Saving Our Cities

During the 60s and 70s many of our cities devolved into cauldrons of crime, poverty, and terror. Heather MacDonald at City Journal argues, in a column that everyone concerned about the poor and the condition of our cities simply must read, that the decay of our communities and the demoralization of our people were not accidents. They were the result of the adoption by policy-makers of a nest of liberal assumptions about human nature and sociology that the experience of three decades of urban life have amply demonstrated to be manifestly false.

MacDonald opens her column with this:

Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency since the early 1990s. You’d never know it from members of the opinion elite, however, who have rarely recognized these successes, much less their provenance.

So let’s recapitulate an epic battle about the foundations of social order, a battle that had not just a clear winner but also a clear loser: the liberal policy prescriptions for cities that many opinion makers and politicians still embrace. New York has been at the center of this battle because so many of the bad ideas that wreaked havoc on cities hatched there. Fortunately, so did many of the antidotes.

What were those bad ideas? MacDonald elaborates:

Liberal urban policy was based on several core assumptions. Number One: multigenerational poverty was the result of structural forces—above all, of rapacious capitalism and racism. It could never be the result of bad decision-making or a deficit of personal responsibility. Number Two: though men were still, alas, required for conceiving a child, they were purely optional for raising one. (Corollary: the role of illegitimacy in creating and perpetuating poverty could never be acknowledged.) Number Three: low-wage work was demeaning and pointless. It was better to receive a monthly welfare check than to labor at an entry-level job. Number Four: crime was an understandable and inevitable reaction to economic injustice and discrimination. (Corollary: the police could not lower crime; only government social programs and wealth-redistribution schemes could.)

Together, these four conceits composed the most dangerous idea of all: that the bourgeois values of order, self-discipline, and respect for the law were decorative afterthoughts to prosperity, rather than its very precondition.

In the balance of the essay, which I would love to post in its entirety if only it wouldn't violate blog etiquette, MacDonald talks about how city governments finally realized that ideas that sounded good in college classrooms had failed in the crucible of real life. After billions of dollars were wasted and thousands of lives lost, liberalism was shown to be an utter disaster.

Whatever you had planned for the next five minutes put it on hold, go to the link, and read MacDonald's article. Nothing could better illustrate why conservatives believe liberal nostrums should be avoided like they were carrying HIV.

Worst of the Year

John Hawkins of Right Wing News presents his annual list of the 40 most obnoxious quotes of the year just ended. Actually "obnoxious" is not an appropriate adjective for some of them. Some are indeed obnoxious, some are even vile, but others are merely dumb or stupid. Others are rather frightening. It's hard to believe the viciousness and hatred that's out there.

Anyway, here are three of my favorites from the "dumb" category:

"My fear is that the whole island [of Guam] will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize." -- Democrat congressman Hank Johnson

"We have to pass the [Health Care Reform] bill so you can find out what is in it." -- Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

"As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the “capital of the free world. But it seems to me that this great city (Brussels), which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title." --Vice-President Joe Biden

Here are four that are exceptionally vile:

"I am starting to think that any parent who takes their kids to Catholic churches from now on should lose custody. Taking your kid where you know sex offenders hang out is inexcusable!!!" -- Roseanne Barr

"The medical term for Down Syndrome is Trisomy-21 or Trisomy-g. It is often shortened in medical slang to Tri-g. Is it not perfectly possible that the very name given to this poor child, being reared by Bristol, is another form of mockery of his condition, along with the "retarded baby" tag? And does the way in which this poor child was hauled around the country on a book tour, being dragged out in front of flash photographs in the middle of the night, barely clothed, suggest someone who actually cares for children with special needs, or rather sees them as a way to keep the spotlight on her?" -- Andrew Sullivan

Well, keep it up boys, just keep it up, um except for one thing: you rat bastards are going to cause another Murrah federal building explosion, you are. And then - what is Beck - maybe at that point Beck will do the honorable thing and blow his brains out. Maybe at that point, Limbaugh will do the honorable thing and just gobble up enough - enough Viagra that he becomes absolutely rigid and keels over dead. Maybe then O'Reilly will just drink a vat of the poison he spews out on America every night and choke to death! Because that's what's gonna happen, that's what they are pushing these right-wing, nut case, fringe, militia jerk-wads to doing! -- Mike Malloy

"I know how the "tea party" people feel - the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their "Obama Plan White Slavery" signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads." -- The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy

And here are a few that should make every American clutch tightly their copy of the Constitution because if these people have their way the document will be as irrelevant as the Articles of Confederation:

"There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: 'Out. Off. End. Goodbye.' It would be a big favor to political discourse; our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly, in their future." -- Democrat senator Jay Rockefeller

"I tell you what, if I lived in Massachusetts I'd try to vote 10 times [against Republican candidate Scott Brown]. I don't know if they'd let me or not, but I'd try to. Yeah, that's right. I'd cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. 'Cause that's exactly what they are." -- Ed Schultz

"The proper channels have failed. It's time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism. If you're one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let's talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like. If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this: We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few." -- Greenpeace, on their blog

These are the people, sadly, who want to decide how the rest of us should live.

Read the rest of the quotes at the link. For those of a historical bent Hawkins also offers links to similar collections from previous years.

I know it's premature, but the absolute nonsense that was written and spoken by those who, in the wake of the awful tragedy in Arizona, wanted to twist it to their political advantage will surely provide Hawkins with a wealth of material to draw upon next year. Two of my favorites to make the list are former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who attributed the shooting to attempts to repeal Obamacare, and Congressman James Clyburn who tied the shooting to the Republicans' decision to open the current session of Congress by reading the Constitution.

I know you find it hard to believe that our elected officials could be such dunderheads, but you can check it out here.

Saving Leonardo

Nancy Pearcy is a scholar and writer who has authored several books on science, culture and faith, and has recently come out with yet another volume on the topic of how worldview influences culture. The book is titled Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, and in it Pearcy outlines how the historical shift in worldview in the West from Christian theism to modern materialism and post-modern nihilism expresses itself in our culture, particularly philosophy, literature, film, and art.

Her overarching theme is the corrosive effect materialism has had on the way artists and thinkers view life and the world. To paraphrase Daniel Dennett this modern view of life is a universal acid that eats away at and destroys everything it touches. The loss of transcendence in Western civilization has been accompanied by a loss of beauty, coherence, and hope in music, painting, and film. When people no longer have anything to believe in the fruits of their imagination reflect only emptiness and despair. Pearcy traces this descent into hopelessness with impressive scholarship.

There are parts of Saving Leonardo that plod a little, but it's beautifully produced with color prints of the paintings she discusses and is so packed with information and insight that the serious reader will be well-rewarded, even if he or she doesn't agree with everything Pearcy says. It would make an excellent gift for anyone, particularly students, interested in the close relationship between the religious assumptions of those who create culture and the art and thought they produce.

Earth from Space

Jason passes along a link to some spectacular photos of earth taken from space. The eight pics appear in the Mail Online. Here's one of the Chinese cities Beijing (upper left) and Tianjun at night:

Check out the rest at the link.

Islam and Darwin

David Klinghoffer shares some brief but interesting thoughts on a parallel between the current state of Islam and the current state of Darwinism. He writes:

I came across a refreshing and illuminating piece on The New Republic website that, in the context of talking about Islam and terrorism, suggested to me a reason for hope in the Darwin debate. In the current culture of science, where the 19th-century materialist Church of Science rules and the congregation bows obediently, what's needed is a modernizing reformation. Doubts about Darwinism are part of that. We can draw a parallel to past reformations in the religious sphere, and future ones.

Most of us in the West agree, for example, that Islam urgently requires a reformation. Some observers see radical Islamism not as the leading edge in Muslim life -- that is, where the religion is going -- but rather as the desperate resistance from within to the modernizing course on which Islamic culture is already embarked and from which there is no turning back. Islamism, in this view, is not the vanguard but a screech of protest in vain.

As the scholar Reuel Marc Gerecht points out, those Muslims most inclined to sympathize with or commit terrorism are not the clerics who are expert in the faith and steeped in its teachings but, instead, laypeople who possess a ruder knowledge of Islamic tradition and who often were radicalized by their contact with the West. Gerecht, a former CIA clandestine officer, writes about sitting with imams and hearing them teach, thinking what a poor preparation for a career in terror Islamic Sharia law actually is.

In the world of science, oddly, it's much the same way. Reading professional scientific journals, you come across far franker talk of holes in Darwinism than you'll ever find in the general-interest media, or on screechy, sarcastic Darwinist blogs aimed at angry laymen and the unemployed (judging from the amount of time commenters seem to have on their hands). Gerecht sees Islamic clerics not as the problem but as a likely feature of the solution when it comes. And it will come. Perhaps the same will prove to be true of scientists -- the real ones, I mean, not the furious bloggers.

Unfortunately, just as the extremists manage to intimidate the moderates in many Islamic communities, so, too, do the more ideological Darwinians, the Darwinians who demand that Darwin not only must entail atheism but also must not be subjected to public challenge, intimidate many of their colleagues who are skeptical of the naturalistic, materialistic paradigm that's being forced upon them.

Nevertheless, there's reason to think that the ideologues cannot suppress the truth forever, either in science or in Islam, and perhaps we'll someday see them both in full retreat in the face of their own colleagues' advance. Maybe.

Ahmadinejad Teetering

DEBKAfile reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad may be fighting for his political life, and, given Iranian politics, maybe his physical life as well. Here's the heart of their report:

Our Washington sources report that the White House is keenly watching the infighting and deepening splits in the clerical regime. Opinions vary as to the cause which triggered the crisis, ranging from opposition to the deep slashes Ahmadinejad ordered last month in subsidies for essential consumer goods, to dialectical differences and a straight power struggle. But they all agree that the Iranian president is fighting for his life in a struggle that is approaching a resolution.

Washington sees three major forces ranged solidly against him for the first time:

1. The Iranian parliament, the Majlis, and its powerful speaker Ali Larijani, who has been working to check Ahmadinejad's limitless thirst for power for some time;

2. The generals: Never before since the 1979 Islamic Revolution have the armed forces chiefs taken a hand in Iranian politics. But they are now deeply concerned that Ahmadinejad's policies, including his push for a nuclear weapon, are bringing the country into perils it cannot withstand.

3. Long-time rival, the former president Hashem Rafsanjani, Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran, the supreme body overseeing the various arms of the regime, is showing signs of recovering from the years of persecution and restrictions placed on the activities of his faction.

It was noticed in Washington this week that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who habitually praises the president and his works, has stopped mentioning him in his public appearances, probably watching and waiting to see how the internal discord turns out. Also sitting on the fence are the heads of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ahmadinejad's principle buttress until now. He appears therefore to be fighting for survival singlehanded except for a hard core of the most radical ayatollahs who have backed him through thick and thin.

Assuming that this report is correct and assuming that if Ahmedinejad falls his replacement isn't even worse than he is, this is very good news. The collapse of Ahmedinejad in Iran may lead to a cessation of their nuclear weapons program as well as their meddling in both Iraq and Lebanon. Indeed, it may actually forestall war in the region. Let us hope that the reports are true.

Politically Correcting Mark Twain

When the Smithsonian recently yanked a painting of Christ covered with ants the painting's admirers complained that art shouldn't be held hostage to those it might offend. The purpose of art, we're told is precisely to make us uncomfortable, to offend the orthodoxies which imprison our minds, etc., etc. Those who were upset by this painting and others like it have been derided and disparaged as a bunch of unsophisticated Yahoos.

Now, however, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is being scrubbed of the words "nigger" and "injun" and many, though not all, of the voices who are outrgaed at censorship of literature and thrilled whenever art is used to offend the sensibilities of the hoi polloi, have suddenly gone silent.

Liberals have told us for decades that we shouldn't be afraid of words, at least that's what they said when people objected to the fact that words many consider vulgar and offensive began to fill our movies and novels. They told us that this was simply an accurate reflection of how people talk, a true depiction of life. It's the reality of modern life, and the role of art and literature is, among other things, to represent reality.

Nevertheless, it's now been decided that there really are some words too offensive for people to read and these must be expurgated from our literature. I guess whether a word is too offensive for the printed page actually depends on who is offended by it.

The Yglesias Rule

Within hours of the first news reports of the deaths of six people at a political gathering in Arizona some on the left were seeking to turn the tragedy to ideological advantage.

Matthew Yglesias was quick to finger the culprits ultimately responsible - Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. Palin had sent out a political flier in which crosshairs were superimposed on Congressional districts of congresspersons Palin hoped to see defeated, and Bachman had once told an audience that she wanted her supporters to be "armed and dangerous".

Of course, both of these were metaphors. Palin was trying to show visually that she had targeted certain politicians for defeat, an expression everyone in politics uses. Bachman was telling her supporters to arm themselves with information so that they'd be "dangerous" to those seeking passage of the Waxman-Markey "Cap and Trade" bill.

Apparently, though, subtle linguistic tropes are lost on people like Yglesias who seems eager to exploit the Arizona tragedy by turning it into an opportunity to score political points. Here's what the Daily Caller tells us about what Yglesias said:

Yglesias blames Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann for creating a political climate in which “violent rhetoric and imagery” apparently incite people to murder.

“A reminder that gun imagery and electoral politics don’t mix that well,” Yglesias opined on Twitter, while referencing a flier published by Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC. In the flier, Palin “targeted,” with crosshairs, 20 House Democrats for defeat.

Yglesias also referenced a Huffington Post article in which Rep. Bachmann reportedly said, “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous” to block global warming legislation.

When it was reported that Bachman was grieving over the shooting, Yglesias responded:

“If Bachmann is “stunned and angered” by [this] shooting, why did she call for “armed and dangerous” resistance to Waxman-Markey?”

That sounds ominous, doesn’t it? There’s only one problem: Bachmann clearly was using “armed and dangerous” in a metaphorical and political, not literal and violent, sense. In fact, she quite clearly meant “armed and dangerous” with information, not bullets.

The Daily Caller then goes on to give us the transcript of Bachman's speech which plainly shows the innocuous context in which she used the phrase "armed and dangerous."

This sort of attempt to exploit a tragedy to discredit one's political opponents is as despicable as it is stupid. It's stupid because people like Yglesias would have us believe that all metaphorical language that may in any way be associated with violence is at least partly responsible for any violence that actually occurs.

Yglesias isn't the only guilty party, of course. An Arizona congressman also blames Palin at the Huffington Post and one commentator on Fox News Sunday even suggested that calling one's opponents fascists, nazis, communists, or socialists creates an incendiary climate in which people are more likely to resort to violence. This despite the fact that some, even in congress and the media, describe themselves as proud socialists. If they call themselves that why shouldn't others call them that? And why stop there? Why not include conservative and liberal in the list of pejoratives that should be beyond the pale of politically correct discourse?

Perhaps soon we'll hear calls to abolish any language that makes anyone else mad because it could, after all, lead to violence.

It seems to me, though, that it's at least as reasonable, even more reasonable, in fact, to think that violence such as we witnessed Saturday in Arizona is a product of a culture which glorifies such mayhem on television, in the movies, and in our video games. Of course, if people like Yglesias were to blame those influences for Saturday's murders then they'd have to pass up an opportunity to smackdown their political opponents, and besides, it would offend their friends in Hollywood. It's much easier, and safer, to blame Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman.

So, in the spirit of Mr. Yglesias' concerns, I'd like to propose what might be called the Yglesias Rule of public discourse. Any and all words and phrases that make any allusion to anything that could be remotely construed as violent must henceforth be avoided in our public conversation. Let's ban from our political dialogue all use of words like political massacre, political bloodbath, political enemies, political suicide, battleground states, tortured reasoning, shootout, fight, beating, drubbing, slugfest, murderous, target, foot-soldiers, rhetorical weapons, character assassination, two-edged sword, and a host of others I'm sure readers can come up with.

Any politician or commentator, or more precisely, any conservative like Palin or Bachman, who uses any of these terms must be made to share responsibility the next time some lunatic perpetrates a horrific tragedy. But of course we'll give the President a pass for his famous quip that “If they [the Republicans] bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”. He is a Democrat, after all, and unlike Republicans, when Democrats employ such imagery they don't really mean it literally.

UPDATE: The number of instances of media lefties and others trying to blame this tragedy on Palin and other conservatives is increasing so fast I can't keep up with it. Go here and scroll down for examples.

Meanwhile, for those who enjoy irony, a former classmate of the suspect reports that the guy was a left-wing stoner when she knew him. Well. That sure doesn't fit the narrative.

Readers and Leaders

This little vignette by Karen Spears Zacharias is about pastors, but it could be about anyone in leadership positions of any kind. Zacharais is an author who had this conversation with the manager of a bookstore that carries her work:

I couldn’t tell if he was making a confession or if he was bragging.

The man looked up from the computer screen from where he was surfing the net and announced very matter-of-factly, “I manage this bookstore but I don’t read.”

Why would you tell that to an author?

I try my best to be gracious to people. I didn’t cuss out loud.

“Have you never been a reader?” I asked.

“Nope. Never,” he said.

“How is it you came to manage a bookstore if you don’t read?”

“I’m a pastor,” he said as if that explained everything.

I’d like to tell you he’s the first bookstore manager I’ve met this year who doesn’t read. In fact, he’s the third one. All were men. All had backgrounds in retail. And all three of them are running bookstores that cater to the Christian marketplace. I think there’s a message embedded in there somewhere, but I haven’t decoded it yet.

I can count on one hand the number of pastors I’ve sat under in my lifetime that I know were avid readers. I remember them because their preaching had a depth and a substance that all others lacked. One of my favorites, Dr. Herb Anderson, would quote poetry from the pulpit. That was always a magical moment. It helped that Dr. Anderson lived in a university town. He had a lot of professors in his audience. They expected their pastor to be well-read. But out here in rural America where hardy people live and vote, pastors are more likely to quote a bumper sticker than they are to recite a poem they’ve memorized.

Whether it's leading a church, leading a business, leading a professional sports team, leading a military, or leading a country the people who do it best are often people who read and read widely. Reading is like the weekly trip to the grocery store. People who don't read often have very little to say that's interesting because they've ceased to grow in their own lives and are trying to feed others from an empty cupboard.

Reading good books, like watching good movies, expands one's background knowledge, deepens one's understanding of the culture and the world, and keeps one from becoming intellectually stagnant and superficial. It gives teachers and speakers a richer mine of resources upon which to draw to make one's lessons or sermons more meaningful to those who hear them. The preacher who doesn't read must rely on his personal experience for the material he shares with his listeners, but unless he has led an extraordinary life, these resources are soon exhausted, and he's often reduced to offering his congregants little more than platitudes.

To be a leader of any kind, whether in a school, the church, the military, business, or the government and not be a reader is, in my opinion, to commit professional malpractice. It prevents one from being as effective as he could be, and thus the people who depend upon his leadership benefit less from it than they could have otherwise.

Thanks to Hearts and Minds' Booknotes blog for the link.

Preacher Ed's Old-Time Revival Meetin'

Ed Schultz, in the sort of angry rant that's not uncommon on his show on MSNBC, gives us insight into the left-wing mind-set in America. It sounds, well, hateful, don't you think?

Let's take a deep breath and examine what he says. He begins with this claim:

"It’s all about taking down President Obama."

Maybe so, but what exactly is wrong with that? The Democrats certainly wanted to take down Reagan and both Bushes. If either party is convinced that the man at the top is fundamentally bad for the country, if they believe his policies are ruinous, as the Democrats believed about George W. Bush, why wouldn't they want to make him a one-term president?

"They don’t want to create jobs. They’re not about that at all. And I’ll guarantee you, if you do see the [unemployment] numbers change, which I believe they will, you won’t hear Boehner or any of these new righties give one ounce of credit to the last Congress for fighting like hell for a jobs bill."

Mr. Schultz is basing his assertion that the Republicans don't want to create jobs on the fact that they believe that the Democrats' proposal for creating them is extremely wasteful and ineffective. President Obama inadvertently admitted this himself when he acknowledged after having spent close to a trillion dollars to fund shovel-ready jobs, that there really weren't any shovel-ready jobs to fund. Now the money is gone and no one knows where it went. Why shouldn't such policies be opposed?

And, if the jobless numbers do improve, why should Democrat policies necessarily get the credit? Economists say that recessions have a natural cycle and that joblessness always improves eventually. Moreover, it could be argued that if employers start hiring now it will be in large part because the GOP victory in November gave them confidence that the government would not be raising their taxes and increasing the regulatory burden on them. One cannot conclude that merely because the Democrats passed legislation and several months later unemployment subsides that the improvement in unemployment is because of the legislation.

"This is an ideological war. I say it on camera tonight here on MSNBC. I will fight these bastards every night at 6 o’clock because I know what they’re up against. I know what they want to do. They want to take down American workers. They want to outsource jobs. They want to destroy the American dream."

Well, if the American dream is to achieve a socialized economy where the government dictates every aspect of your life then, yes, I guess Mr. Schultz is correct. But if the American dream is to be able to move from whatever socio-economic class into which one is born up to the class above it, then the biggest threat to that dream is big government socialism and the strongest advocates of big government socialism are in the Democrat party.

"Concentrate the wealth to the top, and control minorities. That’s what they’re about."

This is the standard Marxist class warfare snake oil that the left has been trying to sell in America since the 1920s. When Schultz or anyone else trots out these superannuated canards it sounds as anachronistic as an old-fashioned revival meeting. Perhaps next he'll be shouting that those despicable Republicans have horns, tails, and carry pitchforks and are coming to get you.

Naturalism

A pair of philosophers named Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro have written a fine introduction to the metaphysical point of view philosophers call naturalism. They title the book simply Naturalism, and in a relatively brief but instructive 122 pages Goetz and Taliaferro walk the reader through the major varieties and implications of naturalistic belief and the criticisms to which naturalism is most vulnerable.

Philosophical naturalists hold that nature is all there is, there is no supernature, no God that acts in the world. The world (i.e. the universe) is "causally closed" to any outside intervention. Although it's possible to be a naturalist who believes that nature is god, in actual practice naturalists are invariably atheists.

There are two basic kinds of naturalism, strict and broad, but adherents of both are united in believing that there are only physical causes acting in the world. Whatever minds or souls may be they're ultimately reducible to material stuff.

All subjective experience (pain, pleasure, purposes, etc.) is either illusory or simply the physical consequences of electrochemical events in our neurons, sort of like the light and sound produced by exploding fireworks. There's no immaterial mind or soul that causes our choices. There are no immaterial purposes for which we act. What we do is strictly determined by the chemical interactions occurring in the brain.

For the philosophical naturalist, mind is simply a word we use to describe the function of the brain, just as we use digestion to describe the function of the stomach. Or, to switch metaphors, mind is like photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is not a material structure which exists in the plant but is rather a physical process involving chemical reactions occurring in the chloroplast. If we understand the chemistry of the plant cell we know everything we need to know to understand photosynthesis. Likewise, if we understood the brain well enough we would understand mental phenomena like purposes, beliefs, sensations, even the nature of understanding itself. We are, as Francis Crick once put it, nothing but a pack of neurons.

Throughout the book the authors consider what naturalism has to say about the soul (mind), values, and conscious experience and they offer some very convincing (to me) counter-arguments to the naturalist hypothesis. Perhaps the most persuasive goes something like this:

If all of our conscious experience is explicable in terms of chemistry and physics then if someone knows all the relevant science involved in seeing the color blue they would know what blue is even if they've never seen it. Of course, that's not the case. Imagine a man blind since birth who is a brilliant scientist and manages to teach himself every detail of the chemistry of seeing color. He knows every physical fact about what occurs in the process of vision. Would he then know what blue looks like? Suppose he suddenly gained his sight and the first thing he sees is the sky. Would he know what he was seeing?

The answer to these questions is almost certainly no. Conscious experience consists in more than just the physical facts of brain chemistry. There is something it is like to see blue that cannot be known simply by learning chemistry. There's something more involved in experiencing blue than just chemical reactions. Consciousness and the experiences we have as conscious beings must be more than simply the material processes which occur in the brain.

Perhaps the relationship between brain and mind (or soul) is something like the relationship between a television set and the signal that the set translates into an image on the screen. Our brains are like the tv, but just turning on a tv is not enough to have a picture (conscious experience). We must also have a signal and even though both can exist without the other the image, or conscious experience, can't exist unless both television and signal, brain and mind, are functioning properly and together.

At any rate, I recommend Naturalism by Goetz and Taliaferro to anyone with at least an introductory philosophy course under his or her belt and an interest in gaining a deeper understanding of the consequences of the logic of contemporary anti-theism.

Obama Hate Machine

David Corn is a lefty writer for The Nation and Politics Daily. He wonders in a recent piece whether President Obama will be able to stave off the "right-wing hate machine" which has harried him since his election. Corn writes:

The OHM [Obama Hate Machine] -- led by a wide-ranging collection of conservative media outfits, right-wing bloggers, and GOP partisans -- has already effectively undermined Obama's presidency by propagating lies about his administration's major accomplishments. It tarred Obama's health care reform initiative by falsely claiming it would establish "death panels." It pushed the falsehood that his $787 stimulus package created no new jobs. (The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that legislation created or saved up to 3.5 million jobs.) And don't forget the birthers, who are still yapping that Obama wasn't born in the United States. One recent poll found that 23 percent of Americans believe this (and 20 percent said they didn't know).

Set aside the very good possibility that some or all of what Corn imputes to the conservatives here is true. Assume instead that all of the claims Corn cites are mistaken, or even screwy. Even so, they're hardly "hate". In fact, they seem like pretty tame stuff.

If this is the sort of thing Corn thinks constitutes hate then I wonder what he thinks of this statement about George W. Bush:

"George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. He has mugged the truth-not merely in honest error, but deliberately, consistently, and repeatedly."

This irenic passage was written by David Corn himself in a book he wrote in 2004 titled The Lies of George W. Bush. Trevor Thomas at The American Thinker delved into Corn's book to see what malicious lies Bush told that warrant Corn's calumnious claims. It turns out that they include such atrocities against the truth as:

• "I have been very candid about my past."
• "I'm a uniter, not a divider."
• "We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the eleventh."
• "It's time to restore honor and dignity to the White House."

Thomas then decided to look up some of the things that had been said by the left about Bush, just to see how they compared to what's been said about Obama. Here's a sample of what he found:

• "He betrayed this country! He played on our fears! He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure pre-ordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!" -- Al Gore
• "There has never been an administration, I don't believe, in our history more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda." -- Hillary Clinton
• "President Bush is a liar. He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country." -- Harry Reid
• "The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader." -- Nancy Pelosi
• "This country was the moral leader of the world until George Bush became president." -- Howard Dean
• "No president in America's history has done more damage to our country and our security[.]" -- Ted Kennedy
• "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." -- Jimmy Carter
• "The man's father is a wonderful human being; I think this guy is a loser." -- Harry Reid
• "Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader." -- Nancy Pelosi
• "We will take to the streets right now. We will delegitimize [him], discredit him, do whatever it takes, but never accept him." -- Jesse Jackson
• "I'd say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind." -- John Edwards
• "Regime change! Bush has to go, and we have the power to do it. The officials of the government shall be removed from office for crimes and misdemeanor[.]" -- Ramsey Clark

As Thomas points out these were not statements made by "media outfits and bloggers", they were made by the very leaders of the Democrat party.

The ability of those on the political left in this country to espy the mote in the eye of others but fail to see the log in their own is little short of amazing. When the right criticizes Obama, the left calls it hate. When the left expressed its hatred of Bush, they called it criticism. Before Mr. Corn and others bemoan the tone and tenor of the right's criticism of Mr. Obama they should spend some time reflecting on how they themselves treated Mr. Bush.

Public Employees Unions

In light of allegations that supervisors of New York City's sanitation workers union ordered that snow removal be slowed down as payback for union layoffs and other offenses, calls for the abolition of public sector unions are growing louder:

As John Hinderaker points out at Powerline such unions only gained legal status in the 60s and 70s:

Public employee unions flourish because government is, by its nature, a monopoly. Thus, there is no need for unionized government units to compete against non-unionized units. Moreover, public officials who negotiate with public employee unions generally lack the same incentives that private employers have to keep costs down. The result has been a fiscal disaster, with numerous states and municipalities now going over the waterfall of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, public employee unions have become perhaps the dominant force in our political life. They extract dues from their members which go to fund the candidacies of politicians who will pay public employees even more money. The unions' ill-gotten clout has created a vicious cycle; at the same time that government units are going broke, public employees are now far better paid than their private sector counterparts, while enjoying better benefits and ridiculous job security.

Not to mention very generous pension plans which the taxpayers, often with very little in the way of a pension themselves, are obligated to sustain. Around the nation a number of cities have had enough and are privatizing services like garbage and snow removal and are saving their taxpayers a boodle.

It's time to privatize. It's also time to make public employees responsible for their own retirement. People who are directly responsible for the death of a newborn infant in New York because an ambulance couldn't traverse the streets that these guys didn't plow surely don't deserve to receive for twenty five years or more a pension close to, or more than, 100% of what they were making when they were working.

Reigniting the Birthers

Hawaii's new Democrat governor, Neil Abercrombie, has decided he's going to put an end to all the speculation about the President's birthplace by producing the long form birth certificate that the "birthers" say is the only way to prove that Obama is really a natural born citizen of the U.S.

Well, we hope he does so that we can put an end to what has been a bizarre chapter in our presidential politics.

We have a president who himself seems unwilling to prove that he really was born in the United States, which, of course, is a condition for eligibility for the office he holds. This reluctance has been like gasoline on the flames of doubt millions of Americans harbor about the man, and now Abercrombie thinks he's doing the President a favor by settling the matter without the President himself having to get involved.

Perhaps he will, but he has really blundered unless he knows with certainty that the birth certificate actually exists. If it turns out that he can't produce it after having boasted that he would the whole controversy is going to come roaring back, and it won't just be a few easily dismissable "fringies" who'll be wondering aloud whether the man in the White House really is an American citizen.

Even Chris Matthews, who often speaks of the President in accents one associates with adolescent girls worshipping their teen idol, and who is at pains to distinguish himself from the "birthers", sounds just like one in this clip:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The issue had pretty much drifted off stage, actually. Why Abercrombie chose to yank it back into the limelight is a mystery unless he knows for sure the certificate exists. If, however, he's just assuming that it does, and it turns out that he can't produce it, he may find himself a leper in the Democrat party and widely regarded as a buffoon on the national stage.

It'll be interesting to see whether Abercrombie actually goes ahead with his boast or whether he suddenly has an epiphany and realizes that if there is no certificate for him to present to the world he will single-handedly and quite unnecessarily have created a very serious problem for the President, the nation, and himself.

American Exceptionalism

Rich Lowery at National Review Online walks us through a little academic exercise by asking us to evaluate which of the world's historically (since the mid-17th century) consequential nations has been the greatest in terms of power, prosperity, and moral goodness.

His conclusion is bound to delight American exceptionalists (like myself) and infuriate the Chomskyites, but there really is only one contender. After considering a number of European candidates (No Asian, Middle Eastern, or South American nations made the finals) Lowery concludes with this:

Which brings us to the U.S. We had the advantage of jumping off from the achievement of the British. We founded our nation upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, even if our conduct hasn’t always matched them. We pushed aside Spain and Mexico in muscling across the continent, but brought order and liberty in our wake. Our treatment of the Indians was appalling, but par for the course in the context of the time. It took centuries of mistreatment of blacks before we finally heeded our own ideals.

The positive side of the ledger, though, is immense: We got constitutional government to work on a scale no one had thought possible; made ourselves a haven of liberty for the world’s peoples; and created a fluid, open society. We amassed unbelievable wealth, and spread it widely.

Internationally, we wielded our overwhelming military and industrial power as a benevolent hegemon. We led the coalitions against the ideological empires of the 20th century and protected the global commons. We remain the world’s sole superpower, looked to by most of the world as a leader distinctly better than any of the alternatives.

Our greatness is simply a fact. Only the churlish or malevolent can deny it, or even get irked at its assertion.

True enough, and there's a very important reason to affirm this truth. Nations have a responsibility to govern justly, but there's a great deal of disagreement over what the just principles of governance are. Certainly democrats (small d), socialists, communists, fascists, and autocrats of all stripes disagree. It seems, though, that the just principles are those which maximize a nation's benefit to its citizens, maximize their freedoms, and empower them to be a force for good in the world.

The nation that has accomplished that to a greater extent than any other in modern history is the U.S., thus it's important that the principles upon which this nation was built be preserved and extended. This will happen, however, only if the American people are convinced that theirs truly is a great nation. Otherwise, the temptation to capitulate to our detractors and experiment with other forms of governance will become seductive. This is why the steady disparagement in the academy of our history is so insidious. It's not only dishonest, but it also undermines confidence in the basic goodness of our founding principles and of our people, a confidence that's necessary for America to remain great.

Essays like Lowery's are salutary in that they remind us that though we're not perfect we really have been the hope and envy of the world for the last two hundred years. We should work to keep it that way and to continuously strive to be worthy citizens of a great nation.

Nuclear Proliferation

The predictable seems to be happening in the Middle East. The failure of the world community to dissuade or prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons has had the completely unsurprising result that other nations in the region have decided it's in their interest to obtain such weapons for themselves. The newest proud owner of these weapons of mass death, if this report is correct, is Saudi Arabia which has allegedly purchased a pair of warheads from Pakistan:

With an eye on the nuclear arms race led by its neighbor Iran, Saudi Arabia has arranged to have available for its use two Pakistani nuclear bombs or guided missile warheads, debkafile's military and intelligence sources reveal. They are most probably held in Pakistan's nuclear air base at Kamra in the northern district of Attock. Pakistan has already sent the desert kingdom its latest version of the Ghauri-II missile after extending its range to 2,300 kilometers.

At least two giant Saudi transport planes sporting civilian colors and no insignia are parked permanently at Pakistan's Kamra base with air crews on standby. They will fly the nuclear weapons home upon receipt of a double coded signal from King Abdullah and the Director of General Intelligence Prince Muqrin bin Abdel Aziz. A single signal would not be enough.

I haven't seen this report anywhere else so it may not be true, but if it is, it's very troubling.

We still have the chance to avoid this proliferation by preventing Iran from building its own nukes, but so far we've chosen half-measures and dithering. Now the whole region is on the brink of becoming nuclearized. How many dictatorships will have nuclear weapons before someone decides to use them? As North Korea becomes more nuclearized and more bellicose, how long will it be before Japan and South Korea decide that they better arm themselves as well? Will we also stand aside while Venezuela purchases these weapons?

I'm not saying that the international community should use military strikes to halt Iran's weapons program, but it should at some point be an option. War is a terrible thing with manifold unforeseeable consequences, but sometimes the lack of war can also be a terrible thing. In the case of declining to decisively prevent Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons the consequences are pretty much predictable. Within a decade or so everyone will have them and someone will eventually use them.

Good News from Afghanistan

Included in a helpful update on the battle for Afghanistan at Strategy Page was this interesting datum:

Meanwhile, the country, overall, prospers. GDP grew over 20 percent this year. Inflation has been reduced (from 9 to 3 percent) in the last two years. All this is a new experience for Afghanistan, which has for centuries been too chaotic to generate much sustained economic growth. The occasional violence in the south makes the news, but the economic growth is what most Afghans pay attention to. The violence has been around here forever, the prosperity is something new.

Who'd have thought it? We keep hearing reports suggesting that we're bogged down in an unwinnable war, but whenever there's an actual analysis of what's happening there the news is often much less gloomy than we'd been led to believe it was.

Public Employees' Unions

In light of allegations that supervisors of New York city's municipal workers union ordered that snow removal be slowed down as payback for union layoffs and other offenses, calls for the abolition of public sector unions are growing louder.

As John Hinderaker points out at Powerline such unions only gained legal status in the 60s and 70s. He notes:

Public employee unions flourish because government is, by its nature, a monopoly. Thus, there is no need for unionized government units to compete against non-unionized units. Moreover, public officials who negotiate with public employee unions generally lack the same incentives that private employers have to keep costs down. The result has been a fiscal disaster, with numerous states and municipalities now going over the waterfall of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, public employee unions have become perhaps the dominant force in our political life. They extract dues from their members which go to fund the candidacies of politicians who will pay public employees even more money. The unions' ill-gotten clout has created a vicious cycle; at the same time that government units are going broke, public employees are now far better paid than their private sector counterparts, while enjoying better benefits and ridiculous job security.

Not to mention extravagant pension plans which the taxpayers, often with very little in the way of a pension plan themselves, are obligated to pay.

Around the nation a number of cities have had enough and are privatizing things like garbage and snow removal and are saving their taxpayers a boodle. We've experimented with public employees' unions for fifty years, but we can no longer afford to continue the experiment. It's time to end it.

It's also time to make public employees accountable for their own retirement. People who are directly responsible for the death of a newborn infant in New York because an ambulance couldn't traverse the streets that these guys didn't plow surely don't deserve to receive for twenty five years or more a pension close to, or more than, 100% of what they were making when they were working and paid for by the very taxpayers whose child is now dead.

Thanks to Hot Air for the video.

Secular Morality

Susan Jacoby is an atheist who writes for the Washington Post's On Faith blog. Her year-end offering touts repeal of DADT as the most important victory for secular values of 2010. In the course of her essay she writes these two perplexing paragraphs:

For a secularist and for people of the more inclusive brands of faith, the sexual preference of adults who love other adults is not a moral issue, period. The moral issue is whether the straight majority condemns and forces a double life on those who happen to desire members of their own sex.

The ending of DADT is one of those rare political issues in which morality is more important than any other consideration. It is simply wrong for a government to demand that people lie about who they are in order to enjoy the rights and take on the responsibilities of a citizen.

Let's set aside arguments over whether repealing DADT is a good thing or bad thing, whether it will weaken our military or strengthen it. Let's focus instead on the following two claims Ms Jacoby, a self-acclaimed voterie of Reason, makes in these graphs.

She asserts, firstly, that sexual preference is not a moral issue for secularists, and second, that it is "simply wrong" to "demand" that people lie about who they are.

Why are these claims perplexing? Because for the secularist one's moral values are subjectively chosen preferences, like one's preference in the music to which one listens. Without a transcendent moral authority (i.e. God) there's simply no objective standard of right and wrong and certainly no duty to do one thing rather than another. This being so, for the rational secularist no issue, not just sexual preference but any behavior, can be a moral issue. What secularists like Jacoby call moral issues are like disagreements over whether chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla, the color blue is more attractive than green, or Beethoven's music is more enjoyable than that of Bach. They're just matters of individual taste.

For something to be a moral issue there has to be the presumption that one choice conforms better to another to some objective, non-arbitrary standard, but in the absence of God there is no such standard, and all choices about values are morally indifferent. They're all based on subjective predilections, and no one can say that their own predilections are any more "right" than anyone else's. Nor can anyone say that others are under any obligation to follow one's own set of values rather than some other set.

Thus, for Jacoby to state that sexual preference isn't a moral issue is banal because, if her atheism is true, there are no moral issues at all. There are only actions that some people like and others don't.

Moreover, when Jacoby further avers that it's "wrong to demand that people lie about who they are" she's uttering a vacuity. One might ask her to explain exactly why it is wrong to force people to lie.

Unfortunately, no answer she can give will make any sense, given her atheism. It may offend her own private value system to see someone put others in compromising positions, but only the most egocentric individual would consider that what she finds personally offensive is a sufficient ground for declaring it wrong for others to do. Indeed, what right does Jacoby have to judge others, anyway?

Atheists like Jacoby need to make a choice. Either they should give up making moral judgments or they should give up their atheism. They can't hold on to both and still regard themselves to be reasonable people. They can't continue to sustain the contradiction of living as if God existed while denying that He does. At least they can't do this and still expect the rest of us to admire their sophistication and intellect.

Seething Hatred

This news piece surprised me a bit:

CBS anchor Katie Couric believes a “Muslim version of ‘The Cosby Show’” could open the eyes of Americans and perhaps put an end to all the ”seething hatred many people feel towards all Muslims.”

“The bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the most disturbing stories to surface,” Couric said. “Of course, a lot of noise was made about the Islamic Center, mosque, down near the World Trade Center, but I think there wasn’t enough sort of careful analysis and evaluation of where this bigotry toward 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and how this seething hatred many people feel for all Muslims, which I think is so misdirected, and so wrong — and so disappointing.”

Well, maybe Ms Couric finds this "seething hatred" for Muslims in the circles in which she travels, but I don't see it. What I do see are a lot of Americans bending over backward to distinguish between Islam and Islamic extremism, between faithful Muslims and Muslims who pervert their religion, and to give Muslims the benefit of every doubt. Sure, there've been criticisms of Muslims and of Islam, we've made them here, but unless Ms Couric equates criticism with hatred I don't know what her evidence is for her claim that Muslims are the object of such awful hostility. It seems to me, in fact, that the hatred is flowing in precisely the opposite direction.

In much of the world it is Muslims who express their hatred of Christians and Jews by killing them whenever the opportunity presents itself. One searches in vain for news accounts of Christians dragging Muslim imams out of mosques and riddling their bodies with bullets. Nor is it commonplace to find reports of gangs of Christians beheading Muslim children, or placing fatwas of death on "Christians" who convert to Islam, but maybe I don't read the same news sources as Ms Couric. In any event, almost any perusal of the daily paper turns up horrifying accounts of such atrocities being perpetrated against Christians.

Moreover, if Ms Couric wants to see "seething hatred" perhaps she might direct her attention to the writings of the New Atheists, most of whom are liberals like herself, who've made it their mission in life to broadcast to the world their utter contempt for the Christian church, the doctrines it holds, and the people who teach and believe them. One only need pick up Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens to feel themselves in the presence of someone who genuinely hates Christianity. Hitchens once wrote a book in which he ranted for the entire volume against Mother Teresa, of all people. To be fair, these writers despise all religious creeds, especially of the monotheistic variety, but it is Christianity which most particularly makes the veins in their necks bulge.

I wonder if Ms Couric would endorse an Evangelical version of the Cosby show to meliorate the anti-Christian hatred and bias that's festering in many liberal precincts in our society. Maybe the program could feature a family such as the one depicted in the movie Blindside. How about it Ms Couric?

Some Birds of 2010

Long time readers of Viewpoint know that birding is a hobby of mine and 2010 produced a number of unusual species of birds in and near Pennsylvania. Here are four that I was able to see while they were "visiting" (The birds in the photos are not of the same individuals I saw):


The first is a shorebird which is experiencing population decline throughout much of its arctic breeding range. It migrates from the far north through the Mississippi valley but occasionally wanders eastward. The islands in the Susquehanna river sometimes attract a vagrant or two, and that's where one was found last summer. The bird is a Buff-breasted sandpiper, and the pic doesn't really do justice to the delicate orange, brown, and black colors the bird displays in good light:

Buff-breasted sandpiper




The next rarity is a small western songbird called a Townsend's warbler that sometimes strays east after the breeding season is over. This one was found in Cobbs Creek park in Philadelphia last fall.



Townsend's warbler

 The third species is a duck found in the northwest and across the northern latitudes to Greenland. It only rarely shows up in winter in Pennsylvania although there have been two sightings in the state this December. The duck is called a Harlequin (meaning fancifully colorful) and the one I saw was in the Juniata river in Huntingdon, PA.

Harlequin ducks

The last find is very rare. It's a European bird related to the American robin called a Wheatear. This one was found by a guy bicycling in Fox Point park in northeastern Wilmington, right along the Delaware river in mid-December.




Northern wheatear

Birds are such beautiful creatures. I never tire of seeing them.

An Atheist's Dilemma

It's not easy being an intellectually honest atheistic lefty in America. Just ask philosopher Michael Ruse who gets insulted by his left-wing allies simply for raising honest and incisive questions. For example, in a piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, he relates how Eugenie Scott, who heads up the National Center for Science Education, called him "dumb" for posing this perfectly reasonable conundrum:

[Evolutionary biologist David] Barash and I are united in thinking that Creationism (and the rest) are religion, and that they should not be taught in biology (or other science classes) of the nation—the publicly financed ones, that is.

So my question (and it is a genuine one, to which I don’t have an answer) to David Barash is this....[I]f you accept modern science, then religion—pretty much all religion, certainly pretty much all religion that Americans want to accept—is false. Is it then constitutional to teach science?

There are several fascinating things to note in what Ruse says here.

First, in his mind, science entails the falsity of religious belief. Second, this being so, teaching science to students is tantamount to teaching that religion is false. Thus, if creationism (or intelligent design) can't be taught because it entails religious conclusions about the world, how can science be taught in public schools if it does the same thing?

Ruse is genuinely perplexed by the problem, as well he should be.

We've posed this very question ourselves many times in the past, albeit in slightly different ways, and it's gratifying to see an atheist recognizing the problem.

One way we've put the difficulty is this: The basic claim of intelligent design is that natural forces and processes are not by themselves adequate to account for the origin, structure and diversity of both the universe and life. If that's a religious claim (which it's not, but never mind that now) and is constitutionally disqualified from being presented in a public school science classroom, how is it that its negation - the claim that physical forces are adequate to account for the origin, structure and diversity of the universe and life - is constitutionally permissable? If the claim P is religious then surely the claim not-P is also religious.

Parenthetically, I happen to disagree with Ruse that science entails atheism (It would certainly be awkward to try to convince Isaac Newton or dozens of other giants in the history of science that it does), but a lot of his fellow atheists believe it, so it would be interesting to see how they respond to his consternation. Perhaps some of them will have something more helpful to say than that his puzzlement is just "dumb".

Thanks to Bradford at Telic Thoughts for calling Ruse's article to our attention.

What Women Want

Dennis Prager seems to know his way around both the male and female psyches. In an article at NRO he explains to us what it is that women want and, in the telling, what men want as well. If you're at all interested in the relationship between the sexes this relatively short piece contains some very good advice.

Prager not only tells us what women want most from a man, and what men want most from a woman (it's not what you think), he also tells us what sort of man a woman is going to find most attractive. I don't want to give anything away, but I will mention that what he says is about as incendiary in some politically correct circles as napalm at a paper mill. It all makes for good fun and tasty food for thought.

More on the Ethics of Abortion

A few days ago we discussed an exchange between Michael Egnor and John Rosenau on the subject of abortion.

Subsequent to Egnor's response to Rosenau a blogger who goes by the name of Tantalus Prime posted a further series of questions for Egnor to answer. The questions are interesting even if Tantalus' insolence is off-putting.

His challenge to Egnor can be found here. Egnor's response, which is very good (though I don't agree with all of it), is here.

A big part of the case Tantalus puts to Egnor and, indeed, to anyone who is pro-life, is in this paragraph:

Egnor asserts that humanity is a discrete, not a continuous variable. If so, then would he kindly point to the exact point at which the human begins? After all, fertilization itself is a multi-step process. So, where is it? When the sperm breaches the oocyte membrane? Formation of the pro-nuclei? Initial DNA replication? Degeneration of the pro-nuclei membrane? Formation of the mitotic spindle? Fusion of the chromosomes? Division of the chromosomes and formation of the first daughter cells? This really should be an easy answer for Egnor. Since biological science affirms that there is a discrete distinction between human and gametes, pointing to that magic point should be trivial.

Egnor's response to this and Tantalus' other questions is worth checking out.

African Genesis

Back when cosmologists first hypothesized that the universe began in an explosion essentially out of nothing, many scientists scoffed and some squirmed. The idea sounded a bit too much like what theologians had been saying for centuries, and the implications of a sudden ex nihilo beginning of the universe was repugnant to those who ridiculed its theological echoes. Consequently, there was a lot of hostility to the theory (Fred Hoyle, for example, referred to it as the Big Bang. He intended this to be a term of derision, but the name stuck) until the discovery by Penzias and Wilson in 1963 of the predicted vestigial energy from this explosion made further resistance to it futile.

I wonder if there won't be a similar reaction to the recent discovery in Israel of human teeth that are twice as old as fossil humans found in Africa. Up till now it has been paleontological dogma that, contrary to the tradition of the world's monotheistic religions, mankind's genesis was not in the Middle East but in Africa and from there he subsequently dispersed around the globe.

Now there appears to be reason to think that the out-of-Africa theory is incorrect. Unless the evidence is misleading it appears that human beings were in the Middle East 200,000 years before they appeared in Africa.

Here's an excerpt from the report on this discovery in the Daily Mail:

Archeologists from Tel Aviv University say eight human-like teeth found in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin - 10 miles from Israel’s international airport - are 400,000 years old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, making them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered anywhere in the world.

The size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man. Until now, the earliest examples found were in Africa, dating back only 200,000 years.

Other scientists have argued that human beings originated in Africa before moving to other regions 150,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens discovered in Middle Awash, Ethiopia, from 160,000 years ago were believed to be the oldest 'modern' human beings.

I'm reminded of the closing lines of astronomer Robert Jastrow's book God and the Astronomers. Jastrow had no religious predilections, but as he concluded his account of how modern discoveries in cosmology, particularly the Big Bang, were pretty much what would be expected if the Judeo-Christian cosmology were true, he writes: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Next thing you know a team of archeologists will discover Noah's ark and atheistic naturalists all across the land will have to be kept away from bridges and high buildings.

The Year's Movies

Continuing our look back at the year just ending I offer here a list of the films I viewed in 2010 with a few comments or descriptions. I didn't see as many movies as I would have liked, but each of the ones I did see I feel I could recommend, albeit for different reasons, of course, and not to the same people. Each of them, in their own way, was worth the time spent to watch:

• Book of Eli - A post apocalyptic story that blends Christian faithfulness with Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Has Denzel Washington ever made a bad movie?
• The Blind Side - A touching film based upon the true story of Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher, it's about a family's compassion and willingness to help a young man surmount awful circumstances. Unfortunately, the film's writers, producers and directors understand neither Christian evangelicals nor high school football programs.
• Into Great Silence - A documentary about life in a monastery in which the monks rarely speak. It may not sound like it would fascinating, but it is.
• Synecdoche, New York - A well-crafted glimpse of the existential emptiness of modern life without God. I don't know if that was what the filmmaker had in mind, but that's certainly what he communicates.
• The Insider - Based on a true story, the film depicts the pressures faced by whistle-blowers in corporate America. Very well-acted.
• The Constant Gardener - An outstanding tale of courage of a man's determination to get to the bottom of his wife's apparent infidelity and murder in Africa. Lots of plot twists and turns that keep the viewer guessing throughout whether the wife really had been unfaithful to her husband.
• The Chosen - A cinematic rendition of the Chaim Potok novel of the same name.
• Angels & Demons - An enjoyable romp with Tom Hanks through the streets of Rome in pursuit of power-mad villains. Based on Dan Brown's novel.
• The Stoning of Soraya M. - The true story of a an Iranian woman falsely accused of adultery by her husband so that he could escape his marriage in order to philander. The penalty in Iran for adultery is death by stoning.
• Sin Nombre - A powerful account of the ordeal millions of illegal immigrants have been willing to endure in order to get into this country.
• A Serious Man - Another film on the existential absurdity of life. This one by the Coen brothers, portrays the travails of a modern day Job-like character. At once funny and tragic.
• The Class - A good film for anyone who would like to know why kids go through school without learning anything. It's filmed in France, but the school it depicts doubtless has numerous counterparts in the U.S.
• John Adams - An excellent three part series on the life of America's second president.
• The Hurt Locker - Perhaps the best movie with a contemporary war theme yet made.
• Journey from the Fall - A tale of a South Vietnamese family's struggle to escape from South Vietnam after its fall to the North Vietnamese in the mid-seventies, and the difficulties they face once they arrive in the U.S.

The Year's Reading

The end of the December is often a time to take a look back at the year just ending. In my case, I like to look back at the books I've read and the films I've watched. Below is a list of the books. Perhaps you've read some of these also. If so, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on them.

My reading this year was heavily invested in C.S. Lewis and Friedrich Nietzsche, an odd juxtaposition, perhaps. I also reread a number of books with which I wanted to renew my acquaintance. Some of this year's books are truly great and some are quite forgettable, but in any case here they are with a word or two of description of each:

• Perelandra: C.S. Lewis (2nd reading) - Lewis imagines how things might have turned out in Eden. The book is an allegory of the Fall but with a much happier outcome.
• Going Rogue: Sarah Palin - Palin's account of her selection as McCain's running mate and the subsequent campaign. She's far from the demoniac the left has made her out to be.
• The Lost Symbol: Dan Brown - A typical Brown page-turner until he gets to the last chapter where he feels obliged to give his own thoughts on institutional religion. He was badly served by his editor here.
• The Screwtape Letters: C.S. Lewis (2nd reading) - A classic tale of human foibles, weakness, and strength told from the standpoint of the demons who seek to subvert those who have committed their lives to God.
• The Chosen: Chaim Potok - A wonderful story about friendship and growing up in America as an orthodox Jew.
• The Promise: Chaim Potok - Ditto
• The Four Loves: C.S. Lewis - Lewis has some very helpful things to say in this book about friendship and eros.
• A New Kind of Christianity: Brian McLaren - McLaren is one of the leading contemporary advocates for a more post-modern Christianity, one that's heavy on human caring and light on doctrinal distinctions.
• Son of Hamas: Mosab Yousef - A fascinating story written by the son of one of the founders of Hamas. Yousef early on became disenchanted with both Hamas and Islam and wound up rejecting both. He lives today in the U.S.
• Till We Have Faces: C.S. Lewis - Another of Lewis' wonderful allegories.
• Quantum Enigma: Rosenblum and Kuttner (2nd reading) - A great book for the reader who wants to at least understand why quantum mechanics is not understandable. The authors do a good job of illustrating the bizarre world of the quantum.
• Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide: Edw. Feeser - An excellent introductory guide to Aquinas' philosophy.
• Tea With Hezbollah: Ted Dekker - Dekker went around the Middle East interviewing people on both sides of the Arab/Israeli conflict to try to get a feel for the prospects of peace in the region. The book seems very superficial in some ways, especially compared to the somewhat similar Terror in the Name of God (below).
• To Change the World: James D. Hunter - An excellent analysis of the idea and nature of worldview thinking. Will probably become a classic on the topic.
• No Laughing in the Kremlin: Valery Kostyleff - Kostyleff is a Russian immigrant who formerly worked for the Soviet news agency TASS. He's written a satire on the fall of the Soviet Union and its transition to capitalism.
• The Gay Science: Friedrich Nietzsche - Nietszche calls his readers to, among other things, exult in the death of God and all that that entails.
• Nickel and Dimed: Barbara Ehrenreich - Ehrenreich set out to see how hard it is to live on minimum wage jobs for a year and writes about her experiences. It's easy to become engrossed in her story.
• Good News About Injustice: Gary Haughens - A call for people, especially Christians, to work for justice on behalf of the world's oppressed.
• The Copper Scroll: Joel Rosenberg - A Middle East thriller, but not, in my opinion, one of Rosenberg's best.
• A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Alberto Angela - Angela takes the reader on an imaginary tour of ancient Rome c. 115 A.D. An excellent glimpse of what daily life was like for the average Roman of the time.
• At the Origin of Modern Atheism: Michael Buckley - A very scholarly, and in some ways pedantic, excursis through the history of the development of materialism among the French philosophes and British Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th and 18th century. Those who might want a more readable treatment of the same themes should try The Roads to Modernity (see below).
• Genealogy of Morals: Friedrich Nietzsche - See Gay Science above
• Ecce Homo: Friedrich Nietzsche - See Gay Science above
• Flight of the Intellectuals: Paul Berman - Berman is a liberal who is very critical of his fellow liberals for their moral blind spot regarding Islamic extremism. In this book the specific blind spot has to do with the left's misplaced fondness for Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Not God's Type: Holly Ordway - A journal of one college professor's journey from secularism to faith.
• Liberty and Tyranny: Mark Levin - A conservative manifesto in which Levin contrasts the philosophy of conservatism with the philosophy of progressive statism. Very helpful for those who want to learn why labels matter.
• The Roads to Modernity: Gertrude Himmelfarb - Historian Himmelfarb compares and contrasts what she sees as three different enlightenments - British, American, and French - and compares the fruits of each.
• Where Men Win Glory: Jon Krakauer - The story of the death of former pro football player turned army ranger Pat Tillman. Tillman was a victim of friendly fire in Afghanistan.
• The Brothers Karamazov: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2nd reading) - One of the greatest novels in all of literature and one of my personal top three favorites. The chapters titled The Rebellion and The Grand Inquisitor are stand alone classics.
• Terror in the Name of God: Jessica Stern - Stern interviews a number of Jewish, Christian and Muslim terrorists and focuses on their motives and other psychological aspects of their worldviews.
• The Faithful: Jonathan Weyer - A novel about the paranormal and the supernatural.
• Beyond Good and Evil: Friedrich Nietzsche (2nd reading) - See Gay Science above.

My New Year's resolution for 2011 is to finally get through three books that I've started on several occasions, including last summer, and never finished. The three are, Augustine's City of God, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Montaigne's Apology for Raymond Sebond. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has found these works tough going, but I'm determined to see them through. I'll report back next December to let you know how it went.

 

Smarter Than They Think

On Fox News Sunday the other day Juan Williams, a liberal contributor to Fox News, was assessing the possible GOP presidential candidates, and made the rather dubious claim that, “There’s nobody out there, except for Sarah Palin, who can absolutely dominate the stage, and she can’t stand on the intellectual stage with Obama."

Now I'm not one of those who's convinced that Mr. Obama is the intellectual colossus his supporters assure us he is. I don't think that an extraordinary intellect is immediately apparent when the President speaks, nor do I know what evidence there is upon which such an encomium is based. On the other hand, neither am I convinced that Ms Palin is the intellectual lightweight she's often portrayed to be and, admittedly, has sometimes come across as being. Nevertheless, two or three unfortunate locutions notwithstanding, she at least appears to understand that there are 50 states in the union, suggesting a knowledge of certain basic facts which surpasses that of candidate Obama.

At any rate, an editorial in the New York Sun should give pause to fair-minded observers who might be inclined to scoff at Ms Palin's political perspicacity. Consider this passage from the column:

One of the questions raised by the news that the Obama administration is going to use regulation rather than legislation to bring in the so-called “death panels” as part of Obamacare is how it happened that this was first foreseen not by the newspapers or the members of Congress but by Governor Palin. Confirmation of Mrs. Palin’s scoop was brought in by the New York Times in a dispatch issued Christmas day, more than a year after Mrs. Palin issued her warning about Obamacare leading to government involvement in end-of-life issues.

At the time, Mrs. Palin’s prophecy touched off an enormous hue and a cry among the liberal intelligentsia, so much so that the scheme was dropped in Congress. Yet even though it was dropped by Congress the New York Times is reporting that “the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation” and will start doing so January 1. The Times says that the government “will now pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.”

It seems to be the administration's conception of democracy that after the Congress so pointedly left this out of the Obamacare legislation the scheme can be advanced by regulation. The point is underscored in Robert Pear’s dispatch in the Times, which quotes one of the congressmen originally advocating for the so-called death panels, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, as saying of the regulatory approach, “we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet” and warning that the regulation could yet be “modified or reversed.”

The question that we find ourselves thinking about is how was Mrs. Palin able to see this issue when others weren’t. Is she just smarter than the editors and the Congress? Or does she just have more life experience? Is it that her religion gives her a framework for learning all this stuff? Or is it that her sensitivity was heightened by making of her own decision to bring Trig into the world? Or is it something about the Alaskan spirit?

The editors go on to enumerate other examples of how Palin has been out in front of the media on a number of different issues. It's interesting.

A friend asked me recently if I supported Palin for the GOP nomination for president. My answer was that just because someone is an outstanding linebacker doesn't mean he'd be a good quarterback. I think Palin's a great linebacker, but I don't know if she'd be a good quarterback. We'll have to see how the primary campaign unfolds. I reject, though, the assertion that she lacks the qualifications to be president, or, I should say that I reject it when it comes from the lips of anyone who thought that Mr. Obama did possess those qualifications. It's hard to see what preparation he had that she doesn't.

Private and Public Generosity

This theme has been touched upon before but it's good to remind ourselves from time to time just how mistaken are those who seek to portray conservatives as grinches who hate the poor. Arthur Brooks has done a number of pieces in which he disabuses his readers of this misconception, and he has another one out now in the Wall Street Journal. Here's a part of his column:

It is common to hear that the popular uprising against the growth of the welfare state, with rising taxes and deficits, is based on a lack of caring toward those who are suffering the most in the current crisis. As soon-to-be ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi puts it, the tea party is working "for the rich instead of for the great middle class." Others have asserted that the backlash against the growth of government is nothing more than an attack on the poor.

Americans in general are very charitable, by international standards. Study after study shows that we privately give multiples of what our Social Democratic friends in Europe donate, per capita. But not all Americans are equally generous. One characteristic of givers is especially important in the current debate: the opinion that the government should not redistribute income to achieve greater economic equality.

Consider the answer to the question, "Do you believe the government has a responsibility to reduce income differences between rich and poor?" Many surveys have asked this over the years. In 2006, the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) found that Americans were almost equally divided on this question (52% in favor, 48% against). This is in stark contrast to the Europeans. For example, 94% of the Portuguese in the 2006 ISSP survey were in favor of redistribution; only 6% were against.

When it comes to voluntarily spreading their own wealth around, a distinct "charity gap" opens up between Americans who are for and against government income leveling. Your intuition might tell you that people who favor government redistribution care most about the less fortunate and would give more to charity. Initially, this was my own assumption. But the data tell a different story.

The most recent year that a large, nonpartisan survey asked people about both redistributive beliefs and charitable giving was 1996. That year, the General Social Survey (GSS) found that those who were against higher levels of government redistribution privately gave four times as much money, on average, as people who were in favor of redistribution. This is not all church-related giving; they also gave about 3.5 times as much to nonreligious causes. Anti-redistributionists gave more even after correcting for differences in income, age, religion and education.

No doubt there are a number of reasons for this disparity between conservatives and liberals. Perhaps one of them is that conservatives are often motivated by religious beliefs which enjoin them to help the poor whereas liberals are more likely to be secularists who feel themselves under no such obligation.

Whatever the reason there appears to be little connection between opposition to the welfare state and personal generosity. If that's so, then the question arises as to why people who are personally charitable are so opposed to helping others through government largesse. I think the obvious answer is because, except in extreme cases of last resort, they perceive government aid as a band-aid that simply subsidizes poverty and provides a disincentive for getting out of it. It doesn't work and is often, even usually, a waste of money. People would much rather help through agencies they know are punctilious about how their money is used and which make every effort to apply every dollar as efficiently and effectively as possible. In other words, they prefer the government not handle their charity.

The More Things Change

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club makes the interesting point that there's every bit as much moral judgmentalism infusing the public square as ever there was, but that what is considered moral and immoral is very much different today than, say, forty years ago. He writes:

Morals legislation appears to be as pervasive as ever. Nothing in the current environment suggests there exist opinions on which you may not be lectured. The extent of what is out of bounds is growing all the time. What has changed is the contents of that proscribed area. It may now be a crime to quote the Bible.

For example, in May of 2010 a British preacher [a Mr. McAlpine]was arrested for handing out leaflets saying that homosexuality was a sin. A policeman approached “to warn him they had received complaints and that if he made any racist or homophobic comments he would be arrested.”

I told him homosexuality is a sin, and he told me “I am a homosexual, I find that offensive, and I’m also the liaison officer for the bisexual-lesbian-gay-transsexual community”,’ he said yesterday. ‘I told him it was still a sin.’

Mr Adams last year represented Cumbria Police at the Gay Pride march in Manchester. On the social networking site MySpace, he describes his orientation as gay and his religion as atheist.

After the warning, Mr McAlpine took over preaching for 20 minutes, although he claims he did not cover homosexuality. But while he talked to a passer-by the PCSO radioed for assistance and he was arrested by uniformed officers.

He was taken to a police station, had his pockets emptied and his mobile phone taken along with his belt and shoes, and was kept in the cells for seven hours where he sang hymns to keep his spirits up.

It is exactly the same process that might have occurred fifty years ago but with a policeman warning a homosexual he could not distribute leaflets advocating sodomy. What has changed isn’t that people are being warned off for their beliefs. What is different is which beliefs they are being warned against. The Ins and the Outs have changed places, but he door remains the same. Wikipedia writes that “views on public morality do change over time,” but whether public morality itself can ever be abolished is an open question.

One of the drivers of the new public morality is who can fight back. British policemen do not go around telling Muslim imams not to preach against homosexuality because such preachers may take strenuous exception to their warnings. But the rules of the new morality are often capricious, unstated or simply arcane.

Fernandez has a point. You'd risk being shouted down were you to suggest publicly that almost any form of sexual expression is wrong. You'd be called a prude, a bigot, and intolerant. On the other hand, progressive society is very intolerant of people who don't belong to any of the groups approved or favored by the contemporary standard-setters. If one is a smoker, a meat-eater, or wears furs, one can expect to meet with a certain measure of social opprobrium in our more liberal precincts. Likewise if one is a Catholic or fundamentalist or a pro-lifer.

Tolerance of other peoples' preferences and beliefs often extends only to those who think the way our left-leaning elites think. All others merit society's anathema and execration.