Buffoonery

In a recent column at Slate.com Christopher Hitchens displays his ignorance of the issues at stake in the intelligent design/Darwinism debate on several different levels. He flatters himself to think that he has discovered a novel argument against intelligent design when in fact the argument he has stumbled upon has been around for at least a century:

It is extremely seldom that one has the opportunity to think a new thought about a familiar subject, let alone an original thought on a contested subject, so when I had a moment of eureka a few nights ago, my very first instinct was to distrust my very first instinct. To phrase it briefly, I was watching the astonishing TV series Planet Earth ....Various creatures were found doing their thing far away from the light, and as they were caught by the camera, I noticed-in particular of the salamanders-that they had typical faces. In other words, they had mouths and muzzles and eyes arranged in the same way as most animals. Except that the eyes were denoted only by little concavities or indentations. Even as I was grasping the implications of this, the fine voice of Sir David Attenborough was telling me how many millions of years it had taken for these denizens of the underworld to lose the eyes they had once possessed.

Hitchens believes that he has discovered a powerful refutation of intelligent design:

But what of the creatures who turned around and headed back in the opposite direction, from complex to primitive in point of eyesight, and ended up losing even the eyes they did have? Whoever benefits from this inquiry, it cannot possibly be [intelligent design advocates]. The most they can do is to intone that "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Whereas the likelihood that the post-ocular blindness of underground salamanders is another aspect of evolution by natural selection seems, when you think about it at all, so overwhelmingly probable as to constitute a near certainty.

Of course, only someone completely ignorant of the issues in the debate between Darwinian evolutionists and intelligent design theorists would suggest that functionless eyes in cave salamanders is an argument against intelligent design. The only thing that Hitchens has stumbled upon is an argument against the doctrine of fixity of species which no one has held for over a hundred years anyway.

Everyone acknowledges that organs can lose their function and atrophy through disuse. Mutations that would diminish the ability of the salamander embryo to produce functional eyes would be eliminated in a lighted environment via the death of the young salamander, but they would not necessarily be eliminated in a dark environment where eyes are of little use anyway. Thus there'd be no selective pressure in a cave environment to retain eyes. Not even the most stalwart special creationist disputes this.

The challenge is not in explaining the degeneration of biological organs and machines, it is explaining through random genetic drift, mutation and natural selection their origin.

Hitchens has great fun ridiculing the ID folks, but his ignorance makes him look like a buffoon. He'd do better to approach matters beyond his competence with a little more humility.

RLC

Simply Irresponsible

The Washington Post, one of the most reliably liberal papers in the nation, is skeptical of the spin Obama's campaign and media supporters have put on the Iraqi response to his plan to have American combat forces out of Iraq by April of 2010. Here's part of their recent editorial:

The initial media coverage of Barack Obama's visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the dramatic turnaround in U.S. fortunes, "does not want a timetable," Mr. Obama reported with welcome candor during a news conference yesterday. In an interview with ABC, he explained that "there are deep concerns about . . . a timetable that doesn't take into account what [American commanders] anticipate might be some sort of change in conditions."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki's timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama's. More significant, it would be "a timetable which Iraqis set" -- not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki "wants some flexibility in terms of how that's carried out."

Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.

Mr. Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Then there is a piece by WaPo columnist Max Boot who examines Iraqi president Nouri al Maliki's apparent agreement with Barack Obama's 16 month pullout and concludes it is purely for domestic consumption. Boot goes on to make this observation:

But Maliki's public utterances do not provide a reliable guide as to when it will be safe to pull out U.S. troops. Better to listen to the military professionals. The Post recently quoted Brig. Gen. Bilal al-Dayni, commander of Iraqi troops in Basra, as saying of the Americans, "We hope they will stay until 2020." That is similar to the expectation of Iraq's defense minister, Abdul Qadir, who says his forces cannot assume full responsibility for internal security until 2012 and for external security until 2018.

What would happen if we were to pull out much faster, on a 16-month timetable? Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, says that would be "very dangerous" -- the same words used by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The upshot of all this is that, if the WaPo writers are correct, almost nobody in Iraq, Iraqi or American, who has any sense of what's happening outside the Green Zone in Baghdad, thinks that Obama's timetable for withdrawal, so far from being irresistible, is anything but irresponsible.

RLC

OOL

One of the most frequent criticisms of those who believe that life and the physical universe are intentionally designed is that those who believe this cannot adduce any mechanism for how the designer would have accomplished the feat. Since design theorists can't posit a means by which the designer would have created a universe or biological structures and organisms the design theory is said to be unscientific. It may be philosophy, skeptics concede, but it's not science. Science is based on empirical evidence, not faith.

This last claim may be so but if it is much of what passes for science is no more supported by empirical evidence and every bit as faith based as is intelligent design. This is especially true of the belief that life arose purely through the laws of chemistry and chance. Here's part of what Paul Geim at Uncommon Descent says about the problem:

[This belief] is heavily faith-based. We have no experimental evidence for this belief, and the theoretical problems appear insoluble. We have here belief against all the evidence, analogous to the most daring leaps of religious faith imaginable, that is to say, faith not only without evidence but in the teeth of evidence. And it is even worse; there is no appeal to a God Who could reasonably do the feat that needs explaining. It is a miracle without God.

The rationale that I have seen for this leap of faith is usually that "science" has solved all previous problems and will solve this one too. But this argument is wrong, on two counts. First, even if successful, it would only establish that there was relative parity between the argument for the supernatural origin of life and those for abiogenesis (the origin of life from non-life). We would still be completely dependent on faith to believe in abiogenesis.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, "science" has in fact not solved all previous problems. Science has come up to a stone wall regarding the origin of the universe. In fact, "science" has come up to several difficult obstacles, issued promissory notes, and moved on without actually solving the problems. The origin of the Cambrian fauna is something that non-interventionalist evolutionary theory has simply postulated without fossil evidence. The origin of the flagellum in a step-by-step manner has never actually been demonstrated (the best try, that of Matzke, was actually a leap-by-leap explanation, and even then without any experimental evidence to back up his scenario). This insistence that nature must be self-contained is in fact faith against the weight of evidence.

Geim has much more to say about the problems inherent in any naturalistic explanation of the origin of life (OOL) at the link.

For more on the things scientists take on faith, often with little empirical warrant, see my letter (May 2006) to First Things.

RLC

Nice People

I wonder how many McCain supporters there are in this crowd:

HT: Wolking's World

RLC

Flew on Dawkins

In The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins has a few snide comments to make about Antony Flew's much heralded conversion from atheism to deism which was based largely on Flew's belief that there's too much evidence of the universe having been designed to discount it.

Now Flew replies to Dawkins. The riposte is reproduced at bethinking.org, but unfortunately there is no link there to the original paper.

For a much more extensive critique of Dawkins' book click on The God Delusion listed in the left margin of this page under the heading of Hall of Fame.

HT: Uncommon Descent

RLC

Great Conservation News

It's easy to get depressed when thinking about the rapidity with which natural lands and habitat are being gobbled up by development throughout North and, especially, South America. For those who delight in the wonders of nature and the beauty it offers, the statistics on its rate of disappearance are glum. So this news out of Ontario, Canada is as welcome as it is surprising:

Ontario has made the largest conservation commitment in Canadian history, setting aside at least half the Northern Boreal region - 225,000 square kilometres - for permanent protection from development, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced yesterday.

It's an area almost the size of the United Kingdom.

"It is, in a word, immense. It's also unique and precious. It's home to the largest untouched forest in Canada and the third largest wetland in the world," McGuinty said.

The Northern Boreal region covers 43 per cent of Ontario but few people call it home. About 24,000 people, mostly in native communities accessible only by air, live there. It is home to approximately 200 sensitive species of animals, including woodland caribou, wolverine and lake sturgeon, which have been driven from large parts of the more southern forest by logging and other development.

The land that Ontario will permanently protect from timbering and mining is also home to 5 million juncos, 4 million magnolia warblers, 3 million palm warblers, 3 million Swainson's thrushes, and 2 million Tennessee warblers, just to name a few species.

See also this article by Scott Weidensaul at The Nature Conservancy.

A small portion of the preserved wilderness in Ontario.

RLC

Campaign Contribution

Having run an editorial by Barack Obama last week on his Iraq policy, the New York Times has chosen to reject a similar piece by John McCain. The ostensible reasons are given here by editor David Shipley. McCain's editorial can also be read at the same site.

Consider it a campaign contribution by the Times to the Obama campaign.

UPDATE: NEW YORK (AP) - New York Times Co. says its second-quarter earnings fell 82 percent from the year-ago quarter boosted by a one-time gain. Meanwhile, print advertising revenue continued to shrink.

Wonder why.

RLC

Radovan Karadzic

It took thirteen years, but former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres and the politician considered most responsible for the deadly siege of Sarajevo, was arrested Monday evening in a Serbian-U.N. raid ending his reign as the world's most-wanted war crimes fugitive:

His alleged partner in the persecution and "cleansing" of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, remained at large.

A psychiatrist turned diehard Serbian nationalist politician, Karadzic is the suspected mastermind of mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." They include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst slaughter since World War II.

Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador who negotiated an end to the Bosnian War, ....calculated that Karadzic is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of 300,000 people, because without him there would have been no war or genocide.

The charges against him, last amended in May 2000, include genocide, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war.

"These offenses include a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing directed at non-Serbs, organized attacks on places of worship, the operation of concentration camps, and the mass murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians," the White House statement added.

It's hard to believe that Europe stood by and watched this genocide take place only fifty years after Hitler, but they pretty much did. It was only when the United States decided that we could no longer allow Muslims to be slaughtered by the tens of thousands and began bombing Bosnian targets that the killing stopped.

Quick quiz: Were we right to intervene militarily in Bosnia to stop the killing? If so, was there a significant difference between Bosnia under Karadzic and Milosevic and Iraq under Saddam? If not, were we justified in deposing Saddam? Explain your reasoning.

RLC

Ten Years?

A couple of months ago Senator Obama said he would campaign in all 57 states and now it appears that he expects to be president for the next "eight to ten years" (see video). I'm sure that the Senator knows that he's limited by the constitution to two four year terms, he was educated as a constitutional lawyer, after all, and I don't want to make too much of his lapses. Such things happen to the best of people.

Nevertheless, Dan Quayle was positively crucified for misspelling "potato" by the same media that lets these howlers from Obama just float on off into the ether, and no one needs to be reminded how George Bush has been made the object of contemptuous ridicule because of his various solecisms. Yet the media which found ample time to chortle at Quayle and Bush is too preoccupied striving to touch the hem of Obama's garment to apply the same standards of rhetorical punctilio to him.

Link: sevenload.com

Perhaps the MSM should be required to file with the elections commission as a 527 group.

RLC

Innumerable Piles of Corpses

Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler, writes a longish but important essay which traces the main lineaments of Western thought about human nature through the 19th and 20th century. The essay is titled The Dehumanizing Impact of Modern Thought: Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Their Followers, and it shows clearly how the ideas of these thinkers prepared the ground for the horrors of the 20th century.

Weikart begins by recalling the words of Viktor Frankl:

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of Auschwitz, astutely commented on the way that modern European thought had helped prepare the way for Nazi atrocities (and his own misery). He stated, "If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted," Frankl continued, "with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazi liked to say, of 'Blood and Soil.' I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

Read the whole essay at the link. It will help you to understand why a lot of people are convinced that atheistic materialism leads ineluctably, in the enthusiastic words of 19th century Darwinian Ludwig Büchner, to "innumerable piles of corpses".

RLC

Other Possibilities

My friend Byron chides me for the post immediately below this one where I said that: "By choosing this site for his speech Obama tacitly endorses the symbolism of the Victory Column and makes himself appear just as blissfully ignorant of European history and culture as the feckless tourist who speaks no French."

Byron correctly points out that I should not have said that Obama was "tacitly endorsing" the symbol since there are other posible explanations for his choice of this venue. For one, it's possible that Obama knows the history behind the Victory Column and is going to use this backdrop to somehow criticize the mindset which lies behind it.

It's also possible that he actually doesn't know the history of the Column and would not have chosen it if he had.

Of course, if the Senator doesn't know the history then the last clause of the passage quoted above obtains, and if he doesn't use the occasion to make a speech which "deconstructs" (to use Byron's word) this expression of German military power then it seems we're back to my original formulation.

RLC

Innocent Abroad

Having been rebuffed in his attempt to hold a rally at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany Senator Obama has settled on the Siegessaeule or Victory Column in the heart of downtown Berlin. This is an odd choice for the candidate who scoffed at American visitors to Europe who can only say merci beaucoup. The Victory Column celebrates German military victories over our allies (France, Denmark, and Austria) and was placed there by Adolf Hitler who looked at it as a symbol of German military prowess. By choosing this site for his speech Obama tacitly endorses the symbolism of the Victory Column and makes himself appear just as blissfully ignorant of European history and culture as the feckless tourist who speaks no French.

And why does he need such symbolic backdrops anyway? The man is a candidate, not a President. Is he hoping to draw huge crowds of enthusiastic Germans in order to convince undecided Americans that the Europeans would love us if only we elected him as President?

Ed Morrissey writes:

Hitler didn't just move the monument to its more central location. He had a taller column built for it as well, to emphasize its message of German military domination over Europe. He saw it as a message to Germans of their destiny - as well as to other Europeans as their destiny as well. It was never meant as a symbol of peaceful, multicultural co-existence.

Team Obama has outdone themselves on symbolism with this choice. They've managed to make their hosts uncomfortable for a second time with their choice of rallying point, and perhaps more so this time. If one wanted to talk peace, what worse location could one choose than Adolf Hitler's favorite monument to militaristic domination? One has to wonder how France, Denmark, and Austria will feel about Obama rallying German masses under the Siegess�ule. Deja vu?

Obama could be excused for his gaffe, except for two reasons. His team certainly understood the historical weight that the Brandenburg Gate would have lent his event, so why didn't they bother to ask the Germans about the Siegess�ule? Quite obviously, the Germans understand the meaning and subtext of the monument, and most of them wonder why Obama does not. Maybe this is a better example of clueless Americans traveling abroad than those who can only say merci beaucoup.

The more basic question is why Obama feels the need to conduct a campaign event among Germans. Meeting with foreign leaders makes sense for a man with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, but that doesn't require massive rallies among people who aren't voting in this election. In his rush to look impressive for no one's purposes but his own, Obama has made himself look ignorant and arrogant all over again.

RLC

Giving Peace a Chance

The Bush administration has taken considerable heat from the right for meeting with the Iranians to discuss their nuclear weapons program. I don't think this criticism is really warranted. Surely the administration anticipated that they would have near zero success persuading the Iranians to draw down, but they did the right thing by meeting with them for two reasons:

First, there was a vanishingly small chance that the Iranians would have a Libyan moment and decide that they couldn't sustain the opprobrium of the world nor the fear of U.S. military action. Too much is at stake for President Bush not to at least allow for the possibility that a face-to-face meeting might provoke Iranian second-thoughts.

Second, and more importantly, the U.S., if it's going to take more serious measures down the road, simply has to make every effort to settle this matter peacefully. To take more aggressive action against Iran without at least having tried face-to-face talks would have been precipitous and unforgiveable. Doubtless, too, some of our allies are insisting that their support for a strike on Iran is contingent upon our exhausting every other avenue first.

Now that the talks have come to naught the next steps will likely be deep sanctions and a blockade, either of which are likely to provoke an aggressive response from Iran and a consequent all-out massive retaliatory strike against their nuclear facilities, military, and government. The most likely window for an escalation is after the November elections but before the next president takes office.

We may have little choice in the end but to do what's necessary to prevent the Iranians from getting these horrific weapons, but we're not there yet. President Bush, in my view, did the right thing by giving peace a chance.

RLC

Facts and Theories

Casey Luskin at Evolution News and Views is beginning a five part series of posts on these five questions:

1. Are Darwinists correct to define "theory" as "a well-substantiated scientific explanation of some aspect of the natural world" or "a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence"?
   
2. Under such a strong definition of "theory," does evolution qualify as a "theory"?
   
3. Is it correct to call evolution a "fact"?
   
4. Is it best for Darwin skeptics to call evolution "just a theory, not a fact"?
   
5. "All I wanted to say is that I'm a scientific skeptic of neo-Darwinism. How can I convey such skepticism without stepping on a semantic land mine and getting scolded by Darwinists?"
   

His response to #1 can be read here.

RLC

Irony

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called President Bush a "total failure":

"You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for "challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again."

Pelosi's outburst was a departure. Her usual practice in public has been to call Bush's policies a failure - not his presidency or him, personally. Pelosi's remarks are the latest evidence of the Democrats' throw-caution-to-the-wind approach to Bush in the waning days of a presidency weighed down by an unpopular war and soaring gasoline prices.

President Bush's approval ratings hover around 28%. The Congress which Ms Pelosi leads is at 8%. Congress has done nothing since Pelosi took the reins except try futilely to defund the troops in Iraq, harass Bush administration officials, and obstruct whatever the President has attempted to do. Even in these dubious pursuits she has had few successes, and yet she has the chutzpah to call Bush -- a man who has liberated 50 million people from oppression, rescued millions more Africans from the ravages of disease and starvation, kept the U.S. free for seven years from a terrorist attack, kept an economy which has experienced several critical shocks from going into recession -- a total failure.

Ms Pelosi has given us a good example of how little people sometimes try to make themselves look big and important by tearing down those who dwarf them.

RLC

Ego

Charles Krauthammer is not Senator Obama's biggest fan, but he has an idea who is. Read his clever and amusing essay to see who gets his vote.

RLC

Post-modern Crackup

A student of mine, Tim, reminds me of this 2003 article in Christianity Today by Chuck Colson who writes about what he sees as the post-modern crackup. I recall that Brian McLaren took exception in CT to Colson's analysis of the faults and future of post-modern thinking, but McLaren's writings on the subject suffer from the fact that he never seems able to bring himself to define exactly what he means by "post-modern". As a result, his critique seemed unfocussed.

Anyway, I couldn't find McLaren's piece so I can't link to it and won't say any more about it.

In Colson's essay he points out that people cannot live with the assumption that there's no ultimate truth, that the only truth is what's true for me and the group I identify with:

Is postmodernism-the philosophy that claims there is no transcendent truth-on life support? It may be premature to sign the death certificate, but there are signs postmodernism is losing strength:

I spoke at my alma mater, Brown University, in June, arguing that without acknowledging moral truth, it's impossible for colleges to teach ethics. I've been saying this since the late 1980s, all over America, and I've yet to be successfully contradicted. Whenever someone claims his alma mater teaches ethics, I ask him to send me the curriculum, which invariably turns out to be pure pragmatism, utilitarianism, or social issues like diversity and the environment-good things, but not ethics. At Brown-one of the most liberal campuses in the country-I was shocked when the professor who introduced me acknowledged that he could no longer teach ethics, adding: "Chuck Colson will explain why."

Read the rest of what Colson says at the link. He talks about how young people seem to be abandoning the assumptions of post-modernity for something more solid, but I'm not so sure this is really happening today. Barack Obama, for example, has waged a campaign that appeals to all of society's post-modern impulses - his campaign's emphasis on style and image over substance, their shifting truth claims, etc. - and young people are soaking it up.

Even so, Colson's piece is a good read.

UPDATE: Byron has sent along links to McLaren's response to Colson along with Colson's reply. Check it out here. RLC

Zigzagger

Byron and I have been having a back and forth over whether Obama has been prevaricating on his plans for Iraq or whether his position is simply so nuanced that it only seems like he's flip-flopping or talking out of both sides of his mouth when, in fact, he's merely been stressing different elements of his plan to different audiences.

Now comes a McCain campaign video that quotes Obama in a before and after format. I don't care much for their "translations", but the juxtaposition of what Obama has said on different aspects of his Iraq policy at different times makes it pretty hard to get a fix on what he actually believes and what he'll actually do.

The video is a little long, but at the very least it is cumulatively a pretty powerful indictment of Obama's ability to remain consistent:

HT:Hot Air

RLC

Which Makes More Sense?

We posted yesterday on what seems to be the Democrats' lack of seriousness about doing something to increase oil supplies. Today we read that Nancy Pelosi is insisting that oil companies drill on federal lands to which they have already been granted access. The oil companies say that the cost of exploring these lands for oil is prohibitively high and the risk is that there's too little oil on these lands to make drilling profitable.

The oil companies want to drill where they know there's oil, and the Democrats want them to drill where there might be none.

HT: Ramirez

RLC

Vile

Patterico wonders why the LA Times, which has to approve all comments made to its blog, would have allowed about one fourth of the comments concerning Tony Snow's death to be such vile, despicable trash.

I read that Michelle Malkin's site got some bad stuff in her comments section when she posted on the news of Ted Kennedy's cancer, and, if so, it's not just the left that reacts in such abominable ways, but some of this has to be seen in order to be believed. It's hard to imagine that there really are people this sick and deranged out there.

RLC