The Unending War

The terrible terrorist attack in New Orleans should awaken Americans to a very uncomfortable fact: Islam's struggle against the West is an unending war. We may think we don't have to fight it, but radical Muslims believe they're doing the will of Allah in waging a war that has waxed and waned for over 1300 years.

Groups like al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian government, the Houthis, the Taliban are all permutations of the same belief system that has been slaughtering unbelievers in the Middle East, North Africa, and everywhere else they've had the ability ever since the time of Mohammad in the seventh century.

Matthew Continetti at the Free Beacon writes that the horrific attack in New Orleans was just the latest atrocity perpetrated against Westerners in the name of "a sick ideology," and goes on to point out that the jihadist worldview exemplified by ISIS is resurgent.

There was a terrible attack in Moscow last April, and last month's Christmas market attack in Germany killed four women and a nine-year-old boy. Radical Islamism is growing in, and fuels violence throughout, Africa. ISIS rages in Syria and Iraq as its Sunni compatriots in Hamas fight to the death in Gaza. Shiite radicals in Hezbollah and among the Houthis sow terror at the direction of their Iranian masters.

Above all, ISIS has embedded in Afghanistan, where its leaders issue communiques to an international following, plot against the West, and attack both the Taliban government and neighboring Pakistan.

As President Trump demonstrated by all but destroying ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the Israelis have shown in their response to the October 7th horrors, the only way to diminish this enemy - they will never be defeated forever as long as there are people who believe that it's God's will that they slay the Jews and the infidels - is by the application of military force.

Here's Continetti:

Terrorist movements wax strong when they believe that history is on their side. And there is no better way to rid the terrorists of that notion than to deny them haven and reduce their leaders to ash. America forgot this lesson. Our leaders reduced commitments in Iraq and Syria. Federal law enforcement shifted its attention to domestic extremism and white nationalism.

Worst of all, President Biden beat a hasty retreat from Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. servicemen killed, U.S. citizens and visa-holders stranded, Afghan allies abandoned, the Afghan people in hock to a jihadist militia that calls itself a government, and Afghanistan's ungoverned spaces in the hands of ISIS.

At the time, Biden pledged continued surveillance of the enemy, "over-the-horizon" military capabilities, and support for Afghan women and girls. None of this was true. Retired general Frank McKenzie, former CENTCOM commander, said last spring that "in Afghanistan, we have almost no ability to see into that country and almost no ability to strike into that country."

The Taliban resumed public executions, imposed dress and behavioral codes on women, and deprived girls of schooling. The other day, the Taliban said it would shutter NGOs that employ women.

Our current political leadership seems to believe that the way to defeat the Islamists is by means of carrot and stick half-measures. Continetti invites us to consider the contrast between Israel and the United States.

Israel possesses the will to strike its enemies, establish facts on the ground favorable to its security, and restore deterrence in a dangerous neighborhood.

The United States, meanwhile, has been tossed about by a whirlwind of events that it believes are beyond its control: an open southern border, a passive-aggressive desire to renew the nuclear agreement with Iran, disaster in Afghanistan, war between Russia and Ukraine that is lessening weapons stockpiles, virulent anti-Semitism on campuses and in city streets, and long-running operations against the Houthis that have led nowhere.

This aimlessness and passivity create openings for terrorists. It gives them the sense of impending victory.

Continetti concludes with this:

I am not arguing that we re-invade Afghanistan tomorrow. Nor am I saying that a more assertive U.S. foreign policy would end every threat to the homeland.

My argument is that the way to reduce the ISIS threat, foreign and domestic, is to take the fight to the evildoers. Don't pretend jihadists can be left to their own devices. Put them on the defensive. Thin out their ranks, dry up their finances, keep them on the run.

Then ISIS's ability to inspire will wane. And justice will be done for the people of New Orleans.

I'd add that we have to secure the border, more thoroughly vet immigrants coming into the country, and clearly expose the hate that's emanating from some of our schools and mosques. Put simply we need people in the Washington who have a clear understanding of the nature of the struggle we're in and who know that this enemy can't be bought off.

The world can't afford any more decisions like the inexplicable and astonishingly foolish decision of President Biden to release 16 billion dollars to Iran, the most brutal state-sponsor of terrorism in the world, at a time they were all but bankrupt and impotent.

That decision guaranteed that there will be more bloodshed, suffering, and grief in the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S.

Mt. Rushmore and the Design Filter

How do we recognize intentional, intelligent design? How do we distinguish things that are designed from things that occur naturally? Back in the 1990s mathematician William Dembski explained that consciously or unconsciously we employ what he called an explanatory filter that helps us to immediately intuit that something is intentionally designed. What follows is a simplification of Dembski's work.

His filter consists of three steps.

When considering whether any object or event was designed we first ask whether it's the sort of thing that physical laws like the laws of electricity or gravity could've produced. If so, then it's intellectually prudent to ascribe the object or event to natural causes rather than intelligent agency. Phenomena that happen as a result of physical law have a high probability of occurring. So the first node in the filter is to ask, does this phenomenon have a high probability of occurring naturally.

If the answer is yes we impute it's occurrence to non-agential causes and rule out design.

For example, is there any physical law that makes the creation of the operating software of a computer highly probable? There doesn't seem to be, so design of the software is still a live option.

The second node is to ask whether the phenomenon has a plausible likelihood of occurring by chance. If it does then we generally attribute it to chance rather than intelligent agency.

For instance, if a poker player is dealt a royal flush (approx. 1 chance in 650,000 attempts) we'd be amazed but such good fortune can be expected to happen from time to time purely by chance, apart from any finagling by an intelligent agent. In such a case we can again rule out design.

Is it probable, though, that a poker player be dealt three consecutive royal flushes or that a computer operating system came about by chance without the input of an intelligent agent? It seems astronomically improbable.

If neither law nor chance are plausible explanations then we're left with design as the most likely alternative. Given an intelligent programmer complex arrangements of zeroes and ones that specify a meaningful computer operation are not improbable at all and given a skilled card cheat neither are three consecutive royal flushes unlikely.

We can apply the same reasoning to the origin of life and the very first DNA sequence. DNA is much like a computer program, it specifies the construction of an entire organism whether a protist or an elephant. The simplest strand of DNA, one long enough to specify a single protein necessary for the functioning of a living cell, is unimaginably complex and the probability it arose by chance makes the belief that it did akin to an extraordinary act of blind faith.

There's no law that governs the formation of DNA and the chance formation of a sufficiently long strand of meaningful DNA, a strand that specifies a necessary protein, is so improbable as to be well beyond plausibility.

Thus, the alternative that DNA was designed by an intelligent mind is the default. The only reason anyone has for refusing to accept that alternative is that they have an a priori commitment to naturalism which rules out the existence of any mind that can't be explained in terms of natural, material causes.

In other words, the rejection of an intelligent designer is an act of blind faith in the power of nature to accomplish the equivalent of writing Windows 10 purely by chance not just once but numerous times.

The following video elaborates on a simple illustration of the design filter: