God Almost Certainly Does Not Exist

At least that's what atheistic Darwinian Richard Dawkins tells us in this article excerpted from his new book The God Delusion. Dawkins bases his certainty on several surprisingly weak arguments - I say "surprisingly" because he invests so much confidence in such thin ice.

His assurance that there almost certainly is no God is derived firstly from his belief that God's existence is highly improbable. This is a peculiar claim given that it's very difficult to see how one could know that God's existence is highly improbable. Dawkins argues that God's improbablity follows from the fact that there's no evidence that God exists, but how does an alleged lack of evidence makes God's existence highly improbable?

If there's no evidence for something then it might be argued that there's no reason to believe it, but that's not the same as saying that the existence of the thing is "improbable". There is no evidence for the existence of other universes or other dimensions but that by itself doesn't make their existence improbable. There's no evidence for the existence of life on other planets either, but Dawkins is at pains in this essay to convince the reader that, even so, extra-terrestrial life is another "almost certain" fact. Why are ETs almost certain to exist even though we have no evidence of them, but God is almost certain to not exist for the same reason?

What, secondly, of this claim that there's no evidence for God's existence? What is Dawkins' support for it?

Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here's why.

First, most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished.

This is an unpromising beginning. The assertion that the arguments for God's existence are easily demolished is simply false. It's the kind of claim made by someone who doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. Dawkins is evidently unaware of the wrestling matches among experts on these arguments over the last 1500 years. He's unaware, too, of the contemporary work of people like William Lane Craig on the Cosmological argument and Alvin Plantinga on the Ontological argument. These people, and the hundreds of philosophers like them, may be wrong, but if anything is certain it is that the arguments they present are not "easily demolished".

Dawkins continues to embarrass himself:

Several of them [arguments for God's existence], such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself.

Surely, though, Professor Dawkins understands the concept of necessary existence. A necessary being has no need of explanation, only contingent being needs be explained. If God exists, he is a necessary being, i.e. he is the ultimate cause of all contingent beings, and thus, not only does he not need a causal explanation, there can be no causal explanation.

To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things. Physicists and cosmologists are hard at work on the problem. But whatever the answer - a random quantum fluctuation or a Hawking/Penrose singularity or whatever we end up calling it - it will be simple. Complex, statistically improbable things, by definition, don't just happen; they demand an explanation in their own right. They are impotent to terminate regresses, in a way that simple things are not.

God, of course, is not something which "just happens". God is. He is not an event like the Big Bang. He is the cause of all events, the cause of all contingent entities. Moreover, we need to ask why Dawkins thinks that ultimate causes must be simpler than their effects. What principle leads him to this conclusion? Couldn't we just as easily argue that the sufficient cause of X must be at least as complex as the effect it produces? Thus the cause of the universe would have to be at least as complex as the universe itself.

The first cause cannot have been an intelligence - let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshipped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.

This is a marvelous case of begging the question. The creative cause of the universe cannot be intelligence, Dawkins avers, because intelligence is part of the creation, not its cause. But whether the cause can be an intelligence is precisely the point at issue. Dawkins decrees by fiat that intelligence cannot be the cause because it is the effect, but this is ludicrous. If humans ever succeed in creating artificial intelligence (AI) in computers shall we conclude that intelligent humans couldn't really have been the creators because intelligence only comes along later in the scheme of technological development, when AI appears? It's a bit irregular to try to neatly define things so that one wins the argument, but this is what Dawkins does. He stacks the deck by stating as a premise the very thing he wants us to conclude.

The only one of the traditional arguments for God that is widely used today, sometimes called the Argument from Design .... is surely one of the most superficially plausible bad arguments ever discovered - and it is rediscovered by just about everybody until they are taught the logical fallacy and Darwin's brilliant alternative.

And what precisely is the fallacy? Dawkins explains:

Even before Darwin's time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable?

I've already pointed out that Dawkins' assumption that God's existence is highly improbable is pure flummery. Apparently fond of circular reasoning he assumes a priori that the chances of God's existing are exceedingly low and goes on, then, to argue that none of the evidence for God's existence, obtained through the argument from Design, can really be evidence for a God because he's already demonstrated that God is too improbable to actually exist.

Suppose life's origin on a planet took place through a hugely improbable stroke of luck, so improbable that it happens on only one in a billion planets. The National Science Foundation would laugh at any chemist whose proposed research had only a one in a hundred chance of succeeding, let alone one in a billion. Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets. And - this is where the famous anthropic principle comes in - Earth has to be one of them, because here we are.

Here he underminines his own argument about God's improbability based on the lack of evidence by claiming that it is probable that life exists on billions of other planets even though we have no empirical evidence that there are billions of other planets and certainly no evidence that there is life on any planet but our own. He also shows here that he either hasn't read, or is deliberately ignoring, works like Rare Earth, Privileged Planet, The Fifth Miracle, Nature's Destiny, Ancient Faith Modern Physics, all of which emphasize the uniqueness of earth as a habitat for life, the numerous factors which have to be just right for a planet to sustain life, and the sheer unliklihood that other planets, even if they number in the billions, would possess more than a few of those necessary properties. In other words, Dawkins' argument that there are billions of planets in the universe capable of supporting life is about thirty years out of date.

The book from which Dawkins' essay was excerpted, The God Delusion, has been widely panned by philosophers and scientists, both theistic and atheistic alike. Judging from the arguments he offers above it's little wonder.

Keep Hope Alive

Ed Whelan at The Ethics and Public Policy Center argues that despite Democratic control of the Senate President Bush still has a good chance of getting a quality nominee onto the Supreme Court should an opening appear. Getting judges approved for the Federal Court of Appeals looks much more difficult but then it has been difficult for the last six years even with the Democrats in the minority.

The core of Whelan's case is this:

...the high-profile politics of a Supreme Court nomination enhances the case for confirmation of a strong pick. Opponents can't rely on obscure procedures to block the nomination. They need to make their case openly, and in the Internet age, unlike with the 1987 nomination of Judge Bork, their distortions won't go unanswered.

More importantly, the conservative case against liberal judicial activism has powerful public appeal across a broad swath of the political spectrum. Opponents of a strong nominee will have to be ready to pay a high price for their opposition. Plus, President Bush, having appointed two white males to the Court, still has the diversity card to play, so a nominee who is a committed proponent of judicial restraint and also a female or a minority would have added political punch.

Forty-one of 45 Democrats voted against Justice Alito's nomination. But the four Democrats who voted for him -- Byrd, Conrad, Johnson, and Ben Nelson -- would be decent bets to vote for the next strong conservative nominee. To be sure, the votes of Byrd, Conrad, and Nelson may have been influenced by the fact that they were up for re-election this year. But since their re-election prospects were never in serious peril, that factor would not seem a major one.

Besides, of course, other Democrats are now looking ahead to re-election in 2008. Along with Johnson (South Dakota), Senators Baucus (Montana), Landrieu (Louisiana), and Pryor (Arkansas) will be running in "red" states in 2008. Especially if they face the prospect of hefty Republican opponents, they won't be eager to be siding with Teddy Kennedy as he rants against the nominee.

Senator-Elect Casey of Pennsylvania is an eighth Democrat whom the White House could reasonably look to for a "yes" vote on confirmation. Casey might as well dance on the grave of his father (a hero of mine) if he would vote against a nominee who could provide the decisive vote to restore abortion policy to the democratic processes.

In sum, a high-quality conservative nominee with a good public presence -- and with the support of the broader conservative coalition that coalesced around Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito -- should be able to hold all, or virtually all, the 49 Republicans and to pick off the one or more Democrats needed for confirmation. Vice President Cheney's tiebreaking vote shouldn't even be needed.

He might have added to the mix that Jim Webb(VA) will be likely to support conservative judges and Joe Lieberman (CT) is not a safe bet to toe the party line set down by the Kennedy/Leahy/Kerry cabal. Another wild card is Hillary Clinton who will probably wish to appear moderate and reasonable in preparation for her presidential run in 2008.

All in all, things may not be quite as bleak as they seemed last Tuesday. There is a likelihood that at least one of the current liberal justices will step down now that the Democrats have captured the senate. Justice Stevens is 86, Justice Ginsburg is 73, and one or both of them may have been waiting until this election to retire with the expectation that a Democratic senate would prevent President Bush from nominating a conservative to replace them. We'll see whether or not they're calculation proves correct.

Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing, Baby

Gary Varvel explains why the Republicans got a "thumpin'" last Tuesday:

If the voters are given a choice between Republicans who act like Democrats or Democrats just being themselves, Republicans can hardly be surprised that the voters decided to elect the real thing.

Another Piece From Murray

Following up on last Sunday's post More on Murray, here's more perspective on the parable of the vine and the branches.

Abide In Christ, by Andrew Murray - In Affliction and Trial

"Every branch that bearest fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." - John 15:2

In the whole plant world there is not a tree to be found so specially suited to the image of man in his relation to God, as the vine. There is none of which the fruit and its juice are so full of spirit, so quickening and stimulating. But there is also none of which the natural tendency is so entirely evil - none where the growth is so ready to run into wood that is utterly worthless except for the fire. Of all plants, not one needs the pruning knife so unsparingly and so unceasingly. None is so dependent on cultivation and training, but with this none yields a richer reward to the husbandman. In His wonderful parable, the Saviour, with a single word, refers to this need of pruning in the vine, and the blessing it brings. But from that single word what streams of light pour in upon this dark world, so full of suffering and of sorrow to believers! What treasures of teaching and comfort to the bleeding branch in its hour of trial: "Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." And so He has prepared His people, who are so ready when trial comes to be shaken in their confidence, and to be moved from their abiding in Christ, to hear in each affliction the voice of a messenger that comes to call them to abide still more closely. Yes, believer, most specially in times of trial, abide in Christ.

Abide in Christ! This is indeed the Father's object in sending the trial. In the storm the tree strikes deeper roots in the soil; in the hurricane the inhabitants of the house abide within, and rejoice in its shelter. So by suffering the Father would lead us to enter more deeply into the love of Christ. Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself. It is an unspeakable mercy that the Father comes with His chastisement, makes the world round us all dark and unattractive, leads us to feel more deeply our sinfulness, and for a time lose our joy in what was becoming so dangerous. He does it in the hope that, when we have found our rest in Christ in time of trouble, we shall learn to choose abiding in Him as our only portion; and when the affliction is removed, have so grown more firmly into Him, that in prosperity He still shall be our only joy. So much has He set His heart on this, that though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home and abide in the beloved Son. Christian! pray for grace to see in every trouble, small or great, the Father's finger pointing to Jesus, and saying, Abide in Him.

Abide in Christ: so will you become partaker of all the rich blessings God designed for you in the affliction. The purposes of God's wisdom will become clear to you, your assurance of the unchangeable love become stronger, and the power of His Spirit fulfil you the promise: "He chasteneth us for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness." Abide in Christ: and your cross becomes the means of fellowship with His cross, and access into its mysteries - the mystery of the curse which He bore for you, of the death to sin in which you partake with Him, of the love in which, as sympathizing High Priest, He descended into all your sorrows. Abide in Christ: growing in conformity to your blessed Lord in His sufferings, deeper experience of the reality and the tenderness of His love will be yours. Abide in Christ: in the fiery oven, one like the Son of Man will be seen as never before; the purging away of the dross and the refining of the gold will be accomplished, and Christ's own likeness reflected in you. O abide in Christ: the power of the flesh will be mortified, the impatience and self-will of the old nature be humbled, to make place for the meekness and gentleness of Christ. A believer may pass through much affliction, and yet secure but little blessing from it all. Abiding in Christ is the secret of securing all that the Father meant the chastisement to bring us.

Abide in Christ: in Him you shall find sure and abundant consolation. With the afflicted comfort is often first, and the profit of the affliction second. The Father loves us so, that with Him our real and abiding profit is His first object, but He does not forget to comfort too. When He comforts it is that He may turn the bleeding heart to Himself to receive the blessing in fellowship with Him; when He refuses comfort, His object is still the same. It is in making us partakers of His holiness that true comfort comes. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, not only because He can suggest comforting thoughts of God's love, but far more, because He makes us holy, and brings us into close union with Christ and with God. He teaches us to abide in Christ; and because God is found there, the truest comfort will come there too. In Christ the heart of the Father is revealed, and higher comfort there cannot be than to rest in the Father's bosom. In Him the fulness of the divine love is revealed, combined with the tenderness of a mother's compassion - and what can comfort like this? In Him you see a thousand times more given you than you have lost; see how God only took from you that you might have room to take from Him what is so much better. In Him suffering is consecrated, and becomes the foretaste of eternal glory; in suffering it is that the Spirit of God and of glory rests on us. Believer! would you have comfort in affliction? - Abide in Christ.

Abide in Christ: so will you bear much fruit. Not a vine is planted but the owner thinks of the fruit, and the fruit only. Other trees may be planted for ornament, for the shade, for the wood - the vine only for the fruit. And of each vine the husbandman is continually asking how it can bring forth more fruit, much fruit. Believer! abide in Christ in times of affliction, and you shall bring forth more fruit. The deeper experience of Christ's tenderness and the Father's love will urge you to live to His glory. The surrender of self and self-will in suffering will prepare you to sympathize with the misery of others, while the softening that comes of chastisement will fit you for becoming, as Jesus was, the servant of all. The thought of the Father's desire for fruit in the pruning will lead you to yield yourself afresh, and more than ever, to Him, and to say that now you have but one object in life - making known and conveying His wonderful love to fellow-men. You shall learn the blessed art of forgetting self, and, even in affliction, availing yourself of your separation from ordinary life to plead for the welfare of others. Dear Christian, in affliction abide in Christ. When you see it coming, meet it in Christ; when it is come, feel that you are more in Christ than in it, for He is nearer you than affliction ever can be; when it is passing, still abide in Him. And let the one thought of the Saviour, as He speaks of the pruning, and the one desire of the Father, as He does the pruning, be yours too: "Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth, that it may bring forth more fruit."

So shall your times of affliction become your times of choicest blessing - preparation for richest fruitfulness. Led into closer fellowship with the Son of God, and deeper experience of His love and grace - established in the blessed confidence that He and you entirely belong to each other - more completely satisfied with Him and more wholly given up to Him than ever before - with your own will crucified afresh, and the heart brought into deeper harmony with God's will - you shall be a vessel cleansed, meet for the Master's use, prepared for every good work. True believer! O try and learn the blessed truth, that in affliction your first, your only, your blessed calling is to abide in Christ. Be much with Him alone. Beware of the comfort and the distractions that friends so often bring. Let Jesus Christ Himself be your chief companion and comforter. Delight yourself in the assurance that closer union with Him, and more abundant fruit through Him, are sure to be the results of trial, because it is the Husbandman Himself who is pruning, and will ensure the fulfillment of the desire of the soul that yields itself lovingly to His work.

The Reason Why

Why have there been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11? It's certainly not that the terrorists haven't been trying. Harold Hutchison at Strategy Page explains the main reason for our good fortune:

The answer was a simple change of mission by the FBI and more communication between the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community.

In the 1990s, the FBI built criminal cases against terrorists - with the intention of locking them up in prison. This meant that making sure evidence of a terrorist's acts could be admitted to court. However, this led to problems, including the fact that when the evidence was provided to the attorneys for the accused terrorists, it eventually found its way back to terrorists still active, blowing methods of gathering intelligence in the process. In many cases, the FBI had to keep a wall between its intelligence side and its criminal prosecution side (some have called it the "Gorelick wall" after the author of one memo that was made public outlining the procedures to be used). Since 9/11, the FBI has changed its tactics, the wall has come crashing down, and attacks have been thwarted, with support networks also being rolled up.

The FBI's new approach has been to break up the attacks beforehand - with criminal cases being of secondary importance. This allows the FBI to do things it was not able to do earlier, like go to into chat rooms where recruiting occurs. It also means the FBI operates on a lower threshold. It is very similar to the approach the federal government used against Al Capone. Ultimately, Capone never served a day in prison for bootlegging or murder - his prison sentence was for tax evasion. Today, the FBI operates mainly to just stop the terrorists. They may not get jail time for terrorism, but there are other charges that can be used (immigration laws are one set of laws) if need be. Even these will break up cells - simply because the terrorists are human, and will make mistakes or do something illegal. If they are in prison, they cannot carry out attacks.

A number of human rights and civil liberties groups are not happy about this. In situations like those involving the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, this has led to lawsuits and hostile media coverage. These groups have viewed the intelligence community with suspicion at best - often they are downright hostile, despite the fact that the cooperation between the FBI and the intelligence community has broken up several attacks.

It will be interesting to see, now that the Democrats have some sway in the government, whether they push to return to the days of the "Gorelick wall" which was set up during the Clinton administration or whether they quietly allow the FBI to continue to do what they must to keep the rest of us safe.

In the meantime let's give the Bush administration some credit for having prevented any more attacks on our soil since 9/11.

A Giant Christmas Ball

That's what earth looks like in this photo taken from space, apparently with cloud cover removed:

It's beautiful in a way, but it's also a shame. All those lights obscure the night sky for modern viewers to the point where when we look up on a clear night we see only a fraction of what observers could see a hundred years ago. The real beauty, the beauty we're missing, is not the lights on earth, but the lights in the Milky Way.

Craig vs. Ehrman

One of the top Christian philosophers debated a professor of religious history at Holy Cross last March on the topic "Is There Historical Evidence For the Resurrection of Jesus?" The debaters were William Lane Craig of The Talbot School of Theology and Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina.

Craig laid out the evidence for Jesus' Resurrection and argued that the evidence is uncontroversial. What's at issue, he claimed, is not the evidence, but whether a miracle is the best explanation for that evidence. Ehrman maintained that it is not while Craig affirmed that it is. It's a fascinating exchange and you can read the transcript here.

Hypocrisy and Gay-ness

First Things has two fine pieces on the Ted Haggard fiasco. The first, by Robert Miller, is a meditation on hypocrisy and an explanation why Haggard's particular faults do not make him a hypocrite. The second, by Richard Neuhaus, is an addendum to Miller's piece and has some interesting things to say about homosexuality in general and particularly the opinion of some gays that the more the public hears about people like Ted Haggard and Mark Foley the more accepting of homosexuality they will be. Neuhaus thinks this is exactly wrong.

They're good reading, and I recommend them to you.

New Neuroscience Blog

Denyse O'Leary has started a new blog, called The Mindful Hack, dedicated to discussion of issues surrounding the nature of mind and the materialist/immaterialist debate in neuroscience. This is a cutting edge field in biology and philosophy, and I urge you to give her site a look. O'Leary says this about her new effort:

A word about me: I am a Toronto-based journalist and author, who also blogs at the Post-Darwinist.

A word about the Mindful Hack: Just as the Post-Darwinist was started in 2005 in order to update By Design or by Chance?, my investigation of the intelligent design controversy, Mindful Hack notes recent events that might interest you if you care about the ongoing controversy between materialist and non-materialist neuroscience.

The Mindful Hack represents the non-materialist side. You will not learn here that you are a meat puppet, a robot vehicle for your selfish genes, or nothing but a pack of neurons. You will get a chance to explore the other side of the argument, as I have time to blog on it.

Publishing this blog distracts me from anxiety while I await the copy edit of The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007), of which I am the coauthor. Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard is the lead author.

Because I have been a book editor as well as a journalist for many years, I worry, even though the boss editor assures me that the copy editor is one of the best in the business (and I bet that's true). I expect to learn a lot from reviewing her work. Meanwhile, here are a couple of fun little items to get us started.

Blogs are like gardens, always in some state of development. So you will notice blank side beds, because I have not got round to starting a blog roll, but that too will happen. About the name, Mindful Hack, it is a play on "mind hack," a person who studies cognitive science, usually from a materialist perspective. Make what you like of that!

O'Leary's blog should be an excellent source of news on developments in this fascinating field.

Betraying the Base

The far left George Soros, Michael Moore wing of the Democratic party is soon going to conclude that it's been had, and they're not going to be happy about it. After having given themselves to their Democratic suitors they're waking up the morning after only to find themselves alone in bed. First, Nancy Pelosi backs off from a committment to seek impeachment of George Bush and then she backs away from any suggestion that the Democrats will push for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Then Howard Dean appears on Chris Matthews' show and, much to Matthews' dismay, seems to back away some more from any prospect of an early end to the Iraq war. Here's a video clip that lends strong support to the supposition that the Democrats don't have a clue about what they're going to do with Iraq.

It's easy to yelp, snipe, and nip at the president's ankles like a pack of dogs as he tries to erect a permanent outpost of freedom in the Middle East, but it's going to be something else altogether to actually come up with a plan that differs significantly from the president's plan without it amounting to a surrender to the Islamo-fascists.

The voters in their frustration, impatience, and, I would suggest, poor judgment, voted the Republicans out and replaced them with ....what? Presumably, the MoveOn, TruthOut, and Democracy Underground people are right now in the first stages of a seething anger as the feeling of betrayal begins to creep over them.

The Current State of Strings

Those of you interested in the esoterica of modern physics might like to read this article by Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, and the author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos.

Greene talks about the present state of string theory and the criticism it is weathering for its inability so far to come up with verifiable predictions. It's a very interesting piece which ends with this:

String theory continues to offer profound breadth and enormous potential. It has the capacity to complete the Einsteinian revolution and could very well be the concluding chapter in our species' age-old quest to understand the deepest workings of the cosmos. Will we ever reach that goal? I don't know. But that's both the wonder and the angst of a life in science. Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

I can't help but wonder why tolerating uncertainty is okay for scientists who work in the realm of the testable and empirical but not okay for religious believers who are constantly admonished by such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins that their beliefs are untenable precisely because there's too great an element of uncertainty in them.

It's also worth noting that string theory is a perfectly acceptable topic for discussion in high school physics classes even though, because it's not testable, it does not meet the criteria of a scientific theory. Yet intelligent design, even though it, too, "could very well be the concluding chapter in our species' age-old quest to understand the deepest workings of the cosmos," is ruled out of bounds in public schools because it's allegedly not testable. Very strange.

Military Deaths in Perspective

The number of Americans killed in Iraq continues to climb and October was a particularly awful month with the number of dead hovering at a little above 100. This is terrible, of course, but the media, in their unceasing attempt to discredit what is being accomplished there, deliberately conveys the misleading impression that this number is somehow an intolerable calamity.

That it is tragic there is no doubt, but the numbers dying in Iraq might be put into some context. For example, in the days preceding the Normandy invasion of WWII close to 800 American soldiers were killed just during the rehearsal for the landing.

More contemporaneously, throughout the month of October there were approximately 3450 people killed in traffic accidents in the U.S., and roughly 1400 people murdered.

These numbers dwarf the number of fatalities in Iraq but they are never trumpeted on the evening news. Why is that? These victims are every bit as precious to their loved ones. Their lives are no less important. So why do the networks not keep a running tally of how many people have been killed in traffic accidents or by homicide? The reason apparently is that there is no political benefit to be gained by reminding the public of the number of accident and murder victims every night. As long as the military deaths can be blamed directly on George Bush, however, we'll continue to hear about them. It's not that it's news, it's that it's politics, and the news media are major players.

The question that needs to be asked and openly debated by the media is not how many soldiers have been killed today but rather is their sacrifice worth the cost? Does what we're accomplishing in Iraq justify, in the long term, the loss of American lives? This is a debate it would be very worthwhile having, but don't count on the major news outlets to hold it. Many of them are simply not interested in looking seriously and candidly at the likely consequences of pulling our troops out of harm's way.

Dennett Defies Death and Denies Deity

Daniel Dennett, the famous atheistic Darwinian philosopher from Tufts University, has recently suffered a life-threatening heart problem. He discusses his condition here and graciously thanks his believer friends for their prayers but, not believing that there's really anyone to pray to, wishes they would do something more rational and efficacious.

In the course of his remarks he makes some confused comparisons between the ethical standards of medicine and the ethical standards of religion, but we may charitably chalk these up to the effects of his medication.

In any event, his meditations may be of interest to those who are familiar with Dennett's work.

Stem Cell Breakthrough

Another potential breakthrough involving stem cells has emerged in England. This time as a treatment for heart attack victims. The stem cells, however, are not the morally problematic embryonic stem cells, but are cells taken from the victim's own bone marrow:

Emergency heart attack patients will be injected with their own stem cells in a dramatic new treatment. The procedure, being pioneered by British doctors, holds out hope of a 'cure' as the stem cells repair damaged heart muscles.

The low-cost treatment, which involves removing stem cells from the patient's bone marrow, could be given within a few hours of a heart attack. It is intended to stop patients suffering further attacks and developing heart failure, something existing treatments fail to do in many cases.

If the initial trials in London are successful, the treatment is likely to be extended to NHS hospitals across the country. Researchers have called the project - the first of its kind in the world - "very exciting" and say it could have a significant impact on the annual toll of deaths from heart disease.

Read the rest of the article here.

Thoughts on the Debacle

Yesterday's electoral results were dispiriting for those who believe, as I do, that conservative principles are generally much better for the well-being of our country than are liberal principles, but the news about the election was not entirely bleak. There were outbreaks of common sense here and there around the country. An affirmative action referendum was shot down in Michigan, resolutions opposing gay marriage were successful in a half dozen states, and a lot of the Democratic winners were fairly conservative candidates.

Even so, as hard as it has been over the last six years to accomplish anything worthwhile in Washington, yesterday guaranteed that it'll be almost impossible now.

Here are some thoughts on three groups who had a major stake in this election:

Republicans: The Republicans as a group got what they deserved. They utterly failed to articulate a principled philosophy of governance or to sell the nation on the major undertakings of the administration. The Iraq war, for example, is not going as badly as the media would have us believe, but the average voter has no way of knowing that. President Bush should have been out every week telling us about the progress being made there, not in general terms as is his irritating habit, but in specifics. Yet there was no such leadership coming from the White House. All we heard was "stay the course", but the voters were never told how "stay the course" was actually working.

Instead, a lot of voters, inhaling the media's daily dose of gloom and doom, decided that it must be pretty bad over there, and nothing they heard from the President gave them reason to think otherwise. The Republicans failed also to take a firm stand on the issue of illegal immigration which has many people extremely concerned, they spent money like Great Society Democrats, and they allowed themselves to grow fat and corrupt. Mark Foley was a blow that perhaps could not have been foreseen, but the Jack Abramoff scandal surely could have been. A lot of people may well have figured that if we're going to have people who act like Democrats in Congress then we may as well elect the real thing.

Democrats: The Democrats got better than they deserved. They ran on nothing other than slogans and code words. "Change" is not a policy by which a party can govern and is indeed an insult to the intelligence of every thoughtful voter, a class which may not have been particularly conspicuous in many precincts around the country. The Democrats never articulated any real or coherent alternative to the administration's conduct of the war. They complained endlessly about the economy which is, in fact, one of the best in history, and they pointed with glee to Republican scandals confident that the media would keep quiet about the likes of William Jefferson, Robert Menendez, Harry Reid and other Democratic malefactors. The Democrats are a party whose only strategy for governing is to oppose whatever George Bush tries to accomplish and to make his last two years in office a political nightmare.

American people: The American voters yesterday blithely but resolutely went to the polls to make Nancy Pelosi third in line for the presidency, Alcee Hastings, who was impeached and removed as U.S. District Court judge by Congress in 1989 for bribery and perjury, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and John Conyers who is as close to a bolshevik as there is in the House now that Bernie Sanders has been elected to the Senate, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The American people voted yesterday, in other words, to insure that there would be no more judges of the caliber of John Roberts or Samuel Alito. They voted for people who have promised that our taxes will go up, our borders will be thrown open, and that we will soon be aboard the last helicopters out of Baghdad, leaving Iraq to stew in a bloodbath rather than sacrifice another soldier or another dollar.

I wonder how many of those who voted to throw the Republicans out yesterday had any idea what they were replacing them with.

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Why Major in Philosophy?

This is a post I put up about a year ago and which I'd like to re-post because a number of students have asked what I thought the advantages of pursuing a philosophy major or minor might be:

In the course of my teaching I often encourage students to consider an undergraduate philosophy major because I believe that a study of the questions philosophers have addressed provides the most important background a thoughtful and intelligent student could acquire. Students often ask, though, what they can do with such a degree. My reply is that most majors don't do anything professionally with their degree but rather they find it excellent preparation for the sorts of careers they do choose to pursue. Employers in most occupations prefer to train their employees themselves in the skills they'll need, and most professions require graduate level work in a specific field. Philosophy prepares a student well for either path.

A friend sent along a link to a post by Dr. Roy Clouser, author of the outstanding book The Myth of Religious Neutrality, and professor of philosophy at Trenton State College, in which he addresses these same questions. His post is entitled Why Major in Philosophy? and it contains a lot of good advice for a young high schooler or undecided undergrad who thinks they might enjoy philosophy but isn't sure if it will prepare him or her for making a living. Clouser writes:

For most students arriving at college, philosophy is the one subject they've never had before so it's natural that it's one of the last they consider majoring in. It's also natural to wonder what the major is good for--after all, few people ever plan to be professional philosophers! Yet, year after year, students switch their major to philosophy, and others tell us they wish they'd discovered it sooner so they could have done so.

What these students discovered - surprising as it sounds - is that philosophy is the single most useful major in the entire undergraduate curriculum! (Yes, useful!)

It's true, of course, that not many people become professional philosophers. But neither do most history majors become historians or English majors go on to become novelists. The fact is that most students don't pick a major because they plan to make their living in that field. They choose a major based on their interests and on how well it will prepare them for the widest possible number of occupations after college. If you are deciding that way too, we can say this for certain: If you have the interest, philosophy is best possible major - hands down.

Let me explain.

Philosophy deals with theories about the most basic beliefs and values that people have. These include topics like the nature of reality and human nature, the nature and sources of knowledge and morality, the proper structure for society and government, and the nature of religious belief. It also studies theories about the nature of science, art, language, and law. In this way, every philosophy major is exposed to the most influential interpretations of the most important issues people face across the entire spectrum of human experience.

But more than simply learning about these issues, philosophy includes a keen training in logic and critical thinking - in the ability to argue and debate the truth of the various theories and viewpoints that are studied. It sharpens one's ability to spot difficulties, pose questions, and to weigh the evidence for and against the reasons given for any view on any topic. (A bank V.P. once told me that his logical training was the most valuable thing he got in his entire undergraduate education - even more valuable than his business courses.)

Even from this short description you may be able to see why a philosophy major is the best possible background for anyone who wants to deal with the public or who wants to write - whether as a novelist, or news reporter. It is also the very best major for those thinking of pursuing any sort of career in religion. And it should come as no surprise that law schools consider it the best background for the Law SAT and a career in law. (Speaking of standardized tests, the highest GRE scores consistently come from three majors: math, physics, and philosophy.)

But there's more. It seems that a solid background in the influential viewpoints over a wide range of issues, and an ability to think logically about them, is also splendid training for a career in business according to several top business schools. But what may be most surprising of all is that the records of some of the best medical schools show philosophy as the undergraduate major of some of their most outstanding alumni!

So, if you have doubts about the major that's best for you - especially if you are presently an undeclared major - why not make an appointment at the philosophy department to talk over your interests with one of our faculty? Philosophy might, at least, be the ideal minor subject for you even if you decide not to major in it.

I offer only one caveat. Philosophy departments, like departments in any of the humanities, often are loaded with instructors who favor a particular school or style of philosophy. Some of these styles may be deadly dull to students who expect their philosophy experience to be an exciting intellectual excursion into the best that's been thought and written about life's most important questions. The student who wants to major in philosophy would do well to check out what approach the department is inclined toward before committing him or herself to majoring in it.

The Road

I recently picked up Cormac McCarthy's latest novel titled The Road. It's a story about a man and his son, neither of whose names we ever learn, whom we come upon while they are journeying together through a post-apocalyptic world. They're trying to reach a vague destination along the coast, and the story is about their struggle to stay alive and avoid the evils which lurk along the vehicle-less highway they're following.

Their world is relentlessly barren, gray, cold, wet, and lifeless. All life, except for handfuls of human survivors, seems to have been extinguished in what we assume was a nuclear holocaust several years earlier. The lives of these remnants are reduced to finding food, staying dry and warm, and avoiding human predators.

McCarthy tells us very little about the man and his son except that they deeply love each other. The dialogue between them is spare, truncated, and taciturn but brimming with affection and mutual commitment. We do learn that the man doesn't believe in God, and this, I think, provides one key to how a reader might understand this compelling tale.

I wondered as I read the book whether McCarthy was consciously offering an allegory of life in a thoroughly secular age. The man and his son can easily be taken to be a synecdoche for the whole human race which finds itself journeying through modern life with no real destination and no real hope that there will be anything better for them when they finally get there. Along the road there are terrors and pain, a constant struggle to survive, to find food and shelter, but with no real reason to press on except that we love each other and want to live for those we love, and they for us. The man and boy are spurred along by the hope that they will find something, anything, along the coast that will help them survive, something that will give their lives point and purpose, but the man, at least, has no real expectation that there really is anything there.

The journey along the road is about as bleak as it can be. There's no meaning in anything. Justice and morality are as dead as the forests and streams through which they pass, except in the hearts of the man and the young boy. Their only delights come in finding a jar of preserved fruit, a can of beans or a dry blanket.

I don't know that McCarthy was trying to imagine a metaphor for the dismal emptiness and hopelessness of a world in which there is no reasonable expectation of life after death, but if he were, he couldn't have done it any better than what he offers us in The Road.

It's a book worth reading.

Believing in God

Atheistic philosopher Ken Taylor is puzzled that smart people can still believe in God in a technological age. The fact that we live in the modern world should, folks like Taylor think, preclude belief in pre-modern superstitions, as if belief is made obsolete by the development of air conditioning and DVD players.

Anyway, Taylor says this:

One should want to believe in the existence of god only if one is confident that such belief is capable of being ratified by either reasoned argument or direct experience.

Actually, no. One should want to believe in the existence of God because God is a necessary condition for there to be meaning, morality, justice, and dignity in life. God is also a ground for man's hope that there is life beyond corporeal death. Thus one might well be inclined to hope that there is a God and, finding no good arguments that dash that hope and several good reasons to think there is a God, is rational if he allows that hope to evolve into a belief.

At the very least, an atheist can, I think, argue the theist to a stand-still with counterarguments. If you start out neutral with respect to god and try to reason your way to his existence by appeal to any of the traditional philosophical arguments, you just aren't going to get all the way to positive belief, in my humble opinion.

But why start out neutral? Lots of people start out believing that God exists. They have reasons for their belief and no serious reason not to believe. So why shouldn't they continue to believe? A man might believe that his wife loves him although he can't prove it, but the inability to gain proof is no reason to asdopt a stance of neutrality. Why, if a person is convinced that God exists, should they somehow try to stifle that belief? Isn't that irrational?

The very worst that can be said for them [arguments for God's existence] is that they are all demonstrably invalid and incapable of compelling rational belief in the existence of god.

This is not true, either. The classical arguments for the existence of God fall short of being proofs, not because they are invalid, but because one is not logically compelled to accept some of the premises of the argument. For example, elementary forms of the Cosmological argument might run like this:

• 1. Every event has a cause
• 2. No event causes itself
• 3. The coming to be of the world is an event
• 4. Therefore, the coming to be of the world has a cause outside of itself.

This argument is perfectly valid, but it's not philosophically compelling for two reasons: First, it's possible to deny the first premise, and, second, even if the first premise is granted, the argument doesn't lead to the existence of the God of theism. It simply leads to some nebulous cause of the initial cosmic explosion.

Nevertheless, that is not nothing. The believer could hold that the first premise is reasonable, even if it can't be proven, and therefore conclude that the argument does suggest the strong possibility of the existence of a transcendent creative agent.

The problem with this approach, as I see it, is that if you take yourself to be positing god merely in order to endow one's life with meaning and you do so with no rational basis for really and truly believing that god exists, then you seem to be engaging in a kind of pretense.

The trouble with Taylor's statement is that by "rational basis" he means deductive proof. If deductive proof were the only rational basis we had for our believings then there would be very few things we'd believe. Among the things we would not be able to believe if we required certainty for our beliefs is that believing in God without proof is a "pretense". There is, after all, no proof for that strange claim.

The Plausibility of Life

Jonathan Wells at Books and Culture reviews a new book on evo devo (evolutionary development)which purports to solve some of the last major problems of evolutionary theory. According to Wells, the book actually does no such thing. Here are some excerpts from his review:

Darwinian evolution is widely advertised to be a fact, as firmly established as the shape of the Earth. Defenders of the theory insist that there is no scientific controversy over it, and people who question or criticize it are typically accused of being ignorant or religiously motivated. Yet every few years a book comes along-written by scientists-claiming to remedy some major flaw in evolutionary theory.

The Plausibility of Life, by Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, is such a book.

There are other major transitions in the history of life that Kirschner and Gerhart also concede remain unexplained. One of these was the "invention" of the first eukaryotes, cells with nuclei that are very different from bacteria. "Generating the first eukaryotic cell was a major and enduring accomplishment," they write. "Extensive innovation showed up in the complexity and organization of the eukaryotic ancestor." Another major transition was the origin of multicellular organisms, which require complex mechanisms for cells to aggregate and communicate with each other. Still another unexplained transition was the origin of animal body plans in the Cambrian explosion. "Once again," write Kirschner and Gerhart, "a new suite of cellular and multicellular functions emerged rather quickly and was conserved to the present."

Some other major transitions that Kirschner and Gerhart concede remain unexplained are the origin of limbs in the first land vertebrates, the origin of neural crest cells that sculpt the heads and nervous systems of vertebrates, and the origin of the neocortex in vertebrate brains. "The origin of these processes and properties would seem to be the primary events of evolution, requiring high novelty," but the authors admit they cannot explain them. So, what does their theory explain?

Their theory purports to explain how organisms that share a given set of conserved core processes-say, land vertebrates-can diversify into a wide variety of forms.hat are we to make of The Plausibility of Life? Its authors claim to complete Darwin's theory by closing its last remaining major gap, yet they concede that the completed theory has no explanation for the origin of core processes in the first cells, the first eukaryotes, the first multicellular organisms, animal body plans, or vertebrate limbs, heads and brains. There seem to be more gaps in evolutionary theory now than there were before Kirschner and Gerhart got started.

Despite the dubious nature of their theoretical proposal, Kirschner and Gerhart imply that anyone who continues to be skeptical of Darwinian evolution is close-minded. In particular, people who think that intelligent design might provide a better explanation for some features of living things are dismissed as ignorant, religiously motivated, and covertly seeking ways to evade the law. Like many of their fellow Darwinists, Kirschner and Gerhart ultimately resort to personal insults.

Does the theory of facilitated variation make life plausible? Not at all, since it assumes the existence of life in the first place. Does the theory of facilitated variation rebut intelligent design? Not at all, since it assumes the existence of irreducibly complex core processes in the first place. The principal take-home lesson from The Plausibility of Life is that evolutionary theory still suffers from major weaknesses, but anyone who says so without reaffirming Darwinism and condemning [intelligent design] is a close-minded, ignorant, Bible-thumping subverter of the Constitution.

Where's the novelty in that?

The very title of the book is a rhetorical ploy to lead the reader away from the manifest fact that life itself is extraordinarily implausible. The chances that a living metabolizing, reproducing cell could have emerged from a primordial broth of its constituents purely by the action of blind, mechanical processes has been compared to the chances that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard would leave in its wake a fully assembled, fully functional jet airliner. And that was an estimate given by someone (Fred Hoyle) who was sympathetic to the evolutionary program.

Pace Kirschner and Gerhart life is not at all plausible. It is indeed prohibitively improbable unless the processes which led to it were somehow guided by an intelligent agent. More and more people are coming to this conclusion. It's only the Darwinian naturalists, holding out like isolated Japanese soldiers who continued to fight years after WWII was lost, who think otherwise.

Read the rest of Wells' review at the link.