Decline

When I was in high school one of my teachers said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said that my generation, the boomer generation, was the last generation which could expect its children to be better off than we were. He was saying that America was headed for a long, slow decline. He turned out to be prescient. Everything that seemed to be a matter of course when my age cohort was growing up, all that we took for granted living in America, seems today to have been much more fragile than we ever dreamed. To paraphrase Marx, all that was solid is melting away.

Jim Geraghty at National Review has a piece in which he gives an analysis of the economic aspect of this decline.

Americans came to think of the economic conditions of the postwar boom -- low unemployment, easy entry into the workplace, job stability, considerable purchasing power and lots of consumer goods, high exports, good pensions, etc. as “normal.” What no one wanted to really acknowledge was how rare our advantage of that era was: We were an intact first-world economy on a planet where almost every other country was rebuilding from being blasted to hell during World War II.

Decade by decade, the rest of the world caught up and offered economic competition, primarily in the form of cheaper labor. The debate between trade and protectionism was largely one among elites. Non-wonk Americans lamented the decline of manufacturing jobs while buying Japanese (and then Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese) electronics, German and Japanese cars, etc. Free trade is terrific for consumers but not so great when somebody overseas can do your job for less money. From where I sit, it’s on the whole advantageous but horrible if it’s your job being “outsourced” overseas.

The public’s interest would briefly stir for NAFTA or Most Favored Nation status for China, but by and large, Americans either applauded globalization, loved its benefits but lamented its costs without ever connecting the two, or just ignored it.

For a while, Americans were told that the graduate-high-school-and-go-to-the-widget-factory-assembly-line life model was disappearing, but was being replaced with a better one: graduate-from-college-and-go-to-the-white-collar-job. In fact, it was so much better, it was worth taking on tens of thousands or even $150,000 in debt, because you would make more money over the course of your lifetime.

And then, sometime around the Great Recession, that deal changed, too. Companies realized they didn’t need that many entry-level positions (or they could shift it to unpaid labor in the form of internships). Undoubtedly, some colleges let their standards slide, and too many young people focused on basket-weaving, gender studies, or humanities majors and found themselves with a degree that didn’t translate well to the needs of the job market. A dramatic expansion of unskilled labor in the form of illegal immigration put the squeeze on another corner of the workforce; automation did even more. For many, that path to the good life seems steeper, rockier, and less clear than their parents ever faced....

These are giant, sweeping problems that are best measured on generational time-frames and go well beyond one law or one president or lawmaker. This change is tied to our nation’s long, slow, painful slide from a system of public schools where kids were likely to get at least a “good enough” education to prepare them for the workforce to one where public schools range from excellent to abysmal.

It’s tied to the U.S. going from a nation of 14 million immigrants in 1980 (both legal and illegal, 6.2 percent of the population) to 40 million immigrants in 2010 (12.9 percent). It’s tied to changing from a world with one primary, stable, relatively predictable antagonist (the Soviet Union) to an asymmetric, multinational, amorphous, adaptive slate of demonic foes like ISIS and al Qaeda. And it’s tied up in going from a relative monoculture influenced by Judeo-Christian values and identities to a cultural Balkanization where the counterculture became the dominant culture, then shattered itself.

Ultimately, electing a better president is one step on the road -- an important one, but only one. A lot of this comes down to what Americans expect of themselves. Do we want to compete in the global economy, and if not, are we willing to live with the consequences of closing ourselves off from the rest of the world? Are we willing to study hard to be qualified for good jobs and work hard once we get them? Are our companies willing to see themselves as national institutions instead of global ones? Are employers willing to show greater loyalty to their employees, and are their employees willing to reciprocate?

It would be spectacular if we could shake the country out of its fascination with caudillo-like figures. You would hope people would have learned from the experience of electing Barack Obama the Lightworker, the Munificent Sun God, the first man to step down into the presidency. But no, for far too many people, the lesson is not that we shouldn’t look to a president to be our savior, it’s that we chose the wrong one -- but Hillary, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders will be the right savior.

It could be argued that economic troubles comprise just one strand, an important strand to be sure, but only one strand of a web of interrelated cultural factors that have radically changed over the last fifty years and which have not been salutary for the nation. Geraghty is right that electing better presidents and members of congress is an important step in regaining our footing, but unless we also learn to discipline ourselves and repudiate the hedonism which has become almost a national trademark, the attitude that life is just one big party, that families can be fluid and children can pretty much raise themselves, we'll never get better leadership, better schools, or a better social environment.

Black Holes

Australian cosmologist Luke Barnes answers eight questions submitted to him by a young student about black holes. If you've ever wondered about any of these questions, or even if you haven't, you'll want to watch the video Barnes has put together on this. Here are the questions:

1. How do scientists know there is a supermassive black hole in the centre of every galaxy?
2. Many sites say scientists don’t know how supermassive black holes are formed. Are there any theories?
3. Why does a star explode into a supernova when it runs out of energy?
4. If it has run out of energy, where does the energy for the explosion come from?
5. Why do extremely dense objects have so much gravity?
6. Does a black hole really ‘blow out’ matter sometimes and why?
7. When a black hole consumes more matter does its gravity increase?
8. Can black holes die?
9. Is it possible for a black hole to have an ‘other side’ and if so what could it be?

And here are Barnes' answers to these questions:

Birthright Citizenship

Set aside whatever negative opinions you might have about Ann Coulter and just objectively consider the case she makes out for the claim that the 14th Amendment was never intended to cover children born to parents in this country illegally, but was intended to cover black children of slaves who had been here for generations.

The most important part of her column she recaps the relevant Supreme Court cases bearing on the Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, the relevant portion of which says that, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

Here are the Supreme Court opinions Coulter cites:

Supreme Court opinion in the Slaughterhouse cases (1873):

“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments), lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

Supreme Court opinion in Ex Parte Virginia (1879): “[The 14th Amendment was] primarily designed to give freedom to persons of the African race, prevent their future enslavement, make them citizens, prevent discriminating State legislation against their rights as freemen, and secure to them the ballot.”

Supreme Court opinion in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880): “The 14th Amendment was framed and adopted … to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that, under the law, are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government in that enjoyment whenever it should be denied by the States.”

Supreme Court opinion in Neal v. Delaware (1880) (majority opinion written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, who was the only dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson): “The right secured to the colored man under the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws is that he shall not be discriminated against solely on account of his race or color.”

Supreme Court opinion in Elk v. Wilkins (1884): “The main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment was … to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States … The evident meaning of (the words, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”) is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. … Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterward, except by being naturalized …”

One has to leap forward 200 years from “the founding of the republic” to find the first claim that kids born to illegal immigrants are citizens: To wit, in dicta (irrelevant chitchat) by Justice William Brennan, slipped into the footnote of a 5-4 decision in 1982.

Of all the developed countries in the world only the U.S. and Canada confer citizenship on children born on our soil. It's a policy based upon a distorted reading of the Constitution and supported by Democrats because they want Hispanic votes and by Republicans because they want cheap labor.

As Coulter points out 70% of illegal aliens are being subsidized by American taxpayers. Coulter is a big Trump fan largely because Trump promises to end birthright citizenship, but beyond his populist Huey Long-type rhetoric there's no reason in his history to think he will. It's almost certain, however, that no Democrat president will end it.

The Refugee Crisis

The tragic flood of refugees pouring into Europe is not without its ironies. Muslim refugees from Muslim wars and tyrants are paying all they have and risking their lives to get to Europe. Why are they fleeing to Europe rather than another African or Middle Eastern country? One answer is their fellow Arab and African Muslims won't let them in. Even though some of these countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE) are awash in oil wealth they're willing to do very little beyond offer financial support to help their fellow Muslims and they're shameless enough to criticize Europeans for not doing more.

The significance of being treated much better by the infidels than by other Muslims is not being lost on either the refugees or the Europeans:

With half of Syria's population displaced in the worst refugee crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations, and Europe overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of people flooding the continent, accusations are flying as to why the wealthy Gulf states are not welcoming people with whom they share a common language and heritage.

Gulf states have cited possible security concerns, and worries that Syrians might eventually compete for jobs. But to the Syrians, the answer is simple: they are not welcome.

"Gulf countries have closed their doors in the face of Syrians," Yassir Batal, a Syrian refugee who fled to Germany, told Bloomberg.

The voyage to Europe necessitates a dangerous and often disastrous ending for the refugees. They must pay smugglers exorbitant fees for space on either overcrowded rubber dinghies or unseaworthy vessels, and thousands end up drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.

But the only Arab countries Syrians may enter without a visa are Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen.

Of course, these nations are themselves war-torn economic basket cases and are hardly attractive destinations for those fleeing poverty, conflict, and tyranny.

It is virtually impossible to gain citizenship in a Gulf state, and these countries favor hiring unskilled workers from Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the BBC reported. The Syrians, who are usually fairly well educated, would compete with jobs with Gulf state locals.

Several tweets point out the hypocrisy of Arab leaders pointing to Europe to do more when they, who share a language, heritage and religion in common with the refugees, do nothing to help, but after photos of a Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach went viral this week and prompting worldwide attention, many Arabs took to social media to express their outrage that Islamic countries failed to do more for their own brethren.

For their part, the Gulf states say they are not indifferent to Syrians' suffering and point to the billions of dollars of aid and the camps they have set up in Jordan and Lebanon. The United Arab Emirates spent $540 million in relief aid to set up a camp in Jordan and another in northern Iraq, a U.A.E. official told Bloomberg.

A cartoon published in Saudi Arabia showed an Arab behind a shut door guarded with barbed wire berating a European for not opening his door to the refugees. "Why don't you let them in, you discourteous people?!" he says.

"Have consciences died? Why can't able countries like [the] Gulf nations take part in hosting refugees?" Salman Aloda, a popular Saudi cleric tweeted.

On Facebook, the Syrian Community in Denmark community page shared a video of migrants being welcomed into Austria from Hungary, "prompting one user to ask: 'How did we flee from the region of our Muslim brethren, which should take more responsibility for us than a country they describe as infidels?'"

Another user replied: 'I swear to the Almighty God, it's the Arabs who are the infidels,' reported the BBC.

As Europe weighs how to deal with the massive crisis at their doorstep — economically strapped Greece absorbed 142,000 refugees since June 1 — European leaders have also pointed bitterly to the Gulf states' indifference.

"I'm most indignant over the Arab countries who are rolling in money and who only take very few refugees," Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen told Bloomberg. "Countries like Saudi Arabia. It's completely scandalous."

For those with a sense of history another irony is that for almost a thousand years Muslim Arabs sought to invade Europe and came very close to conquering the continent before being thrown back by technologically superior European forces. Doubtless, many Europeans and Muslims see the flood of refugees as an inadvertent but de facto means of accomplishing through the exploitation of Christian compassion what they could not accomplish by force of arms.

Why I'm Not a Trumpster

Jonah Goldberg at NRO makes the conservative case against Donald Trump. A summary of his case may go something like this: You can be a conservative or you can be a Trump supporter, but you can't be the latter without abandoning the principles that made you the former.

Trump's biggest appeal for conservatives is that he doesn't accept the rules of political correctness laid down by the media and other liberals. Beyond that and his vague rhetoric about Making America Great Again it's hard to find anything in his history that should appeal to social, economic, or foreign policy conservatives.

I'll quote Goldberg at length because he makes the case so well:

If I sound dismayed, it’s only because I am. Conservatives have spent more than 60 years arguing that ideas and character matter. That is the conservative movement I joined and dedicated my professional life to. And now, in a moment of passion, many of my comrades-in-arms are throwing it all away in a fit of pique. Because “Trump fights!”

How many Republicans have been deemed unfit for the Oval Office because of comparatively minor character flaws or ideological shortcomings? Rick Perry in 2012 saw his candidacy implode when he couldn’t remember the third item on his checklist of agencies he’d close down. Well, even in that “oops” moment, Rick Perry comes off as Lincolnesque compared with Donald Trump.

Yes, I know Trump has declared himself pro-life. Good for him -- and congratulations to the pro-life movement for making that the price of admission. But I’m at a total loss to understand why serious pro-lifers take him at his word. He’s been all over the place on Planned Parenthood, and when asked who he’d like to put on the Supreme Court, he named his pro-choice-extremist sister.

Ann Coulter wrote of Newt in 2011: “If all you want is to lob rhetorical bombs at Obama and then lose, Newt Gingrich -- like recent favorite Donald Trump -- is your candidate. But if you want to save the country, Newt’s not your guy.” Now Ann leads a chorus of people claiming that Trump is our only savior. Has Trump changed, or have Ann and her followers? Is there a serious argument behind the new thinking, or is it “because he fights!”?

It is entirely possible that conservatives sweat the details of tax policy too much. Once in office, a president must deal with political realities that render the fine print of a campaign pamphlet as useful as a battle plan after the enemy is met. But in the last month, Trump has contemplated a flat tax, the fair tax, maintaining the current progressive tax system, a carried-interest tax, a wealth tax, and doing nothing. His fans respond, “That shows he’s a pragmatist!”

No. It shows that he has absolutely no ideological guardrails whatsoever. Ronald Reagan once said, “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.” Trump is close to the reverse. He’s a mouth at the wrong end of an alimentary canal spewing crap with no sense of responsibility.

In his embarrassing interview with Hugh Hewitt last night, Trump revealed he knows less than most halfway-decent D.C. interns about foreign policy. Twitter lit up with responses about how it doesn’t matter and how it was a gotcha interview. They think that Trump’s claim that he’ll just go find a Douglas MacArthur to fix the problem is brilliant. Well, I’m all in favor of finding a Douglas MacArthur, but if you don’t know anything about foreign policy, the interview process will be a complete disaster. Yes, Reagan delegated. But he knew enough to know to whom to delegate.

If you want a really good sense of the damage Donald Trump is doing to conservatism, consider the fact that for the last five years no issue has united the Right more than opposition to Obamacare. Opposition to socialized medicine in general has been a core tenet of American conservatism from Day One. Yet, when Republicans were told that Donald Trump favors single-payer health care, support for single-payer health care jumped from 16 percent to 44 percent.

I’ve written a lot about my problems with populism. One of my favorite illustrations of why the populist mindset is dangerous and anti-intellectual comes from William Jennings Bryan. “The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver,” Bryan announced. “I will look up the arguments later.” My view of conservatism holds that if free silver is a bad idea, it’s still a bad idea even if the people of Nebraska are for it. But Trumpism flips this on its head. The conservatives of Nebraska and elsewhere should be against single-payer health care, even if Donald Trump is for it. What we are seeing is the corrupting of conservatives.

I agree that presidents don’t need to be experts on everything. But they do need to do their homework....

When running for president, doing your homework is a question of character and even patriotism. If you love this country and want to be the president, quite literally the least you can do is be prepared. So let’s return to the issue of character.

In 2012, Mark Steyn wrote that a President Gingrich would have “twice as many ex-wives as the first 44 presidents combined.” If that (quite brilliant) line resonated with you three years ago, why doesn’t it for a President Trump?

I understand the ... compulsion to celebrate anyone who doesn’t take crap from the mainstream media. But when Newt Gingrich brilliantly eviscerated the press in 2012, there was a serious ideological worldview behind it. Trump’s assaults on the press have only one standard: whether the journalist in question is favorable to Trump or not. If a journalist praises him, that journalist is “terrific.” If the journalist is critical of Trump he is a “loser” (or, in my case, a loser who can’t buy pants). Not surprisingly, Hugh Hewitt is now “third rate” because he made Trump look bad. I’m no fan of Arianna Huffington or Gail Collins, but calling them “dogs” because they criticized you is not a serious ideological or intellectual retort. (It’s not even clever.) I think Trump did insinuate that Megyn Kelly was menstruating during the debate. He denies it. Fine. But what in the world about his past would lead someone to give him the benefit of the doubt? This is the same man who said, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

Trump’s glass-bottom id lets the whole world see his megalomania. He talks about himself in the third person all the time. He explains that Trump is great because Trump is rich and famous. He’s waxed profound on how he doesn’t want blacks counting his money (he prefers Jews in yarmulkes). He makes jokes on national TV about women fellating him. He pays famous people to attend his wedding and then brags about it as if he got one over on them. He boasts in his books how he screwed over business associates and creditors because all that mattered was making an extra buck.

If your neighbor talked this way, maybe he’d still be your friend, because we all have friends who are characters. But would you want him to be your kid’s English teacher? Guidance counselor? Would you tell your kids you want them to follow his example? Would you go into business with him? Would you entrust him with nuclear weapons?

Goldberg is right. Trump's not a conservative, he's a narcissistic political opportunist. Conservatives rightly criticized the elevation of style over substance in 2008 and 2012 when the country elected a man whose chief qualification seemed to be personal charisma. Now in 2015 many conservatives are embracing Donald Trump for pretty much the same reason. Goldberg closes with this:

Karl Marx coined the term lumpenproletariat to describe working-class people who could never relinquish their class consciousness and embrace the idea of a classless socialist society. Hence, they were useless to the revolutionary cause. I’m no Marxist, so I don’t buy the idea that anybody -- never mind a whole class of people -- are beyond persuasion. But I am tempted to believe that Donald Trump’s biggest fans are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause. I have hope they will come to their senses. But it’s possible they won’t. And if the conservative movement and the Republican party allow themselves to be corrupted by this flim-flammery, then so be it. My job will be harder, my career will suffer, and I’ll be ideologically homeless (though hardly alone).

That’s not so scary. Conservatism began in the wilderness and maybe, like the Hebrews, it would return from it stronger and ready to rule. But I’m not leaving without a fight. If my side loses that fight, all I ask is you stop calling the Trumpian cargo cult “conservative” and maybe stop the movement long enough for me to get off.

Since this post is about politics and I'm feeling reckless this morning, I offer the following:

Political prediction: Either Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina, or both, will be on the Republican ticket. Jeb Bush will not be.
Political opinion: Donald Trump should not be.

American Justice

So Kimberly Davis must go to jail for refusing to issue licenses to gay couples who wish to marry. It's a difficult situation. She swore an oath, presumably, to uphold the law, and she's now refusing on religious principle to do what she swore to do.

Some argue that she should resign if her job conflicts with her faith. Maybe so. In fact, maybe every elected official, like Ms Davis, should resign or be put in jail if they refuse to uphold the laws they swore to carry out. Of course, as Sen. Ted Cruz correctly notes, that includes many of our nation's mayors and even our nation's president:

For every politician — Democrat and Republican — who is tut-tutting that Davis must resign, they are defending a hypocritical standard. Where is the call for the mayor of San Francisco to resign for creating a sanctuary city — resulting in the murder of American citizens by criminal illegal aliens welcomed by his lawlessness?

Where is the call for President Obama to resign for ignoring and defying our immigration laws, our welfare reform laws, and even his own Obamacare?

When the mayor of San Francisco and President Obama resign, then we can talk about Kim Davis.

Quite so. We have a double standard in this country when it comes to requiring public officials to follow the law. CIA Director General David Petraeus broke the law by keeping classified documents in his home, and he's been punished with two years probation and a $100,000 fine. Hillary Clinton kept classified documents on a computer to which the whole world had access and not only has she not been indicted, but every Democrat in the country will still vote for her for president.

President Obama has consistently violated laws, as Cruz mentions, concerning welfare reform, Obamacare, and immigration, but there's nothing that can be done because the constitutional remedy for law-breaking by a public official - impeachment - is impossible in the president's case as long as there are enough Democrats in the Senate to block his removal.

But let an intrepid but powerless woman who has the courage of her convictions, whether her convictions are right or wrong, do what President Obama and numerous city mayors have done with much greater harm to the citizens of this country when they refuse to carry out our immigration laws, and some bully of a judge slaps the poor woman in jail lickety-split. What a country.

Spooky

The universe is a very strange place, stranger than we can imagine. One of the strangest things about it is something Albert Einstein once referred to as "spooky action at a distance." In quantum mechanics there's a phenomenon called quantum entanglement. No one knows how it works, no one really understands it, but every time it's been tested it's been shown to exist, and it's absolutely bizarre.

Here's the nutshell version: Two subatomic particles, e.g. electrons, can be produced from the disintegration of another particle. These daughter particles then travel at enormous velocities away from each other, but they somehow remain connected such that if a property of one of them is changed the same property in the other one changes simultaneously even though any signal sent from one to the other would have to travel at infinite speed to affect the second. This, though, is impossible, so how does the second electron know what's happened to the first? No one knows the answer to this which is why Einstein, who could never accept the idea of entanglement, called the phenomenon "spooky."

Here's an excellent 15 minute video featuring physicist Brian Greene explaining this quantum weirdness:

An article at Nature discusses a recent test that pretty much clinches the theory that somehow particles that are widely separated from each other, even at opposite ends of the universe, are still in some mysterious way connected so that they can communicate instantaneously with each other:

It’s a bad day both for Albert Einstein and for hackers. The most rigorous test of quantum theory ever carried out has confirmed that the ‘spooky action at a distance’ that the German physicist famously hated — in which manipulating one object instantaneously seems to affect another, far away one — is an inherent part of the quantum world.

The experiment, performed in the Netherlands, could be the final nail in the coffin for models of the atomic world that are more intuitive than standard quantum mechanics, say some physicists. It could also enable quantum engineers to develop a new suite of ultrasecure cryptographic devices.

“From a fundamental point of view, this is truly history-making,” says Nicolas Gisin, a quantum physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. In quantum mechanics, objects can be in multiple states simultaneously: for example, an atom can be in two places, or spin in opposite directions, at once. Measuring an object forces it to snap into a well-defined state. Furthermore, the properties of different objects can become ‘entangled’, meaning that their states are linked: when a property of one such object is measured, the properties of all its entangled twins become set, too.

This idea galled Einstein because it seemed that this ghostly influence would be transmitted instantaneously between even vastly separated but entangled particles — implying that it could contravene the universal rule that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. He proposed that quantum particles do have set properties before they are measured, called hidden variables. And even though those variables cannot be accessed, he suggested that they pre-program entangled particles to behave in correlated ways.

The recent experiments cited in the Nature article are said to show that Einstein was wrong and that entanglement exists. The universe is indeed a very strange place.

Bad Deal

Amid news that the Obama administration has secured enough Democratic votes in the Senate to sustain an Obama veto of the Senate's expected rejection of his Iran deal, comes word of a report from a committee of retired high ranking military officers who conclude that the deal makes war in the Middle East more likely, not less.

A group of former top military officials and intelligence analysts released a new report Wednesday concluding that the nuclear deal with Iran will threaten American interests and increase the probability of military conflict in the Middle East.

In its report, the Iran Strategy Council wrote that the nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), “will enable Iran to increase support for terrorist and insurgent proxies, aggravate sectarian conflict and trigger both nuclear and conventional proliferation cascades.”

Additionally, the deal will “provide the expansionist regime in Tehran with access to resources, technology and international arms markets required to bolster offensive military capabilities in the vital Persian Gulf region, acquire long-range ballistic missiles and develop other major weapons systems,” the council wrote.

In its report, the council argued that the deal is not an alternative to war with Iran, as many of its supporters have claimed, but would actually make war more likely.

“Contrary to the false choice between support for the JCPOA and military confrontation, the agreement increases both the probability and danger of hostilities with Iran,” the report noted. “Given the deleterious strategic consequences to the United States, implementation of the JCPOA will demand increased political and military engagement in the Middle East that carries significantly greater risks and costs relative to current planning assumptions.”

President Obama has tried, with minimal success, to convince the American people that the alternatives were this deal or war. Most Americans, as well as the majority of their representatives in both the House and the Senate, are unconvinced. Nevertheless, the deal will be official policy at least until Mr. Obama leaves office.

Here are several reasons why this deal will probably lead to war:

1. Iran will cheat and the U.S. and allies will be faced with a decision whether to let them get away with it.
2. The thought of Iran eventually being allowed to have a bomb will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
3. When Iran cheats, or even if they don't, Israel will try to take out their nuclear facilities.
4. The $100 billion that Iran will get when their assets are unfrozen will enable them to purchase an enormous amount of weaponry which will be supplied to terrorist surrogates.
5. If, per impossible, Iran doesn't cheat, in ten to fifteen years they'll still be able, by the terms of the deal, to produce a bomb in just a few months. They'll then be able to fulfill their acknowledged dream of visiting a nuclear holocaust on Israel, either by missile attack or, more likely, by smuggling bombs into the country and detonating them in Israel's major cities.

What was the alternative if not bombing Iran's nuclear facilities now? Tightening the tourniquet of economic sanctions until Iran was faced with either economic asphyxiation or abandoning their nuclear program. That option, however, required the U.S. to exert worldwide leadership and to exercise an iron will. Unfortunately, it was a lot easier to cut a deal that just postpones the day of reckoning a few years and ensures that in the meantime there'll be a lot more loss of life.

On Miracles

Philosopher Hans Halverson of Princeton offers a provocative piece on miracles at Slate. Halverson believes that it's rational to believe in the miracles of the New Testament but not in miracles alleged to happen in everyday life:

A recent New York Times bestseller presents numerous accounts of surprising events in the lives of everyday people, arguing that these events were miracles. Should you believe it? My answer here is simple: for any event you experience in your life, no matter how strange, surprising, or wonderful, you should not believe that it is a miracle. Similarly, if somebody tells you that a miracle occurred, you should not believe him.

Really? What if an oncologist is 100 percent certain that her patient has terminal cancer and cannot possibly recover? And yet, when that person’s church holds a prayer vigil, miraculously the next day, the cancer is gone. Would it be rational to suppose that a miracle occurred? I’m sorry to sound harsh, but the answer is No. The oncologist, and everybody else, should continue believing that there is a perfectly cogent scientific explanation for the patient’s recovery.

Am I not condoning a highly irrational attitude, namely a bias against supernatural explanations? Isn’t there a point at which an unbiased observer ought to admit that the evidence points toward a supernatural intervention? Again, I claim that the answer is No. Certainly, I can imagine witnessing an event that violated what we now believe to be the laws of nature. For example, I can imagine witnessing a subatomic particle travelling faster than the speed of light. But why would I call that a miracle? The more rational response would be to say that we were wrong about the laws of nature.

Halverson's argument here sounds similar to that of David Hume who argued in the 18th century that we're never justified in believing that a law of nature has been violated, but whereas Hume insisted that we have a uniform experience throughout the history of humanity that the laws of nature are never violated, Halverson is willing to grant that such events could happen frequently:

Why am I being so stubborn about this? Am I not bringing an irrational, anti-supernaturalist bias to my investigation of the data? No, I’m not. I am not saying that miracles cannot occur. For all I know, miracles happen every day. What I am saying is that seeing an event as a miracle is to treat that event as falling outside the bounds of science; and there is no amount of evidence that could force us to take such a stance.

What kind of evidence would somebody need to have in order to be rationally compelled to say that an event was a miracle? That person would have to know that this event could not possibly be explained by future science. But not only is such a belief unwarranted, it’s also bad for future science to believe it. If you encounter new data—say, a photon traveling faster than the speed of light—then as a scientist, your job is to find a way to explain it, to make it intelligible in scientific terms.

To declare that an event was a miracle would be tantamount to saying: “I’m simply not going to try to understand this event in scientific terms.” (Now, there are perfectly good reasons to give up on seeing events in scientific terms; but these reasons have to do with human desires, not with evidence.) So, I say: as long as you’re trying to see the world scientifically, then you should refuse to believe that any event is a miracle.

I think Halverson makes a misstep here. He seems to be buying into the notion that the only events we're justified believing are those science can explain. If science cannot explain the event then, the thinking goes, we should not believe it, but why should we adopt this "scientism?" Is the scientific lens the only lens through which we can see the world? Halverson, paradoxically, says no.

Of course, many religions claim that miracles have occurred. For example, the Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam contain numerous claims of large-scale disturbances in nature (e.g. parting of the Red Sea), storms being calmed, the sick being healed, and the dead being raised. Am I claiming that such events did not occur and could not have occurred? Not at all. Am I claiming that a rational person should not believe these events occurred? Perhaps surprisingly, No. I think that it can be rational to believe the miracle stories told in Scripture.

Technically, what I just said contradicts my earlier claim that you ought never to believe that an event was a miracle. So let me amend that claim: you ought never believe that a miraculous event occurred, unless such a claim is an integral part of a religious narrative, the whole of which is rational to believe. That’s a mouthful, so let me explain.

You'll have to go to the link to read his explanation. It's interesting.

One thing that's important to mention here about miracles is that the common understanding that they're violations of laws of nature is false. A law of nature is a description of how nature operates in a closed system. In other words, nature will always operate in a certain way, a law tells us, unless an outside force interferes. Thus, Newton's first law of motion states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. The law of conservation of matter (mass/energy) says that matter cannot be created or destroyed under normal conditions. Of course, if there is no God then there are no outside forces and nature is indeed a closed system, but if God exists and acts in the world then no law is violated when he does because the system is no longer closed and the relevant laws simply don't apply.

What Was So Offensive?

Someone will have to explain to me what it was about what Curt Schilling said that is so outrageous that it merited even a reprimand let alone a suspension from his job at ESPN:

Curt Schilling, a star pitcher who was in the Major Leagues for 20 years and a baseball analyst for ESPN, was suspended from his Little League World Series duty after sending a controversial tweet Tuesday.

The tweet re-posted a meme that reads: "It's said only 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?" The text was superimposed of a red-tinted photo of Adolf Hitler.

Schilling added, "The math is staggering when you get to true #'s."

Which part of this tweet is so offensive that it got him suspended from his job? Is it offensive to point out that the percentage of Muslims who support terrorism is about the same as the percentage of Nazis? If the stats are correct then why is Schilling wrong to point it out? If the stats are not correct is the 10% of Muslims who support terrorism too low? Is it offensive to actually underestimate the number of extremists among Muslims?

If the percentage is too high is there any evidence that it's so unreasonably high as to trigger the extraordinarily sensitive outrage sensors in the ESPN front office? Maybe the ESPN suits are offended that Schilling thinks that only 7% of Germans were Nazis. Who knows what offended them? My guess is that the mere mention of "Muslim" and "extremist" in the same paragraph is such a gross transgression against political correctness, such an egregious refusal to go along with the fantasy that Muslim extremism comprises such a vanishingly small percentage of Muslims that Schilling must be punished for flouting accepted doctrine.

There are a billion Muslims in the world. Even if only 1% of them are extremists that's ten million extremists itching for a chance to saw off your head and that of your children. That, I should think, is a significant fact.

Anyway, as is so often the case in our society, the mindless and unprincipled who care only about their image and bottom line and not at all about truth compel their subordinates to conform to absurd standards of political correctness. Schilling was made to grovel and issue an abject apology as he kissed the ring of the ESPN higher ups:

At first Schilling didn't back off from his post, but eventually he said it was wrong to post the meme.

"I understand and accept my suspension. 100% my fault. Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part," he wrote.

"Curt's tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company's perspective," ESPN said in a written statement. "We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration."

Shameful. What Schilling should have said is, "When you can show me that there's a substantive error in what I tweeted then I'll retract it and apologize. Until then, I have nothing to apologize for and I'm not going to abase myself simply for pointing out a fact or to satisfy someone's need to publicly demonstrate their own righteousness."

No one in this society is a member of a privileged racial, ethnic, or religious group, and no one should be exempt from criticism and scrutiny, or at least that's how it should be. Unfortunately, there are some groups which, unless you're going to say something flattering about them, you risk serious censure even by mentioning. Then there are other groups which, if you say something complimentary about them, you risk suffering a barrage of name-calling.

Comedian Colin Quinn's riff on the silliness of this state of affairs is funny, but the fact that it so accurately illustrates the mindlessness that exists in our society today makes it also very sad:

Birthright Citizenship

The "birthright citizenship" contretemps has elicited a lot of hypocritical posturing among the lefties and few are as good at skewering hypocrisy as Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online. Goldberg writes:

I am inclined against the idea [amending the Constitution to delete birthright citizenship] as a matter of public policy, because the costs would outweigh the benefits. But I am far from convinced it is something to be outraged about. It’s funny: On countless public policy issues, liberals are obsessed with comparing America to European countries. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders routinely points out that Europeans have far more lavish welfare policies, including various forms of government-provided health care. President Obama loves to point to the gun-control policies of other industrialized nations. “Why can’t we just be more like (insert more left-wing European country)?” is the standard-issue rhetorical gimmick for cosmopolitan and sophisticated liberal policy wonks.

Except when it’s not. No European country grants automatic citizenship to any person born on its soil. And yet, we are told that undoing this right would be a barbaric and retrograde reversal. “It’s pretty gross, and underlying are deeply seeded [sic], basically racist intentions,” Melissa Keaney of the National Immigration Law Center told Business Insider. Are Sweden and France “gross” now, too?

But let’s get back to the Constitution. Whenever Republicans favor amending the Constitution — or overruling a Supreme Court interpretation of it — Democrats unleash a tsunami of mortified rhetoric. “We should not mess with the Constitution. We should not tamper with the Constitution,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) declared in 2000 when Republicans suggested a victims’ rights amendment. “I respect the wisdom of the Founders to uphold the Constitution, which has served this nation so well for the last 223 years,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) thundered in response to a proposed balanced-budget amendment in 2011. Representative Raúl Grijalva (D., Ariz.) shrieked in protest over the potential repeal of birthright citizenship, “I think it’s horribly dangerous to open up the Constitution, to tamper with the Constitution.”

Now bear in mind, all of these Democrats oppose justices who believe the Constitution should be read narrowly, according to the original intent or plain meaning of the text. They like justices who worship at the altar of the “living Constitution” — you know, the mythical document that magically provides rights never imagined by the Founding Fathers.

Meanwhile, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, announced that one of her four central goals is to change the First Amendment. She wants to do this on the grounds that we must do anything we can to get rid of “unaccountable money” in our political system. Never mind that this is a funny position for a woman who plans on raising a reported $2 billion to win the presidency and whose foundation — which is neatly aligned with her political ambitions — is awash in foreign money. If only she hadn’t scrubbed her illicit private email server, I’m sure she could allay any fears that she is tainted by unaccountable money. And yet, where is the outrage?

It is indeed odd that Democrats can insouciantly encourage and abet the erosion of our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, and our right to bear arms without evincing any concern for Constitutional punctilio, but as soon as someone suggests that the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born on our soil whether the parents are here legally or not, has outlived its original usefulness suddenly the Democrats are rushing to the ramparts to wage battle with the barbarians who would assault their precious Constitution.

Liberals rejoice when the president and the Supreme Court circumvent the Constitution or find hidden in it an otherwise obscure right to abortion or a right to marry someone of the same sex, but let someone suggest that maybe the rest of the world is correct in thinking that it's not a good idea to confer all the rights of citizenship on people just because they happened to be born here to parents who are not themselves citizens and are not here permanently or legally, and the left fires up their trusty name-calling artillery. As Goldberg asks, where is the left's outrage, at say, Hillary Clinton's attempts to undermine the First Amendment?

It isn’t coming from activist groups like People for the American Way, an organization founded to uphold the First Amendment. It has denounced the Republican effort to tinker with the 14th Amendment as an affront to human decency, but it applauds Clinton’s desire to tamper with the First Amendment as proof of her commitment to democracy. Some Republicans disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which applied the 14th Amendment to immigrants born here. Some Democrats disagree with the court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which says the First Amendment applies to groups of citizens acting in concert. Both, or neither, may be right, but only Republicans are forbidden from acting on their conviction.

Whenever a Republican is asked about potential court appointments, he must swear that he will offer no “litmus tests,” specifically on abortion. But Democrats routinely vow that they will only appoint living constitutionalists who see a right to abortion-on-demand lurking between the lines of the Bill of Rights. Clinton recently added a new litmus test. She’s told donors — accountable ones, no doubt — that she would only appoint justices who would overturn the Citizens United decision. Don’t strain yourself trying to hear the outrage. Outrage is saved for Republicans.

Our sick politics will begin to heal only when people start holding themselves to the same standards to which they hold others. As long as one side insists on exempting itself from the rules, both legal and rhetorical, it wishes the other side to abide by bitterness, turmoil, and anger will continue, not just between political parties, but between racial groups and between religious and secular groups as well.

Next Phase in the Culture War

People sometimes scoff at the notion that here in America we're deeply immersed in a "culture war." Well, pace those who disagree, we are. One of the lines of battle is over gay marriage and the left's need to punish anyone who voices any reservations, much less resistance, to this particular example of progressive enlightenment.

In Denver, for example, punishment is to be meted out not only to those who refuse to service gay weddings, but a forteriori to anyone whose personal opinion is that gay marriage is something less than a wonderful thing. The next step in the Culture Wars is shutting down businesses and putting people out of work, not because the business has transgressed the law or discriminated against patrons but purely because of the moral and religious beliefs of the business' founder. Consider this piece by David Harsanyi at The Federalist about Chick-fil-A's application to open a concession at Denver International Airport:

The Denver Council’s Business Development Committee has stalled a seven-year deal with Chick-fil-A because CEO Dan Cathy spoke out against gay marriage back in 2012. Cathy, after being flogged for this misconduct, backed off , saying he regretted getting involved. But that won’t do. There are no prisoners in this culture war. So the council will meet in couple of weeks to take up the topic again. Not so the members can take time to chew over the significance of a city punishing its citizens for their thoughts and beliefs, or even to weigh the importance of tolerance in a vibrant city like Denver. They’re waiting to have a closed-door committee hearing with city attorneys, who will brief them on the legal implications and practicality of shutting down apostates.

The only thing that might stop Denver from pulling this concession from an apologetic Christian, then, is a few risk-averse bureaucrats. This, even though Chick-fil-A has not been accused of any infraction or crime; no one has even suggested it’s guilty of make-believe acts of discrimination. Chick-fil-A has given assurances, in fact, as all other concessionaires at Denver International Airport (DEN) restaurants have, it will follow nondiscrimination policies laid out by law, which include protections for sexual orientation.

So what’s the point? Well, Robin Kniech, council person, asked a concessionaire this question: “If the national corporation with which you are affiliated once again puts themselves at the center of a national debate about depriving people and their families of rights, would you as a concessionaire have any ability to influence that?”

“I don’t believe so,” he answered.

“I don’t think you would, either,” Kniech says. “And that’s my concern.”

So that’s her concern? Setting aside her absurd oversimplification of the debate surrounding marriage, since when is it the interest of a council person to monitor the political activities of citizens and wonder how she deals with vendors who displease her sensibilities? Do Americans with minority opinions function under some different set of laws? The only person with the power to deprive anyone or their families of rights, in this case, is the council. So please tell me how Kniech isn’t a petty tyrant?

There's more to this story at the link. It paints a picture of America in 2015, an America that's been "fundamentally transformed." No longer are you free to hold a view that lies outside the mainstream (or in the Chick-fil-A case, squarely in the mainstream). You must conform to the progressive vision in both thought and deed, and if you don't everything and everyone associated with you will be punished. If we're not in the midst of a culture war it's only because one side has surrendered. Next thing the Denver council will be requiring everyone in their city to wear Mao suits.

Scientism

This past summer I read Alex Rosenberg's The Atheist's Guide to Reality in which he unequivocally promotes a scientistic view of knowledge. "Scientistic" does not mean "scientific," rather it describes a view based on "scientism" which is the view that science is the only guide to truth about the world and human existence. If a claim cannot be demonstrated empirically, using the tools of science, then it's not something that we can know, and in fact is not even something we should believe. In Rosenberg's view physics "fixes all the facts" about what is and what can be reasonably believed. This is sometimes called "physicalism."

Not all scientists are scientistic or "physicalists," many of them hold that there are truths about the world that science is not equipped to discover, but Rosenberg thinks this is neither good science nor good epistemology.

Rosenberg is no dummy. He's the chairman of the philosophy department at Duke University and demonstrates in his book a considerable breadth of learning. He also strives to be rigorously consistent. Given his belief that physicalism is the correct way to understand reality it follows that there is no God, no miracles, no soul or mind, no self, no real meaning or purpose to life, no meaning to history, no human rights or value, no objective moral duties - only what he calls a "nice nihilism."

By "nice nihilism" Rosenberg means that nature has fortuitously evolved in us a tendency to treat each other well despite the fact that doing so is neither a moral duty nor in any way "right." That, for the one who embraces Rosenberg's scientism, is the only glimmer of light in an unrelentingly dark world and even this little glimmer is beset with problems. Here's one:

If our niceness is the product of impersonal undirected processes then it can not have any moral purchase on us. That is, it can be neither right nor wrong to be "nice." Some people are and some aren't, and that's the end of the matter. Evolution has also evolved behaviors that are not "nice." If we are the product of evolution then there's really no way to morally discriminate between "niceness" and rape, torture, lying, racism, etc. All of these behaviors have evolved in our species just as niceness has and we have no basis for saying that we have a moral duty to avoid some behaviors and embrace others. In other words, on scientism, there are no moral obligations and nothing which is wrong to do.

Rosenberg admits all this, but he thinks that we need to face up to the fact that these are the consequences of adopting a scientistic worldview and a scientistic worldview, in his mind, is the only intelligent option in a world in which there is no God.

I think he's right about this and argue in my novel In the Absence of God (as well as my forthcoming Bridging the Abyss) that the consequences he outlines in The Atheist's Guide to Reality do indeed follow from atheism. The atheist who lives as if none of these consequences exist is living out an irrational delusion, most likely because he can't live consistently with the logical and existential entailments of what he believes about God.

A belief that leads to conclusions one cannot live with, however, stands in serious need of reexamination.

Stem Cell Triumph

There's been much debate over the past few decades about the moral propriety of stem cell research. The problem has been that researchers coveted stem cells obtained from human embryos which meant that the embryo was destroyed in order to produce the cells. This was seen by many as morally problematic and so research was begun on obtaining stem cells from other sources. There were many technical difficulties and critics were quick to point out the need to use the much more pliable embryonic cells for the research.

Nevertheless, work continued on alternatives and now comes word that an almost fully-formed human brain, albeit of the size of that of a human fetus, has been grown from stem cells harvested from skin.

Here's part of the story from The Guardian:

An almost fully-formed human brain has been grown in a lab for the first time, claim scientists from Ohio State University. The team behind the feat hope the brain could transform our understanding of neurological disease.

Though not conscious the miniature brain, which resembles that of a five-week-old foetus, could potentially be useful for scientists who want to study the progression of developmental diseases. It could also be used to test drugs for conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, since the regions they affect are in place during an early stage of brain development.

The brain, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, is engineered from adult human skin cells and is the most complete human brain model yet developed, claimed Rene Anand of Ohio State University, Columbus, who presented the work today at the Military Health System Research Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Previous attempts at growing whole brains have at best achieved mini-organs that resemble those of nine-week-old foetuses, although these “cerebral organoids” were not complete and only contained certain aspects of the brain. “We have grown the entire brain from the get-go,” said Anand.

Anand and his colleagues claim to have reproduced 99% of the brain’s diverse cell types and genes. They say their brain also contains a spinal cord, signalling circuitry and even a retina.

The ethical concerns were non-existent, said Anand. “We don’t have any sensory stimuli entering the brain. This brain is not thinking in any way.”

There are more details at the link. Wesley J. Smith at Evolution News and Views comments succinctly on this development:

May it be so. Now let's analyze what this breakthrough could portend.
First, no need for unethical human cloning to derive cells for use in research and drug testing.
Second, no need for fetal farming for experimentation and organ transplants.
Finally, no need for Planned Parenthood dismemberments of fetuses killed in a "less crunchy" way.
Remember when embryonic stem cells were OUR ONLY HOPE? And how those of us who said that particular meme wasn't true were "anti-science"?

Actually, I recall worse pejoratives than "anti-science" being hurled at opponents of embryonic stem cell research. When President George W. Bush cut off federal funding for embryonic stem cell research he was called names which were much less polite. It's nice to see this vindication of those who stood for the principle that "all lives matter," even the lives of embryonic human beings.

Bad Deal

Reading about the nuclear weapons deal with Iran it's easy to think that Iran must have thought they were negotiating with the most naive people in the world, or the dumbest. Not only does the deal grant Iran $100 billion to underwrite terrorism and weapons procurement, not only does it legitimize Iran's nuclear weapons program as long as they wait ten to fifteen years before starting production, it also grants to Iran the responsibility of monitoring its own compliance. As incredible as it sounds, Iran has been granted the privilege of telling us whether or not it's cheating.

As some have said, this deal is like telling pro athletes that the league will take their word for whether or not they've been using banned substances. As details of the deal negotiated by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry seep into the public domain it just looks like one of the worst pieces of American diplomacy in the nation's history.

Remember when the president and others told us that the deal gives us "anytime, anywhere inspection authority"? Well, that assurance seems to be hewn from the same timber as Mr. Obama's promise that Obamacare would allow you to keep your doctor and make insurance coverage cheaper. The mullahs must be in hysterics over how they've bamboozled the Great Satan.

The flaws should make it DOA in Congress nevertheless, many Democrats will still support it on the grounds that, as Mr. Obama avers, it's a choice between either this deal or war. That's not true, of course, there are other options, but even if it were true that war is the only alternative the choice this deal forces us into is between conventional strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities now or a nuclear war a decade from now.

One of the alleged selling points of the deal tacitly confirms this. The administration has claimed that the access we will have in Iran through IAEA inspections will provide us with a much better picture of where Iran's facilities are so that should we have to bomb them we'll be able to do a much better job of it. Put another way, this deal offers us two alternatives: If Iran cheats (which they will) and we bomb (which is highly doubtful) we can do so more effectively. If Iran doesn't cheat they're essentially free to resume nuclear weapons production in ten years.

Wouldn't it have been better to tighten sanctions to the point where Iran had to stop nuclear weapons production permanently and on our terms than to leave ourselves with the options we now seem to have?

The Wesley Experience

Helen de Cruz has been writing an interesting series of interviews with philosophers at the Philosophy of Religion blog Prosblogion. She asks these thinkers to share with readers their own religious views and there are posts from philosophers who run the gamut from Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Mormon, Anglican, agnostic, deist, evangelical protestant, and quasi-atheist. One of the most interesting to me was an interview with David McNaughton who teaches philosophy at Florida State University. Here's part of the interview:

Can you tell me something about your current religious affiliation/self-identification?

I was brought up agnostic, but my parents sent me to Methodist Sunday School (for as long as I wished) so I might find out for myself. After considerable prayer and heart-searching I joined the Methodist Church around 1960 and stayed there for ten years, including being a very active member of the Methodist Society at my undergraduate university. I did my graduate work at Magdalen College Oxford and attended College Chapel, at the end of which I was received into the Church of England.

Shortly thereafter I drifted away from Christianity, eventually becoming both sceptical and slightly hostile until my mid-30s when I began slowly to re-evaluate my position. Strong influences here were C. S. Lewis and William James, as well as teaching philosophy of religion with Richard Swinburne. I remained a highly sympathetic agnostic until 2004, when I decided to recommit to the church.

Could you say a bit more about the factors involved in your recommitting to the church in 2004 (I’m especially interested in the influence of your teaching philosophy of religion – many people allege that personal faith has an influence on one’s philosophy of religion, but here it seems the other way around!)

The immediate cause of my returning to the church was the death of my wife in July 2004. She was diagnosed with terminal secondary cancer of the lining of the lung in 2002. I had signed up to come to FSU and she was keen to be in the USA where her parents lived. As you can imagine, the move in conjunction with her illness and the medical treatment was horrendous.

During this time I prayed regularly and received much help in return. Shortly after her death some of her relatives invited us to a vacation at Port St. Joe. Walking along the beach at dawn, it seemed to me that God was reminding me that he had come through for me and now it was my turn....

In the course of my conversation with God I distinctly remember saying that I would give up my old complaint that I had never had the ‘Wesley experience’ (I was originally a Methodist). Indeed, I recall saying that I assumed He knew best, since as a philosopher I would probably regard any emotional experience with profound suspicion. The temporary priest at my church was part of a husband and wife team at Grace Mission in the most deprived part of Tallahassee, so I started going there. On my second or third visit, I suddenly had the impression that some physical weight had been removed from my shoulders. Puzzled, I thought about this, and realized that, for the first time in my life, I did not feel guilty about the many things I have done that I regret. I realized that my sins really were forgiven, i.e. The Wesley Experience. (This merely confirmed a view that I had long held: that God has a rather Puckish sense of humor).

I learned a number of things from teaching philosophy of religion.

• Hume’s objections were nothing like as strong as I had supposed.
• There was more to traditional arguments for theism than I thought.
• A combination of Pascal’s Wager and William James seemed to me to make a very strong case for commitment. One objection to Pascal is that the wager only makes sense if there is only one form of religion to choose from. James, however, points out that, for the recipe to work, the option must be a live one.

Since Christianity was the only live one for me (I had tried Buddhism) then a combination of James and Pascal’s arguments was irresistible. I say ‘irresistible’ but of course I did resist, or at least, made no move, until impelled by my wife’s death.

I was glad to see that McNaughton, like many, if not most, philosophers of religion, found Hume's arguments to be less than compelling. I realized some time ago that Hume was held in much higher esteem by the free-thought skeptics than he was by philosophers who spent much of their careers studying his arguments.

Anyway, the rest of the McNaughton interview is pretty interesting, too, so you may want to check it out.

Are We a Simulation?

Robert Kuhn host and writer of the public television program Closer to Truth has an excellent column on the theory that our universe is actually a computer simulation. He writes:

I began bemused. The notion that humanity might be living in an artificial reality — a simulated universe — seemed sophomoric, at best science fiction.

But speaking with scientists and philosophers on "Closer to Truth," I realized that the notion that everything humans see and know is a gigantic computer game of sorts, the creation of supersmart hackers existing somewhere else, is not a joke. Exploring a "whole-world simulation," I discovered, is a deep probe of reality.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, describes a fake universe as a "richly detailed software simulation of people, including their historical predecessors, by a very technologically advanced civilization."

It's like the movie "The Matrix," Bostrom said, except that "instead of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the brains themselves would also be part of the simulation. It would be one big computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons and synapses."

Bostrum is not saying that humanity is living in such a simulation. Rather, his "Simulation Argument" seeks to show that one of three possible scenarios must be true (assuming there are other intelligent civilizations):

• All civilizations become extinct before becoming technologically mature;
• All technologically mature civilizations lose interest in creating simulations;
• Humanity is literally living in a computer simulation.

His point is that all cosmic civilizations either disappear (e.g., destroy themselves) before becoming technologically capable, or all decide not to generate whole-world simulations (e.g., decide such creations are not ethical, or get bored with them). The operative word is "all" — because if even one civilization anywhere in the cosmos could generate such simulations, then simulated worlds would multiply rapidly and almost certainly humanity would be in one.

As technology visionary Ray Kurzweil put it, "maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high school student in another universe." (Given how things are going, he jokes, she may not get a good grade.)

Kurzweil's worldview is based on the profound implications of what happens over time when computing power grows exponentially. To Kurzweil, a precise simulation is not meaningfully different from real reality. Corroborating the evidence that this universe runs on a computer, he says, is that "physical laws are sets of computational processes" and "information is constantly changing, being manipulated, running on some computational substrate." And that would mean, he concluded, "the universe is a computer." Kurzweil said he considers himself to be a "pattern of information."

"I'm a patternist," he said. "I think patterns, which means that information is the fundamental reality."

Information, of course, is the product of minds, thus, if information is the fundamental reality in our world there must be a mind that has generated it. Many people, of course, agree with this and argue that the information which comprises this world is produced by the mind of God, but scientists, at least naturalistic scientists, argue that God is a metaphysical concept which lies outside the purview of science. Instead they advert to the existence of computer hackers in other universes which is also a metaphysical posit, but since it's not God, it's okay to speculate about it.

Kuhn goes on:

Would the simulation argument relate to theism, the existence of God? Not necessarily.

Bostrum said, "the simulation hypothesis is not an alternative to theism or atheism. It could be a version of either — it's independent of whether God exists." While the simulation argument is "not an attempt to refute theism," he said, it would "imply a weaker form of a creation hypothesis," because the creator-simulators "would have some of the attributes we traditionally associate with God in the sense that they would have created our world."

They would be superintelligent, but they "wouldn't need unlimited or infinite minds." They could "intervene in the world, our experiential world, by manipulating the simulation. So they would have some of the capabilities of omnipotence in the sense that they could change anything they wanted about our world."

So even if this universe looks like it was created, neither scientists nor philosophers nor theologians could easily distinguish between the traditional creator God and hyper-advanced creator-simulators.

But that leads to the old regress game and the question of who created the (weaker) creator-simulators. At some point, the chain of causation must end — although even this, some would dispute.

In other words, the universe displays indications of having been intelligently designed rather than having been an enormously improbable accident. This poses vexing problems for naturalists who feel constrained to account for the design without invoking you-know-who. So they theorize about a multiverse of an infinite number of worlds or speculate about extra-cosmic computer programmers who've created a world that looks real but is in fact just a computer simulation.

These extraordinary hypotheses are taken seriously by some philosophers and scientists, but if someone were to suggest that maybe this universe really is the only universe, that maybe it's real and not an illusory simulation foisted on us by some pimply extra-terrestrial, and that maybe it's instead the product of a single intelligent transcendent mind, he would suffer the ridicule and scorn of those who'd sooner believe that the universe is a science project of a seventh grader in some other more technologically advanced universe. I wonder which is the more implausible hypothesis.

Kuhn points out that the simulation hypothesis has great difficulty with the phenomenon of human consciousness:

A prime assumption of all simulation theories is that consciousness — the inner sense of awareness, like the sound of Gershwin or the smell of garlic — can be simulated; in other words, that a replication of the complete physical states of the brain will yield, ipso facto, the complete mental states of the mind. (This direct correspondence usually assumes, unknowingly, the veracity of what's known in philosophy of mind as "identity theory," one among many competing theories seeking to solve the intractable "mind-body problem".) Such a brain-only mechanism to account for consciousness, required for whole-world simulations and promulgated by physicalists, is to me not obvious.

In other words, how could the sensation of seeing blue - as opposed to blue itself - be simulated? Until there is a plausible physical explanation of consciousness, which there is not at this point, it seems unlikely that conscious beings are nothing more than a simulation.

There's more of interest in this essay at the link including how physicist Paul Davies uses the simulation argument to refute the multiverse hypothesis. Kuhn closes with this:

I find five premises to the simulation argument: (i) Other intelligent civilizations exist; (ii) their technologies grow exponentially; (iii) they do not all go extinct; (iv) there is no universal ban or barrier for running simulations; and (v) consciousness can be simulated.

If these five premises are true, I agree, humanity is likely living in a simulation. The logic seems sound, which means that if you don't accept (or don't want to accept) the conclusion, then you must reject at least one of the premises. Which to reject?

Personally, I find (i) problematic, (ii) possible but questionable (it's just as likely that technological growth reaches a ceiling or collapses altogether), and (v) highly doubtful.

Does Science Need Philosophy?

It seems to be something of a trend lately for materialists, particularly materialist scientists, to denigrate philosophy. Cosmologists Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss are two recent examples. Hawking even went so far as to pronounce philosophy dead in his book The Grand Design.

I wonder if one of the subconscious reasons for their disdain for philosophy is that these scientists and others are writing books claiming that science pretty much makes belief in God untenable, but they're finding that philosophers who critique their arguments are showing them to be embarrassingly unsophisticated. The animus against philosophy may derive from personal chagrin suffered at the hands of philosopher-critics.

Be that as it may, Hawking and Krauss, for all their brilliance, are astonishingly unaware of the philosophical faux pas that pervades their own writing.

Krauss, for example, made the claim in his book A Universe from Nothing that the universe emerged spontaneously out of a mix of energy and the laws of physics which he calls "nothing." Thus God is not necessary to account for the universe. Of course, this is a semantic sleight-of-hand since if the cosmos was produced by energy and physical laws then there was not "nothing," there was "something," and we're confronted with the mystery of how this energy and these laws came about.

Hawking declared philosophy "dead" in the early pages of his book and then spent a good part of the rest of the book philosophizing about realist and anti-realist views of the universe and the existence of a multiverse.

It's ironic that physicists like Hawking and Krauss would be so willing to deprecate philosophy since their own discipline is infused with it. Every time physicists talk about the multiverse or the nature of time or space or their own naturalistic assumptions about reality, they're doing metaphysics. When they talk about knowledge, cause and effect, the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of uniformity, or the problem of exactly what constitutes the scientific enterprise (the demarcation problem), they're doing philosophy. Whenever they discuss the ethics required of scientists in conducting and reporting their researches they're doing philosophy.

The entire discipline of science presupposes a host of philosophical assumptions like the trustworthiness of our senses and of our reason, the orderliness of the universe, the existence of a world outside our minds, etc. Yet these thinkers seem to be oblivious to the foundational role philosophy plays in their own discipline. Indeed, science would be impossible apart from axiomatic philosophical beliefs such as those listed above.

There's a bit of a joke at Uncommon Descent about this. It goes like this:

Scientist: "Why does philosophy matter?"
Philosopher: "I don't know, why does science matter?"
Scientist: "Well, because scie...."
Philosopher: "Annnnnnnd you are doing philosophy."

What the Left Is Defending

Kirsten Powers has strong words for those of her fellow Democrats who insist on trying to defend Planned Parenthood while simultaneously trying to discredit the journalists who have exposed the butchery and inhumane callousness of the people involved in procuring body parts from aborted babies. Here's her lede:

Democrats like to talk about the importance of being on the “right side of history.” This phrase was invoked frequently during the same-sex marriage debate. Yet when faced with a series of videosdetailing grotesque human rights abuses against unborn children by Planned Parenthood Federation of America doctors, Democratic Party forces have eschewed all concern for historical or moral rightness.

Pope Francis has correctly described the unborn as “ the most defenseless and innocent among us.” But in the sordid tale of strategic crushing of the unborn to better harvest their hearts, lungs and livers, many Democrats have incredibly cast an organization with a roughly $1.3 billion annual budget in the role of the innocent and defenseless. Hillary Clinton emerged as Planned Parenthood’s highest profile protector Monday, decrying the “ assault” against her allegedly helpless campaign donors.

The Democratic Party shilling for barbarism — whether by politicians, liberal media outlets, union officials or unrestricted abortion advocates — is not likely to be viewed favorably by future generations. These Democrats will be remembered for demonizing the activists who lifted the veil on a previously sanitized process and for seeking restraining orders to silence truth tellers.

They will be remembered for publishing dehumanizing decrees — as The New Republic did — that people stop criticizing Planned Parenthood because as a medical matter, “The term baby … doesn’t apply until birth” (that thing on your sonogram is nothing more than a “product[] of conception.”) And they will be remembered for demanding investigations into citizen journalists for meticulously exposing atrocities in our midst.

I don’t use the word atrocity lightly.

Read the rest at the link. Meanwhile, another video has been released by the Center for Medical Progress and is said to be the most horrific yet. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air comments:

The Center for Medical Progress has just released a new video this morning, which continues its in-depth interview with former StemExpress procurement technician Holly O’Donnell. In this video, O’Donnell describes how she saw her supervisor tap the chest of “the most gestated fetus” O’Donnell had yet seen in her work — and the heart started beating. Nonetheless, the child was killed and dissected. In another case, O’Donnell describes being instructed to extract a brain through the face of a cadaver. “I can’t even describe what that feels like,” O’Donnell says.

Here's the video for those who doubt that human beings who seem otherwise normal can simply set aside their humanity and become completely desensitized to what they're doing. Fortunately, the young woman featured in this video hadn't lost her humanity, but the doctor she describes certainly seems to have lost hers:

Ten Topics #9 & #10

John Loftis, at his blog Debunking Christianity, lists ten objections, concepts, or topics that seem to be raised most often by atheists in debates with theists. Here's the ninth and tenth (my response to the earlier objections can be found by scrolling down the page):

9. Atheism is a conclusion, not a worldview. Atheism is not an answer to life, the universe, and everything - just the conclusion that theism isn't.

This is disingenuous. There's an entire worldview which follows from atheism as can be seen by reading Alex Rosenberg's An Atheist's Guide to Reality. Atheism is not a conclusion from an argument but rather it's the initial premise which, for the vast majority of atheists, leads them to scientism, physicalism, materialism, naturalism, and for the most logical among them, nihilism. So far from being the conclusion, it's the starting point from which an entire web of conclusions about reality follows.

As Rosenberg and many other atheist thinkers have made clear, if one starts with the assumption that there is no God then one is led almost inexorably to the conclusion that there's no genuine meaning to life, no objective moral duty, no ultimate justice, no self, no free will, no afterlife, and no hope. The assumption of atheism also leads many atheists to the belief that human beings have no real intrinsic worth, dignity, or rights, that there are no immaterial substances like souls or minds and that human beings are little more than flesh and bone machines. Those beliefs constitute a worldview that colors and frames almost everything else one believes about life and the world.

Here's Cornell University biologist Will Provine:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear, and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death....There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will ....

For more elaboration on the implications of atheism drawn by atheists themselves see here; and here.

The point is that many atheists don't arrive at atheism as a result of a long chain of rational thought, rather they decide at the outset that they just don't want there to be a God and then they draw out the implications of their decision. Philosopher Thomas Nagel admits; that the hope that there is no God is one he harbors himself:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

For many thinkers, their atheism is a kind of wish-fulfillment upon which their worldview is based.

Ten Topics #10

10. Attack the arguments for what is said, not what isn't. Though this should apply to everyone - not just theists. Arguing against interpretations not in the text is setting up a caricature, as is arguing against uncharitable interpretations of what is said.

I might add to this that it is also unhelpful, not to mention exceedingly juvenile, to attack one's discussion partner personally with insult and invective. Unfortunately, it happens all too often. It was disappointing to listen to the dialogue between physicist Lawrence Krauss and philosopher William Lane Craig in Australia a couple of years ago, when Krauss repeatedly attacked; Craig's character over a simple misunderstanding. Such tactics do nothing but cause fair-minded listeners to think that the attacker has no good arguments to offer and so must substitute ad hominem for calm, mature, and rational discourse.