Materialism and Iron Spikes

Michael Egnor employs the strange case of Phineas Gage to argue that materialism is self-refuting. He observes, for example, that:

Brain matter cannot be the complete cause for ideas because matter and ideas share no properties. Cause and effect can't be 'linked' between substances that have no properties in common.

I believe that materialism is incapable of providing an adequate explanation for the mind. Clearly ideas can influence the movement of matter (via the brain), and vice-versa, but materialism alone is inadequate to explain the link. The link between the mind and the brain must involve agency that has such non-material properties as purpose and judgment, and, as such, an adequate explanation for the mind must necessarily be open to immaterial causes.

Egnor makes an interesting argument for what philosophers call substance dualism, the belief that reality is comprised of two disparate essences, mind and matter. Materialists, of course, believe that matter is all there is. His essay can be read at the link.

RLC

Yielding to the Gentleman

In Alabama they still settle disputes in the state legislature with, uh, body language. When one senator took offense to the words of a colleague a third observed that, "It's certainly a black eye on the Legislature and the Senate in particular."

Yes, and to one of the senators most particularly, it appears.

You can watch the video here.

RLC

Killed Bill

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has a post based on information he was given by a congressional aide on why the Immigration Reform Bill was killed. He says in his piece that:

I asked my source if his boss has been hearing from his constituents on this bill and what the for and against ratio was. He said that they have received thousands and thousands of calls and the ratio was something like 95%-98% against the bill.

I also asked my source why he thought so many Republicans had been supporting such an incredibly unpopular bill. He gave three reasons:

First off, there was what he referred to as the "Rovian School of thought," which says that passing this bill would capture the Hispanic vote for the GOP for decades to come.

Next up, there's the "Chamber of Commerce" vote. He says these Republicans were heavily influenced by business groups that want cheap labor no matter what the cost is for the rest of the country.

Then there was the last group, the smallest group in his opinion, who were willing to sign onto a terrible bill just so they could say they were part of a big reform that had bipartisan support.

Is there a noble reason in there anywhere? Makes one proud to be a Republican, doesn't it?

RLC

The Witch is Dead

The immigration reform bill that would have, in effect, provided amnesty to illegal aliens, cost American taxpayers literally trillions of dollars, and likely done next to nothing to stop the flow of illegals, is dead for now.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid tried to end debate last night and bring the bill to a vote, but his attempt to call cloture failed and the bill has been withdrawn from the floor.

Michelle Malkin has the details, including the roll call on the vote.

RLC

Horrific Beauty

We would not be surprised to learn that this is Mahmoud Amadinejad's favorite video. Indeed, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that he had it made. Who else would want to depict nuclear explosions in such beautiful scenes?

We might visualize him rubbing his hands together in rapturous glee as he watches and imagines American or Israeli cities under those mushroom clouds.

RLC

Senator Cheney?

Republican senator Craig Thomas died Monday night after a lengthy battle with leukemia. There's now talk around Washington that his replacement may be Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Apparently, Wyoming law prohibits the governor, who is a Democrat, from appointing someone from the opposite party of the man being replaced, so he has to appoint a Republican.

Ms Cheney would be an excellent choice, and we hope she is indeed selected.

RLC

Eurabia

The most popular name given to baby boys in England this year? Mohammed.

RLC

Betraying the Public Trust

It's hard to believe but a majority of the United States senators voted today to reject an amendment to the immigration reform bill now before Congress that would require that all current immigration laws, laws passed by these same senators, be enforced. The amendment failed 54-42. Most of those voting in favor of it were Republicans (11 Democrats), but here's the shocker: 16 Republicans joined 38 Democrats in voting against the call to enforce our laws protecting our border, and one, John McCain didn't vote.

Michelle Malkin has the vote tally and the provisions of the amendment here. What message are we sending by refusing to affirm and enforce our own laws? These people, Democrats and Republicans alike, really do have to go. They're betraying the public trust. I can see no other way to view this vote.

RLC

Women Drivers

For the next thing to time travel try this video. Watch it and you'll think you're back in 1920s America or maybe on a different planet altogether as a Lebanese man and woman debate whether Muslim women should be allowed to drive automobiles in Lebanon.

No wonder Muslims despise Western culture.

Be sure to listen to the man who speaks at the end.

RLC

ISU Hypocrisy

An acquaintance of mine at Messiah College, a historian of science by the name of Ted Davis, offers his opinion of Guillermo Gonzalez's ordeal at Iowa State. Davis is a theistic evolutionist who has little sympathy for Intelligent Design, but he's rightly outraged at the treatment Gonzalez has received at the hands of the Iowa State inquisition.

Read the letter he sent to ISU president Geoffrey here.

RLC

Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Well known anti-theist Christopher Hitchens has written a book titled God Is Not Great and now his brother Peter, a Christian, critiques the work. Given the relationship between the two men the review is interesting, made moreso because Peter considers the book deeply flawed.

One of the ironies of their fraternal relationship is that Christopher is in favor of the war in Iraq and opposed to belief in God. Peter is opposed to the war in Iraq and is devout. So there's something to like about both of them.

Read Peter's review at the link.

RLC

Survival Strategy

In this passionate editorial Caroline Glick outlines what she sees as a major cause of European self-destruction - multiculturalism. She has a good point, but I suspect there's more to the decline of Europe than just a commitment to "cultural diversity," as fatuous and insidious as that often turns out to be.

I think there is also a collective madness that seizes effete societies which have abandoned a belief in anything transcendent, and Europe is a confirming instance of that belief. How else to explain what Glick says here:

Wednesday's decision by Britain's University and College Union to call for a boycott of Israeli universities and colleges was not only hypocritical. It was suicidal. It is not simply that the British prefer to boycott Israeli universities than say, Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, Saudi and Jordanian universities where students are indoctrinated to seek the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of Christianity through the destruction of Western civilization.

It is not merely that they ignored the poor, brave Iranian students who just three weeks ago were brutally attacked by regime forces as they sought to hold elections for their pro-democracy campus organizations.

By calling for a boycott of Israeli universities, Britain's academic establishment is turning its back not only on Israel, but on Britain. When Britain's professoriate rejects Israel's right to exist as a Jewish, democratic nation-state and glorifies Palestinian society which supports global jihad and the destruction of Western civilization, it is rejecting the British state.

Only those who are suffering some sort of psychological impairment which causes them to experience moral inversion can call for a boycott of Israeli academics while feting those from Muslim nations. I can come up with no other explanation.

Europe reminds me of a certain kind of schoolboy, a weakling himself, who always takes the side of the schoolyard bully in hopes of ingratiating himself to the tough so that he won't turn on him. This child is willing to sacrifice anyone else to the bully's abuse, and to abase himself in the process, but it's worth it to him if it avoids a beating. That's modern Europe, or at least much of the elite class in Europe.

They know they have nothing to fear from Israel but plenty to fear from the Palestinians and their allies, so they perversely play the role of protector and advocate of those who want to destroy them in hopes that the destroyers will change their mind and find the quavering Euros useful against Israel. It's cowardly and unprincipled but that's modern Europe.

RLC

Cut and Run

According to The Drudge Report there were 16,185 murders in the U.S. last year, 400 of them in Philadelphia alone. Since the onset of the Iraq war in 2003 there have been about 3500 Americans killed.

In absolute terms it seems safer to be an American in Iraq than to be a resident of our cities. Perhaps John Murtha will soon call for Americans to redeploy from the U.S. to Okinawa.

RLC

They're Coming For Us

Andrew McCarthy has a must-read piece up at NRO. Here's an excerpt:

We now learn that for radical Islamists, lovers of death, the heart is the jihad's most coveted prize. Tear it out, and you get to kill not once but twice. So says 63-year-old ringleader, Russell Defreitas, whose nom de guerre is, of course, Mohammed.

"Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to do to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow!... They love John F. Kennedy like he's the man.... If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."

Defreitas, er, Mohammed is a naturalized United States citizen. He is another splash in that gorgeous mosaic of American Islam - the one over whose purportedly seamless assimilation the mainstream media was cooing just a few days ago, putting smiley-face spin on an alarming Rasmussen poll.

Alas, Defreitas/Mohammed turns out to be the part of the story the press dutifully buried in paragraph 19: He is that nettlesome one of every four American Muslim males who thinks mass-homicide strikes against civilians, like the one he and his cell were scheming, are a perfectly sensible way to settle grievances.

Does this mean he never really assimilated during his long journey from Guyana to treason against the adopted country he so abhors? Not hardly. For that one in four Muslim males turns out to be in pretty much the same place as one of every two members of the United States Congress - already tacking toward two of every three as we look ahead to September. All are content to let Islamist savagery carry the day.

Militant Islam, you see, is mustered in Iraq, where al Qaeda - the inspiration for Defreitas and his cohorts - has called America out. Like Defreitas & Co., Osama bin Laden and his ranks see themselves in a world war between the United States and a vision of Islam shared by tens of millions. (Think one-in-four, writ large). Iraq, they have decided, is their frontline, though very far from their only line. Everywhere, America is their target. Everywhere, terror - the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children - is their weapon of choice.

For the new Democratic Congress and its growing wake of jittery Republicans, that turns out to be a choice worth living with. Oh yes, they'll sputter about how barbaric and unsavory it all is. But, like those one in four Muslim males, they're prepared to let terror rule the day. That's the plan: Al Qaeda blows up things and people; we leave, grumbling all the way home about civil wars and intractable hatreds between the Religion of Peace's murderous sects; and al Qaeda triumphs ... with bin Laden reminding his acolytes: See, I told you, they're a paper tiger - make it bloody for them and we win.

Naturally, we'll tell ourselves they're not winning at all. They want Iraq? Let 'em have it. Just like - when they killed enough of us - we let 'em have Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Who, after all, needs these hellholes?

Except ... militant Islam doesn't just want the hellholes. It wants everything. It will take the hellholes. For now. But don't think for a second they'll be appeased.

The appetite grows as it feeds. Jihadists won't stop until they break our will. Give them Somalia and they want the World Trade Center. Give them Iraq and they want JFK ... and Fort Dix. They're coming for us, they're only too delighted to tell us they're coming for us, and still we're stunned when their insatiable hatred draws a bead smack in the middle of our shrinking comfort zone - this time, where a thousand flights move 125,000 people every single day.

They were stopped this time, but they will keep on trying until either they are dead or we are. That's the nature of the conflict we're in. Unfortunately for us, most Americans, including some Democratic presidential candidates, either don't believe it, don't care, or don't realize it.

Read the whole thing.

RLC

The Edge of Evolution

This link takes you to a video that shows transport proteins moving along a cilium (It's called a flagellum at the site) in an alga called Chlamydamonas. Michael Behe talks about this system of proteins in his new book The Edge of Evolution, and it's astonishingly complex. Imagine small railroad cars carrying building supplies moving along a track that runs up and down an under-construction skyscraper.

The whole system would consist of hundreds of parts whose movements must be coordinated and timed with the availability and need for different supplies. The supplies would need to be loaded onto the cars and off-loaded at the site, and so on.

These proteins carry the materials necessary for the construction of a cilium and no one, evidently, has a clue as to how this system got set up or what keeps it organized, synchronized and functioning.

Behe describes the system in some detail, and it's fascinating reading. I'm about half-way through his book and if the second half is as interesting as the first it's going to be extremely hard to put down.

RLC

The Iranian Gambit

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to be trying to provoke Israel into an attack upon Iran as this NewsMax story suggests:

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said the world would witness the destruction of Israel soon, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Ahmadinejad said last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah showed for the first time that the "hegemony of the occupier regime [Israel] had collapsed, and the Lebanese nation pushed the button to begin counting the days until the destruction of the Zionist regime," IRNA quoted him as saying.

By threatening Israel's destruction Ahamdinejad seems to be hoping that Israel will launch a preemptive strike that will justify Iran's retaliation, or at least earn Israel further international contempt.

The Iranian leader is playing his hand cleverly. If Israel doesn't rise to his bait Iran will just grow stronger until it is able to destroy Israel on some other pretext. Israel will be damned if it does attack and damned if it doesn't.

The danger for Iran is that Israel will decide that if it's going to be damned either way it might as well be damned for doing something rather than for doing nothing. And it might decide to hit Iran much harder than they anticipate.

RLC

The Atheist's Con

Johann Hari, an anti-theist leftist, is in a quandary about Tony Blair's successor as British prime minister, Gordon Brown. Apparently Brown is a devout Christian heavily influenced by Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine. Hari sees this as both good and bad.

The irony of Hari's post on Brown is that he sees no irony in statements like this:

All this puts left-wing atheists like me in a quandry [sic]. I think faith is a dangerous form of bad thinking - it is believing something, without evidence or reason to back it up.

[But] If religion drives Brown's best instincts and whittles down his worst, should we still condemn it?

The "best instincts" Hari refers to are Brown's concern for the poor, the worst are what Hari assumes, because of Wallis' influence, would be Brown's opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and a preference for non-secular schools.

So what's the irony? Hari, as an atheist, is making a moral judgment about Brown's instincts. It is, he implies, more moral to be in favor of the poor and less so to be against gay marriage, but where does Hari get this from? Why, on his assumption that there is no moral standard beyond ourselves, would it be wrong to despise the poor? What is the source from which he draws his moral valuations? In actual fact, having denied any transcendent ground for moral value, he's left with no ground at all. He simply draws upon his own preferences and tastes and seeks to gain for those subjective inclinations some sort of privileged standing. When an atheist employs moral language it's really nothing more than a con game that they are fond of pulling on everyone else, even though most of them don't even realize what they're doing.

RLC

Gonzalez Appeal Rejected

Iowa State astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez has had his appeal of the decision to deny him tenure rejected by university president Gregory Geoffroy. Why did this happen? ISU will not open up the records of their deliberations despite being legally required to do so thus we're left to draw our own conclusions. Most of the rationales we've heard sound pretty flimsy. Gonzalez has led his department in authoring scholarly papers and textbooks (See also here) and consistently receives good reviews for his teaching.

We're left to conclude that the ISU authorities succumbed, like the 17th century town sages in Salem, Massachusetts, to the hysterics of a few of Gonzalez's faculty colleagues who wanted to get him fired because, of all things, Gonzalez is not a naturalistic materialist.

Gonzalez believes the order and fine-tuning of the cosmos point to an intelligence behind it and for that, it appears, he is being led to the academic equivalent of the stake. Meanwhile, professional frauds like Ward Churchill are still drawing paychecks at the University of Colorado for telling students that the people who died on 9/11 deserved it.

Who says universities are about diversity and tolerance and the marketplace of ideas? Schools like ISU are in the business of regimentation, indoctrination, and conformity. If you're doubtful perhaps the accounts of the Gonzalez affair at the above links and elsewhere on the web will change your mind.

Thanks to Evolution News Network for the picture.

RLC

Tyranny vs. Free Speech

Like tyrants and tyrant-wannabes everywhere, whether on American college campuses, North Korea or the old Soviet Union, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will do whatever he can to eliminate free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

His latest move, however, closing down a popular television station, may prove to be the catalyst that leads to his downfall among the Venezuelan people.

RLC

Divisive Issue

The editors of National Review Online have challenged the editors of the Wall Street Journal to a public debate on the merits of the pending immigration legislation. As of this writing there has been no response from the WSJ. Apparently they're not so sure they can defend their support for this bill and their hostility to its opponents. I'm not surprised. It's pretty much indefensible.

Speaking of hostility, immigration reform is ripping the conservative movement apart. There are some things being said by those who favor the current bill put together by Ted Kennedy and John McCain that are creating wounds that may never heal. The otherwise estimable Linda Chavez has joined President Bush, Michael Chertoff, Ken Mehlman, and others in completely disparaging the motives of her opponents and misrepresenting their position.

I have to say that I have yet to hear an actual argument from supporters of the Kennedy bill on either the left or right as to why illegal aliens are good for America. President Bush and his spokespersons say they are, but they never really tell us why except to offer platitudes about doing jobs Americans won't do. Nor do they ever tell us why it is wrong to want to secure our borders, nor tell us why it is wrong to want to control who comes into this country.

Our country is our home. I'll be more impressed with the President's reluctance to build a fence to keep people from breaking into our home when he has the barriers around the White House removed and orders the secret service to stop shooting people who try to get in without permission.

RLC

Re: Reducing Poverty

Byron offers some comment on, and criticism of, Saturday's post titled Reducing Poverty. His thoughts can be read on our Feedback page.

Those interested in the book to which he refers in his last paragraph can order it here.

RLC

Thought For A Sunday

Earlier this week I stumbled across a 2x3 card that the church I attend gives out after each service. This particular one was from last October. It has a Key Scripture as well as a reference to a Psalm and Daily Scriptures for each day of the week. Quite a bit of stuff packed onto both sides of that little card.

The Key Scripture was from Micah 6:8; "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?".

I was quite taken by this verse and decided to read more of the book of Micah to get the context of the passage. The book is only seven chapters long. I saw that Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah. Both were prophesying around the same time and for the same reasons. For the most part the book seems to be pretty much doom and gloom and then the reader comes to the verse I mentioned above and sees a ray of hope.

And then I came to Micah 7:7 and what may be the most complete verse in all of the Bible; "Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me".

Despite the impending doom of judgment Micah chooses to turn to the LORD. He does so with patience knowing any response may not be immediate. He's prepared to wait on God. And he does so with confidence that he will be heard. What an example and prescription for peace of mind.

Reducing Poverty

Jim Wallis of Sojourners (available by subscription) believes that poverty can be dramatically reduced both at home and across the globe:

"Our plan is nothing less than to put poverty on the national agenda, and to compel candidates from both parties to present the nation with their plans for dramatic poverty reduction both at home and globally. I believe we can vote out poverty, but only if we are all in it together."

This seems a little odd. If Wallis knows how poverty can be "voted out" I would certainly like to hear his suggestions. If he doesn't know but wants to support a candidate who advances some plan, that seems to me a little naive. What criteria will he use to evaluate whether the plan would be effective? Would he support any candidate who advances any plan?

Would Wallis, for instance, support whichever candidate proposes to spend the most money on the problem? Lyndon Johnson established the Great Society's War on Poverty back in the early sixties. Since then we've spent over six trillion dollars trying to eliminate poverty, and we still have lots of poor people. In fact, it can be argued fairly persuasively, I think, that the Great Society was, on balance, a disaster for the American poor.

Would Wallis support a candidate who believes that the best way to help people out of poverty is to foster a strong economy? Republicans from Reagan to Bush have taken that approach, with considerable success, but Wallis doesn't seem enthusiastic about their philosophy of cutting taxes and reducing stifling regulations.

Would Wallis support a candidate who argues that most poverty in America today is due to unfortunate choices people have made throughout their lives which have rendered them unable to take advantage of the opportunities which are there for anyone who has the skills, discipline, and ambition to take advantage of them? Would he agree that the problem is, to a large extent, exacerbated by a degenerate culture which bathes people in assumptions which are often harmful to their prospects for achievement? He does acknowledge the insidious effects of our culture, I'm sure, but I doubt that he would be satisfied with any presidential candidate who believed that the most government can do for the poor is to change the culture.

I don't know this, of course, but my hunch is that were Wallis confronted with three candidates who each represented one of the three positions outlined above, he'd opt for the one who promised to raise taxes and initiate a vast transfer of wealth from the haves to the have nots, just as LBJ did. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the candidate who will win Sojourners' support will not be the one who promises to throw the most money at poverty, but I'll be surprised, pleasantly so, if it's not.

RLC

Atheist Taxonomy

Joe Carter claims that there are four kinds of atheists: Disproof atheists, Methodological atheists, Mystical atheists, and Faith atheists. A description of each, along with an interesting discussion on the topic, can be found in his post.

RLC

Preparing for War , Again

Hamas has launched a total of 310 rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot in the last couple of weeks, but Israel has done little to stop it. One reason, according to some Israeli observers, may be that Israel is gearing up for a war with Syria this summer. Meanwhile, according to Transport minister (formerly Defense minister) Shaul Mofaz, Hezbollah has returned to Israel's northern border area and is even better positioned than they were prior to their war with Israel last summer.

Of course this was not supposed to be allowed to happen, but it was the U.N. which was supposed to prevent it, so no one is surprised that it has happened.

Word in Israel is that it looks to be growing increasingly more likely that there will be another Israeli incursion into Lebanon this summer with the Israelis this time going all the way to Syria to cut off the head of the snake. The rest of the world, which has done absolutely nothing to protect Israel from its enemies, will surely scream if Israel decides that it must protect itself, but their outrage may fall on deaf ears this time around. We'll see.

RLC

Bush Bashes His Base

If you are a conservative and/or a Republican then Peggy Noonan's latest column is a must-read. It essentially discusses why the administration has resorted to insulting it's own strongest supporters over the immigration issue, and it's wonderfully written.

In the course of her column she says this:

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."

The problem that Bush presents to conservatives dismayed by his support for a bill that is so obviously awful is that he has been steadfast on four things that are so important to them: The war on terror, supreme court justices, tax cuts, and support for Israel. He's also been right to shun the Kyoto sham and to pursue a missile shield.

His failures - his exorbitant spending, his embrace of Donald Rumsfeld's policy of a lean military presence in Iraq and his inability to articulate a compelling defense of his policies and thus be an inspiring leader for the nation - have been galling, but tolerable. Until now.

As Noonan says, the administration is consciously trashing those who feel that illegal immigration is a calamity for this nation and is opening a breach that will not likely be mended if the immigration bill passes.

The President would have done much better to have taken her advice:

If they'd really wanted to help, as opposed to braying about their own wonderfulness, they would have created not one big bill but a series of smaller bills, each of which would do one big clear thing, the first being to close the border. Once that was done--actually and believably done--the country could relax in the knowledge that the situation was finally not day by day getting worse. They could feel some confidence. And in that confidence real progress could begin.

Bush could have been a great president, but as Noonan points out in a different context, he squandered the opportunity. It's too bad.

RLC

More Hitchens vs. Wilson

The debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens and theologian Douglas Wilson continues at Christianity Today with part IV and V.

Hitchens, I'm sorry to report, insists on missing the point. His argument in part IV is that atheists can be good without God. Wilson replies that it is not a question of how atheists can behave, rather it is a question of whether there can even be such a thing as "good" if there is no God.

Think of it this way. You and I disagree on how a word is spelled. How do we resolve our disagreement? We agree to consult a dictionary and accept its authority. Now suppose you say lying is wrong and I say it is not. How do we adjudicate our dispute? Must we not hold our two opinions up to some higher standard of moral authority, a moral dictionary, and see which of our views is compatible with that authority? Yet the problem for the atheist is that there is no moral dictionary. There's no right or wrong answer. Thus each of us is our own moral authority and whatever we think is good is ipso facto right.

Hitchens would reply that our sense of morality is innnate in us, a product of our evolution, but this helps his case not at all. As Wilson points out, just because we have a moral sense is no reason to think that sense is authoritative or that it somehow obligates us to live by it. Why should a moral sense which evolved to suit us for life in the stone age have any bearing on how we live today? Moreover, there is a lot about us - aggressiveness, lust, greed, etc. - which are also innate. Why are these things not morally obligatory? How do we choose between innate tendencies which are moral and those which are not?

Wilson makes this explicit in pt. V:

I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational warrant they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." You finally appealed to "innate human solidarity," a phrase that prompted a series of pointed questions from me. In response, you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin?

He then goes on to point out how Hitchens' view leads him to a physical determinism which completely negates the validity of his opinions. If determinism is true then whatever views we hold we hold because of the dance of atoms in our brains and not because of any truth-value inherent in those opinions:

If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is "winning the debate." They aren't debating; they are just fizzing. You refer to "language in which to write this argument," and you do so as though you believed in a universe where argument was a meaningful concept. Argument? Argument? I have no need for your "argument hypothesis." Just matter in motion, man.

In other words our thoughts about right and wrong are just chemicals fizzing in our brains as a result of all the chemical reactions that have occured in our brains throughout our lives. They don't correspond to any "truth" about morality at all.

Wilson then adds this:

You praise reason to the heights, yet will not give reasons for your strident and inflexible moral judgments, or why you have arbitrarily dubbed certain chemical processes "rational argument." That's absurd right now, and yet there you are, holding it. So for you to refuse to accept Christ because it is absurd is like a man at one end of the pool refusing to move to the other end because he might get wet. Given your premises, you will have to come up with a different reason for rejecting Christ as you do.

But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

Read the whole debate at Christianity Today. It's very good - unless you're on Hitchens' side of the argument.

RLC

Hitler's Religion

I and a friend who I would describe as a somewhat pallid deist (almost an atheist) have been enjoying a sporadic dialogue by e-mail over the last couple of years.

He recently said something that one often hears in such discussions that I think needs to be explored.

In response to his point that the history of Christianity was littered with the "insanity" of the "murders of millions upon millions" of people, I said that:

"I don't wish to minimize the abuses and horrors that stain the history of the Church but "millions and millions" is a gross exaggeration of the historical record. I think you'd be hard put to document that number. It's not an exaggeration, however, to note that that number accurately reflects the fruit of state atheism in the twentieth century, so one might well ask when the 'insanity' of atheism is ever going to end."

My friend replied with this:

"Fifty to sixty million people died during WWII started by Hitler. Hitler was not an atheist; in fact he was a Christian who believed himself to be some kind of a Messiah on a mission to kill all the Jews."

Now, in fact this is true, if at all, only in the most tenuous sense. Hitler was in fact a deist. His God was the laws of the universe. He used Christian churches, but he despised Christianity and believed that it was incompatible with National Socialism.

You can read about his religious views in his own words here. The link is to excerpts from Hitler's Table Talk, informal discussions written down for posterity for the most part by Martin Bormann between July 1941 and June 1942. Here are a few of Hitler's thoughts Bormann recorded:

Man has discovered in nature the wonderful notion of that almighty being whose law he worships.

Fundamentally in everyone there is the feeling for this almighty, which we call 'God' (that is to say, the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe).

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.

So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.

[T]he only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.

And so on. There's much more at the link. These are not the words of a Christian nor of a theist. They are the words of a man who set nature as his god and who was so situated that he was able to carry out the logic of his beliefs. They resulted in the holocaust.

RLC

Cindy Sheehan

Gary Randall of Faith and Freedom Network and Foundation hits all the right notes in his commentary on Cindy Sheehan's departure from the anti-war movement. Thanks to Byron for passing it along to "his few conservative friends." I suspect that means that I'm the only one who received it.

Anyway, here's the first half of Randall's piece:

The woman who became the "face" of dissent toward the Iraq war and President Bush is quitting - and going home.

In an essay entitled, "Good Riddance Attention Whore" that she posted on Daily Kos, a popular secularist blog, she said she was broken and disillusioned and was going "to take whatever I have left and go home."

I, of course, have never been a fan of hers. I have not agreed with what she has said nor most of her methods. Her photo opts with Castro and Chavez were offensive to me personally. But, as I read her hurt and confusion, I looked through the politics that have broken her and saw a human being who, I feel, desperately needs something and someone to believe in.

I have noticed that most major news outlets are not quoting the part of her essay that says, "When I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the Left started labeling me with the same slurs the Right used ... It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on."

I do not know this woman, nor do I suggest I have all the answers, but I do know this one thing. Every human being has a need to believe in someone and something.

In her case, she believed in Howard Dean, moveon.org, and the other components of the extreme Left in this country. While she was grieving the loss of her son, she was quickly pushed to the front to advance the extreme Left-wing agenda. When she wasn't valuable, they threw her "under the bus," as they say. That can happen in both parties.

Read the rest at the link. Her letter is here. One of the things she says is that her opponents frequently claimed that she was just being used by the secular anti-war left. It turns out, evidently, that her opponents were right and that she's come to think the same thing.

One can't help but feel sorry for this woman who, although I profoundly disagree with her about the war and much else, always struck me as a basically good person who tried so hard and sacrificed so much in her belief that she is right and that she could make a positive difference. Now she is worn out and exhausted and her former allies are saying "good riddance" to her. Nice people, those lefties.

God bless her.

RLC

Conservative Primers

For the political philosophers among our readers, and those just interested in the history of political thought, probably the best way to gain an understanding of conservative thought is to read Russell Kirk's early fifties classic The Conservative Mind.

Perhaps the second best way is to read the excellent essay by Mark Henrie at The New Pantagruel on Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism. It's an historical overview of the origins of modern conservative thought and it's an enchanting, if somewhat lengthy, read. Even though it's long it's still a lot shorter than Kirk's wonderful book.

The third best way, of course, would be to frequent National Review Online. The folks at NRO bring the principles elucidated by Kirk and Henrie to bear on the issues facing America and the world today. It's very good stuff.

RLC

Why Do People Resist Science?

Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg ask in an article at Edge, why some people, perhaps a lot of people, resist science.

I think the question is miscast. Very few people resist science. People are, by and large amenable to empirical demonstration. Even counterintuitive theories like Einstein's relativity theory are not rejected by the average person even if he doesn't understand it.

What people tend to resist is a metaphysical agenda masquerading as science and the two examples of resistance that Bloom and Weisberg site are perfect confirmations of that.

The authors are concerned because so many Americans refuse to accept the notion that there is no immaterial soul and they resist the idea that natural processes are sufficient to explain all of life and the cosmos.

Neither of these is a scientific idea, however. They are the metaphysical conclusions of some scientists who are a priori committed to a materialist worldview. If materialism were obviously true then of course it would be puzzling that so many people reject it, but materialism is not science. It's not something that can be proven by empirical investigation like whether the earth is round or revolves around the sun.

The truth or falsity of materialism is a philosophical question so Bloom and Weisberg would have done better to ask why so many people resist the philosophical entailments of materialism.

The answer to that question is much easier to see. They resist it because they see its sterility. They see that it leads to a view of life that renders all meaning, morality, human dignity, and hope just so much illusory baggage. They resist it because, quite frankly, a lot of people think that anything so at odds with their common sense intuitions about life is just false, and if the only evidence scientists can offer in its support is their testimony that it's true they're not going to persuade any but those who want to be persuaded.

And most people simply don't want to be persuaded that their lives are hopeless and meaningless.

RLC

Soda Is Very Bad For You

This will make your day. It turns out that a common additive in Coke, Diet Pepsi, and other soft drinks is believed to cause damage to the DNA of our cells and precipitate a host of degenerative neurological diseases as well as cancer. The additive is sodium benzoate. I leave you to read the article while I go check my Diet Rite Cola to see if it contains the stuff.

UPDATE: Diet Rite contains Potassium benzoate. Since potassium behaves chemically very much like sodium it looks like my favorite soft drink may be my undoing.

Maybe the only healthy diet is to starve yourself.

RLC

Quantum Theory

I may have mentioned this before but the March issue of First Things has a particularly clear exposition by Stephen Barr on quantum theory. Along the way Barr shows how quantum theory leads some physicists to conclude that there are a near infinite number of alternative worlds, why it is incompatible with physical determinism, and why it is antithetical to materialism.

It's a good article for the layman who knows little about quantum mechanics but would like a simple, basic understanding of its philosophical implications.

The irony of modern physics is that beginning in the early 19th century science in general, and physics in particular, were used as dispositive justifications for a deterministic, materialistic, naturalistic worldview. Science, we were told, had proven that there's nothing to reality but matter and energy, nature is all there is.

Then came the discovery of the world of quantum phenomena and the crucial importance of observers in the twenties and thirties and suddenly the role of mind took on new significance. Physical determinism collapsed along with the idea that matter is the sole component of reality.

The main prop of metaphysical naturalism was now revealing that naive materialism was an inadequate explanation of reality. It was telling us, in effect, that "there are more things in heaven and on earth than we dream of in our philosophy."

Now, in the early years of the 21st century, more and more non-scientists are beginning to grasp the obsolescence of the earlier views. Today, the universe often looks less like a Newtonian machine and more like a grand idea, an idea, perhaps, in the mind of God.

RLC

Cyber-Terrorism

England's Daily Mail offers a cyber-threat scenario which security experts say is almost certain to one day soon become a reality:

At first it would be no more than a nuisance. No burning skyscrapers, no underground explosions, just a million electronic irritations up and down the land.

Thousands of government web pages suddenly vanish to be replaced with the Internet's version of the Testcard - that dreaded screen '404 - Not Found' or, more amusingly, some pastiche or parody.

Then the Labour website starts to promise a wholesale renationalisation of the railways. The popular response this generates turns to amusement then bemusement as everything from Jaguar to BT is, the sites claim, to be taken back into state hands.

When conservatives.org.uk starts to promise compulsory repatriation and the return of capital punishment, bemusement turns to alarm.

The disruption continues: thousands of popular websites, from eBay to YouTube, start malfunctioning or are replaced by malicious parodies.

Tens of millions of pounds are wiped off the share price of companies like Amazon as fears grow that the whole Internet credit card payment network is now vulnerable and insecure.

Eventually, reports start to flood in that hundreds of thousands of personal bank accounts have been raided overnight.

Panicked bank chiefs and PR men go on TV to try to reassure, promising that this is no more than an electronic glitch, but thousands of anxious citizens take to the streets, many in tears, and pour angrily into the banks to demand their savings in cash.

When the ATM system goes down, the government steps in. A task force is appointed. There is a rush on hard cash that leads to a shortage of notes and coins.

Soon, it is clear that the United Kingdom (and much of Europe) has been subjected to a sustained and effective cyber-terrorist attack. Disaster is narrowly avoided when a series of sophisticated viruses disrupt the workings of the National Air Traffic Control System.

Slowly, the computer network is disinfected; the viruses, botnets and worms that are the electronic versions of bombs and bullets are defused and rendered harmless. No one has died, but the attack has cost Britain �10bn, and share prices take months to recover.

Such a scenario, say some experts, is not only possible but likely in the near future.

In fact, the article notes, a similar scenario actually occured in Estonia last year. The account is in the story at the link.

Imagine if U.S. banks or Wall Street were attacked and your life's savings were wiped out over night. Were this to happen on a large scale it could easily produce immense panic and chaos in the country. Just thought I'd mention this in case you were feeling too cheery this morning.

RLC

Re: Letter to a Young Woman

My friend Matt writes to comment on last week's post titled Letter to a Young Woman:

[In Letter to a Young Woman] you paint, perhaps without knowing it, a solid picture of a Christian approach to cognitive behavioral therapy. Spiritual Depression by D. Martin Lloyd-Jones is the best book I've read in a similar vein. Cognitive behavioral therapy is VERY trendy right now. And with research on brain plasticity, and on the effectiveness of CBT over meds, it's a very intriguing approach to depression and anxiety, but also to life in general. (Listen here)

The basic thesis is that emotions are the physical responses that our body has to thoughts. Change the thoughts, the feelings follow. Follow your feelings, and they'll control you and bury you in falsehood. You have to, as Lloyd-Jones says in taking his cue from Psalms 42 and 43, upbraid yourself. Take yourself by the shoulders and speak truth to yourself even if you don't feel it. And then, instead of trying to be happy and spending all your time asking if you DO FEEL happy, get on with your life and do good things. Be virtuous. Love God. Happiness follows.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing that letter.

I'm glad it was well-received.

RLC

Re: The Real Thing

Byron writes to offer some balance to yesterday's post titled The Real Thing. I think he's largely correct in his criticisms of Michelle Malkin's post to which I linked, and I've posted his e-mail on our Feedback page.

In my reply to him I wrote that:

There is very little in your reply that I can argue or disagree with. I think you're right that Malkin tends to be selective in her outrage and that there's a difference between protesting what is done with our tax dollars and what is done by those over whom we have no control.

That's why in my post I referred to the silence, not of American human rights advocates, but of the international human rights community. Their silence (at least so far) on the tactics of al Qaeda is inexcusable, in my mind, because they stand against all human rights abuse, not just that sponsored by nations to which they pay taxes.

They should, by their raised voices, be setting a standard by which Muslims around the world can measure the conduct of those who act in their name. If they remain silent when manuals such as this are discovered it sends the message that Muslims are not expected to abide by the same standards of decency that others are.

So far, though they were outspoken about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, I have heard nothing about the horrific acts perpetrated by AQ. But perhaps they have said, or will say, much that I just haven't heard about.

RLC

Memorial Day Tribute

These are the sort of men we honor on Memorial Day. Take a little time to read through their stories and thank God that our nation can still produce such valor.

To all who have served our country in uniform, and especially to those who are combat veterans, we at Viewpoint offer you our profoundest gratitude.

RLC

Suspicious Eyes

Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah was killed a couple of weeks ago by coalition forces. Now comes word that he may have been betrayed by associates and that paranoia is spreading through the Taliban leadership. No one knows who can be trusted and who can't.

I'd like to think that this is the result of our intelligence agencies planting the seeds of suspicion among the Orcs. Perhaps it is.

RLC

The Real Thing

So where are the voices of those international human rights advocates who consider it torture to yell at a prisoner or to deprive him of a Koran when real torture rears its hideous head? As Michelle notes, what we're hearing from them is pretty much the sound of silence. Torture, apparently, is only a matter of grave concern when it is Americans placing underwear on someone's head.

Go to Smoking Gun and see what real torture looks like and then ask yourself what was done to detainees at Guantanamo Bay that is even remotely like this.

You might also reflect on what kind of world we will be living in if these people are allowed to prevail, as they will if the Reid/Pelosi wing of the Democratic party has its way, anywhere around the globe.

RLC

Mookie on the Hot Seat

Bill Roggio has some interesting analysis of Muqutada "Mookie" al Sadr's return home from his earlier hiatus in Iran to which he had fled when Baghdad grew too dangerous for him. It seems that his return to Iraq has triggered a preset coalition plan to make it all but impossible for him to resume his role as leader of the Mahdi army. Read Roggio's piece as well as reader comments.

I wonder whether the increased tempo of these operations would be possible if President Bush hadn't increased troop levels in Anbar province.

RLC

Immigration Reform

Charles Krauthammer gives a nice overview of what the new immigration bill being debated in congress will, and will not, accomplish. Here's a part of his column:

Today, preference for legal immigration is given not to the best and the brightest waiting on long lists everywhere on Earth to get into America, but to family members of those already here. Given that America has the pick of the world's energetic and entrepreneurial, this is a stunning competitive advantage, stunningly squandered.

The current reform would establish a point system for legal immigrants in which brains and enterprise count. This is a significant advance. However, before we get too ecstatic about finally doing the blindingly obvious, note two caveats:

(a) This new point system doesn't go into effect for eight years -- eight years of a new flood of immigrants chosen not for aptitude but bloodline. And who knows if a different Congress eight years from now will keep the current bargain.

(b) It's not enough to just create a point system in which credit is given for education, skills and English competence. These points can be outweighed by points given for -- you guessed it -- family ties, which are already built into the proposed new point system. There are already amendments on the Senate floor to magnify the value of being a niece rather than a nurse. (Barack Obama is proposing to abolish the point system entirely in five years.) A point system can be manipulated to give far more weight to family than skills -- until it becomes nothing but a cover for the old chain-migration system.

In our view the bill is unsatisfactory because it does not really guarantee that our porous borders will be fixed. It also grants amnesty to those who are here illegally which itself would not be a problem if it weren't for the fact that it allows illegals to eventually apply for citizenship and become eligible to dip their hands into taxpayers' pockets.

They're calling this proposal compromise immigration reform, but it's really no compromise at all. It gives the open borders advocates just about everything they want.

Our own suggestion, if I may humbly say it, is a genuine compromise and the only plan we've seen that is both just and compassionate. We offered it here last month. Peggy Noonan says much the same thing in a recent column but with far more grace and style than we could ever hope to achieve. Her piece is worth reading.

RLC

Justifying Murder

Jason passes along a Fox News report that contains this troubling passage:

Younger U.S. Muslims under the age of 30 are much more willing to accept homicide bombing in the defense of Islam than are their older counterparts, the study found. While 69 percent of Muslims under 30 say homicide bombings are never justified, 2 percent say they're often justified, 13 percent say bombings are sometimes justified and 11 percent say they are rarely justified. Only 9 percent of older U.S. Muslims said homicide attacks are at least rarely justified.

In addition to young Muslims' attitudes towards homicide bombings, the study found that only 40 percent of U.S. Muslims believe that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Another 28 percent said they don't believe it.

That's one in four young Muslims in the U.S. who are willing to support homicide bombings against other Americans, at least sometimes, and more than one in four who don't believe Muslims were responsible for 9/11.

Muslims complain when they are looked upon with suspicion in airports and other venues, but they need to direct their complaints not at those who feel the anxiety but at their own communities which are producing young men who are willing to condone such savagery.

It is certainly understandable that Americans feel uneasy around their Muslim countrymen when twenty-five percent of them are morally and psychologically prepared to see you and your family blown to smithereens if they believe you to be "a threat to Islam."

RLC

Resplendent Quetzal

I've just returned from a wonderful trip to Costa Rica where I spent a week touring the Pacific side of the country searching out the marvelous bird-life to be found there.

The bird below is considered by some to be the most beautiful bird in the world, and this picture, as fine as it is, doesn't fully capture the creature's beauty. It's a Resplendent Quetzal and they were flying around my cabin at Savegre Lodge each morning we were there.

It was truly a wonderful sight, but only one of the many that my travelling companion and I enjoyed throughout the week.

The photo was taken by Ralph Paonessa.

RLC

Branes

Neil Turok offers us a fascinating and mostly comprehensible article on the present state of cosmological investigation into the origin of the universe. Turok writes at Edge where he explains that his own theory is that the universe is embedded in a huge "brane", short for membrane, that sits in space oscillating slowly back and forth (Imagine a huge, flexible pane of plastic suspended in space upon which are tiny dots representing galaxies). At an infinitesimally small distance from our brane there is another which also oscillates very slowly. This second brane is invisible to us because light only travels along our brane. Throughout the infinite past the two branes have collided with each other an infinite number of times, each collision producing an incredible release of energy in an event similar to the Big Bang.

It all sounds very bizarre, but the theory apparently has won a number of cosmologists to its side and may well be the consensus explanation a decade from now. For my part, however, I have a difficult time accepting any theory which posits an infinite number of collisions over an infinite amount of time. I also wonder how these branes come to have the properties they do, but read the article for yourself. It's very well done.

RLC

Conservative/Muslim Alliance?

Dinesh D'Souza has written a book (The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11) guaranteed to offend everyone. His thesis is that the terrorist attack on the U.S. is the fault of those who have debased our culture over the last forty years and that American conservatives have more in common with Muslims than with western liberals.

Well, it's true that liberal nostrums have had a deleterious effect on our popular culture, and it's true that the Muslim critique of American culture is one which conservatives largely agree with, but that's not the problem.

The problem is that conservatives and Muslims envision widely disparate remedies for the diseased portions of our popular culture. Muslims believe that the only solution is to embrace Koranic law whereas conservatives tend to believe that the answer lies in a return to traditional Christian values, and in many ways those two solutions couldn't be more different.

The fact that both Muslims and American conservatives see the same problem does not entail that we share in common the values and beliefs necessary to address the problem. After all, Mohatma ghandi and Joseph Stalin both saw Adolf Hitler as a problem but it requitres a great deal of rhetorical flexibility to stretch to the conclusion that therefore the two men had a lot in common.

Anyway, Cathy Young dissects D'Souza's argument at Reason magazine.

RLC

Letter to a Young Woman

I recently had occasion to write a letter to my daughter on the subject of happiness. I thought I might share part of it on Viewpoint.

Hi Princess,

I've been thinking a lot about the talk we had the other night on what happiness is and how we obtain it, and I hope you have been, too. I wanted to say a little more about it, and I thought that since I was going to be away, I'd put it into a letter for you to read while I'm gone.

One of the things we talked about was that we can't assess whether we're happy based on our feelings because happiness isn't just a feeling. It's more of a condition or quality of our lives - sort of like beauty is a quality of a symphony. It's a state of satisfaction we gain through devotion to God, living a life of virtue (honesty, integrity, loyalty, chastity, trustworthiness, self-discipline), cultivating wholesome and loving relationships with family and friends, experiencing the pleasures of accomplishment in career, sports, school, etc., and filling our lives with beauty (nature, music, literature, art, etc.).

One thing is sure - happiness isn't found by acquiring material things like clothes and toys. It's not attained by being popular, having good looks, or being high on the social pecking order. Those things seem like they should make us happy, especially when we're young, but they don't. Ultimately they just leave us empty.

To the extent that happiness is a feeling we have to understand that a person's feelings tend to follow her actions. A lot of people allow their feelings to determine their actions - if they like someone they're friendly toward them; if they feel happy they act happy - but this is backwards.

People who do brave things, for instance, don't do them because they feel brave. Most people usually feel terrified when in a dangerous situation, but brave people don't let their feelings rule their behavior, and what they do is all the more wonderful because it's done in spite of everything in them urging them to get out of danger. If they do something brave, despite their fear, we say they have courage and we admire them for it.

Well, happiness is like courage. You should act as if you're happy even if you don't feel it. When you do act that way your feelings change and tend to track your behavior. You find yourself feeling happier than you did before even though the only thing that has changed is your attitude.

How can a person act happy without seeming phony? Well, we can act happy by displaying a positive, upbeat attitude, by being pleasant to be around, by enjoying life, and by smiling a lot. Someone who has a genuine smile (not a Paris Hilton smirk) on her face all the time is much more attractive to other people than someone whose expression always tells other people that she's just worn out or miserable.

One other thing about happiness is that it tends to elude us most when we're most intent on pursuing it. It's when we're busy doing the things I mentioned above, it's when we're busy serving and being a friend to others, that happiness is produced as a by-product. We achieve it when we're not thinking about it. It just tags along, as if it were tied by a string, with love for God, family, friends, beauty, accomplishment, a rewarding career, and so on.

Sometimes young people are worried that they don't have friends and that makes them unhappy, but often the reason they don't, paradoxically, is that they're too busy trying to convince someone to be their friend. They try too hard and they come across to others as too insecure. This is off-putting to people, and they tend to avoid the person who seems to try over-hard to be their friend. The best way to make friends, I think, is to just be pleasant, friendly, and positive. Don't be critical of people, especially your friends, and especially your guy friends, either behind their backs or to their faces. A person who never has anything bad to say about others will always have friends.

Once in a while a critical word has to be said, of course, but it'll be meaningless at best and hurtful at worst, unless it's rare and done with complete kindness. A person who is always complaining or criticizing is not pleasant to be around and will not have good, devoted friends, and will not be happy. A person who gives others the impression that her life is miserable is going to find that after a while people just don't want to hear it, and they're not going to want to be around her.

I hope this makes sense to you, honey. Maybe as you read it you can think of people you know who are examples of the things I'm talking about....

All my love,

Dad

RLC

The Case For Bombing Iran

Norman Podhoretz makes the case in Commentary magazine for bombing Iran. It is a thoughtful and important piece regardless of what you may think about his conclusions. It should be read by every American, if for no other reason than to understand the perils which face us a few short years down the road.

RLC

Sometimes We Hear

The local Sunday paper ran my guest editorial yesterday. It's the third in the series to which I was invited to contribute. Here's the column:

Judge John Jones, presiding in the Dover Intelligent Design trial, deigned to settle the controversy surrounding ID by pronouncing it a religious belief and thus constitutionally unfit for public school consumption. Those who approve of the judge's decision have ever since been intoning the refrain, "Judge Jones said it, I believe it, that settles it." I for one, though, am not convinced that the judge has settled anything, at least in this part of his decision.

As any philosopher or theologian will acknowledge, it's notoriously difficult to determine what exactly religion and religious belief actually are; so difficult, in fact, that it's not at all clear what it is that makes ID "religious."

Sometimes we're told that ID is religious because it invokes a supernatural entity. But what does it mean to be supernatural? Is something supernatural if it is outside the natural universe? If so, what is it about being extra-cosmic that makes it a religious entity? The belief, commonly discussed in science books, that there are other universes besides our own is surely not a religious belief yet these are entities which transcend our universe. If it's not religious to believe that there are universes which reside beyond our own, why is it religious to believe that there's an intelligence which resides beyond our universe?

Sometimes we hear that ID is a religious belief because the designer must be the Christian God. What does the critic mean, however, by the term "God," and why must the Christian God be the designer? The God of traditional theism is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, eternal, necessary, omnipresent, and personal. Why must the designer who creates the universe and life possess these same attributes? Why couldn't the designer be a being of considerable power and intelligence without being the omnicompetent God of Christian belief? To insist that the designer must be God, i.e. that than which nothing greater can be conceived, as St. Anselm famously defined him, is an inappropriate and illogical attempt by ID's opponents to force religion into a theory that is not inherently religious.

Sometimes we hear that ID is a religious belief because its advocates are frequently Christians. But if the metaphysical commitments of a theory's advocates are all that are necessary to make a theory religious why is the naturalistic Darwinian view not considered to be an atheistic belief since many of its advocates are certainly atheists? Furthermore, if the naturalistic view is indeed an atheistic hypothesis why is it permitted to be taught in our schools?

Sometimes we hear that ID is a religious belief because the entity that it posits can't be detected and has to be accepted on faith. But what is meant by saying that the designer can't be detected? Does it mean that we just can't see the designer and thus have no direct evidence that there is one? Or does it mean that the designer is in principle undetectable? If it means the former, we should point out that there are dozens of entities scientists postulate which cannot be directly observed - quarks, neutrinos, and dark matter, for example - but they can be studied and their existence inferred from their effects. Likewise, there is abundant evidence of design in our world from which we can infer the existence of a designer. It may be that we can't study the designer directly right now because our technology doesn't allow it, but that doesn't mean that we'll never be able to study it.

If the above claim means that the designer, being transcendent, is in principle undetectable then we might ask how that makes it different from the multiverse which is believed to transcend our world and the existence of which scientists nevertheless hold out hope of one day being able to confirm. Or we might ask how an undetectable designer differs in this regard from sub-atomic strings which are also in principle unobservable.

A century and a half ago there was very little we could learn about atoms, the cell, or the composition of the stars because we had no good way to observe these things, nor could we imagine ever being able to do so. Since then advances in technology have made them accessible to us. Perhaps a century from now technology will enable us to observe and study the cosmic architect - that is, if it still exists.

We don't know that the designer does still exist, of course, because ID, not being a religious belief, does not identify the designer with the eternal God of traditional theism who cannot not exist. Only those who don't understand ID or who choose to misrepresent it, two groups which include almost all of its opponents, some of its advocates, and Judge Jones, do that.

RLC

Stark Difference

Jerry Falwell seems almost to have stirred up more controversy in death than in life. There's an interesting contrast between the reactions of two men of the political left, one a Christian and one an anti-atheist, to Falwell's death.

The Christian is Jim Wallis who disagreed with Falwell politically, and even religiously, on almost everything. Here's what Wallis wrote (unlinked e-mail):

I watched much of the cable television coverage of Jerry Falwell's death and legacy. And I did a lot of grimacing, in response to both the uncritical adulations of his allies (who just passed over the divisive character of much of Falwell's rhetoric), and also the ugly vitriol from some of Falwell's enemies (who attacked both his character and his faith). And there were even some who attacked all people of faith. I ended up being glad that I had passed up all the invitations to be on those shows. On the day of Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, I was content to offer a brief statement, which read:

"I was saddened to learn that Rev. Jerry Falwell passed away this morning at age 73. Rev. Falwell and I met many times over the years, as the media often paired us as debate partners on issues of faith and politics. I respected his passionate commitment to his beliefs, and our shared commitment to bringing moral debate to the public square, although we didn't agree on many things. At this time, however, what matters most is our prayers for comfort and peace for his family and friends."

Two days later, I might add that Falwell, in his own way, did help to teach Christians that their faith should express itself in the public square and I am grateful for that, even if the positions Falwell took were often at great variance with my own. I spent much of my early Christian life fighting the privatizing of faith, characterized by the withdrawal of any concern for the world (so as to not be "worldly") and an exclusive focus on private matters. If God so loved the world, God must care a great deal about what happens to it and in it. Falwell agreed with that, and blew the trumpet that awakened fundamentalist Christians to engage the world with their faith and moral values. And that commitment is a good thing. Jerry and I debated often about how faith should impact public life and what all the great moral issues of our time really are.

But many conservative Christians are now also embracing poverty, HIV/AIDS, Darfur, sex trafficking, and even the war in Iraq as matters of faith and moral imperatives. It would have been nice to hear on those TV shows that Jerry Falwell, too, had moved to embrace a broader agenda than just abortion and homosexuality. Rev. Falwell, who was admittedly racist during the civil rights movement, was in later years honored by the Lynchburg NAACP for his turn-about on the issue of race, showing the famous founder of the Religious Right's capacity to grow and change. But two nights ago on television, I saw the pain on the face of gay Christian Mel White, who lamented that despite his and other's efforts, Falwell never did even moderate his strong and often inflammatory language (even if maintaining his religious convictions) against gay and lesbian people. They still feel the most wounded by the fundamentalist minister's statements; that healing has yet to be done.

Ralph Reed said that Jerry Falwell presided over the "marriage ceremony" between religious fundamentalists and the Republican Party. That's still a concern about the Religious Right for many of us, and should be a warning for the relationship of any so-called religious left with the Democrats. But perhaps in the overly partisan mistakes that Jerry Falwell made - and actually pioneered - we can all be instructed in how to forge a faith that is principled but not ideological, political but not partisan, engaged but not used. That's how the Catholic Bishops put it, and it is a better guide than the direction we got from the Moral Majority. But Falwell proclaimed a public faith, not a private one. And I am with him on that. As I like to say, God is personal, but never private. So let's pray for Jerry Falwell's family, the members of his Thomas Road Baptist Church, and all the students at his Liberty University. And let's learn from his legacy - about how and how not to best apply our faith to politics.

Now go here and listen to atheist Christopher Hitchens. The difference in tone and humanity couldn't be more stark.

Kudos, by the way, to Sean Hannity for his response to Hitchens.

RLC

Charles Townes

The man who invented one of the most useful pieces of technology in the 20th century, and who won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1964, turns out to believe that the universe is designed. This will not please such as Richard Dawkins who doesn't see how a scientist can be a theist, much less a scientist of the caliber and brilliance of Charles Townes.

There's an interesting piece on Townes at Uncommon Descent along with a link to an interesting interview with him.

RLC

How Certain Is She?

Richard Mouw discusses an article which appears in The Chronicle of Higher Education in which the editors asked a number of academics to imagine what would be "the core of the message" they would give if asked to be the commencement speaker this year at Virginia Tech. The results, according to Mouw, were rather banal.

In my opinion, one of the silliest came from novelist Lionel Shriver. Mouw says this about her imaginary speech:

The most blatantly "postmodern" preachment comes from the novelist Lionel Shriver. She acknowledges that the graduates may come away from this experience with a "leeriness" about other people, especially a distrust of "the strange, the suspiciously quiet" types in their midst. That posture of suspicion, she insists, can serve them well in life. But it will be most productive, she urges, if it is directed, not primarily toward others, but instead is directed inward. "Question your certitudes," she proclaims. "Never forget that the more fiercely you believe a thing, the more likely it is that you are wrong."

Hmmm. I wonder how certain Ms. Shriver is of that.

RLC

Beating Poverty

As the election season bears upon us we're likely to hear increasing talk, especially from candidates such as John Edwards, about the responsibility government has to do more to help the poor. This sounds compassionate and right until one pauses to ask what more government can do to help people mired in poverty. Most who are poor in America are not poor for any reasons that government is suited to remedy. They remain stuck in the underclass because they lack certain virtues which most of the non-poor possess and which government is ill-qualified to instill.

Find 100 men who are living under the poverty line. My guess is that at least 90 of them will be uneducated, unmarried, and in possession of both poor work habits and probably a substance abuse problem.

Find 100 women living below the poverty line and at least 90 of them will be poorly educated, unmarried yet with children, and perhaps shackled to a substance abuse problem.

What can government do for such people? They have already been offered twelve years (or more) of free education which most of them squandered. Government can't keep them from indulging in drugs and alcohol, nor can it force them to wait until they're married before they have sex, nor can it force them to get married.

Yet these are the keys to the gates of the middle class.

Until the underclass in America develops the virtues of prizing education, getting married and staying married, and avoidance of self-destructive behaviors, they and their children will remain impoverished, economically and culturally.

The best thing government can do, probably the only thing it can do, is to be as insistent in communicating this message as it has been in communicating the evils of smoking, unprotected sex, racism, and sexism.

Beyond this it can do little. Expecting government to solve the problem of poverty is like expecting hospitals to solve the problem of obesity.

RLC

Scientific Authority

Bill Dembski reports on a surprising fact about Richard Dawkins. The man who claims to be a scientist has only one peer-reviewed paper to his credit, a paper written the year he received his Ph.D and which has never been cited by any other scientist.

In other words, Dawkins' only claim to fame is that he has written popular works on evolution, but he himself has not done any actual research since his student days in the 1960s.

This is interesting because one of the (unfair) criticisms of intelligent design theorists is that they don't publish in peer-reviewed journals and don't actually do scientific research. Yet someone like Richard Dawkins, who has much to say about the controversy between Darwinism and ID and who really has no more scientific authority than "a suburban school teacher," are given immunity from such criticism.

RLC

Tough Questions

Here are some difficult questions to ponder concerning human embryonic stem cells:

1. You oppose the use of embryonic stem cells in research laboratories and in medical applications because in order to obtain the stem cells a human embryo must be destroyed. You and your spouse are having difficulty getting pregnant, however, and seek the service of a fertility clinic so that you can have children. The clinic tells you that they will produce several fertilized ova and that of these only one will be kept alive, the rest will be discarded. Do you forego having children rather than participate in this practice?

2. You object to destroying embryos for stem cell research, but fertility clinics destroy excess embryos anyway. Do you object to these embryos, rather than being discarded, being used instead by researchers trying to find cures for various diseases and disorders?

3. If you oppose killing embryos for stem cell research should you not also oppose the practice employed by fertility clinics of producing multiple embryos if only one is going to be implanted in the mother's uterus?

These are tough questions, even for those who lean to the pro-life side of debates over "life issues." One thing that some readers may not be clear on is that, contrary to popular opinion, there is nothing stopping researchers from using human embryonic stem cells in their labs. The only restriction is that the federal government will not subsidize the research. Private money is free to do whatever it wishes, though, and there have been some remarkable recent developments.

For instance, see this article for some interesting information about advances made in the use of human embryonic stem cells in the treatment of serious eye and heart problems.

One hopes that stem cells taken from other sources will prove to be even more fruitful in treating injury and illness, but even if other kinds of stem cells prove useful questions #1 and #3 above remain.

RLC

A Soldier's Perspective

U.S. Army Specialist Colby Buzzell offers a dramatic animated narrative of a typical operation in Iraq. God help our young men who have to endure this kind of stress day in and day out.

RLC

Without a Trace

You've no doubt heard of the case of the disappearing honeybees. This editorial offers a nice summary of the problem along with what many entomologists think are potential causes. Here are the key graphs:

As many as a quarter of the nation's commercially kept bees went missing last year, presumed dead, in a phenomenon now called colony collapse disorder. Inspector Paul Jackson said it is as much a mystery in Texas as it is in 24 other states and half a dozen nations. He said it happens overnight without warning signs of distress and with no evidence left behind. The bees simply disappear.

Jackson has yet to find a pattern in this worrisome phenomenon. One beekeeper may lose 5,000 hives in a day's time while another down the road 10 miles loses none. In Texas, as elsewhere, it is the large commercial colonies that are most affected.

Pollination is the name of the game. Beekeepers in Texas and several other states send thousands of hives to pollinate crops around the country, moving them from state to state and crop to crop. Texas hives are deployed as many as four or five times a year, carried about the country on 18-wheeler trucks.

This constant mobility has been cited as a possible cause for the disappearing hives. The resulting stress depresses bees' immune systems, making bees vulnerable to a host of diseases and parasites. And their road food diet of high fructose corn syrup has been compared to a human diet restricted to soft drinks. Other possible causes include pesticides and other poisons and genetically modified crops that might introduce pesticide into the pollen.

The penultimate sentence about the bees' road food diet has me concerned that my daughter might be in danger of suddenly disappearing.

RLC

Bad Science

In an article about the controversy surrounding global warming a couple of scientists are quoted on their view of what science is:

James Wanliss, a space physicist who teaches at Embry-Riddle ...[said] "I fear that attempts are being made to purposefully subvert the public understanding of the nature of science in order to achieve political goals," he wrote in an e-mail. "Science is not about consensus, and to invoke this raises the hackles of scientists such as myself. The lure of politics and publicity is no doubt seductive, but it nevertheless amazes me that so many scientists have jumped on the bandwagon of consensus science, apparently forgetting or ignoring the sad history of consensus science."

Another Embry-Riddle scientist, John Olivero -- professor and chairman of the department of physical science -- allowed that skepticism is an essential tool of the scientific method.

"Science lives with internal conflict all the time," Olivero said. "Part of what we have to do is continually challenge each other."

That process, they say, leads scientists closer to truths that may be elusive for lifetimes.

I see. Science is about dissent and conflict, not consensus. Does this mean that the Darwinians on campuses all around the country who are demanding that non-Darwinians be silenced because they stand outside the scientific consensus are acting in a manner harmful to good science? Perhaps merely to ask the question is to answer it.

RLC

Update on Guillermo Gonzalez

Readers interested in the case of Guillermo Gonzalez which we wrote about below (Paying the Price) can find a lot of additional information here. Go to the link and scroll down through the various articles on this travesty.

RLC

Gentle Darwinians

There is among devotees of both Nietzsche and Darwin a view that the two men were both gentle academics who would have been appalled had they seen how their writings were distorted and perverted to justify eugenics and nazism.

Peter Quinn, writing in Commonweal, puts the kibosh to such romanticizing and demonstrates that the subsequent history of Europe was not at all inconsistent with what both men believed and taught.

The article is a little long but, it's an important contribution to the debate over the consequences of atheism and naturalism in the modern world.

RLC

Wilson Vs. Hitchens

Christianity Today is hosting an online debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and theologian Douglas Wilson. The topic is whether Christianity is good for the world. Round One can be read here and I have to say that I think Wilson already has Hitchens on the ropes, which is not an easy thing to accomplish with someone of Hitchens' intellectual gifts.

Read both Hitchens' opening statement and Wilson's response. It's well-worth the time and it'll cause you to eagerly anticipate Round Two.

UPDATE: Round II is here. Wilson continues to press the key issue: Hitchens wants to talk morality but he doesn't see that atheism undermines all notions of right and wrong. Here's Wilson on the subject:

Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

So I am not saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to live as a responsible citizen. I am saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to be able to give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way. In order to prove me wrong here, you must do more than employ words like "casuistry" or "evasions"-you simply need to provide that rational account. Given atheism, objective morality follows ... how?

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

Hitchens responds in Round III, but, as Wilson shows, his reply is completely inadequate.

RLC

Paying The Price

If ever you hear it said that there's no discrimination on campus against people who hold views in opposition to the reigning Darwinian orthodoxy e-mail them the story of Guillermo Gonzalez. The Darwinist clergy, like the inquisitors before whom Galileo stood, are determined to expunge all traces of dissent and heresy from the halls of academe which was once, before the left took over, a bastion of diversity and non-conformity. Now everyone must march in lockstep, or goosestep, or face the wrath of the guardians of the true faith.

Gonzalez is not the first to suffer excommunication from the academy, nor will he be the last, but just as shutting up Galileo did not prevent the facts about the cosmos from spilling out, denying Gonzalez tenure will not derail the march of truth either.

Read the story at the link and ask yourself how much more qualified can a scientist be than Gonzalez is and how much more of a narrow-minded bigot can a college president be than Iowa State's Gregory Geoffrey is.

RLC

Fred Responds to MM

Michael Moore, the left-wing Hollywood film-maker and political activist, has challenged Fred Thompson to a debate and lays out his reasons here. He's apparently miffed, inter alia, that Thompson criticized Moore's coziness with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro while himself enjoying fine Cuban cigars.

Thompson's 38 second reply is a political work of art. It's hard to imagine any other candidate of either party being able to pull off such a riposte, and it's impossible, unfortunately, to imagine President Bush even trying it let alone succeeding.

I don't know if Thompson would be a good president, but he sure would be a good "communicator."

RLC