That Hideous Strength

C.S. Lewis was an Oxford scholar of medieval literature, prolific writer and a famous Christian apologist (i.e. defender of the faith). He died in 1963 on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

In his novel That Hideous Strength (1945) Lewis writes a "fairy tale," as he calls it, that's a prophetic allegory of the cultural battle we see raging in our own day between the forces of left-wing progressivism/scientism and those who struggle to hold on to the traditional values of family and religious commitment.

In THS Lewis illustrates this struggle by means of a plot by the progressive National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) to take over, first a part of England, and ultimately the whole country and the world. N.I.C.E. is led by men who have embraced a scientistic worldview - naturalistic, atheistic, materialistic, reductionistic, objectivist and purely rational.

As Lewis describes them in a classic work, The Abolition of Man, they're men without chests. They have no heart, no passions. They're men bereft souls who can be pictured as disembodied heads, which is, in fact, how Lewis symbolically represents the leader of N.I.C.E.

N.I.C.E. and the men who run it may seem like fantastically implausible caricatures, but the story should be read as a bi-leveled allegory. On one level it's Lewis' portrayal of the spiritual nature of the battle and on another level it's a portrait of the left's program for crushing their opposition and gaining power, a program that has been employed consistently by the left ever since the days of Karl Marx in the 19th century and perhaps since the French Revolution in 1789 and the ensuing terror.

The Marxists and their progressive allies have throughout this era sought to advance along three fronts. These can be summarized as follows (the summary is taken from Faith and the Arts):

The Four Stages of Cultural Revolution – As described by former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov in the 1970s, these are the stages by which Soviet agents worked to infiltrate and undermine America and other western societies.

1. Demoralization – using pornography and other methods through media, entertainment, education, etc., to break down the moral courage of the people. 
2. Destabilization – By undermining police, courts, borders, etc., to overwhelm public safety and further demoralize the people.
3. Crisis – Build 1 and 2 to the point of a crisis where people resort to rioting or to civil war.
4. New Normal – Declare emergency powers and install the administrative state as a solution for all of the problems which the revolutionary forces have themselves caused.

The Long March through the Institutions – This is a central concept of cultural Marxism. It concerns the strategy of neo-Marxists in America and in other Western societies to overcome the resistance of successful middle-class cultures to the Marxist rhetoric of revolution. Middle-class people tend to be somewhat satisfied with their lives and tolerant of income differences with others.

Cultural Marxists therefore target all of the institutions of middle-class society—church, family, public education, media, the press, entertainment, business, academia, science, law, etc.—in order to create the problems and crises that lead to the imposition of emergency powers and the administrative state. 

Mass Formation – This is an academic concept that has been used for many years to try to understand the mass psychology that appears to be at work in societies like Bolshevik Russia, Nazi Germany, and Mao’s China, where thousands of ordinary citizens either turned a blind eye to the suffering of their fellow citizens or, in some cases, joined the forces that shamed and tortured them.

The process is based on fear and the desire to survive or escape the threat of suffering. Under these conditions, “normal” people may become callous to the suffering of others. They “go along to get along.” But the result is a complete collapse of genuine religious and moral civilization.

All of these corrosive strategies certainly seem to be experiencing alarming success in our contemporary culture, and Lewis shines a light on them in his depiction of the machinations of N.I.C.E. and the spiritual barrenness of those employed in advancing its cause.

For those who may never have read That Hideous Strength, I'd recommend first reading Abolition of Man and perhaps then perusing brief summaries of the first two novels in Lewis' "space" trilogy Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra before tackling That Hideous Strength.

The story will make more sense if you do.

Why Christians Celebrate Christ's Birthday

In this season of shopping and feasting it's easy to lose sight of why Christmas is a special day. The following allegory, which we've posted on Viewpoint several times in the past, is a modest attempt to put the season into perspective [Some readers have noted the similarity between this story and the movie Taken, however, the story of Michael first appeared on Viewpoint over a year before Taken was released so the similarities with the movie are purely coincidental, although the similarities with my novel Bridging the Abyss, are not.]:

Michael, a member of a top-secret anti-terrorism task force, was the father of a teenage daughter named Jennifer, and his duties had caused him to be away from home much of the time Jen was growing up. He was serving his country in a very important, very dangerous capacity that required his absence and a great deal of personal sacrifice. As a result, his daughter grew into her late teens pretty much without him. Indeed, his wife Judith had decided to leave him a couple of years previous and took the girl with her.

Finally, after several years abroad, Mike was able to return home. He longed to hold his princess in his arms and to spend every possible moment with her to try to make up for lost time, but when he knocked on the door of his ex-wife's house the girl who greeted him was almost unrecognizable. Jen had grown up physically and along the way she had rejected everything Michael valued. Her appearance shocked him and her words cut him like a razor. She told him coldly and bluntly that she really didn't want to see him, that he wasn't a father as far as she was concerned, that he hadn't been a part of her life before and wouldn't be in the future.

Michael, a man who had faced numerous hazards and threats in the course of his work and had been secretly cited for great heroism by the government, was staggered by her words. The loathing in her voice and in her eyes crushed his heart. He started to speak, but the door was slammed in his face. Heartbroken and devastated he wandered the streets of the city wondering how, or if, he could ever regain the love his little girl once had for him.

Weeks went by during which he tried to contact both his ex-wife and his daughter, but they refused to return his calls. Then one night his cell phone rang. It was Judith, and from her voice Mike could tell something was very wrong. Jennifer had apparently run off with some unsavory characters several days before and hadn't been heard from since. His ex-wife had called the police, but she felt Mike should know, too. She told him that she thought the guys Jen had gone out with that night were heavily into drugs and she was worried sick about her.

She had good reason to be. Jen thought when she left the house that she was just going for a joy ride, but that's not what her "friends" had in mind. Once they had Jen back at their apartment they tied her to a bed, abused her, filmed the whole thing, and when she resisted they beat her until she submitted. She overheard them debating whether they should sell her to a man whom they knew sold girls into sex-slavery in South America or whether they should just kill her and dump her body in the bay. For three days her life was an unimaginable hell. She cried herself to sleep late every night after being forced into the most degrading conduct imaginable.

Finally her abductors sold her to a street gang in exchange for drugs. Bound and gagged, she was raped repeatedly and beaten savagely. For the first time in her life she prayed that God would help her, and for the first time in many years she missed her father. But as the days wore on she began to think she'd rather be dead than be forced to endure what she was being put through.

Mike knew some of the officers in the police force and was able to get a couple of leads from them as to who the guys she originally left with might be. He set out, not knowing Jennifer's peril, but determined to find her no matter what the cost. His search led him to another city and took days - days in which he scarcely ate or slept. Each hour that passed Jennifer's condition grew worse and her danger more severe. She was by now in a cocaine-induced haze in which she almost didn't know or care what was happening to her.

Somehow, Michael, weary and weak from his lack of sleep and food, managed to find the seedy, run down tenement building where Jennifer was imprisoned. Breaking through a flimsy door he saw his daughter laying on a filthy bed surrounded by three startled kidnappers. Enraged by the scene before his eyes he launched himself at them with a terrible, vengeful fury. Two of the thugs went down quickly, but the third escaped. With tears flowing down his cheeks, Mike unfastened the bonds that held Jen's wrists to the bed posts. She was weak but alert enough to cooperate as Michael helped her to her feet and led her to the doorway.

As she passed into the hall with Michael behind her the third abductor appeared with a gun. Michael quickly stepped in front of Jennifer and yelled to her to run back into the apartment and out the fire escape. The assailant tried to shoot her as she stumbled toward the escape, but Michael shielded her from the bullet, taking the round in his side. The thug fired twice more into Michael's body, but Mike was able to seize the gun and turn it on the shooter.

Finally, it was all over, finished.

Slumped against the wall, Mike lay bleeding from his wounds, the life draining out of him. Jennifer saw from the fire escape landing what had happened and ran back to her father. Cradling him in her arms she wept bitterly and told him over and over that she loved him and that she was so sorry for what she had said to him and for what she had done.

With the last bit of life left in him he gazed up at her, pursed his lips in a kiss, smiled and died. Jennifer wept hysterically. How could she ever forgive herself for how she had treated him? How could she ever overcome the guilt and the loss she felt? How could she ever repay the tremendous love and sacrifice her father had showered upon her?

Years passed. Jennifer eventually had a family of her own. She raised her children to revere the memory of her father even though they had never known him. She resolved to live her own life in such a way that Michael, if he knew, would be enormously proud of her. Everything she did, she did out of gratitude to him for what he had done for her, and every year on the day of his birth she went to the cemetery alone and sat for a couple of hours at his graveside, talking to him and sharing her love and her life with him.

Her father had given everything for her despite the cruel way she had treated him. He had given his life to save hers, and his love for her, his sacrifice, had changed her life forever.

And that's why Christians celebrate Christmas.

A Sampling of Good Books (IMO)

I'm always wary of recommending books, music or movies because what appeals to me is not likely to appeal to others. In fact, it's been my unfortunate experience that it definitely does not appeal to others.

Nevertheless, I thought for this post I'd list just a few of my favorite non-fiction reads from the last couple of years.

Of the hundred or so books I managed to digest over that span, a couple dozen or so stood out. Some of them were books I had read before and wanted to reread, following the advice that one should always alternate between reading a new book and rereading an older one.

From the many that I thought especially worthwhile it was difficult to select those I wanted to mention on this list. Even so, here are a baker's dozen I particularly enjoyed reading or rereading:

The World's Religions - Huston Smith: This is a classic in the field of religious studies. It's perhaps the best explanation of the beliefs and teachings of the world's major religions.

Return of the God Hypothesis - Stephen Meyer: Meyer is a philosopher of science who composes a compelling case for the existence of God or something very much like God. He takes his evidence from the origin of the universe, its astonishing fine-tuning and the origin of life.

The Miracle of Man - Michael Denton: An accessible account of how the laws of physics and chemistry are just what they must be to permit the emergence of intelligent beings like humans. Had any of the properties of matter, such as the viscosity of water, been even slightly different no higher life forms would exist.

Non-Computable You - Robert Marks: Marks is a computer expert who argues in a very entertaining way that artificial intelligence will never be able to do what the human brain can do.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self - Carl Trueman: Trueman outlines the philosophical history of ideas that has produced our contemporary attitudes toward sex and gender.

Kierkegaard - Stephen Backhouse: A very lucid introduction to the life of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.

Sword and Scimitar - Raymond Ibrahim: Ibrahim describes the history of seven major battles between the armies of Islam and those of the West culminating in the siege of Vienna in 1683. It's a fascinating account and one that helps the reader understand the contemporary conflict between Islam and the West.

Animal Algorithms - Eric Cassell: Cassell writes breathtaking descriptions of the ability of animals, particularly insects, to accomplish incredible behaviors despite having brains the size of a pinhead.

I'm Not a Racist, But ... - Lawrence Blum: One of the best books on race that I've come across.

Dominion - Tom Holland: Historian Tom Holland takes us on a tour of the history of Western civilization and argues implicitly that the accomplishments of the West were made possible by the Christian worldview that permeated the thinking of its people.

Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War - Peter Maas: An account of the stupidities and horrors of the Bosnian war in the 1990s by a journalist who lived through it.

A Fortunate Universe - Lewis and Barnes: Two cosmologists team up to explain the fine-tuning of the atom and how had any of the properties of the atom been different by the tiniest amounts the universe wouldn't and couldn't exist.

Lone Survivor - Marcus Luttrell: Luttrell was a Navy SEAL who recounts his SEAL training, a mission in Afghanistan that went horribly bad and his eventual rescue. Only he survived the mission. It's a remarkable story of endurance and heroism.

The Twitter Affair

Gerard Baker at the Wall Street Journal (paywall) puts his finger on what is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the "Twitter Files" revelations:

He writes:

[The documents] provide a valuable picture of the minds of those who make decisions about what gets amplified and what gets suppressed in our public discourse. While there were some dissenters at the company, the key decisions almost all went the way you would expect.

What we get is an unsettling insight into the approach to knowledge by which our cultural elites operate—what we might call an epistemological asymmetry between progressive ideologues and the rest of us.

It’s not that executives, editors, reporters and algorithm-writers at big media and tech companies consciously promote their ideological nostrums, mindful of and striving to overcome competing ideas. It’s much worse.

If you’re an executive at Twitter with the Orwellian title of “head of trust and safety” or a “disinformation” and “extremism” reporter at NBC News, or an executive at the New York Times charged with enforcing intellectual homogeneity, you’re not simply promoting a view of the world that you espouse.

You are doing something much more important, which compels compliance and tolerates no alternatives: promulgating the One True Faith, a set of orthodoxies from which there is no legitimate dissent.

Here is the asymmetry: Most conservatives, or intellectually curious people, don’t think like this. They don’t think that someone with differing opinions on say, immigration restrictions, the right level of taxation, or the case for affirmative action is voicing a provably false and intrinsically illegitimate view that amounts to misinformation.

They think their opponents’ beliefs are wrong and reflect flawed analysis or erroneous evidence. But they don’t think there is only one acceptable belief and that dissent from it is analytically impossible, intellectually dishonest and morally contemptible.

But this is the left’s mindset. It is why they don’t need instructions from government officials or public censors to determine access to information. They are themselves the controlling authority.

They act in ways that are reminiscent of the pre-Enlightenment certitudes of the clerisy. They have a moral and normative view of knowledge that seeks to disfavor, suppress and ultimately extirpate heresy.

Twitter occupies an absurdly inflated amount of space in the minds of people in the media, myself included. While the decisions it makes about who or what to promote or suppress obsess us, its actions impinge little on the deliberations of most Americans. It is a private company and, in accordance with the principles of a free market, should be free to do what it wishes.

These revelations matter, however, not because of anything they tell us about Twitter. They matter because they show the way an entire generation of people who occupy positions of influence think about knowledge, truth and opinion.

It's a characteristic of the young, and also of older folks who are not too well-informed, to be much too certain that they're in special possession of the truth and that anyone who disagrees with them must be either ignorant, perverse or malevolent. It never seems to occur to them that maybe they don't know as much as they seem to think they do.

A few days ago I posted a piece by John Stuart Mill concerning intellectual virtues. The arrogant young censors at Twitter (and Google, and Facebook, and Instagram, etc.) would do well to read Mill's masterful essay On Liberty upon which that post was based.

They might actually benefit from it.

Penciled Out of the "Old" Category

R.R. Reno at First Things (subscription required) writes about an observation made by Rob Henderson on his Substack Newsletter (ditto). Henderson remarks on...

...the peculiar deference baby boomers give to young people: “Older adults crave validation from the youth, which is one reason they are mocked. Young people sense their desire to be seen as cool and deprive them of this by taunting them.”

Worse, “energetic young conflict entrepreneurs” seize the initiative and intimidate baby boomer leaders of institutions and companies, driving the woke agenda into a commanding role in the marketplace and government. Henderson doesn’t see any relief on the horizon.

“Older adults want to be on the side of youth. [They are] desperate to pencil themselves out of the ‘old’ category. Every parent wants to be the ‘cool parent’; every professor wants to be the ‘cool professor.’”

Henderson appends this quote from another writer:

In the old days young people went to university to learn from people who were perhaps three times their age and had read an enormous amount. But nowadays they go in order to tell those older people what they should be thinking and what they should be saying.

What Reno notes here about older people in general is, in my experience, true in particular of not a few high school teachers, college professors and parents. Although with parents the young aren't so much antagonistic toward them, though they may be, as they are embarrassed by them.

Anyway, perhaps I should count myself fortunate that there's just no way I can be penciled out of the "old" category, either by my students or my grandkids.

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

One of the problems faced by those who are researching the potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source is that heretofore it has taken more energy to get atoms to fuse together than what's gotten out of the fusion.

The difficulty is this. The fuel for fusion is an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium. Deuterium contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Because protons are positively charged and because like charges repel, it's exceedingly difficult to get two deuterium nuclei to be pressed close enough to each other for the strong nuclear force to take over and bind them together.

Only the pressures generated in the interiors of stars or in a nuclear explosion or by the focused beams of multiple high-powered lasers can force these deuterium nuclei to "smoosh" together.

And if they can be forced together a small amount of the matter in the nucleus is converted into energy according to Einstein's equation E = mc^2 where E is the energy produced, m is the mass that's converted and c is the speed of light. The speed of light is 3x10^5 km/s. That number squared is 9x10^10 so even a small amount of mass (m) multiplied by such a huge number results in an enormous amount of energy (E) being produced.

Which is why recent work done at Lawrence Livermore National Labs is so significant. Jim Geraghty fills us in at NRO:

Across the bay from San Francisco, the Lawrence Livermore National Labs have been conducting fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility, a giant lab the size of a sports stadium, where the equipment “precisely guides, amplifies, reflects, and focuses 192 powerful laser beams into a target about the size of a pencil eraser in a few billionths of a second, delivering more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy and 500 trillion watts of peak power.”

If you smash two atoms together at exceptionally high speeds, they merge, and in the process release energy; for decades, researchers have been stymied by the challenge of generating a reaction that releases more energy than it consumes.

That, reportedly, is what the Department of Energy has done for the first time.

This is, however, just a first step. There are lots of hurdles to be surmounted. Geraghty quotes the Washington Post:

Creating the net energy gain required engagement of one of the largest lasers in the world, and the resources needed to recreate the reaction on the scale required to make fusion practical for energy production are immense.

More importantly, engineers have yet to develop machinery capable of affordably turning that reaction into electricity that can be practically deployed to the power grid.

Building devices that are large enough to create fusion power at scale, scientists say, would require materials that are extraordinarily difficult to produce. At the same time, the reaction creates neutrons that put a tremendous amount of stress on the equipment creating it, such that it can get destroyed in the process.

There’s a long way to go, and this is just the first step, but it is a key first step. The potential of this breakthrough is spectacular.

Fusion has numerous advantages over every other power source - fossil, green or nuclear - currently on the horizon. There's no radioactive waste or threat of a nuclear meltdown, no carbon footprint, and the fuel, deuterium, is found in water and is almost inexhaustable.

Geraghty has more about this development at the link, but however exciting this breakthrough is we're still a long way from being able to use fusion to produce commercially marketable electricity. Even so, the Lawrence Livermore people have taken a giant first step.

Two Intellectual Virtues

One of my favorite works in philosophy is a book by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) titled On Liberty. Throughout this elegantly written essay Mill offers excellent advice on how to think clearly about the proper limits of state coercion and the freedom of the individual citizen.

In chapter two he takes up the related topic of a citizen's responsibility to inform him or herself on important matters like "morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life". In these, Mill suggests, we should make it our practice to follow the example of one of the greatest rhetoricians in history, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Mill writes:

The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.

How many people know, for example, the arguments on the other side of the issue from their own on matters like the existence of God, evolution, immigration, climate change, abortion, gay marriage, etc.? If we don't know what the opposing arguments are on such questions how are we justified in dogmatically declaring or believing that our opinion is the only one that it's reasonable to hold?

Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.

He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

In other words, if we only hear opposing views from those who agree with our position then we're probably not hearing those views presented as cogently as they would be by someone who really believed them. We shouldn't be afraid to read books and listen to lectures by people with whom we disagree. It'll either sharpen our own views or lead us closer to the truth.

Those on college campuses today who seek to shout down speakers they disagree with, or to prevent them from even appearing on campus, are, in addition to revealing their own intellectual primitiveness, doing both the truth and their fellow students a grave disservice.

John Stuart Mill

Most people, even educated people, Mill laments, don't really know the arguments against the positions they hold:

Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.

They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred.

All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in the strongest light.

Of course, few people have the time, let alone the inclination, to thoroughly explore all sides of all important issues, but if we don't then we certainly have no justification for being dogmatic in expressing our opinions. It would be better instead to display a genuinely open-minded intellectual humility which, so far from communicating the message, "I'm right and you're wrong", says instead that, "I might well not know all that I should about this matter, but here's what I think based on what I do know...."

Unfortunately, just as in Mill's time, open-mindedness and humility are two intellectual virtues not conspicuous among those participating in debates on the issues of our day.

How Did Life Begin?

Josh Anderson at Quora responds to the question whether it's "possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that intelligence was required to create life."

His reply is quite interesting. Here it is in full, slightly edited:

Yes, it is. Here’s the question you should ask yourself: Is symbolic code something that blind, intelligence-free physical processes could create and use? Or is mind alone up to the task?

The legendary John Von Neumann (1903-1957) did important work on self-replicating systems. A towering giant in the history of mathematics and pioneer in computer science, he was interested in describing machine-like systems that could build faithful copies of themselves.

Von Neumann soon recognized that it would require both hardware and software. Such a system had to work from a symbolic representation of itself. That is, it must have a kind of encoded picture of itself in some kind of memory.

Crucially, this abstract picture had to include a precise description of the very mechanisms needed to read and execute the code.

Makes sense, right? To copy itself it has to have a blueprint to follow. And this blueprint has to include instructions for building the systems needed to decode and implement the code.

In order to replicate itself, Von Neumann is asserting, a computer would have to be programmed with a complete set of instructions to direct the replication process. But how could a computer program itself to replicate itself?

Here’s the remarkable thing: Life is a Von Neumann Replicator. Von Neumann was unwittingly describing the DNA based genetic system at the heart of life. And yet, he was doing so years before we knew about these systems.

The implications of this are profound. Think about how remarkable this is. It’s like having the blueprints and operating system for a computer stored on a drive in digital code that can only be read by the device itself. It’s the ultimate chicken and egg scenario.

Again, how would a computer ever "know" how to program itself to produce a copy of itself without input at some point from a mind?

How might something like this have come about? For a system to contain a symbolic representation of itself [there has to be an] actualization of precise mapping between two realms, the physical realm and an abstract symbolic realm.

In view here is a kind of translation, mechanisms that can move between encoded descriptions and material things being described. This requires a system of established correlations between stuff out here and information instantiated in a domain of symbols.

Here’s the crucial question: Is this something that can be achieved by chance, physical laws, or intelligence-free material processes? The answer is decidedly NO. What’s physical cannot work out the non-physical. Only a mind can create a true code.

Only a mind can conceive of and manage abstract, symbolic realities. A symbolic system has to be invented. It cannot come about in any other way.

Another way to say this is that there's a vast chasm between immaterial, abstract information (symbols) and physical machines. The only way to bridge that chasm, whether in computers or human beings, is through a mind. But on naturalism there was no mind present when the first cells evolved the ability to replicate.

So how did they?

If you think something like this - mutually interdependent physical hardware and encoded software - can arise through unguided, foresight-less material forces acting over time, think again.

If I were to ask you to think of something, anything that absolutely requires intelligence to bring about, you’d be hard pressed to think of a better example. It’s not just that no one understands how it could be done, it’s that we have every reason to believe that it is impossible in principle.

No intelligence-free material processes could ever give you something like this. (i.e. a complex, self-replicating entity like a living cell)

But wait, how can we be so sure this feature of life was not forged by evolution, built up incrementally by the unseen hand of natural selection? What’s to say this is beyond the ability of evolution to create?

The question answers itself. In order for evolution to take place you have to have a self-replicating system in place. You don’t evolve to the kind of thing we’ve been describing. That is, necessarily, where you begin.

Evolution cannot get started until the first self-replicating system exists, but how does that first system come to exist? How, in other words, does life begin apart from a mind?

The DNA and the dizzyingly complex molecular machinery that it both uses and describes did not evolve into existence. This much is clear.

Any suggestion that it did is not based on a scintilla of empirical evidence or any credible account of how it could have come about in this way.

The conclusion is clear: The unmistakable signature of mind is literally in every cell of every living thing on earth.

Every living thing is comprised of millions if not trillions of self-replicating biological factories called cells. Naturalists insist that this ability to self-replicate evolved without any help from a mind, but they have no answer to the question of how that would've even been possible.

The claim that it did is no more than an assertion of blind faith.

Good News, Bad News

One can be happy for Brittany Griner and her family that the Russians have finally released her from prison while at the same time be dismayed at the Biden administration's priorities.

While Griner had been in prison since last February other Americans have languished in the Russian prison system for much longer.

Fifty two year-old Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive, traveled to Moscow in December 2018 for a wedding and was detained by Russian authorities on espionage charges.

In 2020, the former Marine received a 16-year prison sentence in what the U.S. has called a sham trial.

Whelan was ordered to serve time at a prison labor camp in the province of Mordovia.

Last month, Whelan was moved to a prison hospital for undisclosed reasons.

Marc Fogel, a history teacher from Pittsburgh who taught the children of U.S. diplomats abroad, was detained in Moscow in August 2021. He had with him a small amount of medical marijuana he used for chronic back pain.

In June, Fogel was sentenced to 14 years at a labor camp. He's sixty-one years-old.

Sarah Krivanek, 46, moved to Russia from Fresno, California, five years ago to teach at a Russian private school.

Last year, Krivanek was involved in a domestic abuse situation with her boyfriend and allegedly grabbed a knife to defend herself, nicking him slightly. Krivanek was arrested by Russian authorities and detained for roughly a year despite her boyfriend retracting the charges.

She was released last month but detained again at a Moscow airport when she tried to leave the country. Krivanek is not incarcerated but is also not authorized to return home. She is waiting in a holding facility while she figures out how to leave Russia.

So, why was the Biden administration so determined to get Griner back that they were willing to overlook the plight of these other Americans and release to Russia Viktor Bout, a former Soviet military officer serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, acquire and export anti-aircraft missiles, and provide material support to a terrorist organization?

Is it because Griner is a celebrity - an African American, lesbian professional basketball player? It's hard to see what other reason Mr. Biden would've had to prioritize her release over that of Whelan, Fogel and Krivanek. She's famous and they're not.

It says a lot about both the U.S. and Russia that we prioritized the release of a celebrity over a former Marine and that the Russians were eager to have us release to them a man dubbed by our intelligence agencies "The Merchant of Death."

I wonder if the American negotiators played all their cards before acceding to Russia's demands to release Bout from Griner. Did they think to tell the Russians that either they release all four Americans post haste or the U.S. will stop reconfiguring the HIMAR missiles we're sending to Ukraine to limit their range to only fifty miles?

If the Americans are not released, our negotiators could've stipulated, the missiles we send the Ukrainians will be able to achieve their maximum range and reach Russian bases and troops inside both Crimea and Russia.

Maybe our negotiators could've thrown Bout in to sweeten the deal since he'd already served fifteen years of his sentence anyway.

The Russians could then be left to ponder whether holding on to innocent Americans was worth the humiliation and demoralization that would result from the loss of officers, men and material the rejiggered HIMARs would cause.

Did our people play this card? If not, why not?

Digitized Immortality

There's been a lot of talk in the last couple of years about the possibility of gaining immortality by downloading one's consciousness into some information-storing medium like a computer chip which could then be implanted into another body of some sort.

It sounds interesting given the technological advances in computer power that've been made in recent years, but as the following 11 minute video points out the obstacles to downloading the contents of one's brain in such a way that the self remains intact are more than daunting.

The narrator of the video, which was recommended to me by one of my students, seems to have a tongue-in-cheek optimism about the prospects of digitizing the brain. There's no reason to think it can't be done, he seems to imply, but as the video proceeds the viewer realizes that the whole point of the video is to show that, in fact, it could never be done.

One wonders, watching this video, how something as astoundingly complex as a brain could have ever evolved by chance, but set that very important questions aside. In addition to all the fascinating technical difficulties that preserving one's consciousness involves there's another major problem that the video doesn't address. The video assumes that the brain is all that's involved in human consciousness, but it's by no means clear that that's so.

Many philosophers are coming to the conclusion that, in addition to the brain, human beings also possess a mind that somehow works in tandem with the brain to produce the phenomena of conscious experience. If this is correct then the problems entailed by downloading the data that comprise the physical brain are child's play compared to the difficulties of downloading an immaterial mind.

Maybe the only way to gain immortality is the old-fashioned way, the way that involves the God that your grandparents told you about.

The Language Chasm

Last week I put up a post in which I noted that many researchers have concluded that the ontologicsal chasm separating humans from apes is greater than the chasm separating apes from viruses. That post reminded me of one I did several years ago on the last book written by the late Tom Wolfe and thought I'd repost it.

Here it is:

I've been enjoying Tom Wolfe's new book, The Kingdom of Speech, and heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the theory of evolution and/or the history of the study of linguistics. Michael Egnor at Evolution News concurs with this commendation, and goes even further. Rather than me telling you what the book is about, I'll quote Egnor:

Tom Wolfe has a new book, The Kingdom of Speech, and it's superb. Wolfe's theme is that human language is unique and is not shared in any way with other animals. He argues forcefully that evolutionary stories about the origin of human language are not credible.

In the first chapter of his book, Wolfe describes an article in the journal Frontiers of Psychology from 2014, co-authored by leading linguist Noam Chomsky and seven colleagues. Wolfe declares that:

"The most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever," [researchers] concluded. Not only that, they sounded ready to abandon all hope of ever finding the answer. Oh, we'll keep trying, they said gamely... but we'll have to start from zero again.

One of the [researchers] was the biggest name in the history of linguistics, Noam Chomsky. "In the last 40 years," he and [others] were saying, "there has been an explosion of research on this problem," and all it had produced was a colossal waste of time by some of the greatest minds in academia....

One hundred and fifty years since the Theory of Evolution was announced, and they had learned...nothing....In that same century and a half, Einstein discovered the ...the relativity of speed, time and distance... Pasteur discovered that microorganisms, notably bacteria, cause an ungodly number of diseases, from head colds to anthrax and oxygen-tubed, collapsed-lung, final-stage pneumonia....Watson and Crick discovered DNA, the so-called building blocks genes are made of...and 150 years' worth of linguists, biologists, anthropologists, and people from every other discipline discovered...nothing...about language.

What is the problem? What's the story?...What is it that they still don't get after a veritable eternity?

Wolfe provides a précis of his argument:

Speech is not one of man's several unique attributes -- speech is the attribute of all attributes!

Yet despite almost two centuries of speculations and hypothesizing we're no closer today to being able to explain what language is or how we come to have it than we've ever been. Indeed, Darwin and his votaries tried to come up with a plausible explanation and failed so utterly that scientists gave up for almost eighty years trying to explain it. Says Wolfe:

It is hard to believe that the most crucial single matter, by far, in the entire debate over the Evolution of man - language - was abandoned, thrown down the memory hole, from 1872 to 1949.

It's also hard to believe that it's been 72 years since 1949 and still no progress has been made on this question. Egnor writes:

And yet, as Wolfe points out, Darwinists are at an utter loss to explain how language -- the salient characteristic of man -- "evolved."

None of the deep drawer of evolutionary just-so stories come anywhere close to explaining how man might have acquired the astonishing ability to craft unlimited propositions and concepts and subtleties within subtleties using a system of grammar and abstract designators (i.e. words) that are utterly lacking anywhere else in the animal kingdom.

Egnor, who is himself a neuroscientist, closes his piece with these words:

I have argued before that the human mind is qualitatively different from the animal mind. The human mind has immaterial abilities -- the intellect's ability to grasp abstract universal concepts divorced from any particular thing -- and that this ability makes us more different from apes than apes are from viruses.

We are ontologically different. We are a different kind of being from animals. We are not just animals who talk. Although we share much in our bodies with animals, our language -- a simulacrum of our abstract minds -- has no root in the animal world.

Language is the tool by which we think abstractly. It is sui generis. It is a gift, a window into the human soul, something we are made with, and it did not evolve.

Language is a rock against which evolutionary theory wrecks, one of the many rocks -- the uncooperative fossil record, the jumbled molecular evolutionary tree, irreducible complexity, intricate intracellular design, the genetic code, the collapsing myth of junk DNA, the immaterial human mind -- that comprise the shoal that is sinking Darwin's Victorian fable.

The charm of Wolfe's book is that it reads like a novel, which is the metier for which Wolfe is famous. It's free of scientific jargon, it's funny and contains some fascinating insights into several of the major figures in the history of the search for an explanation for the origin and nature of language. Plus, it's only 169 pages long.

All in all a great read.

Three Options

The book A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely-Tuned Cosmos by cosmologists Luke Barnes and Geraint Lewis discusses the incredibly precise fine-tuning of the forces, parameters and constants that comprise the structure of the universe.

Here's a video trailer that introduces the theme of their book:

The trailer suggests that there are four possible explanations for this incomprehensible level of precision, but for reasons I'll explain in a moment, there really are only three.

The first is that something about the universe makes it a logical necessity that the values cosmologists find are in fact the only possible values a universe could have. There is no reason, however, to think this is the case. There's nothing about the universe, as far as we know, that makes it impossible for gravity or the strong nuclear force, to take just two examples, to have slightly different strengths.

The second explanation is that even though it's astronomically improbable that any universe would be so fine-tuned that living things could exist in it, if there are other universes, all with different parameters, universes so abundant that their number approaches infinity, then one like ours is almost bound to exist. This option goes by the name of the multiverse hypothesis.

The difficulty with this idea is that there's no good reason to believe other universes actually do exist, and even if they do why should we assume that they're not all replicas of each other, and even if they're all different whatever is producing them must itself be fine-tuned in order to manufacture universes, so all the multiverse hypothesis does is push the problem back a step or two.

The third explanation is that our universe is the product of a very intelligent agent, a mathematical genius, which exists somehow beyond the bounds of our cosmos.

There are actually two varieties of the third option. One is to say that the designer of the universe is a denizen of another universe in which technology has advanced to the point that it allows inhabitants of that world to design simulations of other universes.

The trailer treats this as a fourth option but since it posits a designer who resides in some other universe it's actually a combination of the second and third options and suffers some of the same difficulties as the multiverse hypothesis. It also assumes that computer technology could ever simulate not only an entire cosmos but also human consciousness, which is certainly problematic.

The other version of the third explanation is to assume that the designer of our universe is not some highly accomplished computer nerd in another universe but rather that it is a transcendent, non-contingent being of unimaginable power and intellectual brilliance who is the ultimate cause of all contingent entities, whether universes or their inhabitants.

Which of these options is thought most attractive will vary from person to person, but philosophical arguments won't settle the issue for most people. Human beings tend to believe what they most fervently want to be true, and what they most want to be true is often whatever makes the fewest demands upon their autonomy and their lifestyle.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Like many great artists, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow experienced a lot of tragedy in his life. At the age of fifty seven (1863) he wrote to a friend, “I have been through a great deal of trouble and anxiety.”

Indeed he had. His first wife died in 1835 from complications from a miscarriage:

28-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was devastated by the death of his beloved young wife, Mary. The couple had been traveling in Europe as the poet prepared to begin teaching literature at Harvard.

The distraught Longfellow gave vent to his grief, resolving to dedicate himself to a life of "goodness and purity like hers." He vowed to abandon "literary ambition . . . this destroyer of peace and quietude and the soul's self-possession," but by the time he returned to Cambridge in 1836, he had begun writing again and eventually remarried.

Suffering from grief, Longfellow plunged into study and spent the following winter and spring in Heidelberg perfecting his German.

Henry met Fanny Appleton eight months after Mary died, while summering in Switzerland. Fanny captivated Longfellow, but she did not show the same interest in him.

Longfellow proposed marriage in 1837 but Fanny refused him.

The young professor left soon after for America and his duties at Harvard. Longfellow persuaded Elizabeth Craigie to accept him as a boarder at her home overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first writings were published during these years.

Resuming his friendship with Fanny Appleton, Longfellow was crushed by her rejection of his marriage proposal in 1837, but he was determined to win Fanny’s heart.

In July 1839, he wrote to a friend: “[V]ictory hangs doubtful. The lady says she will not! I say she shall! It is not pride, but the madness of passion”. His friend George Stillman Hillard encouraged Longfellow in the pursuit: “I delight to see you keeping up so stout a heart for the resolve to conquer is half the battle in love as well as war.”

After seven years of courtship, Fanny married Longfellow on July 13, 1843. Her father purchased the Craigie House later that year, and presented it and the surrounding grounds to the Longfellows as a wedding gift.

Well-educated, Fanny was a perceptive critic of art and literature who happily shared her husband’s pursuits. Henry and Fanny were seldom apart.

The home, well-known even then as George Washington‘s headquarters during the early days of the American Revolution, would be their residence for the rest of their lives. Fanny never changed the room where George and Martha had celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary amid the sorrows and uncertainties of war.

The family home was a favorite gathering place for artists, philosophers, writers and reformers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens and Charles Sumner. An active abolitionist, Longfellow contributed money to help freedom-seeking and former slaves and to support the anti-slavery cause.

The Longfellows were blessed with the birth of six children – Charles (1844), Ernest (1845), Fanny (1847, who died in childhood), Alice (1850), Edith (1853) and Allegra (1855). Alice was delivered while her mother was under the anesthetic influence of ether – the first time it was used in North America.

Fanny was a skilled artist, art collector and insightful commentator on 19th-Century Boston literary culture, well-traveled, and well-read in many subjects. She was a loving and attentive mother and had much influence on the intellectual growth of the Longfellow children.

At Craigie House they formed the warm family circle that became a kind of national symbol for domestic love, the innocence of childhood and the pleasure of material comfort.

By 1854 Longfellow was able to resign from Harvard. He had become, at age forty-seven, one of America’s first self-sustaining authors.

For the next seven years, Henry was able to pour his energies into his writing, unimpeded by teaching duties and supported by the love of his family.

But tragedy was to strike again: On July 9, 1862 after trimming some of seven year old Edith’s beautiful curls, Fanny decided to preserve the clippings in an envelope. While she was melting a bar of sealing wax with a candle to seal the keepsake in the envelope, a few drops fell unnoticed in her lap. A breeze came through the window, igniting Fanny’s dress – immediately wrapping her in flames.

In her attempt to protect Edith and Allegra, Fanny ran to Henry’s study in the next room, where Henry frantically attempted to extinguish the flames with a throw rug. Failing to stop the fire with the rug, he tried to smother the flames by throwing his arms around Frances – severely burning his face, arms and hands.

Fanny Longfellow died of her injuries the next morning, July 11, 1861, at the age of 43, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

Too ill from his burns and grief, Henry did not attend her funeral. His facial scars and the difficulty of shaving caused him to grow the beard that gave him the sage and distinguished look reproduced in so many paintings and photographs.

A month after Fanny’s death, on August 18, 1861, Longfellow wrote about his despair in a letter to his late wife’s sister, Mary Appleton Mackintosh:

"How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, I know not. I am at least patient, if not resigned; and thank God hourly – as I have from the beginning – for the beautiful life we led together, and that I loved her more and more to the end."

Longfellow continued to reside in the house they had shared and served as both father and mother to the children. The first Christmas after Fanny’s death, he wrote, “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays.” The entry for December 25, 1862 reads: “A merry Christmas’ say the children, but that is no more for me.” The Christmas of 1863 was blank in his journal.

His troubles weren't over. Justin Taylor recounts that in March of 1863 his oldest son Charles ran off to join the Union army without his father's permission. In November he suffered a severe shoulder wound – the bullet passing within an inch of his spine.

His father traveled to Washington, D.C., to consult with doctors. Charles' survival was in doubt.

One doctor said the wound could result in paralysis. Another surgical team provided more promising news, saying the young soldier would survive but would require months of healing.

They returned to their home in Cambridge by Christmas 1863. That morning Henry listened to the bells ringing. Taylor writes:

He heard the Christmas bells that December day and the singing of 'peace on earth (Luke 2:14),' but he observed the world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.

At this moment in which the widower with six children was languishing in the midst of a terrible war and a life of grief and suffering, he found hope in those bells and penned a wonderful poem titled "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." The poem has been recited and set to music ever since.

It closes with these stanzas (You can read the whole poem here):

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

That last stanza should be bring hope to those suffering today in China, Iran, Ukraine, North Korea and everywhere that men of blackened and hate-filled souls are torturing and murdering the weak and the helpless.

Watch and listen:

Religious Nones?

In a recent study the Pew Research Center discovered something interesting about American "nones," i.e. those who claim no religious affiliation.

They found that the "nones" in the U.S. are at least as religious as Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.

This is on the face of it a startling result, although I'm not sure how much it actually tells us. One difficulty with surveys of religious beliefs is that the term "religious" lacks a clear definition.

We're pretty sure Christianity, Islam and Judaism are religions, but what about Buddhism, Daoism or Confucianism which are non-theistic? Are these latter systems religions or are they merely guides to living, like Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking?

To get around this problem Pew specifically asked respondents if they "believed in God with absolute certainty." They found that whereas only 23 percent of European Christians say they believe in God with absolute certainty, 27 percent of American nones say this!

More American nones say they believe in God with absolute certainty than do European Christians?

Of course, this raises another difficulty. What is the concept of God whose existence the respondent either rejects or accepts?

Some people think of God as simply "something out there," a "higher power," "the universe," "the totality of being," "humanity," "science" or "nature." Since different people have different concepts of God, the question whether they believe in God, without specifying what's meant by "God," is quite meaningless.

Perhaps the next time Pew poses the question they might sharpen it up a bit by asking whether the respondent believes in the existence of a personal, transcendent being who is maximally good, spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and non-contingent, and which possesses the properties of both omnipotence and omniscience.

That's the traditional concept of God in the Judeo-Christian West, and if people were asked whether they believe that that God exists the results might be considerably different and more useful.

Naturalism and Male/Female Behavior

Let us for a moment assume that naturalism, the view that nature is all there is, is correct and that humanity is the product of a long process of blind evolutionary development. If so, let's further consider the question of what men and women are for.

That is, given the assumption that we're just evolutionarily advanced mammals what "purpose" do we fulfill? Of course, I put "purpose" in quotes because on the view we're considering there actually isn't, nor can there be, any genuine purpose for humanity, but let's play along with the idea anyway.

Well, speaking purely biologically, male humans have evolved to serve two primary purposes: First, to spread their genes as far and wide as they can, and second, to fight for territory and resources. Any reading of history will confirm that these have always been, and still are, the two main drivers of male behavior.

In modern times, in what we call the civilized world, these behaviors have been sublimated somewhat by sports and other competitive endeavors, but they still underlie most of male behavior.

What about females? Speaking purely biologically - and on naturalism that's pretty much all there is - women have evolved to attract males for mating and to bear and raise the young that result.

This is, of course, a horrid claim in today's cultural climate in which any suggestion that the sexual subordination and oppression of women is natural is guaranteed to provoke howls of outrage, but it's nevertheless correct all the same. That is, it's correct if naturalism is true, and there's a piquant irony in this.

Many of those who would be most repulsed by this description of male and female roles hold to a naturalistic worldview. They reject the only metaphysical position which could undergird a greater dignity and purpose for both men and women.

They dismiss the traditional theistic view that we are created not solely by natural forces for natural ends like the perpetuation of the species, but by a God in whose image we are and who grants equal dignity to everyone.

Having rejected this view they're left with naturalism and are therefore left with the evolutionary view whose consequences they paradoxically deplore.

Moreover, on naturalism, there's no basis for charging any behavior with being immoral since there's no moral law to be violated. Thus no matter how distastefully men may behave toward women, the most we can say about that behavior is that it offends certain social conventions. We can't say that it's morally wrong.

So, if naturalism is true, men who sexually exploit women are simply following an unpleasant evolutionary imperative. Modern women may not like it, but it's hard to see what grounds they have for complaint as long as they themselves continue to adhere to the naturalistic, evolutionary paradigm.

The Pregnancy Problem

Here's a problem to which no one has ever provided a satisfactory answer, or any answer at all, apparently: Which came first, mammals, specifically humans, or mammalian pregnancy?

Throughout the development of the human fetus it's constantly interacting with the mother via chemical signals and feedback systems, but until and unless all these interactions are in place and operational a fetus could never develop and there would be no next generation.

Yet Darwinian evolution holds that biological development occurs gradually, step by step, over eons of time with neither guidance nor foresight, but how could this be if all these systems have to be in place simultaneously and fully operational in order for the fetus to be viable?

So, either there's a gradual evolutionary pathway that mammalian pregnancy followed that has so far eluded all attempts to elucidate or all of the systems between mother and child were set in place from the beginning.

Believing the latter is at least as rational as believing the former, unless one has a priori ruled it out because it would require an intelligent, purposeful engineer at the outset of life and the skeptic has concluded that no such being has ever existed.

But why conclude that? It's simply a metaphysical preference lacking any evidential warrant.

The co-author of the book Your Designed Body, engineer Steve Laufmann, addresses the pregnancy problem in this short video:

Are We Naked Apes?

It's not uncommon to hear human beings referred to as hairless apes. We look a lot like apes, after all, and according to Darwinism apes and humans have descended from a common ape-like ancestor.

Nevertheless, neuroscientist Michael Egnor isunimpressed by the morphological similarities. According to Egnor,

We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm. It is obvious and manifest in our biological nature. We are rational animals, and our rationality is all the difference.

Human beings, Egnor argues, have mental abilities or powers, that animals simply do not.

Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities and ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought and contemplation of moral law and eternity are pitifully inadequate to describe man.

Nonhuman animals such as apes have material mental powers. By material I mean powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite.

Humans also have these same material powers, of course, but they have additional powers that are immaterial:

Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts.

A universal is an abstract concept like humanity or treeness to which particular humans or trees belong. Egnor continues:

Human beings are rational animals.

Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.

Universals can be represented in matter — the words I am writing in this post are representations of concepts — but universals cannot be instantiated in matter. I cannot put the concepts themselves on a computer screen or on a piece of paper, nor can the concepts exist physically in my brain.

Concepts, which are universals, are immaterial.

Nonhuman animals operate on the purely material plane. They experience sensations like hunger and pain, but they don't contemplate abstractions like the injustice of suffering or the meaning of their lives.

It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes, Egnor argues. It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. It's a difference that creates the metaphysical chasm between humans and other animals.

Egnor concludes with this:

The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men.

Dragonflies

All of us have seen dragonflies around ponds and lakes, but there's a lot more to these fascinating creatures than perhaps we realized. They really are amazing and their anatomy and behavior is unique as the video below illustrates.

It's a bit long (18 minutes), but if nature is an interest of yours, once you start watching you'll probably want to watch the whole thing. It's certain that you'll never look at dragonflies quite the same way again, and you won't take them for granted.

One question you might keep in mind as you watch is how such amazing engineering ever could've evolved through chance genetic mutations.

Bridging the Abyss

Saturday I urged readers to consider my novel In the Absence of God (2012) as a Christmas gift for friends and family and mentioned in passing its companion novel Bridging the Abyss which came out three years later.

Bridging is, in part, the story of the search for a young girl who has disappeared off the streets of Baltimore, MD and is believed to have been abducted. Members of the girl's family as well as those involved in the search are forced to confront the tension between a secular view of life which offers no ground for thinking any act "evil" and the obvious evil of which some men are capable.

Here's an excerpt from the Prologue:

In 1948 philosopher W.T. Stace wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly, a portion of which serves as an appropriate introduction to the story which follows in these pages. Stace wrote:

"The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called "final causes" …[belief in which] was not the invention of Christianity [but] was basic to the whole of Western civilization, whether in the ancient pagan world or in Christendom, from the time of Socrates to the rise of science in the seventeenth century ….

They did this on the [basis that] inquiry into purposes is useless for what science aims at: namely, the prediction and control of events.

"…The conception of purpose in the world was ignored and frowned upon. This, though silent and almost unnoticed, was the greatest revolution in human history, far outweighing in importance any of the political revolutions whose thunder has reverberated around the world….

"The world, according to this new picture, is purposeless, senseless, meaningless. Nature is nothing but matter in motion. The motions of matter are governed, not by any purpose, but by blind forces and laws….[But] if the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless.

A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends - money, fame, art, science - and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center.

"Hence, the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless spirit of modern man….Along with the ruin of the religious vision there went the ruin of moral principles and indeed of all values….If our moral rules do not proceed from something outside us in the nature of the universe - whether we say it is God or simply the universe itself - then they must be our own inventions.

"Thus it came to be believed that moral rules must be merely an expression of our own likes and dislikes. But likes and dislikes are notoriously variable. What pleases one man, people, or culture, displeases another. Therefore, morals are wholly relative."

This book, like my earlier novel In the Absence of God, is a story of people living in the wake of the revolution of which Stace speaks. It's a portrait of a small slice of modern life, a glimpse of what it is like to live in a world in which men live consistently, albeit perhaps unwittingly, with the assumptions of modernity, chief among which is the assumption that God does not exist or is in any case no longer relevant to our lives.

A world that has marginalized the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition is a world which finds itself bereft of any non-arbitrary basis for forming moral judgments, for finding any ultimate meaning in the existence of the human species as a whole or the life of the individual in particular, and for hope that the human yearning for justice could ever be satisfied.

Modern man dispenses with God and believes that life can go on as before - or even better than before - but this is a conceit which the sanguinary history of the 19th and 20th century confutes. A world that has abandoned God has abandoned the fountain of goodness, beauty and truth as well as the only possible ground for human rights and belief in the dignity of the individual.

Modernity has in some ways of course been a blessing, but it has also been a curse. History will ultimately decide whether the blessings have outweighed the curse. Meanwhile, Bridging the Abyss offers an account of what I believe to be the only way out of the morass into which widespread acceptance of the assumptions of modernity has led us.

If you'd like to read more about either novel click on the link at the top of this page, and if you're looking for a gift for someone who likes to read and who thinks like W.T. Stace, both Absence and Bridging might be just the thing. I hope you'll give them a look.

They're available at Hearts and Minds Bookstore, a great little family-owned bookshop, and in both paperback and e-book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

A Modest Christmas Gift Suggestion

Is there someone on your Christmas shopping list you think might enjoy reading a novel which blends philosophy, religion, and a crime story all together on a college campus during football season? If so, you might consider giving them a copy of my book In the Absence of God.

I know the foregoing sounds like a shameless plug, but Absence encapsulates a recurring theme throughout our seventeen years here at Viewpoint. It's a fictionalized argument for the proposition that naturalism affords little or no basis for either moral obligation or ultimate meaning and renders a host of other human needs and yearnings absurd.

Naturalism, to put it succinctly, is an existential dead-end, for unless there is a God, or something very much like God, then life really is, as Shakespeare described it, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In the Absence of God is set on a mid-sized university campus in New England at the beginning of the fall semester sometime in the early years of the last decade.

The main plot line involves a professor named Joseph Weyland who's forced by the events swirling around him, as well as the challenge presented by a young nihilist in one of his classes, to come to grips with the implications of his materialistic worldview. As he wrestles with the issues his materialism raises he's engaged in an ongoing series of dialogues with a colleague and friend named Malcolm Peterson, and also with the pastor of his father's church, Loren Holt.

Meanwhile, the campus has been terrorized by an apparent serial rapist, and several young student-athletes find themselves thrust into the role of both victim and pursuer of the individual perpetrating these crimes.

Over the course of three weeks in late August and early September the lives of these students become intertwined with those of Weyland and Peterson in ways none of them could have foreseen when the semester opened.

In the Forward to the book I write this:

This is not a book about football, though it may at first seem to be. Neither is it a crime novel, though it ends that way. Nor is it just a book about people sitting around talking, although I'm sure some readers will think so.

In the Absence of God is a novel about ideas concerning the things that matter most in life. It's a tale of three different worldviews, three different ways of seeing the world and of living our lives in it. It's the story of how for a few short weeks in September these three views come into conflict on a college campus in New England and how that clash of ideas forces people on campus to think seriously about the implications of their deepest convictions.

It's often said that ideas have consequences, and nowhere is this more true than in one's personal philosophy of life - one's beliefs about God.

It's my hope that in reading this book you'll be stretched to think about things you perhaps hadn't thought about before, or that you'll at least think about your own beliefs in new and different ways. I hope that whatever your convictions about the matters taken up in this book may be, by the time you close its covers you'll agree that those convictions matter, and matter more profoundly than any other opinions you hold.

< /br> You can read more about In the Absence of God by following the link at the top of this page. It's available at my favorite bookstore, Hearts and Minds, and also at Amazon (paperback and kindle), where reviewers have given it 4.5 stars, and at Barnes and Noble (paperback and nook).

I hope you'll consider putting it and/or it's companion novel Bridging the Abyss (about which more on Monday) on your Christmas shopping list.

The Pilgrims' Voyage

Every year since 1961 the Wall Street Journal has been running an account of the departure of the Pilgrims from Holland for the New World where they believed they could be free to worship without being threatened by an oppressive state church.

The recorder was a man named Nathaniel Morton, and he introduces his history with these words:

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:

What follows is Morton's recollection of the Pilgrims' departure:

So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.

When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them.

One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love.

The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other’s heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears.

But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with the most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessing; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.

They originally departed in two ships but one leaked badly and they had to turn back to England.

The leaking ship was found to be unseaworthy so some of the pilgrims abandoned the idea of trekking the ocean and returned to Holland. The rest, plus some others who wanted to accompany the pilgrims, boarded the one remaining ship, the Mayflower, and finally set sail six weeks after leaving Leyden.

One hundred and two men, women and children plus 30 crew made the voyage. They originally intended to land in northern Virginia and make their way to the Hudson river valley, but landed first near Provincetown on Cape Cod and later moved inland to establish their colony.

Morton goes on to write about what the company found upon their arrival in the New World:

Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.

Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.

If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.

These were doughty men and women. It's hard to imagine what must have gone through their minds when they faced the prospect of winter in a land where they had to start a civilization almost from scratch.

The hardships they endured seem almost unimaginable to those of us accustomed to the comforts of modern life, comforts which we take for granted and for which we should be thankful to God.

Gratitude

The Thanksgiving holiday which Americans observe today is a beautiful celebration, not least because it reminds us of the importance of gratitude in our lives - gratitude to family, friends, neighbors, and God.

It's been said that gratitude is the most fragrant of the virtues and ingratitude one of the ugliest of character defects, and that certainly seems true.

Those who are grateful for what others have done for them have about them a sweetness and loveliness not exuded by any other personality trait, while those who take all their blessings for granted, or think of them as things to which they're entitled, or who are otherwise unappreciative for what others have done for them, project a self-centeredness or ignorance that's thoroughly unpleasant to be around.

Anyway, here are a few quotes for your contemplation that reinforce the significance of gratitude:

• “Entitlement is such a cancer because it is void of gratitude.” — Adam Smith
• “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” — Cicero
• "It's not happiness that brings us gratitude, it's gratitude that brings us happiness." - Anonymous
• “Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.” — Randy Rausch
• “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” — William Arthur Ward
• “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” — Aesop
• “The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.” — Mary Davis
• “When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.” — Elie Wiesel
• “Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.” — Ralph Marston
• “In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I hope that for all our readers (including even those outside the U.S. who don't celebrate the holiday) today will be a day filled with gratitude, love and joy.

Thanksgiving Proclamation

Ever since the presidency of George Washington Americans had been celebrating days of thanksgiving, but they had been declared mostly by the states for the states. However, on September 28th, 1863 a 74 year-old magazine editor named Sarah Hale wrote to President Abraham Lincoln urging him to declare a nation-wide observance.

During his administration President Lincoln had issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861 he had ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. Hale, though, wanted him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival," an observance for which she had campaigned in her magazine, Godey's Lady's Book, for 15 years.

She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation only to become permanently an American custom and institution."

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states.

President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether.

According to an April 1, 1864 letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, the actual proclamation was written for President Lincoln by Secretary of State William Seward. A year later the manuscript, in Seward's hand, was sold to raise money to benefit Union troops.

Here's Lincoln's proclamation:

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.

Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.

They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

In some respects the proclamation reads quite as if it could have been written today.

I hope we all give thanks tomorrow for our many blessings, remembering especially, as we express our gratitude to God and to each other, those who suffer and grieve.

Have a wonderful and meaningful Thanksgiving day!

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Physicist and writer Brian Greene does a fine job of explaining the concept of the multiverse in a column at The Daily Beast which appeared some years ago.

In the piece he quotes the late Carl Sagan reminding us that in science extraordinary claims must be supported by extraordinary evidence and then tacitly acknowledges that there's not much evidence for the multiverse theory, so we're left to wonder why it has enjoyed so much popularity among some cosmologists.

Perhaps one reason is that our universe is comprised of forces and constants whose values are calibrated with unimaginably exact mathematical precision.

If any of dozens of forces, like gravity, for instance, deviated in their strength from the tiniest amounts - one part in 10^60 in the case of gravity - the universe could not exist, or if it did it would not be the sort of place where living things could emerge.

It's mind-bendingly improbable that such precision would have emerged by sheer chance and there are thus only two viable explanations for it. Either the universe is the product of an intelligent engineering process or there are so many different universes, an infinite number, that one like ours would have to exist as a consequence of sheer probability.

Just as the probability of a blindfolded rifleman hitting a postage stamp half a mile away is increased as the number of bullets fired increases, so, too, the chance of a universe as improbable as ours increases as the number of different universes that exist increases toward infinity.

It seems odd that scientists would posit an explanation which requires the existence of so many entities for which there's so little evidence, but consider that the only viable alternative is that the universe is the creation of an intentional agent, a God, and it's easier to understand why they do so.

It is, at least for some of them, an act of metaphysical desperation.

As physicist Bernard Carr once put it, "If you don't want God you better have a multiverse." They're the only two live options.

Anyway, it would be good to read Greene's article. It's written by a physicist who's sympathetic to the multiverse theory, and, like much of his work, it's very lucid and accessible to the layman.

Swinburne's Argument for the Soul

Richard Swinburne is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Oxford University and one the most prominent of contemporary philosophers. In his recent book, Are We Bodies Or Souls? he takes up Descartes' argument for the existence of the soul and amends it slightly to remove one of the classical objections philosophers have made to it.

The result is a succinct argument for the existence of the soul in human persons. His argument goes like this:

1. I am a substance which is thinking.
2. It is conceivable (i.e. logically possible) that while I am thinking my body is destroyed.
3. It is not conceivable (i.e. not logically possible) that 'I am thinking and I do not exist.'
4. I am therefore a substance which, it is conceivable, can continue to exist while my body is destroyed.
5. It is not conceivable (i.e. not logically possible) that a substance can lose all its parts simultaneously and yet continue to exist.
6. Therefore, I am a soul, a substance, whose only essential property is the capacity for thought.

How does the conclusion follow from the rest of the argument? According to 4. it's logically possible that I exist when my body ceases to exist, but according to 5. it's logically impossible that anything can continue to exist when every part of it is destroyed.

Therefore, there must be more to my existence than just the existence of my body. There must be something about me that can continue to exist when every part of my body is destroyed.

That other part of me must be, from 1. and 2., that part of me which thinks, i.e. a soul (or mind), and which I identify as myself.

Swinburne gives a cogent defense of this argument in the book, which, though he claims it to be written for a broad audience, would be rather hard going for someone with little background in philosophy.

Nevertheless, in an age in which the reigning view on these matters is a philosophical materialism which denies the existence of a soul or mind, Swinburne's book is refreshing.