No matter how old they get some people just never reach maturity. How childish, hateful, and mentally unstable do people have to be to derive pleasure from throwing shoes at a picture, or to be willing to take the time and trouble to set up such an event in the first place?
HT: Hot Air
RLC
Yesterday I outlined some of the commonly accepted criteria of Just War theory. They included circumstances which must be satisfied before going to war (jus ad bellum) and principles that should govern how the war is actually fought (jus in bello). In any conflict it must be asked whether either party was justified in entering into the conflict, and if so, are they fighting it with due consideration to the requirements of Just War theory.
These are often difficult questions to answer, of course, because it's so hard to know what's going on both on the battlefield and behind the scenes in the offices of the leaders of the combatant parties. Even so, based on news reports we have of the current Israeli/Hamas conflict, I think the case can be made that, as far as we're able to tell, Israel is making a genuine effort to abide by the principles of Just War.
The first question which must be answered is whether the Israelis were justified in attacking Hamas. Did they have just cause?
Hamas has two objectives: To destroy Israel and to establish a hard-line Islamic state in its place. Since Israel left Gaza in 2005 Hamas has launched over 5000 rockets into Israeli cities and countryside killing dozens and terrorizing thousands. They've launched 3000 rockets in just the past year. Given these facts it certainly seems that Israel is acting in legitimate self-defense.
Meanwhile, as many observers have pointed out, Hamas is committing three distinct war crimes. They're deliberately targeting Israeli civilians, they're using their own civilians as human shields, and they seek the destruction of a member state of the United Nations.
The second question is whether the Israelis had just intention in entering into war. Their stated purpose is to remove the existential threat to their citizens which is a valid justification under Just War theory. Moreover the the war was declared by a legitimate authority - a freely elected government.
Next, is there a reasonable prospect of success? This is difficult to assess from this vantage, of course, but it certainly is the case that doing nothing would not have stopped the attacks. Israel will have been successful if it destroys Hamas' ability to make war, and if the world community is persuaded to take a more active role in monitoring the flow of weapons into Gaza.
Finally, is the Israeli offensive a last resort? Israel has been trying through negotiations since at least 2005, when they withdrew from Gaza and gave the territory to the Palestinians, to get them to stop their terror attacks. Nothing has worked. Not walls, not blockades, not talks. The most recent rocket barrage came as Israel was delivering relief supplies to Palestinians. When the border crossing was opened to allow the trucks into Gaza the Israelis cautioned Hamas that should they continue to attack Israel they would incur grave consequences. Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israeli targets anyway even as the trucks were delivering relief to the Palestinian people.
According to Reuters Israel reopened border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Friday, a day after Prime Minister Olmert warned militants there to stop firing rockets or they would pay a heavy price. Despite the movement of relief supplies, militants fired about a dozen rockets and mortar shafts from Gaza at Israel on Friday. One accidentally struck a house in Gaza, killing two Palestinian sisters, ages 5 and 13. Palestinian workers at the crossings said fuel had arrived for Gaza's main power plant and about a hundred trucks loaded with grain, humanitarian aid and other goods were expected during the day.
It's hard to imagine what more Israel could do that would placate Hamas, short of simply leaving the region like they left Gaza. Some have argued that the Israelis have established a naval blockade of the country which is causing hardship and that they should lift it, but the blockade was necessitated by the fact that Hamas was using shipping to import rockets and missiles with which to threaten Israel. To lift the blockade without having some way of supervising what flows into Gaza would be folly.
Few critics of Israel argue that they had no justification for initiating an attack on Hamas, but many have argued that the war does not meet the jus in bello principles of discrimination and proportionality.
The principle of discrimination forbids doing intentional harm to civilians. Indeed, in my mind this principle calls into grave question the decision to carpet bomb German and Japanese cities in WWII. Those who think that Israel is recklessly killing civilians, however, just aren't thinking. Every dead civilian is a propaganda coup for Hamas. Why would the Israelis hand them such a gift if it could be avoided? The fact is what evidence we have shows that they're not recklessly killing civilians, and to get a sense of the lengths to which Israel is going to avoid civilian casualties consider this story from Strategy Page:
The Israelis have been using both leaflet drops and the phone system to avoid civilian casualties. For example, the bombing campaign after the initial attack was directed mostly at the thousands of rockets Hamas had stockpiled. Most of these were stored in civilian housing, a technique pioneered by Hezbollah in Lebanon. When a cache is found the Israelis will phone the home just before the attack and tell the civilians they have a few minutes to get out before the place is bombed. In at least one case, the civilians were defiant, and went to the roof, believing that the Israelis would not bomb with women and children in plain sight. In response, the Israeli fighter came in low and fired some 20mm cannon shells right next to the building. The panicked civilians fled the building and the place was then bombed shortly thereafter.
It's interesting to note that the Hamas tactic would not have worked against any but a moral attacking force. No one would have even thought to try it against the Russians in Chechnya or Afghanistan where civilians were slaughtered willy-nilly. Nor would such a tactic have been employed against their fellow Arabs who recognize no such distinction between civilians and combatants. The Hamas tactic of using women and children as human shields works only against a moral enemy who cares deeply about minimizing civilian casualties and Hamas knows it.
The most voluble complaints against the Israelis, however, have to do with what is claimed to be their disproportionate response to the provocation. A few dozen Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets, the reasoning goes, so an attack that takes the lives of hundreds is wildly disproportionate to the offense. This, however, misconstrues the principle of proportionality.
If the purpose of the principle were to establish a tit for tat retaliation protocol then Israel would be justified in killing one Palestinian civilian, and only one, for every Israeli civilian fatality. But this is absurd. Hamas would gladly sacrifice millions of civilian Palestinians if they could kill millions of Israelis.
Nor has proportionality ever been understood to be correlated with the deaths of combatants. It has to do with matching ends and means. Proportionality means that the steps taken to bring about a legitimate end must be the least destructive steps available which do not place one's own troops at significantly increased risk. It would have been disproportionate, for example, had U.S. troops leveled an entire neighborhood in Iraq in order to silence a single sniper.
If the terror attacks on Israel will not stop as long as Hamas controls Gaza then it's legitimate to degrade Hamas to the point where they can no longer cling to power, whether it takes the deaths of 100 Hamas fighters or 10,000. The deaths of Palestinian civilians are tragic, but as long as Israel has just cause to fight and is doing its best to honor the principle of discrimination, the ratio of dead Palestinian civilians to dead Israeli civilians is irrelevant to whether the war is being justly fought.
Many of the dead civilians, moreover, were killed because Hamas uses them as human shields. Nizar Rayan was a Hamas leader who sent his own son on a suicide bomb mission that killed two Israeli civilians and who had repeatedly swore to destroy Israel. Rayan was stockpiling weapons in his home, and the IDF called to warn the family to get out because they were going to destroy the weapons. Either the family (four wives and nine children) chose not to leave or Rayan wouldn't let them leave. In any event, they all died when the home was bombed. Given that Israel had a right to destroy the weapons, and urged the family to evacuate, who is responsible for the deaths of the innocent children?
In fact, Hamas has killed almost as many of their fellow Palestinians as the Israelis have. As of this writing some 40-80 Palestinian civilians have died from Israeli fire. Fearing that their rival political faction, Fatah, will use the chaos created by the war to topple Hamas, Hamas is killing or crippling whatever Fatah personnel they can find. So far, they've murdered about 35 and shot some 75 others in the legs. These civilian casualties are all no doubt attributed to Israeli aggression, but their deaths are the work of Hamas (See here for more on the murderous brutality of Hamas toward their own people).
Israel has adopted the Christian Just War standard in their fight against an enemy for whom there are no standards. It puts them at a serious disadvantage but one which they believe is worth assuming in order to avoid lapsing into the barbarism of their enemies. The shame is that so many in the West are so reluctant to give them the credit they deserve for trying to defend themselves in the most honorable way possible and are so quick to believe the worst reports about Israeli conduct in the war zone.
RLC
According to this Human Events story Congressional Democrats, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, are trying to turn the U.S. into a one-party state by effectively making it impossible for Republicans to have any input on legislation before the House:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi's proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
Pelosi's rule changes -- which may be voted on today -- will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America."
After decades of Democrat control of the House of Representatives, gross abuses to the legislative process and several high-profile scandals contributed to an overwhelming Republican House Congressional landslide victory in 1994. Reforms to the House Rules as part of the Contract with America were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.
Pelosi's proposed repeal of decades-long House accountability reforms exposes a tyrannical Democrat leadership poised to assemble legislation in secret, then goose-step it through Congress by the elimination of debate and amendment procedures as part of America's governing legislative process.
And the Democrats used to complain that George Bush was a "divisive" president.
RLC
Uncle Jay, still in the Christmas spirit, recaps some of the major news stories of 2008:
Thanks to Jeanne for passing this along.
RLC
Byron has suggested that it might be helpful to look at the current Israeli/Hamas conflict in terms of what philosophers and theologians call Just War theory. This is a fine suggestion so I'd like to devote a couple of posts to exploring what we know about the current conflict in the context of Just War thinking. First, though, some background.
From the time of Augustine (c.400 a.d.) many Christian philosophers and theologians have thought about the question of the demands and restrictions the Gospel imposes on the use of force. One result of that thinking has been a list of criteria that must be satisfied in any situation in which force, particularly military force, is contemplated. This is called jus ad bellum (justice in going to war). These criteria generally include the following:
1. Just cause. Examples of a just cause for the use of force include: Defense against an unjust invader; Protection of family, home, or other innocent victims from direct harm; Recovery of goods unjustly taken; Protection of constitutional rights and liberties from government encroachment; Defense of allies who have been unjustly attacked, etc.
2. Just intent. The purpose of the war must be to establish peace or to protect the innocent. Hatred, economic gain, or the exercise of power are all illicit reasons for using force against another.
3. Legitimate authority. The war must be declared/waged by a legitimate government authority. A war declared by a terrorist organization like al Qaeda is by definition unjust.
4. Reasonable prospect of success. Deliberately protracted wars or wars initiated with no reasonable hope of success are unjust.
5. Last resort. When it's clear that no measure short of the application of force will avail, or that an attack upon one's nation is imminent, war is justified provided the other criteria are met. This requirement is problematic in that it is always possible to imagine yet another set of peace talks, etc. that could be embarked upon and which would delay war indefinitely. Thus, governments have to exercise reasonable judgment in determining whether they have actually exhausted all practical options and have been left with no realistic alternative to war.
Just War theory also requires that wars not only be warranted by stringent criteria (jus ad bellum) but that when fought they be conducted according to certain guidelines (jus in bello: justice in war). The two chief criteria of jus in bello are:
1. Discrimination. Civilians should never be deliberately targeted. This follows from the Christian imperative to be compassionate and merciful. It entails that prisoners not be mistreated and that property and livelihoods not be unduly or unnecessarily damaged.
2. Proportionality. The means employed must be no more brutal or violent than what is necessary to secure victory. It would be unjust to slaughter defeated and retreating enemy soldiers if they no longer pose a threat. It would be a disproportionate response, and therefore unjust, to respond to a cross-border raid with nuclear weapons.
As is no doubt obvious, the heat and stress of war and incipient war may create a lot of gray areas for those seeking to hold to the criteria of Just War, and there's often much room for differences in interpretation. Nevertheless, those who wish to wage war justly will strive to hew as closely to these principles as the exigencies of war permit.
Tomorrow I'll try to explain why I think Israel is conducting itself quite in accord with the requirements of Just War theory. For now, though, I close by observing that whatever the case with the Israelis, it's certainly clear that Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their Iranian masters care nothing at all about these requirements, but then, of course, Islam has no just war tradition to speak of.
It is also the case that secularists who condemn Israel for the war in Gaza have absolutely no basis for so doing. The secularist must piggy-back on the Christian understanding of morality in order to make their condemnations, but that understanding rests on belief in God. If there is no God then howling about alleged Israeli transgressions against moral behavior is foolish nonsense. The secularist simply has no grounds whatsoever for condemning anyone or any nation. All they can do is insist that they don't like that Israel is killing Hamas fighters and destroying buildings.
RLC
A recent Rasmussen poll shows that:
Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republicans back Israel's decision to take military action against the Palestinians, but only half as many Democrats (31%) agree. A majority of Democrats (55%) say Israel should have tried to find a diplomatic solution first, a view shared by just 27% of Republicans.
This is hard for me to understand. What do the people who think that Israel should have tried "a diplomatic solution first" think has been going on in that region for the last thirty years? How much effort must be expended in seeking a diplomatic solution while a nation's citizens are being daily terrorized by rocket attacks before the nation is justified in resorting to military measures to stop the terror?
It would have been helpful, I think, if Rasmussen had asked it's respondents to explain who Hamas is and where Gaza is. The answers the pollsters got to those questions might go a long way to explaining that 55%.
RLC
Think what you will about George W. Bush's policies, he has, in my view, set a standard for character that every president will henceforth be measured against. Despite being the object of continuous and reprehensible insults President Bush never once responded publicly in kind to any of his detractors. He has never shown the slightest animosity or desire to retaliate against his political foes. He ran a decorous White House which, despite the best efforts of his opponents to uncover some scandal, never really got embroiled in anything that in a less crassly partisan era would be thought to be trivial.
Notwithstanding enormous pressure to cave on Iraq, Bush refused to yield to the temptation to try to salvage his popularity and cast about instead, like Lincoln, for a general that would win the war for him, and he found one. He performed many acts of compassion both at home and abroad, especially in Africa, to little fanfare because he didn't want to be seen as exploiting the suffering of others for his own political aggrandizement. Unlike his predecessor's staff, which trashed the White House upon leaving it, the Bush/Obama transition has been handled, like everything the Bushes did, with class and courtesy. He always, as far as I could tell, did what he thought was right and not what was politically expedient, even though he would invariably get pummelled for it in the press.
He's a good man who is nearly universally loved by those who worked for him and who knew him best. Byron York at National Review writes a piece about just this affection and loyalty that almost everyone feels for him. It's a remarkable thing, maybe the crucial test of a man's character, and it speaks louder than any carping left-wing blog or sour New York Times editorial ever could of the man's inherent integrity and strength.
One reason so many hate him, perhaps, is that lesser people are often driven to rage when their own flaws are illumined by the light of a better person's virtue. Their weaknesses and paltriness are indicted by the superior man's opposite qualities, and their jealousy at having the dark places of their souls exposed by the comparison throws them into fits of irrational hostility. They're not infrequently overcome by an irresistible urge to deride and scorn the man in whose presence they themselves seem so puny and base.
George W. Bush didn't always make me happy, but I admire and respect the standard he set as an American and as a man. I hope Barack Obama follows his example.
RLC
A week or so ago I recommended a series of short lessons on economics by Chris Martenson. I was listening to one of them the other day in which Martenson said something I wish every township supervisor and county commissioner would take to heart: Growth does not equal prosperity. He was talking about economic growth, but what he said got me to thinking about the belief that land "development" is good for the economic well-being of a region.
I could never understand the argument that erecting more housing developments, more shopping malls, more apartment complexes, etc. makes a community more prosperous. In fact, I never could see how it doesn't have exactly the opposite effect. The more people who crowd into an area the more services - police, fire, schools, highway maintenance, etc. - that are needed to support them. This not only requires higher taxes, but it also results in an inevitable erosion of the quality of life that comes with more traffic, more crime, and fewer open spaces.
The rejoinder is, of course, that the more businesses there are in an area the more jobs it creates for the residents, but how is this so? If job opportunities increase, the expanded opportunities will simply draw people looking for work who will move in from elsewhere to fill the openings, and that just results in a demand for even more housing, more traffic, more services, higher taxes, etc. Yes, we are told, but with more people in an an area the businesses do better, but if a business profits it isn't long before more of the same type of businesses start up and the profit just gets distributed over more competitors.
Growth is often a wash, a treadmill. Whatever advantages accrue from having more people living and working more closely together are cancelled out by the higher costs they impose. The more growth there is in an area the more there is of everything else that diminishes those qualities which made a community a great place to live in the first place. This is, in my opinion, true of the county in which I live, York Co. in Pennsylvania, and I suspect it's true everywhere. Some people have benefited from the development of York Co. over the last thirty years, to be sure, but I don't see how the county as a whole is a better place to live today than it was, say, in 1970.
RLC
DEBKAfile outlines Hamas' strategy against an Israeli ground invasion and occupation of Gaza. They hope to wear the Israelis down by inflicting steadily mounting casualties until Israel can no longer muster the political support to maintain its occupation and are forced to withdraw. Read how they hope to accomplish this at the link.
Israeli sources claim that Hamas' apparent eagerness to engage an Israeli ground assault is bluster intended to boost morale and that, in fact, Palestinian forces are scared and ill-prepared to face a modern armored attack.
The Times Online is reporting that the ground invasion is expected tonight.
There's lots of interesting information on this conflict at all of the above links.
RLC
Hamas militants are videotaped loading rockets onto a truck to transfer them to launch sites where they would be used in an attempt to kill Israeli women and children. Fortunately for the intended victims, but unfortunately for these particular terrorists, the taping was being done by a missile-armed UAV. Things end badly for the terrorists.
Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has a roundup of many of the protest demonstrations launched in the wake of the Israeli attacks on the terrorists in Gaza. It's disturbing to see how much irrational antipathy there is among American Muslims and left-wing anti-war people for Christians, Jews, and America in general, and these were demonstrations held in American cities. Evidently (read some of the comments at the link), it's far worse in Europe where Arab populations are greater and anti-semitic hatreds are once again becoming fashionable.
What is particularly disturbing is the prevalence of the view that it's a shame, essentially, that one person keeps shooting bullets into his neighbor's house, but that if his neighbor, frustrated that no one makes the shooter stop, chooses finally to fight back, he's guilty of an atrocity.
Given the failure of the rest of the world to do anything effective to stop Hamas from terrorizing Israelis, and given Hamas' obvious goal of killing as many Israelis as they can until they have destroyed the Jewish nation, Israel has no recourse but to destroy Hamas or to commit national suicide. Much of the rest of the world, apparently, wishes they would opt for suicide, and they despise Israel for not going along.
RLC
Hamas has, according to some reports, prevented many Palestinians in Gaza from fleeing to Egypt for medical care, but the hospitals in Gaza are already overfull from the Israeli bombing, so where are injured and sick Palestinians going for care? Israel. One wonders how many Israelis would ever be treated in a Palestinian hospital.
RLC
Moviewise, 2008 was a year for old favorites and first time delights. The old films enjoyed again, some for the third or fourth time, were:
There were also a number of older films I had never seen before, but which I finally got around to watching:
And then there were newer films that I managed to squeeze in. Among the best of these were:
All of the above were, in my opinion, good to very good films, and I'd recommend them all with the caveat that some are R-rated.
Movies that ranged all the way from "okay" to "painful to watch" were:
There are many more good films out there, of course, and if anyone has any recommendations please don't be reticent about passing them along.
From Bill and I best wishes for a great 2009.
RLC
Gary Varvel offers us cartoon commentary on recent developments in the news. The opinions expressed in the text are ours:
It is perplexing, don't you think, that the Israelis simply fail to understand that if the Hamas terrorists want to kill them it's not very civilized of them to do anything substantive about it.
If Mr. Madoff goes to jail for his Ponzi scheme which defrauded thousands of people of their life savings, and he should, then so, too, should every person in congress who resists social security reform and/or who obstructed serious investigation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and/or who used their legislative influence to force banks to make high risk home mortgage loans.
RLC
Jason shares with us an article in the Albany Democrat-Herald which informs us of a clever idea hatched in the fertile mind of Governor Ted Kulongoski:
"As Oregonians drive less and demand more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is increasingly important that the state find a new way, other than the gas tax, to finance our transportation system."
According to the policies he has outlined online, Kulongoski proposes to continue the work of the special task force that came up with and tested the idea of a mileage tax to replace the gas tax.
The governor wants the task force "to partner with auto manufacturers to refine technology that would enable Oregonians to pay for the transportation system based on how many miles they drive."
The task force's final report came out in November 2007. It was based largely on a field test in which about 300 motorists in the Portland area and two service stations took part over 10 months, ending in March 2007.
A GPS-based system kept track of the in-state mileage driven by the volunteers. When they bought fuel, a device in their vehicles was read, and they paid 1.2 cents a mile and got a refund of the state gas tax of 24 cents a gallon.
The residents of Oregon get fleeced coming and going. The more they cut back on fuel consumption to save both gas and money, the less revenue their voracious government rakes in. But voracious government can never be expected to cut their spending. Oh, no. Elected public servants cannot be asked to forego their great retirement and medical insurance programs, or any of the other entitlements and emoluments of their esteemed office. Better it is to compensate for revenue shortfalls by taxing the mileage driven by the poor saps who purchased fuel-efficient cars.
Perhaps we should look at this, though, not from the standpoint of the lowly taxpayer, but from the point of view of a politician. Why should they simply raise the gas tax, if revenues have fallen, when they can create a whole new parasitic bureaucracy affording rich opportunities to descend yet again upon the long-suffering public like a horde of hungry paper-pushing wood ticks? And, of course, once the mileage tax is enacted, the gas tax can be raised anyway. If only a way could be found to tax the air we breathe surely our political leaders would rejoice and levy the tariff forthwith.
Exit question: Can you guess the party affiliation of the governor of Oregon whose brainchild this is? Here's a hint: He has a letter to the citizens of his state on his website .... from his dog. Oregon's voters have no one to blame but themselves.
RLC
The end of the year is always a good time for reflection on movies watched and books read. As I look over the books I managed to finish this year I notice a distressing lack of classic fiction, a lack I hope to remedy in 2009. What fiction I did read was mostly unremarkable. I confess to having read and, dare I admit it, even mildly enjoyed, a couple of high testosterone Vince Flynn thrillers. I also endured Stephen King's logorrheic and highly overrated The Stand. William Young's very popular The Shack was a nice enough story despite its implausibility, and The Fossil Hunters by John Olson was an intermittently entertaining tale of the competition between teams of paleontologists and the dangers inherent in doing field work in hostile countries. That's pretty much the extent of the year's fiction.
There were some other forgettable books which I have duly forgotten, but here are twenty five others (including some of the novels mentioned above) which I've rated on a scale of one to four stars (*poor, **fair, ***good, ****outstanding). A caveat: The rating reflects only my interest in, and enjoyment of, the book and my opinion of its importance. A book on science or philosophy that I rank with 4 stars might seem a complete waste to someone who cares nothing for those subjects:
1. Life's Ultimate Questions, Ronald Nash ***: A good introductory text in philosophy geared to students at a Christian college. Its only drawbacks are Nash's treatment of the early Greeks, which is a bit tedious, and his dismissive treatment of views with which he disagrees.
2. Intelligent Design, Dembski and Ruse ***: Arguments by various scholars pro et contra intelligent design.
3. Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith***: A fine survey of the last one hundred years of argument about the nature of science.
4. The Design Matrix - A Consilience of Clues, Mike Gene ****: An explication of the concept of "front-loaded" evolution. In my opinion, Gene has made an important contribution to the debate about intelligent design.
5. Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg ****: Perhaps the most important book I read this year, it makes a compelling case that fascism is a phenomenon of the political left, not, as most people assume, the right.
6. Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne **: Claiborne gets good grades for enthusiasm and for sincerely trying to live up to his understanding of the gospel, but receives low marks for the quality of his reasoning.
7. The Life of the Mind, Clifford Williams ***: This little book would make a nice gift for an academically-oriented student heading off to college.
8. Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright ***: A condensation of his much more voluminous Resurrection of the Son of God.
9. A Primer on Postmodernism, Stanley Grenz ****: An excellent and very readable overview of the major figures and ideas associated with postmodern thought.
10. Moral Choices, Scott Rae ***: A good introductory text on ethics from a Christian perspective.
11. The Case for Civility, Os Guinness **: Os makes a plea for greater civility in our politics while diminishing his case by taking jabs at the Bush administration whenever the opportunity presents itself.
12. Devil's Delusion, David Berlinski ***: An amusing critique of modern anti-theism written by an agnostic mathematician.
13. Fossil Hunters, John Olson **: A sometimes interesting but uneven story of a paleontological hunt for a prehistoric fossil in an Islamic country.
14. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins **: Perhaps the most overrated book of the decade. Dawkins gives us a polemic against God that seems to attack everything but its intended target.
15. The Reason for God, Tim Keller ***: The pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City seeks to answer questions about Christianity posed by seekers among his congregants.
16. God and Other Minds, Alvin Plantinga ***: In one of the most important and influential books in philosophy in the latter half of the twentieth century, Plantinga shows that we know of God's existence in the same way we know that other minds exist. Not for the beginner.
17. The Nature of True Virtue, Jonathan Edwards **: Edwards brings his logical skills to bear in this 18th century discussion of what it means to be virtuous. The book is written in a dense style that makes it less accessible to modern readers than one might wish.
18. The Shack, William Young ***: Young has written an enormously popular tale of a man who manages to overcome terrible grief through a weekend spent with the Trinity.
19. Last Lecture, Randy Pausch **: A book of advice written by a terminally ill computer prof for his children who will grow up without him. Poignant, wise, and funny.
20. The Stand, Stephen King *: Don't bother.
21. Getting it Right, William F. Buckley ***: WFB puts the internecine struggles of the nascent conservative movement in the 1950s and 60s into a charming novel. Ayn Rand fans will be dismayed.
22. Who Walk Alone, Percy Burgess **: Burgess recounts the life of an American soldier who contracts leprosy while fighting in the Philippines during WWI. The reader of this book will learn a lot about the disease and what life was like for people who suffered from it.
23. Abraham Kuyper - God's Renaissance Man, James McGoldrick **: A straightforward biography of a fascinating character in the history of reformed Christianity. Kuyper was a pastor, a theologian, a parliamentarian and eventually the president of the Netherlands.
24. The Language of God, Francis Collins **: Collins was the scientist who headed the team which elucidated the sequence of nucleotides that comprise the human genome. In the book he talks about his journey from atheism to faith and also lays out his blueprint for harmonizing faith and science.
25. Why the Universe Is the Way it Is, Hugh Ross ***: The first part of this book relates some astonishing facts about the fine-tuning of the universe. The second part is more theological and speculative.
RLC
In a recent post titled Personal Generosity, we discussed a NYT op-ed in which Nicholas Kristoff wrote about studies by Arthur Brooks which reveal that conservatives are much more generous than liberals. Kristoff quoted a remark made by a critic of Brooks' findings to the effect that it may be true that conservatives give more than do liberals but that most conservatives are religious and their giving goes to build church buildings and not to help people. The comment demonstrated a complete unfamiliarity with what churches do, and a reader named Andrew writes to illustrate why the remark belies an unfortunate ignorance on the part of the critic who made it:
I go to a "mega church" here in Lancaster. I've grown up there actually. My family has been attending since there were only 200 members. Anyway, I've often wondered myself why we spend so much on the building, or flat screens for the youth rooms, or the light systems for the services. I used to wonder... wouldn't that money be better spent helping someone needy?
[But] this year members at my church supported over 2200 children in an area of Kenya called Securu. Our 5th and 6th graders raised $165,000 for a charity called Hoops of Hope to go to that same area of Africa to drill deep bore hole wells. Earlier this year we raised around $30,000 to open a few rehabilitation clinics in Vietnam for a vet who attends our church. Our members prepared over 2500 shoeboxes full of essentials to send away to children in need and bought hundreds of presents for needy families in our own area. These are just the things I can remember, and all this on top of the other ministries we run and the time we volunteer.
Yes, maybe some of the money conservatives give goes to build big fancy churches, [but] better a big building where people come to care, and serve, and give than an empty art museum.
In other words, the money that's spent by Andrew's church on physical structure is an investment that ultimately empowers them to do more to meet human need around the globe. Meanwhile, as Kristoff pointed out, much of what secular liberals donate goes to fund art museums, theaters, concert halls, and museums - nice things to have in one's community, to be sure, but hardly institutions likely to do much to help the poor and downtrodden. Indeed, this sort of "charitable giving" is simply a means for the well-off to make their own comfortable lives even more enjoyable.
RLC
I don't know how many of our readers are really into biology, especially as it relates to the Intelligent Design/ Darwinism debate, but if you are there's a must read on the subject by Casey Luskin at Evolution News and Notes.
Biochemist Michael Behe made an argument in his book Darwin's Black Box that a portion of the human blood clotting cascade was irreducibly complex. Biologist Kenneth Miller claims to have refuted Behe's argument to the satisfaction of presiding judge John Jones at the Kitzmiller trial two years ago. Now it's true that Miller satisfied Jones, who was eager to be satisfied by the plaintiffs, but it's not true that he refuted Behe, and Luskin explains why.
This is important because Miller and others are going around the country claiming that Behe has been refuted, and thus ID has been discredited, when in fact neither he, nor it, has been. As Luskin points out, Miller did not address Behe's argument at all, but rather mischaracterized it and then critiqued the mischaracterization. This is called a straw man argument, and Miller's skill in the use of it does him no credit.
RLC
Hot Air links to this video of a computer simulation of an asteroid collision with the earth. It's best watched full screen with the captions on. The asteroid in the sim is about 300 miles in diameter (about as wide as Pennsylvania is long):
The video notes that this is believed to have happened about six times in the earth's history. One such collision, which struck more of a glancing blow to the earth, is believed to have ejected enough molten rock from the earth's crust to have formed the moon. Another impact, smaller than the one depicted, is believed to have wiped out the big dinosaurs.
Such collisions would be even more frequent were it not for the fact that the earth orbits the sun in the same plane as the large outer planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus. These, as well as our large moon, act as cosmic vacuum sweepers whose powerful gravity sucks debris into themselves preventing it from striking the earth. This is one of the many facts about life on earth that often gets overlooked in discussions of the possibility of finding life in other solar systems. Any planet which would give rise to life has to meet an extraordinary number of conditions, among which is that it has to be shielded from impacts such as this one by larger planets in the same solar system.
Few, if any, other planets in the galaxy, or even in the entire universe, meet all the criteria necessary to sustain life which is why scientists Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee titled their book on the subject Rare Earth.
Until just a decade or so ago, scientists pretty much accepted the principle of mediocrity which held that the earth was an unexceptional planet of an unexceptional star situated in an unexceptional galaxy. It was believed that such characteristics must be common in the universe and that therefore life, too, must be common. With the dawning realization, however, that the earth is anything but ordinary and that living things require hundreds if not thousands of specific conditions unlikely to be found together in any one place anywhere else in the cosmos, scientists have of late had to change their thinking, and the principle of mediocrity is being silently laid to rest.
The earth is an extraordinary place. One might almost think, if he didn't know better, that it was all intentionally set up that way.
RLC
Matthew Parris at The Times Online is an atheist which makes this article rather remarkable. He writes, surprisingly but correctly, that the best hope for Africa is Christianity. Here's part of his essay:
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
After discussing how Africans are enchained to a kind of group think that reveres the strongman and how the typical African resigns himself to his wretchedness and adopts a stultifying passivity toward life and its challenges, Parris says:
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know-how that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
Of course, Christians have been saying for two thousand years that Christianity provides a liberating worldview that nothing else, certainly not materialistic atheism or tribal polytheism or animism, does. It's good that some non-believers are finally seeing for themselves and telling others that it is indeed so, but it reminds me of the closing line of Robert Jastrow's God and the Astronomers when Jastrow, talking about the arduous trail of scientific discovery that led finally to the conclusion that the universe exploded into being ex nihilo just as Christian thinkers have been saying for two thousand years, says:
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
For "scientists" substitute "secular liberals" and you have the situation in Africa that Parris describes.
HT: Hot Air
RLC
