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.

The Eveready Presidency

We keep hearing that President Bush's approval numbers are in the tank and that he's a weakened president. This is perhaps more wishful thinking than it is an accurate reflection of the American voter's opinion of the president's job performance. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Rasmussen, which has been very reliable in the past, has him at 50%.

It's likely that most people contacted in these polls are only responding according to their perception of a MSM-generated virtual reality. We doubt that most people who are polled have any real idea what Bush is doing or why he's doing it. They just know that the media is hammering on him relentlessly so he must be pretty bad.

Indeed, Bush can be faulted for permitting excessively high spending, something Democrats should applaud him for, actually, and an incomprehensible insouciance toward the hemmorhage of illegal immigration across our southern border. Other than those sins, though, he's doing a fine job under extremely trying circumstances.

Nevertheless, just today another journalist, this time its Tom Friedman, tells us that we can "stick a fork" in this administration if President Bush doesn't do this, that, or the other thing. Some months ago it was E.J. Dionne who used the same metaphor for concluding that Bush was finished, and numerous others have been saying the same thing in different words for at least the last three years. If Bush had as many needles sticking out of him as he has cutlery sticking in him he'd be a porcupine.

Yet Bush keeps right on chugging along, chalking up one victory after another. His critics thought his presidency was finished prior to the '04 election, but he sent John Kerry back to the political oblivion which is his proper abode. The carpers gleefully pronounced his demise after Katrina, but nobody talks much about Katrina anymore, since it's become obvious that much of the incompetence in that tragedy was wielded with stunning profligacy by the inept Democratic mayor of New Orleans and Democratic governor of Louisianna. The Democrats expected that the Valerie Plame affair would send Bush's administration spiralling down in flames, but Bush has walked away from the inferno like one of those guys in the Book of Daniel who were cast into the fiery furnace but were never even singed.

Iraq is going moderately well, the economy is perky, and just today Bush ensconced his second nominee to the Supreme Court on the Bench. He's more like the Eveready bunny than an overdone turkey, and his frustrated opponents like Al Gore and Ted Kennedy are reduced to throwing infantile tantrums - stamping their feet, pounding their fists, and holding their breath till they turn blue. It's quite a spectacle, really.

Brief History of the Evolution of ID

Mike Gene at Telic Thoughts has a fascinating post that traces the early development of the modern Intelligent Design movement. He shows quite convincingly that its connections to Creationism were tenuous at best and that attempts to conflate ID and creationism are inapt.

You've no doubt heard the argument which claims that ID grew out of Creationism and that therefore ID is just creationism "in a cheap tuxedo." Even if it were true that ID descended from Creationism, which Gene's argument rebuts, nothing much about the nature of ID follows from that. It could be noted, for example, that the anti-IDer believes that mankind has descended from ancient microbes, but he would never think to say that mankind is just a microbe in a cheap tuxedo. It is just silly to argue that because two conceptual paradigms share a common lineage that therefore they are identical, or nearly so. If that argument were valid then chemistry would be very nearly the same as alchemy, and Darwinism would just be Lamarkism with make-up on.

And to think that this is the argument that convinced Judge Jones in Kitzmiller v. Dover that ID is just Creationism and therefore not real science. It sure doesn't take much to convince someone who's eager to be convinced anyway.

The Coming World Oil Crisis

The Guardian's Heather Stewart reports on the coming world oil crisis:

Oil markets are braced for a nail-biting week, as world leaders demand action against Iran over its nuclear ambitions, and analysts warn that crude prices could reach $90 a barrel if the oil-rich state retaliates by blocking supplies. The International Atomic Energy Agency meets on Thursday to decide whether to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has threatened to respond to any punitive action by cutting off the 2.6 million barrels of oil a day it pumps into the markets - 5 per cent of the world's supply.

Kona Haque, commodities editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the worst case scenario of a shutdown of supplies from Iran would be 'absolutely devastating ... I wouldn't be surprised to see the price go over $90 a barrel'. She said fears about Iran are already adding a $10 risk premium to oil prices, which could remain in place for months as the crisis escalates. Davoud Danesh-Jafari, Iran's oil minister, has warned that the result of punitive action against his country would be 'the unleashing of a crisis in the oil sector'.

Haque said that with little spare capacity in the market, prices are much more vulnerable to political shocks: 'We need a lot more supply capacity to have a cushion; it's going to take another couple of years until that happens.'

The oil producers' organisation Opec meets in Vienna on Tuesday amid calls from some members, including Iran, to cut back production and push up prices further. But most analysts believe production quotas will be left unchanged. 'There's no pressure on Opec to do anything,' said Rob Laughlin, oil analyst at Man Financial.

He said the Nigerian situation could potentially be worse for oil prices than fears about a supply squeeze from Iran. Production levels in Nigeria have already been lowered by 200,000 barrels a day in an effort to protect facilities from the rebels, who have deliberately targeted foreign oil companies. 'Nigeria is probably as big a problem as Iran for us. We're pretty politically squeezed, between the Nigerian rebels and the Iranian president,' said Laughlin. The president of Opec, Nigeria's Edmund Daukoru, fuelled market fears on Friday when he told Reuters that his organisation was unlikely to step in with extra supplies if the Iranian crisis worsened. 'If Iran decides to stop production, or is forced to stop production because of a sanction, I don't think Opec necessarily has a role to play there,' he said.

Investment in Russian oil production has been weak since President Putin's tax raid on the oil giant Yukos, and Iraqi output is well below the levels Washington hoped for before coalition tanks rolled into Baghdad. A cold snap in the US, which has so far had an unusually warm winter, could push prices up further in the weeks ahead. 'Should cold weather return to the US, then we'll really be in trouble,' said Laughlin.

The Left's mantra of no blood for oil prior to the Iraq war was silly, but if Iran cuts off production, and Nigeria and Venezuela, the latter not mentioned in Stewart's article, choose to tighten up their supply just to harm the U.S., the public clamor to strike back will be irresistable. Cutting back on oil supply in the present climate would be a clear invitation to war, and the U.S. would probably not be alone in waging it.

Iran seems determined to hasten Armageddon. They are fools and madmen, but they're driving this bus, and the rest of the world has little choice but to try to stop them. Even though the cost of doing so may be nightmarishly high, the alternatives are even worse.

A Conservative Breeze

Is there a conservative breeze blowing across Western civilization? First George Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 to become president of the United States. Then Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister of Italy, then Angela Merkel defeated Gerhard Schroeder in Germany and Pope Benedict was chosen to succeed John Paul II. Now Stephen Harper has defeated Paul Martin in Canada.

Perhaps the defeat of conservative Jose Aznar in Spain two years ago was a mere aberration. Perhaps there is a growing disenchantment in the West with leftist political parties and their stultifying, counterproductive economic policies and their head-in-the-sand attitudes toward the Islamist threat.

If only the same were true in South America.

Another Finger Points to Syria

FrontPage Mag has this fascinating story from Iraqi General Georges Sada, author of the forthcoming book Saddam's Secrets:

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed. The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over. "Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."

Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in 2003. And President Bush himself has conceded much of the point; in a televised prime-time address to Americans last month, he said, "It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong."

The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a U.N. investigation over its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon. The Bush administration has criticized Syria for its support of terrorism and its failure to cooperate with the U.N. investigation.

Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops. "I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.

The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including "yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.

The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.

There's more on this turn of events at the link. We wonder how much play the story will receive in the MSM and suspect the answer is very little. If it turns out to be true, it would be a public relations disaster for the Democratic left which staked an enormous amount of credibility on the assumption that President Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. Fair-minded people have always assumed, of course, that it was possible that the weapons were never found because Saddam moved them to Syria or Iran, but the left has never had much inclination to be fair-minded.

If the story is true, Bush and the Republicans will get a huge boost in their favorability ratings and the Democrats will join the whale dung on the political abyssal plain. So, don't look for MSM stories on General Sada's testimony unless they're attempts to discredit it. The left will never admit that Bush was right and they were wrong.

Pure Luck

Isn't it amazing what blind, unguided, purposeless forces can accomplish when they put their mind to it? Here's just one example of the astounding abilities of random mutation and natural selection to create marvels of complex engineering.

The Assault on Freedom

Free speech and freedom of religious opinion is under assault not just in the Islamic world but throughout Western civilization. The politically correct are carrying out their inquisitions and laying the wood around the stakes to which people who dare to speak their minds are bound. Read this chilling summary from Wretchard at Belmont Club:

Two Christian pastors were convicted in Australia for vilifying Islam. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

"In Victoria, two hellfire Christian preachers, Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot, are facing jail after preaching against Islam in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Ever since, they've been fighting an action brought by the Islamic Council of Victoria under the state's new Racial and Religious Tolerance Act."

That's not too surprising. Everyone knows Oriana Fallaci is facing charges before an Italian magistrate for her criticisms of Islam. What about this: a French member of parliament has been convicted in court of making derogatory remarks about homosexuality. The The Brussels Journal notes:

"Stating that 'homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity' and that 'heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality' can cost you dearly in France. Exactly these opinions, expressed by the French politician Christian Vanneste last year, led to him being sentenced on Tuesday to payment of a heavy fine."

"A court in Lille [Rijsel in Dutch], in the French northern province of Flanders (adjacent to the Belgian Dutch-speaking region of Flanders), ruled that Mr Vanneste has to pay a fine of 3,000 euro plus 3,000 euro in damages to each of the three gay organisations that had taken him to court. The politician, a member of the French National Assembly for the governing UMP, also has to pay for the verdict to be published in the leftist Parisian newspaper Le Monde, the regional Lille daily La Voix du Nord, and the weekly magazine L'Express."

Again you might say, no surprises here either. But what about this: An Austrian cartoonist is facing charges in Greece for writing a satire on the life of Jesus in his home country. The Guardian reports:

"Haderer did not even know that his book, The Life of Jesus, had been published in Greece until he received a summons to appear in court in Athens in January charged with blasphemy. ... 'It is unbelievable that a person can write a book in his home country and be condemned and threatened with imprisonment by another,' said Nikki Conrad, a human rights expert who organised yesterday's press conference. 'But he is not going to just sit back and accept this injustice. He is prepared to take this to the European court of human rights. When Gerhard first got the summons he thought it was a joke. But now he is starting to get a bit nervous.' "

Whole categories of discourse are now being outlawed in the West. At least two celebrities are fighting this trend, probably because they lead active lives of the mind. One of them is Mr. Bean.

"Blackadder star Rowan Atkinson has launched a comedians' campaign against a government bill to outlaw inciting religious hatred. ... Mr Atkinson told a meeting at the House of Commons on Monday night there are 'quite a few sketches' he has performed which would come into conflict with the proposed law."

"He added: 'To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society.' "

The other is Michael Crichton. At a speech entitled "Fear, Complexity, Environmental Management in the 21st Century" that he gave before Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy, Crichton described one the major unrecognized dangers stalking the world: bad information. Crichton meticulously showed how grossly hysterical coverage of Chernobyl reactor incident, for example, caused deaths far more numerous than the incident itself. He went on to trace the history of public policy fads, Global Cooling, the predicted Y2K meltdown, the Population Bomb, Electromagnetic Fields and so on, and shows how we have nearly forgotten them in our rush to replace them with new ones. We live once again, in Carl Sagan's phrase, in a demon-haunted world.

Wretchard posts some interesting commentary at the end of this piece that you might wish to peruse.

It would, of course, be more difficult to persecute Americans in the U.S. for this sort of speech because of the protections guaranteed us by the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is unnerving, however, to reflect upon what a Supreme Court which looks to Europe for judicial guidance might do to this body armor for the mind.

This is why it is so crucial that we have people on the Court who rule according to what the Constitution says and not according to what current political fashion dictates. This is why we need more Constitutional conservatives and fewer liberals on the Bench. One shudders to think who a President Kerry would have appointed to fill the last two vacancies and how long our First Amendment protections would survive a Kerry Court.

Not everyone holds George Bush in as high esteem as we think he merits, at least in those moments when we're not thinking about our southern border, but everyone who cherishes the right to voice their opinions, no matter how unpopular, can thank God that neither John Kerry nor Al Gore made it to the White House.

The Necessity of Disarming Iran

Gerard Baker at the Times Online lays out the catastrophe that war with Iran would be for the world:

Those who say war is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. They will, quite probably entrench and harden the Iranian regime. Even the young, hopeful democrats who despise their theocratic rulers and crave the freedoms of the West will pause at the sight of their country burnt and humiliated by the infidels.

A war, even a limited one, will almost certainly raise oil prices to recession-inducing levels, as Iran cuts itself off from global markets. The loss of Iranian supply and the already stretched nature of production in the Arab world and elsewhere means prices of $150 per barrel are easily imaginable. Military strikes will foster more violence in the Middle East, strengthen the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, fuel anti-Western sentiment among Muslims everywhere and encourage more terrorism against us at home.

He then says this:

But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power. If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. What the country itself may do with those weapons, given its pledges, its recent history and its strategic objectives with regard to the US, Israel and their allies, is well known. We can reasonably assume that the refusal of the current Iranian leadership to accept the Holocaust as historical fact is simply a recognition of their own plans to redefine the notion as soon as they get a chance ("Now this is what we call a holocaust"). But this threat is only, incredibly, a relatively small part of the problem.

If Iran goes nuclear, it will demonstrate conclusively that even the world's greatest superpower, unrivalled militarily, under a leadership of proven willingness to take bold military steps, could not stop a country as destabilising as Iran from achieving its nuclear ambitions.

No country in a region that is so riven by religious and ethnic hatreds will feel safe from the new regional superpower. No country in the region will be confident that the US and its allies will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the US and its allies will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists. The terror training grounds of Afghanistan were always vulnerable if the West had the resolve. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian camps will become impregnable.

And the kind of society we live in and cherish in the West, a long way from Tehran or Damascus, will change beyond recognition. We balk now at intrusive government measures to tap our phones or stop us saying incendiary things in mosques. Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima.

Iran simply cannot be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons. As disastrous as war might be for the world, a nuclear Iran, as Baker eloquently argues, would be far worse. We must pray and hope that the Iranians can be persuaded to back down, but we must prepare for the eventuality that they won't.

Retired Major General Robert Scales discusses the military difficulties inherent in an Iraq-type war against Iran - and how he thinks an attack on Iran should be fought - in an editorial in the Washington Times here.

End of the Spear

Christianity Today has a review of End of the Spear. We haven't yet seen the movie, but it's based on a truly amazing story. For those not familiar with it, in 1956 four young missionaries were murdered by Ecuadoran indians. After their deaths, two of the widows and a sister of another of the slain men went to live with the tribe from which the killers came. Because of the beauty of their witness, eventually much of the tribe, including the killers, was converted to Christianity.

It is very difficult to imagine the selflessness of bereaved women who might have been understandably embittered toward the murderers of their loved ones, instead going to live among the killers to win them to the Truth. It is an amazing story of love, forgiveness, redemption, and human nobility, and from all that we've heard and read the movie tells it faithfully and powerfully.

Another Humanist For ID

Another non-Christian, non-theist endorses the basic idea of Intelligent Design. In a recent interview on National Public Radio, novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who describes himself as a secular humanist, said this:

Mr. VONNEGUT: Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It's the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.

NPR: How are the scientists behaving tribally?

Mr. VONNEGUT: They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. But look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines.

NPR: Does that mean you would favor teaching intelligent design in the classroom?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Look, if it's what we're thinking about all the time; if I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as to how the hell we really got this way. It's a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can't think this? Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion. Also, I think that, you know, it's tribal behavior. I don't think that Pat Robertson, for instance, doubts that we evolved. He is simply representing a tribe.

NPR: There are tribes on both sides here in your view?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Yes.

NPR: May I ask what tribes, if any, you have belonged to over the years?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Well, it's an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They're called Humanists now: people who aren't so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.

NPR: Who are denounced by some religious people as secular humanists?

Mr. VONNEGUT: Well, that's exactly what I am. The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don't have a congregation. We don't meet, so it's a very flimsy tribe, but there's a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly wonderful is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

So much for the canard that ID is a Christian meme and that the designer has to be the God of the Bible. David Berlinski, Michael Denton, Antony Flew, and now Kurt Vonnegut are none of them Christians nor theists. Yet they're all impressed by the evidence that life displays purpose and intention.

Is Judge Jones paying attention?

Swann vs. Rendell in PA

We'd like to point out that a recent poll in Pennsylvania showed Lyn Swann leading the incumbent Democratic governor Ed Rendell 46% to 44%. There are so many odd results on this poll, however, that we can't put too much confidence in Swann's lead. For just one example, Republican respondents said that they'd like to see Condaleeza Rice run for president by 46% to 32% margin, but on the previous question, when asked who their choice for president would be, Rice wasn't even mentioned in a list of nine candidates.

It's hard to say what significance a poll has at this point in the election campaign, but it does seem that Rendell is vulnerable, especially to a black opponent with the name recognition of someone like Lyn Swann.

Humble <i>Brights</i>

From the website of the Brights, an organization of people who hold to a naturalistic worldview:

Although some individual Brights may have negative views of persons who hold supernatural beliefs, the Brights movement does not proclaim superiority or a disdain for others.

This may be, but if they don't feel that they're intellectually superior to the rest of us why do they call themselves "Brights"?

Good Publicity

The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture has graciously put up two posts on our series on Judge Jones' decision in the Dover trial. The first announces the series, and the second is a very positive sampling from it. Check them out, especially the second.

Palestinians Vote For War

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters believes that the Palestinians, in bringing Hamas to power, have, for all intents and purposes, voted for war with Israel:

Unless someone can show widespread voter fraud on behalf of Hamas, the Palestinians should be judged by the choices they have made this week. They have chosen war and the annihilation of Israel over the two-state solution favored publicly (if not fervently) by Fatah. Europe and the United States need to wake up from their delusional dreamland of a situation where both sides in this conflict want a peaceful conclusion and a world without hatred for their children and grandchildren. Clearly, the Palestinians want war, and they have made no secret of using their children and grandchildren as bomb fuses in order to perpetuate it.

The first item on our list should be an absolute end to all aid to the Palestinian territories and government. The US should not subsidize Hamas, nor should it give money to a people whose only aim appears to be genocide.

Second, the US should allow Israel to respond militarily to any and all provocations -- no more pressure from Washington on Tel Aviv to moderate their responses to suicide bombings and missile attacks. And if Hamas and the Palestinians still want to wage war after that, then let the IDF roll across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and push the whole lot of them right into the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. That's what total war means, and as soon as the world stops preventing the Palestinians from the risks of their own choices, the sooner they will conclude that war is the worst possible choice for them.

It's hard to find cause for optimism in the results of this election. The Palestinian people know what Hamas stands for, and, in what will probably have been an act of ethnic suicide, they pulled the lever for them. There is no people in the history of the world who have so deliberately thrown in their lot with terrorism. Any hope for peace in the Middle East has gone by the boards. Short of a miracle, war is as inevitable in Palestine as anything in human affairs can be.

The Palestinians had a chance to establish a state in Gaza and the West Bank if they would be willing to live in peace with the Israelis, but in yet another manifestation of the Islamic death wish, they loudly proclaimed in the election Wednesday that they are not so willing. They have chosen their fate, and the U.S. should, as Morrissey insists, stop subsidizing them immediately. We can not, and must not, have anything to do with a terrorist state, much less send them taxpayer money to finance their crimes. May God help the innocent Palestinians who didn't want Hamas and who will surely get caught in the middle of the coming conflict. Their government certainly won't.

UPDATE: Emanuele Ottolenghi writes that Hamas' electoral victory was not what they wanted and will be its undoing. It's a very interesting column. You can read it here.

The Alito Vote

It appears that the vote to confirm Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court will take place Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. So far about 86 senators have declared their intentions, 55 saying they will vote for Alito and 31 declaring that they'll oppose him. It looks like the vote tally will come out around 58 to 42. Of the remaining fourteen votes, Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe are the two likeliest Republicans to vote nay. Among Democrats there are four who are possible yes votes: Conrad, Dorgan, Landrieu, and Pryor.

There's been talk of a filibuster, John Kerry has called for one, but it's going nowhere. To end a filibuster requires 60 votes and even some of the Democrats who intend to vote against Alito have said they will vote to stop one. With 58 senators already on record as supporting Alito and several others opposed to a filibuster it doesn't look like the Democrats will be able to pull it off. Even Harry Reid has said it won't happen.

The upshot of all this is that on Tuesday George Bush will have his second Supreme Court nominee confirmed. With three years left in his presidency he's quite likely to get yet a third opportunity. The Left, already guzzling Maalox like it was water, will be apoplectic.

E.O. Wilson on ID

In a recent column in USA Today biologist E.O. Wilson writes that evolution is a fact and there's no point in denying it. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is untestable and it's pointless to try to make it into a science:

Modern biology has arrived at two major principles that are supported by so much interlocking evidence as to rank as virtual laws of nature. The first is that all biological elements and processes are ultimately obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry. The second principle is that all life has evolved by random mutation and natural selection.

Although as many as half of Americans choose not to believe it, evolution, including the origin of species, is an undeniable fact. Furthermore, the evidence supporting the principle of natural selection has improved year by year, and it is accepted with virtual unanimity by the biologists who have put it to the test.

Scientists are not opposed to the search for intelligent design, only to the claim that it is supported by scientific evidence. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the culture of science. Discoveries and the testing of discoveries are the currency of science; they are our silver and gold.

If positive and repeatable evidence were adduced for an intelligent force that created and guided the evolution of life, it would deservedly rank as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. I doubt that there is a researcher alive who would not race to make such a breakthrough if the minimum criteria of science could be met.

Wilson here commits a common mistake in this debate. He assumes that ID is something which requires its own evidence, as though the evidence for design is somehow qualitatively other than the facts that can be found in any cosmology or biochemistry text. The evidence for ID is the evidence that is discovered by the scientist every day in his laboratory. That evidence belongs to everyone, not just the researchers who glean it, and the evidence is mountainous.

To suggest that the current dispute is about evidence is to misunderstand things entirely. The dispute is over how best to interpret evidence that scientists have been accumulating now for centuries. The crucial question is not which side has the most evidence but whether what we have discovered about life and the cosmos should be seen as the product of chance accident and serendipidity or whether it should be seen as the product of intention and purpose. Complaints about the lack of evidence for a designer are red herrings in this controversy.

He goes on to write that:

Biology is biology, conservative Christianity is conservative Christianity. The two world views - science-based explanations and faith-based religions - cannot be reconciled.

What then are we to do? Put the differences aside, I say. Meet on common ground where we can find it. An excellent example taking form is the cooperation between science and religion, the two most powerful forces in the world, to protect Earth's vanishing natural habitats and species - in other words, the Creation, however we believe it came into existence.

Oops. Where does this come from? If religion, the realm of values, should stay out of science, and vice versa, how does a scientist make a value judgment such as that we ought to save the earth's natural habitats? A Christian can certainly conclude this from the mandate we have to be stewards of the earth, but how does a scientist who, qua scientist, can say nothing of values and morals and scriptural mandates, arrive at this conclusion, much less take it for granted.

Wilson finds that he can't live consistently by the principles he espouses, and so from time to time he, and other scientists, slip off their lab coats, enter the metaphysician's study, and think no one will notice. That's fine in their personal lives but it is disingenuous of them to use their authority as scientists to pontificate on values while at the same time they try to hold up a wall of separation between the realm of facts (science) and the realm of values (religion, philosophy).

Wilson wrote a wonderful book on ants. Anything he tells me about ant behavior I will certainly accept on his authority. But as a philosopher ... well, he's a great entomologist.

Great Game Plan

So a major terrorist organization swept to victory in Palestine. Iran is on the verge of getting nuclear weapons. Bin Laden is threatening us with more death and destruction. And what are the Democrats trying to do? Get George Bush impeached for surveilling telephone calls in which one of the parties is a foreign terrorist suspect. Yesindeedee, that'll be a winner with the American people in November.

Combat Zones: Foreign and Domestic

A friend passes along this observation:

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a combat death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.

We don't vouch for the accuracy of the figures, but if they're correct perhaps Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, and Ted Kennedy will organize the exodus.

Alternate Universe at the NYT

The New York Times treats its readers to one of the most implausible analyses of the GWOT, perhaps, that has appeared to date in any major newspaper. The editorial, titled al-Qaeda is Winning, is written by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon:

Had Americans ....listened [to Osama's tape] with the ears of those for whom the message was intended - Muslims around the world - they would have heard something very different. Instead of a weak Osama bin Laden, they would have heard a magnanimous one who could offer a truce because "the war in Iraq is raging, and the operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favor." Mr. bin Laden staked his claim to leadership of the Muslim world on 9/11, striking us as others only dreamed of doing. On the tape, he shows strength by taking credit for America's humiliation in Iraq and continues to do what we are not: fighting for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

Yes, but even Islamist true-believers must know that truces are not offered, especially by Islamists, when the correlation of forces is in their favor. They are not signs of strength. They're offered when one side feels the need to regroup, reorganize, catch their breath and slow down a superior force. If Osama is using words like "truce" it's only because he sees the jittery leadership of his movement casting sidelong glances toward the skies in a worried search for predator drones, and he sees his forces in Iraq being cut to pieces, not just by Americans, but by Iraqi militias. He's losing in Iraq, he has lost in Afghanistan, and if any more of his lieutenants are visited in the middle of the night by hellfire missiles his organizational structure will begin to crumble. That's why he's calling for a truce.

It is too early to say how this tape will affect Muslim opinion, but there is no doubt that Mr. bin Laden's strategy has been paying off. According to a poll released last month by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and Zogby International, when Muslims in several countries were asked what aspect of Al Qaeda they "sympathize" with most, 39 percent said it was because the group confronted the United States. Nearly 20 percent more sympathized because it "stands up for Muslim causes," which is really just a polite way of saying the same thing.

How is this poll result any different than those obtained in polls after 9/11 or prior to the invasion of Iraq? Indeed, in the wake of 9/11 one could buy Osama t-shirts in the markets of almost every Muslim city, but they're considerably more scarce today than they were then. Al-Qaeda has alienated large swatches of Muslims through their attempted WMD attack in Jordan, their murderous attacks in Saudi Arabia, the attempts on the life of Pakistan's Prime minister Musharraf, and the savagery of their war on Iraqi civilians. To say that bin Laden's strategy is working seems needlessly pessimistic.

Two other phenomena also show the movement to be strengthening. The first is the emerging breed of self-starter terrorists with few or no ties to Osama bin Laden, like the Madrid and London bombers, and others who have been arrested before they were able to carry out attacks in Pakistan, Australia and elsewhere. The second is the emergence of an indigenous jihad in Iraq. Much is said about the foreign fighters in Iraq, but the truly dramatic development is the radicalization of Iraqis who will continue the insurgency or travel abroad to kill, like those who bombed three Western hotels in Jordan in November.

Perhaps Benjamin and Simon are a pair of twenty-somethings with short historical horizons, but the "self-starters" are not a novel development. They've been around since the 1970s. The indigenous jihad in Iraq is, even as you read this, largely occupied fighting al-Qaeda foreigners and running for political office. Those who are still engaged in trying to run the infidels out of their country find themselves more and more often confronted by competent Iraqi military units rather than Americans.

Despite so much evidence that the jihadists are winning sympathy, America has provided no counter-story to their narrative.

The evidence to which the authors refer exists only in their own minds. Unless they are aware of facts that have not yet been made public there's very little reason to think that the jihadists have more sympathy among their co-religionists today than they did six months or a year ago and lots of reasons, as we've outlined above, to think that they have less.

The American counter-story, for those who have been paying attention, has been the progress made by the people of Afghanistan and the purple fingers of the people in Iraq.