Colbert and Dawkins

Stephen Colbert interviews atheistic Darwinian Richard Dawkins. It's pretty funny. Along the way Dawkins impresses the audience with the question, "If God designed the world then what designed God". Despite the audience's enthusiasm for the retort it's really little more than a red herring. The answer, of course, is 1) nothing, and 2) it doesn't matter.

1) The universe is the totality of all contingent (or designed) things and therefore the creative cause of the universe cannot itself be contingent or else it'd be part of the universe.

2) Once it is agreed that the universe has a creative cause, as is tacitly done in Dawkins' question, the argument is over. In order to pose his question Dawkins has to tacitly accede to the theist's main point which is that the universe has a cause responsible for all of its order, design, and personality. Whether that cause is itself caused by something greater than itself makes no difference to the argument that the universe has a cause outside of itself and does not alter the fact that the theist has won the point.

Soft on National Security

If this turns out to be as it appears it'll be just one more reason why Democrats can't be trusted to handle national security:

WASHINGTON - House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

A spokesman to Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, confirmed that a committee staff member was suspended this week. He said the staff member is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review.

"Chairman Hoekstra considers security highly important, and the coincidence certainly merits a review," he said.

So far there hasn't been much said about this in the MSM, I mean not compared to, say, the really super-important scandals like Dick Cheney's hunting accident, Scooter Libby mentioning that Valerie Plame works for the CIA, and Mark Foley's licentious correspondence with a male page. Those scandals were about really important things and, besides, they featured Republicans.

I wonder what the media would be doing with this story were the suspected leaker of genuinely significant national security information a Republican?

This Week's Feedback

Today we highlight several of the many interesting reader responses we've received to last week's posts. We are taken to task by one reader for Limbo while others offer thoughts on Thirty Eight Ways to Win, YEC v. ID, and one young lady offers a different perspective on Orange Bowl Brawl. Their thoughts can be found on the Feedback page. Enjoy.

Limbo

Robert T. Miller writing at First Things is made uneasy by word that the Roman Catholic International Theological Commission might abolish the doctrine of limbo, a "place" where children go if they die unbaptized.

The attempt to harmonize the standard theological doctrines of salvation with the perfectly understandable hope that children who die have eternal life has resulted over the centuries in a number of theological contortions, limbo being one of them.

Miller describes limbo as a state wherein, according to Thomas Aquinas:

...the souls of the unbaptized infants enjoy the complete fulfillment of human nature, including a natural knowledge of God, the greatest possible for unaided human reason. The only thing such souls lack is the supernatural vision of God that is possible only through grace, and, according to Aquinas, they do not even regret not having that supernatural vision because they understand that it is a gift over and above anything human nature could merit and so not something they could ever have reasonably hoped to attain. They no more regret not having the beatific vision, Aquinas says, than a peasant regrets not inheriting a kingdom.

In limbo the child neither suffers the torments of hell nor exults in the joys of heaven. It is neither heaven nor hell, which is certainly a better fate than awaits the unfortunate child according to those whose theology follows the Westminster Confession of Faith:

Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by by Christ....So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word (Chap. X, sec. III).

This suggests the inference that there are infants who die who are not among the elect and which therefore go to hell for eternity. This is difficult, to understate the matter, to reconcile with the notion of a perfectly good and loving God. That such a God would cause to be created persons who live for a few hours and are then consigned to suffer the agonies of hell forever simply because they are human and thus a descendent of Adam is not a proposition one would think to be easy to defend.

Other Christians, wishing to avoid treacherous apologetic terrain, simply assert that all children who die before the "age of accountability" are saved forever by God. This seems much more in keeping with the teaching of Jesus about the love, mercy and compassion of God, but it also presents difficulties of a different kind.

For example, what is the age at which one becomes spiritually accountable and is there Biblical warrant for such an idea? More significantly, if it is granted that children and mental incompetents are saved without having to make a decision for Christ because they simply can't, that seems to crack the door open for the conclusion that perhaps such a decision is not necessary for others as well. If children can't make a decision for Christ because of a lack of comprehension, then neither can those who were born both before and after Christ who never heard the gospel.

And if we allow the possibility that at least some of these might benefit from the work of Christ on the Cross though they know nothing about it, then why not those who have heard the gospel but who for reasons of psychology rather than spiritual hostility find themselves unable to believe it?

We have now wandered far from the reservation staked out by the Westminster Confession and into the regions of what is called Christian inclusivism. Inclusivism is the belief that Christ's death on the cross atones for the sins of all humanity, not just some as in the Reformed view, and that all people are born saved by God's grace until they themselves explicitly reject God and/or spurn His forgiveness and offer of salvation.

This notion may be completely wrong, although it's not easy to see that it is, but it has at least one advantage. It allows us to put aside notions like limbo and unelect children suffering forever for the sin of an ancestor over 10,000 years ago.

According to this view Jesus takes to his bosom every child who dies early. His sacrifice has covered whatever price must be paid for these little ones, so that they can enjoy the presence of God forever. No limbo, no eternal damnation, just unending joy and happiness in the presence of God.

This seems to me to be a much better fit with what the Bible tells us about God than the belief that God allows some infants to be born for no purpose other than to be dispatched to an eternity of misery. If this is wrong, though, and if the Westminster Confession accurately states the way things really stand then parents would actually be doing the moral thing by seeking to have their unwanted children aborted. If the aborted child is one of God's elect then the abortion would not succeed. If the child is not among the elect then the abortion spares them a completely meaningless eternal suffering. Unless, of course, the child is damned from the moment it is conceived in which case it becomes even more difficult to imagine why God would do such a thing.

For Miller's part, he holds fast to the doctrine of limbo:

So, in my view, the argument from the universal salvific will of God is inadequate to support the view that all unbaptized infants are saved....the view that all unbaptized infants are saved is decidedly a modern one, a view very much in the spirit of our times. Ours is a culture that can't bear the thought of anyone going to hell, even the people who, for all the world, seem to deserve it. Thus we have the near universal custom at Christian funerals of proclaiming that the decedent, no matter how morally dissolute his life, is now enjoying the banquet of heaven in the company of the saints, without even a short stay in Purgatory. The spirit of the age hates hell, and so hates limbo as well, which it cannot adequately distinguish from hell.

With due respect to Mr. Miller it seems to me that part of what it means to be a Christian is that one not be able to "bear the thought of anyone going to hell, even the people who, for all the world, seem to deserve it". Does Mr. Miller suggest that we should rejoice that our non-Christian loved ones are destined to everlasting suffering?

Indeed, the spirit of the age does hate hell. This may be the only point of agreement between the spirit of the age and Jesus Christ who Himself hated hell so much that He died so that men, and children, may be spared from it's terrifying maw.

The Possessed

This piece of cheery news comes to us by way of the Drudge Report:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "counterfeit and illegitimate regime that cannot survive", in a live broadcast on state television.

"The Zionist regime is counterfeit and illegitimate and cannot survive," he said in a speech to a crowd in the town of Islamshahr in southwestern Tehran.

"The big powers have created this fraud regime and allowed it to commit all kind of crimes to guarantee their interests," he added.

Ahmadinejad sounds for all the world like a psychopath bent upon plunging the world into nuclear war. He's striving strenuously to build a nuclear weapon and scarcely anyone in the world is interested in doing much to stop him except George Bush and the Israelis.

We have said this before, but it bears repeating: The only thing worse than going to war to disarm Iran would be to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Threat to Liberty Posed by Gay Rights

We have several times throughout our two and a half years of existence at Viewpoint argued that legalizing gay marriage would have the almost inevitable consequence of opening the door to the legalization of any union which any combination of persons wished to form. Marriage is currently the union of one man and one woman, but once the gender of the persons in the union no longer matters neither will the number. There would be no logical reason why the number of people entering into marriage should be limited to two. Once the Rubicon of gay marriage is crossed courts would eventually and ineluctably compel legislatures to legalize polyamorous unions.

Now comes an article by Maggie Gallagher in the Weekly Standard which claims that another consequence of legalizing gay marriage, or at least legitimizing the arguments which culminate in legalized gay marriage, will be the erosion of both religious liberty and our freedom of speech. As one lawyer puts it in the article "when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict sexual liberty should almost always prevail because that's the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner". Despite the fact that the First Amendment of the constituition guarantees freedom of religion and despite the fact that there is no corresponding constitutional guarantee of sexual liberty, this lawyer asserts that the latter should nevertheless trump the former. This is more than a little disturbing.

A prelude to the coming storm occured last March when Catholic Charities in Boston decided it was getting out of the adoption business because the courts decreed that they had to allow gay couples to adopt children. This violated the teaching of the Catholic church, and so, rather than accede to what they saw as immoral and unbiblical policy, they simply stopped serviung as an adoption agency.

The consequences will not be limited, however, to adoption. Read this excerpt from Gallagher's very informative column:

Consider education. Same-sex marriage will affect religious educational institutions...in at least four ways: admissions, employment, housing, and regulation of clubs. One of (general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, Marc) Stern's big worries right now is a case in California where a private Christian high school expelled two girls who (the school says) announced they were in a lesbian relationship. Stern is not optimistic. And if the high school loses, he tells me, "then religious schools are out of business." Or at least the government will force religious schools to tolerate both conduct and proclamations by students they believe to be sinful.

Stern agrees...that public accommodation laws can and should force truly commercial enterprises to serve all comers. But, he asks, what of other places, such as religious camps, retreats, and homeless shelters? Will they be considered by courts to be places of public accommodation, too? Could a religious summer camp operated in strict conformity with religious principles refuse to accept children coming from same-sex marriages? What of a church-affiliated community center, with a gym and a Little League, that offers family programs? Must a religious-affiliated family services provider offer marriage counseling to same-sex couples designed to facilitate or preserve their relationships?

"Future conflict with the law in regard to licensing is certain with regard to psychological clinics, social workers, marital counselors, and the like," Stern wrote last December--well before the Boston Catholic Charities story broke.

Will speech against gay marriage be allowed to continue unfettered? "Under the American regime of freedom of speech, the answer ought to be easy," according to Stern. But it is not entirely certain, he writes, "because sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace principles will likely migrate to suppress any expression of anti-same-sex-marriage views." Stern suggests how that might work.

In the corporate world the expression of opposition to gay marriage will be suppressed not by gay ideologues but by corporate lawyers who will draw the lines least likely to entangle the company in litigation. Stern likens this to "a paroxysm of prophylaxis--banning 'Jesus saves' because someone might take offense."

Or consider a recent case at William Paterson University, a state school in New Jersey. A senior faculty member sent out a mass email inviting people to attend movies with a gay theme. A student employee, a 63-year-old Muslim named Jihad Daniel, replied to the professor in a private email asking not to receive messages "about 'Connie and Sally' and 'Adam and Steve.'" He went on, "These are perversions. The absence of God in higher education brings on confusion. That is why in these classes the Creator of the heavens and the earth is never mentioned." The result: Daniel received a letter of reprimand for using the "derogatory and demeaning" word "perversions" in violation of state discrimination and harassment regulations.

Precisely because support for marriage is public policy, once marriage includes gay couples, groups who oppose gay marriage are likely to be judged in violation of public policy, triggering a host of negative consequences, including the loss of tax-exempt status. Because marriage is not a private act, but a protected public status, the legalization of gay marriage sends a strong signal that orientation is now on a par with race in the nondiscrimination game. And when we get gay marriage because courts have declared it a constitutional right, the signal is stronger still.

The culture war against religion that the secular state has been waging at relatively low intensity for the last three decades is soon about to erupt into a very bitter battle. If gay marriage is codified it may well be unconstitutional to preach against it from the pulpit or to do anything which puts teeth into one's belief that it is incompatible with God's will for men and women.

This is why it's crucial that the next Supreme Court justice be an originalist, which is why it's crucial that the president who nominates this justice and the senators which confirm him or her be themselves constitutional conservatives.

Which is why your vote in November is so very crucial.

What's at Stake

Go to Michelle's blog and click on the video to see the new Republican ad. It'll get your attention. Michelle compares it to a Democrat ad that is best described as pathetic but symbolic of the current campaign. They have offered no answer to the question of what they'd actually do if they're returned to power in Congress. Their whole campaign seems to have been pretty much a plea to the voters to elect them for the single reason that they're not Republicans.

The Democrat ad is a good example of the vacuousness of this kind of politics.

The Twilight of the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis

"...the evidence that macroevolution has happened is all around us, in the patterns of biogeographical distribution of species and in the fossil record. What is not so obvious is the mechanism(s) by which such macroevolution has occurred. Prof. Giertych is probably right in asserting that the "modern synthesis" mechanisms grounded in theoretical population genetics are insufficient to explain macroevolution. However, scientists within the field of evolutionary biology have been saying the same thing for over a century." Allen MacNeill, Cornell University evolutionary biologist.

Well, they may have been saying this for over a century, but, if so, they haven't been very public about it.

At any rate, MacNeill isn't saying that evolution never happened. He believes quite the opposite. What he's saying is that the traditional Neo-Darwinian view that evolution is the product of a synthesis of natural selection and genetic mutation is an inadequate explanation. Large scale evolution (macroevolution) simply cannot be explained in terms of any purely mechanistic processes of which we are aware.

MacNeill is not known to be overly sympathetic to Intelligent Design, but what he's claiming is what ID theorists have been asserting for two decades to considerable resistance from the Darwinian establishment which, according to MacNeill, has largely been in agreement with them. That's pretty strange.

Read the rest of MacNeill's comment here.

Meanwhile, you can catch an audio interview with a leading ID proponent, Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, on The Sci Phi Show. To hear it go here and click on the link to Michael Behe on the Sci Phi Show.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for posting the links for the Sci Phi shows.

The Imperiled French

Arnaud de Borchgrave at The Washington Times updates us on the state of the intifada in France. Here are a few excerpts from this deeply disturbing story:

An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youths. France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police cruisers are pelted daily with stones and "Molotov cocktails" (gasoline-filled bottles with burning wicks that explode on impact) and Mr. Thooris said cops assigned to what was rapidly degenerating into "free fire zones" should be protected in armored vehicles. Entire tall buildings empty into the streets to chase police and free an arrested comrade.

"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," Mr. Thooris told journalists. Mr. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and teargas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime."

Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right National Front (FN) appears to have opted for a can't-lick-'em-join-'em strategy, a rapprochement with France's large immigrant Muslim community -- with undertones of anti-Semitism. Mr. Le Pen's reasoning appears to be the recognition that Islamicization is in France to stay with 25 percent of France's under-20 population Muslim (40 percent in some cities), second- and third-generation North Africans.

FN's tough stance on immigration is tempered by support for Arab and Islamist causes in the Middle East (Hamas and Hezbollah are two favorites). There are an estimated 6 to 8 million Muslims among France's 62 million and Islam is now France's second religion. Mosques are well attended on Fridays; churches aren't on Sundays. More than 50 percent of France's prison inmates are Muslims.

Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; a bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked three times in the last 14 months; synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in mainstream U.S. media. The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the last 30 days throughout the country.

The No. 1 best-selling book in France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which posits no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon. A similar book in Germany sold more than 1 million copies.

Neither multiculturalism nor integration of Muslim communities seems to be working anywhere in Europe. Moderate Muslim voices cannot rise above radical hubbub.

Nothing like this has happened yet in the United States but if the situation is allowed to fester and deteriorate in Europe it won't be long before the same troubles visit our shores.

I read an article recently, I can't remember where, that claimed that Europe is all but lost. Whereas today we look forward to enjoying a holiday in Paris, London, or Rome, that is a luxury our children will not have. By 2030, Europe will be predominately Muslim and very probably hostile to Americans. The secularist or Judeo-Christian European remnant will either emigrate or live out their years in dhimmitude (Enforced second class subservience to Muslims and Sharia law). Europe will be a much different place, a much more dangerous place, twenty years from now than it was twenty years ago.

Whether this prediction comes to pass or not it certainly does seem that the trend lines all point in that direction.

YEC v. ID

Sal Cordova at Uncommon Descent offers an answer to a reader's question about the nature of the rift between Young Earth Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates. Along the way he offers a list of the IDers (and ID sympathizers) who favor an old age (on the order of billions of years) for the earth.

It's an interesting post and it sheds light on a perplexing dispute between two groups which should be allies against the common Darwinian opponent.

Collateral Damage

A recent report on the number of Iraqi deaths since the war began has renewed discussion about the morality of any policy which entails the deaths of innocent civilians. The report, put out by Lancet, estimates that 655,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a result of both coalition and insurgent action since the war began.

The study is critiqued here, but on the face of it the number seems absurd. The math works out to a death rate of 15,600 civilians a month or 520 dead Iraqis a day since March of 2003. This seems preposterous. Other estimates place the figure closer to 60,000.

Nevertheless, whether the number is 60,000 or ten times that figure the fundamental questions are legitimate: Is a policy that entails civilian deaths moral, and, if so, at what point does it cease to be so?

One answer given by objectors to the war in Iraq is that our policy there is morally wrong because it is always wrong to be the cause of deaths of innocent people. We are therefore wrong to go to war, not just in Iraq but anywhere, if it is probable that civilian lives will be lost as a result.

This argument is problematic. To illustrate why consider a couple of extreme, but entirely plausible, scenarios where what the military euphemistically calls "collateral damage" is a certainty.

Suppose first that terrorist hijackers have commandeered an airliner and are guiding it toward a skyscraper in which thousands of people are working. There is only one way to prevent the impending mass murder and that is to shoot down the plane.

Second, historians tell us that during the early years of American involvement in WWII it was feasible to have bombed some of the Nazi concentration camps, effectively putting them out of operation and mitigating, perhaps substantially, the horrific carnage taking place in those camps. Had the order to bomb them been carried out, however, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent prisoners might have been killed.

Should the order be given to shoot down the plane? Should orders have been issued to destroy the concentration camps? If either order had been given would they have constituted unjust, immoral or criminal actions?

If downing the plane and/or bombing the camps would have been justified, then causing the deaths of some innocents in order to prevent even greater harm cannot be ipso facto wrong. If someone were to say that it would not have been unjust or immoral or criminal to give those orders then he is agreeing that, as agonizing and heartwrenching as it may be, the sacrifice of innocent lives is sometimes necessary or justified in order to thwart an enemy's larger aims.

If one were to respond, on the other hand, that those orders should not be given and that, if they were, it would be morally wrong or criminal, it would be interesting to hear the rationale for he bases his reply upon.

If it is agreed that sometimes, under some circumstances, killing innocent civilians may be justified then the debate shifts to a consideration of what those circumstances would be, whether they obtained prior to the commencement of the war in Iraq, and whether they still do today.

Some might argue that the deaths of 60,000 Iraqi civilians, reagrdless of who is responsible for them, is too many, and it's time for us to get out. But how many is too many? On what do we base whatever figure we consider to be the limit?

These are important questions but they lead to a different discussion than the one based on the assumption that it's always wrong to kill innocent civilians.

George Smoot

University of California at Berkeley physicist George Smoot was recently awarded the 2006 Nobel prize for work he did with John Mather in clarifying some of the details of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Smoot, like a lot of others who study the fine structure of the cosmos, finds the cosmological evidence for intentional design hard to resist. He observes:

"There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing."

Smoot draws attention not only to the fact that his team had provided more evidence for the creation event, but for a "finely orchestrated" creation event. Stephen Hawking was so impressed with this finding that he called it "the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time."

"In order to make a universe as big and wonderful as it is, lasting as long as it is-we're talking fifteen billion years and we're talking huge distances here-in order for it to be that big, you have to make it perfectly. Otherwise, imperfections would mount up and the universe would either collapse on itself or fly apart, and so it's actually quite a precise job. And I don't know if you've had discussions with people about how critical it is that the density of the universe come out so close to the density that decides whether it's going to keep expanding forever or collapse back, but we know it's within one percent."

"The big bang, the most cataclysmic event we can imagine, on closer inspection appears finely orchestrated."

There are many similar quotes from other physicists at The Veritas Forum.

Thanks to Intelligent Design The Future for the tip.

Danielle Pletka

Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute takes on Bill Maher, Ben Affleck and an unsympathetic audience and acquits herself well. The Republicans should be getting this woman on television more.

Coddling the Freeloaders

This will astonish you. Or maybe not. Thousands of emigrants, including Americans, are migrating to England and claiming asylum. Why? Because they get free accommodations, free health care, and 35 pounds a week in free money. A lot of this story will sound familiar to anyone who has been following our own immigration controversy:

Britain is such a soft touch that even Americans are coming here to claim asylum and sponge off the state. The incredible revelation comes from immigration whistleblower Rory Clarke.

And yesterday the Government was forced to admit figures that backed him up. Disgusted Rory, 34, contacted The Sun to expose the true depth of the asylum shambles. He said:

"Britain is seen as such a soft touch that poor people from countries such as America are even coming here now. A couple of years ago I met two black guys from the States who were over here because they thought they could get a better standard of living. One was from Ohio and the other from Kansas. They claimed asylum because they said they were racially discriminated against at home. But they freely admitted they were here for the free healthcare and accommodation. It is an absolute joke. They could have been here for up to five years before their application was processed."

Last night the Home Office admitted five American nationals have claimed asylum this year alone. Rory also revealed a shocking catalogue of blunders by officials, and lying by applicants that is making our asylum system the gravy train of the world.

He spent five years heading a team evicting failed asylum seekers from their homes after applications were turned down. But [he] quit the Government's National Asylum Support Service (NASS) in disgust at what he encountered.

When he started the job he calculates 50 per cent of asylum seekers were genuine. But now he reckons that figure is five per cent. Those waiting for applications to be processed get immediate free healthcare, free accommodation and 35 pounds a week in benefits.

Rory maintains the deluge is dominated by freeloaders. These include fit young men from Middle Eastern countries who are here because they want to dodge compulsory military service back home, he added.

Rory - who does not want his face to be recognisable in our picture - said: "Working for NASS was like banging your head against a wall. For example, I helped evict 30,000 illegals from their homes. But they weren't taken to detention centres.

"Instead of them being kicked out of the country, we were told to let them go. We once rounded up 56 illegals and were told to send them to the detention centre at Oakington in Cambridgeshire. The Immigration Service said they didn't have the staff to take them there so they would have to make their own way. Unsurprisingly, only five ever turned up."

Government studies estimate 300,000 bogus asylum seekers are still in the country after having applications turned down. But Rory said: "The Government figures are just the tip of the iceberg. I reckon there are at least a million and that number is growing every day.

"What really scares me is that we have no idea who is coming into the country. Less than a third of those here illegally have official papers or any identification. We let people in and take their word for who they are and what they are doing in Britain. Nobody knows if they are murderers, rapists or even terrorists.

"If Osama Bin Laden got off a boat today and gave a false name and age he could be on benefits for three years without anyone being any the wiser. In the end I just became so angry I just couldn't hack it any longer."

The Home Office yesterday said the number of asylum seekers had fallen "dramatically" in the past year.

No wonder Europe is dying. I wonder if anybody in Washington has read this article?

Foley's Mistake

NewsBusters detects the pungent scent of media bias and hypocrisy in the differing ways in which Gerry Studds, who passed away last Friday, and Mark Foley have been treated. Studds, you will recall, was the Massachussetts congressman who was caught having a sexual affair with a 17 year-old male page back in the 1970s. Foley was the Florida congressman who was recently found to be conducting a lewd instant message correspondence with a 17 year-old male page. Studds was then, and is now, treated with respect and deference by the media and congressional Democrats like John Kerry (see here). Foley is treated with contempt and contumely. Why the difference between how they are treated? Evidently it's that Studds was a Democrat and Foley was a Republican.

Foley's "lapse in judgment" was not his decision to carry on an improper dialogue with a 17 year old boy, it was, presumably, his decision to run for office as a Republican. If he had been a Democrat we would doubtless be inundated by the media with articles deploring how the poor man, a devoted public servant, had been hounded out of office by the prudes and homophobes in the Religious Right and the Republican leadership.

How Long Would it Take?

Joe Carter asks how long would it take for all traces of humanity to disappear from the earth after humans went extinct. By way of an answer he links us to this graphic.

I suppose the graphic assumes that the extinction was caused by a natural loss of reproductive vitality, but the numbers would probably be different were the extinction caused by the effects of a large-scale nuclear war.

In any case the chart should give pause to those who sunnily assume that the meaning of anything we do here on earth is independent of whether there is an eternal destiny awaiting us. If there is not, if existence is transient, then whatever we accomplish, the graphic reminds us, is doomed ultimately to be reduced to nothing but overgrowth and decay. Our efforts only have meaning if our existence has permanence, and belief that our existence has permanence is a truly blind and irrational hope unless it is based on belief in the existence of God.

Not <i>Opus</i>!

How long until the imams of the Religion of Perpetual Umbrage issue a fatwa against Opus?

I just wish I knew what he meant by "bad dogs".

Thirty-eight Ways to Win

Telic Thoughts links us to an old piece attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer which the philosopher surely meant as satire. It's titled 38 Ways to Win and Argument, and it's clear that the goal is indeed winning and not arriving at truth. Here are a couple of tactics Schopenhauer "endorses":

8. Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

14. Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your question without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.

18. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

21. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character. But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him. For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth. Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice, emotion or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.

32. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category. Example: You can say, "That is fascism" or "Atheism" or "Superstition." In making an objection of this kind you take for granted 1) That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited; and 2) The system referred to has been entirely refuted by the current audience.

38. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.

These and the rest of Schopenhauer's thirty-eight stratagems are certainly in wide use today in the political arena, in theological debates, and in the controversy between Darwinists and Intelligent Design advocates. Some things never change.

Wells vs. Shermer

C-Span will be airing next week a recent exchange at the Washington D.C. Cato Institute between atheistic Darwinian Michael Shermer and Intelligent Design advocate Jonathan Wells. Shermer's remarks were taken from his book Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. Wells' address followed Shermer's and provided an excellent overview of ID. A transcript of Wells' talk can be found at Uncommon Descent.

If you don't want to wait for the C-Span showing there's a video of the whole event here. A critique of Shermer's presentation can be found at Evolution News and Views.

Challenges and Priorities

Christianity Today features a number of prominent evangelicals who discuss what they think are the challenges which will be facing our society and what should be our priorities over the next fifty years.