Let it Rest

Even Richard Cohen, the solidly left columnist at the Washington Post thinks the brouhaha over who outed Valerie Plame is a tempest of Lilliputian proportions. Cohen actually calls for the District Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, to just call the whole thing off:

The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals. As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly haul this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the first place but that now, as is often the case, might have metastasized into some sort of coverup -- but, again, of nothing much. Go home, Pat.

The alleged crime involves the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose husband, Joseph Wilson IV, had gone to Africa at the behest of the agency and therefore said he knew that the Bush administration -- no, actually, the president himself -- had later misstated (in the State of the Union address, yet) the case that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.

Wilson made his case in a New York Times op-ed piece. This rocked the administration, which was already fighting to retain its credibility in the face of mounting and irrefutable evidence that the case it had made for war in Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, above all -- was a fiction. So it set out to impeach Wilson's credibility, purportedly answering the important question of who had sent him to Africa in the first place: his wife. This was a clear case of nepotism, the leakers just as clearly implied.

Not nice, but it was what Washington does day in and day out. (For some historical perspective see George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck'' about Edward R. Murrow and that most odious of leakers-cum-character assassins, Joseph McCarthy.) This is rarely considered a crime. In the Plame case, it might technically be one, but it was not the intent of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once) but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet.

Now we are told by various journalistic sources that Fitzgerald might not indict anyone for the illegal act he was authorized to investigate, but some other one -- maybe one concerning the disclosure of secret material. Here again, though, this is a daily occurrence in Washington, where most secrets have the shelf life of sashimi. Then, too, other journalists say that Fitzgerald might bring conspiracy charges, an attempt (or so it seems) to bring charges of some sort. This is what special prosecutors do and why they should always be avoided. (The one impaneled in 1995 to investigate then-HUD Secretary Henry G. Cisneros for lying about how much he was paying his mistress is still in operation, although the mistress most certainly is not.)

I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do. My own diligent efforts to find out anything have come to naught. Fitzgerald's non-speaking spokesman would not even tell me if his boss is authorized to issue a report, as several members of Congress are now demanding -- although Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, tells me that only a possibly unprecedented court order would permit it. Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or, after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us, among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free press that I and others believe she is or whether, as some lefty critics hiss, she's a double-dealing grandstander, in the manner of some of her accusers.

More is at stake here than bringing down Karl Rove or some other White House apparatchik, or even settling some score with Miller, who is sometimes accused of taking this nation to war in Iraq all by herself. The greater issue is control of information. If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good people when the administration -- any administration -- is in sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are afraid to speak up. This -- this creepy silence -- will be the consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of truth, fame and choice restaurant tables. Apres Miller comes moi.

This is why I want Fitzgerald to leave now. Do not bring trivial charges -- nothing about conspiracies, please -- and nothing about official secrets, most of which are known to hairdressers, mistresses and dog walkers all over town. Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, there's so much crime in Washington already. Don't commit another.

Needless to say, the rest of the left is seriously miffed by Cohen's apostacy, but then they're so filled with hatred for Bush they'd crawl a mile over broken glass to get a high ranking Republican indicted. Whether the indictment has merit or not doesn't matter. They're not interested in justice, they're interested in destroying political enemies, and every effort must be made, in their view, to bring about that noble end.

The Miracle of the Cell

Bill Dembski directs us to this 38 minute video which uses computer simulation to illustrate some of the reasons why most people, other than the true believers, are skeptical of the putative powers of blind nature to produce living things.

The resolution is a little fuzzy, but it's worth a look.

Ill-Starred Nomination

John Fund tells us how the Miers nomination came about. The core of his column is these paragraphs:

Regardless of whether or not the vetting process was complete, it presented impossible conflicts of interest. Consider the position that Mr. Bush and Mr. Card put Mr. Kelley in. He would be a leading candidate to become White House counsel if Ms. Miers was promoted. He had an interest in not going against his earlier recommendation of her for the Supreme Court, or in angering President Bush, Ms. Miers's close friend. As journalist Jonathan Larsen has pointed out he also might not have wanted to "bring to light negative information that could torpedo her nomination, keeping her in the very job where she would be best positioned to punish Kelley were she to discover his role in vetting her."

Mr. Lubet, [a Northwestern professor], says "all the built-in incentives" of the vetting process were perverse. "In business you make an effort to have disinterested directors who know all the material facts to resolve conflicts of interest," he told me. "In the Miers pick, the White House was sowing its own minefield."

"It was a disaster waiting to happen," says G. Calvin Mackenzie, a professor at Colby College in Maine who specializes in presidential appointments. "You are evaluating a close friend of the president, under pressure to keep it secret even internally and thus limiting the outside advice you get."

Indeed, even internal advice was shunned. Mr. Card is said to have shouted down objections to Ms. Miers at staff meetings. A senator attending the White House swearing-in of John Roberts four days before the Miers selection was announced was struck by how depressed White House staffers were during discussion of the next nominee. He says their reaction to him could have been characterized as, "Oh brother, you have no idea what's coming."

A last minute effort was made to block the choice of Ms. Miers, including the offices of Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It fell on deaf ears. First Lady Laura Bush, who went to Southern Methodist University at the same time as Ms. Miers, weighed in. On Sunday night, the president dined with Ms. Miers and the first lady to celebrate the nomination of what one presidential aide inartfully praised to me as that of "a female trailblazer who will walk in the footsteps of President Bush."

The conservative displeasure with the Harriet Miers selection shows no signs of abating. No one expects George Bush to pull her nomination, but there's a lot of money being wagered that she'll withdraw of her own volition. It's hard enough to face the judiciary committee when half of the Senators are in your corner, but it'll be an especially difficult ordeal for Harriet Miers because the best she can hope for is that a couple of Senators on an otherwise hostile panel might be lukewarm.

Heads Up

As the above announcement indicates, Viewpoint is going to be down for some server maintenance this weekend. Bill has discovered the reason our blog has been intermittently unavailable over the last month or so, and he's going to be correcting the problem tomorrow. We expect to be down starting Friday afternoon for an indefinite period. We may be back by Friday night or maybe not until Sunday. Check back with us when you get the chance.

I wish to take the opportunity of this post to thank all of our readers for your interest in what we're doing. It's gratifying to know that people are reading us and finding us worth their time. If you come across one of our posts that warrants it, please link us to your friends.

ID Critics Self-Destruct

One of the chief opponents of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools nevertheless encourages teachers to teach religion in science lessons in elementary schools. Steve Peterman at Telic Thoughts reports that:

In one fell swoop Eugenie Scott destroyed so many arguments of ID critics it is hard to believe it. The so called Wedge complaint. The complaint that IDists are trying to smuggle religion into high school science classrooms. The argument that ID=religion under the guise of science. The adamant assertion by ID critics that religion does not belong in science. That science is detached from metaphysical assertions and ideology. All gone in one fell swoop!

Eugenie Scott is the president of the National Council on Science Education and has frequently written against teaching ID in public schools because because ID is religion and religion doesn't belong in science classes, especially in classes of young students. Yet in the article linked above she endorses doing precisely what she wants to prohibit others from doing. Indeed, she recommends that teachers use religion to teach evolution to elementary students.

It's too bad that some newspaper reporter doesn't ask her to explain herself, but it's not likely that any of them will.

Idiots and Ignoramuses

A Stephen Gordon of Utah submits a letter to the 11/2005 Discover magazine:

"I am sick of scientists tiptoeing around the topic of religion. Scientists need to make it clear that if you believe in God you are most likely an idiot or at best uneducated....To treat beliefs as if they mean anything merely elevates them to equal status with science....it is pathetic when an adult thinks demons, angels, Satan, and God are real."

Well. Let's trot out a roster of those uneducated idiots: Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Kant, Locke, Dostoyevsky, Galileo, Newton, Brahe, Boyle, Aggassiz, Faraday - we could go on, but you get the point. Perhaps Mr. Gordon would scoff and say that these are all pre-twentieth century thinkers, and that it was easier to believe back in their day than it is in ours. We might ask him, if we dare, why that is so. What do we know today that makes belief in God impossible for any but an idiot or an ignoramus? We should not hold our breath waiting for an answer to that one.

In any event, it doesn't matter whether or not Mr. Gordon has an answer for us since the basic assumption that only the mentally defective or uneducated can believe in God in the modern era is quite at variance with the facts. Let's take a look at just a few of those whose intellects are of the first rank and who also believe that God exists (and may even believe some of those other things Mr. Gordon contemptuously dismisses as well): Pope John Paul, George Marsden, Mark Noll, William Lane Craig, Karl Barth, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, William Dembski, Os Guiness, Richard Swinburne, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, J.R.R. Tolkein, Carl Henry, William Buckley, John Stott, Reinhold Neibhur, Alistair MacIntyre, Antonin Scalia, Richard Neuhaus, John Polkinghorne et multi, multi plus.

Among the scientists so esteemed by Mr. Gordon, as many of them believe today as believed a century ago, and the number of believing scientists is about the same as the number of their skeptical colleagues (see here, for instance).

Mr. Gordon may not be familiar with these names, but then one probably needs a modicum of education to be acquainted with them. Perhaps Mr. Gordon is indeed conversant with many of them but thinks them mere pygmies in comparison with his own intellectual gifts, and they may be. It's hard to say because, although I've heard of these Christian intellectuals and read their work, Mr. Gordon has till now escaped my notice, doubtless to my detriment. Consequently, I'm unaware of his scholarly credentials which must surely be impressive.

He'd Do it Differently

Former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday he had no intention of ever running for president again, but he said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won the 2000 election.

Of the truth of this statement we have no doubt. One difference almost surely would be that under a President Gore we'd still be haggling with the U.N. to bring pressure to bear on Mullah Omar of the Afghan Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden to the International Criminal Court.

Creationism, Evolution, and ID

The Detroit Free Press runs an excellent column by Brian Fahling which persuasively makes the case that Intelligent Design and Creationism are philosophically disparate paradigms and that Darwinian evolution is much more like Creationism than is Intelligent Design. This claim may surprise some, but Fahling provides a cogent explanation as to why it is so.

This article should be required reading for anyone who insists on using the disingenuous construction, "intelligent design creationism." The two frameworks share very little in common. Indeed, the essay should be required reading for anyone who sides with the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case underway in Harrisburg, PA.

The heart of Fahling's argument is this:

Creationism is an a priori argument drawn from a particular interpretation of the Genesis account of creation. In the context of a public classroom, that means the God of the Bible is the starting point and assumed ground of life's origin and the origin of the cosmos. Drawing from a literal reading of Genesis, creationists postulate a "young Earth" and six 24-hour days of creation. All empirical data are subject to and analyzed within this interpretive grid.

Intelligent design, however, is an a posteriori argument; it is the inference drawn from examination of complex structures in living organisms and the universe.

As a matter of science, intelligent design theory is much more disciplined and modest in its claims than either the theory of evolution or creationism. Intelligent design theory merely infers, but does not attempt to identify a designer. Unlike creationism and the theory of evolution, intelligent design theory does not make dogmatic religious or philosophic claims about the origin of life.

Creationism and the theory of evolution, unlike intelligent design theory, are insular in their approach to science. Creationists reason downward from an article of religious faith and conduct their science within that paradigm. Evolutionists, too, reason downward from an article of faith and conduct their science with the same dogmatic zeal and selectiveness of their creationist counterparts.

Like creationism, the theory of evolution is an a priori argument drawn from the evolutionist's article of faith which holds that the origin of life and the cosmos can only be explained by undirected natural processes. This is a metaphysical claim, not scientific fact. Still, it is not in dispute that one may infer an evolutionary process from the data, but that is not what the evolutionist does.

Good science requires an open mind. There is more than a little irony, then, in the evolutionists' attempt to paint intelligent design theory with the creationist brush when it is the evolutionists who have the most in common with the creationists.

The only flaw in Fahling's piece is when he writes this:

Creationism requires a student to first affirm the creed that God created the heavens and the Earth, and the theory of evolution requires that a student affirm the creed that there is no God. Both are exclusive claims, neither is scientific, neither can be empirically verified.

Everything Fahling says here is true except that evolution does not require what Fahling claims that it does. One can be an evolutionist and still believe God exists. Ken Miller of Brown University is a very prolific writer on behalf of evolution and is a practicing Catholic. Michael Behe is also a Catholic, and he believes that God somehow pre-programmed evolution to produce the forms, processes and structures of living things.

It is the case, however, that Darwinian evolution requires an a priori commitment to the principle that whatever God's status may be he was not involved in the development and radiation of living things. This is, in fact, a religious a priori commitment, of course, so Fahling's larger point is still valid that Creationism and Darwinian evolution are more religiously and philosophically like each other than either is like Intelligent Design.

Fahling adds that:

Intelligent design theory, on the other hand, does not require that any creed about the origin of life and the cosmos be affirmed. It merely points to the evidence and suggests that the best explanation (though not the only explanation) for the design found in nature and the cosmos is a designer, whoever or whatever that may be.

In this respect ID is philosophically unlike either of the other two paradigms and, most importantly, is more scientific than either of the other two. We wonder if this fact will be emphasized in the Dover trial.

The Case For Confirming

Paul Mirengoff at the Weekly Standard makes the case for confirming Harriet Miers:

Two questions control the confirmation issue: Is Miers qualified and should she be rejected on ideological grounds? At this juncture, neither question strikes me as very close. Miers has achieved just about everything a lawyer can accomplish--head of a substantial law firm, head of the state bar association, and top legal adviser to the president. She also has a background in local politics. Only by insisting that a Supreme Court nominee possess either judicial experience or a portfolio of scholarly writings can one pronounce Miers unqualified. But this has never been the standard, and it's not clear why (ideological considerations aside) Republicans should invent a new standard with which to deal a blow to a Republican president.

On the merits, moreover, judicial experience or legal scholarship should not be a requirement for the Supreme Court Justice position. This background may well be highly desirable, and not just for purposes of intelligence gathering about a nominee. Yet some knowledgeable commentators think it's highly desirable for some justices to possess a more practical, less rarified background. Reasonable minds can differ, which suggests that the president should have the option of appointing outstanding lawyers with no judicial or scholarly experience.

The argument that conservatives should reject Miers because she doesn't seem to be the right kind of conservative, and may not be a conservative at all, seems problematic as well. For the past four years, conservatives have argued that ideology does not constitute a proper basis for voting against a president's qualified nominees. We have deplored Democrats who voted against qualified mainstream conservatives. We would have become apoplectic had Sen. Arlen Specter not supported a conservative nominated by his party's president. On what principled basis, then, can conservatives now vote down a nominee who is either a moderate or, more likely, some sort of a conservative? Miers plainly is not "outside the mainstream."

In the case of Harriet Miers, ... we are talking about someone who might be another O'Connor but is just as likely to vote with Scalia in the vast majority of big cases. In this situation, it seems imprudent to blow up the confirmation process---and possibly the Bush presidency and the Republican party--to block her nomination. Thus, conservative senators should be prepared, barring new and damning information, to vote in favor of Miers. The rest of us should be prepared to hold our breath until we start seeing what she writes.

We agree. If Miers turns out to align consistently with Scalia and Thomas on the big cases then whether she's the finest constitutional scholar available becomes less important. After all, Republican presidents have given us a lot of highly intellectual justices who waltzed to the left once they were seated on the Court. Earl Warren, Harry Blackmun, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter come to mind. Given a choice between a fine legal scholar and a reliably conservative (i.e. originalist) vote we'll happily take the latter.

Sadly, though, we could have had both.

Putting Earle on Defense

Tom DeLay's lawyer, acting on the adage that the best defense is a good offense, has subpoened Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle's records. Mr. Earle, like most bullies, is unaccustomed to having his victims fight back. Even so, DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, believes there has been a serious breach of professional ethics on the part of Mr. Earle and intends to demonstrate prosecutorial misconduct. This is shaping up to be a real donneybrook.

The lawyers at PowerLine have some good background on this story.

No Booty Shaking Allowed

In a fine article at Evangelical Outpost Joe Carter cites the Texas cheerleader "booty shaking" legislation to make the point that conservatism isn't really so much about small government as it is about healing sick societies. The heart of his post is this passage:

I believe this example provides an opportunity to clarify a misunderstanding about conservatives and our attitude toward legislating issues of morality and "taste." While resolving disputes over the locus of autonomy, responsibility, and sphere sovereignty of institutions is essential, conservatism isn't, as is commonly misperceived, about "small government."

When it comes to government, conservatives are admittedly somewhat clueless. Unlike libertarians, liberals, socialists, Marxists, and other advocates of utopian political philosophies, conservatism has no idea how to build a healthy social and political structure. We do know, however, how to recognize a sick one. Just as physicians define bodily health as the absence of sickness, conservatives view the absence of sickness as the primary gauge of the health of the body politic. Our political objective, therefore, is similar to that of medical doctors -- eliminating sickness.

The late media critic and educator Neil Postman used this same medical analogy in describing the proper role of teachers. In his essay "The Educationist as Painkiller", Postman proposes that educators don't try to make students intelligent, because we don't know how to do that, but instead try to cure stupidity in "some of the more obvious forms, such as either-or thinking; overgeneralization; inability to distinguish between facts and inferences; and reification, a disturbingly prevalent tendency to confuse words with things."

"Stupidity is a form of behavior," adds Postman, "It is not something we have; it is something we do." The presence of stupidity can therefore be reduced by changing behavior. As a guiding political philosophy, conservatism plays a similar role in society as Postman's paradigmatic teacher. Conservatives, in essence, prescribe procedures for avoiding moral stupidity.

His analysis of what it is conservatives seek to accomplish is interesting. It's true that, as a general rule, bloated governments are symptomatic of a sick society. Consider for example the great harm done to the poor in this country by addicting them to the vast welfare state that subsidized and perpetuated all manner of social dysfunction from the sixties to the nineties. It doesn't follow, however, that there should never be instances, e.g. disaster relief, conservation of historical sites or biologically significant lands, or homeland security, when government takes on a larger role in society. Nevertheless, it requires great care and discernment to assess where and in which way government should be granted power to grow and act, and the way is fraught with many perils.

Carter suggests that it may perhaps be counterproductive for conservatives to argue adamantly that government should be kept as small and unintrusive as it can be, consistent with its role in national defense. After all, conservatives want the government to be intrusive when it's a matter of regulating pornography or sleazy television programming. By what principle do we call on government to protect us from the assaults of the concupiscent juveniles who write television scripts but insist that government stay out of other areas of our lives?

So the question, especially in light of President Bush's exercise of "compassionate conservatism" and his indulgence of deficit spending, is whether conservatives should rethink their traditional view of government. Mr. Bush has certainly given us occasion to begin that reassessment.

The fear that people like me have in saying all this, though, is that once we allow our ideological tether to slacken we risk losing the security and consistency afforded by a well-anchored set of guiding principles. Even worse, we risk, heaven forbid, becoming moderates.

"Sexist" Conservatives

Laura Bush is a lovely woman, but she's not helping to soothe the rift between her husband and his staunchest supporters over the last few years by accusing those supporters of being sexist because of their opposition to Harriet Miers' candidacy for the Supreme Court:

First lady Laura Bush joined her husband in defending his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday and said it was possible some critics were being sexist in their opposition to Harriet Miers.

"That's possible, I think that's possible," Mrs. Bush said when asked on NBC's "Today Show" whether criticism that Miers lacked intellectual heft were sexist in nature. She said Miers' accomplishments as a lawyer made her a role model to young women.

Mrs. Bush's statement was thoughtless. The critics of the Miers nomination are not opposed to having a woman on the court and indeed would love to see Priscilla Owen, Janice Brown, Edith Jones, or Alice Batchelder nominated. Their objection to Miers is rooted in the fact that she's an unknown at a time when there are at least a dozen exceptional candidates whose judicial philosophy and acumen have been demonstrated for all to see. The president has asked us to trust him, and conservatives want to do so, but they also want the best qualified people appointed to the court that Mr. Bush can find, and the White House has given us no reason to think that Ms Miers belongs on that list.

Unlike his conservative critics, perhaps, the president is not overly impressed by scholarly credentials. That is not to say that these are not important to him, but rather to say that they're not of primary importance. He's a man who places more weight on an individual's personal character and virtues and believes that Ms Miers' possession of such assests more than compensates for any shortage of judicial experience or expertise she might suffer. Unfortunately, assessments of character don't lend themselves to quantification and they strike many as vague and subjective, so the administration is unable to mount a compelling rationale for its selection. That's why Bush has to ask that we simply trust him.

The critics respond by noting that there are plenty of candidates out there from which the president could have chosen who have both character and an impressive paper trail, and they are dismayed that he declined to pick from that group. Nor are they shy about giving voice to their disappointment. Unlike the critics, though, we think it to no good purpose to be too critical of the president's nominee until the hearings.

If she's impressive the criticism will appear foolish, if she's a dud then there will be time to call for her defeat on the Senate floor - although defeating her will surely be an uphill battle. If she ultimately turns out to be David Souter in heels then conservatives may justly join with liberals in decrying George Bush's historical legacy and the magnificent opportunity he squandered despite his campaign assurances to the contrary.

See Captain's Quarters for some thoughtful analysis of Mrs. Bush's comments and the Miers nomination.

Niggardly Americans

According to an article in the Independent Online Pakistanis criticize the U.S. and Britain for a niggardly response to the disaster created by the recent earthquake:

Western governments rushed to step up their pledges for the earthquake relief effort after their initial response to the disaster was condemned as slow-moving and financially inadequate.

The United States, which was under pressure to increase a pledge of $500,000 (�280,000) considered almost derisory by many Pakistanis when it was made over the weekend, announced it intended to give $50m in emergency aid.

The gesture, intended to make up for the resentment caused by an initial pledge which, along with the British offering of �100,000, was labelled as "peanuts" by Qazi Hussain, the leader of the Pakistani opposition party Jamat Islami, was greeted as a major boost to the struggling relief effort.

This just shows what ingrates Americans are. After Pakistan rushed so much aid to our Gulf coast in the wake of Katrina you would think we'd be more forthcoming. Just because Pakistan looks the other way as hatred of America and Americans is offered up as regular fare in madrassas and mosques is no reason why we shouldn't have had relief supplies on the way even before the earthquake hit.

We should do what we can, of course, but it certainly diminshes one's desire to sacrifice for another when the other demands that you do it and then criticizes you for not doing it on his time schedule and not giving right away what he thinks you ought to give. We're tempted to say to such as Mr. Hussain that maybe he should just hit up his fellow Muslims for the relief his countrymen need. They're much more generous than Americans, and we're sure that they'll flood the country with all the help Mr. Hussain could ask for.

Why ID Will Win

Douglas Kern has an article at Tech Central Station titled Why Intelligent Design is Going to Win. He writes:

It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. It's happening right now, actually.

He then goes on to posit five claims in support of his thesis:

1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.

2) ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.

3) ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.

4) ID will win because it can piggyback on the growth of information theory, which will attract the best minds in the world over the next fifty years.

5) ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.

The text of the article gives supporting arguments for each of the above five assertions. It's pretty interesting.

We'd like to suggest a sixth reason: ID will win because it's obvious to everyone who isn't blinded by a materialist bias that life is such an unlikely phenomenon in any universe even minutely different from our own that the sense that our world is quite probably the product of purposeful intent is overwhelming.

Once it seeps into the public consciousness and discourse that the universe is the result of intentional engineering rather than blind, purposeless forces the correlative idea that the obvious design in the biosphere is also a consequence of intelligent agency will become much more easily accepted.

Indeed, when the public becomes aware that Intelligent Design is a kind of philosophical Grand Unifying Theory, uniting the earth, space, and biological sciences under the teleological umbrella, it will gain a purchase on the public imagination that will could make it virtually irresistable.

The Worldwide Caliphate

The Washington Post describes a recently intercepted letter from Ayman Zawahiri, Bin Laden's deputy, to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the brutal leader of al Qaida in Iraq:

The letter of instructions and requests outlines a four-stage plan, according to officials: First, expel American forces from Iraq. Second, establish a caliphate over as much of Iraq as possible. Third, extend the jihad to neighboring countries, with specific reference to Egypt and the Levant -- a term that describes Syria and Lebanon. And finally, war against Israel.

U.S. officials say they were struck by the letter's emphasis on the centrality of Iraq to al Qaeda's long-term mission. One of the two excerpts provided by officials quotes Zawahiri, a former doctor from Egypt, telling his Jordanian-born ally, "I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era."

But bin Laden's deputy also purportedly makes clear that the war would not end with an American withdrawal and that anything other than religious rule in Iraq would be dangerous.

"And it is that the Mujaheddin must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal. We will return to having the secularists and traitors holding sway over us," the letter reportedly says.

Bin Laden's deputy has spoken before about the broad plans for the al Qaeda movement. In a book smuggled out of Afghanistan in December 2001, Zawahiri said the goal of jihad is to establish a religious state throughout the Islamic world and "reinstate its fallen caliphate and regain its lost glory."

The report elicits a couple of thoughts: First, it vindicates the war, if not the means by which the war has been fought. The Islamists see Iraq as central to their efforts to establish Islamic rule throughout the world.

Second, the Sheehanites who are calling for an immediate pullout are extremely irresponsible, or worse. All withdrawal would accomplish would be to widen the theater of operations for the Islamists and every government in the Middle East which did not bend to their will would quickly fall. Once the U.S. no longer forces the Islamists to concentrate their energies in Iraq, the scourge of Islamo-fascism will spread across the region and eventually across the world.

Their jihad is not about poverty or oppression, it's about religion and it's about hatred for every person or nation which resists the goal of a world-wide caliphate. They are fanatical and will not be appeased by U.N. resolutions or economic bribes. They will not rest until every Israeli is dead and Talibanic governments prevail throughout the ancient Islamic world from Indonesia to Spain and the rest of the globe lives in servile dhimmitude.

We have to win in Iraq. Unless we choose unilaterally to quit the fight, the GWOT is not going to have a quick, clean denouement. The conflict will probably endure throughout much of our children's lifetimes. This is unpleasant to contemplate, but the only realistic alternative is surrender and the knife sawing at our children's and grandchildren's throats.

Dysfunctional Police Force

Michelle Malkin has the necessary links to get up to speed on the travesty that is the New Orleans police force. First, many officers were AWOL in the runup and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, then others were apparently involved in looting businesses and homes, then the police superintendent suddenly up and quit, and now there is a taped beating of a 64 year old inebriate which appears completely unwarranted.

If the mayor of this city were a white Republican the media would be screaming at the top of its lungs for his resignation. As it is, New Orleans' Mayor Nagin seems to own one of those courtesy cards that entitles the bearer to special privileges, including immunity from liberal media criticism.

Eenie, Meenie

In an article alluded to an earlier post (Beneath Even Debating?) the TimesOnline specifies those claims of the Bible which the Catholic bishops of England have decided are untrue and those which are true. It's a very interesting list, raising the question of what criteria the bishops' decisions were based upon.

Here's the list:

UNTRUE:

Genesis ii, 21-22: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Genesis iii, 16: God said to the woman [after she was beguiled by the serpent]: "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

Matthew xxvii, 25: The words of the crowd: "His blood be on us and on our children."

Revelation xix,20: And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had worked the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone."

TRUE:

Exodus iii, 14: God reveals himself to Moses as: "I am who I am."

Leviticus xxvi,12: "I will be your God, and you shall be my people."

Exodus xx,1-17: The Ten Commandments

Matthew v,7: The Sermon on the Mount

Mark viii,29: Peter declares Jesus to be the Christ

Luke i: The Virgin Birth

John xx,28: Proof of bodily resurrection

We wonder how the bishops decided that the Genesis passages which were adjudged untrue were, in fact, not true. It would also be worth knowing what the bishops mean when they say that the passage is not true. Do they mean that it is not true in any sense or do they simply mean that it's not literally true? The column seems to suggest the latter, but it's not clear.

The passage from Matthew seems to offend simply because it has been used to rationalize anti-semitism which the bishops apparently think is reason enough to declare it false. If so, they're resorting to emotional rather than scholarly reasons for making their judgment. The Revelation passage is apparently deemed false because it seems too fantastic, but then why do the Virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Christ pass the test?

Perhaps the sages of the Church had good reasons for their choices, but they seem to have decided on the basis of their own sense of credulity, almost as though they were playing a game of theological eenie, meenie. We hope not.

Beneath Even Debating?

Andrew Sullivan cites this article in the TimesOnLine UK on a statement by Catholic Bishops in England regarding the literal truth of the Bible. The writer, Ruth Gledhill, states that:

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin's theory of evolution in schools, believing "intelligent design" to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

Gledhill is identified as the religion writer for the Times Online so she should know better. That she would write such a sentence is evidence that either she's incompetent or she's willfully trying to deceive her readers.

Let's deconstruct her claim:

1) It is true that some Christians would like to have a literal reading of Genesis taught in public schools but no one has seriously tried to accomplish this since Louisiana's attempts were defeated by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard in the late 1980s.

2) The belief that Genesis is literally, and thus scientifically, true is creationism. It is not Intelligent Design. ID takes no formal position on any of the questions raised by the Genesis account. Genesis could be shown to be completely wrong in every particular and Intelligent Design would be unaffected.

3) Intelligent Design is not a theory "of how the world began." It says nothing about how the world originated. The theory of Intelligent Design makes only two claims: First, it claims that blind, unguided, impersonal forces and processes are not adequate by themselves to account either for the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmos in every aspect of its structure, nor the high level of information found in the biosphere. Second, it claims that any adequate explanation of both the pervasive fine-tuning of the cosmos and the high information content of living things must somehow include intelligent agency.

Sullivan shows that he doesn't understand what's going on in the current debate any better than does Glendhill when he offers this comment:

The Catholic bishops of England tell American fundamentalists the bleeding obvious: not everything in the Bible is literally true. Money quote: "We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision." Of course. Anyone who believes that the world was literally created in six days a few thousand years ago is not expressing his or her "religious beliefs". Believing something that is demonstrably and empirically untrue is not religion. It is simply superstition or lunacy. It has nothing to do with faith in things we cannot know. The notion that it should actually be taught in public schools as science is beneath even debating.

This is a classic straw man fallacy. Sullivan wants the reader to believe that what's at stake in efforts like that currently being fought out in the courts in Kitzmiller v. Dover is whether students will be taught that "the world was literally created in six days a few thousand years ago." This, of course, is not at all what is at issue despite the attempts of the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller case to create that impression.

What is being contended in the Dover case is whether a school board should have the right to insist that when biology teachers instruct students that life is the product solely of blind, unguided, impersonal processes that they also point out that not all scientists nor philosophers think that to be true. Some of them, perhaps many of them, think that intelligence must somehow have been involved.

It would be interesting to see Mr. Sullivan or the Catholic bishops demonstrate that any of this is "demonstrably and empirically untrue."

From the Mail Bag

Every now and then we get an e-mail like this that makes us feel that we're doing something worthwhile:

I've been following Viewpoint for a little over a year now, since [a teacher] introduced me to it. I believe that this [Real Reform] is one of, if not the best, entry you've written since I've started reading Viewpoint.

Every word of what you've written in this entry is completely accurate and to the point. Your eleven points are, in my opinion, entirely viable, if only the populous, and the various levels of government by extension, "decide to make American public schools truly excellent."

Thank you for taking the time and effort to make Viewpoint such an excellent resource and treasure trove of information.

Thank You,

Micah

Thank you, Micah.

Denying the Obvious

I had occasion the other night to spend the evening with a very bright group of people (my presence in the group was something of an anomaly) discussing issues related to the Intelligent Design controversy. One participant, a Darwinian and geneticist, objected to a question from another participant by replying that she doesn't talk about design in biology because to do so is unscientific.

It would have been rude to have interrupted the conversation, which didn't really involve me, but I was tempted. I wanted to say that there's nothing unscientific about noting design in living things; almost every biologist does it (except her, apparently), and the fact that living things are designed all the way down to the molecular level is not denied by anyone and is not in dispute. What's in dispute is the cause of the design.

Darwinians insist that the design evident to anyone who has ever studied sixth grade life science is the product solely of blind, unguided processes like mutation and natural selection. Intelligent Design theorists, on the other hand, wish to affirm that blind processes alone are inadequate mechanisms for engineering the degree of complexity and information we see in the biosphere. They argue that some degree of intelligent input is required to satisfactorily explain it.

Evolutionists must really be running scared if they're so afraid of handing their opponents a rhetorical advantage that they refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that the natural world is full of designed structures and systems. Materialistic evolutionists seem to be nervous about using the word design because they don't wish to encourage the general public to think along those lines. The concern may be that the public might draw the conclusion that, given a choice between explaining complex design in terms of coincidence and blind luck and explaining it in terms of intention and purpose, the former suffers grievously in the comparison.

Speaking of ID, the reader might be interested in this column by Jeff Jacoby on why Intelligent Design is a legitimate topic for discusion in science classes. He gets it.