Krauthammer's Cluelessness

The normally astute Charles Krauthammer demonstrates that he's not infallible and that on the matter of the philosophy of science he's in fact quite clueless:

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

Well, "clear" is what he's not being. For the umpteenth time we reiterate. ID is:

1. not incompatible with evolution even if some of its advocates remain skeptical of many aspects of evolution.

2. not a contest between evolution and God. No ID advocate, qua scientist/philosopher, claims that God is the designer. The most ID can claim is that God could be the designer.

3. not a "god of the gaps" theory. It's not a theory that reacts to things we don't know by positing a god. It's a theory that bases its conclusions upon what we do know. Most relevantly, what we do know is that information, everywhere we see it being generated, is the product of intelligence, and there's no sufficient reason to think that things would have been otherwise in the generation of the information contained in biological machines, cells, and processes.

4. not asserting that God was behind the lemur. ID asserts that the mechanisms which produced lemurs and everything else in the biosphere include among them intelligence. The claim that intelligence is at least in part responsible for life is no less scientific than the claim that natural selection and genetic mutation and other blind, purposeless mechanisms are the exclusive cause of the evolution of life.

Krauthammer adds:

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein?

In an amusing example of sawing off the branch upon which one is sitting, Krauthammer argues that the earth shows forth elegance, simplicity, brilliance, economy, creativity, and implies that these are the marks of divine intelligence. But if so, intelligence, whether divine or otherwise, is empirically detectable, since Krauthammwer has detected it, and he nicely refutes his own position stated above.

He goes on to ridicule those who criticize the Darwinian claim that evolution is an "unguided process." Finding fault with this definition, he writes,:

[I]s as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis? He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science.

In fact, physics and chemistry never use these terms for precisely this reason. To assert that the processes of physics and chemistry are unguided and purposeless would be to remove them from the province of science and deposit them in the arena of metaphysics, which is exactly where all such claims belong, including those of the Neo-Darwinists. You cannot test the claim that any physical force is purposeless, and so the claim is not made in science, except in biology, and it is as out of place there as, say, a political journalist, even a good one, holding forth amongst controversies in the philosophy of science.

Troubling Trend Line

South Africa seems to be drifting the way of many another black African nation toward an accomodation with tyranny and corruption. The people of Africa must feel cursed. Why, they must wonder, can't they ever seem to get relatively competent, honest, and humane leadership that has some staying power?

Brian Maloney writes about South African president Thabo Mbeki's coziness with Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe at Michelle Malkin's blog:

Apparently, it isn't bad enough that Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe first destroyed his country's economy by forcibly removing white farmers from their land. Then, after successfully chasing away every hard currency generation means Zimbabwe had ever known, Mugabe turned against the poor. Demolishing the modest shanties and businesses of hundreds of thousands of black city dwellers, he left innocent people with nothing and nowhere to go.

For what rational reason did all of this happen? Nobody knows. American liberals have remained virtually silent on these daily atrocities, partly because they still see Mugabe as a "freedom fighter" who battled white minority rule three decades ago. And the American media largely looks the other way, as well.

In Britain, however, the crisis regularly makes headlines. It BEGS to become top news here in America. How can we possibly continue to ignore it? Another reason it's blown off: Zimbabwe's not important for the left because there's no known way to blame the mess on Bush and the GOP.

Tonight, the story gets worse: rather than provide a strong voice for freedom and democracy in the region, increasingly suspect South African President Thabo Mbeki has pledged to HELP Mugabe torture dissidents and maintain one of the world's worst human rights records. No joke, Mbeki has actually signed a new agreement to cooperate on intelligence and security matters, the BBC reports. It's truly a deal with the devil:

"The two neighbours undertook to share security information and to co-operate in enforcing immigration laws. After the signing, South Africa's intelligence minister scolded a journalist who raised questions about Zimbabwe's record on human rights.

"Details of the deal were not released but Zimbabwe's secret police is accused of torturing opposition activists. South Africa is a key player in attempts to negotiate an end to Zimbabwe's political crisis. President Thabo Mbeki has been criticised at home and abroad for not putting more pressure on President Robert Mugabe's government to end abuses.

'This week's historic meeting further consolidates a long-standing socio-political and economic relationship between our two countries,' South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils said at the signing of the agreement in Cape Town on Thursday. After the signing, a journalist asked Mr Kasrils how South Africa, with a 'good human rights track record', could sign agreements with Zimbabwe, which had a 'poor human rights record'.

Mr Kasrils apologised to his Zimbabwean counterpart, Didymus Mutasa, for the question. 'We have very strong ties with our neighbour and we are indebted to our neighbour for achieving freedom and liberty,' Mr Kasrils said. Mr Mutasa suggested praying for the journalist. 'Lord forgive him for he does not know what he is saying,' Mr Mutasa said.

Numerous activists from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have said they have been detained and assaulted by Zimbabwe's secret police - the Central Intelligence Organisation."

Next up for South Africa: deals with North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran?

At this point, I defy anyone to tell me how Mbeki's policies are ANY better than what existed under Apartheid? In both cases, Africans are needlessly suffering and dying, all to protect corrupt rulers. Is it time to recall diplomats from South Africa? Or reimpose sanctions? More? Possibly.

First, we need to get the Bush Administration and Republicans to take a hard line against both countries. Yes, the American media will pound away at any tough proposals, but so what? South Africa has today shown itself to be an enemy of humanity and freedom and it's time to stop mincing words here in America. I hope Bush is alarmed tonight. Under Apartheid, South Africa was a pariah state and remains that way under Mbeki's sleazy rule.

Well, that last paragraph may be a little premature, but the trend lines for South Africa surely aren't comforting. Nor is it comforting to reflect that the MSM is snoozing through this story. You can bet that had South Africa still been under white rule and there were signs of oppression brewing reveille would've sounded in the journalists' barracks a long time ago.

Is Zarqawi Dead?

There are rumors afloat that Abu al-Zarqawi was killed in a raid on a house in Mosul although White House sources are calling the reports unlikely. We can hope, though.

Political Quiz

Perhaps you are unclear as to what distinguishes the two political parties which dominate our current political scene. If so, you might try this little quiz:

Ask yourself which party is least likely to:

1. believe that poverty is largely a function of attitudes about sex, marriage, and education.

2. believe that taking wealth from those who have it and giving it to those who don't is a counterproductive way to alleviate poverty.

3. tolerate mentions of God or expressions of Judeo-Christian religious belief in public spaces.

4. aggressively prosecute the war on terror.

5. maintain low tax rates.

6. impede the development of oil reserves and refineries.

7. protect innocent human life either at its inception or toward its conclusion.

8. make it easier to convict and punish criminals.

9. strengthen the military.

10. favor free trade.

11. protect free speech.

12. protect the right to bear arms.

If you answered "the Democratic Party" for each of these questions then you scored 100%. If you found yourself in agreement with the Democrats on more than two or three of questions then you're probably a political liberal. If you agreed with roughly half of them then you're probably a moderate, and if you disagreed with all but one or two then you're probably a conservative.

An Open Letter to the President

A friend at the University of Michigan has sent an open letter to President Bush. I thought it was worth being seen by others as well so I'm posting it here:

AN OPEN LETTER TO GEORGE W. BUSH

Here in November, 2005, you are down in the polls, just one year after being elected by the greatest number of votes in U.S. history. Your enemies, Al Qaeda, Fidel Castro, Kim Jung Il, Mohammad Khatami, terrorist everywhere, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Jimmy Carter, Harry Reid, Michael Moore, the entire Hollywood left, the mainstream press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and the Democratic Party are gleeful beyond words.

I would like to remind you about another President, Abraham Lincoln, and what happened to him. Here is what the press was saying about him in the 1860's:

"Mr. Lincoln evidently knows nothing of ... the higher elements of human nature ... His soul seems made of leather, and incapable of any grand or noble emotion. Compared with the mass of men, he is a line of flat prose in a beautiful and spirited lyric. He lowers, he never elevates you ...When he hits upon a policy, substantially good in itself, he contrives to belittle it, besmear it in some way to render it mean, contemptible and useless. Even wisdom from him seems but folly." The New York Post

Today, Lincoln is considered, by virtually every survey, to be the greatest of all U.S. Presidents. One of his speeches, The Gettysburg Address, is considered among the greatest speeches ever given, but here is what the press said about it at the time:

"We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself. He has literally come out of the little end of his own horn. By the side of it, mediocrity is superb." The Chicago Times about The Gettysburg Address

President Bush, please take heart, ignore your critics and continue to do the right thing. As Harry S Truman said, "It will gratify some and astonish the rest."

Richard H. Francis Jr.

Well put, Richard.

Iraq's WMD

Former UNSCOM weapons inspector Bill Tierney speaks out in this interview at Front Page.com about Iraq's WMD. His conclusion: Iraq had them and Bush was right to go to war. If you're skeptical read his reasons. If you do you will almost certainly understand why George Bush came to the conclusion he did about Iraq's possession of WMD.

You will also understand why his opponents' claims that he deceived the nation about the presence of WMD in Iraq is both unfair and foolish.

Diversity vs Unity

Back in July of this year I posted an article on the topic of diversity.

While the concept of diversity is a corner stone of political correctness, I showed my concern in that post for how it will devastate our country.

To elaborate further, and hopefully drive the point home, I have included the following quotes from President Theodore Roosevelt who even in his day saw the danger of such wrong thinking...

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
- Theodore Roosevelt

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
- Theodore Roosevelt

I can't help but wonder if the concept of "hyphenation" applies to the last names that women choose these days when they get married.

403 to 3

Let's hear no more talk from House Democrats about pulling out of Iraq as soon as possible. They've voted overwhelmingly, 187 to 3, to shun that option. Maybe after the embarrassment this has brought them they'll be a little more circumspect, and fair, in their criticisms of the war.

Or not.

The Democrats, having considerable experience themselves with such ploys, claimed that the Republican resolution to withdraw immediately from Iraq was a mere political stunt. They sniffed that they would not be gulled into taking it seriously and would therefore vote massively against it. But this is all quite disingenuous, actually.

Why not take the resolution seriously and send the country and the world a message that support for the Bush Iraq policy is minimal in the House? Why not take a stand on principle and demand that our troops come home if that's what the Democrats believe? Why not show the nation how much strength the Democrats have in the House on this issue?

It seems more likely that they don't have any real strength on the issue and rather than make public that uncomfortable fact they chose to conceal it by pretending to protest the Republicans' dirty trick by voting en masse to defeat the resolution. So far from being a protest vote of some bizarre kind, the Democrats' capitulation was actually a very important admission. They seem to be acknowledging that serious opposition to Bush's Iraq policy exists only in the fever swamps of the Left, the media, and Hollywood. Beyond those ideological ghettos, out where the voters are, people may be skeptical, but they're not ready to cut our troops' psychological lifeline.

Time to Put Up or Shut Up

Rep. John Murtha is a good man. I don't believe he's playing politics with his call for the end to the American effort in Iraq. I think he sincerely believes that his call to terminate our presence in Iraq at the earliest practicable date is the right thing to do. Even so, he's wrong and he's being used by those of his fellow Democrats whose chief goal is to hurt President Bush.

The Republicans, however, have called their bluff. If the Democrats truly believe that the war is a failure, if they believe we should get out now, the Republicans are giving them the chance to say so on the record by introducing a sense of the House resolution that calls for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. If Democrats think that pulling out now is the wrong thing to do then they have the chance to express that opinion, too, by voting against the resolution. The vote is coming up tonight.

It's time for President Bush's critics to tell the American people exactly where they stand on Iraq. It's easy to snipe and criticize when there's no price to pay. It's easy to say that Bush has failed in Iraq and that we have no business being there when one's words aren't recorded for all the world to see, but now they will be. And the Democrats are going ballistic. Taking a stand on the record is the last thing they want to do.

"A disgrace," declared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "The rankest of politics and the absence of any sense of shame," added Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat.

"It's a pathetic, partisan, political ploy," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D- N.Y. Added Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif.: "It's just heinous."

"This is a personal attack on one of the best members, one of the most respected members of this House and it is outrageous," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

Their reaction to the resolution highlights their hypocrisy. If they had sincere convictions about the war they would just vote one way or the other, either to withdraw immediately or not, but their convictions are not sincere. Their stance on the war is for many of them pure political opportunism and the Republican call to put up or shut up is an embarrassing spotlight on their abysmal behavior.

They know that an immediate withdrawal is a morally indefensible position and to endorse it would be politically fatal in a general election. They also know that that's exactly what the Michael Moore/George Soros/MoveOn.org crowd that funds their campaigns and gets out the vote are demanding. They find they have demagogued their way between Scylla and Charibdys and the Republicans are simply giving them the opportunity to declare whether they are going to act like adults or throw in with the jejunne Hollywood elites.

Imagine. The Democrats are outraged that they have to declare themselves either for an immediate withdrawal or against it. Why?

It's really pretty pathetic.

Alito on Abortion

Judge Sam Alito's now famous job application can be found here. Scroll down to page two for the autobiographical information which has created a stir on both Left and Right. Alito states clearly that he believes the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion.

It will be interesting to see how Democratic senators challenge him on this statemment in the confirmation hearings. Will they argue that he is wrong and that there is indeed such a protection? This would be a reckless tactic because they'll then be required to cite chapter and verse which would prove most embarrassing to the entire pro-choice enterprise.

It's more likely they'll just want to severely reprimand him in one of their interminable speeches, to which he will be unable to respond, for his impertinence in casting doubt upon liberal dogma and then try to get him to commit to a reverence for established precedent, or some such thing. Their big donors at MoveOn.org and elsewhere, however, recognize the utter pointlessness of this strategy, and will demand that the Democrats do whatever they can to stop this nomination no matter how many knees to the groin they have to administer. Judge Alito better be wearing a cup come January.

Meanwhile, an odd reaction to this application is bubbling in some precincts on the Right. Conservatives are insisting that we shouldn't read too much into Alito's words, that everyone exaggerates on job applications, that nothing in his judicial record suggests he'd overturn Roe v. Wade, etc. This is an astonishingly disingenuous and disappointing argument.

Do these conservatives mean to suggest that Alito might not vote to overturn Roe and that therefore the Left should have no qualms about approving him? Are they conceding to the Left that a Justice who would overturn Roe could be justly blocked by the Democrats while maintaining that Alito is not that sort of judge? Do they mean that the Left shouldn't be concerned about his anti-abortion statements because he might not have really meant them? What kind of a strategy is this?

These Republicans seem to be proclaiming with some enthusiasm that Judge Alito is not really what conservatives hope he is, or that he's actually not impeccably honest since he doesn't really believe what he wrote on his application, and therefore Democrats shouldn't mind confirming him. That's absurd.

If he wasn't telling the truth on the job application and if he doesn't really believe that Roe is an instance of judicial usurpation of the democratic process then conservatives shouldn't support him. This argument that he's not really all that conservative, when made by conservatives to mollify liberals, is sheer stupidity married to dishonesty.

Harold Meyerson at the WaPo writes that:

Alito's advocates argue that he never once called for overturning Roe v. Wade during his 15 years on the appellate bench. But appellate judges interpret the law within the framework that the Supreme Court lays out. Supreme Court justices can change that framework when they see fit -- and they do. Those are the Supreme Court decisions that make the history books, and there are a number of them. Deference to precedents may be a pillar of the law, but -- and on this, conservatives and liberals agree -- it is clearly less of one for Supreme Court justices than for appellate and trial judges.

Alito's champions would have us believe, however, that he will defer even to precedents that he regards as unconstitutional -- despite the fact that the job of a justice is precisely to determine what is and isn't constitutional. That's asking us to believe a lot.

Clearly, the senators charged with questioning Alito will ask him if he still believes what he wrote 20 years ago.

Alito's answer should be, "Darn right I believe it. Why shouldn't I? If anyone can show me why my analysis of what the Constitution says is wrong I'll recant. Otherwise, let's move on to the next question." He might add that "Moreover, those Republicans who are seeking to mislead the public on my position on Roe are a bunch of dishonest dunderheads."

The Iranian Nuclear Program

A "smoking gun" has emerged in Iran that has brought rare unanimity of opinion between the U.S. and its erstwhile European allies about Iran's intentions to build nuclear weapons. Somehow, the U.S. has come into possession of a laptop that has on it a detailed record of Iran's various steps toward developing nukes.

The Iranians have made a calculated decision, it seems, that the political climate in the U.S. will prevent Bush from taking immediate action against them, so they feel emboldened to continue with their nuclear program, and also to try to hurt us with their oil policy. Their hope, perhaps, is that Bush will remain crippled throughout the remainder of his term and that the next president will be much less of a threat to their ambitions.

I think, though, that they have misunderestimated George Bush. The only thing keeping him from hitting Iran tomorrow is that he doesn't want to juggle two messes in the Middle East simultaneously. If Iraq should stabilize over the next twelve-month, Tehran could be in serious trouble. Look this time, however, for the United States to be joined by more allies than fought with us in Iraq.

If this analysis is correct, it explains a couple of things. For one, it explains why the Left is so desperate to weaken Bush. They simply don't want the United States to launch any more assaults in the Middle East and to enjoy any more military successes. The best way for them to ensure that this does not happen is to keep Bush preoccupied at home with one nip at his heels after another. A man busy fighting off a swarm of mosquitoes is ill-positioned to do much else.

The second thing it explains is why Shia-dominated Iran would be supporting a Sunni-dominated insurgency that is killing Iraqi Shiites. The longer Iraq remains unsettled the longer Bush will likely delay in calling the Tehran mullahs to account. If they can keep Iraq unstable for another 18 to 24 months they may be able to survive Bush's tenure. That's worth the cost of abetting the murders of a few thousand of their co-religionists in Iraq.

On An Ineradicable Stain

Dick, I'm not sure what "Ineradicable" means but I want to followup anyway.

You mentioned in your article that "Creationism is an attempt to vindicate the Genesis account and to reconcile science with the Bible. It starts with the assumption that Genesis is true, and rejects any hypotheses incompatible with this assumption."

I'd like to take that statement and run with it a bit if I may. I originally intended to post this on the Feedback page but thought better of it and decided it warranted a place front and center.

From E.W.Bullinger's How To Enjoy The Bible pages 351-352. I quote:

The world that then was" (Gen i. 2) - The accurate reading in the English of the A.V. [my note: Authorized Version] Gen.i. 2 will be sufficient to show there is something in the verse which needs explanation; and when we have explained it we shall find that it points to a wonderful exposition of the Creation, and provides a complete answer to all the cavils of Geologists.

This discovery would be impossible if the Revised Version were used, as the Revisers deliberately discarded the use of italics in certain cases, one of which was in the case of the verb "to be", which does not exist in Hebrew.

In Gen.i. 2 (A.V.) we read: "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

Here, it will be seen that, the first "was" is in Roman type, while the second is in Italic type. This accuracy tells us that the latter verb, "was" represents the verb to be; and that the former "was" must represent a different verb, and not the verb "to be." This is the case; and the verb is (hayah), to become, come to pass.

That this is its meaning is clear from the very next verse (v. 3): "Let there be light, and there was light." Here the verb for "be" and "was" is hayah, and means become, while, in verse 4, the verb "was" is the verb to be, and is in italics.

The same use of "was" (Roman type) and "was" (Italic type) may be seen in verses 9 and 10; and in verses 11 and 12.

If we enquire further about the verb hayah we find it in Gen. ii. 7, "and man became a living soul; ch. iv. 14, "it shall come to pass"; ch. ix. 15, "the waters shall no more become a flood"; ch. xix. 26, Lot's wife "became a pillar of salt."

From all this we assuredly learn that Gen. i. 2 should read "and the earth BECAME without form."

Having made this discovery we now pursue it further; and we "search the Scriptures" to find out whether God has said anything else about the way in which He created the earth. And we find it in Isa. xlv. 18, Here the sentences are heaped together, in order to impress us with the fact that, He who created the earth, ought to know, and be able to tell us, how He made it. Note the words:

"Thus saith Jehova that created the heavens' Elohim himself that formed the earth, and made it; He hath established it, He created it not tohu."

But this word (tohu) is the very word which is translated "without form" in Gen. I. 2. So that, whatever tohu means, it is evident that God did not create the earth tohu. Therefore it must have become so, at some time, in some way, and from some cause which we are not told.

It is clear from this that in Gen. i. 1. we have the record concerning what is called in 2 Pet. iii. 6 "the world that then was." This earth, we are there told also, "being overflowed with water perished." This is exactly what is stated in Gen. i. 1,2.

So that at the end of the first verse we must put a very large full stop; or draw a line; or leave a blank space, so as to separate verse 1 from what follows in verse 2, which relates to "the heavens and earth which are now" (2 Pet. iii. 7), and which will continue, until the time comes for "the new heavens and the new earth" of 2 Pet. iii. 13, and of many other Scriptures.

When Geologists have settled how many years they require between the first and second verses of Gen. i. there is ample room for all they want, and a large margin beside.

Meanwhile, we may well conclude that all the fossils and remains which are found belonged to "the world that then was," and thus, at one stroke, remove all friction between Geology and Scripture.

Again, we ask, why assume that all the Geological phenomena pertain to the earth "which is now," when it is this very assumption which creates the difficulty? and compels us to ignore all the phenomena of God's Word mentioned above?

His Word is misinterpreted, and His works are misunderstood, and the difficulty thus created is charged against the Scriptures of Truth!

Given this information and its reconciliation of the geological record with the biblical account of creation, I am quite perplexed that there is so much apparent ignorance on the part of Christians regarding the issue.

If you're not fully persuaded by the message above, I would like to challenge you to pursue it further. Research the ample references Bullinger provides to substantiate his position. The argument of Creationism vs Evolution is a major issue of our day. If you are a Christian that believes in the Bible as the Word of God, shouldn't you have a scriptural basis for your conviction that can weather the storm of the enemy as it breaks across the bow?

An Ineradicable Stain

Our local paper, The York Dispatch, ran this column from the Tufts Daily a couple of weeks ago which several times repeats the claim that Intelligent Design is a religious belief. Today they carried another essay in which George Will repeats the same claim. One despairs of ever purging this misconception from the public mind, but the task is even more hopeless when public intellectuals insist on perpetuating it. It takes on the character of an ineradicable stain on the debate over Intelligent Design.

I submitted the following reply to the Dispatch whose editors have apparently decided to ignore though they have chosen not to share with me their reasons:

The editors made an unfortunate choice of columns in selecting The Creationists' Trojan Horse(11/1). Almost every assertion in the essay is either incorrect or misleading. Consider the claim, which appears regularly in both of our local papers, that Intelligent Design (ID) is religious. This judgment is simply false.

The fundamental assertion of Darwinism is that all of life has arisen solely as a consequence of blind, unguided, purposeless processes. ID is the denial of this claim. It asserts that purposeless processes are inadequate by themselves to account for what we find in the realm of living things and that one of the causal factors which must be invoked to fully account for life is intelligence. If the proposition that life is completely explicable in terms of blind, impersonal processes is a scientific claim then so is it's denial. If the proposition that life bears the impress of intelligent purpose is a religious claim then so is it's contrary.

Nevertheless, the insistent claims of its critics and the hopes of some of its advocates notwithstanding, ID is not a religious belief. It requires no commitment to belief in a god, it prescribes neither worship, rites, rituals, creeds, nor codes of conduct. It has no body of doctrine, no clergy, and no holy books. It simply holds that blind, unguided processes are inadequate by themselves to account for living things and that in some way intelligence must have played a role. This is hardly a religious assertion, and, unlike religious assertions, it may even lend itself to testing. If it could be shown, for instance, that some unintelligent, mechanistic process does indeed produce information, or an increase in information, if it could be plausibly and convincingly demonstrated that DNA or proteins could have arisen by chance through purely natural processes, then intelligent agency will have been shown to be a superfluous add-on, and ID would be effectively refuted.

It needs to be said, too, that contrary to much of what has been written in the papers, ID is not creationism. Creationism is an attempt to vindicate the Genesis account and to reconcile science with the Bible. It starts with the assumption that Genesis is true, and rejects any hypotheses incompatible with this assumption. In this respect, creationism is much more like Darwinism than it is like ID.

Darwinian evolution also begins with an assumption. In this case it's the assumption that only natural forces can be employed to account for living things. Any hypothesis that is incompatible with this assumption is rejected out of hand.

Both creationism and Darwinism, in other words, are inferences from an a priori metaphysical commitment and as such are mirror images of each other.

Indeed, ID is scarcely even related to creationism philosophically except insofar as both theories hold that an intelligence was involved in the emergence of life. To understand the vast difference between them one need only to realize that all of the book of Genesis could be proven wrong but, although creationism would be thoroughly devastated, the theory of ID would be unaffected. ID is not dependent upon Genesis or any other religious or metaphysical book or doctrine for its content.

ID starts with observations of living things and infers from the resulting empirical data that intelligence must have played a role in the development of life. As such, ID is an observation-based hypothesis and is therefore more scientific, in this sense, at least, than either of its competitors. Its inference that purpose and intentional design underlie life on earth is based not on a presupposition that there is a designer (though many ID theorists doubtless hold such a presupposition in their private lives), but rather upon several obvious facts about the world.

One of these facts is the abundance of information in living things. We have no experience of complex information being generated by purposeless processes, and thus its ubiquity (in DNA and proteins, for instance) leads to the inference that purpose plays a role in the design of life.

Another fact upon which the design inference is based is the apparent teleology in the cosmos. That life is telic (i.e. evinces purpose) is in dispute. That the cosmos is telic is much more difficult to gainsay. Cosmologists can invoke no mechanism like natural selection to explain the exquisite fine-tuning of the physics that governs the cosmos. If the universe as a whole bears witness to having been intricately engineered for life, it is plausible to think that certain aspects of the universe, like the structures in living things, which certainly appear to be designed, actually are.

Indeed, we must keep in mind that the current debate is not about whether there actually is design in the biosphere. Everyone agrees that there is. The debate is over the source of that design. Is it nature blindly selecting for survival advantage, or is it an intelligence of some kind - a stoic "World Soul", a Platonic demiurge, an idealist "Absolute", or the God of classical theism? ID offers no opinion other than to rule out blind nature.

It must be stressed, finally, that ID does not conflict with evolution, the theory of descent by modification. It conflicts only with the Darwinian version of evolution which insists that descent is a thoroughly naturalistic, mechanistic process. Evolution is simply the view that organisms share common ancestors. It does not require one to believe that the process of descent from these ancestral forms was purely accidental or unintended.

Some may indeed wish to use ID as a wedge to get religion into schools, but ID should be judged on its merits and not on the motives of some of its proponents. There are some who insist, after all, that Darwinism be taught because they see it as a "Trojan Horse" for atheism. There are others who have used evolution to justify social Darwinism and even genocide. It would be an error to judge evolution on the basis of such misuses by its supporters, and it's equally wrong to judge ID by the misuses to which some of its adherents wish to put it.

For a good example of how the media totally confuses ID with creationism see this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Constitutional Confusion

In commenting on Pat Robertson's anathemas upon the community of Dover, PA, Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page juxtaposes two thoughts which are frequently voiced by critics of Intelligent Design, but which are mutually incompatible. He writes that the voters of Dover, by electing an entirely new school board, were, in effect, seeking to keep religion out of their school and maintain the separation of church and state. Page exclaims:

Ah, Dover. How dare you try to separate church and state!

A little later on in his essay, however, he utters this opinion, one commonly heard expressed by those who seek to banish ID from science classes:

Intelligent Design is ... more a matter of faith than science, more suitable in my view for a history or social studies class than for a course in real science.

Mr. Page seems to suffer from Constitutional confusion. If the separation of church and state is sufficient reason to keep ID out of science classes how can teaching it in a history or social science class be justified? Does he think that the putative great wall of separation surrounds only the science departments of our schools? If ID is suitable for a history class then the only reason that it would be unsuitable for a science class is that it's not good science, not that it violates the separation of church and state.

Follow Up

I did a little bit of research and found that the State Street Corporation is the largest holder of General Motors at 95,318,342 shares. They boast of being not only "the #1 servicer of U.S. pension plans" but also "investment manager of U.S. pension assets and a leading pension manager globally".

One has to ask themselves how safe their pension is if some or all of it is invested in GM. GM was down over 5% today...ouch!

If and when GM declares bankruptcy, what do the people whose pension fund is so heavily invested in GM do as their pension withers away to nothing?

Truly a sad scenario but one that could have been avoided if these people would have diversified their wealth as they accumulated it by transferring it into solid assets such as precious metals i.e. gold.

The moral of the story is, don't gamble your future well-being on shares of companies in the US whose profits are contingent on a booming US economy simply because the new "global economy" ensures that those days are over.

Is Santorum Finished?

RealClear Politics says that Senator Rick Santorum is finished in Pennsylvania. The latest polls show him trailing his challenger, Bob Casey, by 15 to 20 points.

If this is true it's certainly too bad, but Santorum has alienated much of his Republican base, and Casey neutralizes him among a large sector of the remainder of Pennsylvania voters. Santorum could count on his strong pro-life stance to garner him a lot of votes among pro-life Pennsylvanians, but he's now facing that rarest of breeds, a pro-life Democrat whose father was a popular pro-life governor of the state. Thus, Santorum's position on this issue is not the asset it was against previous opponents. Indeed, it hurts him among pro-choice voters who resent his outspoken advocacy of Terri Schiavo's right to live.

Where he's really paying a price, in our opinion, is among conservatives in general who were dismayed that Santorum endorsed fellow Republican senator Arlen Specter two years ago in his tough primary fight against conservative congressman Pat Toomey. It was the endorsement of Santorum and President Bush that persuaded enough Republicans to vote for the much distrusted Specter in the primary, enabling him to thinly defeat Toomey.

Then Santorum failed last month to back the Coburn amendments to the transportation bill which would have sliced a lot of pork out of the bill. This was an unconscionable lapse for someone who calls himself a conservative, and it did nothing to shore up support among rank and file Pennsylvania Republicans.

Add to the erosion of enthusiasm for Santorum the fact that Casey is the son of a popular governor in a blue state and the fact that the president's numbers right now are not particularly fat and Santorum's low poll numbers are not surprising. He has twelve months to turn things around, but its hard to imagine what could happen on the state level that would give him the opportunity to do that other than conducting a very vigorous campaign.

We're still waiting for Arlen Specter's endorsement. No doubt Santorum is, too.

Senator Blabbermouth

Bill Bennett calls for Senator Rockefeller to step down from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee for doing what he admitted doing to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Senator Rockefeller said the following:

I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq - that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

Bennett calls for "an investigation, now, into what exactly Senator Jay Rockefeller told Syria and just what Syria might have done with the information made available to them presumably before it was made available to the U.N., the Senate, or the American people."

He goes on to write that:

Senators and congressmen don't have to agree with their president's policies, and they should make the president robustly defend his policies - but they should not be acting as if they are the president or secretary of state; they should not be tipping off sometimes friends and definitive enemies about war plans that not even the president has yet made as policy. This is the true mockery of prewar intelligence, and Senator Rockefeller should fully explain his actions.

If Syria - or elements in Saudi Arabia - began acting on this information before we even went to war in Iraq (more than a year later), then Senator Rockefeller may have seriously harmed, impeded, and hindered our war efforts, our troops, and the entire operation in the Middle East. This should be investigated immediately; and perhaps Senator Rockefeller should step down from the Intelligence Committee until an investigation is complete.

What is a guy this loose-lipped doing on the Senate Intelligence Committee in the first place, for heaven sakes? It's boneheaded blabbermouths like Rockefeller who are the reason Democrats have such difficulty convincing the American public that they can be trusted with our national defense.

Operation Steel Curtain Continues

The Fourth Rail has the latest on Operation Steel Curtain and the fighting in Ubaydi. The insurgency has less and less room to maneuver and they're finding that there are more and more competent Iraqi forces with which to contend. The dilemma they face is this: They cannot afford to drain their forces out of Iraq and relocate elsewhere because to lose Iraq is to lose not only a base of operations but also to suffer a psychological defeat in the minds of all Arab people. Arabs will run with the strong horse. A defeat in Iraq means that that horse isn't them.

On the other hand, they cannot afford to stay and fight because they're simply not winning. They're losing militarily and the only thing they're gaining is the everlasting enmity of the Iraqi people. Their only chance is that the Americans will weary of the fight and withdraw. They can hope that the "useful idiots" among the American political Left and media can somehow weaken George Bush to the point where he cannot continue the war. If so, the insurgents will snatch victory from defeat and Iraq will be theirs.

If Bush prevails against his domestic foes, however, then al Qaida will probably seek to set up shop in a nearby country from which they can continue to conduct a low-level insurgency in Iraq and Jordan. Their problem is that there aren't any obvious havens for them anymore. Syria and Iran might have welcomed them in the past but to do so now is to invite an unpleasant visit from the United States Air Force and there's no reason why either of those countries would want that. Iran, in particular, will be very reluctant to give our bombers an excuse to raid their airspace and an opportunity to drop an extra bunker buster or two on their nuclear facilities.

It's looking bleak indeed for the jihadis. On the bright side, though, they can anticipate a delightful sojourn shortly with their seventy two virgins.

The Cheeseheads Proliferate

A friend of mine who himself served relatively recently as a Resident Assistant on a University of Wisconsin campus was moved by Real Wisconsin Cheeseheads to relate his own remarkable experience at UW. It's a disturbing tale of inexcusable intolerance toward anyone who has the courage to dissent from the politically correct orthodoxy established by left-wing bureaucrats in contemporary universities:

Well, I read your blog titled "Real Wisconsin Cheeseheads" and I started to have flashbacks. Recall that I was an RA (or as they call it at UW-Madison, "House Fellow") from 2000-2002. In addition to dating the woman who would become my wife, at that time I was also a member of the UW-Madison College Republicans and part of the Knights of Columbus. At first I was quite excited when I found out that I got the House Fellow position. The post paid for my university housing, provided a food stipend, and also provided a nice paycheck for an out-of-state undergrad.

One of our principal responsibilities as House Fellows, according to our training (or as I called it the second time around - indoctrination) and official handbook, was to "promote an inclusive community" among the students living in the residence halls. I witnessed the ugly reality of that phrase throughout much of my junior year in 2001.

It turns out an "inclusive community" is only one that supports and promotes a homosexual lifestyle. One afternoon after class I returned to my dorm, but I first decided to go to check my House Fellow mail in our office for Tripp-Adams-Slichter Halls. Upon walking into the office, I immediately noticed what appeared to be a campaign button in my mailbox. There were actually two buttons - one with a rainbow on it, the other black with a pink triangle on it - both promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (LGBT) activities and lifestyle.

I was informed by a letter in my mailbox that I was supposed to display these buttons prominently, either on my person, on my hall door, or on my backpack. I noticed that my immediate supervisor (or "Residence Life Coordinator") was in her office. I asked simply "do we have to wear these, are we required to wear these?" She responded no, but that we would have to talk about why at a later time. In her plain view, I put the buttons back in the bag that had at least 25 others and walked out of the office.

To make a long story short, that decision quickly made the rest of my year a personal living hell. I filed a discrimination complaint against a female co-worker (who happened to live directly above me in our dorm), citing her private and public displays of making me feel uncomfortable due to my race (Caucasian), gender (male), sexual orientation (heterosexual), religion (Roman Catholic), as well as political affiliation (conservative Republican).

Turns out that she was in the office with my supervisor when I asked about the buttons, and she took offense to my (in)action. Residence hall leaders surprisingly took my complaint seriously enough to hold a series of small, closed door meetings. The meetings at points got quite uncomfortable, as my co-worker submitted testimony that I later found out she gained by listening through the floor vents of her room. She found instances of my disciplining my own residents "disturbing displays of domineering, masculine power."

One incident in question? It was about 3:30am on a Thursday evening, a couple of my male residents were screaming drunk down the hall after returning from a night on the town. In response I just opened my door and stood there in my boxer shorts and muscle t-shirt. I said nothing, only stood there. They looked at my face and my bed hair, immediately apologized, and went to their room. We spoke the next morning on the incident when I returned from lecture, and they apologized again. I commented in my testimony that I thought it was a sign of "powerful, mutual respect" that I had built with my residences. It seems all my co-worker caught was the "powerful" part and took it from there.

That whole year I prayed a lot, and thank God I got through it. There were moments, though, when I actually called home to Pennsylvania fearful that I would lose my job. I kept my mouth shut about the situation around my non-House Fellow friends because most of them lived in the dorms. I could not tell my girlfriend anything, because she, too, lived in the same dorms that I did. My House Fellows, friends who I worked with, behind the scenes confided in me that I was right, but they did not feel comfortable sticking their necks out like they thought I was.

To make a long story short, the co-worker was politely asked to leave at the end of the year. I got transfered to another building with increased responsibilities, meaning instead of 50 residents the following year I had over 100 and the second largest student/House Fellow ratio on campus. By luck my immediate supervisor was moving to another residence hall location on campus.

I found over the deliberations, however, I had "gained a name" for myself among the residence hall leadership. One administrator in particular later made it his mission to provoke me into a fireable offense. After letting a trouble-making resident of mine off the hook for "only smoking marijuana," he admonished me for disciplining my residents according to "my conservative beliefs." He informed me that I "should have been doing better things like busting people for drinking" rather than "imposing my values" on my resident.

After informing him that marijuana possession is not just against housing regulations but also federal law, I asked him to explain to me what he meant by "conservative beliefs." Turns out that as an openly-gay activist, he considered conservatives hateful homophobes. I immediately informed him that my own beliefs did not reflect that characteristic, citing John Paul II "condemn the sin, not the sinner." I then went on for the next five minutes outlining my personal worldview, supporting my view with the words of such notables as Ronald Reagan, C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, even G.K. Chesterton (although I doubted he ever heard of him).

I noticed that he increasingly blanched throughout, then turned very red in anger. He told me that the meeting was over. I ended the meeting by telling him that I guess I was not what he defined as his average "token conservative."

You know that I read Viewpoint on the rare occasion that I have time to separate myself from my Ph.D. work. This blog just spoke to me deeply. I felt that someone else needed to know the truth. You have my permission to post portions of this message if you would like.

One gets the feeling reading this sort of thing that if conservatives choose to attend a school like the University of Wisconsin they better either keep their mouth shut or have a parent who's a lawyer. It's deeply distressing that the very institutions which are supposed to be bastions of free speech and independent thinking are actually training grounds for censorship and petty tyranny. What kind of nation will our children inherit if people like some of those mentioned above ever ascend in large numbers to positions of political leadership?

Racial Suicide

Matt Rosenberg at City Journal shines a bright light on the failure of white liberals and black leadership to speak out against the pathological embrace of the Thug culture among black youth. His whole column is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

[T]he black gangsta identity-the glorification of drug-dealing, crime, and serial sexual conquest, coupled with a blithe rationalization of fatherless black children-is what really deserves condemnation and concern, and not just in black barbershops, churches, and homes. Bill Cosby excepted, however, few have raised public concerns when blacks outfit themselves in the sartorial and ethical drapery of common street hustlers. Many young blacks walk around saying n**** this, n**** that, but then take offense when others borrow the attendant stylistic signifiers, which our culture foolishly condones and celebrates as black authenticity.

One would think that of all people it would be those most concerned about erasing the stereotypes of blacks as stupid and thuggish who would be most outraged by what regularly appears in our entertainment venues as typifying the black "experience." Young blacks who dress and speak as though they are proud of being inarticulate dopes, or who wish to project a menacing image, simply ratify the convictions of whites, who may know few blacks personally, that these are not people they particularly care to know or care to have living in their neighborhoods.

The silence of black leaders on the glorification of misogyny, criminality, and sexual licentiousness in black culture is doing both black society and the cause of racial harmony tremendous harm. They stand by while their young commit slow-motion suicide. Young people think this is the persona they should adopt in order to be authentically black, but that persona imprisons them in the dysfunctional ghetto of black failure. The road out of poverty is paved with the bricks of personal virtue and those bricks are not much in evidence in a lot of what is held up for young blacks to emulate today.