inauguration. Here are just a few examples:
- $45 million for diversity scholarships in Burma (Myanmar).
- $40 million for social and economic inclusion of "sedentary migrants" in Colombia, benefiting Venezuelan refugees.
- $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique, reportedly for AIDS prevention.
- $20 million for the Arab "Sesame Street" a program focused on education and promoting inclusivity for young children.
- Programs aimed at promoting LGBTQ+ advocacy or acceptance in countries like Botswana, Belize, and Peru, including funding for an LGBTQ+ comic book.
- $325,000 for a program adapting an LGB+ teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys.
- $22.6 billion for aiding illegal migrants through resettlement programs, home and car purchases, and loans.
- $7.5 billion for funding a few dozen electric vehicle stations across the nation.
There may be worthwhile programs that've been thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak, but the abuse has been so massive that there's little inclination to spend time drawing subtle distinctions. The government workers who've lost their jobs in the first six months of the current administration have only themselves and/or their colleagues to blame.
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Do They Really Think It's Not Alive?
Thirty years ago some embryos were produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF), and the mother had them frozen. Recently, one of those embryos was brought to term and born. It's a fascinating, and in some ways troubling, development, but some of the commenters to the report, in an apparent attempt to dump snark on pro-lifers, displayed alarming ignorance of basic biology.
One commenter wrote that "Since right wingers think life begins at conception is this baby old enough to go to war?" Another asked if "people who believe life begins at conception would sell liquor to this baby."
Implicit in these questions is the assumption that it's preposterous to believe that an embryo is a living entity, but of course it obviously is. Do these people think that the cells that comprise an embryo are non-living cells? Are the cells inert? Are they dead? It's simply absurd to imply that metabolizing, replicating cells are not alive.
If those who made these comments meant to suggest that the embryo is not really human then perhaps they'd be willing to tell us what sort of embryo it is. What sort of being was it that ultimately grew into a human baby? It wasn't the embryo of a cow or a frog or a tulip. Obviously, the being, or entity, which was frozen thirty years ago was a human entity. It was a living human being.
Another point: The assumption throughout the X thread that forms the basis for this article is that this newborn baby is actually thirty years old, but of course, it's not thirty years old. Everyone's age is calculated from the date of his or her birth, not the date of one's conception. This baby (its name is Thaddeus Daniel Pierce) was born on July 26th of this year and thus, as of this writing, is a little over one week old.
Blaise Pascal once stated that our first responsibility is to think clearly. That's good advice in any case, but in discussions that have life and death implications it has special salience.
One commenter wrote that "Since right wingers think life begins at conception is this baby old enough to go to war?" Another asked if "people who believe life begins at conception would sell liquor to this baby."
Implicit in these questions is the assumption that it's preposterous to believe that an embryo is a living entity, but of course it obviously is. Do these people think that the cells that comprise an embryo are non-living cells? Are the cells inert? Are they dead? It's simply absurd to imply that metabolizing, replicating cells are not alive.
If those who made these comments meant to suggest that the embryo is not really human then perhaps they'd be willing to tell us what sort of embryo it is. What sort of being was it that ultimately grew into a human baby? It wasn't the embryo of a cow or a frog or a tulip. Obviously, the being, or entity, which was frozen thirty years ago was a human entity. It was a living human being.
Another point: The assumption throughout the X thread that forms the basis for this article is that this newborn baby is actually thirty years old, but of course, it's not thirty years old. Everyone's age is calculated from the date of his or her birth, not the date of one's conception. This baby (its name is Thaddeus Daniel Pierce) was born on July 26th of this year and thus, as of this writing, is a little over one week old.
Blaise Pascal once stated that our first responsibility is to think clearly. That's good advice in any case, but in discussions that have life and death implications it has special salience.
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
80 Years Ago Today
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. An old article by Max Hastings offers some thoughts on the bombing upon which we might reflect. He argues that there are good arguments both to justify and to condemn the use of the atomic bomb on Japan and anyone interested in the continuing debate on this historical watershed should read his column. He closes it with an important observation:
Those who today find it easy to condemn the architects of Hiroshima sometimes seem to lack humility in recognizing the frailties of the decision-makers, mortal men grappling with dilemmas of a magnitude our own generation has been spared.
In August 1945, amid a world sick of death in the cause of defeating evil, allied lives seemed very precious, while the enemy appeared to value neither his own nor those of the innocent. Truman's Hiroshima judgment may seem wrong in the eyes of posterity, but it is easy to understand why it seemed right to most of his contemporaries.
It's hard to disagree with what Hastings writes. I think we have an obligation to try to understand the circumstances in which the men who made the decision to drop the bomb found themselves. Even so, there is something Hastings omits from his column which I think is of overriding importance in judging what happened, not just at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also at Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg and many less-noted cities.
In all of these, there was a conscious decision to deliberately target civilians for death. It doesn't much matter, in my opinion, whether the death was administered by conventional or nuclear explosives, the salient point is that the intentional killing of non-combatants, women and children, is prima facie morally unjustifiable.
I am not saying that it is absolutely wrong. There may be circumstances which would make such a measure necessary, and perhaps such circumstances obtained in August of 1945, but it's not obvious that they did.
We were outraged on 9/11 when 3000 civilians lost their lives to Islamic terrorists. We were incensed that the hijackers targeted innocent people. We called them cowards (which they certainly weren't). We called them evil (which they certainly were), but in what morally significant ways did their deed differ from the fire-bombing of thousands of children in Dresden or Tokyo?
I sympathize with the difficulty of the decision those men had to make during WWII. I don't know what I would have decided myself, especially if I had a son slated to take part in the impending invasion of Japan. But I do think we can spare those men harsh judgment without withholding moral assessment of their choices.
If we seek to justify deliberately killing innocents now it will only make it easier for us to yield to the temptation to do it again.
We are fortunate to be in possession of precision weapons today that our fathers did not have and which enable us to target combatants without deliberately harming non-combatants. We have, as best as can be discerned, used these with great care and effectiveness. They have relieved us somewhat of the moral burden previous generations of Americans carried.
Even so, there are many times in war when the temptation to kill indiscriminately must seem overwhelming. To the extent we excuse what was done in WWII we make it more likely that it will happen again today in the war against Islamic terrorists.
If you'd like to learn more about the history of the American air war against the Japanese homeland, I highly recommend James M. Scott's book Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb.
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Dragonflies
All of us have seen dragonflies around ponds and lakes but there's a lot more to these fascinating creatures than perhaps we realized. They really are amazing and their anatomy and behavior is unique as the video below illustrates.
It's a bit long (18 minutes), but if nature is an interest of yours, once you start watching you'll probably want to watch the whole thing. It's certain that you'll never look at dragonflies quite the same way again, and you won't take them for granted.
One question you might keep in mind as you watch is how such amazing engineering ever could've evolved through chance and fortuitous genetic mutations as the modern Darwinists claim.
It's a bit long (18 minutes), but if nature is an interest of yours, once you start watching you'll probably want to watch the whole thing. It's certain that you'll never look at dragonflies quite the same way again, and you won't take them for granted.
One question you might keep in mind as you watch is how such amazing engineering ever could've evolved through chance and fortuitous genetic mutations as the modern Darwinists claim.
Monday, August 4, 2025
Is England Facing Civil War?
Writer Mark Steyn is predicting that there will be a civil war in England within the next fifteen years. His reason is that over the next decade Muslims will have gained decisive political clout and will begin imposing Sharia on the rest of the English who by that time will be fed up with the two-tier justice system that already prevails in England.
They will also be fed up with the criminalization of speech, especially speech critical of immigrants. You can read more of Steyn's thinking on this here.
Relatedly, Powerline's John Hinderaker notes a very disturbing trend in England. Whereas in recent years Muhammad has been the most popular name given to boys, Hinderaker cites a story from The Telegraph which tells us that another name is rising in the rankings:
Well, in England, France, Germany, and The Netherlands Muslims are well on the way to becoming the larger culture and there seems to be scant indication that they have any desire to assimilate.
They will also be fed up with the criminalization of speech, especially speech critical of immigrants. You can read more of Steyn's thinking on this here.
Relatedly, Powerline's John Hinderaker notes a very disturbing trend in England. Whereas in recent years Muhammad has been the most popular name given to boys, Hinderaker cites a story from The Telegraph which tells us that another name is rising in the rankings:
Imagine if in 1945 hundreds of Brits christened their newborn sons Adolf. That might have rattled us as a nation, right?Hinderaker comments that,
I feel similarly about the news that, last year, 583 baby boys in the UK were given the name Yahya.
Yes, hundreds of families saw fit to bestow on their little ones the name shared by the one-time leader of Hamas and the architect of the worst mass murder of Jews since Adolf’s days – Yahya Sinwar.
The Top 100 Boys’ Names of 2024 were released this week, and Yahya has really blown up.
It reportedly enjoyed a larger spike in popularity than any other male name. It leapt a staggering 33 places up the rankings, to become the 93rd most popular boy’s name.
No doubt some would argue that it is good, or at least acceptable, that large numbers of “British” babies are named Muhammad. But I don’t know how a positive spin can be put on the fact that a considerable number of Muslim parents are naming their male babies after the architect of the October 7 massacre.The Left has been telling us for decades that Muslim immigration into the West will have a meliorating affect on their religious fanaticisms, that they'll assimilate into the larger culture and adopt the values of the larger culture.
How are actual Englishmen supposed to share their country with people whose values are literally as evil as Hitler’s, Stalin’s and Mao’s?
Well, in England, France, Germany, and The Netherlands Muslims are well on the way to becoming the larger culture and there seems to be scant indication that they have any desire to assimilate.
Saturday, August 2, 2025
What Are They Afraid Of?
The Office of Personnel Managementsent out a memo the other day instructing federal workers that religious expression in the workplace will henceforth not be forbidden. The memo is reproduced here:
If two federal workers during their break got into a discussion on politics would that be considered "outrageous"? Since politics is an ersatz religion for some people, since some individuals are so zealous for their particular political beliefs that they're willing to estrange themselves from family and friends over their disagreements, why are the folks at the FFRF so allergic to the possibility that someone might bring up the topic of God in the workplace but not, presumably, to the possibility that someone might mention Biden or Trump?
Part of what it means to be an intellectually mature individual is being able to hear with equanimity opinions at variance with one's own. The person who cannot abide the knowledge that someone might disagree with them about something as important as religion is like a child who sticks his fingers in his ears while loudly insisting that he can't hear you.
Not only is the FFRF reaction childish, it also seems to be a symptom of insecurity. It's the sort of reaction one might expect from people who deep down fear that the views they've spent their lives believing and promoting simply cannot withstand scrutiny, and the only way to keep them from collapsing altogether is to avoid any discussion of their rationale.
Good for the Trump administration for treating federal workers like intellectually mature and psychologically healthy adults.
As anodyne and sensible as this directive is, the folks at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) considered it an intolerable breach of the "wall of separation" between church and state. Exactly how this memo violates that principle isn't clear but here's the memo they sent out:🚨Just in: The Trump administration has directed federal agencies to safeguard religious expression in the workplace, allowing employees to display crucifixes, carry Bibles, and pray with rosary beads pic.twitter.com/FZPwcpB7ya
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) July 28, 2025
What exactly are these people afraid of, that someone might have a meaningful conversation about what is perhaps the most important topic anybody could discuss? That someone might actually find themselves learning something important?An outrageous memo the United States Office of Personnel Management released yesterday says “during a break, an employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the nonadherent should rethink his religious beliefs.” https://t.co/8ExblnsKOe
— FFRF (@FFRF) July 29, 2025
If two federal workers during their break got into a discussion on politics would that be considered "outrageous"? Since politics is an ersatz religion for some people, since some individuals are so zealous for their particular political beliefs that they're willing to estrange themselves from family and friends over their disagreements, why are the folks at the FFRF so allergic to the possibility that someone might bring up the topic of God in the workplace but not, presumably, to the possibility that someone might mention Biden or Trump?
Part of what it means to be an intellectually mature individual is being able to hear with equanimity opinions at variance with one's own. The person who cannot abide the knowledge that someone might disagree with them about something as important as religion is like a child who sticks his fingers in his ears while loudly insisting that he can't hear you.
Not only is the FFRF reaction childish, it also seems to be a symptom of insecurity. It's the sort of reaction one might expect from people who deep down fear that the views they've spent their lives believing and promoting simply cannot withstand scrutiny, and the only way to keep them from collapsing altogether is to avoid any discussion of their rationale.
Good for the Trump administration for treating federal workers like intellectually mature and psychologically healthy adults.
Friday, August 1, 2025
How Not to Find a Good Man
Nathanael Blake, writing at The Federalist, discusses a New York Times column titled "The Trouble With Wanting Men," by a writer named Jean Garnett. Blake writes that Garnett's piece,
Blake concludes with this:
portrays the sexual and relational landscape as a hellscape, or at least a dreary purgatory in which Garnett longs for men who are just not that into her. She is, as she eventually explained, on the dating scene because she recently divorced after her “open” marriage fell apart partially because she fell in love with a paramour who had no interest in a relationship.It must be very difficult for women to understand that men are not like women. Men, quite often, are averse to commitment to one woman, and they're especially so if the women who desire a commitment are willing to give men what they do want without any serious conditions attached. Blake continues:
One writer on X was quick to point out that Garnett had written a long, positive piece about said open marriage only a few years ago.
Now, Garnett is learning a painful lesson, as seen in her account of how she and her friends commiserate together, wondering, “Where were the men who could handle hard stuff? Like leaving the house for sex?” The answer should be obvious: Ladies, you’re competing with younger women — and endless internet porn — for the attention of guys who do not want a relationship.
Even if you were once irresistible to men, did you really think you would remain so forever?
It is darkly humorous how these men have learned to use therapy-speak to dull the edge of the proverbial fury of a woman scorned. Garnett recounts one guy she hooked up with texting her the next week, “I was really looking forward to seeing you again … but I’m going through some intense anxiety today and need to lay low :(.” She reports that she replied, “Totally understand,” but tells her readers that she “didn’t. Feeble, fallible ‘looking forward’ is not longing; a man should want me urgently or not at all.”It's just another way of saying, "It's not you, it's me" when in fact it's probably both of them.
Well, this guy clearly doesn’t want her — not really.
But Garnett doesn’t seem to get this, writing that, “lately I have been bruised by the ambivalence of men, how they can first want me and then become confused about what they want.” Again, they’re not confused. They’ve just learned that saying they are anxious and confused provides cover when they want to keep women of Garnett’s type at arm’s length.
It seems to be working. Though she wants to blame men for her miserable dating life, Garnett still writes that “the men my friends and I are feeling bleak about” are “the sweet, good ones. Dammit.” Of course, they aren’t sweet or good. They are selfish through and through. They’ve just learned that they can get away with that selfishness as long as they cover it with therapeutic language while telling women not to expect much from them.Actually, "the sweet, good ones" are often the men most accomplished at play-acting. Their sweetness is a mask that hides both selfishness and arrested development, but they know that women like Garnett are easily fooled by the act.
And yet Garnett and her friends are somehow disappointed when the little they are promised is all they get.
In truth, the “good guys” aren’t the ones using anxiety as an excuse to ditch their middle-aged hook-ups. Indeed, the really good ones are, by Garnett’s age, mostly off the market. They aren’t hooking up with bitter writers. Rather, they are going to church and raising their children and are still married to their first wives. Those are the good ones. What Garnett is sifting through are the dregs — maybe superficially attractive dregs, but still the dregs — and dregs that have no intention of settling down with her.If Garnett wants to find a good man, she should try joining a large, independent Christian church. She may find a good one through an online dating service, of course, but if she wants commitment and character in her man, especially at her age, she's going to have difficulty finding it amongst a secular demographic that hasn't ever made such virtues a priority in their lives. She's certainly going to have difficulty finding trust, respect, and faithfulness among acquaintances who've dabbled in open marriages which allow each spouse the freedom to "leave the house" to seek sex.
This reality almost breaks through when Garnett reflects on the affair that ended her marriage:“[T]hroughout the year and a half or so that we saw each other, he continued to gesture to his incapacity to commit as if it were a separate being, an unfortunate child who followed and relied upon him, maybe, or a physical constraint. I stood there reaching for him while he sad-faced back at me like a boxed mime: He couldn’t talk about it; he wished things were different; maybe someday the child would mature, the glass would break, but for now, there was really nothing to be done.Oh, they know about it. “Don’t want to” is indeed at the root of their refusal to commit to women such as Garnett. But anxiety and helplessness are palatable excuses, ones that women such as Garnett buy, or at least lease, because the alternative — realizing that she just isn’t that desirable and most of the good men are long gone anyway — is too painful.
"It seems to me, surveying the field as a dating novice, that this kind of studiously irreproachable male helplessness abounds. I keep encountering and hearing about men who ‘can’t.’ Have these men not heard of ‘don’t want to?’"
Blake concludes with this:
Garnett’s present unhappiness is a result of the ideology and behaviors she has promoted. The immediate cause of her unhappiness is that she’s a middle-aged woman hooking up with noncommittal men. The more comprehensive cause is the culture she has marinated in and furthered. She obviously yearns for the “old-fashioned man-woman stuff” she wants to dismiss. And she should — she was made for it.One hopes that Garnett and others like her find the happiness and fulfillment they're seeking, but until they realize why they're having trouble finding it the dating scene will, for many of them, largely remain a romantic hellscape.
But our culture encourages people to give their bodies quickly and their hearts slowly, if at all. This divides the person and precludes genuine love, which requires the gift of the whole self. This is why Christian sexual morality — and the marital sexual exclusivity it requires — is not a killjoy. Rather, it is a protector and promoter of human well-being. It directs us toward our good and the good of others.
The freedom, pleasure, and authentic flourishing the sexual revolution promised were lies and are why sexual liberation has hurt so many people. Sexual liberalism presumes that we thrive as autonomous pleasure seekers, unconstrained by norms or obligations. But this is false. We thrive through love, and real love, including romantic and sexual love, requires real commitment.
This, in turn, protects people by directing them toward their long-term fulfillment and happiness.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
The Democrats' Popularity Problems
Frankly, I don't believe the polls that say that the Democrats' approval rating is lower than the remains of the Titanic, but given their liabilities it probably should be.
Jim Geraghty summarizes some of those liabilities at National Review.
He begins with a question: "What have Democratic leaders delivered to their constituents, at the national, state, and local levels in recent years?" To start with there's inflation:
There's more of Geraghty's column at the link, but it's little wonder that people, even many Democrats, are beginning to doubt that the Democrats have any idea how to run a city much less the country.
He begins with a question: "What have Democratic leaders delivered to their constituents, at the national, state, and local levels in recent years?" To start with there's inflation:
Early in Biden’s term, former Harvard president and Clinton-era Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers warned the Democrats that excessive stimulus spending was creating inflationary conditions, but his party ignored him.The Democrats have also been on the wrong side of the immigration issue:
In July 2021, President Biden insisted, “There’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way — no serious economist.” When he said that, the inflation rate was 5.4 percent; it peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022 and remained above 3 percent until June 2024.
The Biden administration boasted of gargantuan, inflation-fueling spending bills, but by the end of Biden’s term, the results were thoroughly underwhelming — most famously, spending billions but only building 58 new charging stations. Even Democratic senators called the progress “pathetic.”
Biden himself complained to staffers in December 2023 that there were still no major construction sites for photo opportunities to tout the passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill he signed into law in November 2021.
It took a while, but Democrats also gradually soured on how the Biden administration was handling illegal immigration; when Biden was elected, Democrats largely believed immigration was not a threat, the proportion who believed controlling and reducing illegal immigration to be an important goal was near its all-time low, and opposition to increased border patrols and opposed border wall construction was near its all-time high.Then there was the dishonesty surrounding President Biden's obvious mental incapacity:
By the end of the Biden years, Democrats had started to sound more like the Republicans they had demonized as xenophobic.
If every elected official in the Democratic Party except for Dean Phillips was ready to play along with the idea that the doddering octogenarian was doing just fine and all the footage of him looking out of it were “cheap fakes,” why should Democratic voters trust them? Why should anyone trust them?On the state and local level Democrats are facing a crisis due to what could be called Blue flight:
Looking beyond Washington . . . sure, lots of people still enjoy living in blue states like California, New York, and Illinois, as long as they can afford it. Even with a small increase in 2024, California’s population is lower than it was before the pandemic; at best, it’s now a slow-growth state. “Comparing census numbers from 2010 to 2024, California’s population has increased by less than 6 percent; in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah, the increases range from 15 percent to nearly 30 percent.”And New York City is on the cusp of electing a communist Islamist antisemite who wants to abolish prisons, defund police, have the city run the grocery stores, and "globalize the intifada," i.e. kill Jews wherever they're found.
California is losing middle-class families and businesses and gaining illegal immigrants. As I’ve written before, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s popularity outside of his state appears to be based on a completely inaccurate sense of the quality of life in the Golden State:U.S. News and World Report ranks each state on a wide variety of categories. In the most recent assessment, California ranked dead last in opportunity, dead last in affordability, 47th in employment, 47th in energy infrastructure, 46th in air and water quality, 45th in growth, 42nd in public safety, 42nd in short-term fiscal stability, and 37th in K–12 education.Can anyone point to California’s high-speed rail project — $15 billion spent so far over 16 years, with not a single stretch of track laid down — and conclude, “Yes, this is good government?”
The Tax Foundation ranks California 48th in its most recent State Tax Competitiveness Index. For five straight years, California has ranked highest in people moving out of the state, according to U-Haul’s data. BankRate found California was the 47th-best state for retirement. California ranks fifth-worst in roads and third-worst in drivers, second-highest in accident rate, and second-worst in drunk driving.
Doesn’t it trouble Illinois Governor JB Pritzker that on his watch, Boeing, Caterpillar, and the hedge fund giant Citadel all chose to move their headquarters to other states, lamenting the state’s business environment and Chicago’s inability to get crime under control?
Doesn’t it bother Governor Tim Walz that the Minnesota state government keeps getting robbed blind, for billions of dollars’ worth of fraud, in every major state spending project?
Karen Bass apparently thought being mayor of Los Angeles was a form of semi-retirement. The county government is no better; we’re almost at the end of July, and Los Angeles County has issued 137 rebuilding permits for the 12,048 buildings damaged or destroyed by the wildfires.
In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson got what he wanted and now enjoys a job approval rating of 14 percent.
There's more of Geraghty's column at the link, but it's little wonder that people, even many Democrats, are beginning to doubt that the Democrats have any idea how to run a city much less the country.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Why Public School Enrollments Are Dropping
Public school teacher Auguste Meyrat writing at The Federalist highlights a decline in public school enrollments.
Assistant principals are in a tough spot because they know that if they discipline disruptive students they may not get support from the building principal when angry parents demand to confront him or her. And the lack of support extends, often, to the school board which doesn't want to deal with irate parents and threatened lawsuits.
This state of affairs derives from a view of school, promoted by inept administrators, as a "happy place" where students are to be coddled and pampered rather than as a "boot camp" where students are to be trained and taught basic life skills.
His concluding paragraphs nicely summarize the current circumstances in many of our public schools:
This is why so many teachers, after ten or fifteen years of putting up with this, seek out some other, less stressful, line of work. It's why parents who care and can afford it are taking their kids out of public schools and either homeschool their children or find a private school alternative.
Too many public schools are just not "happy places" for either teachers or the students who want to learn.
[Since the cessatin of the pandemic] many parents have either continued homeschooling or gone on to enroll their children in private or charter schools, apparently fed up with their neighborhood public schools.The standard answer for any public school problem is that there's not enough funding, but Meyrat isn't buying that:
A recent report in Education Next from researchers Joshua Goodman and Abigail Francis offers some numbers that support what many of us teachers have observed firsthand. They mainly focus on enrollment in Massachusetts’ public schools, where the total enrollment in 2024 was “4.2 percent lower than it was in fall 2019,” and the numbers in future school years are only going to continue to worsen under these conditions.
Moreover, the drop was steeper among white and Asian students and mainly occurred in the middle school grades (five through eight).
It’s significant that this is happening in Massachusetts, a state with a well-funded school system that routinely leads the country year after year and has set the standard for public education ever since Horace Mann invented the whole concept nearly two centuries ago. If enrollment is declining here, then it’s fair to conclude that this is happening nationwide. Indeed, Goodman and Francis say as much: “Fall 2023 public school enrollment nationwide was 2.8 percent below predicted levels compared to a 2.6 percent drop for Massachusetts by fall 2024.”
So what accounts for the decline? Why is it more pronounced among whites and Asians? And why is it during middle school?
It should go without saying that the leftist responses to this question, usually revolving around funding, equity, and accessibility, are utterly misguided. On the whole, public schools are amply endowed — particularly in Massachusetts, which spends more than $24,000 a student — and they are decked out with every instructional resource a teacher could ever want.This is pretty much right, although the failure to maintain student discipline is actually the root of a decline in academic rigor and concerns about the moral influence on campus. Nor did it start with the covid years. It's been an ongoing problem in public schools for decades. Meyrat continues:
Most campuses aren’t the squalid, impoverished, gang-infested dens depicted in movies like Dangerous Minds or shows like Abbot Elementary. Rather, they are generally clean, boring, and look more like corporate offices.
The real reasons for declining enrollment ironically have more to do with the inverse of these complaints: Public schools are now excessively funded and overly obsessed with equity and accessibility, which then prevents them from being reformed. Regardless of the state, most public schools are now failing in three critical areas that parents care about when deciding on their children’s K-12 education: academic rigor, student discipline, and the campus’ moral influence.
To prevent mass failure, grading systems have been reconfigured in such a way as to discourage studying, practicing, and applying new concepts, and thereby deepening one’s understanding of any given subject.Again, all this is a consequence of the failure of school authorities to maintain a disciplined atmosphere. Students know that if they misbehave and get sent by their teacher to an assistant principal for discipline, that the principal is very likely to return the student to the classroom with a note to the teacher to solve the problem him or her self. With little recourse for handling disruptive students teachers often give up even trying and classrooms devolve into barely controlled chaos.
Even in supposedly advanced classes, students are often awarded perfect grades for projects and games and rarely assessed objectively. When they actually encounter the occasional test or essay, many cheat and use AI. The students who rise above all this mediocrity and really do prove themselves to be formidable scholars are typically the students in affluent households who either have personal tutors or attend test-prep centers after school.
As for the on-level or non-advanced classes, there are hardly any demands. Simply showing up and completing a few busywork activities will allow a student to pass. For the rest of the time, the students in these classes are on their phones goofing off or allowed to roam the halls for hours at a time — something I’ve described elsewhere as “Vegetative Learning.”
The teacher’s job in these classes is to keep the peace, pass on the students, take attendance, and pray that their students already have some kind of rudimentary knowledge of reading and math so they can pass their standardized tests.
Predictably, due to this lack of rigor, there has been a surge in student misbehavior. As the saying goes, “the Devil finds work for idle hands,” and never have students been so idle in their classes as they are after Covid. Not only has this led many of them to become constantly restless and disruptive, but it has also led many to become addicted to their smartphones.
Assistant principals are in a tough spot because they know that if they discipline disruptive students they may not get support from the building principal when angry parents demand to confront him or her. And the lack of support extends, often, to the school board which doesn't want to deal with irate parents and threatened lawsuits.
This state of affairs derives from a view of school, promoted by inept administrators, as a "happy place" where students are to be coddled and pampered rather than as a "boot camp" where students are to be trained and taught basic life skills.
His concluding paragraphs nicely summarize the current circumstances in many of our public schools:
To make matters worse, the tools to deal with these students (remedial classes, suspension, expulsion, disciplinary campuses, or even juvenile detention centers) have been removed in the wake of the false DEI narratives that have prevailed in education ever since President Obama’s infamous memo to school districts to essentially stop disciplining black and brown kids.All true. When minority kids aren't, or can't, be disciplined then it's hard to justify disciplining anybody, and when students can use the most vulgar obscenities in lashing out at teachers, then discipline has collapsed and teacher morale plummets.
Along with everything else, this misplaced equity agenda has resulted in certain students regularly wreaking havoc on school safety and student well-being with little recourse for teachers and principals to do anything about it.
Finally, the overall culture and spirit of public schools has become increasingly immoral. Many young people from otherwise wholesome households are introduced to a wide variety of obscenity, vice, and nihilism at the typical school.
Bullying and harassment go unchecked, kids routinely swear, everyone cheats on their work, most of the boys are addicted to online pornography, most of the girls consume mindless slop on social media, and most teachers are demoralized by idiotic policies that dictate how they’re supposed to teach.
This is why so many teachers, after ten or fifteen years of putting up with this, seek out some other, less stressful, line of work. It's why parents who care and can afford it are taking their kids out of public schools and either homeschool their children or find a private school alternative.
Too many public schools are just not "happy places" for either teachers or the students who want to learn.
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