The God Delusion, Ch. 4 (part I)

Chapter 4 is the crux of The God Delusion. It's here that Richard Dawkins sets out to demonstrate, as the chapter heading states, why there almost certainly is no God.

His argument amounts to this:

Creationists (for Dawkins this is anyone who believes in God) hold that the world and life are astronomically improbable and therefore could not have come about on their own. Thus, the creationists believe, there must be an intelligence which lies behind it all, i.e. God. However, anything intelligent enough to create the world must itself be highly complex and therefore at least as improbable as the world it creates. Thus, if the improbability of the universe is so great as to render it inexplicable apart from a designer, then that designer, being even more improbable, must itself require an explanation. This leads to an infinite regress of "designers" which is an absurdity. Therefore, the simplest, most reasonable alternative to believing an absurdity is to believe that the universe is all there is.

Dawkins thinks this is a knock down argument against the rationality of believing in God's existence, but it fails for at least reasons:

1. The assumption that the source of complexity must itself be complex is false.

2. The argument from improbability is based on a category mistake.

3. The argument is based on the assumption that the theist is forced to accept an infinite regress.

4. The argument commits the fallacy of claiming that if there's no good reason to think an event didn't happen that it therefore almost certainly did happen.

We'll consider 1 and 2 today and 3 and 4 tomorrow.

Dawkins argues that if life is designed the designer must be at least as complex as what he designed and therefore at least as improbable and therefore at least as much in need of an explanation for his complexity.

Yet Dawkins believes that the ultimate source of the universe and all the complexity it contains was a simple, homogenous point (singularity) which, in the Big Bang, ultimately produced the present world. He also believes that the first cell to appear in the long chain of living things was far less complex than the myriad life forms into which it has evolved. He also believes, I assume, that the zygote which gives rise to an adult human is much less complex than the adult it gradually forms itself into. So, it's not clear to me, in light of these examples, why he would stake his argument on the claim that complexity can only be generated by even greater complexity. The assertion seems to be just false.

If God is simple, as many theologians and philosophers believe, then Dawkins' claim that he's even less probable than the universe comes to nothing. But this is a relatively minor point. The second - and I think the greatest - problem with Dawkins' argument is that it uses the idea of improbability in an ambiguous and logically illicit manner.

When we say that the complexity of the living world is improbable we mean that it is unlikely that it could have arisen solely by unguided processes. We mean that it is astonishing that it would have just happened by coincidence, without any purposeful input. It is highly improbable, for instance, that a stick would appear to be whittled to a point if only mechanical forces ever acted upon it, but it's not at all improbable that the stick takes on this appearance given the existence of a boy with a knife.

In other words, complex universes containing complex living things are improbable only on the assumption that they arose by sheer chance. They're not at all improbable if there's an intelligent agent involved in their origin.

Moreover, although it's indeed highly improbable that complex things like cells and universes could be produced by purely mechanical processes, God, unlike the boy with the knife, is not something which is produced. God has for centuries been thought of by philosophers as a necessary being, one which does not depend on anything else for his existence. Thus, it is a category mistake to talk about the improbability of God coming to be in the same sense that the universe comes to be. It is the origin of the universe and the origin of life that beg for a causal explanation. God is not the sort of thing that has an origin and therefore not the sort of thing which depends upon some cause outside himself and not the sort of thing to which the term "improbable" applies.

The universe can be defined as the sum of all contingent entities. Contingent entities require a necessary entity as their ultimate cause. This ultimate cause of the constituents of the universe cannot itself be contingent (dependent) upon anything else or it would, by definition, be part of the universe. Thus the ultimate cause must be something which does not "come to be" and which exists entirely independently of any contingent entity. It must have necessary existence.

Dawkins doesn't seem to understand the distinction between necessary and contingent being. If he did he wouldn't confuse God with contingent entities. When the difference is understood, the argument from improbability, in which he invests so much, collapses.

More on Dawkins' argument in chapter 4 tomorrow.

RLC

Re: Remaking a Great Nation

Byron writes to take exception to Mark Steyn's recent column on Barack Obama and my endorsement of it. His letter can be read on the Feedback page.

RLC

The God Delusion, Ch. 3

We continue our walk through Richard Dawkins' best-selling attack on belief in God (though he calls it, rather pretentiously (p.57), an attack on God himself) with a look at chapter 3.

This chapter is ostensibly given to an adumbration of some of the arguments in favor of God's existence, although Dawkins can't resist the temptation to scoff at their alleged inadequacies as he summarizes them. Some of these inadequacies are genuine and some are due to Dawkins' tendentious explications of the arguments. As an example of the latter, he offers the long-discredited observation that omniscience and omnipotence are logically incompatible since God must know today what he will do tomorrow, but if he knows today what he will do tomorrow then he can't change his mind tomorrow, which means there's something he can't do. Therefore, he's not omnipotent.

This is like the old paradox that asks whether God can create a stone so heavy that he can't lift it. Whether the theist answers yes or no he is tacitly agreeing that there's something beyond God's power to accomplish. One of several problems with this paradox is that it's incoherent. It suggests that there's something that can't be done by a being which can do anything. In other words, it seeks to show that God's inability to bring about a logically impossible state of affairs means he must not exist. This, as every freshman philosophy student learns, misconstrues God's omnipotence.

To say that God is omnipotent is to say that he can do anything it is logically possible to do. Philosophers at least since Aquinas have recognized that God cannot do anything which establishes a contradiction of some sort. He cannot, for instance, cause it to happen that he never existed, nor can he create a world in which it would be true to say that he did not create it. If it's logically possible to know the future then God can know what will happen tomorrow. All that follows from Dawkins' argument is that God's freedom to change his mind is constrained by his foreknowledge, just as his actions are constrained by his goodness. He has the freedom to change his mind, but if he knows that he won't, then he won't.

Dawkins spends a little time in this chapter deriding the ontological argument, calling it infantile just before acknowledging that philosophers have been of two minds about it's validity. The world has had to wait for Richard Dawkins to arrive to settle the matter and he does so by seemingly confusing Anselm's version of the argument with Descartes'. Conflating the two, he defeats Descartes, whose argument almost no one accepts anyway, and claims to have thus defeated Anselm. Moreover, he never mentions the more formidable versions of the ontological argument presented by contemporary philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and Norman Malcolm, but perhaps he's not aware of them.

Another of the arguments he selects for ridicule in this chapter is what he calls the Argument From Admired Religious Scientists. This is the claim that since certain scientists believe in God and since scientists are intelligent that, therefore, belief in God is an intelligent option. This is indeed a bad argument, and I know of no educated person who would ever use it as a justification for belief, but equally as bad is Dawkins' response to it.

With a certain glee he points out that the more educated people are, the more intelligent they are, the less likely they are to be religious, but of course this argument by correlation is fraught with dangers. If we're going to argue that intelligent people are usually atheists we can also argue that the longer a person's criminal record the more likely he is to be an atheist, or that, at least in the non-Islamic world, the more blood-thirsty a tyrant the more likely he is to be an atheist. So, I don't know what we should make of the fact, if it even is a fact, that intelligence correlates to unbelief except to say that highly intelligent tyrants and criminals are even more likely to be atheists than are more modestly endowed thugs.

In any event, the argument from the correlation to intelligence is not very impressive. Intelligence is not wisdom. Intelligence is an ability, and ability in one sphere of life does not entail ability in other spheres. A man brilliant in his field is often an incompetent outside of it. Literary geniuses are often mathematical clods, and vice-versa. Indeed, the most striking examples of this are idiot-savants (Think of the movie Rain Man or even A Beautiful Mind). College professors are a close second. That a man is a brilliant biologist tells us nothing about his ability to discern the fingerprint of God in the world and in his life.

More later.

RLC

Calorie Counter

This link takes you to a quick calorie counter. Plug in your weight and sex, and check the box which best describes your activity level, and you're immediately told how many calories per day it takes to maintain your weight.

To lose one pound a week you need to reduce your intake by 500 calories a day which you can do by cutting out sugar and bread and by increasing your physical activity.

I know. If I'm such an expert why ain't I skinny? Because it's unfortunately a lot easier to know what to tell others to do than to do it yourself.

RLC

Winning the GWOT

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air writes that "Either the New York Times has replaced its entire editorial board, or the US has become so successful against al-Qaeda that they can't avoid reporting it. Today, Eric Schmitt informs the Times' readers that the US-led efforts against AQ and radical Islamist terrorism has the enemy in collapse, with its funding all but gone and popular support dissipating. Perhaps Manhattan pharmacies should stock up on smelling salts."

What is this deviation from liberal anti-Bush orthodoxy at the Times about which Morrissey writes?

Here's part of Schmitt's column:

The deadliest terrorist networks in Southeast Asia have suffered significant setbacks in the past three years, weakened by aggressive policing, improved intelligence, enhanced military operations and an erosion of public support, government officials and counterterrorism specialists say.

Three years after the region's last major strike - the attacks on three restaurants in Bali that killed three suicide bombers and 19 other people - American and Asian intelligence analysts say financial and logistical support from Al Qaeda to other groups in the region has long dried up, and the most lethal are scrambling for survival. In Indonesia, since 2005 authorities have arrested more than 200 members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic group with ties to Al Qaeda. In the Philippines, an American-backed military campaign has the Abu Sayyaf Group, an Islamic extremist organization with links to Jemaah Islamiyah, clinging to footholds in the jungles of a handful of southern islands, officials said.

To be sure Southeast Asia is not the Middle East but it must nevertheless pain the Times to write that the terrorists are suffering and Bush's strategy is being vindicated in this part of the world. For five years his detractors at the Times and elsewhere have been telling us that Bush is incompetent, that his approach is all wrong, that the world hates us because of him, that we need to negotiate with terrorists not treat the conflict between us as a war. And yet the news over the last six months about the Global War on Terror has been consistently hopeful.

Imagine, though, where we'd be today had John Kerry, the avatar of surrender, won in 2004 or if Bush had listened to Barack Obama instead of John McCain and we had fled Iraq a year ago.

RLC

Remaking a Great Nation

Mark Steyn skewers the pretensions of Sen. Obama who wants to "remake this great nation" and promises, for good measure, to halt the ocean's rise:

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to.

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more than six months, see your doctor.

Out there in the voting booths, however, Democrat legs stayed admirably unthrilled. The more the media told Hillary she was toast, and she should get the hell out of it and let Obama romp to victory, the more Democrats insisted on voting for her. The more the media insisted Barack was inevitable, the less inclined the voters were to get with the program. On the strength of Chris Matthews' vibrating calves, Sen. Obama raised a ton of money - over $300 million - and massively outspent Sen. Clinton, but he didn't really get any bang for his buck. In the end, he crawled over the finish line. The Obama Express came a-hurtlin' down the track at 2 miles an hour.

But what does he care? Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton's: If you behave like a star, you'll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his "victory" speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way:

"I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people ... . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ... . This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation."

It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? Because otherwise who knows what he'd be saying.

Read the rest at the link. It's good stuff.

The line about halting the ocean's rise reminds me of John Edwards' promise in the last election that if John Kerry won, paraplegics like Christopher Reeve would rise up out of their wheelchairs and walk. Liberal Democrats sure don't lack for self-confidence. Unfortunately, their confidence is such that they apparently all think they're the second coming of Christ.

RLC

Object Lesson

Here's an item you might have missed on last night's evening news:

Whereas once [AIDS] was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Epidemiologist Dr Kevin De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia - China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas."

Anyone who read Michael Fumento's book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS knew back in the early nineties that media prophecies regarding the scourge about to be visited upon our planet by heterosexual AIDS was all hype and no substance.

AIDS was never a threat to the heterosexual population outside of Africa, but we were nevertheless assured by various government and gay rights organizations that it was so that we would continue to subsidize research into a cure. The AIDS lobby feared that if the general population no longer thought itself to be at risk AIDS would quickly come to be seen as strictly a gay problem and funding would just as quickly evaporate. They also feared that if AIDS was seen as a uniquely gay disease it would diminish sympathy for gays in society. Thus the need to keep anxiety about the threat high.

Fumento's book exposed all this for the scam that it was, but because the book was so far out of the PC mainstream many stores wouldn't even carry it. Fumento argued to much derision that unless one is a homosexual, a sex partner of bisexual men, or an intravenous drug abuser, one was more likely to get struck by lightning than to contract HIV/AIDS. Everything we know today about the disease vindicates his claim.

There's a good lesson here for those of us who may be prone to get caught up in the crisis du jour. There's always something that the left and the media are in a panic about and which portends the end of civilization as we know it, but which never seems to amount to anything. In the seventies it was (American) nuclear weapons, in the eighties it was AIDS, today it's global warming. What will it be ten years from now? The only thing I can say with relative assurance is that there will be something.

Be skeptical.

RLC

The God Delusion Ch. 2

Richard Dawkins doesn't like God. He makes that quite clear in the opening lines of chapter 2 of The God Delusion (TGD) where he avers that "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser;a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniac, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Having exhausted his thesaurus' pejoratives, Dawkins mercifully jogs to a panting halt and gives us a preview of his main argument against the existence of the monster he has just described.

He recognizes, of course, that he has just created a straw man and that it's possible some believers in God do not see him quite the way Dawkins portrays him. Thus, he defines the God whose existence he will disprove by laying out for us what he calls The God Hypothesis: "There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." One might think that it'd be very difficult to refute the existence of such a being and that the best Dawkins could do would be to argue that there's no reason to believe such a being exists. After all, what evidence might be adduced against it? But Dawkins is undaunted. He believes he has a knockdown argument and he's eventually going to give it to us, but first he wants to take a few more swipes at religion.

Confusing the question of the existence of God with popular religious expressions of belief in that existence, a confusion he indulges throughout the book, Dawkins launches into a rambling catalogue of complaints about tax exemptions, trinitarian theologizing, and the religious views of the American Founding Fathers. He claims to be attacking God ("I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural..."), but busies himself in chapter 2 with peripheral concerns having little to do with the question of the truth of The God Hypothesis.

At pains to show that the Founders were not Christians, he adduces a document drafted by Washington and signed by Adams as giving the lie to the belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. Washington writes in a treaty with Tripoli that "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This is true enough as far as it goes, but what it elides is that the U.S. was founded on the principles of equality, liberty, and human rights which arguably could not have been derived from any other worldview. In other words, the Founders imported into our nascent government ideas which were rooted uniquely in their Christian heritage while at the same time keeping the government neutral with respect to matters of religion. This distinction, however, escapes Dawkins' notice.

Dawkins repeatedly quotes Thomas Jefferson's hostile comments about the Christianity of his experience and deduces from these quotes that ... Jefferson didn't much like Christianity. This rather banal conclusion is hardly a surprise nor is it much to the purpose of demonstrating that God doesn't exist.

Dawkins is contemptuous not only of Christian believers but also of those timorous agnostics who hide behind their ignorance and refuse to take a stand against belief in God. In the course of chastising them for their pusillanimous fence-sitting he makes an astonishing claim, one that he insists upon several times throughout the chapter: He asserts that the question of God's existence "is a scientific question."

In one single sentence the dean of contemporary Darwinism has undone all the arguments that have ever been adduced against teaching intelligent design in public schools. Those arguments have been founded on two premises: Intelligent design is all about God, and, second, God doesn't belong in the science classroom. Now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University has assured us that indeed God does belong in the science classroom. I'm sure the ACLU and Judge John Jones of the Dover Intelligent Design trial were not amused to read this.

Lest you think you maybe didn't read him right here he is again on pages 72 and 73: "I shall suggest that the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other...it belongs in the same...box as the controversies over the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions. God's existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe..." And again on p. 82: The presence or absence of a super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question....So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the miracle stories...."

As more than one commenter on the book has observed, one can almost hear Dawkins' Darwinian comrades yelling at him: "Richard, please shut up! You're giving away the game!"

The rest of chapter 2 is given to scoffing at such things as prayer experiments and those evolutionists who deny that evolution leads to atheism: "Any creationist lawyer who got me on the stand could instantly win over the jury simply by asking me: 'Has your knowledge of evolution influenced you in the direction of becoming an atheist?' I would have to answer yes and, at one stroke, I would have lost the jury."

Yes, and he's also blown the case for keeping intelligent design out of our science classes. If ID is forbidden because it points to God, why should not evolution be forbidden because it points away from God? If we are going to allow our children to be taught the one, why not the other?

RLC

Dear Viewpoint

Dear Viewpoint,

Our culture seems to be spinning out of control and our politicians appear to be insensible to the plight we're in. I'm a young person who wants my life to make a difference in the lives of others, I want our time on earth to count for something, I want to exert a positive influence on society and make it better, yet I have no idea how to do these things. What advice can you offer?

Sincerely,

Need Help

--------------

Dear Need Help,

There are lots of things I'd like to say, lots of things that I wish I had learned earlier in life than I did, but I'll limit myself to four:

1. Get all the education you can (especially history, literature, science and philosophy). Learn as much as you can about the issues at stake, even the ones you're not particularly interested in. Read the stuff written by people with whom you disagree so that you better understand them and can respond to them more effectively. Know so much more than anyone else that people recognize and respect your expertise and defer to it even if they don't want to agree with you.

2. Make a conscious effort to educate others, either in your family, church or school. Letters to local papers are helpful, especially in response to controversial matters.

3. Learn to be sensitive, humble and irenic. Don't force your opinions on others or be otherwise pushy and obnoxious. A good listener is often more effective than a good arguer.

4. Whatever career you pursue resolve to make your personal and professional life an example of how a life should be lived. Your life is the best argument you can make. No other argument will have any weight at all if your life does not reflect what you say you believe.

Good luck,

Viewpoint

720p/1080i

If, like me, you're totally mystified by all the high definition tv jargon, here's a brief article that lays out the basics pretty well and also makes some recommendations if you're considering a purchase. Here's the key graph:

First off, let's tackle what High-Definition means. A television works by painting an image over and over again, usually around 60 times per second. If half the image's lines are repainted every time the screen refreshes, it's called an interlaced scan technique. If the entire picture is repainted every time the screen refreshes, it's a progressive scan technique. A regular television displays a picture that's made of 480 lines from the screen's top to bottom.

The high-definition threshold begins when the number of lines shoots up to 720, packing in more detail for those sharp "I-can-actually-see-the-guy's-skin-pores!" details. Right now, the zenith of high-definition capability you can buy is 1080p-1080 lines, progressive scan. Critical viewers prefer progressive scan for its smoother look when watching content that packs a lot of motion (like sports), mainly due to the fact that you're seeing twice the amount of pictures per second (frame rate) as you'd get with interlaced scan. The only problem is, unless you're playing a game on a PS3 or feeding content through a high-end video card on your PC, there is no actual 1080p content available for your tv. Weird, huh?

High-definition cable is piped in at 1080i and high-definition movies are filmed at less than half the rate your screen is repainted at (24 frames-per-second)...and neither of those standards are likely to change anytime soon. Having said that, if you can still find a 1080i tv (1080 lines, interlaced scan) or you pick up a 720p model (720 lines, progressive scan), you'll be satisfied. As a matter of fact, it can be difficult to discern the additional detail differences between a 1080p unit and a 720p when viewing a screen size less than 50" (in the right viewing ranges).

There's more at the link, including recommendations, if you're interested.

RLC

The Olivet Controversy

Here's something for those readers who attend a conservative Christian college. Rick Colling has been prohibited from teaching biology at Olivet because he wrote a book advocating a kind of theistic evolution. Two questions: Did the college do the right thing? If so, did they handle it in the right way?

Read Colling's description of events and let me know what you think.

RLC

The God Delusion Ch. 1

I confess that despite all the buzz about it I had not until recently read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (TGD). I had read so much about it that I thought it would be redundant to actually spend time on the book itself. Recently, however, a friend of mine was challenged by an atheist acquaintance to read TGD, and I thought it might be useful to read it along with him and discuss it as we go.

I also thought that it might be worthwhile posting my thoughts on the book chapter by chapter to help others who may not be inclined to read it themselves to at least get one person's perspective on what Dawkins says that's good and what he says that's not.

With that in mind, then, here are some thoughts on Chapter 1:

Dawkins says in the preface that "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." I don't know how successful he's been in achieving that goal - although I've heard more than one Christian say that the book really shook them - but the effectiveness of Dawkins' polemic, in my opinion, is due more to the emotional impact of his jackhammer indictments of religion than to the rigor of his arguments against the existence of God.

In chapter one he sets out to dispel the myth that Einstein and others were religious believers. In this he is, of course, correct. Einstein used the word "God" as a short hand for the mysteriousness of the cosmos. He did not believe in a transcendent, personal, creator. Dawkins' project in TGD is to destroy the basis for belief in the latter. He's indifferent about conceptions of God which immanentize him.

He then goes on to argue that religion and religious belief do not deserve any more respect than any other beliefs one holds. Religious beliefs should not be deemed out of bounds and beyond challenge and, he argues, we should not hesitate to press people on their religious beliefs even if this causes them to be offended. I happen to agree with him on this point as well. A man's belief in God should not be treated with the deference that we treat his belief that his wife is beautiful. In fact, I think the reason we often do treat a person's religious beliefs respectfully and deferentially is out of a certain politeness. We have learned through long experience that most people cannot give a coherent defense of their beliefs and that to press them to defend them would only embarrass them, like pressing a man to defend his conviction of his wife's beauty. Not wishing to embarrass people, and not seeing the matter as poarticularly significant, we generally don't pursue such questions.

This is fine if we are inclined not to create hard feelings, but I see nothing wrong with someone like Dawkins laying down the gauntlet to religious believers, especially if those believers are themselves evangelical and concerned to encourage others to accept their faith. Christians should always be prepared to give an account for the hope that is within us.

I disagree with him, though, when soon after he defends his right to poke his nose into what Christians most deeply believe he tells us that "the right to be Christian seems ... to mean the right to poke your nose into other people's private lives." He has in mind here Christian opposition to the homosexual political agenda, and Dawkins thinks it's simply intolerable that Christians would publicly declare homosexuality to be wrong. This is pretty funny coming from the man who thinks it's just fine to tell Christians that they're wrong.

In any event, the claim that any behavior is wrong is an odd one coming from a man who is promoting in his book the idea that there is no God and thus no basis for anything being right or wrong. But this discussion will have to wait until chapter 6 and 7.

RLC

New Politics

Senator Obama has promised us a new kind of politics but as Powerline reminds us:

Earlier this year, three-fourths of the Senate voted in favor of a resoution designating the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization. Among those who voted for the resolution were Hillary Clinton, Richard Durbin, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Obama voted against it.

Yesterday, however, Obama told the AIPAC convention that the Iranian National Guard is, in fact, a terrorist organization. He attempted to explain his recent vote to the contrary by claiming that the resolution contained language about military action. But this is false, and transparently so -- if it had contained such language Clinton, Durbin, Reid, and Schumer would have opposed it.

Obama's change in position on the Iranian National Guard is mirrored in other flip-flops, with more likely to come. On the vital issue of the Iraq war, for example, Obama spoke out against it as a state legislator. But when running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he declared that there is little difference between his position on Iraq and that of President Bush. After his election, differences quickly reappeared, and Obama's position continued to evolve over the next several years. When it comes to Iraq, Obama makes the John Kerry of 2004 look constant.

Is Obama dishonest? I'm not prepared to say that, but it's troubling that much of what he says turns out to be inconsistent with the facts. Perhaps there are reasons for this inconsistency. If so, I'd like to know what they are.

HT: Ramirez

A big part of the problem Obama faces is that if he's forthright about where he stands on most issues facing the country, he won't have much of a chance of winning in November. He likes to say that a McCain presidency will amount to a third George Bush term, but Obama looks very much like he would give us a second term of Jimmy Carter.

RLC

Conservatives Are More Honest

Speaking of honesty, The Examiner's Peter Schweizer tosses up a column that'll shock liberals and elicit little more than a "we-already-knew-that" nod from conservatives. The point of his essay is that several studies have shown that conservatives have much more integrity than liberals. The article is so interesting (to me, at least) that I'm going to copy most of it here:

Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as "very liberal" said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those who are "very conservative." When Pew Research asked whether it was "morally wrong" to cheat Uncle Sam, 86 percent of conservatives agreed, compared with only 68 percent of liberals.

Ponder this scenario, offered by the National Cultural Values Survey: "You lose your job. Your friend's company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?"

Almost half, or 49 percent, of self-described progressives would go along with the scheme, but only 21 percent of conservatives said they would.

When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn't deserve.

The World Values Survey found that those on the left were also much more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that you know are stolen. Studies have also found that those on the left were more likely to say it was OK to drink a can of soda in a store without paying for it and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.

Another survey by Barna Research found that political liberals were two and a half times more likely to say that they illegally download or trade music for free on the Internet.

A study by professors published in the American Taxation Association's Journal of Legal Tax Research found conservative students took the issue of accounting scandals and tax evasion more seriously than their fellow liberal students. Those with a "liberal outlook" who "reject the idea of absolute truth" were more accepting of cheating at school, according to another study, involving 291 students and published in the Journal of Education for Business.

A study in the Journal of Business Ethics involving 392 college students found that stronger beliefs toward "conservatism" translated into "higher levels of ethical values." And academics concluded in the Journal of Psychology that there was a link between "political liberalism" and "lying in your own self-interest," based on a study involving 156 adults.

Liberals were more willing to "let others take the blame" for their own ethical lapses, "copy a published article" and pass it off as their own, and were more accepting of "cheating on an exam," according to still another study in the Journal of Business Ethics.

Now, I'm not suggesting that all conservatives are honest and all liberals are untrustworthy. But clearly a gap exists in the data. Why? The quick answer might be that liberals are simply being more honest about their dishonesty.

However attractive this explanation might be for some, there is simply no basis for accepting this explanation. Validation studies, which attempt to figure out who misreports on academic surveys and why, has found no evidence that conservatives are less honest. Indeed, validation research indicates that Democrats tend to be less forthcoming than other groups.

The honesty gap is also not a result of "bad people" becoming liberals and "good people" becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.

Sixties organizer Saul Alinsky, who both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say inspired and influenced them, once said the effective political advocate "doesn't have a fixed truth; truth to him is relative and changing, everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist."

During this political season, honesty is often in short supply. But at least we can improve things by accepting the idea that truth and honesty exist. As the late scholar Sidney Hook put it, "the easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists."

Yes, it is an easy rationalization, but if one believes that truth and morality have no objective basis it's foolish to accept their word on anything they tell you. Especially if he or she is a politician.

RLC

Zombie Bodyguards

Nature is certainly amazing, but this is almost unbelievable:

The parasitoid wasp Glyptapanteles lays its eggs, about 80 at a time, in young geometrid caterpillars. The eggs hatch and the larvae feed on the caterpillar's body fluids. When they are fully developed, they eat through the caterpillar's skin, attach themselves to a nearby branch or leaf and wrap themselves up in a cocoon.

At this point, something remarkable and slightly eerie happens. The caterpillar, still alive, behaves as though controlled by the cocooned larvae. Instead of going about its usual daily business, it stands arched over the cocoons without moving away or feeding. The caterpillar - now effectively a zombie - stays alive until the adult wasps hatch.

"We don't know exactly what kills the caterpillars, but it is fascinating that the moment of death seems to be tuned to the duration of the wasp's pupal stage," says Arne Janssen of the University of Amsterdam.

To test the manipulation hypothesis, Janssen's team allowed wasps to infect caterpillars in a laboratory setting. Once the larvae emerged and formed their cocoons, the researchers separated half the cocoons and the caterpillars. The separated cocoons were attached to a leaf next to an unparasitised caterpillar, which was prevented from moving away by a ring of insect glue around the stem.

When they added a stinkbug, a voracious predator of wasp cocoons, the team found that 17 of the 19 parasitised caterpillars thrashed their heads around in the direction of the bug. More than half the time, this knocked the bug off the branch or made it retreat. Unparasitised caterpillars barely noticed the bug, even when it climbed on top of them.

To see if the behaviour affected the survival of wasp cocoons in the wild, the researchers placed over 400 parasitised caterpillars in guava fruit trees one day before the larvae were due to break through their skin. Once the larvae had cocooned themselves on the nearby branches, the researchers removed half of their bodyguard caterpillars and watched what happened. The survival rate of "guarded" cocoons was twice as high as that of unguarded cocoons.

I wonder how many chance mutations must have occurred in both the wasp and the moth in order for this behavior to evolve. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this wonderful dance of wasp and caterpillar is not just a result of natural processes acting blindly over long eons of time. I'm not saying that stuff like this suggests that there must have been some kind of intention somewhere along the way. I'm not saying that lots of random mutations at just the right time, together with natural selection, can't all by themselves work miracles. I've read my Dawkins, and I'm sure they can, but still....

RLC

Best Animated Films

Moviefone lists the top 25 animated movies of all time. I'm surprised at what was left off the list, but the raters evidently considered not just the quality of animation but the quality of the story, the characters, and the popularity of the movie. Still, I think Prince of Egypt and Ants should have made the cut and Ratatouille and Finding Nemo should have been ranked higher.

Anyway, check it out if you're a movie fan.

RLC

Pot Heads

This confirms what a lot of high school teachers have long suspected:

Long-term Cannabis (Marijuana)Users May Have Structural Brain Abnormalities

The hippocampus, thought to regulate emotion and memory, and the amygdala, involved with fear and aggression, tended to be smaller in cannabis users than in controls (volume was reduced by an average of 12 percent in the hippocampus and 7.1 percent in the amygdala). Cannabis use also was associated with sub-threshold symptoms of psychotic disorders. "Although cannabis users performed significantly worse than controls on verbal learning, this did not correlate with regional brain volumes in either group," the authors write.

No kidding.

RLC

Let's Drill

This article was passed along by my friend Richard Francis. There's been talk of the potential of this field for a long time, but now it appears that we're going to go after it, that is unless Congress throws up a roadblock:

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel oil field that could potentially make America energy independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology, the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America's Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC's short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present, but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed since it would have cost $20-$40 a barrel to extract it.

It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil, that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in oil discovery since oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

The US imported about 14 million barrels of oil per day in 2007, which means US consumers sent about $340 billion dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the world. If 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 trillion dollars which would go a long way toward stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.

It's nice to know it's there. It'd be nicer to know that the Democrats will let us have it.

RLC

TANG II

A couple of days ago I discussed an argument by Michael Martin which he calls TANG (Transcendental Argument for the Non-existence of God). It's an argument against the existence of God based on logic, science, and morality. In that last post we talked about whether his claim that logic and science precluded God actually works. In this post I want to take the last of the three elements of TANG and see how a theist might respond to it.

Martin writes:

Consider morality. The type of Christian morality assumed by TAG (Transcendental Argument for the existence of God)is some version of the Divine Command Theory, the view that moral obligation is dependent on the will of God. But such a view is incompatible with objective morality. On the one hand, on this view what is moral is a function of the arbitrary will of God; for instance, if God wills that cruelty for its own sake is good, then it is. On the other hand, determining the will of God is impossible since there are different alleged sources of this will (The Bible, the Koran, The Book of Mormon, etc) and different interpretations of what these sources say; moreover; there is no rational way to reconcile these differences. Thus, the existence of an objective morality presupposes the falsehood of the Christian world view assumed by TAG.

One reply to this is that morality is not merely a function of God's will nor is it independent of God, rather it's a consequence of God's essential nature. Just as logic is part of the essential nature of God, so too is goodness. Thus, just as all the energy on earth ultimately derives from the sun and would not exist were it not for the sun's existence, whatever goodness there is in the world derives from God and would not exist were there no God. Goodness, and derivatively, morality, are objectively real but only because they are grounded in the being of God. Without God it's very hard to see how there could be any moral good or bad, right or wrong.

Even if it were true that we can't know what God's will is it doesn't follow that morality is independent of God. We grope, perhaps, to find the good, but if there were no God there'd be no good to find. Nevertheless, as J. Budziszewski argues in his books Written on the Heart and What We Can't Not Know God has impressed upon us the basics of morality much as we have been given a facility for learning language. We may disagree about the details, but everyone knows deep inside that kindness is better than cruelty, and that fairness is better than unfairness. Yet why should we think this if we are just a mass of atoms?

The fact that there are disagreements about what God's will is means nothing. People disagree on how the world came to be. It doesn't follow from that that there is no true explanation for the provenience of the world.

Thus, contrary to Martin's assertion, the existence of an objective morality presupposes the existence of a transcendent ground for moral good and evil. It presupposes a God.

RLC

Wafa Sultan Redux

Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist, is as irrepressible as she is courageous. Having blasted Islamo-fascism and its various apologists on several previous occasions and having had death fatwas pronounced against her, she's back at it in this video clip which should be required viewing for everyone in the West.

RLC

Eradicating Women

Colleen Carrol Campbell has written an outstanding piece on the effects of sex-selection abortions in India and China and the irony therein for Western feminists.

Demographers predict a shortage of some 30 million Chinese women by 2020, which they fear will contribute to early, coerced marriages of young girls, increased violence against women and more exploitation of women and girls through the region's already burgeoning sex trade.

Campbell's column spurs us to consider not only the sociological consequences of having so many "superfluous" males walking about, but also the likelihood that the government will have to initiate war just to get rid of all the extraneous testosterone.

The irony, of course, is that a procedure which was legalized in order to liberate women from oppression is being used to kill them by the millions and will result eventually in the degradation and dehumanization of millions more in India and China.

Campbell closes with this:

Sadly, most American feminist leaders have remained silent in the face of this modern atrocity. Their refusal to brook any limits on abortion rights has led to one of the bitterest ironies of our post-feminist age: that the abortion license touted as the key to liberating future generations of women would become the preferred means of eradicating them.

Read the whole thing.

RLC

Shroud of Turin

Here's a site that has all the current information on the Shroud of Turin, which, quite apart from its religious significance, is a fascinating scientific mystery. Despite a flurry of media stories about the shroud being shown to have had a 14th century provenience, apparently it really does date back 2000 years, and there is as yet no known process by which the image could have been impressed upon the fabric.

The site addresses all the issues raised by the Shroud and offers the views of both those who think it's genuine and those who are skeptical.

RLC

Stillborn Renaissance

Readers interested in American literature, particularly early 19th century New England writers like Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville, will find this article from First Things an engrossing read.

RLC

Yipes!

Hillary said today that she's open to being Obama's VP, but I doubt he'll ask her. Why would he want Bill looking over his shoulder?

What's going to keep me awake for the next couple of nights is the gnawing fear that McCain will ask her - and that she'll accept!

RLC

ETL

My friend Caleb writes with a fun question:

I saw this article a few weeks ago where the Vatican said it was OK to believe in aliens and God. I know you have mentioned the book Rare Earth, which suggests that Earth may be the only planet capable of supporting life, but what do you think personally on this subject? Do you think that there is the possibility of life on other planets, or do you think Earth is the only planet with life? Or, is it impossible to know for sure? I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Here's part of my reply to him with one or two thoughts tacked on:

I agree with the Vatican, Caleb, that it's perfectly okay to keep an open mind on the possibility of extra-terrestrial life (ETL). Such a phenomenon, if it existed, would have no bearing on the existence of God. Everything that exists in the cosmos is a product of God's creative effort and there's really no theological reason to think that we are the only life forms He has chosen to create.

Indeed, it seems to me that although most people might think that the discovery of ETL would be a blow to theism, I think it would be just the opposite. If there is no Creator then the origin of life is so astronomically improbable as to be quite miraculous. No one knows how it could have happened given that chance and physical law are the only factors operating in the universe. The sheer improbability of abiogenesis occurring through purely naturalistic means suggests to me, then, that if there's sentient life elsewhere it's more probable, not less, that there's an intelligence guiding its origin and development.

Having said that I think that there are scientific reasons to be skeptical of ETL. You mentioned the "Rare Earth" problem which for me is the biggest barrier to ETL.

For instance, only a fraction of the 300 billion galaxies in the universe are suitable for higher life, and of that fraction, only a portion of their stars are capable of sustaining life. Of those stars only a fraction would possess the appropriate satellites, and of those that do have planets, there are so many (hundreds) highly improbable physical conditions that the planet would have to meet in order to provide a haven for higher life forms that the odds are not in ETL's favor. See here for some of the qualifications any life sustaining planet would have to have.

To me, then, it seems most reasonable, scientifically speaking, to assume that intelligent life probably exists nowhere else but here.

RLC

Global Warming Skepticism

I've had this in the queue to be added to Viewpoint for about a week so it's old news by now, but in case some readers may have missed it, here's an interesting story about one very prominent global warming skeptic:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms. "I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he's not too much willing to make such a conversation," Klaus said. "So I'm ready to do it."

Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.

"My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, our prosperity," he said.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

"Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said.

"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.

Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he opposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

"It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda," he said.

Klaus alleged that global warming was being championed by scientists and other environmentalists whose careers and funding requires selling the public on global warming.

"It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only," Klaus said.

It would be interesting to hear Al Gore, or anyone on his side of the issue, debate a knowledgeable critic. The global warming people, however, seem unwilling to engage their opponents in public dialogue. Or have there been debates that I am not aware of?

RLC

Behind Every Successful Man

I'm skeptical about this, but for what it's worth NewsMax is reporting that:

An untold story lies behind Hillary Clinton's determination to remain in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination - the possible revelation of a shocking recording of rival Barack Obama's wife Michelle.

That's the word from longtime political analyst Roger J. Stone Jr., who writes on his The StoneZONE Web site that the recording purportedly documents Michelle Obama making racist comments in a speech.

According to Stone, Hillary aides are in a race with Republicans to get their hands on the offensive recording.

"On the heels of Michelle Obama's quote that she 'has never been proud of her country' until now, the new controversy could turn the contest upside down, but its more likely" to benefit "John McCain than to boost Hillary Clinton to the nomination - if the alleged recording exists," Stone writes.

He also asserts that Mark Penn, Clinton's former chief campaign strategist, has told sources that the bombshell "could come this week."

Wouldn't that spice things up.

If the tape exists, and the Republicans get it, they'll no doubt sit on it until Obama wraps up the nomination at the convention. If they use it now it might propel Sen. Clinton to the nomination and thus not help the GOP at all. That's why Hillary needs to get her hands on it before the Republicans do. If it exists at all.

RLC

Denzel on Faith

BeliefNet has a list of the twelve most powerful Hollywood actors and actresses who count themselves as Christians. Some on the list may surprise you. They also have an interesting interview with Denzel Washington, part of which we highlight here:

What role does Jesus play in your own life?

I was raised in the church. My father was a minister for 60 years. And I've been a member of West Angeles Church of God in Christ for, now, about 27 years, since I've been out here in Los Angeles.

I open the film (The Great Debaters) with a prayer and end it with praise. The spiritual aspects of the film weren't even necessarily in the screenplay. But I added those. It was my desire to start the film with a prayer.

Why was it so important to put spirituality in it?

Because spirituality is important in every aspect of my life. I mean, that's why I'm here. That's what I've been blessed to do.

When I was about 20 years old, when I first started acting, I was sitting in my mother's beauty shop. And a woman just kept looking at me. I was looking in the mirror, and I saw her across the room. And she said, "Someone give me a piece of paper." And she wrote down a prophecy. She said that I would speak to millions of people, and I would travel the world and preach to millions of people. And I didn't know what she was talking about. But this was March 27th, 1975, 32 years ago now, almost 33 years ago.

So my work has been my ministry. In fact, I asked my pastor, years ago, "Do you think I should become a minister or a preacher? And he says, "Well, that's what you're doing already." And he felt, as I feel, that that's what she was talking about back then.

I've always understood why I've been blessed to be put in this situation. And I'm more than happy to take advantage of it and to preach, if you will, about what God has done in my life.

How did being the son of a pastor help you prepare for this career?

I don't know. When I was young, actually, it was an obligation. You had to go. It wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. But I lived in church morning, noon, night, weekends, Sundays, every day. So there was a time, between that time and as a young adult, where I moved away from the church because I was obligated to go. And I just found my way back, maybe 30 years ago, at 27--30 years ago, when I came out here.

How would you describe the role of prayer in your life today?

Even this film--every major decision I made, I made through prayer, about who I was picking to be in it, what it was I was trying to say, praying that the film was saying the right thing and that it would reach the right people. It's every aspect of it. Every aspect of it. It's how I start every day, and it's how I end every day.

I was especially interested in what Washington had to say about his participation in the movie Training Day. Read the interview to get his thoughts on playing the vile character he portrays in TD.

Meanwhile, my friend Jason nominates Bella for our list of films which offer positive portrayals of Christianity and/or Christians. Another movie we might give honorable mention is Manna from Heaven.

RLC

Ten Myths about Divorce

Throughout the last several decades, though perhaps not so much lately, we've often heard each of the following claims about divorce, and a lot of people, apparently, have come to believe them. A 2002 Harvard study, however, has shown each of them to be wrong. Maybe that's why enthusiasm for these notions seems to waned somewhat in recent years.

Here are the "ten myths" about divorce:

• Because people learn from their bad experiences, second marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages.
• Living together before marriage is a good way to reduce the chances of eventually divorcing.
• Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the children recover relatively quickly.
• Having a child together will help a couple to improve marital satisfaction and prevent a divorce.
• Following divorce, the woman's standard of living plummets by seventy three percent while that of the man's improves by forty two percent.
• When parents don't get along, children are better off if their parents divorce than if they stay together.
• Because they are more cautious in entering marital relationships and also have a strong determination to avoid the possibility of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have as much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.
• Following divorce, the children involved are better off in step-families than in single-parent families.
• Being very unhappy at certain points in a marriage is a good sign that the marriage will eventually end in divorce.
• It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings.

There's an explanation of why each of these commonly held beliefs is wrong at the link.

In the same vein the prologue to this book also makes for fascinating reading.

Finally, a friend of mine tells me that there's another Harvard study, though I was unable to find it, which shows that weddings held in a church service have a divorce rate of one out of fifty marriages, but marriages in which the couple attends church every week, reads the Bible and prays together have a divorce rate of one out of 1,105. If that's accurate it's pretty astonishing.

It would be interesting to know what the divorce rate is for couples joined in a civil ceremony.

RLC

Angry Dems

I wonder how many Democrats this woman speaks for:

No wonder Democrat women like this one are angry. It's amazing that a woman who was - we were often told by Democrats - highly intelligent, experienced, and competent, has been thrown over by her party so that they can run a charismatic black man who appears to be little more than political fool's gold.

RLC

More Good News from Iraq

Here's some very good news, but don't expect the Keith Olbermanns of the world to dish out any high fives:

The U.S. military said Sunday that the number of attacks by militants in the last week dropped to a level not seen in Iraq since March 2004.

About 300 violent incidents were recorded in the seven-day period that ended Friday, down from a weekly high of nearly 1,600 in mid-June last year, according to a chart provided by the military.

The Iraqi forces are slowly taking over more of the combat operations and are becoming much more proficient in handling them. As this trend continues American infantry and Marines forces will be needed less and less, except as advisors, and will start coming home, possibly by mid-summer.

If so, the war will be a difficult issue for the Democrats to run on. They certainly won't want to remind the voters that they were all for pulling out when pulling out meant almost certain defeat. Unless something very surprising happens, and that's always a possibility in Iraq, the Democrats are going to look just plain wrong on the war to all but a relatively tiny group of pacifists, and McCain, compared to Obama, is going to look more and more presidential.

RLC

Empty Promises

For those readers looking for good reasons to vote for John McCain, here's one:

Susan Sarandon, who appeared in three films last year and won kudos for her TV movie "Bernard and Doris," is still not a contented soul. She says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada. She adds, "It's a critical time, but I have faith in the American people."

Please, don't go, Susan. How will we ever get on without you?

RLC

Auto Repairs

This article has some good information about independent automotive service shops and dealership service departments. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the comparison is unhelpful, but the article itself is informative.

RLC

Your Taxes

The Tax Foundation has an interesting chart that shows a comparison of what your federal tax bill would be, assuming no children and standard deduction, without the Bush tax cuts. It's surprising to me that both Democrat candidates for president have promised to rescind Bush's tax cuts, and a lot of people who complain about not being able to make ends meet are still going to vote for whichever of the two wins the nomination.

Here's your homework assignment: Go to the chart and see the difference between how much you'd be paying if the cuts were not in effect and how much you pay as a result of the cuts. Multiply your answer by four and that's what a Democrat in the White House for the next four years is going to cost you - at a minimum.

Speaking of taxes here's an interesting factoid: The share of federal income tax needed to fund Social Security and Medicare in 2010 will be 8.6%. By 2050, however, largely because the Democrats have blocked all attempts to reform the system, it will grow to 76%.

RLC

Beautiful Birds IV

I thought I'd grace Viewpoint with pics of three more of the feathered gems I've been fortunate to observe this spring. The first is a common bird in the northeast whose soft colors give it an understated beauty. It's called a cedar waxwing because its wingtips look like they've been dipped in red sealing wax:

The red-headed woodpecker is one of the most striking members of that family, at least among those found east of the Mississippi. It's not very common in the east but seems to be increasing in numbers and should be looked for anywhere there are open stands of mature oaks such as in parks, etc.

I'm sometimes asked what my favorite bird is. I don't know if I have a favorite, but among eastern North American species this one probably ranks in the top five or six. It's a blackburnian warbler, and the flame-throated male is absolutely gorgeous in good light. These birds are difficult to see unless you're in an area where they breed or you're deliberately looking for warblers during migration. They're tiny and often flit about high in the forest canopy and so usually go unnoticed by casual observers.

RLC

Big Oil

This site, sponsored by the Petroleum Institute, is chock full of interesting information about oil and gasoline matters. Some of the more salient facts that can be gleaned from it include the following:

• The amount of profit from a dollar of gasoline that goes to the oil companies is about 7.5 cents (though I've heard that it's even lower than that).
• Oil demand worldwide has grown from 77 mbd (million barrels per day) in 2001 to 85 mbd in 2007. It will increase another 1.2 mbd this year and 1.3 mbd next year.
• Next year's world oil production is expected to increase markedly over 2008 levels, which should push pump prices back down to about $3.45 a gallon.
• Oil and natural gas sales in 2007 resulted in 8.3 cents profit on every dollar. The beverage and tobacco industry earned 19.1 cents per dollar. Oil profits were about average among all American industries.
• Oil industry stock is overwhelmingly owned by the public. When oil companies profit almost all of us do as well. Individual investors own 23% of the stock; mutual funds almost 30%; pension funds hold 27%; IRAs hold about 14%; and corporate "insiders" own about 1.5%.
• The top 27 energy companies paid $48.4 billion in income tax in 2004. With their friends Bush and Cheney in office giving them all sorts of tax breaks, starting wars on their behalf, and in general ripping off the little guy their income tax payments rose to $90.4 billion in 2006.
• Oil companies in 2006 paid 40.7% of their income in taxes. The rest of American manufacturers paid 22.1%.
• Since 1985 fifty seven refineries have closed but refining capacity has risen by 20% due to increases in efficiency. Continued improvements will boost domestic refining capacity by the equivalent of four new refineries by 2010.
• The industry has spent $160 billion since 1990 on making their product more environmentally safe.
• We have 112 billion barrels of crude oil offshore and in Alaska that we are not using. This is enough oil to power 60 million cars for 60 years. There's enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years. Congress, however, has blocked all attempts to recover this resource.
• Of the eighteen largest oil companies in the world, only one of them is a U.S. company. Our largest firm, Exxon/Mobil, produces only about 3% of the world's petroleum.
• The U.S. imports 59% of the petroleum it uses. Our largest supplier is Canada (12% of what we use). Only 7% of our petroleum needs comes from Saudi Arabia. The only other Middle eastern supplier is Iraq (3%).

Despite these statistics, people like Maxine Waters want to nationalize the industry and all of our presidential candidates are talking about taxing oil companies even more heavily. Speaking of Waters, this video has to be seen in order to fully appreciate the congresswoman from California:

Link: sevenload.com

And to think we're paying her salary. Who votes for these people, anyway?

RLC

Fuel Economy

If you're concerned about gas prices and are thinking about a new ride you might be interested in this article from Consumer Reports:

Consumer Reports recently announced its annual used cars ratings, and we weren't surprised to see one of the major categories was "Best in Fuel Economy." With gasoline and oil prices on a seemingly endless upward spiral, that's a key factor these days when choosing a used car -- or even a new one.

The cars that made this list were, according to Consumer Reports, "the affordable and reliable vehicles [that] returned some of the best results in our real-world fuel-economy tests."

Consumer Reports broke them up into two groups: "Under $10,000" and "$10,000-$20,000."

What follows is a list of the vehicles that Consumer Reports rated "Best in Fuel Economy," with a short description of each vehicle. The mileage figures stated are the ones calculated by Consumer Reports in their own on-the-road tests.

Read the recommendations at the link.

RLC

TANG I

My friend Byron links me to a brief 1996 piece by Michael Martin, a philosophy professor at Boston university, who makes an argument against the existence of God. I read it with interest, impressed by the inverse relation between the ambition of Martin's project and the thinness of the argument he offers in its support.

Let's take a look. Martin writes:

Some Christian philosophers have made the incredible argument that logic, science and morality presuppose the truth of the Christian world view because logic, science and morality depend on the truth of this world view. Advocates call this argument the Transcendental Argument for Existence of God and I will call it TAG for short. In what follows I will not attempt to refute TAG directly. Rather I will show how one can argue exactly the opposite conclusion, namely, that logic, science and morality presuppose the falsehood of the Christian world view or at least the falsehood of the interpretation of his world view presupposed by TAG. I will call this argument the Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God or TANG for short.

I don't know to which Christian philosophers Martin refers, but I know of no one who claims that logic, science, and morality depend upon the truth of Christianity. I do think, though, that morality, at least, depends upon the truth of theism, and that it may be that logic does also. As for science, it's conceivable that it could have emerged in an atheistic milieu, but it nevertheless seems to be the consensus among historians, even some who are not especially sympathetic to theism, that a Biblical worldview was an indispensible assist to the development of the modern scientific enterprise.

But let's see what Martin has to say in defense of TANG.

How might TANG proceed? Consider logic. Logic presupposes that its principles are necessarily true. However, according to the brand of Christianity assumed by TAG, God created everything, including logic; or at least everything, including logic, is dependent on God. But if something is created by or is dependent on God, it is not necessary--it is contingent on God. And if principles of logic are contingent on God, they are not logically necessary. Moreover, if principles of logic are contingent on God, God could change them. Thus, God could make the law of noncontradiction false; in other words, God could arrange matters so that a proposition and its negation were true at the same time. But this is absurd. How could God arrange matters so that New Zealand is south of China and that New Zealand is not south of it? So, one must conclude that logic is not dependent on God, and, insofar as the Christian world view assumes that logic is so dependent, it is false.

Well, actually no. God cannot change the laws of logic, to be sure, but that's because those laws are an expression of his nature out of which he has engineered the creation, something like an artist impressing his personality upon his art. God cannot change his nature any more than he can cause himself to cease to exist. So, yes, logic is dependent upon God in the same way that Goodness, Beauty, and Truth are dependent upon God, but these are not "things" he creates. They are his very essence.

Even so, the principles of logic may also be thought of as necessary in that, being an essential element of a necessary being (God), they themselves cannot not exist. If they did the necessary being which possesses them would not exist and that is a contradiction. Logic, then, is an ontological effusion of God into His creation and exists necessarily because it is an essential aspect of a God who possesses necessary existence.

Martin continues:

Consider science. It presupposes the uniformity of nature: that natural laws govern the world and that there are no violations of such laws. However, Christianity presupposes that there are miracles in which natural laws are violated. Since to make sense of science one must assume that there are no miracles, one must further assume that Christianity is false. To put this in a different way: Miracles by definition are violations of laws of nature that can only be explained by God's intervention. Yet science assumes that insofar as an event as an explanation at all, it has a scientific explanation--one that does not presuppose God. Thus, doing, science assumes that the Christian world view is false.

Martin here makes enough errors to cause one's head to spin. First, it's not at all the case that "to make sense out of science one must assume that there are no miracles." If it were then Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Boyle and dozens more of the greatest minds in the history of science were not making sense out of the discipline to which they contributed so much. Nor does science presuppose that there are no miracles. It simply cannot do this without making a nonscientific assumption that either God doesn't exist or, if he does, he doesn't intervene in the physical world. Both of these assumptions are metaphysical, not scientific.

What science actually presupposes is that what we call physical laws are simply descriptions of the way nature operates the vast majority of the time. If there appears to be a breach in the law then scientists assume, as a matter of methodology, that there is a natural explanation, but that methodological principle does not rule out God's intervention. It merely assumes that God's intervention cannot be scientifically demonstrated. If a scientist were to observe water change to wine the most he could say as a scientist is that there's no natural process with which he is familiar which could account for the phenomenon. It doesn't mean that there isn't one, nor does it mean that God did not override the normal action of physics and chemistry to produce a true miracle. The scientist has simply come up against the limits of what he can speak about as a scientist.

Nor is Martin correct in saying that miracles, by definition, are a violation of the laws of nature. A law of nature is a claim that given certain conditions certain other conditions will follow as far as we've been able to tell. For example, every time we've looked we've found that if something has mass it will exert a gravitational attraction on every other body. We thus assume for convenience's sake that this holds true everywhere in the universe and every time it's tested, but we have no proof of that. Induction does not yield proof.

Moreover, scientists talk all the time about regions or domains in the cosmos (or multiverse) which could have different laws. If so, then why couldn't a God who superintends the whole of reality import laws from one domain into another and thus override laws which normally obtain with higher order laws which normally do not?

God could supercede a physical law just like the gravitational force between particles can be overcome if both particles possess the same electrical charge. Gravity is not violated, the force still acts on the particles, but its effect is overridden by another, stronger, force.

One more thing. It could be that the laws of physics are framed such that given X, Y will occur unless Z happens. The law of inertia is stated exactly this way: An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Perhaps, to take a biblical example, the laws of buoyancy are something like this: Denser objects will always sink when placed in less dense substances unless the denser object is the Son of God. Since no one in modern times has witnessed the qualifier, science would be completely unaware of that part of the law.

Here's the point that Martin misses: Miracles need have no effect on the assumptions of science unless they are frequent. If they are rare, if a man were raised from the dead on average only once every thousand years, then the impact of such events on the scientific enterprise and the assumptions necessary for science to be fruitful, would be negligible.

So, whether science and logic actually depend upon the atheist assumption or presuppose the falsehood of Christianity, as Professor Martin wants us to believe, his argument does little to help us decide.

More on the third element in his case later.

RLC

Hypocrisy, at the Very Least

"Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book."

Scott McClellan, March 22, 2004, speaking of Richard Clarke who had just written a book blasting the Bush administration.

HT: Michelle Malkin

With all the sturm und drang today about McClellan's perfidy and hypocrisy, which shortcomings in his character he seems to have left little reason to doubt, the chief questions about his book have gone unanswered. To wit: To what extent, exactly, is George Bush actually guilty of the malfeasances his former friend implicitly accuses him of and what evidence does he offer in support of the charges?

This is from the link:

McClellan issues this disclaimer about Bush: "I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people."

But most everything else he writes comes awfully close to making just this assertion, all the more stunning coming from someone who had been one of the longest-serving of the band of loyalists to come to Washington with Bush from Texas.

The heart of the book concerns Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, a determination McClellan says the president had made by early 2002 - at least a full year before the invasion - if not even earlier.

"He signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," McClellan writes in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

McClellan says Bush's main reason for war always was "an ambitious and idealistic post-9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom." But Bush and his advisers made "a marketing choice" to downplay this rationale in favor of one focused on increasingly trumped-up portrayals of the threat posed by the weapons of mass destruction.

During the "political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people," Bush and his team tried to make the "WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable than they were." Something else was downplayed as well, McClellan says: any discussion of "the possible unpleasant consequences of war - casualties, economic effects, geopolitical risks, diplomatic repercussions."

Did the administration really make a conscious "marketing choice" or were they simply predisposed to see in Iraq what they expected to see? What evidence does McClellan offer that the administration deliberately manipulated facts to deceive the American public? Given what was known at the time and in the wake of 9/11, was the administration trying to enact an idealistic geo-political agenda by invading Iraq or were they following a policy of "better safe than sorry" in toppling one of the most evil men since Adolf Hitler? Or were they doing both?

I'm sure Mr. McClellan will be asked to answer these questions and others like them before more than one Congressional committee.

Meanwhile, we may reflect on how sad it is that people who feel that trashing one's benefactor in print after declining the opportunity to honorably leave the service of the benefactor, is an act of personal betrayal when done by others, but who will themselves indulge in the same ignoble behavior when the opportunity presents itself to them.

RLC

America's Dark Ages

In an essay in First Things titled The Sixties Again and Again George Weigel points to six events or "moments" which occurred in that lamentable decade which forever changed this nation and its people:

Taken together, these six moments suggest that something of enduring consequence happened to liberal politics, and thus to American political culture, during the Sixties. A politics of reason gave way to a politics of emotion and flirted with the politics of irrationality; the claims of moral reason were displaced by moralism; the notion that all men and women were called to live lives of responsibility was displaced by the notion that some people were, by reason of birth, victims; patriotism became suspect, to be replaced by a vague internationalism; democratic persuasion was displaced by judicial activism. Each of these consequences is much with us today. What one thinks about them defines the substratum of the politics of 2008, the issues-beneath-the-issues.

You'll have to read Weigel's essay to find out what those six moments were.

If reading about the sixties is more than you can think you can bear, take heart, it could be worse. The article could have been about the seventies. Perhaps the only decade in America's history more nightmarish than the sixties was the one which came immediately after it.

Roe v. Wade, forced busing, Watergate, mile long lines at the pumps, the explosive growth of crime, government entitlements and divorce, My Lai and our ignominious retreat from southeast Asia, the string of court decisions which made many of our schools all but ungovernable, and on and on. For a good synopsis of this miserable but strangely fascinating period in our nation's history see David Frum's How We Got Here.

RLC

Substance Dualism

Dinesh D'Souza offers us a concise introduction to the mind/body controversy in this essay. He begins with this:

Conventional wisdom holds that the human mind is nothing more than the human brain. This belief derives from materialism. By "materialism" I don't mean the mania to shop unceasingly at the mall. Rather, I mean the philosophy that material reality is all that there is. Immaterial or spiritual realities are, in this view, simply epiphenomena of the material world.

We find the materialist view ably expressed in Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis. What Crick finds astonishing is that our thoughts, emotions and feelings consist entirely in the physiological activity in the circuitry of the brain. Daniel Dennett argues that "mind" is simply a term for what the brain does. And how do we know that the brain and the mind are essentially the same? The best evidence is that when the brain is damaged, the injury affects the mind. Patients whose brains atrophy due to stroke, for instance, lose their ability to distinguish colors or to empathize with others.

But in his book The Spiritual Brain, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows why the Crick-Dennett position is based on a fallacy. Yes, the brain is the necessary locus or venue for the mind to operate. It does not follow that the two are the same. Beauregard gives a telling analogy. "Olympic swimming events require an Olympic class swimming pool. But the pool does not create the Olympic events; it makes them feasible at a given location." Far from being identical to the mind, Beauregard argues that the brain "is an organ suitable for connecting the mind to the rest of the universe."

The book he refers to by Mario Beauregard, The Spiritual Brain, makes an excellent case for what is called substance dualism, the view that in addition to our material body we also possess a mind that is not reducible to matter. The book, co-written with Denyse O'Leary, plods in places but overall the two authors make a powerful case that materialism is simply wrong.

Thanks to Justin for passing the article along.

RLC

Positive Depictions

We often read of Hollywood's distaste for traditional religion and are irritated by the stereotypes they often present of people of faith. Yet there are occasionally films made - though not always by "Hollywood" - which present Christians in a realistic and favorable fashion, sometimes explicitly and sometimes in a more understated way.

I've tried to think of some examples that I've seen over the years and the following list is what I've come up with. I've limited the list to non-fantasy and thus have not included the Narnia films (e.g. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian), and I've not included films based on the Biblical narrative such as The Passion of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, etc.

Here's my list:

• The Mission
• Saints and Soldiers
• The Scarlet and the Black
• Chariots of Fire
• Amazing Grace
• Romero
• The Big Kahuna*
• Luther
• End of the Spear
• The Apostle
• Facing the Giants

My friend Byron suggests some further possibilities:

• Babette's Feast
• The Hiding Place
• Joni
• Long Walk Home
• Remember the Titans
• To End All Wars*
• Matewan
• Entertaining Angels

* indicates an R-rating

I'm sure that there are many other films that we've overlooked so recommendations from readers would be welcome. You can send them along via our Feedback function.

RLC

Chauncy Obama

Charles Krauthammer, Jack Kelly, and Michelle Malkin tell us clearly, if tacitly, why we should see Barack Obama as an empty suit. As the campaign wears on there's a nervous apprehension beginning to take shape around the quality of Obama's education. Despite a degree from Harvard, he seems to possess a very uncertain grasp of both American history and American geography. Perhaps this judgment is unfair, but of this much we can be certain: If George W. Bush said just half the things Barack Obama has said, the hoots of derision would reverberate through the media echo chamber for years.

As Michelle reminds us in her piece, we still today hear about Dan Quayle misspelling of potato and George H. W. Bush's unfamiliarity with a supermarket scanner, but there's a good chance you haven't heard in the traditional media any of Obama's doozies reported by Krauthammer, et al.

Read their columns and contemplate that this man might well, in a few months, be the leader of the free world.

Here's a parting irony: George Bush often sounds a little dim when he speaks, especially extemporaneously, but he's known to be reasonably bright. Barack Obama sounds like Demosthenes when he speaks, but is rapidly coming to be seen as an intellectual poseur.

If you haven't already, you really should put Peter Sellers' Being There at the top of your Netflix queue. Senator Obama is Chauncy Gardner come to life.

RLC

Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day perhaps the best thing we can do to honor the men and women who have fought, died, and/or been grievously injured so that we can feel safe from communists, fascists, and terrorists while enjoying our backyard barbeques is to pause for a moment and send a card to someone lying in a bed at Walter Reed or any veterans' hospital around the country. You don't have to know anyone there, you can just send the card to the hospital and ask the staff to give it to someone of their choosing.

There are so many young men and women, and their families, trying to salvage something of their lives after suffering devastating injuries or the deaths of their loved ones, and so many other veterans of other conflicts who carry with them everyday the physical and psychological pain of war.

Surely we can take a moment on this day to express our gratitude to those whose sacrifice has made our comfort and security possible.

RLC

Feeling His Pain

I know exactly how Dilbert feels:

HT: Telic Thoughts

RLC

The End of Faith II

The other day we talked about David Brooks' assessment of the future of faith and left one part of his essay for separate consideration.

Brooks writes:

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I'd recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

These, then, are the beliefs with which those who adhere to traditional faiths will have to contend in the future. Lets consider them seriatim:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships.

I'm not sure what this means, nor am I sure that anyone can say exactly what the self is. I do think that if we have no soul then the self is either a nebulous and meaningless abstraction (e.g. "dynamic process of relationships")or it just is the physical body. In either case, those who wish to hold onto a meaningful notion of a self which possesses a body will probably do well to not abandon the idea of a personal and enduring soul.

Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions.

True enough, which raises the puzzling question of why this is. Is it because we have a common evolutionary ancestor from who we've inherited these intuitions? If so, then these intuitions are mere vestiges of an evolutionary history which need not encumber us today. Just as we can get along perfectly well without our tonsils so too can we get along just fine without the baggage of impulses that evolved to suit us for life in the stone age.

Or are these common moral intuitions a result of the Creator having inscribed on our hearts timeless principles which he expects all men to follow? If so, they are binding, obligatory. In other words, the sense of moral obligation points us toward the God of traditional theism rather than toward some nebulous New-Age force of nature.

Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love.

Perhaps so, but what is the significance of these experiences? Are they encounters with God or merely the result of a hyper-active id? Unless these are encounters with something personal and transcendent they're ultimately just expressions of the state of our own psycho-chemistry and as such they're at bottom meaningless. If they're to be considered meaningful then they point to the God of traditional theism rather than some impersonal cosmic warm fuzzy.

Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

I don't think this is the best way to conceive of God at all. First of all the claim is self-refuting. If God is unknowable then we can say nothing about Him (It), which means that we can't say that He's unknowable or the "total of all there is." Second, the claim turns God into a vague abstraction like the deity of the deists or the Force from Star Wars. That's hardly the best way to think of God. A better way to conceive of Him, in my view, would be along the Anselmian lines of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, at once transcendent and immanent, eternal, personal, and necessary.

Such a being is, in fact, the God of traditional theism and is compatible with the deity of most major world religions. Only the existence of this kind of Supreme Being gives religion any real content at all. If God is not as described above then all of man's religiosity is empty posturing and futile psychologizing.

The attempt to invest our spiritual quest with meaning while stripping the universe of any trace of the God of theism is an exercise in absurdity.

RLC