Muslims Behaving Like Muslims

Whatever is behind the latest episode of Muslims-Behaving-Badly it's not that their outrage results from the fact that Muhammed was represented in cartoons. Muhammed has been depicted many times in Islamic history (see here). What's different, perhaps, is that this time it's been done by European infidels. Then again, maybe it has just been a while since they've had an opportunity to act like true Muslims, and the cartoons were as good an excuse as any to shoot a few Christians:

A teenage boy shot and killed the Italian Roman Catholic priest of a church in the Black Sea port city of Trabzon in Turkey yesterday, shouting "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) as he escaped, according to police and witnesses. The priest, 60-year-old Andrea Santoro, was shot hours after Mass at Santa Maria Church....A woman who answered the telephone at the church said the priest was inside when he was attacked, and prosecutor Burhan Cobanoglu said he was shot twice from behind, with bullets ripping through his heart and liver.

"Allah Akbar," indeed. We're sure Allah is pleased that his devotees are acting like the spawn of twenty generations of incest among a population of imbeciles.

By the way, can you imagine a Muslim doing this?

You Better Shop Around

A former student sends this along after having read our post titled Orwell Warned Us About People Like This:

Your recent article entitled Orwell Warned Us About People Like This reminded me yet again why I find your site so enjoyable. Your assertion that "universities do not exist to challenge established thought-forms, they're not supposed to be "opening" minds" is, in my opinion, completely accurate at most universities. While there are some professors that are the exception, often they are denied tenure, made to silence their views, etc.

Most of the professors in today's universities seem to simply peddle a blatant left-wing agenda, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't try to pass it off as unbiased. For example, my Contemporary Arab World Professor nonchalantly will defend the Arabs/Palestinians and rant on against the "evils of Israel" - how they butcher civilians, stole the land from the Arabs, have no right to that land, etc.- and she doesn't present this as an opinion, but as accepted belief. The sad part is, for most of the left-wing ideologues at American University (and other schools), they view their extremist beliefs as in the mainstream, unquestionable, and perfectly acceptable.

As always, I find your site informative and entertaining. Keep up the superb work.

We wonder what this student's university would do if a professor of Israeli or Jewish studies promoted the same sorts of hate-inspiring propaganda against the Palestinians. Doubtless, he or she would be the object of loud protests, demands for disciplinary hearings, and on and on. Universities, or at least certain departments in many of them, have lost their soul along with their intellectual integrity. They've abandoned the academic ideals of scholarship, objectivity, and fairness and have transformed themselves into crass megaphones for left-wing ideology.

Mama, before you send your child off to college, you better check into what you'll be getting for your thirty five thousand dollars a year. You might also do well, if you have a high tolerance for sleaze, to read Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons. It's an eye opener for a lot of parents.

Kripgenstein

The New York Times has an interesting profile of perhaps the most prominent of contemporary philosophers, Saul Kripke. Kripke is a true genius and a genuine eccentric. The Times article is a good read. Here's part of it:

Mr. Kripke, a rabbi's son, grew up in Omaha, and by all accounts was a true prodigy, so brilliant and precocious that the so-called prodigies of today are by comparison mere shadows flickering on the wall of our collective cave. In the fourth grade he discovered algebra, which he later said he could have invented on his own, and by the end of grammar school he had mastered geometry and calculus and taken up philosophy. While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first."

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own."

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. His 1980 book "Naming and Necessity," based on work he began in high school, is among the most influential philosophy books of the last 50 years, and his book-length interpretation of Wittgenstein, published two years later, is so thoroughgoing that some scholars now refer to a sort of composite figure known as Kripgenstein.

He certainly sounds like an amazing character.

Living in a Fantasy World

Amy Goodman, whoever else she is, must be the poster child for left-wing naivete. She thinks the American media are declining in popularity because people are fed up with positive coverage of the war in Iraq and that the Arab media have an opportunity to take over as the premier global news source, presumably because the world hungers for the sort of honest, objective reporting they would get from, say, al-Jazeera. Here are the opening paragraphs of The Guardian's report on a News Forum sponsored by al-Jazeera at which Ms Goodman spoke:

Arabic-language media have an unprecedented chance to take over as the world's premier news source because trust in their US counterparts plummeted following their "shameful coverage" of the war in Iraq, a conference heard today.

The US media reached an "all-time low" in failing to reflect public opinion and Americans' desire for trusted information, instead acting as a "cheerleader" for war, said Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of US TV and radio news show Democracy Now!, at a news forum organised by al-Jazeera. Ms Goodman said in the run-up to the Iraq war a study of NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS newscasts over a fortnight recorded 393 interviews on the conflict, of which only three reported the anti-war movement.

"This is a media cheerleading for war and does not represent mainstream opinion in the US," she added. Ms Goodman said she believed the policy of embedding reporters with coalition forces was "a total failure for independent journalism ... western audiences need to see the other side of the story - from communities and hospitals".

"If people in the US had a true picture of war - dead babies, women with their legs blown off, dead and dying soldiers - they would say 'no'," she said. "There is nothing more important than the media - it is more powerful than any bomb or missile and we have to take it back ... we need a media that is independent and honestly showing us the images, the hell, ugliness and brutality of war, not selling us war."

Well, of course. No one wants to be confronted with the ugliness of war in their living rooms every evening, and many people who don't otherwise think very much about the reasons for going to war would be repelled by the visuals of death and carnage, but if the nightly news bombarded us with the horrors of automobile accidents night after night many people would probably support serious restrictions on automobiles, too. Her complaint, at bottum, is that she's against the war and she's upset that the media haven't done everything they could to turn the rest of public opinion against it.

If Ms Goodman thinks the American media are in decline because of their alleged support for the war, she hasn't been paying attention. Every night we're reminded of the death toll. Every night we hear of bombings and mayhem, but rarely is there a report on the many positive developments taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead we hear report after report about how dire the situation is "on the ground" and how chaotic Iraq is.

Moreover, both the LA Times and New York Times are, in fact, anti-Bush, anti-war papers, and their circulation numbers are in decline, especially those of the LA Times. People are resigning their allegiance to the old media for a number of reasons, but dissatisfaction with their "cheerleading" is hardly one of them. If it were, how would we explain the fact that conservative talk radio is prospering?

The old media is suffering because of the proliferation of competitive alternatives on cable news networks, talk radio, and the internet. They're also declining in influence because people are disgusted with their liberal tendentiousness and the realization that they can't be trusted to present the whole truth.

If Ms Goodman thinks that the solution to the woes of mainstream print and broadcast media is to embrace the likes of al-Jazeera then she's living in a fantasy world. As a perusal of the article linked above will show, even others at al-Jazeera's News Forum said as much.

Orwell Warned Us About People Like This

Another University instructor is excommunicated for heresy by the Darwinist Inquisition. This time it's Caroline Crocker at George Mason University. The Washington Post has a lengthy piece on the ugly business which is summarized here.

One part that caught our eye was this:

GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch denied that the school had fired Crocker. She was a part-time faculty member, he said, and was let go at the end of her contract period for reasons unrelated to her views on intelligent design. "We wholeheartedly support academic freedom," he said. But teachers also have a responsibility to stick to subjects they were hired to teach, he added, and intelligent design belonged in a religion class, not biology. Does academic freedom "literally give you the right to talk about anything, whether it has anything to do with the subject matter or not? The answer is no."

Well. If GMU is going to refuse to renew the contract of every lecturer who talks about something other than what he/she was hired to teach there will certainly be a lot of job openings at that university next Fall. We can hardly wait to see the panic on the faces of all those English and sociology instructors who use their podium as a stage for criticizing George Bush's foreign policy when they find out about this.

On the other hand, we suppose the GMU faculty really need not worry. Everyone knows that what Mr. Walsch meant to say was that academic freedom doesn't give an untenured instructor the right to talk about weaknesses in materialistic evolutionary theory when she's supposed to be drilling into students' heads that it's true, for heaven's sake.

We need to realize, Mr. Walsch reminds us, that contrary to what the rubes who send their children to them think, universities do not exist to challenge established thought-forms, they're not supposed to be "opening" minds. The task of the modern university is to indoctrinate, stifle curiosity, and regiment student thinking along lines that are left-wing in their ideology and materialist in their metaphysics. Anything else is treated as a heresy.

Mr. Walsch tells us in no uncertain terms that teachers at his university must conform to the accepted dogmas and orthodoxies and refrain from trying to pry open closed minds with heterodox ideas or they can look for employment elsewhere.

Sounds like one of those communist re-education camps, doesn't it?

Preparing For the War That'll Never Come

Ralph Peters has an absolute must-read article at The Weekly Standard. His essay ranges over the war against Islamist terror, the looming potential conflict with China, and the role of the global media and intelligentsia. He puts his finger on every weakness that besets us and argues persuasively that we are simply not suited temperamentally or philosophically to face the challenges that await us in the decade ahead. We rely too much, for example, on technology to defeat an enemy driven by a passionate, if misguided, faith against which the effete secularism of the West is no match.

Here are just a few excerpts:

There is...not a single enemy in existence or on the horizon willing to play the victim to the military we continue to build. Faced with men of iron belief wielding bombs built in sheds and basements, our revolution in military affairs appears more an indulgence than an investment.

Not a single item in our trillion-dollar arsenal can compare with the genius of the suicide bomber--the breakthrough weapon of our time. Our intelligence systems cannot locate him, our arsenal cannot deter him, and, all too often, our soldiers cannot stop him before it is too late. A man of invincible conviction--call it delusion, if you will--armed with explosives stolen or purchased for a handful of soiled bills can have a strategic impact that staggers governments. Abetted by the global media, the suicide bomber is the wonder weapon of the age.

The Chinese version of the counterrevolution in military affairs puts less stress on a head-to-head military confrontation (although that matters, of course) and more on defeating the nation behind our military. Despite the importance Beijing attaches to a strong military, China won't fall into the trap that snared the Soviets--the attempt to compete with our military expenditures. Why fight battles you'll lose, when you can wage war directly against the American population by attacking its digital and physical infrastructure, its confidence and morale? In a war of mutual suffering, which population would be better equipped, practically and psychologically, to endure massive power outages, food-chain disruptions, the obliteration of databases, and even epidemic disease?

Plenty of Americans are tougher than we're credited with being, but what about the now-decisive intelligentsia? What about those conditioned to levels of comfort unimaginable to the generation that fought World War II (or even Vietnam)? Would 21st-century suburban Americans accept rationing without protests? Whenever I encounter Chinese abroad I am astonished by their chauvinism. Their confidence is reminiscent of Americans' a half century ago. Should we pretend that Chinese opinion-makers, such as they are, would feel inclined to attack their government as our journalists attack Washington? A war with China would be a massive contest of wills, and China might need to break the will of only a tiny fraction of our population. It only takes a few hundred men and women in Washington to decide that a war is lost.

America's triumph shames the Middle East and Europe alike, and has long dented the pride of Latin America. But the brotherhood of Islamist terrorists and the tribe of global intellectuals who dominate the media are the two groups who feel the most fury toward America. The terrorists dream of a paradise beyond the grave; intellectuals fantasized about utopias on earth. Neither can stomach the practical success of the American way of life, with its insistence on individual performance and its resistance to unearned privilege. For the Islamists, America's power threatens the promises of their faith. For world-intellectuals, America is the murderer of their most precious fantasies.

Is it any wonder that these two superficially different groups have drifted into collusion?

Every word of Peter's article is enlightening and urgently needed. It's a little long, but don't miss it.

More Islamic Lunacy

All this because of a few sketches of a man that Muslims don't even regard as divine:

Mahmoud Zahar, leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, told the Italian daily Il Giornale the cartoonists should be punished by death. We should have killed all those who offend the Prophet...." he said.

Yes. By all means. Kill, kill, kill. That's all a savage knows. It's what he does best. It's why the Islamic world is still mired in the 6th century.

Michelle Malkin has everything on this lunacy that you could ever want to read or see. As we've said, we don't think the newspapers should have deliberately flipped the world's Muslims the bird, but on the other hand the bloodthirsty reaction by the mindless regiments of Orcs among the Muslim masses shows that they haven't advanced an inch in 1500 years.

If Muslim communities had peacefully made their case, explained why they were offended, even imposed economic boycotts on European goods in their markets to make their point, we would be sympathetic to those who felt, rightly or wrongly, that a good and holy man was being maliciously degraded by outsiders.

But not now. Not after the way members of the religion of peace all around the world are responding. The Danes, Norwegians and the rest simply should not yield to threats and violence. If Muslims are incensed that their prophet is being caricatured they have no one to blame but themselves. It is they, after all, who shout to the world their faithfulness to Muhammed even as they blow innocent people to pieces. How can they expect that any civilized people would respect their religion or their prophet when both of them inspire such barbarity?

It's a good thing for Kanye West that he portrayed himself as the Christ whom Christians revere and not as Muhammed. The difference between Christianity and Islam couldn't be more stark than in the reactions of both to what they perceive as insults.

Meanwhile, in News That Matters

While the news media focusses our attention on such weighty matters as whether or not Samuel Alito belonged to an all-male club two decades ago or the latest self-inflicted embarrassments of Cindy Sheehan, the war in Afghanistan continues to simmer:

Afghan Army and police units, along with the U.S. military are engaged in combat with Taliban forces in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand. The Associated Press states the fighting began after Afghan "police were deployed to the Haji Fateh area to hunt for Taliban rebels" and the Taliban attacked the police forces. Afghan police and Army units poured into the region to engage what is believed to be a force of about 200 Taliban fighters, and U.S. air support, including A-10 Warthog ground-attack aircraft have been pounding the Taliban positions.

Reuters reports there have been four engagements in the area, and twenty Taliban and three police have been killed in the fighting. According to Mullah Mir, Helmand's deputy provincial governor, "We're sending more reinforcements. The fighting is still going on." The latest report indicates "Two well-known Taliban commanders, Mullah Torjan and Haji Nasru, are among those enemy forces who were killed today [during clashes in Helmand]," along with thirty Taliban fighters. A Taliban spokesman denies their forces took heavy casualties.

Well, the Taliban spokesman may be correct, but it probably depends on his definition of "heavy." If A-10s were employed in the battle the meaning of "heavy" in this context is probably something like "destroyed to the last man," as in, "A Taliban spokesman denies their two hundred man force was completely wiped out by the American Warthogs. A couple of Mujahadeen managed to survive, albeit with severe wounds."

While the fighting continues in Helmand, the Dutch Parliament has approved the deployment of 1,400 troops to neighboring Uruzgan province. The increase in suicide attacks and current fighting have not deterred the Dutch from fulfilling their commitment to NATO. There are fears the 5,500 British troops preparing to deploy to Helmand province may be facing in influx of foreign fighters. Ghulam Dusthaqir, Nimroz's provincial government, states there is a batch coming in from Iraq; "They're linked to al-Qa'eda and fought against US forces in Iraq. They have been ordered to come here. Many are suicide bombers."

It's interesting that al-Qaeda is redeploying fighters from Iraq, where they had to fight against Americans, to Afghanistan to fight against the Dutch and British. Perhaps they think this will allow for a more successful display of their talents. In any event, it suggests a sense on the part of al-Qaeda that Iraq is a lost cause, at least as long as the Americans are there.

Should Blackmail Be Legal?

Blackmail is illegal and for good reasons, right? Well, you may not have ever thought about it, but actually it seems as if there really are few good reasons for making blackmail a crime other than we think it should be. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy explains why our intuitions on the matter don't have much logical warrant. Here's the basic argument:

1. I am generally free to publish embarrassing information about you - in fact, I generally have the constitutional right to do so. Likewise, I am free to keep quiet about it.

2. I am generally free to ask you for money in exchange for my doing something (here, keeping quiet) that I have no preexisting legal obligation to do. I am also free to ask you to perform some service in exchange for my doing something that I have no preexisting legal obligation to do. I am even free to ask you to cast a vote in exchange for my doing at least some things that I have no preexisting legal obligation to do: For instance, a pro-choice newspaper editor may generally say that he will endorse a politican for reelection if the politician votes against an abortion restriction.

3. But if I ask you for money or a service in exchange for my not revealing embarrassing information about you (and recall that I have no preexisting legal obligation to keep quiet), then that's a crime.

The question is: Why is the combination of 1. and 2. a crime if neither of them alone is a crime?

Volokh, who is a wiz (He got his B.S. in math/computer science from UCLA when he was 15), thinks blackmail should be illegal, but confesses that he doesn't know exactly why. The question arises as a result of a blog post by one Michael Rogers who threatened to out a closeted gay Republican U.S. Senator if he did not vote against the confirmation of Samuel Alito. You can read Volokh's ruminations on this legal conundrum at the link.

For what it's worth, only one Republican voted against Alito. If we hear nothing more about this sordid affair the assumption will be that Rogers' condition was met. Since only one Republican voted the way the blackmailer directed, that senator will be assumed to be the target of the blackmail, and, rightly or wrongly, he will be "outed" even though he voted the way Rogers demanded.

This could be very unfair to that senator because one of the Yay voters may well have been the target, but Rogers might have, for whatever reason, changed his mind about outing him. If Rogers does change his mind, and doesn't publicize the fact that he has changed his mind, then people are likely to wrongly suspect that the lone Nay voter is in fact the closet homosexual.

We wonder if that senator could then sue Rogers for defamation. Or doesn't it constitute defamation anymore to cause people to think that someone is gay?

Do We Need God to be Moral?

John Loftus is a 1985 graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with a Th.M. who subsequently rejected Christianity and turned to atheism.

He currently manages a blog called Debunking Christianity at which he reminds us several times that he studied under prominent Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig. It's not clear if he's claiming to be an atheist because of Mr. Craig's influence or in spite of it.

At any rate, Loftus has posted an essay on the matter of the relationship of God to moral behavior. In it he addresses the question whether one must be a Christian or a theist to be moral.

He quotes Craig:

"If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint...." "Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? "The world was horrified when it learned that at camps like Dachau the Nazis had used prisoners for medical experiments on living humans. But why not? If God does not exist, there can be no objection to using people as human guinea pigs."

Loftus then adds:

There are two bases for grounding Christian ethical standards. The first is known as the Divine Command Theory. The second basis is Natural Law Theory, which I will dispense with briefly later. I will show that neither of these bases for Christian ethics offers believers a special access to moral truth that unbelievers don't also share. Christian moral foundations are not superior ones based on their own assumptions!

He goes on to argue for his claim that neither of these ethical theories give the Christian an access to moral truth that the unbeliever, through the use of his reason, doesn't also have. In other words, an atheist can discover and live by moral truth equally as well as the Christian, and God is therefore superfluous to morality.

He then quotes the late Louis Pojman:

"God commands the Good (or right) because it is good (or right), and the Good (or right) is not good (right) simply because God commands it. Furthermore, if this is correct, then we can discover our ethical duties through reason, independent of God's command. For what is good for his creatures is so objectively. We do not need God to tell us that it is bad to cause unnecessary suffering or that it is good to ameliorate suffering; reason can do that. It begins to look like the true version of ethics is what we called 'secular ethics.'" Pojman rightly asked: "If [a Christian] wants to claim that it is goodness plus God's command that determines what is right, what does God add to rightness that is not there simply with goodness?....If love or goodness prescribes act A, what does A gain by being commanded by God? Materially, nothing at all."

If one need not resort to God to discover ethical truth then God is an unnecessary entity in our ethical lives and may as well be discarded like some vestigial anatomical structure that just gets in the way of proper functioning.

A careful reading of what Loftus and Pojman write here, however, will show that neither of them really answer the challenge that Craig lays down in the beginning of the post. Loftus may think he's debunking Christianity with this post, but all he's really doing is missing the point.

The problem for the atheist is not whether he can, through the exercise of his reason, discern moral truth independently of God, the problem is that if there is no God there is no moral truth to discern. Right and wrong are ontologically dependent upon a transcendent moral authority. If there is no such being then there simply is no way anyone can say that anything at all is morally right or wrong. There's no non-arbitrary answer to the question, what is it that makes an act wrong?

Pojman says that:

"if both modified divine command ethics and secular ethics have human flourishing as the goal, what difference should it make whether the very same [ethical] principle issues from a special personal authority (God) or from the authority of reason?"

The difference is that if the atheist is correct and God does not exist then there's no reason to insist that human flourishing should be the goal of human conduct. If someone decides that he doesn't care in the least about human fluorishing he does nothing wrong. If someone were to decide that all he cares about is his own personal pleasure, even at the cost of others' well-being, what is it about his decision that could possibly make him "wrong"? Indeed, if atheism is correct, there are no grounds for saying that any goal is right or wrong. Ethics reduces to one's own subjective inclinations and preferences and everyone's subjectivity is just as valid as anyone else's.

The next time someone passes a moral judgment on another's behavior, the next time you hear, for instance, someone say that the war in Iraq is immoral, ask them if they believe there is a God. If they answer "no" ask them then on what grounds they conclude the war is immoral. If they reply that it's wrong to kill people, then ask again, why is killing wrong? What is it about hurting people that makes it wrong? The usual reply is that we wouldn't want someone to hurt us, but, true as that is, it's no reason at all why one person shouldn't hurt another. What, precisely, is the connection between what I want done to me and what I should do to others? In a world without God I am free to do whatever I have the power to do, even if that involves visiting harm upon another human being.

Indeed, the only reason it's wrong to harm another is because persons are created in the image of God, they belong to God and are loved by Him. No one has the right to harm that which belongs to God. No one can harm God's beloved with impunity. Take God out of the picture, however, and all our ethical disputes reduce to matters of taste and temperament. As Dostoyevsky observed, If God is dead then everything is permitted.

The Bondage of Materialism

Michael Behe has an article in the December issue of First Things that illustrates the bondage to materialist philosophy that enthralls contemporary science.

This passage, describing some of the extraordinary reactions that Behe has elicited from antagonistic audiences, is especially remarkable:

Socially acquired materialism often manifests itself by an emotional reaction when challenged. When I lecture in favor of the idea that intelligence is explicitly needed to explain some aspects of biology, the response is not typically, "Gee, that's interesting, but I disagree." Instead, people become angry, denouncing the mildest of challenges to materialism as unspeakable heresy. Once after a lecture in Virginia a student declared she was going to dedicate her life to demonstrating I was wrong.

In Canada an academic ran after me with a loaded rat trap, inviting me to stick my finger in it to see if it worked (I use a mousetrap as an example of the sort of system that can't be made by Darwinian processes). After a lecture to the biochemistry department of a major west-coast university, a group of students I spoke with sullenly agreed that the evidence for Darwinism wasn't there. Nevertheless, they viewed the alternative with contempt and passionately swore to seek a materialistic answer.

At a debate before the Royal Society of Medicine in London, I argued for the incontestable position that science doesn't yet objectively know whether Darwinian processes can explain the human mind, simply because philosophers and neurobiologists don't yet even know what constitutes the human mind. After all, I said, one can't contend that science knows how an undefined entity could be produced by an unspecified process. By a show of hands, about 95 percent of the assembled scientists disagreed. Of course science already "knows" natural selection can explain the human mind-because science already "knows" Darwinian processes explain everything.

Behe's article confirms a point we've made here several times in the past. The attachment people have to their metaphysics is much stronger than the attachment they have to their science. Moreover, what people believe does not depend as much on evidence as it does on what they deeply want to be the case. Most scientists want some materialist explanation for life to be true, and thus their reactions to contrary arguments are as often characterized by irrational outbursts and obstinate denial as they are by reasoned counter-arguments.

Freud alleged that religious belief was nothing more than wish-fulfillment, but surely the same is no less true of materialism.

Behe's whole piece is worth a read.

Po-Mo Statistics

Of course if Bush had said something like this the media would be on it like piranha on a side of beef. "Bush Lies Again," the headlines would scream. Well, we don't think John Kerry deliberately attempted to mislead his listeners, as Kerry and other Dems assert that Bush has repeatedly done. We just think that the junior senator from Massachusetts, like the senior senator, doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about.

This report is from Drudge:

Sen. John Kerry claimed [Wednesday] morning on NBC TODAY that 53% of America's children do not graduate from high school -- a claim that raised eyebrows in the NBC control room, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Kerry made the comments after host Katie Couric asked the former presidential candidate about Bush's State of the Union call to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.

COURIC: He wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.

KERRY: That's terrific. But 53 percent of our children don't graduate from high school. Kids don't have after-school programs... He didn't ask America to sacrifice anything to achieve great goals and the biggest example is making the tax cut permanent for the wealthiest people in America. The average American struggles to find time to take carry of families, working two or three jobs... It's a disgrace. He did not tell the real state of the union.

Kerry's 53% claim conflicts with a recent press release from the U.S. Census Bureau: "High School Graduation Rates Reach All-Time High"

And the Census Bureau's own website states: 85.9 Percent Of Americans Aged 20-24 Are High School Graduates.

Living in the Democrats' postmodern universe evidently means never having to get your facts right.

King Coal

Here's an interesting piece of news. The governor of West Virginia has asked that all coal mining operations in the state be stopped while the mines are inspected for safety. Sixteen miners have died in accidents in the state since January 2nd.

Whatever the inspections find, mining operations will certainly continue in the state's 544 mines, and coal will continue to be used to provide energy to feed our voracious appetite for it. This means acid rain and global warming will continue to ravage our ecosystems, it means our infrastructure will continue to corrode faster than it otherwise would, it means miners will continue to die, and perhaps thousands of other citizens will suffer respiratory ailments and other health problems from the effects of the contaminants coal introduces into the air.

Despite these hazards, there will be no serious call for the abolition of coal from the political left. There will be no serious arguments raised by them about the enormous damage we're doing to our people and our planet through the use of coal. Yet, were the utility companies to announce that they planned to build a nuclear power plant to help meet the energy demands for the 21st century, the cacaphony in liberal media precincts would sound like a dog kennel that's got a cat running loose.

No one in this country has ever died from a nuclear power accident. Nuclear plants put no contaminants in the air, and, unlike coal fired power plants, their normal use causes no environmental damage. There are drawbacks, to be sure. Safely disposing of spent fuel will remain a challenge, for example, but the problems are not insurmountable and, compared to coal, the safety record of nuclear power in this country is impeccable.

So why is the left so afraid of it? We have no idea, unless it has something to do with the fact that an energy independent U.S. would become an even greater economic colossus than it already is and stand as the ultimate refutation and reproach of socialism.

No Surprises

We took the position earlier today that European papers were, on balance, wrong to publish caricatures of Mohammed which, though perhaps quite mild in the eyes of a Western observer, were nevertheless sufficiently inflammatory to offend the religious sensibilities of millions of Muslims. We argued that as Christians we certainly wouldn't want Christ to be the object of caricature in the major press organs of the world, and we are therefore enjoined by Jesus' command to "do unto others as we would be done by" to refrain from needless ridicule of that which others hold sacred.

Having said that, we have to add that the violent reaction to this perceived affront by Muslims around the world is the very reason their religion is held in such low esteem by outsiders. Rather than rely upon the levers of peaceful protest, a form of pressure apparently unknown in the Islamic world, today's news is full of threats of murder and kidnappings of innocent Europeans. Unable to comprehend the concepts of separation of church and state and freedom of the press, Muslims everywhere are holding the governments and businesses of the countries in which the cartoons were published responsible for what their newspapers printed.

So, the European media acted with contempt for the religious convictions of members of a major world religion, and Muslims in turn responded like thugs and savages. We can't say that either is a surprise.

Meanwhile, American networks, out of respect for Muslims, they assure us, have chosen not to air the cartoons. As Michelle Malkin observes, it's a pity that the nets don't show the same solicitous concern for the sensibilities of Christians. Michelle convincingly catalogs the hypocrisy of their rationale which is really just a cover for cowardice.

No surprise here, either.

Hurt Feelings Among the Muslims

European newspapers, in a rare display of Euro-kidney, are running the cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad that have infuriated many Muslims around the world. The papers are doing it, they say, because they want to establish that they will not be intimidated by those who seek to censor the press through threats and intimidation:

PARIS - French and German newspapers on Wednesday republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have riled the Muslim world, saying democratic freedoms include the "right to blasphemy." The front page of the daily France Soir carried the headline "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God" along with a cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud. Inside, the paper reran the drawings.

"The appearance of the 12 drawings in the Danish press provoked emotions in the Muslim world because the representation of Allah and his prophet is forbidden. But because no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society, France Soir is publishing the incriminating caricatures," the paper said.

Germany's Die Welt daily printed one of the drawings on its front page, arguing that a "right to blasphemy" was anchored in democratic freedoms. The Berliner Zeitung daily also printed two of the caricatures as part of its coverage of the controversy. The Danish daily Jyllands-Posten originally published the cartoons in September after asking artists to depict Islam's prophet to challenge what it perceived was self-censorship among artists dealing with Islamic issues. A Norwegian newspaper reprinted the images this month.

The depictions include an image of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, and another portraying him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet to prevent idolatry.

Angered by the drawings, masked Palestinian gunmen briefly took over a European Union office in Gaza on Monday. Syria called for the offenders to be punished. Danish goods were swept from shelves in many countries, and Saudi Arabia and Libya recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.

The Jyllands-Posten - which received a bomb threat over the drawings - has apologized for hurting Muslims' feelings but not for publishing the cartoons. Its editor said Wednesday, however, that he would not have printed the drawings had he foreseen the consequences.

Carsten Juste also said the international furor amounted to a victory for opponents of free expression. "Those who have won are dictatorships in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, where they cut criminals' hands and give women no rights," Juste told The Associated Press. "The dark dictatorships have won."

Demonstrations and condemnations across the Muslim world continued. The Supreme Council of Moroccan religious leaders denounced the drawings on Wednesday. "Muslim beliefs cannot tolerate such an attack, however small it may be," the statement said. In Turkey, dozens of protesters from a small Islamic party staged a demonstration in front of the Danish Embassy.

Despite the show of solidarity among Europe's newspaper editors, not all Europeans appreciated the drawings. Norway's deputy state secretary for foreign affairs, Raymond Johansen, said they encourage distrust between people of different faiths. "I can understand that Muslims find the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Norwegian weekly ... to be offensive. This is unfortunate and regrettable," Johansen said on a visit to Beirut. There was also anger in France, which has Western Europe's largest Muslim community with an estimated 5 million people.

Mohammed Bechari, president of the National Federation of the Muslims of France, said his group would start legal proceedings against France Soir because of "these pictures that have disturbed us, and that are still hurting the feelings of 1.2 billion Muslims." French government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope struck a neutral tone, saying France is "a country that is attached to the principle of secularism, and this freedom clearly should be exercised in a spirit of tolerance and respect for the beliefs of everyone."

French theologian Sohaib Bencheikh spoke out against the pictures in a column in France Soir accompanying them Wednesday. "One must find the borders between freedom of expression and freedom to protect the sacred," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the West has lost its sense of the sacred."

This episode does raise difficulties. The Muslim belief that any depiction of the Prophet constitutes blasphemy is silly, of course, and we're delighted that the papers are willing to stand against the same sort of Islamic thuggery that produced a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Indeed, if Muslims are offended by these cartoons they'd be donning the bomb vests if anyone ever put into their hands an accurate biography of Muhammad.

Nevertheless, not all Muslims are homicidal extremists, and it is the sincere belief of many among the saner sort that Muhammad was a prophet of God. If Christians don't wish to have their own revered figures caricatured in the secular press, they certainly shouldn't support the caricaturization of other peoples' icons. That is, after all, the point of the Golden Rule.

We agree that newspapers should have the freedom to express ideas that some will find offensive, but the right to publish offensive ideas should entail an obligation to the public not to publish those ideas in an offensive manner. A paper, for example, can advertise toilet tissue without running photographs of the product being employed. A man's free speech doesn't mean that his public use of vulgar language should not be rebuked.

We admit sympathy with the Europeans' wish to stand against, rather than truckle to, those Muslims who seek to impose their intolerant and archaic religious views on the rest of the world, but we're reluctantly reluctant to applaud the means they've chosen to do it. We demur not because we think Muhammad deserves the reverence Muslims heap upon him but because if it's Muhammad who is being skewered and mocked today, it'll surely be Jesus Christ tomorrow. If we don't want the latter, and we don't, then we can't countenance the former, as much as we'd like to.

By the way, the offending cartoons can be seen here. According to Michelle Malkin, who supports the cartoons' thumb in the Muslim eye, pressure is building to run them in the U.S.

The 5th Miracle

Physicist and prolific science writer Paul Davies wrote a book in 1999 entitled The 5th Miracle: The Search For the Origin and Meaning of Life. The title is a little misleading because the book has more to do with the search for an explanation as to how life might have arisen through purely mechanistic processes than it does with the question of the meaning of life. Even so, it's a good book and contains a lot of information on the matter of why the problem of abiogenesis seems so intractable.

The fifth miracle of Davies' title refers to Genesis 1:11: "Let the land produce vegetation." (The first four Biblical miracles are the creation of the universe, the creation of light, the creation of the firmament and the creation of dry land.), and Davies tries to explain how this might have occured without invoking an actual miracle.

Davies' book is especially noteworthy for two things: First, he acknowledges what a lot of anti-IDers want to paper over which is that evolutionary science is believed by many of its practitioners to be antithetical to belief in the God of Christianity, and secondly, he recognizes that natural mechanisms are wholly inadequate to explain how life could have arisen. He doesn't come out and say that life seems to have required intelligent input to have emerged, but he may as well have. He doesn't go all the way because he doesn't want to accept the logic of his own argument, but it's hard to escape it.

About the alleged incompatibility between God and materialistic science he writes:

Science takes as its starting point that life wasn't made by a god or a supernatural being: it happened unaided and spontaneously, as a natural process. p.28

This is an interesting claim, actually, given the number of commentators who have been at pains lately to convince us that there's really no conflict at all between the established theories of science and Christian religious belief. Technically, this is true, but there is certainly a substantial conflict between what many scientists think their science implies and the religious beliefs of most Christians.

Elsewhere, for example, Davies says this:

Darwin's...Origin of Species...sought to discredit the need for God to create species..... p.83

...atoms...accomplish ingenious marvels of construction and control, with a fine-tuning and complexity as yet unmatched by any human engineering. Somehow nature discovered, on its own, how to do this. p.98

For three hundred years, science has based itself on reductionism and materialism, leading inevitably to atheism and a belief in the meaninglessness of physical existence. A bio-friendly universe would mark a decisive shift. p.263

Davies himself doesn't seem to know what to think about all this. He's impressed by the apparent evidence for teleology and unimpressed with the arguments of some materialists that life is common in the cosmos. The laws of nature, they aver, make it inevitable. Davies disagrees. The laws of chemistry and physics don't make life inevitable, because they can't produce organized, specified complexity or information, and if there are other laws, still unknown, which lead ineluctably not only to life but to mind, then where did such astonishing things come from? How did a mindless universe give rise to algorithms which program matter to be sentient?

Davies asks the question from several different perspectives:

We are then confronted by the ultimate question: where did the information content of the universe come from? p.60

The problem of the origin of life reduces to one of understanding how encoded software emerged spontaneously from hardware....It is like trying to explain how a kite can evolve into a radio-controlled aircraft. Can the laws of nature as we presently comprehend them account for such a transition? I do not believe they can. p.115

This viewpoint (that intelligent life is common in the cosmos), though prevalent, again conceals a huge assumption about the nature of the universe. It means accepting, in effect, that the laws of nature are rigged not only in favor of complexity, or just in favor of life, but also in favor of mind. To put it dramatically, it implies that mind is written into the laws of nature in a fundamental way. p.271

The dilemma for the materialists is this: If life is inevitable, that fact points to a purposeful universe, but if it's contingent, accidental, then the improbability of it ever coming to exist is absolutely staggering and as close to miraculous as anything can be without crossing the line.

Davies wonders:

How did something so immensely complicated, so finessed, so exquisitely clever, come into being all on its own? How can mindless molecules, capable only of pushing and pulling their immediate neighbors, cooperate to form and sustain something as ingenious as a living organism? p.30

He wants to hold on to naturalism at all costs, of course, because the philosophical and professional price to be paid for allowing a non-natural agent in the door is too dear:

The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecues into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating. p.29

But why does he think the choreographer should be in evidence? Does the audience see the choreographer onstage in the midst of a musical? His last two sentences above are sheer affirmations of his materialist faith which he senses is to be at odds with so much of what he's written in this book and which he feels he must reinforce to himself:

[I]t is the job of science to solve mysteries without recourse to divine intervention. Just because scientists are still uncertain how life began does not mean life cannot have had a natural origin. p.31

It is worth repeating that, in spite of the appearance of purpose, the participating molecules are completely mindless. p.107

Unfortunately, "meaning" sounds perilously close to purpose, an utterly taboo subject in biology. So we are left with the contradiction that we need to apply concepts derived from purposeful human activities (communication, meaning, context, semantics) to biological processes that certainly appear purposeful, but are in fact not (or are not supposed to be). p.121f

Davies certainly gives the reader the impression that he's teetering on the brink of thinking that the universe is governed by something that seems awfully close to the designer posited by the ID folks:

Might purpose be a genuine property of nature right down to the cellular or even the subcellular level? p.122

...shunting the problem off into outer space does nothing to address the central problem of biogenesis - the problem that has plagued researchers in this discipline for decades - which is that life seems just too good to be true. p.243

He quotes physicist Freeman Dyson in this connection:

"The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming." p.245

The book concludes, inconclusively, with these words:

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is therefore the testing ground for two diametrically opposed world-views. On one side is orthodox science, with its nihilistic philosophy of the pointless universe, of impersonal laws oblivious of ends, a cosmos in which life and mind, science and art, hope and fear are but flukey incidental embellishments on a tapestry of irreversible cosmic corruption. On the other, there is an alternative view, undeniably romantic but perhaps true nevertheless, the vison of a self-organizing and self-complexifying universe, governed by ingenious laws that encourage matter to evolve towards life and consciousness. A universe in which the emergence of thinking beings is a fundamental and integral part of the overall scheme of things. p.273

It's hard to see how this second alternative differs from the fundamental claim of ID that life and the cosmos show evidence of having been designed with a purpose. That being so, we can be sure that the thought police in the ACLU will certainly fight hammer and tong to prevent The 5th Miracle from being read in the science classrooms of American public schools. More's the pity because it certainly does give the reader an excellent education in the difficulties involved with trying to imagine a naturalistic origin of life.

See also Phillip Johnson's excellent review of The 5th Miracle.

Gallantry Under Fire

Vasko Kohlmayer at The American Thinker has a piece that says something about George Bush and his political opponents that we have mentioned, oh, every other day or so: George Bush shows far more class, Kohlmayer calls it gallantry, than do his detractors, and indeed, far more class than almost anyone who has been vilified and hated to the extent he has could be expected to show. Here are some highlights from Kohlmyer's essay:

The other day, the American people saw George W. Bush once again addressing his critics in connection with the NSA's surveillance program . Despite the fact that he has been accused of the worst of possible motives - of willfully and deliberately breaking the law to spy on his fellow citizens - the President tackled this and other gratuitous charges without a trace of anger or bitterness.

A relative few presidents in this country's history have endured the kind of vicious and spurious attacks that have been leveled against George Bush. Completely abandoning any sense of decorum or statesmanship, some of the highest officials in the Democratic Party have repeatedly called him a liar, a loser, an election-thief, an airhead, and a fraud. Regularly likened to Hitler, there have been books discussing his assassination. Recently he was even dubbed the world's greatest terrorist by one of America's once-prominent entertainers . There are just a few of examples. Sadly, such views are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream liberal outlook.

But no matter how malicious they have been, George Bush has always faced his critics with affability and goodwill. Even his most bitter enemies - hating him as they do - would be hard pressed to fault him for being uncivil or personally unpleasant. He displays none of the unkindness, harshness or anger one would normally expect from someone engaged in a political struggle against those who frenziedly seek his destruction.

In fact, Bush's gallant manner has become something of a trademark. His comportment has served him well, for he has triumphed in almost every great battle he has fought, including two heatedly-fought national elections. His successes tend to drive his opponents into what can only be called spasms of political hysteria, and not knowing what else to do, they crank up even further their already outlandish rhetoric. Their near-madness is indeed a sight to behold.

What this shows is that that when you are on the side of right you do not have to be brusque to prevail. Conducting yourself with grace and dignity can in itself have a devastating effect. Insults and vituperation are altogether unnecessary. Quite to the contrary - geniality and personal warmth further augment the effectiveness of your words and actions.

No president since Lincoln has had to endure what Bush has suffered. That he has borne up so well and has not allowed the attacks to make him bitter or angry is a testament to his character. His reward will be that he will probably be a heroic historic figure long after his disparagers have been completely forgotten. Some of them may go down in the history books, perhaps, but it will be in the same fashion that James Thomson Callendar, Thomas Jefferson's vicious journalistic critic, made his mark in history - as a deranged man irrationally obsessed with destroying a president.

The Democrats Need to Grow Up

At last night's State of the Union message the Democrats gave the president a gleeful standing ovation when he said this: "By 2030 spending for social security, medicare, and medicaid alone will be almost 60% of the entire federal budget. It will present future Congresses with impossible choices: staggering taxes, immense debt, or deep cuts in spending. Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save social security..."

As much as anything else they could have done this shows the juvenile immaturity of people who themselves offer no solutions to our problems. Why they should celebrate blocking a proposal to save social security is beyond me. Even if Bush's proposal was a bad one, it was at least a step toward a solution and should be praised and respected as such rather than treated with the raucous contempt the Democrats displayed last night. The fact is that the Democrats have no solution to the looming entitlement crisis. If left to them nothing at all would be done to prevent it.

Some day when social security is bankrupt the tape of the Democrats' wild, self-congratulatory applause will be endlessly played and replayed by their political opponents, and they will rue the day they gave themselves so much credit for their puerile obstructionism while ceaselessly impugning those who sought to prevent the calamity they will then be facing.

Survey For Anti-IDers

One of the most enduring misunderstandings in the ID/materialistic evolution debate is that ID is simply a variant of Creationism and therefore a transparent attempt to smuggle religion into public schools. This is, of course, not the case as Krauze at Telic Thoughts illustrates. He recently sent out a questionaire to a couple of dozen anti-ID bloggers asking them to respond. Here's what he sent:

Dear recipient,

You have been contacted because you contribute to a blog which has been identified as a "pro-science blog". I am conducting a survey on outsiders' perception of intelligent design, and I would appreciate your input. The results will be published on Telic Thoughts, an independent blog about intelligent design, and every reply will be treated as anonymous. Please read the following carefully, and send your answer to [my e-mail address.]

For the purpose of this survey, "creationism" will be defined as "a belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible" (source: Dictionary.com). "Evolution" will be defined as "the theory that all modern life forms are derived from one or a few common ancestors via descent with modification".

Please answer the following:

On which points are intelligent design and creationism identical?

A. Both creationism and intelligent design require one to have a particular interpretation of the Biblical creation account.

B. Both creationism and intelligent design require one to accept a particular age of the Earth and of the universe.

C. Both creationism and intelligent design require one to reject evolution.

D. Both creationism and intelligent design identify the Christian God as the creator.

E. Both creationism and intelligent design hold that there is an intelligence behind certain features of nature.

F. There are no points of similarity between creationism and intelligent design.

G. None of the above options accurately describe the relationship between creationism and intelligent design.

(Please check all that apply.)

His respondents were notably uncooperative:

Unfortunately, some ID critics didn't like the scientific method to be applied to themselves. Within 27 minutes, one of the respondents, Wesley Elsberry of The Austringer, had posted the contents of my letter, advising others to reply by choosing "G". And within hours, other blogs had followed, including the highly popular Pharyngula. As another respondent, Tara Smith, said, "If you received [a mail], check out their comments before sending your answer back." Predictably, all of the respondents who replied either chose "G" or refused to participate in the survey (as it was of course their right to do, the survey being voluntary).

The reaction of these "defenders of science" is itself an interesting piece of sociological data, and I might deal with them in a later post. For now, I will leave you with a question: If the poll was indeed "wretchedly incomplete", as Elsberry claims, why did he see it necessary to notify his fellow bloggers immediately after receiving the poll? Was he worried that some might feel that one or more of my options adequately described their perception of intelligent design?

Of course, the reason Krauze obtained such meager results from his survey is that the anti-ID crowd, if they had answered it honestly, would have had to acknowledge that there really isn't much similarity between ID and Creationism after all, and instantly one of their handiest arguments for bamboozling the public would have gone up in smoke. Rather than admit the truth and give up an effective piece of misleading propaganda, they simply refused to answer. This is a strange response by people who otherwise claim to hold truth in such high esteem.

Liberal Heretics

The liberal media are under assault from, strangely enough, .... the left. It's hard to believe, I know, but the southpaw hurlers at places like the Daily Kos are "mad as hell and not going to take it any more" from the likes of - are you sitting down? - The Washington Post and reliable lib warhorse Chris Matthews. All it takes is one little misstep, apparently, one tiny offense against orthodox doctrine, and the Taliban left will be screaming for your infidel head. John Leo has the story. Here's a snippet:

Two skirmishes are under way, one against The Washington Post and its ombudsman, Deborah Howell, the other against Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball." Howell's offense was writing that the sleazy Jack Abramoff had given money to Democrats as well as Republicans. That was inaccurate. A tide of angry and exceptionally abusive complaints flooded into the Post. Howell then corrected herself, writing that she should have said that Abramoff "directed" a considerable amount of his clients' money to Democrats, though he never gave any himself. That was correct, but vicious and amazingly obscene e-mail kept pouring in, so the Post shut down its Web site. (Not a good idea, in my opinion. It would have been better, though more expensive, to let readers vent, while editing out obscenities.)

The campaign against Chris Matthews has escalated into talk of a boycott, though the would-be boycotters prefer to call it an "appeal to advertisers." Matthews is accused of being soft on Republicans in general, and in particular, of comparing Michael Moore to Osama bin Laden. On Jan. 19, Matthews said on "Hardball" that in his new audio message, bin Laden "sounds like an over-the-top Michael Moore." Matthews was citing bin Laden's mention of "the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars to the influential people and war merchants in America." The next night, Matthews suggested that bin Laden was picking up the lingo of the American anti-war left, and asked, "Why would he start to talk like Moore?" Bloggers turned quickly against Matthews, a Democrat, calling him "a broadcasting neo-con," "stupid Bush lover" and "man whore for the GOP."

Ouch. "Stupid Bush lover." I'll bet that hurt.

The lefties are right, though. It's crazy to compare Michael Moore to Osama bin Laden. Moore's probably twice as heavy as bin Laden is.