Bad History

Everything you ever wanted to know about why you should not be in the least impressed with the religious history presented in The Da Vinci Code (neither the book nor the movie) can be found at MarkRoberts.com. Roberts is a scholar of the first rank and his treatment of author Dan Brown's claims is both thorough and devastating.

The State of Star Wars

A few short years ago skeptics were scoffing at Ronald Reagan's proposal to build a defense against a missile attack on our soil. The doubters derisively dubbed the program a "star wars defense". The name stuck, but the derision behind it has long since evaporated. Those who thought that a workable missile defense system was technologically beyond reach, those who scorned Reagan's dream of being able to protect American cities against nuclear ICBMs launched from a hostile country, are no longer easily found.

As with so many other naysayers who proclaimed in confident accents that the U.S. couldn't accomplish some great goal, those who self-assuredly dismissed the ability of the U.S. to develop a workable missile defense system are left looking pretty dumb. The system they said could not be built is today up and running, and will soon be complete.

For an overview of what missile defense is, how it works, and where we are in its development read James Thayer's article in the Weekly Standard titled "Star Wars Now". Thayer begins with a description of the most recent test of the system:

High above the earth, the Aries missile streaked toward its target, creasing the thermosphere at two miles a second. Launched at 8:12 a.m. Hawaiian Standard Time, the 30-foot long solid-fuel rocket had weighed in at more than six tons and had generated 200 kilonewtons of thrust. But now, high overhead, the missile had separated from its booster, and it screamed along the edge of space.

It was doomed from the start. Far below, rolling gently in the sea off the Kauai coast, the USS Lake Erie waited. The ship--a Ticonderoga class cruiser--is 567 feet of gray lethality: Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, MK 46 sub-killer torpedoes, and a brace of six-barreled Vulcan Gatling guns (rate of fire: a sweet 6,000 rounds per minute). The Lake Erie is outfitted with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. The sailors detected the missile, and went to work.

"The firing team had no clue when the [Aries target] missile would be launched," said Fire Controlman 3rd Class Jacob Todd on board Lake Erie. The ship's crew tracked the missile's course, and quickly generated a fire-control solution. At 8:16 a.m., an SM-3 missile was launched from the Lake Erie's deck. Trailing a cone of fire, the SM-3 rose into the sulfurous yellow sky.

Six minutes elapsed. Then, a hundred miles up and 375 miles northwest of Kauai, the Lake Erie's missile ripped into the incoming Aries. The explosion was brilliant and furious and then instantly gone, and the only things remaining of the two missiles were slivers of hot metal drifting back toward earth.

This test occurred last November, and was the sixth successful missile interception out of seven attempts.

In a world in which North Korea, China, and Iran all have, or soon will have, nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, it is reassuring to know that there is a good chance that sending those weapons our way by mounting them on missiles is very likely going to be futile.

How to Help With the Fence

NewsMax has a short article on the proposed fence along the Mexican border. The article includes a little bit on the design and what interested persons can do to support the project. Give it a look and give some thought to helping out.

By the way, I'm told that the Mexican staff of my favorite eating spot, all of whom I'm assured are legal immigrants, showed up for work the day when immigrants were being called upon to take off from work to show the gringos how important they are. Co-workers who asked them about their decision were told simply that they came to the U.S. to work to support their families and that's what they were going to do.

That sort of immigrant - legal, hard working, and family centered - should be welcome in every community in this land.

Let's build the fence so that all the immigrants who come here are like those who prepare the food and do the custodial tasks at that restaurant.

Lerner For NSA

Barbara Lerner has an excellent piece of analysis in the National Review Online, wherein she points to three mistakes that the United States made in Iraq and discusses what to do about Iran. Thumbing her nose at the conventional wisdom, She completely vindicates Donald Rumsfeld and places the blame for both our successes and our failures in Iraq squarely on the shoulders of George Bush:

The surest way to draw ... wrong conclusions [about Iraq] would be to accept the analysis of the rebel generals currently baying for our Defense secretary's head, because the three mistakes they harp on aren't mistakes at all, and the three big mistakes we really did make weren't made by Donald Rumsfeld. They are the mistakes of the State Department, the CIA, and the rebel generals themselves, along with two other mistake-prone groups David Frum rightly added to my April 30 list in May 2004: "the British Foreign Office," and "most of the better-known foreign policy pundits." But it was John O'Sullivan in a National Review piece later that same May who put the responsibility for all our major decisions in Iraq-the winning ones and the losing ones-squarely where it belongs: on the shoulders of the man in charge, the man who tried to have it both ways, our president.

One should not get the impression, though, that Lerner is anti-Bush. She simply thinks that Bush listened to the wrong people on what to do about Iraq and doesn't want him to make those same mistakes with Iran.

One thing Barbara Lerner doesn't recommend, but I do, is that Bush name her National Security Advisor. She's smart, tough, and she's right. You won't read anything like this in the New York Times, but it's hard to argue with her analysis or her recommendations. Read the whole thing. It's important.

McLaren on <i>The Da Vinci Code</i>

Sojourners online magazine (link unavailable) has an interview with Brian McLaren on the religious impact and significance of The Da Vinci Code. As with a lot that McLaren says and writes there's a lot of gold and a little bit of dross in his replies. He's worth reading for the gold:

Sojourners: What do you think the popularity of The Da Vinci Code reveals about pop culture attitudes toward Christianity and the church?

Brian McLaren: I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church. Why would so many people be disappointed to find that Brown's version of Jesus has been largely discredited as fanciful and inaccurate, leaving only the church's conventional version? Is it possible that, even though Brown's fictional version misleads in many ways, it at least serves to open up the possibility that the church's conventional version of Jesus may not do him justice?

Sojourners: So you think The Da Vinci Code taps into dissatisfaction with Jesus as we know him?

McLaren: For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true. It's my honest feeling that anyone trying to share their faith in America today has to realize that the Religious Right has polluted the air. The name "Jesus" and the word "Christianity" are associated with something judgmental, hostile, hypocritical, angry, negative, defensive, anti-homosexual, etc. Many of our churches, even though they feel they represent the truth, actually are upholding something that's distorted and false.

I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown's suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown's book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion's grasping for power. Again, there's something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.

Sojourners: Do you think the book contains any significantly detrimental distortions of the Christian faith?

McLaren: The book is fiction and it's filled with a lot of fiction about a lot of things that a lot of people have already debunked. But frankly, I don't think it has more harmful ideas in it than the Left Behind novels. And in a certain way, what the Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends. But at the end of the day, the difference is I don't think Brown really cares that much about theology. He just wanted to write a page-turner and he was very successful at that.

Sojourners: Many Christians are also reading this book and it's rocking their preconceived notions - or lack of preconceived notions - about Christ's life and the early years of the church. So many people don't know how we got the canon, for example. Should this book be a clarion call to the church to say, "Hey, we need to have a body of believers who are much more literate in church history." Is that something the church needs to be thinking about more strategically?

McLaren: Yes! You're exactly right. One of the problems is that the average Christian in the average church who listens to the average Christian broadcasting has such an oversimplified understanding of both the Bible and of church history - it would be deeply disturbing for them to really learn about church history. I think the disturbing would do them good. But a lot of times education is disturbing for people. And so if The Da Vinci Code causes people to ask questions and Christians have to dig deeper, that's a great thing, a great opportunity for growth. And it does show a weakness in the church giving either no understanding of church history or a very stilted, one-sided, sugarcoated version.

On the other hand, it's important for me to say I don't think anyone can learn good church history from Brown. There's been a lot of debunking of what he calls facts. But again, the guy's writing fiction so nobody should be surprised about that. The sad thing is there's an awful lot of us who claim to be telling objective truth and we actually have our own propaganda and our own versions of history as well.

Let me mention one other thing about Brown's book that I think is appealing to people. The church goes through a pendulum swing at times from overemphasizing the deity of Christ to overemphasizing the humanity of Christ. So a book like Brown's that overemphasizes the humanity of Christ can be a mirror to us saying that we might be underemphasizing the humanity of Christ.

Sojourners: In light of The Da Vinci Code movie that is soon to be released, how do you hope churches will engage this story?

McLaren: I would like to see churches teach their people how to have intelligent dialogue that doesn't degenerate into argument. We have to teach people that the Holy Spirit works in the middle of conversation. We see it time and time again - Jesus enters into dialogue with people; Paul and Peter and the apostles enter into dialogue with people. We tend to think that the Holy Spirit can only work in the middle of a monologue where we are doing the speaking.

So if our churches can encourage people to, if you see someone reading the book or you know someone who's gone to the movie, say, "What do you think about Jesus and what do you think about this or that," and to ask questions instead of getting into arguments, that would be wonderful. The more we can keep conversations open and going the more chances we give the Holy Spirit to work. But too often people want to get into an argument right away. And, you know, Jesus has handled 2,000 years of questions, skepticism, and attacks, and he's gonna come through just fine. So we don't have to be worried.

Ultimately, The Da Vinci Code is telling us important things about the image of Jesus that is being portrayed by the dominant Christian voices. [Readers] don't find that satisfactory, genuine, or authentic, so they're looking for something that seems more real and authentic.

Dan Brown's book is indeed a page-turner of a story. Unfortunately, he intends to discredit Christianity, and he does it by playing fast and loose with history. This is not necessarily bad in a novel, but it's clear he wants us to take the history seriously, and to the extent people do, Brown bears an onus of guilt for deceiving them. His claim that he's only writing a novel, and that it's all fiction, is disingenuous. This is plain to anyone who reads the statement at the front of the book where he attests to the veracity of the historical material contained within it.

Roadmap to Victory

Hugh Hewitt offers this five-point plan for GOP victory in November:

Win the war.

Confirm the judges.

Cut the taxes.

Control the spending.

Secure the border.

Since Democrats oppose all five of these goals, that leaves the Republicans as the nation's only hope that they will be accomplished. Success in achieving a majority of them, many conservatives believe, would translate into Republicans prevailing at the polls. The question is whether the Democrats will allow this to happen or whether they will seek to obstruct attempts to enact policies which would very likely prove their undoing in November.

The Democrats' biggest hope, it would seem, is that none of these initiatives succeed and that the public, oblivious to why nothing is getting done and weary of treading water, votes for a change in Congress.

The Greatest Threat to Free Speech

A lot of Christians are very upset about what they see as an assault on their faith by The Da Vinci Code. Some are threatening legal action, at least in Europe. It is ironic that the movie houses and filmmakers, both of which stand to make a boodle on this film, would never have dreamed of making or showing a film which debunked or embarrassed Islam. Muslims have managed to frighten Hollywood into a state of craven self-censorship.

As Joseph Bottum writes at First Things the lesson will not be lost on the fringe elements among Christians who will ask themselves why violence should not be used if it works so effectively.

An entertainment culture that regularly perpetrates the most disgusting insults on the Christian faith, knowing that Christians will not slit their throats over it, recoils in terror from printing a few bland cartoons of Mohammed.

The greatest threat to free speech in this country is the willingness of those who make their living off of it to exploit it to offend only those who will not punish them for it. What good is free speech, people are going to wonder, if it can be employed to satirize one group but not another? What good is it if those who threaten violence are exempted from its barbs?

The failure of the media and the entertainment industry to stand up to Islamic intimidation will only encourage others who have been offended by those institutions, which depend upon the protections of the first amendment, to threaten violence themselves.

Robert Wright Discusses the Anthropic Principle

Robert wright interviews a number of thinkers who grapple with the telic implications of the anthropic principle. A brief video clip of a particularly interesting session with physicist turned theologian John Polkinghorne is here, and links to interviews with Freeman Dyson, Owen Gingrich, and Brian Swimme can be found there as well. Swimme, by the way, does a pretty good job of convincing the listener that the universe must have been designed while trying vigorously to avoid that conclusion himself.

It seems to many that our universe is so astonishingly fine-tuned for life that either it is the product of purposeful design or there must exist a near infinite number of other universes in addition to our own. If there are enough worlds, the thinking goes, then every possible world, no matter how improbable, would have to exist among them. Since ours is a possible world it would have to exist, and therefore we shouldn't be too surprised that it does.

A lot of thinkers, including many who don't want to accept the conclusion that our world is intentionally designed, are very uncomfortable with the many-worlds hypothesis. They don't like the fact that there is no evidence for other worlds, and it's hard to imagine how there could be or how any test for another universe could be conducted. They're also uncomfortable with the obvious flouting of the principle that the most parsimonious explanations which fit all the facts are to be preferred in both science and philosophy. There's nothing parsimonious about an explanation which posits a near infinite number of entities that no one has, or could, observe. Moreover, the source of these other worlds seems problematic. How are they being produced? Is there some sort of universe generator that manufactures universes? If so, what sorts of laws would govern it? Where did it come from?

Finally, we might ask of the advocates of the many-worlds hypothesis why it is, given that we have evidence of minds producing order, complexity and fine-tuning but no evidence of other worlds existing, that they would embrace the speculation that they do. If this embrace is merely an act of desperation to enable them to escape the inference that there is a cosmic designer then why do they feel the need to do that? Why is the existence of a cosmic designer more philosophically repugnant to them than the existence of an infinite number of worlds?

Global Warming

Worried about global warming or do you think global warming is a bunch of hooey? Either way, Mark Steyn's column on the matter, like his columns on just about any matter, is a must read:

Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: He feels good by feeling bad.

But what to worry about? Iranian nukes? Nah, that's just some racket cooked up by the Christian fundamentalist Bush and his Zionist buddies to give Halliburton a pretext to take over the Persian carpet industry. Worrying about nukes is so '80s. "They make me want to throw up. . . . They make me feel sick to my stomach," wrote the British novelist Martin Amis, who couldn't stop thinking about them 20 years ago. In the intro to a collection of short stories, he worried about the Big One and outlined his own plan for coping with a nuclear winter wonderland:

"Suppose I survive," he fretted. "Suppose my eyes aren't pouring down my face, suppose I am untouched by the hurricane of secondary missiles that all mortar, metal and glass has abruptly become: Suppose all this. I shall be obliged (and it's the last thing I feel like doing) to retrace that long mile home, through the firestorm, the remains of the thousands-miles-an-hour winds, the warped atoms, the groveling dead. Then -- God willing, if I still have the strength, and, of course, if they are still alive -- I must find my wife and children and I must kill them."

But the Big One never fell. And instead of killing his wife Martin Amis had to make do with divorcing her.

Read the rest at the link. It's funny.

For Puzzle-Solvers

Those readers who enjoy a challenging diversion now and then are invited to go here and see if you can figure out how the gap in the second triangle is created simply by rearranging the parts of the first.

The answer appears in the comments below the diagrams.

Taking Down the Bad Guys

Task Force 145, the special operations outfit assigned to hunt al-Zarqawi and other high value targets, struck over the weekend in Samarra. Bill Roggio has the report:

Over the past month, Task Force 145, the special operations unit designated to hunt Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other high value al-Qaeda targets, has dismantled al-Qaeda cells in the cities of Yusifiyah and Balad. It appears Task Force 145 has struck at two more al-Qaeda cells and killed a senior member of Ansar al-Islam over the weekend. On Friday, two al-Qaeda cells were dismantled near the city of Samarra.

On Saturday, [the task force arrested or killed] Ali Wali (a.k.a. Abbas bin Farnas bin Qafqa) who is described as "Ansar al-Islam's military command responsible for training and military operations including the planning of suicide operations, ambushes and kidnappings... an expert in the implementation of explosives as well as in the use of artillery, tanks and anti-aircraft weapons... and allegedly was an expert in toxins and poisons."

Here is how CENTCOM describes the action in their press release:

As the troops moved to intercept a vehicle occupied by three suspected al-Qaida associates, the assault force simultaneously took small arms fire from a nearby house. While the troops positioned to stop the car, armed men exited the house, two carrying shoulder-fired rocket launchers and one firing a light machine gun. The forces quickly neutralized the threat emanating from the structure, located approximately 20 kilometers southwest of Samarra, with small arms and rockets fired from supporting aircraft. The troops then detained the three suspects located in the vehicle, finding two AK-47s, ammunition, two improvised grenades and one hand grenade. The forces were then provided another location of a second, related vehicle occupied by suspected al-Qaida associates; two more detainees were taken after the troops stopped the vehicle approximately 15 kilometers east of the first intercepted automobile. Troops later searched the safe house discovering mortar rounds and grenades. One of the five suspects detained is believed to be a senior al-Qaida associate. All are currently being questioned for their level and involvement in terrorist activity.

Roggio goes on to tell us that:

In related news, another "High-ranking leader of terrorist organization Al Qaeda" was arrested in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. Abdel Fatih Isa (a.k.a. Abu Aisha) is described as "the chief organizers of terrorist acts in capital Baghdad. According to military sources Abu Aisha was an officer from the Iraqi army during Saddam Hussein's rule..." The myth that secular Baathist and radical Islamists would never collaborate should be sufficiently shattered at this point.

Karbala and Baghdad have been targeted by suicide bombers over the past day, killing upwards of thirty Iraqis. The arrest of Abu Aisha may have spurred the attacks, as he can now compromise his network while under interrogation. His network is aware he is missing, and now are forced to "use it or lose it" as Task Force 145 is likely on the hunt.

The MSM always portrays a flurry of bombings as an indicator of the insurgency's continued vigor when in fact it may be a sign of waning capabilities due to the attrition of their leaders and material assets. To see what a difficult situation al-Qaeda has gotten itself into in Iraq read Ed Morrissey's analysis of a captured document penned by an al-Qaeda source and just released by CENTCOM.

The Democrats say we're losing in Iraq. By "losing" they evidently mean that we're winning more slowly than they think we should.

GOP Dithers at its Peril

John Fund at Opinion Journal lays out some of the reasons why Republicans are in trouble in 2006 and may lose their majority in the House of Representatives. If they do, they have nobody to blame but themselves:

Ken Mehlman is the unflappable efficiency expert who chairs the Republican National Committee. Because he's not known for histrionics, his warning last week to GOP congressional staffers about this November's elections caused many on Capitol Hill to bolt upright.

Mr. Mehlman traveled to Capitol Hill to warn the staffers that they risked a disaster at the polls if they didn't pass meaningful legislation the conservative base cares about. Other GOP strategists go even further. "If the election were held today, I'd say the odds are 90% that we'd lose the House," says GOP consultant Mike Murphy.

Other Republicans aren't as gloomy, but they warn the GOP Congress has to act on a range of issues soon. Some polls show public disapproval of the GOP among conservatives reaching dangerously high levels. A new Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that only 66% of Republicans now approve of President Bush's performance. A new Associated Press/Public Affairs poll found 45% of self-identified conservatives disapprove of Mr. Bush's job as president, and 65% disapprove of the GOP Congress.

Republicans are notorious for going into a prevent defense as soon as they get the lead. Once they captured the majority they simply stopped governing and settled for not losing. They ceased trying to institute conservative reforms in spending and immigration, especially, grovelled whenever the Democrats threatened to resist what initiatives they did come up with, and waxed apologetic whenever the Democrats accused them of being meanies. If in November the voters spank them for their indolence and timidity they will have deserved it.

One bright spot is that the Democrats have offered absolutely nothing to the voters except the assurance that they're not Republicans and the tacit promise that if they regain the House Bush will be impeached. As bad as the Republicans are the Democrats are much worse.

While the world is spinning out of control, the country is running serious deficits, our borders are wide open to anyone who wants to cross, the Republicans sit on their hands, and the Democrats seek revenge for the Clinton embarrassments. Makes you wonder why we send these people our taxes every year.

A Natural Law Case Against Torture

A friend directs our attention to a piece by Dane Shelly at the Institute For Global Engagement in which he outlines an argument which concludes that torture is an absolute moral wrong. After using the piano to illustrate that there are both proper and improper uses to which anything can be put, he writes:

Humans, no less than pianos, are created for a purpose. Treating them in ways that do not conform to that purpose is simply wrong. For this reason, torture is always wrong because that is not what we were created for.

God created humans in a way that gives moral weight to how we treat others. Torture, then, offends the natural order (and its Creator) for two reasons: Humans were not created to torture others, and humans were not created to be tortured.

The problem with Shelly's argument is that one can agree with everything he says without being compelled to accept his conclusion that torture is absolutely wrong. A couple of counterexamples may serve to show why.

Humans were not created to live in prison, or to imprison others, and therefore it would be wrong to incarcerate someone, unless there is just cause for doing so. The fact that imprisonment is a state of affairs for which we were not designed does not make it absolutely wrong.

I don't know how Shelly feels about gay marriage, but his premises would demand that he find it absolutely wrong since we were not created for homoerotic sex. Indeed, humans were not designed for anal intercourse, so Shelly would have to say that it's absolutely immoral for couples, whether homo or heterosexual, to engage in it. Shelly may in fact hold to that position, but if he doesn't then he's acknowledging that just because a certain behavior is not one for which we were created or designed doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

There is a danger in seeking to absolutize particular behavioral acts, whether it be capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, torture or whatever. There are certainly acts which are absolutely wrong (beating or burning a child, for example), but they are wrong because they always violate one or more of the absolute principles given to us in Scripture.

The Bible commands us absolutely to love God, do justice, and show compassion. Any act which is wrong is wrong because it violates one of these three imperatives. Torture, like killing, is almost always either unjust or uncompassionate, but there may be times, as there is with killing, when torture may be just and/or compassionate. In the same way that it may be both just and compassionate to kill a terrorist in order to save other peoples' lives, so, too, it may be both just and/or compassionate to torture him to save other peoples' lives. Of course, the terrorist himself might fail to see the compassion in it (Both justice and compassion constrain us to never inflict any more pain or suffering than what is necessary to elicit the life-saving information), but the would-be victims would certainly see it.

The existential burden of a thoughtful Christian life lies in trying to find the fulcrum around which justice and compassion balance. In the search for that pivot there are few easy answers.

Running Low on Resources

Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that George Bush recently got some encouraging news from one of his biggest critics, General Barry McCaffery:

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as President Clinton's drug czar and has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, recently returned from a trip to Iraq.

He concluded: "The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to creation of an Iraqi government."

Kelly's article outlines the late misfortunes of al-Qaeda in Iraq and points out that their most effective weapon against the Iraqis, the suicide bomber, is a dwindling asset which, by its nature, is a non-renewable resource. In Kelly's view al-Qaeda is likely to have a diminishing role to play in the insurgency in Iraq. It's an interesting column.

Educating Characters

This news report contains an interesting nugget:

MT. LEBANON, Pa. -- The Mt. Lebanon School District is responding to a list of raunchy ratings about its students. The "Top 25" list of 2006 grades high school girls on their body parts, and it also describes in crude detail sexual information about the girls. In one case, a racial slur was used.

Channel 11 News learned a 17-year-old boy has been suspended in connection with the list. It's not clear how long that student will be suspended or if other students will be punished.

The superintendent, George Wilson, said he was appalled to hear about the list and assured parents the situation is being treated very seriously. In his statement Thursday, Wilson said, "No one can begin to understand the hurt, embarrassment and humiliation these young women have had to endure. Those proven to be responsible will receive consequences that include disciplinary action, a requirement for atonement and character education."

The nugget is those last two words. How, we wonder, is this student going to have his character educated in a public school setting? Exactly what will the education consist of? Will he simply be told that it's wrong to be disrespectful of others? What if he asks why it is wrong? I suspect that that question will call forth a lot of hemming and hawing and "everybody knows" type answers and such like, all of which will likely be very unpersuasive to the young miscreant.

When the courts required public schools to expel God from their classrooms and hallways they forced them to abandon the sole meaningful and effective basis for character education they had. The only approaches left to them now are either an appeal to force (e.g."Treat others with respect or else"), or an appeal to sentiment ("Don't you see how much you've hurt these girls?"). Of course, the problem may well be that the adolescent playboy doesn't much care that he's hurt these girls, and the appeal to force doesn't teach what's right, it only teaches what's prudent. Besides, there is something doubtful about a society which abhors the idea of people imposing their values on others letting Superintendent Wilson get away with doing exactly that at public expense.

Superintendent Wilson may think he can teach character, but if the young pervert asks any questions at all about why he should believe or accept anything he's being told, that'll be the end of the lesson. Good character, he will have learned, consists in doing what those who are in authority arbitrarily tell you to do.

Contempt For One's Betters

Richard Cohen is a journalist, a newspaper opinion writer. One might think that that fact would be the source for him of a certain humility, but one would be wrong. Despite the fact that Mr. Cohen has no formal training in the sciences or in the philosophy of science (if he does, he keeps it well-hidden), he nevertheless feels confident to hold forth on topics in which he has no expertise and to make bold, dogmatic pronouncements on matters concerning which he knows nothing.

In this column, for example, he declares Intelligent Design theory to be "idiocy." How, we wonder, did he arrive at this conclusion? What research has he done on the matter? What books has he published? The sheer pomposity and fatuous arrogance of a man who collectively calls hundreds of thinkers in philosophy and the sciences who've devoted their lives to thinking about these things idiots is beyond breathtaking.

Even so, it might be a teensy bit more credible if the rest of his piece were not so flimsy, but, alas, flimsy thinking is not alien to Mr. Cohen's style.

Enthusiastically recommending a book on sociobiology, the notion that all of evolution is driven by genes striving to perpetuate themselves into the next generation, he makes claims like this as if it was common knowledge among biologists:

For instance, they [our genes] have ensured that newborns in general are not only cute but look alike -- so the charmed but possibly cuckolded male will accept them as his own.

Perhaps he has interviewed a few genes to score this scoop, but otherwise it's appropriate to ask how he knows that this is why babies tend to look alike. Why couldn't they look alike because at early stages of development there are only so many possible variations of appearance so they pretty much have to look alike. Never mind, Professor Cohen just knows that babies look all the same so that cuckolded fathers won't suspect their wives' infidelity.

Of course, Professor Cohen, Ph.D seems uncurious as to why, as children continue to develop, they look more and more different. Why don't our genes ensure that we look alike all through childhood so that the father never gets suspicious? What good does it do for the father to accept the child as an infant only to reject it a year or so on when it begins to dawn on him that he's raising another man's child? There is, we are to suppose, a satisfactory sociobiological reason why children tend to gradually take on diverse appearances, but Dr. Cohen doesn't share it with us.

Another myth concerns those cute chimps, one of whom, J. Fred Muggs, once co-hosted the "Today" show. They have 99 percent of a human being's DNA sequence, which may explain why humans and chimps are the only creatures to make war.

Or it may not explain anything. Several species of ants also make war, and presumably they have very little DNA in common with either chimps or humans. Humans, chimps, and ants all make war. What follows? Nothing that I can see.

Evolution is making us less aggressive and smarter, since, clearly, brains are better than brawn in the modern world.

And just as clearly there's not much reason to think that this is any more true than the rest of what he has said in this piece. How the eminent scholar Prof. Cohen, Ph.D can make the assertion that "Evolution is making us less aggressive and smarter" in the wake of the bloodiest century in human history escapes me, but if he really believes it's true, it would be nice of him to at least tell us why he does, but he doesn't.

Having thusly impressed us with his erudition, Dr. Cohen concludes his essay with this:

It is an odd paradox of our times that as science relentlessly validates Darwin's genius, American social conservatives push back with such idiocies as "intelligent design." They should read this book -- it even explains the evolutionary basis of religion -- to appreciate what will happen to them.

The author of an essay so liberally sprinkled with error and misconception would do well not to call further attention to his own inadequacies by claiming his intellectual betters to be idiots.

Bad News, Good News

In Pennsylvania Governor Rendell is pulling ahead and Senator Santorum is pulling even.

HARRISBURG -- Aided by a $1-million-plus TV advertising blitz, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell has opened a 14-point lead in his re-election campaign against Republican challenger Lynn Swann, according to the latest Pittsburgh Tribune-Review/WTAE-Channel 4 Keystone poll. The statewide poll of 578 registered voters released today also showed U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn Hills, has pulled within six points of his likely Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., of Scranton.

Santorum has come from a long way back and he still has a difficult slog ahead, but the trend is encouraging. It's interesting that in a recent voter survey significant numbers of people who said that they would vote for pro-life Democrat Bob Casey over very pro-life Republican Rick Santorum changed their minds when told that the National Organization for Women, an abortion rights advocacy group, was going to endorse Casey's Democratic primary opponent. A substantial number of respondents, when told this, said essentially that, "Well, if Casey's pro-life, then I'm voting for the Republican. I don't want anymore of those pro-lifers in the Senate."

Perhaps these potential voters have been vacationing in Tora Bora, Afghanistan for the last twelve years.

Six Million!?

This is hard to believe, but it is evidently true. Each year in Africa six million Muslims convert to Christianity. Read this interview with a Muslim scholar who does not deny the figure, though he understandably sees it as a tragedy.

Economic Saber Rattling

From the link:

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced here on Friday that within two months, his country will base its oil accounts on the EURO.

The Russian News Agency, Itar Tass, quoted Ahmadinejad as saying that Iran also intends to found a bourse at the Arabian Gulf's economic zone of Kish which will rely on the EURO currency in its accounts.

Nothing New Here

A must-read article for those interested in staying ahead of the game.

From the link:

And "as the decline in purchasing power of fiat currencies is magnified, gold will start attracting even more interest from individuals that are seeking an alternate 'currency'," said Emanuel Balarie, a senior market strategist at Wisdom Financial.

...

Now there are "trillions of dollars floating around and as people flee paper money (dollars), gold and silver money become attractive competitors," said Peter Spina, a chief investment strategist at GoldSeek.com.

One could say, "gold IS money," he said.

...

"As more and more investors start allocating more resources in gold, we could see $800 and as high as $1,000 by year's end," said John Person, president of National Futures Advisory Service.

"All the elements are in place for such a move, and it would not be unrealistic to achieve in a relatively short period of time," he said.

As I've said before, govern yourselves accordingly.