Another Indonesian Earthquake

Another disaster has struck Muslim Indonesia, killing almost 3000 people, and, as they did in the wake of the 2004 tsunami, the non-Muslim world is mobilizing to assist. We're sure that the absence of any mention of assistance from the Arab Muslim world is just an oversight.

Letter to First Things

A month ago I sent a letter to the journal First Things in response to an opinion piece by Robert T. Miller on why Intelligent Design should not be taught in public schools. Unfortunately, access to First Things is by subscription and his column is too lengthy to copy here. In any event, the recent issue has a very truncated version of my letter along with the submissions of others, including Michael Behe, to which Mr. Miller responds. My letter, slightly shortened, follows. The portions run by FT are italicized. I will post Mr. Miller's response tomorrow:

Robert T. Miller asserts in his article Darwin in Dover, PA (April 2006) that ID "is not science but neither is it religion." He explains that it's not science, at least in the strong sense, because a designer does not operate by law-like necessity. ID, he concludes, is metaphysics, a branch of philosophy, and thus does not belong in a science classroom.

Even if we grant Professor Miller's premise that intelligent design is philosophy and not real science, a point about which philosophers of science are certainly in dispute, it's not clear that his conclusion that ID should be kept out of science classes follows. There is much philosophy of science that science teachers, at least the good ones, discuss with their students everyday. For example, anyone sitting in on a high school honors science class might hear mention, overt or tacit, of any of the following:

1. Many universes: The idea that ours is just one of a nearly infinite number of universes all of which are closed off from each other thus defying detection.

2. Oscillating universes: The theory that our universe has expanded and collapsed an infinite number of times.

3. String theory: The idea that the fundamental units of material substance are unimaginably tiny vibrating filaments of energy.

4. Other dimensions: The theory that the four dimensions of space-time are only part of physical reality.

5. Principle of uniformity: The assumption that the laws and properties of the universe are homogenous and constant throughout the universe.

6. Assumption of uniformitarianism: The idea that the same processes and forces at work in the world today have always been at work at essentially the same rates.

7. Scientific method: The idea that there is a particular methodology that defines the scientific process which ought to be followed.

8. Law of parsimony: The principle that assumes that the simplest explanation which fits all the facts is the best.

9. Assumption that human reason is trustworthy: The notion that a faculty which has evolved because it made us better fit to survive is also a dependable guide to truth, which has no necessary connection to human survival.

10. Assumption that we should value truth: The idea that truth should be esteemed more highly than competing values, like, for instance, personal comfort.

11. Preference for naturalistic explanations: A preference based upon an untestable assumption that all knowable truth is found only in the natural realm.

12. Materialistic abiogenesis: The belief that natural forces are sufficient in themselves to have produced life.

13. Assumption that if something is physically possible and mathematically elegant then given the age of the universe it probably happened.

14. Assumption that the cosmos is atelic. I.e. that it has no purpose.

15. Assumption that there's a world external to our own minds.

16. Reductionism: The conviction that all phenomena, including mental phenomena, can be ultimately explained solely in terms of physics and chemistry.

17. Assumption that the universe arose out of a "vacuum matrix" rather than out of nothing.

18. Any ethical claim regarding the environment, nuclear power, cloning, or genetic engineering.

19. Memes: According to biologist Richard Dawkins memes are the cultural analog to genes. They are ideas or customs that are believed by Dawkins and others to get passed along according to their survival value rather than their truth value. An example of this, unfortunately, is the concept of the meme itself.

20. The criteria by which we distinguish science from non-science.

None of the above precipitate the levitation of a single eyebrow when they're discussed in public school science classrooms yet every one of them is a matter of metaphysical preference, not empirical fact. Why, then, must we suddenly wax squeamish when the philosophical topic turns to the possibility of an extra-cosmic designer?

Professor Miller also mentions that the argument for ID is weaker than arguments for traditional cosmological hypotheses because it's vulnerable to being falsified whereas cosmological fine-tuning arguments are not.

This is an interesting observation since it is explicitly denied by most of ID's opponents. One of the claims anti-IDers adduce in support of their view that ID is not science is that it can't be tested, i.e. falsified. If it's true, as Professor Miller avers, that ID is vulnerable to being falsified, then it must be testable, and thus the only valid grounds for proscribing it in public school science courses would be that it is indeed false. That ID actually is false, however, has yet to be demonstrated.

Moreover, Professor Miller is drawing a questionable distinction between design in the biosphere and design in the abiotic physical universe. If there really is a cosmic designer then it is reasonable, and parsimonious, to assume that it played a role not only in engineering the physical constants, parameters, and forces that govern the universe but also those processes which led to the origin and diversification of living things. In other words, intelligent design is a comprehensive theory. It seems somewhat arbitrary to maintain that the cosmos had a designer but that life is purely serendipitous.

Judge Jones, in presiding over the Dover ID trial, may have got things partially right, as Professor Miller says, but the part that he got right is that those who were pushing ID into the Dover biology curriculum were motivated by a religious purpose. This is really the only solid legal or philosophical grounds the Judge had for deciding the way he did. Nevertheless, there is a very troubling problem inherent in his reasoning on this point.

For a Christian everything one does is ultimately "religiously" motivated. There is no distinction in the life of the Christian between sacred and secular. If religious motivation is a disqualifier under Lemon v. Kurtzman, and it is, then Christians who take their faith seriously are constitutionally unfit to serve on school boards or in the classroom because it can be truthfully asserted that a religious motivation underlies everything they do. Any attempt to introduce ID, or anything else, for that matter, into a public school curriculum by anyone who can be shown to be a devout Christian is ipso facto impermissible under Lemon. That would seem to put the Lemon test at odds with the religious protections guaranteed by the first amendment.

Of course, there is a religious motivation behind everything the non-believer does as well, since, as Roy Clouser reminds us in The Myth of Religious Neutrality, there is no such thing as religious neutrality, but Judge Jones was unfortunately never made aware of this fact of philosophical life in the course of his deliberations. It is, parenthetically, an oddity of the Judge's ruling that the materialist claim that natural processes are adequate by themselves to account for living things is considered science, but its contrary, the claim that natural processes are not adequate by themselves to account for living things, is deemed religious.

#1

Here's Michael Long's explanation for his pick as the best conservative rock song ever:

If conservatism were expressed as one line from which the rest could flow, it might be this: Human nature does not change. This is not pessimism so much as realism: The banners of every war are carried over from the last. Liberation should live between quotation marks, because new regimes are so often similar to those that came before. Thus the French Revolution gives rise to the tyranny of Napoleon.

Or you could put it this way: The party on the left will become the party on the right-revolutions slide from attack into self-preservation. They begin softly, like the insistent synthesizer that drives the track, and then roar into the main, all power chords and bullet holes. But it always ends in a throat-ripping scream.

Almost without exception, revolutionaries are greedy little prigs, planning utopia while measuring for the office drapes. Sometimes they swear to put the public itself in charge. That's what Brother Karl proposed to do. But this never comes to pass, since every selfless idealist so far has decided that the populace wise enough to propel him to power is not quite wise enough to hold the reins themselves.

It's not just the Left. Anyone who has watched our own government has met the new boss and come away with the scent of the old boss in his clothes. Forty years of Democratic rule in the House of Representatives turned to bloat and arrogance. A decade of Republican dominance is now yielding much the same thing. Revolution, where is thy sting?

Power corrupts both Left and Right, hence the deep conservative passion for reducing the power of government itself. Some of us go further, advocating that we smash government into little bits that, if need be, can be crushed under your shoe or dusted off the collar with your fingertips. Better to keep the burden light, since at some point we will have to throw off the burden. We get fooled again and again. We always do.

Civilization that lasts more than a lifetime requires understanding all this: that the world is a place where human nature does not change and where revolutions are coming-out parties for perfectionists with shotguns. The only lasting revolutions are personal and spiritual and they may be the only way-to "get on my knees and pray"-we don't get fooled again.

If you haven't figured it out yet go here. The entire list of fifty songs is here.

Neil Postman's Commencement Address

Last year at this time I posted a graduation speech composed by Neil Postman. Despite his numerous achivements, Postman was never invited anywhere to deliver such an address so he made the speech available to anyone who wanted to use it. It's a speech that every graduate could hear or read with profit:

Members of the faculty, parents, guests, and graduates, have no fear. I am well aware that on a day of such high excitement, what you require, first and foremost, of any speaker is brevity. I shall not fail you in this respect. There are exactly eighty-five sentences in my speech, four of which you have just heard. It will take me about twelve minutes to speak all of them and I must tell you that such economy was not easy for me to arrange, because I have chosen as my topic the complex subject of your ancestors. Not, of course, your biological ancestors, about whom I know nothing, but your spiritual ancestors, about whom I know a little. To be specific, I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many years ago but whose influence is still with us. They were very different from each other, representing opposite values and traditions. I think it is appropriate for you to be reminded of them on this day because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other.

The first group lived about 2,500 years ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens. We do not know as much about their origins as we would like. But we do know a great deal about their accomplishments. They were, for example, the first people to develop a complete alphabet, and therefore they became the first truly literate population on earth. They invented the idea of political democracy, which they practiced with a vigor that puts us to shame. They invented what we call philosophy. And they also invented what we call logic and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science, and one of them-Democritus by name-conceived of the atomic theory of matter 2,300 years before it occurred to any modern scientist. They composed and sang epic poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the power to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood higher than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology.

About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language spread all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to speak on any subject without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago.

The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them. They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders-ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics.

Like the Athenians, the Visigoths also disappeared, but not before they had ushered in the period known as the Dark Ages. It took Europe almost a thousand years to recover from the Visigoths.

Now, the point I want to make is that the Athenians and the Visigoths still survive, and they do so through us and the ways in which we conduct our lives. All around us-in this hall, in this community, in our city-there are people whose way of looking at the world reflects the way of the Athenians, and there are people whose way is the way of the Visigoths. I do not mean, of course, that our modern-day Athenians roam abstractedly through the streets reciting poetry and philosophy, or that the modern-day Visigoths are killers. I mean that to be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organize your life around a set of values. An Athenian is an idea. And a Visigoth is an idea. Let me tell you briefly what these ideas consist of.

To be an Athenian is to hold knowledge and, especially the quest for knowledge in high esteem. To contemplate, to reason, to experiment, to question-these are, to an Athenian, the most exalted activities a person can perform. To a Visigoth, the quest for knowledge is useless unless it can help you to earn money or to gain power over other people.

To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind's most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth's language aspires to nothing higher than the clich�.

To be an Athenian is to understand that the thread which holds civilized society together is thin and vulnerable; therefore, Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order. The modern Visigoth cares very little about any of this. The Visigoths think of themselves as the center of the universe. Tradition exists for their own convenience, good manners are an affectation and a burden, and history is merely what is in yesterday's newspaper.

To be an Athenian is to take an interest in public affairs and the improvement of public behavior. Indeed, the ancient Athenians had a word for people who did not. The word was idiotes, from which we get our word "idiot." A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community.

And, finally, to be an Athenian is to esteem the discipline, skill, and taste that are required to produce enduring art. Therefore, in approaching a work of art, Athenians prepare their imagination through learning and experience. To a Visigoth, there is no measure of artistic excellence except popularity. What catches the fancy of the multitude is good. No other standard is respected or even acknowledged by the Visigoth.

Now, it must be obvious what all of this has to do with you. Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths. That is why there are so many more Visigoths than Athenians. And I must tell you that you do not become an Athenian merely by attending school or accumulating academic degrees. My father-in-law was one of the most committed Athenians I have ever known, and he spent his entire adult life working as a dress cutter on Seventh Avenue in New York City. On the other hand, I know physicians, lawyers, and engineers who are Visigoths of unmistakable persuasion. And I must also tell you, as much in sorrow as in shame, that at some of our great universities, perhaps even this one, there are professors of whom we may fairly say they are closet Visigoths. And yet, you must not doubt for a moment that a school, after all, is essentially an Athenian idea. There is a direct link between the cultural achievements of Athens and what the faculty at this university is all about. I have no difficulty imagining that Plato, Aristotle, or Democritus would be quite at home in our class rooms. A Visigoth would merely scrawl obscenities on the wall.

And so, whether you were aware of it or not, the purpose of your having been at this university was to give you a glimpse of the Athenian way, to interest you in the Athenian way. We cannot know on this day how many of you will choose that way and how many will not. You are young and it is not given to us to see your future. But I will tell you this, with which I will close: I can wish for you no higher compliment than that in the future it will be reported that among your graduating class the Athenians mightily outnumbered the Visigoths.

Thank you, and congratulations.

Thanks to Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost from whom I was able to borrow the speech.

What the World Needs Now

Mary Katherine Ham deconstructs the difference between how our institutions handled the case of the Duke lacrosse players and Taheri-azar. You don't know who Taheri-azar is? That's pretty much the point. She concludes her piece with this.

I have heard it said that what America needs to win the war on Islamofascism is moral clarity - a strong belief that our ideology and theirs are not comparable; that there is a good and an evil and we are on the good side; that Western civilization, for all its faults, is a damn sight better than that which seeks to destroy it.

Taheri-azar and the Duke lacrosse players were all technically innocent until proven guilty. In one case, public officials, the press, and the local community did their best to deny the accused that particular courtesy of American justice. Tellingly, it was not the case of the murderous thug who confessed to attempting to kill his classmates [at UNC by running them over with his car], in a fashion reminiscent of Mohammad Atta, just for being non-Muslims - and then detailed his plans and motivations in letters to a local paper.

Moral clarity is what we need. It was in short supply in a pair of college towns this spring.

Read the whole thing. It's very good.

Debunking the Anti-Bush Myths

Here's Peter Whener at The Wall Street Journal:

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn...

Which he proceeds to do. In the process he demonstrates how irresponsible, perhaps even dishonest but certainly reckless, many of his critics are. He closes with this:

These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.

It is indeed strange to hear people still today - when so much evidence of Saddam's complicity with terrorists has been unearthed and so many good reasons have been adduced for assuming that Saddam was working on WMD - it is indeed strange to see people clinging tenaciously to the myth that Bush lied about these things. I suppose there are psychological reasons for the tightness with which Bush's opponents grasp these thin reeds. To admit that they were completely and utterly wrong in their assessment of the president would be so devastating to their ego and to their credibility that they cannot bring themselves to do it.

They'd rather ignore the evidence and continue to impugn the president's character than to face up to the fact that they have been miserably and detestably irresponsible and wrong. Professing themselves to be wise they prefer nevertheless to look like fools rather than admit their error.

National Review's Top Five

Earlier this week we mentioned National Review's ranking of the fifty most conservative rock songs, and noted that the compiler of the list, Michael Long, would be counting down the top five this week. Number five is here, along with Long's explanation for why the song merits inclusion on such a list, number four is here, number three is here, and number two is here.

Number one will be announced tomorrow along with the other forty-five.

Sick Man

Here's left-wing British MP George Galloway staking out his accustomed terrain in the febrile swamps of moral depravity:

The Respect MP George Galloway has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder Tony Blair.

In an interview with GQ magazine, the reporter asked him: "Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?"

Mr Galloway replied: "Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq - as Blair did."

It is just a short step, perhaps an imperceptibly short step, from justifying a man's murder to hoping for it or calling for it. Try to imagine a member of the House of Representatives saying that the murder of George Bush would be justified. There have been a number of people on the left who have made somewhat similar statements but no one, so far as I know, of such lofty position as George Galloway enjoys in England.

He is a sick man.

Ominous News

This does not sound good:

Military activity in the Gulf has been increasing tremendously in the past few months. According to British sources, the stock of weapons, missiles and combat planes in the six neighboring countries to Iran is now three times what it was at the onset of the Iraq war in 2003.

This arsenal is also composed of submarines, destroyers belonging to Iran and also to the international community in the Sea of Oman. An impressive number of offensive and defensive weapons are also deployed in the region. For instance, since March ,Gulf refineries and vital oil installations are protected by batteries of Patriot missiles. Furthermore, according to the Kuwaiti daily Al Seyassah, the US has built a massive stock of oil and could ask the temporary stop of Gulf refineries in order to prevent heavy damage in case of an Iranian attack. Iran has indeed warned Gulf monarchies that their oil facilities would be the first target in case of a US operation on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Let's hope that if war with Iran breaks out the Bush administration has lots of allies on board. Being solely responsible for a shock to the world's oil supply would create enormous ill-will both at home and abroad, even if the war is necessary to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

The Liberal Plan For Victory

Will Marshall and Jeremy Rosner tell us what the Democrats' plan for the war on terror should be. Not surprisingly the plan is to do pretty much what the Bush administration is already doing:

Democrats should begin by reaffirming their party's commitment to progressive internationalism -- the belief that America can best defend itself by building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy.

Progressive internationalism occupies the vital center between the neo-imperial right and the noninterventionist left, between a view that assumes our might always makes us right, and one that assumes that because America is strong it must be wrong. It stresses the responsibilities that come with our enormous power: to use force with restraint but not to hesitate to use it when necessary; to show what the Declaration of Independence called "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind"; to exercise leadership primarily through persuasion rather than coercion; to reduce human suffering where we can; and to bolster alliances and global institutions committed to upholding an increasingly democratic world order.

By applying the organizing principles of progressive internationalism -- national strength, equal opportunity, liberal democracy, U.S. leadership for collective security -- Democrats can design a strategy that will defeat Islamist extremism. That strategy should specifically revolve around five key imperatives:

First, we must marshal all of America's manifold strengths, starting with our military power but going well beyond it, for the struggle ahead.

Second, we must rebuild America's alliances, because democratic solidarity is one of our greatest strategic assets.

Third, we must champion liberal democracy in deed, not just in rhetoric, because a freer world is a safer world.

Fourth, we must renew U.S. leadership in the international economy and rise to the challenge of global competition.

Fifth, we must summon from the American people a new spirit of national unity and shared sacrifice.

Okay. The Bush administration hasn't been too good on number five, but what is Marshall and Rosner's alternative? A military draft? Nooo. It's raising taxes. Like "progressives" everywhere they propose that we all share the burden of the war by making ourselves all worse off than we are now. Sounds like a winner in '08.

Bush's Chance

Dick Morris thinks that Bush's best chance for a political resurrection is to get pump prices down. He notes that:

As incredible - and almost sacrilegious - as it seems, Iraq has faded as the dominant political issue even though we are still losing 50 to 60 good young men and women there every month.

And - even after a prime-time speech and a solid week of congressional action on the subject - immigration runs a distant third to pump prices as the major topic of conversation these days.

I doubt that Morris is correct about this. If Bush signs a weak immigration bill he's going to permanently alienate his base, and, in my opinion, the Republicans will lose their majority, if not in 2006 then certainly in 2008. Bush's only hope for political resurrection lies in the House of Representatives. If they can negotiate a tough compromise bill with the senate in conference committee - a bill which closes our borders - and Bush signs it, then he can recover. If not, conservatives all across the country are going to throw up their hands in disgust, and it'll take years to win them back to the Republican fold.

From Our Feedback

Your post on Rollins cracked me up. I'll have to check it out. Before coming to Christ I worshipped Rollins. I went to hear his band multiple times, read his books, and went to his spoken word performances. :)

MR

UPDATE: Here's a picture of Henry Rollins sharing his affection for Christians and ID supporters:

Or maybe this is really Senator John McCain in disguise telling us what we can do with our desire to stop illegal immigration.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Defining Our Terms

Telic Thoughts has a discussion of the nature of "metaphysical naturalism" here to which I've submitted the following comment:

One of the fundamental problems in the debate over design is the vagueness of the terms "natural" and "supernatural." What exactly are natural or supernatural entities? Is a natural entity simply something which is part of the space-time universe and a supernatural entity something which transcends this universe?

If so, then those cosmologists wrestling with theories about "other worlds" are really doing theology, not science. If, however, we wish to consider the theorizing of cosmologists to be legitimate science then we have to say that excluding theorizing about an extra-cosmic designer from science is an arbitrary and unwarranted step.

For all we know, the designer could be a denizen of one of those universes or it could be the "generator" which manufactures those universes.

In other words, the concept of other worlds effectively erases the natural/supernatural distinction and greatly expands the purview of science.

The question then becomes not whether talk of a designer is scientific or not but whether there is reason to think that our universe and the living things in it show evidence of intention and intelligent engineering.

The next time someone tells you that Intelligent Design is not science because it invokes the supernatural and science only deals with what is natural ask them what they mean by those terms. Chances are they won't be able to give a coherent, non-arbitrary reply.

Steadfast Ally

Australian Prime Minister John Howard recently gave a marvelous speech in which he offered much praise of the United States. I'm trying to imagine this speech coming from, say, Harry Reid, but I can't:

No global challenge could be secured without American power and purpose, Prime Minister John Howard has declared in a vigorous defence of the role played by the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks. "Without American leadership, the trials and tragedies of recent years could be but a prelude of darker days to come," Mr Howard said in an address yesterday to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. "With American leadership, we can build a better world - not just for us, but for all."

Sharpening his call for the US to play a greater role in global affairs, Mr Howard told the council: "To the voices of anti-Americanism around the world, to those who shout 'Yankee go home', let me offer some quiet advice: be careful what you wish for."

Mr Howard said the imperative of American global leadership was one of three defining truths "in this age of global opportunity and uncertainty". The other truths were that, "we live as never before in a world of blurred boundaries" and that liberal democracies had to respond with "a synthesis of interests and values; a marriage of national strategy with national character".

1. Addressing specific global challenges, Mr Howard:

2. Reaffirmed the commitment to match the resolve of the US in Iraq. "Australia is with you. We will stay the course. We will finish the job," he said.

3. Described Iran's refusal to back down on its pursuit of uranium enrichment as a challenge for the United Nations.

4. Predicted that the emergence of a global middle class, particularly in China and India, would be one of the most momentous trends of the 21st century.

5. Defined China's rise as the defining phenomenon of the age.

6. Praised Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, saying he was tackling the enormous challenges facing Indonesia robustly and admirably.

Mr Howard also said none of the problems in the Asia-Pacific region - including in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula - could be resolved, or even managed, without US leadership and engagement. He said the key to relations with China was "building on shared interests and widening the circle of co-operation, while dealing openly and honestly on issues where we might disagree".

Acknowledging a greater wariness towards China's growth in the US, Mr Howard cautioned that not only China needed to adjust to changing realities. "The international community must also acknowledge that China is determined to succeed and to reclaim its place in the global order." Before the speech, Mr Howard played down the personal significance of the glowing reception and lavish praise he received in Washington from President George Bush and others.

"I see everything that has happened over the past few days as a compliment to my country, not to me," he said. "This is a wonderful endorsement of the importance of Australia to the United States, of the respect America has for Australia no matter who the prime minister is."

That respect is due to the fact that unlike most other Western countries, Australia sees clearly the threat we are all facing and is resolved to resist it. Western civilization is surrounded by those who want nothing more than to destroy it, including China and Russia. Most of the West has buried their heads in the sand and refuse to face up to what's happening. The U.S., Britain, Australia, Israel and a very few others, alone among the world's civilized nations, refuse to capitulate to the forces which plot it's destruction.

Fighting in Afghanistan

Bill Roggio summarizes the latest news from the fighting in Afghanistan in two posts at Counterterrorism blog:

Coalition forces continue to maintain the offensive against the Taliban in Southeast Afghanistan. A joint task force of Afghan and Coalition security forces encountered "organized armed opposition" from the Taliban during a joint operation near the town of Azizi in Uruzgan province. Twenty Taliban were confirmed killed, with up to 80 suspected killed after a combined ground and air assault on Taliban positions. This would put the number of Taliban killed in action over the past week between 220 to 280. In a separate raid, Mullah Mohibullah, the Taliban commander for Helmand province, was captured in a bazaar in Uruzgan province.

The engagement in Azizi follows a week of combat in the southeastern provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan, Helmand and Ghazni. The majority of the fighting has been initiated by joint Afghan-Coalition operations designed to root out Taliban strongholds and safe havens in the region....Afghan and Coalition forces are pushing into relatively uncharted territory and are now encountering resistance from the Taliban and their allies.

The lopsided results of operations in Azizi, Panjwai and Zangi Abad are indicative of what happens when Taliban forces mass to wage open battles against Coalition and Afghan security forces. Even when the Taliban has initiated the combat, such as the ambushes in Musa Qala, Afghan security forces have been able to fend off the attacks and call for reinforcements of ground and air assets. Well-trained Western forces (and the Afghan Army in many instances) combined with Coalition air power has had a devastating effect on Taliban units attempting to fight in company-sized units or greater, and result in high Taliban casualties. Lately, the Taliban have begun to focus on the Afghan police, which are easier targets as they are not as well trained or equipped as the Afghan Army and Coalition forces.

Every spring since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 the Taliban has initiated a new spring offensive. By the end of the summer, their energy is spent after suffering high casualties and lopsided defeats on the battlefield. But there is no shortage of Taliban fighters just as long as the Taliban can freely recruit, train, arm and stage forces from Pakistan's tribal areas.

Earlier in the week Roggio reported this:

The latest estimate of Taliban casualties during the fighting over the past few days is approaching 200, with 25 Coalition, Afghan security forces and civilians killed. The Daily Times of Pakistan reports the fighting around Kandahar City, which was initiated by two separate Coalition operations, resulted in an estimated 100 Taliban killed. The U.S. military reported up to 60 Taliban were killed in the fighting at Musa Qala, where the Afghan security forces thwarted a major Taliban assault. Agence France-Presse reports two French commandos were killed and one wounded in an "engagement against the Taliban in the region of Kandahar" - during offensive operations. A U.S. soldier was also killed in Uruzgan. Fighting continued in Helmand through Saturday, as the Taliban ambushed an Afghan convoy. At least 15 Taliban and 4 Afghan soldiers were killed, and 13 Afghan soldiers are missing. the Afghan Army called for reinforcements and air support, and beat back the attack. The reporting continues to conflate Coalition and Taliban operations.

Assadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar reiterated the claim that three Taliban commanders were captured, and described them as "high-ranking Taliban, members of their leadership council." The arrest of Mullah Dadullah has not been confirmed, however a one legged man fitting Dadullah description is said to be in custody. A man claiming to be Dadullah phoned a Pakistani newspaper and refuted the claims.

In addition to the capture of three top Taliban leaders, and all the intelligencve they will divulge, the good news here is that the Afghan army appears to be able to handle much of the fighting on their own (along with a little help from coalition air support). The competence of the Afghans will continue to expand with time, just like that of the Iraqi forces.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are like the cartoon character Elmer Fudd. Each day he goes out to shoot Bugs Bunny and each day he winds up getting himself severely scorched. The Taliban just keep throwing themselves unthinkingly at the coalition with pretty much the same result each time.

Case Closed

The case for building a high-tech fence between the United States and Mexico has just been clinched. The only half-serious argument against building such a fence is that it wouldn't work. Now we know that that argument is just so much hot air. Here is Vicente Fox, president of Mexico on the subject:

Kicking off a four-day, three-state tour, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Tuesday that his nation wants to be part of the solution in the immigration debate, not the problem. "We don't set up walls, and that's not the way you're going to fix this situation," Fox said in Spanish to representatives of groups active in Utah's Mexican community. "It's not with fences that we are going to solve this problem."

It's a reliable rule of thumb that if Fox is saying that something is not a solution to illegal immigration then it is very likely to be exactly that.

See here for a good brief discussion of the issue.

Heavy Metal Head

Thank goodness for rockers, or ex-rockers. Where would we be without their penetrating insight into difficult philosophical and scientific problems? A rock vocalist by the name of Henry Rollins sets us straight about intelligent design and those contemptible Christians who promote it. His two and a half minute diatribe demonstrates a thorough and uncanny grasp of the issue. Or it demonstrates what a lot of dope and loud music can do to one's cognitive abilities.

Go here ("The New Dark Ages Are Upon Us") and click on the link to listen. Caution: Not for children.

Money? What Money?

Rep. William Jefferson (D.LA) has adopted the old Marion Barry ploy. When you're caught exposing yourself in public (figuratively speaking) blame the public for looking. Barry is the former mayor of Washington D.C. who was videotaped buying and smoking crack cocaine. He claimed that he should not be found guilty because he was a victim of government entrapment.

When you're guilty and you have no other defense, blame the police.

Jefferson was taped accepting $100,000 in bribe money but is declaring his innocence. The FBI, apparently, had no business searching his office and the fact that they found the money in his freezer is no reason why his constituents should think that he is anything but an innocent victim of unconstitutional government overreach.

We're expecting that soon he will be attributing the whole thing to rampant racism in the Bush administration which, at the behest of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, had the money planted in his freezer. The sad thing is a lot of people on the left will believe him.

Iraq and the Talking Dog

The Iraqis have sworn in a 37 member cabinet. These people are incredibly brave. By accepting this call they have placed their lives and the lives of their loved ones on the target list of the orcs who wish to return Iraq to the savage days of fear, wood chippers, and mass killings. They need our prayers.

It will go unmentioned by the MSM, of course, that this is yet another in a series of major steps that Iraq has taken toward the formation of a sovereign state. As of now the Iraqis have a representative democratic government. This is truly an amazing achievement in the Arab world and though critics will complain that it should have been - and could have been - done more wisely, the fact that it has been done at all is astounding.

Nevertheless, the whiners and complainers will wail that there's still so much to unaccomplished, the country is not stable, Iran is too influential, the war is costing too much money, Zarqawi and Bin Laden still haven't been caught, Americans and Iraqis are still dying, electricity for some people is still limited, and on and on, preferring to see only how far we have to go and ignoring how far we've come.

The Democratic sourpusses and other critics of the administration's accomplishment in Iraq remind me of little children in the back of the car impatiently complaining because we haven't "gotten there yet." They're like the man who owns the dog in this old story:

A guy is driving around Tennessee and he sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog For Sale."

He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a Labrador retriever sitting there.

"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep," the Lab replies.

"So, what's your story?"

The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

"Ten dollars," the guy says.

"Ten dollars?! This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"

"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that stuff."

No Peaceful Coexistence For Dawkins

Just as Eugenie Scott and others are trying to convince the American public that evolutionary theory has no implications for Christianity, along comes Richard Dawkins telling us this:

The suicide bomber is convinced that in killing for his God he will be fast tracked to a special martyr's heaven. This isn't just a problem of Islam. In this program I want to examine that dangerous thing that's common to Judaism and Christianity as well. The process of non-thinking called faith. I'm a scientist [well, actually, I just talk about science these days] and I believe there is a profound contradiction between science and religious belief. There is no well demonstrated reason to believe in God. And I think the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe. The 21st Century should be an age of reason, yet irrational militant faith is back on the march. Religious extremism is implicated in the world's most bitter and unending conflicts. America too has its own fundamentalists. And in Britain, even as we live in the shadow of Holy Terror, our government wants to restrict our freedom to criticize religion. Science we are told should not tread on the toes of theology. But why should scientists tip toe respectfully away? The time has come [when] people of reason should say enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous....

People like to say that faith and science can live together side by side, but I don't think they can. They're deeply opposed. Science is a discipline of investigation and constructive doubt, questioning with logic, evidence, and reason to draw conclusions. Faith, by stark contrast, demands a positive suspension of critical faculties. Science proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas, or models, and then attempts to disprove them. So a scientist is constantly asking questions, being skeptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

According to Bill Dembski, Dawkins goes on:

referring to religious faith as a "delusion," "superstition," "backward belief system," "shallow pretense," "parasite," and "supporting Bronze Age myths." He refers to evangelicalism as "an American Taliban." He contends that "the abundance and variety of life on earth may seem improbable, but it's self-evidently futile to invent an improbable god to explain that very improbability." Later, when contrasting evolution with creationism, he announces, "Evolution by natural selection is supported by mountains of evidence, while creation contradicts the evidence and is only backed by some ancient scribblings."

So much for the idea of peaceful coexistence between evolution and theism. For Dawkins and his allies, the controversy between evolution and intelligent design is more than a philosophical dispute, it's a major battle in a war against theism. Dawkins' greatest concern is not convincing people that evolution is true, but rather discrediting religious belief.

Why is that? We have no way of knowing, of course, but it can be said that a man who has invested his whole life in a set of metaphysical assumptions, who has based everything on the truth of those assumptions, is going to feel deeply disturbed when those assumptions are threatened. Such a threat poses a challenge to the very core of his being. In response to such a challenge he will often mobilize every resource at his disposal, including invective, to defeat it.

Theism in general, and Intelligent Design in particular, pose a severe challenge to Dawkins' outspoken atheism and evolutionism. His professional credibility is on the line. If his critics can convince people that they're right, Dawkins will be relegated to the dustbin of scientific history. He will be seen as a curiosity who had nothing substantial to contribute. He'll be seen as a man who was fundamentally wrong. This is a hell many intellectuals cannot endure and perhaps Dawkins is one of them. Thus, perhaps he feels the need to wage war, personal and professional, against anyone who opposes him, and especially against theists.