The Atheist Delusion

William Lane Craig is a philosopher in the tradition of the ancient Greek Socrates. He believes that philosophical ideas, particularly religious ones, should be debated in the public square rather than confined to academic cloisters. Consequently, he finds himself frequently invited to debate prominent atheists in public forums.

He recently engaged Dr. Louise Antony, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachussetts, on a topic that gets a lot of print here at Viewpoint: "Is God Necessary for Morality?" Craig reflects on the debate here.

One of the exchanges he mentions had to do with a problem first raised by Epicurus over 2000 years ago and frequently cited by skeptics ever since. Here's Craig's summary of it:

In her opening speech .... [Dr. Antony] went on the offensive and argued that moral values cannot depend on God .... Her argument was an old, familiar one: either something is good because God wills it or else God wills something because it is good. The first alternative is unacceptable, since it makes what is good (or evil) arbitrary, and the second alternative implies that the good is independent of God. So moral values cannot depend on God.

David Berlinski presents this same argument in his otherwise enjoyable Devil's Delusion. Berlinski claims that there are three possible answers to the question of what sanctions our moral sentiments - God, logic, and nothing. Berlinski claims that all three are inadequate. He's right about the last two but not about the first. His mistake is to think that if morality derives from God's will then if God's will were to change what's wrong today - rape, murder, and cruelty - could all be right tomorrow. The problem with this is that morality doesn't derive from God's will but rather from His nature. His will simply reflects His nature and His nature is unchanging.

Craig responds to Antony in similar fashion:

In my second speech I immediately dispatched this false dilemma by explaining a third alternative: God wills something because He is good. This is the classical theistic position: God's nature determines what is good (so the good is not independent of God) and His nature necessarily expresses itself toward us in the form of His commandments (so that they are not arbitrary).

The atheist just cannot circumvent the fact that if atheism is true moral obligation is an illusion and nothing is more absurd than an atheist delivering himself of moral opinions and judgments, which, of course, many of them do with amusing regularity. This is what might be called the atheist delusion.

Craig challenges Antony with this very point:

In my opening speech I presented three challenges to any atheist who, like Prof. Antony, wants to cling to objective morality in the absence of God. (1) If there is no God, what is the basis for objective moral values? In particular, what is the basis for the value of human beings? (2) If there is no God, what is the basis of objective moral duties? Who or what imposes these obligations and prohibitions upon us? (3) If there is no God, what is the basis of moral accountability? Since all human life ends in death, morality becomes vain, since our fate is unrelated to our moral behavior. I knew that Dr. Antony, though an atheist, believes in objective morality, so what I was challenging her to give was some positive account of how morality is objective in the absence of God.

Apparently, Dr. Antony declined to respond to those challenges, but that's not surprising. There's really nothing she could have said by way of reply. You can read more on the debate at the link.

RLC

The Winner

Larry Wright's cartoon tells a strange story. The media which fawned all over Senator Clinton when she first announced her candidacy and which staunchly defended her and her wayward hubby throughout the nineties despite their numerous crimes, misdemeanors, malfeasances and peccadilloes, has now, like a middle aged man undergoing a mid-life crisis, tossed Hillary aside for a younger, sexier political novice.

It's bad enough that she has suffered this treatment from her husband but to suffer it now at the hands of a fickle press who has left her for a candidate she probably regards as a political bimbo must be almost unendurable.

Another ironic thing about the narrative of this primary is that Hillary may well wind up with a higher popular vote total than Obama if Michigan and Florida are counted. She has won almost all of the big states and would possibly have more appeal to moderate Republicans and independents than Obama would once his views are fully vetted. Yet the Democrats seem determined to go with a virtual novice, a complete unknown.

Fortunately for them their opponent is John McCain who is himself determined to do whatever he can to alienate his Republican base.

RLC

Beautiful Birds II

Spring is full of delights to the eye. Flowers and butterflies, for example, are incredibly beautiful when viewed up close. My favorites, though, as I noted the other day, are the birds: Here are pictures of three North American species that are particularly lovely. The first is found anywhere in the east there are mature trees in relatively open woodlots. It's the bird for which the major league Baltimore orioles are named:

This next is a fairly common migrant, and in fact I just had one in my backyard today. It's called a Rose-Breasted grosbeak and the combination of black, white and red makes it a gorgeous bird:

This striking creature is harder to find unless one lives south of the Mason-Dixon line. It inhabits wooded swamps and nests in cavities, mostly in the south. It's a prothonotary warbler, and it played a prominent role in the famous Alger Hiss spy trial back in 1948.

There are lots more feathered jewels of spring so I'll post a few more pics in a day or so.

RLC

Unelectable?

Is Senator Obama unelectable? I'd feel more confident that he was if it weren't for McCain's propensity for thumbing his nose at conservative Republicans. Enough Republicans may vote for McCain, but few are enthusiastic about him, and enthusiasm is crucial. It translates into volunteers, contributions, and friends and family being persuaded to vote for the candidate one feels strongly about.

If the Republican party had had the foresight to groom and nominate someone with administrative experience, personality and solid conservative credentials Obama would be a flash in the pan. As it is he may very well prove to be our next president. If so, he will probably be the furthest any president has ever been from the philosophical mainstream of the American people.

RLC

Time to Invade Burma?

Gosh. Time magazine, of all people, has an article all but calling for the U.S. to invade Burma in order to rescue the suffering millions from the wicked delinquencies of their leaders. Can this be the same Time magazine that has been reliably opposed to our efforts to do pretty much the same thing in Iraq where we have far more in the way of national interest at stake than we do in Burma?

Is the difference between the two cases merely that Iraq was George Bush's idea and therefore misguided, but invading Burma would be a liberal idea and therefore noble? I don't know, and I don't necessarily oppose military action to rescue those poor wretched peasants in principle. I just wonder why Time would think military force in Burma more justifiable than military force in Iraq.

See also here, and National Review Online starting here.

RLC

Philosophers' Version of Fight Club

Two prominent philosophers whose specialty is the study of mind have been at each other's throats, as it were, for twenty five years, all because of an impolitic remark one made about the other's girl-friend. No one holds grudges with the tenacity and bitterness of intellectuals.

One of them has written a book which has been reviewed by the other. This article in The Guardian describes the review:

It is probably the most negative book review ever written. Or if there is a worse one, do let me know. "This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad," begins Colin McGinn's review of On Consciousness by Ted Honderich. "It is painful to read, poorly thought out, and uninformed. It is also radically inconsistent."

The ending isn't much better: "Is there anything of merit in On Consciousness? Honderich does occasionally show glimmers of understanding that the problem of consciousness is difficult and that most of our ideas about it fall short of the mark. His instincts, at least, are not always wrong. It is a pity that his own efforts here are so shoddy, inept, and disastrous (to use a term he is fond of applying to the views of others)."

Ouch. There's more at the link including some amplification by both combatants.

HT: Mindful Hack

RLC

Unassisted Triple Play

This has happened only fourteen times in major league history - an unassisted triple play:

Triple play
by krs601

It happened tonight in a game between the Indians and the Blue Jays. You'd think the announcers would be a little more excited about having witnessed it.

RLC

Regarding Reagan

My friend Jason passes along a Newsweek piece in which a liberal, Sean Wilentz, and a conservative, George Will, discuss the legacy of Ronald Reagan. It's an interesting conversation in its own right, not least because Wilentz has a lot of admiration for Reagan and suggests that he's becoming more universally recognized as a historic president. I urge any reader interested in recent history to give it a look.

The thing about it that I found most fascinating, however, is that almost everything both men say about Reagan could also be said about George W. Bush. I've said before that I believe Bush will go down in history as a much more consequential president than Ronald Reagan, especially if Iraq and Afghanistan are long-term successes. I don't like everything that George Bush has done, but most people forget that there was a lot about Reagan that even members of his own party didn't like (Will and Wilentz mention a few). People point to Bush's approval numbers and scoff at any suggestion that he'll be vindicated by history, but they forget that Harry Truman, who is widely respected by historians today, had even lower numbers than Bush does.

Bush's legacy, especially among conservatives, will someday eclipse that of Ronald Reagan who is justly regarded by contemporary conservatives as an icon. Bush's impact on the Supreme Court and on tax policy, the relative health of the economy despite terrific shocks (9/11, Katrina, the lending crisis), his liberation of 50 million people from oppression, his success in preventing further terrorist attacks on our soil, his stand for life, his compassionate outreach to the poor around the world, especially in Africa, the culmination under his leadership of Reagan's dream of a ballistic missile defense, his personal grace, virtue and faith, his appointments of minorities to positions of power, all of these and more are either the equal of RR or exceed what Reagan was able to accomplish.

Anyway, read the article. It's well worth the ten minutes it'll take you to do it.

RLC

Operation Chaos

There's been a flurry of media attention over the last several days on the matter of Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," i.e. the talk show host's attempt to persuade Republicans to cross over and vote for Hillary in those Democratic primaries where voting is "open" to anyone. He's also urging Republicans to change their registration to Democrat for the sole purpose of voting for Hillary in those primaries which are closed. The putative purpose of all this is to keep Senator Clinton close enough to Senator Obama in the balloting that she'll be encouraged to stay in the race until the convention. Rush's thinking is that the longer this race goes on, especially if it goes all the way to the convention in August, the weaker the Democrat candidate who emerges from the fray will be.

Some Democrats are upset by this, but exit polls show that Mitt Romney defeated John McCain among Republicans in several states that McCain won because he garnered more of the non-Republican vote. So, the Democrats really have no right to complain.

There's been some media commentary on the ethics of all this, but it is legal, and that brings us to the topic of this post. Whether Rush succeeds in weakening the Democratic party or not, Operation Chaos will have served a salutary purpose, in my opinion, if it accomplishes two things:

First, it will be a good thing if the blatant manipulation of one party's nominating process by members of the other party causes both parties to realize that open primaries are a political absurdity. Why should Democrats, for example, have a say in who the Republicans will run against them? Perhaps after this primary season state parties will start asking themselves that question and close their primaries to all but members of their own party.

Second, there has been a trend for the last several decades toward doing everything possible to make voter registration easier. In some states you can join a party and vote in their primary just a few weeks, or even one day in the case of Connecticut, prior to the election. If the rules were changed to require that registration be closed, say, by Dec. 31st of the year before the primaries begin, that would effectively end tactics like Operation Chaos. Months before the voting started voters would be less likely to know whether there would be a close race in their own party and would thus be more reluctant to change their affiliation just for the sake of voting in another party's contest.

Whatever effect Operation Chaos has had, and Obama's people have said that it gave Hillary 7% in Indiana, a state she won by 2%, it would have been impossible to pull off at all had primaries been closed to non-members and had registration been closed long before the primaries began. If these two reforms gain wider consideration because the Democrats have been manipulated into a self-destructive primary campaign, then Operation Chaos will have been, on balance, a very good thing.

RLC

Heroes Must Be Punished

There's a certain type of person, unfortunately all too common, who's like a mechanical device. Whenever input A is received, output B is spit out. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, A must always result in B. As with automatons, there can be no exceptions, no deviations, only a rigid, unthinking, invariable stimulus/response. These people would be no more willing to actually think about what they do than they would be willing to donate their monthly paycheck to a local street gang. They possess consciousness, but prefer not to use it, opting instead to act like mental zombies. Such are the corporate overlords who run Super America:

A local gas station employee is out of a job after he thought he was helping save someone's life. Mark Beverly was one of two employees inside a Roseville Super America when a robber came into the store on March 26.

Beverly was cleaning the bathroom when he heard the store clerk cry out. He came out to find a robber attacking the female employee.

"I just jumped on his back and trying to hit his head and pushed him over the counter. I jumped back over and he was out of there," he said.

Later that day, Beverly returned to work only to be punished for his actions.

"I didn't think I was going to get fired for it," he told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

Super America issued a statement, saying that 'employees are never to take action that could endanger themselves or others. It's regrettable this happened.'

"I didn't care about the money, I know Super America is insured. But I thought he was attacking her, that's why I jumped on him," he explained.

The Roseville Police Department has not made any arrests regarding the robbery. Beverly has been denied employment with Super America.

Mr. Beverly is a hero, but he's treated as though he were caught sleeping on the job. It makes sense to have a policy of non-resistance to robbers, but that's not what was happening here. A co-worker was being beaten. What do the corporate sages at Super America, who have probably never risked anything to help anyone in their lives, suggest that Mr. Beverly should have done? Dialogue with the mugger? Call 911 and let the woman be beaten for five long minutes until the police responded? Continue to mop the floor and pretend nothing was happening?

It doesn't matter to the lobotomized suits who inhabit the Super America penthouse suite that Mr. Beverly did the only thing that any decent human being in his position could do. All they know is that he breached company policy and so must be made an example for any other would-be decent human beings in their employ. This is how we reward those, their dismissal of Mr. Beverly warns, who have the insolence to care about the well-being of other people enough to risk harm to themselves to help them.

I hope there are some businessmen in the twin cities region who possess brains as well as spine and who will see in Mr. Beverly the kind of humanity and courage that they would like to have working for them. He's obviously over-qualified for Super America.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Re: Bailout

About a week ago we did a post on an opportunity for readers to express their displeasure with Congress' plans to bail out lenders and borrowers who can no longer make payments on their mortgages by signing a petition.

One reader who signed the petition offers his reasons on our Feedback page. I'm sure he speaks for millions of Americans, and his letter will help those who might not quite understand what the fuss is about to see the issue more clearly.

To read it click on the Feedback button to the left.

RLC

Evangelical Manifesto

The Evangelical Manifesto we wrote about earlier this week has been released, and although I haven't had time to examine it thoroughly it seems on first reading to be a very impressive document. The concerns I expressed in the earlier post have been largely allayed.

The Manifesto's twenty pages are much too rich to summarize in a single post, but I certainly urge everyone to study it. Christians should familiarize themselves with it because it's a lodestone for people of faith looking to navigate the currents of modern culture, and non-Christians should study it because it's a Rosetta stone for those who seek to go beyond media stereotypes of Christianity and to decipher and understand for themselves who Christians are and what they really believe.

The Manifesto can be read here. A list of signatories can be found here.

RLC

Self-Evident Moral Truth

There's a fascinating discussion going on at Uncommon Descent over the question of whether there are self-evident moral truths. The springboard for the conversation is a passage from Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov in which Dostoyevsky has Ivan tell this story - which is believed to be based on actual events - in order to illustrate the utter depravity of human beings (Caution: This story describes acts of sickening violence):

People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother's eyes. Doing it before the mother's eyes was what gave zest to the amusement.

Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.

The question is whether what the soldiers did was self-evidently and absolutely wrong. The answer is, if there is a God then yes; if there isn't then, no, it's not wrong at all. If there is no transcendent moral source then there are no absolute moral wrongs nor, indeed, is there such a thing as moral right and wrong. There are only things people do which we like or don't like.

My contribution to the debate is comment #90.

RLC

Rosie on Wright

Forget about Rosie's gaffes in this clip (it's 3/5, not 3/4; the Tuskegee program was reprehensible, but the government did not give the men syphillis). Set aside the implied slur against black preachers that Rosie delivers when she says that Wright is just doing what black preachers do, i.e. lie. Forget that when Rosie says that Wright made sense to her that was all anyone teetering on the fence about Wright might need to justify abandoning any hope of ever sympathizing with the guy.

Ignore all that and ask yourself: Aren't you getting a little weary of people insisting that if we're going to scrutinize Jeremiah Wright then we ought to also scrutinize John Hagee, who endorsed John McCain, and indeed every other preacher in the U.S.?

John McCain did not sit under John Hagee for twenty years, Hagee did not baptize his children or wed McCain and his wife. McCain has not, so far as I know, donated thousands of dollars to Hagee's church nor does he consider Hagee a close personal friend and spiritual mentor. In other words, there is no relevant comparison between McCain's relationship with Hagee and Obama's relationship with Wright. There's even less reason to insist that if Jeremiah Wright is going to be deconstructed then so too should Pat Robertson and others. These preachers are not ideological influences on John McCain in the way that Wright has been on Obama.

So why do people like the women in this video clip keep insisting that there's some sort of equivalence between Hagee and Wright and that fairness demands that we treat both McCain's relationship to Hagee and Obama's relationship to Wright the same?

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Beautiful Birds

I went for a bit of a field trip yesterday to a park near my home and had one of these gorgeous creatures land in a branch just a few feet from me. The picture is very good but even it doesn't give a full sense of the loveliness of this little bird:

The bird is a hooded warbler and is found in mature woodlands throughout much of the eastern U.S.

Since I'm posting bird pics, here are three other beauties I was lucky enough to see on my hike. I should note that I didn't take any of these photos:

This is one is an indigo bunting. It's very common on telephone wires near open fields in the eastern U.S., but it's so small and just looks dark when seen in poor light that most people never notice them, which is a pity because if they're seen in good light they're breathtakingly pretty.

This striking blackbird is called a bobolink. It breeds in extensive open areas like old hay fields, etc. Since extensive open areas are becoming increasingly scarce this fellow is, unfortunsately, not particularly common.

This last gorgeous little jewel is a denizen of woodlands and parks and can be found pretty easily if you learn it's song. It's called a scarlet tanager.

When a few hours of walking produces so much beauty it gives one an incentive to get out more often. Maybe tomorrow I'll post a few other photos of some of the beautiful birdlife that can be seen in spring if one just looks around a little.

RLC

Out of His Depth

David Berlinski responds to a scathing review of Expelled by National Review's John Derbyshire. Derbyshire is an intelligent, well-educated man who often writes sagely except when he turns his pen to the topic of intelligent design and related matters. Then he seems to come all unraveled and says and does the silliest things, like reviewing a movie he hasn't seen.

In any event, despite his acumen, he's no match for Berlinski, and he should have known better than to insult Berlinski in his review, tacitly referring to him as an eccentric non-Christian crank. Berlinski's riposte is a treat to read.

If you read both essays, do Derbyshire's first. If you have time for only one, read Berlinski's.

RLC

American Jew Hatred

David Horowitz brings us up to date on the parlous condition freedom of speech finds itself in on American university campuses. According to Horowitz the major threat comes from an alliance of leftists and Muslim student groups. Reading his report one can't help but think that if the holocaust ever recurs in the West, it'll start in our institutions of higher learning.

RLC

Brother Minister

Christopher Hitchens wonders whether Michelle Obama is behind her husband's unfortunate association with Jeremiah Wright. This is an interesting question in itself, but even more interesting was something Hitchens reminds us of in his essay that I had completely forgotten:

So numbed have I become by the endless replay of the fatuous clerical rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that it has taken me this long to remember the significant antecedent. In 1995, there appeared a documentary titled Brother Minister about the assassination of Malcolm X. It contained a secretly filmed segment showing Louis Farrakhan shouting at the top of his lungs in the Nation of Islam's temple in Chicago on "Savior's Day" in 1993. Farrakhan, verging on hysteria, demanded to know of the murdered Malcolm X: "If we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours?" His apparent admission of what had long been suspected-that it was the Black Muslim leadership that ordered Malcolm's slaying-is not understood or remembered (or viewed) as often as it might be.

I invite you to look at the film of Farrakhan's sweating, yelling, paranoid face and to bear in mind that this depraved thug, who boasts of "dealing with" one of black America's moral heroes, is the man praised by Jeremiah Wright and referred to with respect as "Minister Farrakhan" by the senator who hopes to be the next president of the United States.

I had forgotten that Farrakhan had been implicated in the murder of Malcolm X, though nothing was ever proven. What was never in doubt, however, was that Farrakhan approved of the killing of the man who was a hero to so many African Americans. In fact, Malcolm's daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, was arrested back in the 90's for trying to hire a hit man to assassinate Farrakhan to avenge her father's murder.

So why do blacks let Jeremiah Wright get away with being cozy with Farrakhan? Why do blacks let the Obamas get away with being cozy with Wright? It's as deep a mystery, perhaps, as why African Americans let the Democrat party get away with keeping them on the political plantation while doing almost nothing to assuage their grievances.

RLC

Devil's Delusion

David Berlinski is a charming example of that rare species among our intellectual flora and fauna - a genuine agnostic. Despite his own personal theological uncertainties he has written a book which offers a defense of modern religious belief. The work is titled The Devil's Delusion, an obvious play on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Here's what the Product Description at Amazon says about the book:

Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated bestseller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement-one that now includes much of the scientific community.

"The attack on traditional religious thought," writes David Berlinski in The Devil's Delusion, "marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion."

A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community's cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:

Has anyone provided a proof of God's inexistence? Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.

This brilliant, incisive, and funny book explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it can be-indeed must be-the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves.

I hope to have more to say about The Devil's Delusion once I get it read.

HT: Mindful Hack

RLC

Evangelical Manifesto

Some 80 conservative Christian luminaries have composed a manifesto which, according to this article, says that these leaders:

...believe the word "evangelical" has lost its religious meaning plan to release a starkly self-critical document saying the movement has become too political and has diminished the Gospel through its approach to the culture wars.

The statement, called "An Evangelical Manifesto," condemns Christians on the right and left for "using faith" to express political views without regard to the truth of the Bible, according to a draft of the document obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

"That way faith loses its independence, Christians become `useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology," according to the draft.

The declaration, scheduled to be released Wednesday in Washington, encourages Christians to be politically engaged and uphold teachings such as traditional marriage. But the drafters say evangelicals have often expressed "truth without love," helping create a backlash against religion during a "generation of culture warring."

"All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others," they wrote, "while we have condoned our own sins." They argue, "we must reform our own behavior."

The document is the latest chapter in the debate among conservative Christians about their role in public life. Most veteran leaders believe the focus should remain on abortion and marriage, while other evangelicals - especially in the younger generation - are pushing for a broader agenda. The manifesto sides with those seeking a wide-range of concerns beyond "single-issue politics."

Among the signers of the manifesto are Os Guinness, a well-known evangelical author and speaker, and Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif. Organizers declined to comment until the final document is released.

I hope the manifesto is more specific than is this news article as to how often Evangelicals have failed to be loving in their proclamation of the truth and how, exactly, they have condoned their own sins. It's easy to criticize using nebulous allegations which reflect conventional prejudices, especially when one is reasonably assured that relatively few people will take the trouble to ask how prevalent and serious the problem really is.

I also hope the manifesto explains how a pastor can preach the gospel without preaching on the themes of justice and compassion and how, unless he speaks in terms so circumspect and vague as to be meaningless, he can preach on doing justice and compassion in this world without also urging people to be politically engaged. How political is "too political"?

Were not the early abolitionists like William Wilberforce, who is much admired by Os Guinness, politically engaged? Were not the churches havens for the American civil rights movement and, for better or worse, the anti-war movement of the sixties? How can we fight against hunger and oppression around the world without being politically involved? How can we effectively oppose the wanton killing of millions of unborn children without trying to elect pro-life politicians? How can we insist on decency and academic quality in our schools without being willing to elect like-minded school board members and legislators?

Perhaps we'll see on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Joe Carter has some good things to say in addressing the issue of evangelicals in politics.

RLC