Dionne's Dhimmitude

E.J. Dionne thinks the Pope was wrong to slap the Muslims in the face. Of course. For those with a dhimmi mind-set it's always wrong to criticize, even truthfully, one's Islamic masters:

But then why did Benedict take his shot at Islam? And why didn't he pause to acknowledge that at various moments in history, Christians, including Catholics, have themselves been guilty of inappropriate uses of violence?

"Inappropriate uses of violence" by Christians? What the adherents of a religion do was hardly the point of this part of the Pope's message. The words he quoted claimed that the teachings of Mohammed, wherever they offered something not present in the sacred texts of the Jews and Christians, were evil and inhumane. This may be a bit of an exaggeration to be sure, but the Pope's eye was on the means by which Muhammed taught that Islam was to be spread. There can be little disagreement in the West that a religious teacher who countenances violence and murder in order to convert people is indeed countenancing evil. If Mr. Dionne can find in the teaching of Jesus anything that endorses anything remotely similar then I'll grant his point, but failing that, his question as to why the Pope didn't mention that Christians sometimes behave "inappropriately" is absurd.

Dionne then serves up this masterful understatement:

Benedict's defenders have a point when they question whether his comments fully justify the explosion against him in the Muslim world. A significant number of Muslim religious leaders have said some harsh things about Christians, Jews and Western secularists in recent years. Would that all of Benedict's Muslim critics were as critical of anti-Christian or anti-Jewish statements from their own side.

If "harsh" is an adequate synonym for "vile and despicable" then Dionne is correct. Otherwise, his description of the invective to which Jews and Christians are subjected in the mosques and madrassas falls short of conveying the violence of their speech by several orders of magnitude. It is beyond parody that people who can say the sort of things these people say and believe about Christians and Jews can be so incensed by the simple claim that the prophet Mohammed taught some things that were evil and inhumane.

The proper response to the Pope's words, the civilized response, is to try to show that he is incorrect. Instead many Muslims have chosen a response that shows clearly that he is not.

Dionne thinks that rapprochment between the West and moderate Muslims requires more delicate diplomacy on the part of the West's spokespersons. Not at all. What it requires is blunt truth-telling. The best way to persuade Islamic moderates, a group whose size is difficult to assess due to their silence, is to make them see how much of a black eye the extremists are giving their faith and their God. If Christians were prosyletizing at the point of a dagger Mr. Dionne would have no trouble summoning the indignation necessary to call the evil by its name. Nor should he. Why then shrink from identifying that which is similarly evil in contemporary Islam, and why criticize someone, like the Pope, who does have the courage to speak the truth even if Mr. Dionne doesn't like hearing it?

Good Casting

Here's a funny news story:

Actor Sean Penn may wind up portraying legendary physicist Albert Einstein for a joint U.S.-Italian TV film production.

The selection of Penn must've been made by the same casting director who wanted Paris Hilton to portray Mother Teresa.

The Demise of "Never Works"

One of the chief arguments in favor of absolutely prohibiting torture (whatever constitutes torture) is that it doesn't ever work. Since it doesn't produce reliable intelligence, the argument goes, it is always wrong to employ it on a terror suspect.

The argument fails to be persuasive because the premise that it never works is so obviously dubious and that in cases where there is no other way to get the information to prevent an atrocity, security officials should be allowed to at least take the chance. The absolutists remain steadfast, however, that harsh interrogations never produce accurate, actionable intel.

That fervent conviction took a pretty severe jolt when it was reported last month that it was intelligence gleaned from Pakistan's harsh interrogation of Rashid Rauf, one of the plotters in the plan to blow up ten airliners departing from Britain, that led to the short-circuit of that horrific plot.

The "never works" dogma takes another hit in a report by ABC news chief Brian Ross who appeared last night on Bill O'Reilly's show. The video of Ross and O'Reilly is here. Ross claims that the "never works" argument is simply factually wrong. Scroll to the video screen and click on it to view the video. The most significant material comes toward the end.

Dos Amigos

The following pics explain everything you need to know about why Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez feels the way he does about George Bush and the United States:

People judge you by the friends you keep and the books you read. On both counts Hugo shows bad judgment:

A Skeptical Mathematician

Mathematician and computer engineer Granville Sewell explains why he's skeptical of the Darwinian explanation for life's origin and complexity. He introduces his paper with this:

When Dr. Behe [author of Darwin's Black Box] was at the University of Texas El Paso in May of 1997 to give an invited talk, I told him that I thought he would find more support for his ideas in mathematics, physics and computer science departments than in his own field. I know a good many mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists who, like me, are appalled that Darwin's explanation for the development of life is so widely accepted in the life sciences. Few of them ever speak out or write on this issue, however--perhaps because they feel the question is simply out of their domain. However, I believe there are two central arguments against Darwinism, and both seem to be most readily appreciated by those in the more mathematical sciences.

He then proceeds to offer his two arguments. Here's one:

Although we may not be familiar with the complex biochemical systems discussed in this book, I believe mathematicians are well qualified to appreciate the general ideas involved. And although an analogy is only an analogy, perhaps the best way to understand Behe's argument is by comparing the development of the genetic code of life with the development of a computer program. Suppose an engineer attempts to design a structural analysis computer program, writing it in a machine language that is totally unknown to him. He simply types out random characters at his keyboard, and periodically runs tests on the program to recognize and select out chance improvements when they occur. The improvements are permanently incorporated into the program while the other changes are discarded.

If our engineer continues this process of random changes and testing for a long enough time, could he eventually develop a sophisticated structural analysis program? (Of course, when intelligent humans decide what constitutes an "improvement", this is really artificial selection, so the analogy is far too generous.)

If a billion engineers were to type at the rate of one random character per second, there is virtually no chance that any one of them would, given the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth to work on it, accidentally duplicate a given 20-character improvement. Thus our engineer cannot count on making any major improvements through chance alone. But could he not perhaps make progress through the accumulation of very small improvements? The Darwinist would presumably say, yes, but to anyone who has had minimal programming experience this idea is equally implausible.

Major improvements to a computer program often require the addition or modification of hundreds of interdependent lines, no one of which makes any sense, or results in any improvement, when added by itself. Even the smallest improvements usually require adding several new lines. It is conceivable that a programmer unable to look ahead more than 5 or 6 characters at a time might be able to make some very slight improvements to a computer program, but it is inconceivable that he could design anything sophisticated without the ability to plan far ahead and to guide his changes toward that plan.

If archeologists of some future society were to unearth the many versions of my PDE solver, PDE2D , which I have produced over the last 20 years, they would certainly note a steady increase in complexity over time, and they would see many obvious similarities between each new version and the previous one. In the beginning it was only able to solve a single linear, steady-state, 2D equation in a polygonal region. Since then, PDE2D has developed many new abilities: it now solves nonlinear problems, time-dependent and eigenvalue problems, systems of simultaneous equations, and it now handles general curved 2D regions.

Over the years, many new types of graphical output capabilities have evolved, and in 1991 it developed an interactive preprocessor, and more recently PDE2D has adapted to 3D and 1D problems. An archeologist attempting to explain the evolution of this computer program in terms of many tiny improvements might be puzzled to find that each of these major advances (new classes or phyla??) appeared suddenly in new versions; for example, the ability to solve 3D problems first appeared in version 4.0.

Less major improvements (new families or orders??) appeared suddenly in new subversions, for example, the ability to solve 3D problems with periodic boundary conditions first appeared in version 5.6. In fact, the record of PDE2D's development would be similar to the fossil record, with large gaps where major new features appeared, and smaller gaps where minor ones appeared. That is because the multitude of intermediate programs between versions or subversions which the archeologist might expect to find never existed, because-- for example--none of the changes I made for edition 4.0 made any sense, or provided PDE2D any advantage whatever in solving 3D problems (or anything else) until hundreds of lines had been added.

Read the rest of his argument at the link.

There are some folks on the religious fringes of our culture who hold to peculiar and unsupportable doctrines but who meet regularly and reinforce each other in their implausible beliefs. They thus each leave the meeting encouraged but no more correct than when they went in, and outsiders are often bemused that these folks could really believe the things they do.

The Darwinians are something like these people. They keep insisting to each other that blind, unthinking natural forces are all that's necessary to explain how the computer program of life got written. They recite to each other their catechism which states that given enough time, enough mutations, and the magic wand of natural selection, anything, no matter how incredible, is possible. They succeed in reinforcing each other in their faith that it happened all by chance and physics, but thinking people on the outside marvel at how anyone could actually believe it.

Thanks for the tip to Uncommon Descent.

Climbing GOP Approval Rating

The President's approval rating continues its upward trend which is good news for Republicans running for office this November and bad news for the Democrats who were popping champagne corks as recently as a month ago over the prospect of sweeping both the House and the Senate under their control:

Amid falling gas prices and a two-week drive to highlight his administration's efforts to fight terrorism, President Bush's approval rating has risen to 44% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. That's his highest rating in a year. The poll also showed likely voters evenly divided between Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress, 48%-48%. Among registered voters, Democrats had a 51%-42% advantage.

Much of the increase in the President's numbers are Republicans getting serious as elections get closer. There's a lot of disappointment with Bush among the GOP faithful over spending and especially illegal immigration, but many are recognizing that as bad as Bush has been on these two issues, a Democratic congress would be far worse:

Bush's approval rating has edged up largely on the strength of Republicans coming back to the fold - 86% with him now compared with 70% in May.

So, as elections approach the Republicans are closing ranks which means that Bush's approval may hit about 48% this Fall, provided gas prices continue to drop and nothing else on the world scene changes much. If the House bill to build the wall along the border passes the Senate and the President signs it, his numbers might edge toward 50%.

Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who ran Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, said GOP fortunes have turned since Labor Day: "This has been the best two weeks Republicans have had since Bush was re-elected."

The new poll found likely voters more prone to vote for candidates who support Bush on terrorism, 45%-28%, and evenly divided on those who support and oppose Bush on Iraq. More than a quarter said Iraq is their top concern this fall. For the first time since December 2005, a majority of people did not say the war there was a mistake; the split was 49%-49%.

Bush's terror-fighting techniques drew mixed reviews. A 55%-42% majority supported his policy of wiretapping phone conversations between U.S. citizens here and suspected terrorists in other countries without getting a court order.

There's more at the link.

Red States Rising

George Will reflects on a book written by Thomas Edsall of The New Republic who offers what is, from his point of view, a dispiriting assessment of the rise of the Republican party and the demise of the Democrats. Will points out how lefties like Edsall consistently attribute GOP success to all the wrong reasons and are utterly purblind to the fact that their own message has very little resonance with the majority of Americans.

Will's entire column is good, but his last two paragraphs put a sharp point on his argument:

Edsall notes that one-third of American children -- and almost 70 percent of African American children -- are born to unmarried mothers. Then, in an astonishing passage about this phenomenon, which is the cause of most social pathologies, from crime to schools that cannot teach, he explains how Americans differ concerning what he calls "freedom from the need to maintain the marital or procreative bond."

"To social conservatives," he writes, "these developments have signaled an irretrievable and tragic loss. Their reaction has fueled, on the right, a powerful traditionalist movement and a groundswell of support for the Republican Party. To modernists, these developments constitute, at worst, the unfortunate costs of progress, and, at best -- and this is very much the view on the political left as well as of Democratic Party loyalists -- they constitute a triumph over unconscionable obstacles to the liberation and self-realization of much of the human race."

Looking for the real reason for the rise of "Red America"? Read that paragraph again.

Red America is a reference, of course, to the "red" states which voted for George Bush in the last election as opposed to the "blue" states which went for John Kerry.

The major problem the Democrats have is that too many of their movers and shakers hold it as a religious dogma that the social dysfunctionalities of the last four decades are actually a good thing. Until they realize that "red staters" regard these dysfunctionalities as extremely harmful to our culture and associate them with liberal social attitudes, the Democrats will have a very difficult time turning red states blue.

Re: What Makes it Torture?

JB brings his military and police experience to bear on the question I addressed in What Makes it Torture? His insightful response is featured on our Feedback page and is worth reading.

The Speechalist

Even those who admire President Bush for his strength and resolve have to admit that his admirable virtues do not extend to public speaking. It can be painful for the President's supporters, of which I am one, to listen to him speak ex tempore.

He and his staff recognize this shortcoming, of course, and what most people don't know and what you may well be hearing for the first time here at Viewpoint, they have employed a "Speechalist" to turn Mr. Bush's weakness into a strength.

You heard correctly - a Speechalist - but don't take my word for it. Go here and see for yourself.

No matter how much you may love the President, you'll still have to laugh at "The Speechalist".

Thanks to Isaac for the link.

Into the Pit of Hell

One irony of enlightenment modernity is that in the move to exalt human kind and to liberate man from the shackles of guilt and repression imposed by medieval religious institutions, man was actually dehumanized. When God was dispensed with as the basis for human dignity and worth, dignity and worth washed away like bare topsoil in a thunderstorm. There was nothing left to hold it. The attempt to deify man wound up paradoxically reducing him to the status of a herd animal - something to be manipulated, exploited, and slaughtered to suit the convenience and the needs of whoever controlled the levers of power in society.

Thus the twentieth century, the zenith of modernity, the age of state atheism, the age of the ascendency of reason, was the most savage, murderous century in human history.

Our dignity, worth and thus our right not to be harmed, our fundamental right to life, is rooted, John Locke reminds us, solely in the fact that we are created by God for His purpose and in His image. He loves us and we are His property. No one can with impunity harm that which is cherished by God. But modernity has sought to render God irrelevant to the human enterprise and to replace rights rooted in God with rights rooted in reason. Reason, however, cannot bear the weight that modernity wishes to place upon it.

The following story about Peter Singer is a good illustration of the erosive effect that modernity's rejection of God has had on our belief in the value of human life. Perhaps no contemporary thinker is as clear, consistent, and forthright about the implications of modern atheism as is Singer:

An internationally known Princeton "bioethicist" and animal-rights activist says he'd kill disabled babies if it were in the "best interests" of the family, because he sees no distinction in the child's life whether it is born or not, and the world already allows abortion.

The comments come from Peter Singer, a controversial bioethics professor, who responded to a series of questions in the UK Independent this week.

...Singer believes the next few decades will see a massive upheaval in the concept of life and rights, with only "a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists" still protecting life as sacrosanct.

To the rest, it will be a commodity to be re-evaluated regularly for its worth.

Singer's response came to Dublin reader Karen Meade's question: "Would you kill a disabled baby?"

"Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole. Many people find this shocking, yet they support a woman's right to have an abortion," he said.

He added that one point on which he agrees with the pro-life movement is that, "from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby."

The statement furthers the argument that Singer's position is just an extension of the culture of death that has developed in the world, with euthanasia legal in some locations, abortion legal in many and even charges that in some repressive societies there's an active business in harvesting healthy organs from victims in order to provide transplants for the wealthy.

Singer holds that man is no different from other forms a life, and therefore man's life is not worth more than, for example, the life of a cow.

The only moral absolute, he noted, "is that we should do what will have the best consequences for all those affected by our actions."

Here in this last sentence Singer slips into inconsistency. If there is no God then there are no moral "shoulds", there are no moral absolutes at all. As Dostoyevsky writes in the Brothers Karamazov "If God is dead then everything is permitted". In the Godless world that modernity wishes to build there is no reason, moral or otherwise, why I shouldn't just do what will have the best consequences for me and not care at all about how my actions affect anyone else.

Nor can atheism offer us any consistent, non-arbitrary reason why the killing should be limited to fetuses and newborns. After all, as Singer points out, there's no qualitative difference between the born and the unborn child, but neither is there a sharp qualitative difference between the newborn and the toddler, or the toddler and the child, or the child and the adolescent. The boundaries are blurry at best and completely arbitrary at worst. The logic of Singer's argument leads us, once we accept killing defective newborns, to killing less defective newborns and eventually normal newborns, and from thence to killing defective children and eventually normal but inconvenient children. From there the horror will eventually extend to adult undesirables and eventually to any adult who is politically inexpedient.

In other words, Singer's atheism leads us right back to the mass exterminations of the Nazi holocaust.

Peter Singer's ideas, as affable and congenial as he might be in person, would, if followed consistently, lead us straight into the pit of hell.

What Makes it Torture?

The controversy over interrogation techniques has once again emerged in our public discourse. Unfortunately, politicians and media types, so far from clarifying the issue for the rest of us, seem to be confusing the questions involved. There really are two issues which need to be separated in this debate, but they're often conflated by the media. One question is definitional or ontological, the other is ethical. They are: What constitutes torture, and whatever torture is, is it ever justified?

We've discussed the second question at some length on Viewpoint (See here, here, here, here, and here for recent examples) but haven't considered the first one as much.

So let's agree that torture is at least almost always wrong. If we're going to prohibit it, however, we have to have a pretty good idea what it is, especially if we risk abolishing is a useful tool in preventing terror attacks that isn't really torture.

President Bush is trying to get Congress to define torture so that we know what can be done and what can't, but he's meeting resistence from the usual suspects, including Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Warner, and Susan Collins. Their argument seems to boil down to this: Don't worry about what torture is. Just don't do it. Their position is quite unhelpful and more than a little ludicrous, but then they are U.S. senators.

The dictionary defines torture as the infliction of severe pain or mental anguish in order to coerce or punish. Let's apply that definition to one of the most notorious, and effective, means of coercing cooperation among people the CIA is interrogating - waterboarding. The CIA is believed to have used waterboarding in a very few special cases,a nd it's an example of the sort of thing that Senator McCain wants stopped. In waterboarding a detainee is strapped to a table, his face is wrapped in saran wrap, and water is poured over it. This somehow produces the sensation of drowning and induces panic in the person to whom it is done. It's said to be very effective in eliciting accurate intelligence, intelligence which has saved lives.

Let's set aside, though, the question of its justification and ask why we should think that this particular technique constitutes torture. What are some possible answers to that question?

Perhaps it's torture because it's painful.

But apparently there's not much pain involved, and if there were it would only be brief since people only hold out for a few seconds when subjected to it.

Perhaps it's torture because it does lasting harm to the detainee.

Evidently not. The individual is no doubt shaken but none the worse for the experience. In fact, interrogators have had it done to them just so they know what it feels like.

Perhaps it's torture because it's done to punish.

No. It's done to elicit information. Once the subject cooperates the treatment ceases.

Perhaps it's torture because it's unpleasant.

Surely an unpleasant experience, however, is not ipso facto torture. If it were, then putting someone in restraints or feeding them institutional food would be torture.

Perhaps it's torture because it frightens the terrorist.

Indeed, it does frighten the terrorist, but so does the prospect of being executed for their crimes or being put in prison for the rest of their life. Should they not be threatened with these possibilities? Why must we be so squeamish that we are reluctant even to scare people who are trying to murder our children?

Perhaps it's torture because it elicits information against the detainee's will.

It certainly does motivate the terrorist to divulge information, but the fact that they don't do so willingly is hardly reason to think that the method is somehow tainted. If it were then phone taps, etc would be torture since they are means by which we obtain information from people who would not otherwise willingly give it.

Perhaps, it's torture because some men are exerting power over another.

Yes, but so is a cop who stops you for a traffic violation, and we don't consider that torture.

The fact is that the suspect has complete control over how long the process lasts or whether it will even begin. This is an important point. The terrorist is essentially in complete control of what, if anything, happens to him. He's no more damaged when it's over than when it started. He experiences no sensation other than panic and though he's frightened, he knows that he really is not drowning. So why would waterboarding be considered torture but, say, lengthy imprisonment, which may do some, or even all, of the things mentioned above, is not?

I really have no answer to the question. It simply makes no sense to me to ban this technique, but if someone can point out something that I'm overlooking I'm certainly willing to reconsider.

The Euston Manifesto

A large group of British leftists have put together what they call the Euston Manifesto in which they criticize the direction that much of the left in Britain and in the United States has taken over the last six years and set forth principles and ideals which they hope will govern the direction that liberalism will follow in the future.

There's lots in the document to like and much of it could have been crafted by the staff of the conservative National Review. For example:

The founding supporters of this statement took different views on the military intervention in Iraq, both for and against. We recognize that it was possible reasonably to disagree about the justification for the intervention, the manner in which it was carried through, the planning (or lack of it) for the aftermath, and the prospects for the successful implementation of democratic change.

We are, however, united in our view about the reactionary, semi-fascist and murderous character of the Baathist regime in Iraq, and we recognize its overthrow as a liberation of the Iraqi people. We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country's infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted - rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.

This opposes us not only to those on the Left who have actively spoken in support of the gangs of jihadist and Baathist thugs of the Iraqi so-called resistance, but also to others who manage to find a way of situating themselves between such forces and those trying to bring a new democratic life to the country. We have no truck, either, with the tendency to pay lip service to these ends, while devoting most of one's energy to criticism of political opponents at home (supposedly responsible for every difficulty in Iraq), and observing a tactful silence or near silence about the ugly forces of the Iraqi "insurgency".

The many Left opponents of regime change in Iraq who have been unable to understand the considerations that led others on the Left to support it, dishing out anathema and excommunication, more lately demanding apology or repentance, betray the democratic values they profess.

Go to the link and read the whole thing. Even if you're a conservative you'll almost be tempted to lend your signature to the effort.

Concentration Camp or Country Club?

Critics like Illinois senator Dick Durbin tell us the prison at Guantanamo is one step removed from a Nazi death camp. Rush Limbaugh says its more like a country club and calls it Club Gitmo. Who's right? Richard Miniter recently returned from a visit to Guantanamo and files story on his impressions with the New York Post. He writes:

The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.

The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.

Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)

Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee privacy.

Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has developed in the camp. Military intelligence can't yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for making weapons and so on.

And they can make weapons from almost anything. Guards have been attacked with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs and fan blades. Some are more elaborate. "These folks are MacGyvers," Harris said.

Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others. How? Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages. (Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono basis, with more than 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.) Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of "attorney-client privilege" - even if they know the document inside is an Arabic-language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.

That's right: Accidentally or not, American lawyers are helping al Qaeda prisoners continue to plot.

There is little doubt what this note-passing and weapons-making is used for. The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005 to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.

One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life; the doctors wear body armor to treat their patients.

There's much more at the link. Please read the whole thing, especially if you lean toward Senator Durbin's point of view.

Murdering a Saint

The photo below is of Sister Leonella Sgorbati. She was gunned down, along with a bodyguard, outside a Mogadishu hospital where she labored trying to ease the suffering of all who came to her. The gunmen were believed to be members of the Religion of Peace who were offended because the Pope agreed that it's evil and inhuman to try use violence to convert others to one's religion.

Michelle has the details. Hot Air has a video summation of reaction around the Islamic world to the Pope's remarks. Click on the video titled Religion of Peace.

Are the Gospels Trustworthy?

BeliefNet excerpts a portion from a book by prominent New Testament scholar N.T. Wright talking about the historical trustworthiness of the four canonical Gospels. Wright explains why the Gospel of Thomas, pace Dan Brown's claims in the DaVinci Code, fails to be reliable history.

Against those who claim that the Gospels were written long after Jesus' death and are therefore unreliable, Wright points out that:

What is more, those four canonical gospels must all have been written by about AD 90 at the very latest. (I am inclined to think they are probably a lot earlier than that, but they cannot be later.) They are known and referred to by Christian writers in the first half of the second century.... And they incorporate, and are based on, sources both oral and written which go back a lot earlier, sources from the time when not only most of Jesus's followers were still alive and active within the early Christian movement, but when plenty of others--bystanders, opponents, officials--were still around, aware of the new movement as it was growing, and ready to challenge or contradict tales that were gaining currency.

There's more in the excerpt at the link.

The Four Gods

Baylor University has recently released the results of a survey it conducted on religious belief in America. The Baylor Religion Survey is a project focused on improving understanding of American religion and is "the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever amassed". A story about the survey can be read here. The survey itself and its results are here.

The Baylor Religion Survey documents that:

A third of Americans (33.6 percent), roughly 100 million people, are Evangelical Protestants by affiliation.
The majority (62.9 percent) of Americans not affiliated with a religious tradition believe in God or some higher power.
More than a quarter have read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, but likelihood of reading the book decreases with church attendance.

One of the interesting questions the survey asked had to do with the kind of God people believe in. What researchers found was that the type of God people believe in is a better predictor of their political and moral attitudes than is their religious tradition.

Researchers also found that none of the "Four Gods" dominated among believers. The data showed that:

Individuals who believe in an Authoritarian God (Type A, 31.4%) tend to think that God is highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs. They tend to believe that God helps them in their decision-making and is also responsible for global events such as economic upturns or tsunamis. They also tend to feel that God is quite angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.

Believers in a Benevolent God (Type B, 25%) tend to think that God is very active in our daily lives. These individuals are less likely to believe that God is angry and acts in wrathful ways. Instead, the Benevolent God is mainly a force of positive influence in the world and is less willing to condemn or punish individuals.

Those who believe in a Critical God (Type C, 16%) feel that God really does not interact with the world. Nevertheless, God still observes the world and views the current state of the world unfavorably. These individuals feel that God's displeasure will be felt in another life and that divine justice may not be carried out in this world.

Believers in a Distant God (Type D, 23%) think that God is not active in the world and not especially angry either. These individuals tend towards thinking about God as a cosmic force which set the laws of nature in motion. As such, God does not "do" things in the world and does not hold clear opinions about our activities or world events.

Atheists are certain that no God exists. Nevertheless, they may still hold very strong opinions concerning the morality of human behavior and ideals of social order, but they have no place for the supernatural in their larger worldview.

Other demographic relationships and religious effects surrounding the "Four Gods" include the following:

There is a strong gender effect in belief in God. Women tend towards very engaged images of God (Types A an B) while men tend towards less engaged images (Type D) and are more likely to be atheists.

Region of the country is significantly related to the four types of God. Easterners tend towards belief in a Critical God; Southerners tend towards an Authoritarian God; Midwesterners believe in a Benevolent God; and the West Coast believes in a Distant God.

Individuals with lower educations and lower incomes tend towards more engaged images of God.

Individuals with more engaged images of God (Types A and B) are more likely to attend church weekly and pray several times a day.

God's anger alone does little to inspire religious participation such as prayer and church attendance.

Catholics and Mainline Protestants tend towards belief in a more Distant God. Evangelical Protestants and 53.4 percent of Black Protestants tend towards belief in a more Authoritarian God.

Jews tend towards belief in a Distant God and over 8% of Jews in our sample report being atheists. Over 40% of Americans who are not affiliated with a church, synagogue or mosque are atheists.

Individuals who feel strongly that God is a "he" tend towards belief in an Authoritarian God.

The Four Gods have a significant effect upon abortion attitudes. Approximately 12 percent (12.2%) of the American public believe that abortion is wrong in all circumstances, however those who believe in an Authoritarian God are nearly twice as likely (23.4%) to believe that abortion is always wrong. Those who believe in a Distant God are much less likely to condemn abortion (1.5%).

The Four Gods are also significantly correlated with other issues related to marriage, such as gay marriage, premarital sex, and divorce.

"This is a very powerful tool to understand core differences in the United States," one member of the research team said. "If I know your image of God, I can tell all kinds of things about you. It's a central part of world view and it's linked to how you think about the world in general."

Indeed, the results run to 74 pages and are a rich mine of information that will probably take years to exhaust. Check it out.

Religion of Perpetual Outrage

Hot Air has the latest on the hysterical reaction by members of what Michelle Malkin calls "the religion of perpetual outrage".

Note the drawing of the Pope that's circulating on Muslim websites and read the translations.

If it weren't so pathetic, and dangerous, it would be worth a shake of the head that Muslims in Gaza and elsewhere are venting their anger by throwing firebombs at Greek Orthodox churches. The Greek Orthodox, of course, have nothing to do with the Pope. Maybe it's just that Orthodox and Catholics are both Christian, and that's all that matters to the adherents of the religion of peace.

We wait for wiser and cooler heads in the world's Muslim communities to call for an end to what really is another embarrassment for Muslims everywhere.

Protesting the Pope

Muslims around the world are outraged that in his meeting with "representatives of science" at the University of Regensburg the Pope said this:

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". (Emphasis mine)

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.

Muslims are incensed that the Pope would dare to quote a 14th century emperor who suggests that some of the teachings of the prophet were "evil and inhuman". The proper response, of course, if one finds the Pope's words offensive, is to show that the words he quotes are false, but it's not obvious that this is the tack very many Muslims have chosen to follow. Instead, they seem to be intent on confirming by their actions exactly that in the Pope's message to which they most deeply object.

The fact is that conversion by compulsion and threats is indeed evil. The use of violence to spread one's religion is indeed inhuman. If this misrepresents Islam then Muslims should point out the error. Instead they engage in the sort of protest that gives people of common sense every reason to believe that threats and violence are exactly what Islam is all about.

Muslim students burn an effigy of the Pope in India.

Michelle has more.

Father/Daughter Talk

A friend digs out this venerable tale from his file and passes it along. It makes a nice companion to the piece we posted yesterday titled Does Poverty Make America Immoral?:

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth and heavily taxing the "haves" to give to the "have nots".

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a fairly conservative Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in at school, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father.

He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?"

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."

Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"

Her father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the Republican Party, honey."

Moral Inferiority

Dennis Prager writes consistently interesting columns. His latest makes the argument that Islamic morality is inferior to that of the West. He states that:

[E]very country that calls itself "Islamic" is morally inferior to just about every country in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, almost every Asian country and many African countries.

At first this may cause an eyebrow to lift given the Western world's obscene greed, lasciviousness, and violence, and the Muslim's contrary emphasis on personal purity, but read his argument at the link and see if you don't agree that he makes a strong case.

I might want to take his thesis a step further and say that not only is Islamic morality inferior, so is Islamic culture. Since the 13th or 14th century the Muslim world has produced little or no great art, architecture or music, and it's literary efforts have been uneven.

They manufacture little that the world wants and produce only what Western technology and expertise is able to extract from the ground beneath them.

Their scientists have made no contributions to human well-being or knowledge since the middle ages.

Indeed, their single genius seems to be in producing as leaders religious extremists skilled in thinking up ways to torture and kill both infidels and their fellow Muslims. Too much of Muslim culture seems based upon punishment, retribution and revenge. Until they can break out of this mind-set they will probably float through history, drifting from one war to another, while the rest of the world increases the cultural distance between it and them - that is, unless the Islamist extremists get their hands on the ultimate infidel-killer, nuclear weapons. If they do, then we'll all be thrown back into the 7th century. The difference will be that the remnants of Western civilization will start over and try to regain some of what has been lost. The Islamists will be content to stay where they are, killing each other.

It's tragic that what the Muslim world needs most they also seem most resistant to - the Gospel of forgiveness, grace, freedom, redemption, and love.