Pope Benedict XVI

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was named Pope Benedict XVI today. Here is an excerpt from his homily at the Mass for the election of the next pontiff a couple of days ago:

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking... The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth.

Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4:14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching," looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.

He appears to be a man keenly aware of the corrosive effect modernity has had on the Christian Church in general and Catholicism in particular. If so, he will be a worthy successor to John Paul II. Would that a few such as they could be found among the leaders of mainline protestantism right now.

The whole homily can be read here. You'll have to scroll down.

What Baghdadis Believe

Arthur Chrenkoff has a report and commentary on a recent poll taken of 778 Baghdad residents. The results were published in the April 18 edition of Iraqi Arabic newspaper Almidhar. Baghdadis were asked:

Do you support the pull out of foreign troops?

At once - 12.56%

According to a future timetable - 81.80%

Do not know - 5.64%

Has the security situation improved since the start of the new government?

Yes - 55%

No - 35%

No change - 10%

Chrenkoff's associate Haider Ajina writes:

"Most of us read, heard and saw the media report of the April 9th demonstrations in Baghdad. Most of the U.S. media portrayed it as a massive anti American demonstration in the streets of Iraq. I noticed, however, from Iraqi Arabic newspapers that most the demonstrations were against terrorism and calling for Saddam's trial and hanging (all these signs were in Arabic).

I called my father in Baghdad to confirm this and he confirmed it. My father then confirmed that Al Sadr had asked his followers to demonstrate for the withdrawal of foreign troops, he also said that this group was very small and almost insignificant compared to the rest who were calling for Saddam's trial and hanging and those against terrorism.

My father said the Iraqi media reported the number like this 'about 200,000 demonstrators of which 8,000-10,000 were Al-Sadr and Sunni supporters' (strange bed fellows). He also said that when he listened to the Iraqi elected officials (on live T.V.) in the assembly, that every one (every one including those Sunnis initially opposed to the elections), every man and woman assembly member, reiterated the importance of foreign and specifically U.S. troops staying in Iraq till Iraq is ready to take over its own security. Most of them expressed their thanks for the troops being there and freeing Iraqis from Saddam. This I did not read, hear or see in any U.S. mainstream media outlet.

"These are the people Iraq elected, asking us to stay and thanking us. The poll shows only 12% want us to leave at once. This makes a complete mockery of the mainstream media coverage of the demonstrations. As my wife told me when she heard the coverage on CNN: 'Haider you are going to get mad when you hear this', and I am still mad. Forgive me for rehashing this point. I feel it really needs pointing out. Iraqis are grateful for what we did and continue to be grateful for us being there."

The lesson here is, of course, that we should be skeptical of everything we see or hear in the MSM. They've a profound interest in discrediting Bush's Iraq policy and have demonstrated that they're not going to make him look good by publishing and broadcasting news from Iraq that shows that policy to be succeeding. The news must be unfavorable or it simply gets spiked. And they wonder why they're losing audience.

Thanks to Instapundit for the tip.

A Few Good Men

Go here to read a fascinating account of how a couple of Pennsylvania Marines thwarted the attack on Camp Gannon in Iraq last week in which 21 insurgents were killed and no Americans were seriously injured.

Speaking About the Unspeakable

Richard John Neuhaus asks good questions in a piece on torture called Speaking About the Unspeakable in the March issue of First Things. He writes:

Sanford Levinson who teaches law at the University of Texas has edited a book from Oxford University Press, Torture, with sixteen reflections on the subject. They range from the don't-talk-about-it school to the talk-about-it-only-to-condemn-it view, to a variety of discussions of when torture is permissible and impermissible....Among the more interesting contributions is one by Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Posner notes that "torture" lacks a clear definition in international agreements and American law. "Almost all official interrogation is coercive, yet not all coercive interrogation would be called 'torture' by any competent user of the English language, so that what is involved in using the word is picking out the point along a continuum at which the observer's queasiness turns to revulsion."

There is ... a continuum of circumstances in which most people, rightly or wrongly, would make an exception to the general prohibition of torture. The most commonly cited exception is that of "the ticking bomb" in which there is reason to believe that a suspect knows the location of a nuclear weapon planted in a large city which, if it explodes, will kill thousands of people. In this book and elsewhere, almost all the parties to this discussion feel compelled to address "the ticking bomb" circumstance. Posner says he agrees with (Alan) Dershowitz that "if the stakes are high enough, torture is permissible." He adds, "No one who doubts that should be in a position of responsibility."

The assumption held by many, however, is that torture is intrinsically evil and is therefore absolutely wrong. Even moral subjectivists will sometimes argue that torture is absolutely wrong until they realize the logical awkwardness of their position. In any event, causing pain is not intrinsically evil. If it were then the surgeon who performs a painful operation would be malevolent. What makes torture wrong is not the pain it inflicts but rather the motive or reason for inflicting it.

Torture carried out for amusement, for its own sake, or for punishment is a great evil and should be banished from the earth, but torture to save lives is of a different moral order altogether. Just as all killing isn't of the same moral quality, neither is all causing of pain the same. Just as some killing may be morally justified, so, too, may some instances of causing pain. The justification lies in the purpose for the act.

Neuhaus goes on to say that:

In all this, I am struck by the paucity of serious discussions by Christian moral theologians and ethicists. In these pages I have said, "We dare not trust ourselves to torture." I believe that but acknowledge that it is not sufficient. How do we address these questions of what in fact is happening in circumstances in which conscientious Christians seek moral guidance, and how can we do this without falling into the pits of relativism, proportionalism, consequentialism, and related errors? In the ticking bomb instance, does the duty to protect thousands of innocents override the duty not to torture?

The answer to Neuhaus' question, I think, has to be "yes". Not only in cases where thousands of lives are at stake but also in cases where only a single life hangs in the balance. Consider this entirely plausible scenario: A young girl has been kidnapped and imprisoned in a torture chamber or buried alive by her captor who is subsequently caught. He acknowledges that he is the girl's abductor but will not tell police where she is. He will tell them only that she has just a few days of food, air, and water left before she dies. If this were your daughter would you fault the police if they tortured the man to get the information from him needed to save the girl's life? Indeed, if this were your daughter would you refuse to let the police use such methods on her behalf if they came to you and asked for your assent? If so, why? Is the comfort of a child molester and killer more important than saving your daughter's life?

Most of us don't like to ask ourselves such questions. They make us feel too uncomfortable. Yet unless we do ask them our opinions on this subject remain inchoate. We may well find ourselves thrust into a real ticking bomb scenario in the not too distant future. The bomb may be a nuclear device in a major city. We'd be wise to have done some thinking about this issue before that day arrives.

Rampant Nitwitism

Campus Magazine Online's 2005 Campus Outrage Awards are out. Sterling examples of political correctness run amok on our college campuses, the awards are hilarious in their stupidity but terribly sad in the toll that PC takes on individual lives and what it portends for intellectual freedom in this country.

Here, for example, is the account of the second place winner which Viewpoint thinks may well have deserved top honors:

At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Economics Professor Hans Hoppe received disciplinary sanctions for making an economically verifiable argument that homosexuals engage less in long-term financial planning than heterosexuals because they typically do not have children. One of Hoppe's students, Michael Knight, filed a complaint leading to a yearlong battle between Hoppe and the University (which Hoppe eventually won). Knight accused Hoppe of "stereotyping homosexuals...When the door closes and the lecture began [sic], he needs to make sure he is remaining as politically correct as possible."

In an interview with Professor Hoppe by the Collegiate Network, Professor Hoppe believes he lost a year of his life to the entire affair. The University's Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Officer affirmed the complaint by Knight and recommended that Hoppe receive a reprimand and be suspended without pay for one week. A grievance committee made up of one student and Hoppe's faculty peers was held on November 18, 2004. The committee upheld the original grievance and recommended that Hoppe be reprimanded and forfeit any merit pay for the current academic year.

On February 9, 2005, Hoppe received "a non-disciplinary letter of instruction" from Raymond W. Alden, III, the university's Executive Vice President and Provost, affirming the decision of the grievance committee, stating that Hoppe had created "a hostile learning environment" in his classroom, and instructing Hoppe "to cease mischaracterizing opinion as objective fact in the educational environment." However, nine days later, the university's president, Dr. Carol Harter, released a statement in which she acknowledged that professors "are entitled the freedom to teach theories and to espouse opinions that are out of the mainstream or are controversial...."

Nowhere in the statement did Harter apologize to Hoppe for what university officials put him through, nor were any individual university officials singled out for criticism.

We have said it before, but it bears repeating. No one should be permitted to serve in any capacity on a college or university campus, or to graduate from any such institution, without having read, discussed, and digested John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. It is the perfect antidote to the rampant nitwitism and intellectual tyranny that afflicts our institutions of higher learning.

The Wolphin and the Hominids

Scientists have found that an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin has bred with a false killer whale to produce a hybrid referred to as a "wolphin".

Although false killer whales and Atlantic bottlenose dolphins are different species, they are classified within the same family by scientists.

Scientists identify a species in terms of whether members of the two groups can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. If they cannot, like cats and dogs which cannot interbreed, or horses and donkeys which can interbreed but whose offspring (mules) is infertile, they are said to be reproductively isolated and are therefore regarded as separate species.

If this "wolphin" is fertile, however, then either the concept of species loses a lot of its meaning or we must allow that at least some kinds of whales and some kinds of dolphins are really the same species.

A revision of the concept of species would have interesting implications for human evolution. There are numerous fossil hominids which have been placed in disparate species on the basis of morphological differences which may or may not warrant the separation. Morphology, after all, is a precarious criterion for taxonomic distinctions. All the domestic dogs around the world, from Chihuahuas to Great Danes, are members of the same species.

If the various hominids were indeed interfertile then the rationale for placing them in different species disappears. As it is, the only rationale for separating them is that paleontologists assume that they have evolved over time one from the other, and that, being separated by vast amounts of time, they must have been reproductively isolated.

If, however, it were to turn out that they were all members of the same species it would certainly make life difficult for evolutionists. They would then be confronted with a relatively abrupt speciation event in which ape-like hominoids transitioned to Homo sapiens while leaving very little evidence of intermediary forms.

The story of human evolution, like evolution in general, is far from settled.

Sarah Lunde

Another little girl has been raped and murdered by a registered sex offender, a man who has committed sexual assault and rape on previous occasions:

David Lee Onstott, 36, was charged with first-degree murder in Sarah Lunde's death after confessing Saturday, Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee told reporters. He had once dated her mother and unexpectedly showed up at the family's trailer home after the girl returned from a church trip April 9.

Sarah let Onstott into the house when he came looking for her mother, Kelly May Lunde, in the predawn hours of the next day, Gee said. After getting into a verbal fight with Sarah, he put her into a choke hold and killed her, Gee said.

Onstott had been previously convicted of a rape, but his father, David Onstott Sr., has said his son wouldn't hurt the girl. Investigators found Sarah's partially clothed body in an abandoned fish pond Saturday. Gee said Onstott "went to great effort to keep her body from being discovered."

Sarah's 17-year-old brother came home early April 10 to find the front door wide open and his sister gone. He told detectives that Onstott came by shortly after, and took a half-empty beer bottle before leaving the house in a rural community about 20 miles south of Tampa. Both Sarah's brother and mother initially assumed Sarah had gone to a friend's house. She wasn't reported missing until April 11.

Doris Fontana, the mother of Sarah's best friend, said that Sarah had told her she didn't like Onstott. "We felt it was him all along. He had no business being there. He hadn't been there in months," she said.

Before Gee announced the charges, her relatives and her church "family" turned out in droves to tearfully mourn the loss of the girl who'd found a safe haven at First Apostolic Church. Sarah almost never missed Sunday morning services at her beloved church.

Among the mourners were Mark Lunsford, whose daughter Jessica was found dead last month after she was kidnapped from their Citrus County home, and Roy Brown, whose daughter Amanda was murdered in 1997 by convicted child molester Willie Crain.

"People asked me why did she come here, why did she spend her time here," said Matt Fontana, the youth minister at the church. "Because she found love here...Now she's in heaven."

Sherry Cook, who with her husband founded the rural church more than two decades ago, said Sarah rarely missed church services. The girl's life seemed to revolve around the church's youth group, and she had spent her last day at a church function.

Sarah had started coming to the church three years ago on her own. No other members of her family attended with her, church leaders said. So determined was she to make it to church that Sarah would often call two or three families to arrange for a ride; they'd all show up to get her.

Fontana said other members of Sarah's youth group were taking the news of her death hard. "I'm trying to stay composed so they stay composed," he said. "They think only bad things happen to bad people."

Standing at the church's altar and surveying the crowd that included about 20 of Sarah's relatives, Fontana told the mourners that more than anything Sarah had wanted to bring her friends and family to the church she so loved. "It's ironic that not until she goes to be with the Lord that she got her wish," Fontana told the congregation.

If our courts won't put these predators in prison and keep them there the next best thing is for people to know who they are. FoxNews has posted a link to the Megan's Law site that lists all registered sex offenders in the nation. You can search the database by zip code or county. It might surprise you what you'll find.

A search turned up seven offenders living in my zip code and over 250 in my county. If you click on the person's name you'll be given some information about them, including a photo. If you have young children you might wish to see if any of these gentlemen (and a few ladies) are living in your neighborhood.

Not all molestors are repeat offenders, I suppose, but virtually everyone who kills is. Many of them testify to the fact that just as an alcoholic is never cured of his alcoholism, neither are sex offenders, especially those who target children, ever cured of their "addiction". If they're going to be allowed to live among us it's worth knowing who they are.

Just Do It

Bob Novak reports that the Republicans have enough votes in the senate to shut down the Democrats' practice of filibustering conservative judicial nominees:

WASHINGTON -- Republican leaders count only two or three GOP senators who will vote against the efforts to end, by a straight majority vote, filibusters on confirmation of judicial nominations.

Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island will not support this move, and they are likely to be joined by Sen. John McCain of Arizona. That would mean 52 senators would go along with the parliamentary maneuver attempting to end filibusters on judges. Only 50 are needed.

The only Democrat who might possibly join this effort is Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. But Bush will not press him to break party discipline if his help is unnecessary.

The GOP plans to change the rule in the senate that the Democrats had exploited since 2000 to launch "virtual" filibusters of the president's judicial appointments. The rule actually only applies to legislative bills, but the Democrats extended it to include judicial nominations, which meant that, once a filibuster was declared, sixty senators had to vote for cloture in order to get a floor vote on the nominee. Since the Democrats hold 45 seats it was almost impossible to get the sixty votes necessary to end the filibuster. Thus, by employing this tactic on Bush's judicial nominees the Democrats essentially arrogated to themselves the ability to decide the ideological complexion of all future judges.

McCain's reason for not supporting the rule change, which the Republicans have every right to enact, is that he fears that someday the Republicans will be in the minority and need the filibuster to block excessively liberal Democratic nominees.

The surest way to realize the senator's fear of impending minoritydom, however, is to fail to act like a majority party. If the GOP isn't going to act like they belong in the senate they can't expect the voters to be enthusiastic about keeping them there. The purpose of being in the majority is to use the power it grants to make our nation stronger and more just. Yielding to the will of senate lefties on a matter as important as who sits on the Supreme Court and the federal bench is precisely the wrong way to accomplish those goals.

We urge the Republicans to act like the majority party and to do what it takes to get the president's nominees approved. If the roles were reversed there can be no doubt that the Democrats would use every watt of their political power to appoint judges who possess the proper ideological predilections. The Republicans have the constitutional authority to change the rule and they have a duty to future generations to do so. Just do it.

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005

Andrea Dworkin passed away on April 9th after an unspecified illness, according to this summary of the driving passion of her life, rescuing women from the depredations of men and the bondage of marriage:

On April 9 the National Organization for Women (NOW) paid tribute to its longtime member, the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, who had died earlier that day at the age of 58. Dworkin authored the 1974 book Woman Hating, a polemic whose objective, she explained, was "to destroy patriarchal power at its source, the family, [and] in its most hideous form, the national state." The New York Times quoted her saying the following: "One of the differences between marriage and prostitution is that in marriage you only have to make a deal with one man"; "Marriage . . . is a legal license to rape"; "The hurting of women is . . . basic to the sexual pleasure of men."

Possibly she is now in a place where she is free from masculine oppression and safe from the dreaded effects of testosterone. Perhaps she is at peace.

A more sympathetic obituary of Dworkin can be found here.

Captured by the Bamboozle

Our Daily Philosophical Quotation service recently forwarded this one from The Fine Art of Baloney Detection by astronomer Carl Sagan:

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge - even to ourselves - that we've been so credulous.

If anyone is qualified to speak on bamboozling an audience it is the author of the astonishingly hubristic claim that "the universe is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be." Why Sagan ever thought that a scientist, speaking as a scientist, should make such a blatantly unscientific assertion he never to our knowledge said. His insistence that reality consists, and has always consisted, solely of matter and energy has the ring of a religious affirmation to it, and it is fair to suppose that Sagan believed it, not on the basis of evidence, but because he wanted it to be true. He was a metaphysical naturalist, an outspoken atheist, who promoted his worldview with unrestrained gusto and who reveled in his vision of a world purged of the supernatural.

He's right, though, that people reach a point in their lives when they're captured by the bamboozle. We each acquire so much psychological inertia in our believings, we invest so heavily of ourselves in our convictions, that we ultimately reach a point of no return after which it is nearly impossible for us to change our minds. We become so enamored of an idea, so comfortable with it, that we don't want it not to be true. Indeed, we sometimes cannot conceive of it not being true. At this stage we have probably already passed the point where it became too painful to acknowledge that we've been taken in.

In the passage quoted above, Sagan probably has in mind, inter alia, religious believers, but one wonders if he could not as easily be talking about himself. Was Carl Sagan himself beguiled, captured, by a naturalistic account of reality that is inherently fraudulent? As an astronomer, he of all people should have been aware of the burgeoning body of evidence being compiled by his colleagues which indicated that the universe is almost unbelievably fine-tuned. He must have known that many scientists in his field were remarking with awe upon the numerous signs of intentionality and foresight that filled the cosmos. There are, it turns out, literally hundreds of facts about the universe discovered in the last several decades which, had they been otherwise than they are by nearly infinitesimally small amounts, the universe either would not have existed at all or it would have been utterly unsuited for living things.

Of course, astonishing precision and enormously high improbabilities are not conclusive proofs that naturalism is a mistake, but it certainly must count as evidence that should provoke doubt in the mind of an honest skeptic. Those who doubt, however, don't make the sort of claim quoted above, a claim which requires a level of dogmatic certainty found only in the staunchest of true believers. Sagan didn't seem to have any doubts whatsoever that man is a purely material being in a purely material universe which is ontologically solitary and unique. If he did have doubts, they were evidently too painful for him to acknowledge. It probably would have dismayed him beyond endurance to think that he might have been so incredibly credulous.

Carl Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62. The irony is that if he was wrong, perhaps he's now realized it. If he was right, though, he'll never have had the satisfaction of knowing it.

The Center For Naturalism, Pt. II

On April 10th we posted commentary on claims the Center For Naturalism (CFN) present on their web site where they seek to clarify and promote the fundamental tenets of naturalism and to tease out their implications for modern man.

CFN embraces a deterministic view of human volition, a view that all of our behavior is caused by our strongest motives, and that free will is an illusion. They state, for instance, that:

Since on a naturalistic understanding, persons are not self-made, but owe their successes and failures to the conditions into which they were born and developed, major social and economic inequalities cannot be justified on the basis that individuals strongly deserve their status.

Nor, however, can these inequalities be condemned. On the naturalist view, they are neither right nor wrong. They just are. Social inequalities, like everything else, are simply the product of the conditions in which society has emerged.

But if it is true that all our choices are determined, if indeed all of our successes and failures are the result of factors over which we have no real control, why does CFN assert the following:

Because naturalism shows our deep connection to the world, lessening ego-driven acquisitiveness and self-preoccupation, it prompts concern for others and for those who will succeed us on the planet.

Naturalists like those at (CFN) assume that everyone will agree with them that acquisitiveness and self-preoccupation are bad, and that concern for others is good. Yet why, if naturalism is true, should anyone assign value to these things at all? Concern for others, especially those who haven't been born yet, is neither good nor bad. In a Godless universe it's simply a personal preference, an expression of one's taste. CFN suggests that there is some sort of moral meaning in their claim that naturalism prompts concern for others, but in a world without God there is no moral meaning. There's no morality at all. Neither good nor evil have any existence.

They also write that:

Seeing our deep connection to nature in every respect can supply the basis for a mature, fulfilling, and cognitively consistent quest for personal growth and meaning.

The problem here is that if death is the end of all personal existence there really can be no ultimate meaning in our lives. On the assumption of atheism, meaning is at best ephemeral and at worst illusory. Everything man does is doomed to perish, all that he seeks to build are just so many sand castles at the edge of the surf, fated to be washed away at the next tide. We're born, we suffer, and we're annihilated. It's all pointless. There's no more meaning in our individual lives than there is in the life of a solitary fly, nor can there be unless physical death is not really the end of our existence.

Naturalism as a guiding philosophy can help create a better world by illuminating more precisely the conditions under which individuals and societies flourish.

Naturalism does not have the sort of record that engenders confidence in its claims to possess the key to human flourishing. Almost all of what is great in Western culture - its music, art, and much of its literature; its charitable and educational institutions; its hospitals and orphanages; its democratic forms of government; its concern for the oppressed and for human rights; even the work of its seminal scientists, was inspired directly or indirectly by Christian theism.

What cultural achievements, on the other hand, have been specifically contributed by atheistic men and women inspired by their naturalistic worldview? What cultural achievements can atheism point to as unambiguous contributions to "human flourishing"? Totalitarian communism? Darwinian survival of the fittest? Post-modern nihilism? The drug culture of the sixties? Gangster rap and punk rock? The art of Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano?

The unfortunate fact is that naturalism, so far from assisting human flourishing, actually stifles it. Its fruits are the Gulag, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Tiananmen Square, and the Holocaust. What's more, such fruits are inevitable when man is reduced to a mere flesh and bone machine with no soul nor anything about him that participates in the divine. The naturalist worldview affords meager support for the concept of human dignity and thus no solid basis for human rights. Rights, without transcendent sanction, are arbitrary and transient. They do not inhere in persons, they are mere words on paper which endure only so long as it pleases those who have the power to rescind them.

To paraphrase George Orwell, if you wish to picture the future in a world in thrall to naturalistic materialism imagine a boot smashing a human face, forever.

Gay Ordination in the ELCA

The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in their Chicago Conference last week, developed and forwarded three resolutions to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly which convenes this August.

The third of the three resolutions urges that the Church's policy prohibiting the ordination of openly homosexual men and women be waived. The recommendation has to be accepted by two thirds of the voting members at the Churchwide Assembly in order to become church policy.

It's hard to say how the assembly will vote. The voting members who will attend the Assembly are often people who seek appointment because they are politically active, and the politically active, for better or worse, tend to be liberal, and liberals in the church, as elsewhere, tend to favor proposals such as these.

One thing of which I feel somewhat sure is that the vast majority of Lutherans would prefer to keep the policy on gays in the clergy the way it has been since the 16th century. Most Lutherans are pretty conservative folks and they have a hard time reconciling the acceptance of openly gay pastors living in unmarried sexual relationships with what they read in their Bibles about homosexuality.

If the Assembly does choose to accept the Council's recommendation two things will probably happen. The severe shortfall of ordained ministers in the ELCA will be temporarily mitigated by an influx of homosexual applicants, and, secondly, the ongoing decline in churchwide membership will accelerate as many Lutherans will simply take their families to the more conservative and traditional non-denominational church down the street.

The leadership of the ELCA surely understands this, but for reasons of political expediency they prefer not to take a firm stand against the ordination of gays. Indeed, almost everyone whose desk the issue crosses recommends that the prohibition against gay ordination be relaxed. Perhaps they each hope that the buck can be passed to the Churchwide Assembly where the whole matter will be tabled for a couple more years.

If so, they're playing a dangerous game. They have the accelerator pressed to the floor and the car is heading for the cliff. We'll see in August how well the brakes work.

Time's Top 100

Time magazine's list of the world's most influential leaders is out and it includes ... Barack Obama, a freshman senator who has been in the senate now for all of three months. It also includes Abu al-Zarqawi, Mahmoud Abbas, and Hugo Chavez but oddly omits Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon, and Pope John Paul II (who, in fairness, may have been scratched from the list after his death). In other words, it's a rather strange register of the world's most influential leaders.

They have other categories with similar inventories which are equally as peculiar. For example their roster of artists and entertainers consists of all Hollywood types (as near as I can tell) plus Ann Coulter. Why is Ann Coulter placed in this list? If a political commentator does belong here (Jon Stewart is mentioned) why are Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who are at least as influential as anyone else Time mentions, not included?

The Heroes and Icons selection includes Nelson Mandella, Melissa Ethridge, and LeBron James, but not Billy Graham or Tommy Franks, nor are any other American service men or women mentioned even though some of them are in line for Congressional Medals of Honor.

The group of influential Scientists and Thinkers has Rick Warren (!?) and Peter Singer but omits William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Alvin Plantinga, certainly three of the most influential thinkers of the last twenty years, whether one agrees with them or not.

Nor do we know how Time could have overlooked the Swift Boat Vets if they were really serious about enumerating the most influential people of 2004. If they could place Rick Warren (who certainly deserves to be somewhere in the top 100) in with scientists and thinkers they could surely have found a home somewhere for the Swift Vets and Paul O'Neill.

If readers would like to suggest nominations for significant omissions or dubious inclusions in Time's list please feel free to forward them to us via our Feedback forum.

Why Home-Schooling is So Popular

This is a story of astonishingly brutal and disgusting behavior by students and incredibly bad judgment by administrators in a school in Columbus, Ohio:

A 16-year-old disabled girl was punched in the face and forced to engage in videotaped sexual acts with several boys in a high school auditorium as dozens of students watched, according to witnesses.

Authorities are investigating and no charges have been filed in the alleged attack last month at Mifflin High School. Four boys suspected of involvement were sent home and have not returned to class.

Also, the principal, Regina Crenshaw, was suspended and will be fired for not calling police, school officials said. And three assistant principals were suspended and will be reassigned to other schools.

The girl was forced to perform oral sex on at least two boys, according to statements from school officials, obtained by The Columbus Dispatch.

Part of the alleged assault was videotaped by a student who had a camera for a school project.

School officials found the girl bleeding from the mouth. An assistant principal cautioned the girl's father against calling 911 to avoid media attention, the statements said. The girl's father called police anyway.

Her father said the girl is developmentally disabled. A special education teacher said the teen has a severe speech impediment.

If we read between the lines, the administrators were just going to let this episode slide by. A young handicapped girl is beaten and coerced into sex by a group of boys while dozens of students look on, filming the event, and the administrators urged the father not to call the police because it would make the school look bad. We hope the father presses charges against his daughter's assailants and sues the school's principal for negligence, malpractice, and fraud - the latter for misrepresenting herself as a professional school administrator.

We wonder what the school district will do with these students - not just the ones who did it, but also the ones who watched and did nothing to stop it. Will the perpetrators receive the usual three day suspension and return to the hallways to the cheers of their buddies as though they were heroes, or will the district show more spine than Ms Crenshaw displayed and permanently expel the thugs and administer serious punishments to their cheerleaders?

We also wonder what the parents of the students involved in the assault, and of those who enjoyed the spectacle, will do with their children. Sadly, we would not be surprised if many of them do nothing.

Thank goodness the school board is firing the principal. We suspect that an assistant principal or two should be cashiered as well.

And public school educators wonder why so many parents want to home-school their children. Would any sane parent want his or her child to be attending this school, or any of the hundreds, maybe thousands, like it across the nation?

Chrenkoff's Latest

Arthur Chrenkoff's latest installment of Good News from Iraq is up. It's a mine of information about what is going on in Iraq and it's well worth a perusal.

Let's Let Everybody Vote

New York City presents us with more evidence that liberals in general, and Democrats in particular, have very little confidence in their ability to persuade citizens through the force of their ideas. They're now seeking to win elections by extending the franchise to non-citizens:

Left-wing advocates in New York have convinced a City Council member to put forward a bill that would legalize non-citizen voting in America's largest city.

Council Member William Perkins of Manhattan has drafted a bill that would allow any immigrant over the age of 18 who has been a resident of New York City for more than six months the right to vote in all local elections.

Why is it, we have to ask, that the left seeks to broaden the franchise to include convicted felons and now non-citizens? Is it because they realize that the only people they can persuade to vote for them are crooks, thugs, and those who can't speak English? Is it because they know that these people can be bribed with promises of access to the public purse? Is it because the left is so desperate for power that they don't care who votes as long as they're returned to office? Is it all of these?

Actually, maybe there's merit to extending the franchise to whoever shows up at the polls. Maybe we should allow teenagers to help elect our government. After all, they already vote for student council and homecoming queen, why not school board and county commissioners?

And how about letting al Qaida vote. Maybe if they had a say in how things were run here they wouldn't feel the need to resort to violence.

Somebody please relay this suggestion to the New York City Council.

The Threat to Marriage

Advocates of gay marriage often argue that it is not gays wanting to marry that jeopardizes the institution of marriage, rather it is the high divorce rate among heterosexuals that poses the real threat.

Dennis Prager deconstructs this argument and leaves it lying in tatters. He gives four reasons why the argument fails, and although in our view any one of them by itself is decisive, the third one is perhaps the most interesting. Prager writes:

A third flaw in the argument is that it presupposes that every divorce constitutes a failure of a couple's marriage. Sometimes this is true; sometimes it is not. I know a couple married for 30 years who made a beautiful home for their three now-married children. The couple divorced last year because they had both concluded that they had drifted too far apart to continue living together in any meaningful way (one aspect of the drift was one partner's increasing devotion to religion and the other's decreasing interest in it).

Who has the hubris to call their marriage a failure? Their children surely don't think their parents' marriage was a failure. It produced three wonderful married adults, and it provided them a beautiful and loving home in which to grow up. One can only wish all marriages so "failed."

It is simplistic to maintain that the one criterion of success or failure in marriage is permanence. There are marriages that provided years of comfort to a couple and a fine home to their children that eventually end; and there are permanent marriages that have provided neither comfort to the couple nor a loving environment for their children. If the end of something renders it a failure, every one of our lives is a failure, since they all come to an end.

Read the whole column. It's very provocative and well-reasoned.

Antony Flew's Conversion

A couple of months ago philosopher Antony Flew made news when it came out in the press that he was abandoning his ardent commitment to atheism and accepting the idea that the universe was designed by an intelligent agent. Now Christianity Today has an article by James A. Beverley, professor of Christian apologetics at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, on Flew's very significant philosophical shift. The article will be extremely interesting to anyone who has read and/or been influenced by Flew and should be read in its entirety. Here are a few excerpts:

Flew has been rethinking the arguments for a Designer for several years. When I saw him in London in the spring of 2003, he told me he was still an atheist but was impressed by Intelligent Design theorists. By early 2004 he had made the move to deism.

Flew also cites the influence of Gerald Schroeder, an Israeli physicist, and Roy Abraham Varghese, author of The Wonder of the World and an Eastern Rite Catholic. Flew appeared with both scientists at a New York symposium last May where he acknowledged his changed conviction about the necessity for a Creator. In the broader picture, both Varghese and Schroeder, author of The Hidden Face of God, argue from the fine-tuning of the universe that it is impossible to explain the origin of life without God. This forms the substance of what led Flew to move away from Darwinian naturalism.

I asked Flew more explicitly about the impact of these and other scholars. "Who amazes you the most of the defenders of Christian theism?"

He replied, "I would have to put Alvin Plantinga pretty high," and he also complimented (Terry) Miethe, (J.P.) Moreland, and (William Lane) Craig for their philosophical skills. He regards Richard Swinburne, the Oxford philosophy of religion professor, as the leading figure in the United Kingdom. "There is really no competition to him." He said that (Gary) Habermas has made "the most impressive case for Christian theism on the basis of New Testament writings."

These Christian philosophers have uniform respect for Flew as a person and as a thinker. Craig spoke of him as "an enduring figure in positivistic philosophy" and was "rather surprised by his giving up his atheistic views." He, Miethe, and Habermas have found Flew to be a perfect gentleman both in public debate and private conversations. Swinburne says Flew has always been a tough thinker, though less dogmatic as the years went by. Plantinga, the founder of the Society of Christian Philosophers, said that Flew's change is "a tribute to his open-mindedness as well as an indication of the strength of current broadly scientific arguments against atheism."

There's much more at the link on the reasons for Flew's reluctance to embrace Christianity despite his very positive attitudes toward the person of Christ.

Needless to say, the secularists are beside themselves with angst. If a thinker of Flew's stature can abandon the dogmas of materialism then how do they prevent a hemorrhage of defections? If Antony Flew has become persuaded by the evidence that the universe and life are designed, it makes it that much more difficult to defeat the accursed Intelligent Design advocates who want to expose our children to the same arguments that persuaded Flew. How, they're no doubt asking themselves, will kids remain good Darwinian materialists once they've heard the arguments against it?

Paltry and Ignoble

These two stories indicate that whereas some people have to work at making themselves look foolish, others find that it just comes naturally:

A parent complained to the Washoe County School District this week about her child's school showing students parts of Pope John Paul II's funeral on television.

The complaint by Debby Carr, the mother of a Marvin Moss Elementary School student, was the only one received Thursday by the district's communications office, said Ron Cooney, a district spokesman.

Carr said she is concerned that showing the pope's funeral sends a mixed message about what is allowed in public schools about religion.

Cooney said the district's central office didn't instruct individual schools about what to do in regard to the pope's death and funeral. He said a teacher at Moss plans to show a tape of it today so children can see an example of a historical world event.

"If there are parents who don't want their children participating, they can opt out," Cooney said.

The district's policy allows religious literature, music, drama or art in the curriculum if presented objectively. An emphasis on religious themes in the arts, literature and history also is permitted if it doesn't foster particular religious tenets or demean any beliefs.

The policy also says that student-initiated expressions to questions or assignments in forms of compositions, art, music, speech and debate that reflect their beliefs are allowed.

And then there's this story out of Madison, Wisconsin:

A Madison secular organization is protesting Gov. Jim Doyle's order to fly flags at half-staff at public buildings all week to remember Pope John Paul II.

The gesture "appears like an endorsement of Roman Catholicism over other religious viewpoints," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Gaylor said her organization would have looked the other way if the order had been for just Friday - the day of the pope's funeral - instead of all week.

"This seems excessive," she said. "Not everyone in the country is Roman Catholic, and (the pope's) not even American."

Federal statutes allow a president to lower flags not only upon the death of principal figures of the U.S. government but also upon the death of "other officials or foreign dignitaries."

Gaylor said she respects the private mourning of Catholics but protests state-backed grieving.

The American Humanist Association in Washington, D.C., also opposes the weeklong lowering of flags, said Tony Hileman, executive director. "We have to ask whether this would be done for other cleric - the Dalai Lama or Jewish or Muslim leaders."

Ms Gaylor evidently thinks that someone has to be an American in order to merit our respect and honor for the contribution he's made to civilization, and that if one is not a Catholic one cannot be moved to pay tribute to greatness. Why she should think such a thing is incomprehensible. Perhaps someone might remind Ms Gaylor of the old adage that it's better to keep one's mouth closed and have people just suspect you're a ditz than to open it and remove all doubt.

As for Ms Carr and Mr. Hileman, perhaps if they hadn't slept through the eighties they would understand that no religious figure in the history of the twentieth century did as much to relieve oppression and to promote peace as has John Paul II.

Mr. Hileman, blithely unaware of the embarrassing fatuousness of his assertion that this honor would not be accorded to religious leaders of other faiths, seems totally oblivious to the fact that there simply is no Jewish leader, and certainly no Muslim leader, who has accomplished what the late pope has. If there ever were, they would doubtless be likewise honored.

One gets the feeling that for such people as these the pope's contribution to the toppling of communist tyranny in eastern Europe is unimportant. Their gripe is that the pope was the head of a religion and was himself a model of piety. Honoring such a man in ways that might influence others to admire him is something they just can't abide regardless of the historic greatness of his life. Their carping sounds paltry and ignoble because that's precisely what it is.

A Glimpse of the Future in Gaza

Little Green Footballs tips us to this horrifying story in The Jerusalem Post from Palestinian-controlled Gaza.

Hamas has begun operating a "vice and virtue commando" in the Gaza Strip to safeguard Islamic values, Palestinian security officials and residents told The Jerusalem Post.

The new force, called the Anti-Corruption Unit, is believed to be behind the gruesome murder over the weekend of Yusra al-Azzami, a 22-year-old university student from the northern Gaza Strip. Her "crime" was that she was seen in public with her fiance.

Although "honor killings" are not a new phenomenon in Palestinian society, the perpetrators were almost always relatives of the victims. But this is the first time that one of the Palestinian groups has openly acted against a woman suspected of "immoral behavior."

Hamas's "morality" patrolmen first spotted the young couple strolling along the beach in Gaza City, together with Azzami's younger sister. After enjoying the spectacular sunset over the sea, they got into the future husband's car and started driving towards Azzami's home.

According to eyewitness accounts, five masked gunmen who were in another car gave chase, opening fire at Azzami, who was sitting in the front seat next to her fiance. She died instantly.

The fiance and sister were later brutally beaten and moderately injured by the attackers.

The incident took place at a busy intersection in Gaza City. What happened immediately afterwards left many passersby traumatized. The assailants dragged the young woman's body out of the car, pouncing upon it mercilessly with clubs and iron bars.

"It was the most horrific crime I've seen in my life," said a university student who witnessed the attack. "What they did to the body while it was lying on the ground was barbaric. This does not represent Islam." The student, who asked not to be named, said he and several other people at the scene were too afraid to interfere. "We waited until the gunmen left the area before we called the police and an ambulance," he added.

The witness claims that this savagery does not represent Islam, but then why is it that such atrocities seem so commonplace in Islamic countries? What the Palestinians are being given a taste of is exactly what the Taliban imposed on Afghanistan. If any Palestinian wonders what life will be like in the territories if, and when, the Islamists gain control of them all they need do is look at Afghanistan before it was liberated.

There's more on this brutal story at the Jerusalem Post link.