Closing in on a Cure

Here's more marvelous medical news: Researchers have developed a vaccine which apparently prevents an Alzheimer's-like disease in mice. The hope is that the vaccine may even be able to reverse some of the causes of Alzheimer's. Read the story for the details.

RLC

The Loser Letters II

Mary Eberstadt sends off another letter to her BRIGHT overlords offering them some sage advice as to how to deal with Christian DULLS. Her letter is full of excellent insights. Let's hope the BRIGHTS decline her recommendations.

RLC

The Scientist and the Turtle

Scientist Sean Carroll responds to an article by physicist Paul Davies who wonders why the laws of nature take the form they do. Carroll writes:

I can think of a few possibilities. One is logical necessity: the laws of physics take the form they do because no other form is possible. But that can't be right; it's easy to think of other possible forms. The universe could be a gas of hard spheres interacting under the rules of Newtonian mechanics, or it could be a cellular automaton, or it could be a single point. Another possibility is external influence: the universe is not all there is, but instead is the product of some higher (supernatural?) power. That is a conceivable answer, but not a very good one, as there is neither evidence for such a power nor any need to invoke it.

The final possibility, which seems to be the right one, is: that's just how things are. There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops. This is a simple hypothesis that fits all the data; until it stops being consistent with what we know about the universe, the burden of proof is on any alternative idea for why the laws take the form they do.

No further explanation is necessary or plausible. The universe is the way it is because it just is. But could it be designed? Yes, Carroll tells us, but there's no need to invoke that possibility.

Why not? There are mountains of evidence that the universe is amazingly suited for living beings and that such a universe is extraordinarily improbable. Doesn't that suggest the need for some explanation beyond itself?

No, Carroll insists. Why? Because there's no evidence that a designer exists. But what about the evidence of a precisely-tuned cosmos? That's not evidence, replies Carroll, that's just the way things are.

This is like the men who found a turtle perched atop a five foot high post. One man turned to his friend in wonderment and asked who he thought put the turtle there. His friend replied that there was no reason to think that anyone put the turtle on the post since there was no evidence that anyone else was around. But what about the turtle, the first man, asked, isn't that evidence? No, the second man answered, the turtle's sitting on the post because that's just the way things are.

That's how scientists think when they're determined to make their science support their atheism.

RLC

The Conservative Candidate

The American Conservative Union has issued its annual congressional rankings for 2007. Senator John McCain earned an 80%, Senator Obama stood at 7%, and Senator Clinton scored a zero. Obama would probably have gotten a zero as well but for an uncharacteristically sensible vote he cast on an earmark bill.

These results show that there are indeed important differences between McCain and his rivals, but even so: Of the five issues most important to us here at Viewpoint - the war on terror (of which Iraq and Afghanistan are instances), judicial appointments, the economy (taxes, spending, jobs, earmarks, etc.), illegal immigration, and energy independence - McCain figures, on the basis of his record, to be good on the first, a little iffy on the next two, and absolutely awful on the last two.

Sadly, whichever of the two Democrat contenders he faces in November will most assuredly be absolutely awful on all five, and that stark reality persuades us to inch grudgingly toward Mr. McCain.

RLC

More Cell-Phone Hazards

Here's yet another report on the hazards of using cell phones, this time to unborn children:

Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.

A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the peril they pose "is not much lower than the risk to children's health from tobacco or alcohol".

Surely one of the biggest hazards of cell-phones is that reading all the studies on them can cause one to be depressed. There's more at the link.

RLC

Advice for the Candidate

The Reverends Al and Jesse give Senator Obama some advice:

Doesn't this violate the separation of church and state, or something?

RLC

Defense Spending

In the following video clip Barack Obama essentially promises to emasculate the American military. All he needs to make his list of promises complete is to promise to appoint terrorist William Ayers Secretary of Defense:

Here's one of the systems/capabilities the senator promises to kill if he's elected to the presidency:

The system used to destroy this malfunctioning satellite was developed to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles from China, Russia, and rogue states like North Korea and perhaps one day, Iran. This is a capability Senator Obama thinks we shouldn't have and which, in any event, is too costly.

Is he right? Isn't it true that we're spending an enormous amount of our resources on the military? Aren't Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bankrupting this country? Let's put military spending into historical perspective. The following is taken from the Federal Budget Historical Tables and passed along to us by Dick Francis:

In 2007, total defense spending was 4 percent of the GDP and 20.2 percent of federal spending. Most government spending is on human resources. This portion of the budget took up 64.4 percent of federal spending in 2007. But there's more:

In 1943, during World War II, defense spending was 37 percent of the GDP and 84.9 percent of federal spending.

In 1953, during the Korean War, it was 14.2 percent of the GDP and 69.4 percent of federal spending.

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, it was 9.5 percent and 46 percent.

And, most significantly, during the Carter Administration, with no war going on and a Democratic president and Congress in Washington, defense spending averaged about 4.8 percent of the GDP and 23 percent of the federal budget.

In other words, contrary to what Senator Obama and others of the President's critics would have us believe, the U.S. is allocating a historically low proportion of its economy and its national budget to the defense of our nation and our people.

RLC

Prince Caspian

There's a lot of commentary at NRO on the recently released Prince Caspian, a film based on the second installment of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. Frederica Mathewes-Green thinks the movie is better than the book and offers a list of other movies which, in the minds of her friends and family, were better than the books they were based on.

For more on Prince Caspian check out Byron Borger's Booknotes.

RLC

Our Prospering Intellectual Culture

Perhaps we should start a list of public individuals who really need to see the movie Expelled. A worthy candidate for charter membership on our list might be Alan Wolfe, a Boston College sociologist, who delivered himself of the following little gem while commenting on the emergence of Evangelical thinkers among academic intellectuals. The paragraph is taken from a Washington Post article:

As evangelical scholars seek greater influence, Wolfe warns that getting respect is a two-way street. Evangelicals in the academy too often aren't open to truly engaging those who disagree, said Wolfe, who points to things like "faith statements" at evangelical colleges, which require professors to proclaim Christian belief. A prospering intellectual culture wouldn't make that requirement and shut other views out, he said.

Really? Tell that to Guillermo Gonzalez, formerly of Iowa State University, or any number of other non-tenured professors at any number of universities who remain closet anti-Darwinians for fear that public acknowledgement of their views would wreck their careers. Evidently, there's not much of a prospering intellectual culture at many of our major academies.

Come to think of it, Wolfe may unwittingly be on to something.

RLC

Sen. Kennedy and Life Eternal

The news of Senator Ted Kennedy's brain tumor led me along a rabbit trail of reflections to some thoughts on the matter of eternal life.

I would have dearly loved to have Mr. Kennedy out of the senate, but not this way. I think his ideas and policies, his harsh, and sometimes vicious, attacks on Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Robert Bork to George W. Bush, have been deeply harmful to this country, but, even so, being wrong and doing things that hurt others is a human failing to which we are every one of us predisposed.

I pray that the treatments he will undergo will be successful and that his cancer will subside into remission.

The possibility that he has only a few months left to live, however, led me by stream of consciouness to wonder about eternity, and how, exactly, we should think about the eternal fate of people we believe to have deeply harmed our nation (Senator Kennedy's illness initiated this rumination, but I do not now have him in mind). It's tempting, no doubt, to resent the idea that such individuals could ever be granted access to Paradise, and it certainly seems fair that individuals who have perpetrated particularly terrible wrongs, people like the Nazis, for example, be made to suffer forever for their offenses.

Whatever one may think of the justice of this, it certainly seems uncompassionate, and unChristian, even if many of us often very reasonably succumb to this way of thinking. I can imagine a person who lost a loved one on 9/11 would have great difficulty with the notion that Osama bin Laden might wind up in heaven with them.

Thus I find myself in an uneasy theological position. I desire justice, that those who have done great harm somehow be made to pay, and yet I believe, too, that it's cruel to desire to see anyone, even someone as monstrous as a Stalin, Hitler or Saddam, suffer for eternity. In other words, I find myself having to admit that my hope should be that God's will eventually will be done and that everyone ultimately will be purged of his crimes and debt by accepting Christ's atoning work.

Since I also believe that our eternal fate is something that we choose, and since I believe that there are those who cannot bear to choose to spend eternity with God, and since these people therefore choose to separate themselves from God and all that is good, I have to consequently believe that some there are who could well be eternally lost. Yet, I wonder if their lostness doesn't produce an ache in God's heart like the pain the father of the prodigal must have had. I wonder if God is not in some sense like a loving parent, some of whose grown children nevertheless treat Him abominably and break His heart every day.

Could it be possible that perhaps part of the mission and challenge of some in the new earth will be to minister to these wretched souls for as long as it takes to bring them back (See C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce)? Could it be possible that this is the plan the Father has for the "younger brothers" in His Kingdom? Perhaps it is the case that only when everyone is safely home will the Father be able to fully rejoice.

In any event, while we desire, hope and pray for justice in the world let's also pray that we not become like the Pharisees who, in their pursuit of justice, forgot all about compassion. In other words, regardless what our personal convictions about salvation may be, we should hope that somehow, ultimately, everyone will find their way home.

Shouldn't we?

RLC

Off-Limits? Why?

Barack Obama was indignant on Good Morning America the other day over Republican criticisms of his wife's recent remarks:

"But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable," he said.

Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans "to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class ... and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable."

"But I also think these folks should lay off my wife," he told 'GMA' as his wife chuckled beside him.

Gracious me. The Senator evidently believes that Michelle Obama should be allowed to join in the political fray, make whatever comments she pleases about the meanness of the United States and how there's nothing about the U.S. of which she can be proud, and the GOP must dare not quote her remarks or express any disapproval of them whatsoever. Such behavior is "detestable" according to the outraged husband.

I wonder. Is it also detestable for Hillary's spouse's comments to be scrutinized and criticized? Is Michelle Obama a child to whom we should all condescend when she makes speeches in the public square bearing on matters of public interest? If Obama wants his wife to be off-limits to GOP political ads then he should get her off the political stage. If she's going to act like a politician then it's just as silly to declare her exempt from public criticism as it is to declare Bill Clinton exempt.

RLC

Pay Up

Think about this if you're starting a family - you're already, right now, half a million dollars in debt:

The federal government's long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement. That's double the red ink of a year earlier.

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That's nearly $500,000 per household.

When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal debt such as mortgages.

So what are your congresspersons doing about it? How much enthusiasm is there for reforming the system? When President Bush tried to relieve the burden on Social Security the Democrats said that the system was not in jeopardy and blocked his reform plans. Of course, the President himself added to the problem by expanding medicare entitlements.

Someday soon this debt is going to be unsustainable and millions are going to lose medicare coverage, social security and perhaps even see their private pensions dry up. This will almost certainly rock Wall Street so even those who have invested in the markets, which all pension funds do, will likely lose their nest egg. It's a time bomb that could devastate millions of lives.

Meanwhile, Congress spends its time, and your tax dollars, dreaming up ways to indict former Bush administration officials.

One thing we can count on. When you and I lose our retirements, your congressperson won't.

RLC

Rockumentary

This video is a pastiche of scenes cut from Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Privileged Planet, and Expelled, with a little Rappin' With Dicky Dawkins and Judas Priest thrown in for good measure. The result's maybe a C+:

Caroline Crocker's story is interesting. It's too bad she doesn't get more time on the vid.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

Mixing Science and Philosophy

One of the arguments against teaching intelligent design in science classes is that ID is a philosophical hypothesis, and only scientific hypotheses should be taught in science classes, especially in public schools. Even if it were the case that ID falls short of the criteria which define science, criteria which no one has ever really been able to satisfactorily identify, that should hardly disqualify it from mention in the science classroom. There are, after all, dozens of topics and ideas discussed in science classes, especially those populated by the brighter students, which surely share the same philosophical status as ID.

Here's a partial list of examples taken from a Viewpoint post from a couple of years ago:

1. The Many Worlds Hypothesis: The idea that ours is just one of a nearly infinite number of universes, all of which are closed off from each other thus defying detection.

2. The Oscillating Universe Hypothesis: The theory that our universe has expanded and collapsed an infinite number of times.

3. String theory: The idea that the fundamental units of material substance are unimaginably tiny vibrating filaments of energy.

4. The existence of other dimensions: The theory that the four dimensions of space-time are only part of physical reality.

5. Principle of Uniformity: The assumption that the laws and properties of the universe are homogenous and constant everywhere throughout the cosmos.

6. Assumption of Uniformitarianism: The idea that the same processes and forces at work in the world today have always been at work at essentially the same rates.

7. The Scientific Method: The idea that there is a particular methodology that defines the scientific process and which ought to be followed.

8. The Law of Parsimony: The principle that assumes that the simplest explanation which fits all the facts is the best.

9. The assumption that human reason is trustworthy: The notion that a faculty which has evolved because it made us better fit to survive is also a dependable guide to something else, truth, which has no necessary connection to human survival.

10. The assumption that we should value truth: The idea that truth should be esteemed more highly than competing values, like, for instance, personal comfort or group advancement.

11. The preference in science for naturalistic explanations: This is a preference based upon an untestable assumption that all knowable truth is found only in the natural realm.

12. Naturalistic Abiogenesis: The belief that natural forces are sufficient in themselves to have produced life.

13. The assumption that if something is physically possible and mathematically elegant then, given the age of the universe, it probably happened.

14. The assumption that the cosmos is atelic. I.e. that it has no purpose.

15. The assumption that there's a world external to our own minds.

16. Materialistic Reductionism: The conviction that all phenomena, including mental phenomena, can be ultimately explained solely in terms of physics and chemistry.

17. Assumption that the universe arose out of a "vacuum matrix" rather than out of nothing.

18. Ethical claims regarding the environment, nuclear power, cloning, or genetic engineering.

19. The Concept of the Meme: According to biologist Richard Dawkins memes are the cultural analog to genes. They are ideas or customs that are believed by Dawkins and others to get passed along according to their survival value rather than their truth value (see #9, above). An example of this, unfortunately, is the concept of the meme itself.

20. The criteria by which we distinguish science from non-science.

Mention of none of these in public school science classrooms precipitates the levitation of a single eyebrow among the custodians of science purity yet every one of them is a matter of metaphysical preference, not empirical fact. Why, then, do those custodians suddenly wax squeamish when the topic of discussion turns to the possibility that incredibly complex information-based systems in the living cell are the product of intentional engineering?

RLC

Beautiful Birds III

Here are a couple more pics of some of the more brilliant examples of our North American avifauna. The first is a Wood duck, one of the most common waterfowl in the northeast. Despite their abundance they're not often easy to see up close. They're shy, they inhabit wooded ponds and streams, and will often take flight before they are even spotted. Nevertheless, if the male can be seen at close range or with good optics in good light, it's stunningly colorful.

This next little fella' inspired one of America's most famous naturalists and artists, Roger Tory Peterson, to devote his life to the pursuit of birds. As a boy he was walking in New York City's Central Park one May, and a birder directed his gaze to a Magnolia warbler flitting in the bushes. Once he saw it he was hooked for life.

Finally, this last photo is of perhaps the most colorful songbird in all of North America. It's a male Painted bunting. These are found across the south and only rarely wander north of the Mason-Dixon line. Nevertheless, there was a female in Philadelphia's John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge throughout the winter of 2006.

Nature offers so much beauty to delight the senses and enrich our lives. It's a shame that we have so little time, and, sadly, too little inclination, to take it in.

RLC

The Future of Faith Pt. I

David Brooks has a column in the New York Times (free subscription may be required) which has already sparked some lively discussion. He talks about how advances made in the field of neuro- and other cognitive sciences are ultimately going to undermine belief in the Bible and in the soul, but not in the existence of a transcendent deity.

His last paragraph provides a good summary of his essay:

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That's bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I'm not qualified to take sides, believe me. I'm just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We're in the middle of a scientific revolution. It's going to have big cultural effects.

Actually, the future Brooks predicts has been with us for almost two centuries. Ever since Darwin, and even before, scientific naturalism and religious faith have been at daggers drawn. Moreover, for the last several decades we've seen the growth of a syncretistic "New Age" religion which seeks to hold onto transcendence while pretty much disposing of inconvenient religious doctrines.

In any event, Brooks thinks that our deepening understanding of the brain is going to somehow hasten the process of dissolving religious particularism. He believes that Christian belief will become less and less persuasive for more and more people as science learns more and more about how the brain works. If he's right then those churches and Christian institutions which have failed to teach their young the basis for belief and ground them in a solid understanding of why they believe what they believe have done the faithful a real disservice and will indeed come to be seen as increasingly irrelevant.

He writes:

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

Brooks makes an assumption here about the soul that needs be teased out. He seems to be conflating soul and mind, which is not an unusual association, but neither is it necessary. Mind and soul may well be two different entities, in which case the question is not whether the soul survives the death of the body but rather whether the mind does. In other words, even if the materialist view is correct that we are just atoms, and that mind is just a word we use to describe the function of the brain, that doesn't necessarily eliminate the soul.

In the materialist view the soul, life, emotions, and consciousness are nothing but the products of chemical processes which have reached a certain critical mass and give rise to certain astounding emergent phenomena. But we need not accept this dehumanizing reductionistic materialism, a view which, by the way, is thoroughly unscientific because there's no way to test it, in order to grant that it might be that there's no soul, in the classic sense, residing in persons. It is possible that we have a mind which works in concert with the brain and is necessary for its proper function and also have a soul which is not necessarily a mental entity.

Perhaps the soul is not some gossamer, wraith-like entity that inhabits our body like a ghost-in-a-machine, to use Gilbert Ryle's famous metaphor. Perhaps instead we can think of it as the sum total of information which describes us as a person. It is, on this view, the totality of our history, our personality, hopes, dreams, loves, and fears. It encompasses a complete description of our physical, emotional, and moral selves. It is a comprehensive account of every aspect of our being all stored like a computer file folder in the data base that is the mind of God. As such it is eternal and indestructible unless God chooses to delete it. Even at the death of the body we have the potential to exist as long as God holds us (the information which describes us) in being in His mind. God may, if He chooses, reinstantiate us when our body gives out by downloading selected files from our folder into another suitable structure in some other reality.

Thus the materialists could be correct that we (our bodies) are comprised solely of material substance (I don't think they are, though, because I have my doubts that matter alone can fully explain consciousness) but they could still be wrong in asserting that there is no soul.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it's going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

This is probably true, but it's not news. The Bible has been under assault for at least two hundred years. Despite the exegetical difficulties presented by certain passages, especially in the Old Testament, it has weathered many storms. Whether it will continue to do so depends, at least from the human side of things, on the scholarship and skill of its defenders. Again it must be said there will be increasing need for well-educated, committed Christian scholars to face these challenges. If we don't produce them Christianity could well become sociologically and culturally marginalized.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Here we see one of the many vulnerabilities of secular materialism. If our moral sense is just a by-product of genetic evolution then we're no more obligated to obey our instinct for fairness, say, than we are to obey our instinct to be promiscuous or aggressive. Instincts impose no demands and are not moral imperatives. They carry no moral value. To act contrary to human instinct, if indeed such a thing exists, is to do nothing that can be judged morally wrong.

The best explanation for universal moral intuitions, and the only one that gives them any moral sanction, is that they were woven into the universe by an omnibenevolent, omniscient mind which insists, on pain of eternal consequences, that they be obeyed.

Brooks says more on the future of faith that I'd like to talk about in a separate post.

RLC

The Loser Letters

A former Christian who has converted to atheism initiates a series of letters to her new colleagues cautioning them about some of their attitudes and rhetoric. The preliminary letter as well as the first installment can be read at National Review Online. The ex-Christian admonishes her new friends in the letter to be very careful about how they talk about sex.

Those who have enjoyed C.S.Lewis' Screwtape Letters will appreciate this clever addition to the genre.

RLC

The Culture War

The California State Supreme Court has ruled 4-3 that there is in the state's constitution, evidently, a right to marry for same sex couples. This decision overrules a law favored by over 60% of the state's citizens that restricts marriage to a man and a woman.

Several observers have noted that there's nothing in the majority's decision which would prevent plural marriage or incest, only a tepid footnote which states that "our nation's culture has considered [those] relationships inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry."

Well, has not our nation's culture long considered homosexual marriage to be inimical to healthy family relationships? If the gender of the people entering marriage no longer matters why should the number of people?

In Pennsylvania, where there's an ungoing struggle to pass a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman, a man testifying before the state senate was grilled by one senator with this question: If two homosexuals are allowed to marry will that harm your marriage to your wife? The witness was temporarily at a loss for a response and the Senator interpreted that as some sort of victory for the gay marriage advocates.

The appropriate answer to the Senator is that the problem is not the effect that opening marriage to same sex couples will have on particular heterosexual unions. The problem is the effect it will have on the institution of marriage in general.

If court decisions like that in California are allowed to stand (California voters will have the opportunity to effectively overturn it in a referendum scheduled for November) they will act as a social acid gradually but inexorably eating away at the institution of marriage and the family, dissolving both. Once any combination of people can marry each other then marriage will come to mean anything at all, and, consequently, nothing at all.

RLC

On Dignity

Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard, has written something of a screed in The New Republic in which he's very critical of a book produced by the President's Council on Bioethics addressing the role of human dignity in formulating public policy. He's even more critical of the book's contributors and passes up no opportunity to insult them for their views and the religious assumptions which inform them. Pinker is an atheist and is therefore of the belief that dignity, if it exists at all, is irrelevant to human ethical thinking.

There are three sections of his piece to which I'd like to call special attention. In the first Pinker writes:

The problem is that "dignity" is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it. The bioethicist Ruth Macklin, who had been fed up with loose talk about dignity intended to squelch research and therapy, threw down the gauntlet in a 2003 editorial, "Dignity Is a Useless Concept." Macklin argued that bioethics has done just fine with the principle of personal autonomy--the idea that, because all humans have the same minimum capacity to suffer, prosper, reason, and choose, no human has the right to impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another. This is why informed consent serves as the bedrock of ethical research and practice, and it clearly rules out the kinds of abuses that led to the birth of bioethics in the first place, such as Mengele's sadistic pseudoexperiments in Nazi Germany and the withholding of treatment to indigent black patients in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. Once you recognize the principle of autonomy, Macklin argued, "dignity" adds nothing (Italics mine).

This is a good illustration of the confusions in which one gets mired once one abandons the notion of transcendence. The italicized claim is a non-sequitur. How does it follow from the fact that we share certain traits in common that therefore no one has the right to "impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another?" What is the logical connection between the two propositions? There simply isn't any.

Moreover, Macklin and Pinker confuse autonomy with dignity. It is not our autonomy that confers rights upon us. It's the fact that we have dignity. Our autonomy follows from the fact we have a prima facie right, bestowed by God, to be treated with respect. Indeed, this is what dignity is and we have that right because we are created in the image of God and because He loves and values each one of us.

If there is no God, if we're simply a cosmic accident, then not only has no one any right to be treated with respect but no one has any natural rights at all. Whatever rights we have are purely legal, they're just words on paper.

Pinker adds:

To be fair, most of the chapters in the Dignity volume don't appeal directly to Catholic doctrine, and of course the validity of an argument cannot be judged from the motives or affiliations of its champions. Judged solely on the merits of their arguments, how well do the essayists clarify the concept of dignity?

By their own admission, not very well. Almost every essayist concedes that the concept remains slippery and ambiguous. In fact, it spawns outright contradictions at every turn. We read that slavery and degradation are morally wrong because they take someone's dignity away. But we also read that nothing you can do to a person, including enslaving or degrading him, can take his dignity away. We read that dignity reflects excellence, striving, and conscience, so that only some people achieve it by dint of effort and character. We also read that everyone, no matter how lazy, evil, or mentally impaired, has dignity in full measure. Several essayists play the genocide card and claim that the horrors of the twentieth century are what you get when you fail to hold dignity sacrosanct. But one hardly needs the notion of "dignity" to say why it's wrong to gas six million Jews or to send Russian dissidents to the gulag.

Well, then. Why is it wrong for those who have the power to murder and enslave others to actually do it? David Berlinski in The Devil's Delusion quotes Heinrich Himmler, faced with the difficulties posed by Germany's treaty obligations with surrounding countries, as wondering aloud, "What, after all, compels us to keep our promises?" Indeed, Berlinski asks, what does?

On what grounds does Pinker, or any atheist, deny that might makes right? Like many atheists, Pinker believes that somehow moral right, wrong, and obligation can exist in a world where human beings are simply flesh and bone machines. This is the atheist delusion, if you will. They think they can still make meaningful moral judgments after having sawn off the metaphysical branch upon which they're sitting. Having rejected any adequate transcendent ground for moral right and wrong they're left with nothing but their own subjective feelings upon which they base moral pronouncements proclaimed ex cathedra, as though they were grounded in some inexorable law of the universe.

Here's an example:

Worst of all, theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.

Forget about the obvious mendacity of the first sentence. Ask instead, yet again, what grounds Pinker has for being outraged by such an affront were it really the case. Once more, all he's doing is emoting, telling us something about his own likes and dislikes, declaring to all and sundry that he doesn't feel good about allowing moral constraints to hold up biomedical progress. But of course, that's no reason for him to think such impediments are actually wrong. On his view they can be nothing more than an unfortunate inconvenience.

Pinker suffers from an advanced case of the atheist's delusion, the belief that moral obligation can be grounded entirely in one's own feelings, and perhaps only a miracle, ironically enough, can cure him.

Yuval Levin offers a devastating response to Pinker's other claims at NRO.

RLC

Happy Birthday to Us

Today is a special day here at Viewpoint. Four years ago today we put up our first post (on gay marriage). Since then we've tallied 4290 posts and almost 259,400 visitor hits. Special thanks to my brother Bill for keeping everything up and running and to all of our faithful readers who visit us regularly and give us the inspiration to keep going.

RLC