Is AARP Bought and Paid for?

Michelle Malkin notes that AARP offers the only health coverage that under "ObamaCare" would be exempt from having to accept clients with medical pre-conditions. Their Medigap program rakes in $400 million a year and will not be required to incur the expense of insuring those whose medical conditions make it a near certainty that the insurer will have to pay out huge sums for treatment. What did AARP do to get this favored status?

The intrepid Jason Mattera chases down an AARP officer to get an answer to that question and others. He wonders whether the exemption has anything to do with AARP's support of the health care reform bill currently before Congress. Needless to say, he doesn't get much satisfaction:

RLC

Evolutionary Ethics (Part III)

This post concludes our discussion of Marc Hauser's essay Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality in which he attempts to argue that morality can be, and should be, based upon our biological nature. You can read Parts I and II here and here.

Mr. Hauser's essay continues by presenting us with examples of moral dilemmas from which he draws the wrong conclusion:

... if five people in a hospital each require an organ to survive, is it permissible for a doctor to take the organs of a healthy person who happens to walk by the hospital? Or if a lethal gas has leaked into the vent of a factory and is headed towards a room with seven people, is it permissible to push someone into the vent, preventing the gas from reaching the seven but killing the one? These are true moral dilemmas - challenging problems that push on our intuitions as lay jurists, forcing us to wrestle with the opposing forces of consequences (saving the lives of many) and rules (killing is wrong).

Based on the responses of thousands of participants to more than 100 dilemmas, we find no difference between men and women, young and old, theistic believers and non-believers, liberals and conservatives. When it comes to judging unfamiliar moral scenarios, your cultural background is virtually irrelevant.

Well, maybe, but it shouldn't be. I would be among the last to say that moral choices are never excruciatingly difficult, but, in the cases that Hauser cites, not so much. The Christian is guided by one overarching principle: Always do the act which maximizes compassion and justice. In the scenarios that Hauser constructs it would be manifestly unjust to take organs from an unwilling passerby and equally unjust to push someone into the vent to save others, even if the others were children, even if they were your own children (surely an individual should jump into the vent himself rather than push another into it).

Hauser assumes, apparently, that everyone thinks in utilitarian terms which require of us that we produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. A utilitarian could superficially justify sacrificing the happiness of one innocent person in order to maximize the happiness of many, but a Christian cannot.

What guides your judgments is the universal and unconscious voice of our species, a biological code, a universal moral grammar....If this code is universal and impartial, then why are there are so many moral atrocities in the world? The answer comes from thinking about our emotions, the feelings we recruit to fuel in-group favouritism, out-group hatred and, ultimately, dehumanisation.

Actually the answer is because atheism offers us no reason why we should not submit to our emotions, nor does it offer us any reason why we should care about anyone but ourselves, but that aside, on what biological or evolutionary grounds does Mr. Hauser condemn in-group favoritism or out-group hatred? These behaviors are as natural to our species as breathing. They've been encoded in our DNA by millenia of evolution. Why, in an atheistic view of things, are they wrong? What is the standard Mr. Hauser is smuggling in here in order to judge them as wrong?

It can't be that he finds warrant for disdaining them in our biological nature because these behaviors are fundamentally ingrained in that nature. It can't be that evolution gives him reason to condemn them because on his view evolution is responsible for their existence.

Mr. Hauser wants to say that out-group hatred is wrong but he can't tell us why. He wants to say, in effect, that there is a natural law written on our hearts that forbids such behavior, but no natural "law" rooted in our evolutionary development can be morally obligatory (see part II). Favoritism or hatred can only be wrong if the source of the natural law is a transcendent moral authority, and that's something Hauser's atheism does not allow.

Consider the psychopath, Hollywood's favourite moral monster. Clinical studies reveal that they feel no remorse, shame, guilt or empathy, and lack the tools for self-control. Because they lacked these capacities, several experts have argued that they lack the wherewithal to understand what is right or wrong and, consequently, to do the wrong thing. New studies show, however, that this conclusion is at least partially wrong. Psychopaths know full well what is right and wrong but don't care. Their moral knowledge is intact but their moral emotions are damaged. They are perfectly normal jurists but perfectly abnormal moral actors. For the psychopath, other humans are no different from rocks or artefacts. They are disposable.

In fact, if naturalism is true we should all be moral psychopaths. Remorse, guilt, shame, etc. are simply illusions that deceive us into thinking we've done something terribly wrong when in fact we haven't. Now that we're enlightened and realize, as atheist Michael Ruse puts it, that "morality is just an illusion fobbed off upon us by our genes in order to get us to cooperate," we should shed these emotions like a growing child sheds his fear of the dark and face the fact that we have nothing to feel guilty about because there's no such thing as guilt.

Guilt can only exist in a world in which our behavior stands condemned by a competent moral judge. In the world of the naturalist there are no moral judges, only, in Richard Dawkins' words, "blind, pitiless indifference."

RLC

Kiva

A while ago we made brief mention of the increasing popularity of microfinance as a great way to help poor entrepreneurs get enough capital to start or maintain their businesses. In the post we touted an organization called Kiva which is involved in this sort of work. I've since come across an article about Kiva in Christianity Today that some of you might like to check out. It's a wonderful way to do something truly meaningful this Christmas season.

RLC

Fat Lips, Fat Heads

In a post we did a week or so ago I mentioned the injustice of court martialing three navy SEALs who were accused of punching a terrorist and then trying to cover it up. In my opinion the people who ought to be court martialed are the Navy poobahs who are charging these men. Surely fatheadedness among the brass is a court-martial-worthy offense, and if it's not it should be.

Clifford May has a piece on this at National Review Online that's worth reading if you want to see how wimpish the higher echelons of our military have become. May writes:

Surely, these SEALs - like all American citizens - deserve the presumption of innocence. It's also worth recalling that the al-Qaeda manual recommends that all detainees complain of torture and abuse.

But what if it turns out that one of the SEALs did give the guy a shot? What if Abed was uncooperative, or spit at them, or bragged about how he slaughtered the Americans (one of whom was a retired SEAL) and how they begged for their lives and squealed like pigs as they died? I can imagine how a normal guy - even one as disciplined as a SEAL - might lose his temper for a moment.

In that case, I wouldn't expect a senior officer to turn a blind eye. I'd expect him to take the SEALs aside and say, "Let me be clear: You guys cut the John Wayne stuff or you're going to be peeling potatoes on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf for the next six months. Understood?" The reply would be: "Yes, sir! Understood, sir!" And that would be the end of that.

But a court martial? Maybe there's more to it than we know. But how much more could there be? Abed is alive. He has two eyes, two ears, ten fingers, and ten toes. This much is clear: If a single alleged knuckle sandwich is all it takes to remove three special operators from the battlefield, Abed won this battle.

A terrorist in American custody should be aware that he is in the presence of principled professionals. But he should not believe that he is untouchable or that he is entitled to the rights enjoyed by an American citizen under the U.S. Constitution - a document he'd gladly trample underfoot.

He should know that the troops who detain him are not like him: They won't chop off his head on video tape while chanting praise for a divinity pleased by the carnage. But he also should know that if he asks for a fat lip, he might just get a fat lip.

Read the whole article. The more I read about political correctness in the military the more convinced I am that our troops are made of far sterner stuff than are those who command them.

RLC

An Exact Science

Since the filched emails from East Anglia were released a month ago we've come to learn a lot about the scientific method, at least as it is practiced by some leading global warming enthusiasts. Consider this graph, for example, which shows temperature data at Darwin, Australia for the twentieth century:

The red line is alarming indeed. It shows temperatures in a runaway ascent, but there's a catch. Although the red line is what's usually cited when the global warming folk want to put a good scare into school children, it actually represents what is called "adjusted" data. In other words, the field measurements are deemed in need of adjusting to account for all sorts of factors like the implementation of new equipment or moving the recording apparatus to a different location, etc. So the climatologists throw into the data mix an eye of newt and a wing of bat and out comes adjusted temperatures that'll frighten the bejabbers out of you.

On the graph the black line represents the adjustment factor. The raw data, the measurements that were actually recorded by the instruments at Darwin, are in blue, and notice that these temperatures have been essentially flat throughout the twentieth century.

It's not until the global warming alchemists have applied their ministrations to the raw data that we get something that Al Gore can sell books about. In the meantime, it looks like the raw data show no real change occurring at all, at least not in Darwin.

Go to the link for a more thorough analysis.

RLC

Evolutionary Ethics (Part II)

This post continues our discussion of Marc Hauser's essay Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality in which he attempts to argue that morality can be, and should be, based upon our biological nature. You can read Part I here.

Hauser writes:

None of my comments so far are meant to be divisive with respect to the meaning and sense of community that many derive from religion. Where I intend to be divisive is with respect to the argument that religion, and moral education more generally, represent the only - or perhaps even the ultimate - source of moral reasoning. If anything, moral education is often motivated by self-interest, to do what's best for those within a moral community, preaching singularity, not plurality. Blame nurture, not nature, for our moral atrocities against humanity. And blame educated partiality more generally, as this allows us to lump into one category all those who fail to acknowledge our shared humanity and fail to use secular reasoning to practice compassion.

But why should we care about our "shared humanity?" Why should we practice compassion? Hauser never tells us. He just assumes that this is the right thing to do, but we need to ask him what fact of evolution or our biology is he basing this assumption upon? Indeed, what fact of our biology tells us that we should not act in our self-interest? To such questions Hauser gives no answer.

He adds this:

If religion is not the source of our moral insights - and moral education has the demonstrated potential to teach partiality and, therefore, morally destructive behaviour - then what other sources of inspiration are on offer?

One answer to this question is emerging from an unsuspected corner of academia: the mind sciences. Recent discoveries suggest that all humans, young and old, male and female, conservative and liberal, living in Sydney, San Francisco and Seoul, growing up as atheists, Buddhists, Catholics and Jews, with high school, university or professional degrees, are endowed with a gift from nature, a biological code for living a moral life.

This code, a universal moral grammar, provides us with an unconscious suite of principles for judging what is morally right and wrong. It is an impartial, rational and unemotional capacity. It doesn't dictate who we should help or who we are licensed to harm. Rather, it provides an abstract set of rules for how to intuitively understand when helping another is obligatory and when harming another is forbidden. And it does so dispassionately and impartially.

This is fascinating. It sounds exactly like what natural law philosophers and theologians have been saying for centuries. Indeed St. Paul writing to the church at Rome in the first century observed that everyone has a moral law "written on their hearts" (See Romans 2: 15).

But the question is not whether we have such a moral code or moral sense but rather where it comes from. This makes all the difference as to whether it is in any way incumbent upon us. If the code is inscribed on our hearts by God then it is presumably morally obligatory, but if it's the product of evolution then we're no more obligated to observe it than we are obligated to cover our mouth when yawning. If this law that Mr. Hauser thinks he has discovered is the product of blind chance and purposelessness which somehow conspired to fit us for life in the stone age then why should we live our lives by it today? It's merely an evolutionary vestige, like a man's beard, and can be ignored or removed with just as little moral consequence.

To argue that because we have a moral sense we are therefore bound to live by it is to commit the fallacy of deriving an "ought" from an "is" (sometimes called the naturalistic fallacy). It simply does not follow that because something is a certain way it therefore ought to be that way. Just because in some situations we feel compassion for others does not mean that if we didn't feel compassion we'd be in some sense morally wrong.

Moreover, evolution-based ethics are highly selective in what they deem right and wrong. On what basis, for instance, do we determine which of our evolved behaviors are morally good and which are not? Men are just as likely, perhaps more likely, to be selfish, cruel and violent as they are to be generous, kind, and peaceful. Both tendencies, according to Hauser's view, are part of our biological makeup and must result from our evolutionary development as a species. On what basis, then, does he prefer one behavior over the other? On what basis does he decide that we're required to do one and required to avoid the other? Why, exactly, should I care about the poor or care about the world my great-grandchildren will inherit? Why shouldn't I just live for myself and let the poor or future generations worry about their own survival? What answer based upon our biological make-up can Hauser possibly give to these questions?

The fact is that naturalistic, evolutionary ethics provide us no basis, other than one's individual feelings, for judging one behavior to be morally better than another and certainly no reason for thinking that we're in any way obligated to do one thing rather than its opposite. As a guide to moral behavior it is utterly useless.

More tomorrow.

RLC

Debunking the Shroud

I don't know what to make of the Shroud of Turin, the famous burial cloth that bears the scientifically inexplicable imprint of a man whose wounds appear consonant with those which Jesus is described as suffering during his execution.

The Shroud is believed by many to be the actual burial cloth of Christ and the imprint is believed to have been preternaturally impressed into the fabric. Perhaps. I'm not in a position to say. What I can say, however, is that arguments like the one below which purport to debunk the Shroud as spurious are risibly dumb.

According to an article in Science Daily another burial shroud has been unearthed in Jerusalem dating to the first century. The shroud is apparently that of a man who was a leper and who died of tuberculosis, all of which is pretty interesting, but then the article quotes the researchers as claiming that the leper's shroud proves that the Turin Shroud could not be that of Jesus:

This is also the first time fragments of a burial shroud have been found from the time of Jesus in Jerusalem. The shroud is very different to that of the Turin Shroud, hitherto assumed to be the one that was used to wrap the body of Jesus. Unlike the complex weave of the Turin Shroud, this is made up of a simple two-way weave, as the textiles historian Dr. Orit Shamir was able to show.

Based on the assumption that this is representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus, the researchers conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.

In other words, we can assume that the leper's shroud had a weave typical of the period and since the Turin Shroud had a more sophisticated weave it must have dated from a more recent era or a different place.

If the researchers are being accurately represented in the article theirs is a remarkably shallow argument. What reason is there for making the assumption that the weave of the leper's shroud is typical? How many such linens have we discovered that we can make such a determination? And even if it were typical of the common folk to use such shrouds do we know that the more expensive weave was not preferred by the well-to-do? Why could it not be that Jesus was buried in a fabric typically imported for purchase and use by the wealthy from outside Jerusalem? Why could it not be that the rich man who donated the grave for Jesus' burial also donated the shroud? It was also typical of that time that the garments people wore were stitched together from numerous strips of cloth and thus had many seams, but Jesus' garment was seamless and thus considered unusual enough by his executioners for them to gamble for it. Should we assume that this story is false because it suggests that Jesus wore a garment not typical of that worn in the region at the time?

Sometimes in their eagerness to discredit Christian belief skeptics resort to the most desperate reasoning and wind up saying the silliest things. The Shroud of Turin may not be what its devotees believe it to be, but it'll take a lot more than the reasons offered in this article to convince them of that.

RLC

Evolutionary Ethics (Part I)

The idea that our moral sense is a product of human evolution has been around ever since Darwin, but in all those years it has never managed to convince most philosophers that it's plausible. Marc Hauser at Edge takes another stab at it in an article titled Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality. There's much to think about (and to criticize) in his essay so I'd like to offer an analysis over the next several days. This post will be part I of the series.

Hauser writes:

For many, living a moral life is synonymous with living a religious life. Just as educated students of mathematics, chemistry and politics know that 1=1, water=H2O, and Barack Obama=US president, so, too, do religiously educated people know that religion=morality.

As simple and pleasing as this relationship may seem, it has at least three possible interpretations.

First, if religion represents the source of moral understanding, then those lacking a religious education are morally lost, adrift in a sea of sinful temptation. Those with a religious education not only chart a steady course, guided by the cliched moral compass but they know why some actions are morally virtuous and others are morally abhorrent.

Actually, it's not so much a lack of religious education which casts one adrift, it's the lack of any objective ground for moral judgment and moral obligation. If morality is not rooted in the goodness of a transcendent moral authority then it's entirely rooted in human subjectivity and what's moral is simply a matter of whatever feels right to me. Any ethics that seeks to ground itself in something other than God ultimately founders on the shoals of subjectivity, and, as we'll see Hauser's attempt is no exception.

Second, perhaps everyone has a standard engine for working out what is morally right or wrong but those with a religious background have extra accessories that refine our actions, fueling altruism and fending off harms to others.

Well, at least those who understand Christianity do. The "extra accessories" that the Christian has at her disposal are the twin motivators of love for, and gratitude to, God. The reason why there are relatively few charities run by atheists is that motives rooted in evolution will almost always drive people toward egoism rather than altruism. Love and gratitude, especially when directed toward something or someone beyond ourselves, are the most powerful incentives anyone has for caring about others, and the atheist has denied himself access to these resources.

Third, while religion certainly does provide moral inspiration, not all of its recommendations are morally laudatory. Though we can all applaud those religions that teach compassion, forgiveness and genuine altruism, we can also express disgust and moral outrage at those religions that promote ethnic cleansing, often by praising those willing to commit suicide for the good of the religious "team".

The obvious question Hauser raises for himself here is what standard is he using to judge compassion, forgiveness, and altruism as laudatory and ethnic cleansing as outrageous? Where does he get the idea that the former are good and the latter is bad? What is he basing this evaluation upon? The answer has to be either evolution or his own feelings, but if so how can either of these tell us that something is good or bad?

Indeed, an ethic based on evolution should see ethnic cleansing as a natural expression of the survival of the fittest gene pool. It should view suicide bombers as altruists sacrificing their own lives to promote the survival of the genes of the larger group of which he is a part.

In other words, Hauser wants to ground morality in the evolution of humanity, but as soon as he starts making moral judgments he finds himself forced to import values that have their source elsewhere. This is a problem that many naturalists face. They simply cannot consistently reconcile their naturalism with their moral sense. They see where the train of naturalist morality is taking them, and they don't like it so they make an irrational leap onto the back of Christian morality, and hope no one will notice as they piggyback upon the very assumptions they wish to discredit.

More tomorrow.

RLC

Taxes

Jason sends along a cartoon that's both depressing and funny:

There's more than a bit of truth to this. President Obama insists he wants to create jobs, but nothing he's done so far has worked. The reason joblessness is still over 10% is that businesses won't hire when they fear their taxes, i.e. their costs, are going to go up in a few months. Yet the current Congress and administration seems unconcerned about this common sense impediment to job creation as they push legislation that will elevate taxes to levels that will be a disincentive for many businesses to increase their workforce.

If the President wishes to stimulate job creation, rather than throw money at programs that pay people to rake leaves, he should drop health care reform (at least in its current form) and cap and trade. If employers are confident that there won't be huge levies waiting for them down the road they'll be much more likely to hire workers today.

Unfortunately, the Democrats' solution to our economic woes has been to sink the nation further into debt, throw more money at pointless jobs, provide health care for those who don't have it, tax industry for using energy, and then raise taxes on everyone to try to pay for it all. The irony is that raising taxes simply means more people will be out of work and unable to afford health care so that more people will be dependent upon government to pay for their care, which means that taxes on everyone else will have to be raised even higher.

It doesn't make much sense.

RLC

Safe Schools Czar

Jim Hoft has been documenting the career of Kevin Jennings, President Obama's Safe Schools czar, and has the latest here. In 2000 Mr. Jennings apparently organized and led a conference for teenagers in which almost every imaginable sexual deviancy was promoted to the teens. Among these were ... well, you'll have to read it for yourself if you have the stomach for it.

That the administration would deem this man suitable to put in charge of children shows an appalling lack of judgment. The man is an embarrassment to the President, and the longer he's allowed to hang around the more unavoidable will be the conclusion that the President actually wants him around.

Read the article (or this one) and see if this is the sort of man you want supervising your children's safety.

RLC

More Complex Than Expected

Telic Thoughts directs us to an article which reports on a study that assesses how complex the simplest functional cell would have to be. What the researchers found is that the simplest biologically viable cell is still very complex indeed:

What are the bare essentials of life, the indispensable ingredients required to produce a cell that can survive on its own? Can we describe the molecular anatomy of a cell, and understand how an entire organism functions as a system?

...three papers published back-to-back today in Science, provide the first comprehensive picture of a minimal cell, based on an extensive quantitative study of the biology of the bacterium that causes atypical pneumonia, Mycoplasma pneumoniae. The study uncovers fascinating novelties relevant to bacterial biology and shows that even the simplest of cells is more complex than expected.

The rest of the article explains the complexity. The significance of this is that before the mechanisms of evolution could take over and generate, at least theoretically, all of the diversity of living things we see today, blind, purposeless chance still had to produce a structure which was highly integrated and organized and which possessed enormous information content (see video below).

Perhaps a non-biologist, uninitiated in the mysteries of the discipline, might be forgiven for thinking this is all a bit far-fetched. It seems rather like constructing a computer, together with its operating system, by shaking together a random assortment of its parts. It's not as if we see such prodigies happening every day, after all.

The irony is that those who believe that the feat of producing an information-rich, highly organized and functional systems like the one in the video requires the agency of an intentional mind - and who point to the fact that every time we see similar structures manufactured there's always a mind behind it - are nevertheless called superstitious. But those who claim that random chance and physical law can somehow create such a marvel, and have probably done so countless times across the cosmos - even though no one has ever actually observed chance or physical law producing information and no one knows how it could possibly have been accomplished - are said to be enlightened. It's pretty funny.

RLC

Heading for Default

This article that Bill passes along will fill you with hope for change. Here's the nut of it:

It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion.

Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from?

How did we end up with so much short-term debt? Like most entities that have far too much debt - whether subprime borrowers, GM, Fannie, or GE - the U.S. Treasury has tried to minimize its interest burden by borrowing for short durations and then "rolling over" the loans when they come due. As they say on Wall Street, "a rolling debt collects no moss."

What they mean is, as long as you can extend the debt, you have no problem. Unfortunately, that leads folks to take on ever greater amounts of debt... at ever shorter durations... at ever lower interest rates. Sooner or later, the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that's when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over. Bankruptcy is next.

When governments go bankrupt, it's called a "default." Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists - Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti - published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. The formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule.

The rule states: To avoid a default, countries should maintain hard currency reserves equal to at least 100% of their short-term foreign debt maturities. The world's largest money-management firm, PIMCO, explains the rule this way: "The minimum benchmark of reserves equal to at least 100% of short-term external debt is known as the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. Greenspan-Guidotti is perhaps the single concept of reserve adequacy that has the most adherents and empirical support."

The principle behind the rule is simple. If you can't pay off all of your foreign debts in the next 12 months, you're a terrible credit risk. Speculators are going to target your bonds and your currency, making it impossible to refinance your debts. A default is assured.

So how does America rank on the Greenspan-Guidotti scale? It's a guaranteed default.

Read the rest at the link, but make sure you're not near any open windows or sharp objects.

RLC

The Hockey Stick

Doc at The Autopsy has put together an interesting video that puts the global warming "hockey stick" into perspective. The "hockey stick" is the name given to the way a graph of temperatures over the past century or so stays fairly constant and then suddenly shoots upward like a hockey stick lying on the ground with its blade pointing up. What the video does is start with a graph that shows recent temperature changes and then keeps putting those changes into greater and greater historical context. The longer the reach of the data the less significant the hockey stick appears:

If this is accurate it makes all of the "sky-is-falling" panic about global warming seem rather melodramatic and overblown.

RLC

Stretching the Truth

Planned Parenthood continues to embarrass itself. This undercover video filmed in a Wisconsin PP clinic shows a counselor and doctor providing a young mother inaccurate information and even resorting to scare tactics to persuade her to terminate the pregnancy:

LiveAction.org observes that:

In the undercover video, when the two women ask a Planned Parenthood counselor if the pregnant woman's 10-week-old unborn child has a heartbeat, the counselor emphasizes "heart tones," and answers, "Heart beat is when the fetus is active in the uterus--can survive--which is about seventeen or eighteen weeks." On the contrary, embryologists agree that the heartbeat begins around 3 weeks. Wisconsin informed consent law requires that women receive medically accurate information before undergoing an abortion.

The counselor then says, "A fetus is what's in the uterus right now. That is not a baby." Dr. Prohaska, the abortion doctor, insists, "It's not a baby at this stage or anything like that." Prohaska also states that having an abortion will be "much safer than having a baby," warning, "You know, women die having babies."

Hey, what's a little truth-stretching when there's a boodle of money to be made? There's more on this at the link.

RLC

Buyer's Remorse

According to Ben Smith at Politico.com things are President Obama's popularity is in serious decline. For example:

...just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they'd rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that's somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country's difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited.

Less than a year in office and President Obama is making the country wish George Bush was back. By this time next year he may be making the country wish Jimmy Carter was back.

I heard on the radio yesterday, though I haven't been able to find it documented anywhere, that 20% of Americans would support impeachment of the President. As harmful as I think the President's policies are, as much as I fear that he is deliberately driving us toward bankruptcy in order to fulfill his ambition of destroying capitalism and imposing socialism, I nevertheless find impeachment a ludicrous solution.

Like it or not, the President isn't doing anything that he didn't tell us he would do during the campaign. Voters had every indication that he was a radical leftist, that he favored a radical redistribution of wealth and that he would fundamentally change our economic structure, but, in a free and open election, the majority cast their ballots for him anyway.

His policies may be extremely harmful (though no moreso than those of the Congress whose lead he follows), but they are what the nation voted for. To now say that he deserves to be impeached because he's doing what anyone who was paying attention knew he would do is to make a mockery of our Constitution and to turn the U.S. into a banana republic.

The best way to stop the President is at the ballot box by voting progressives out of Congress in 2010, and voting for Mr. Obama's opponent in 2012. Maybe next time voters will take their franchise seriously, pay attention to what's being said and who is saying it, and not be so impressed by a candidate whose r�sum� is as empty as his speeches are stirring.

RLC

Microscopic Beauty

Here are some beautiful pictures of living things so tiny that most of us never see them.

Here's one of my favorites. It's a unicellular algae called Penium:

RLC

This Year's Daniel

Stephen Meyer has been awarded World magazine's "Daniel" award for 2009, presented to the man or woman who withstands intense opposition, often in the form of personal assaults, with grace and resolve:

This fall Meyer came out with a full account of what science has learned in recent decades: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (Harper One, 2009) shows that the cell is incredibly complex and the code that directs its functions wonderfully designed. His argument undercuts macroevolution, the theory that one kind of animal over time evolves into a very different kind. Meyer thus garners media scorn for raining on this year's huge celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin 200 years ago and the publication of On the Origin of Species 150 years ago.

From his office Meyer has ventured forth to debate at least nine prominent Darwinians on CNN, NPR, FOX, the BBC, and other venues. In it he has written numerous newspaper and magazine columns in defense of Intelligent Design (ID), as well as an academic article that became notorious five years ago when Richard Sternberg, a Smithsonian-affiliated scientist, agreed to publish it in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Darwinian higher-ups demoted Sternberg for allowing the other side to have its say. They interrogated him about religious and political beliefs.

ID proponents regularly receive that type of harassment: No lion's den, but denials of tenure and media depiction as anti-science. Ironically, scientific advance is now backing ID, which starts with the idea that - in Meyer's words -"certain technical features in a physical system reveal the activity of an intelligence or a mind. A simple example might be Mount Rushmore: You drive into the Dakotas and you see carvings of the presidents' faces up on the mountainside, and you immediately recognize that you're dealing with a sculpture, an intelligence, rather than an undirected process like wind and erosion."

Our new ability to peer into cells also shows ID: Meyer says, "We don't see little faces but we do see other indicators of intelligent activity, such as the digital code that's stored in a DNA molecule, or the tiny little miniature machines, the nanotechnology, the sliding clamps and turbines and rotary engines that biologists are now finding inside living cells." Darwin did not know any of that and Meyer, 51, did not always know it. His career shows the four-stage pattern that is common among intellectual Daniels: Questioning, discernment, courage, and perseverance.

The article goes on to trace Meyer's journey through those four stages, and it's quite interesting. Also interesting is the note that the author, Marvin Olasky, appends to the end of the essay:

This year atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins refused my offer to schedule a debate in New York between Meyer and himself: Dawkins, who says that Darwinism makes for "intellectually fulfilled atheism," apparently does not want to lose his sense of fulfillment. But theistic evolutionist Francis Collins also attacks ID and is unwilling to enter into a public discussion with Meyer.

For all their bluster and bravado about slaying the dragons of superstition and exposing the ridiculousness of theistic belief the atheistic Darwinians, and even some of their theistic allies, really want nothing to do with the ID people (see the post below this one). They know such battles, especially if held in public fora, would be as hard on their scholarly reputations as they'd be on their egos.

RLC

Flincher

Bill Dembski at Uncommon Descent introduces the brief video clip below with these words:

William Lane Craig is not only one of the world's leading Christian apologists but he has actually made outstanding original contributions to philosophy. Yes, Craig publishes popular-level books. Unlike Dawkins, however, who in 20-years plus has been purely a popularizer (of Darwinian evolution, materialist science, and atheism), Craig continues to publish at the highest levels of the academy addressing scholars of the highest caliber (and gaining their respect). Dawkins, by contrast, increasingly appeals to the lowest common denominator. It's in this light that Dawkins glib dismissal of Craig should be viewed:

This is another example of how the smack-talkers among the new atheists would prefer to attack straw men in the comfort of their study rather than venture out to wage face-to-face combat with a real opponent. One wonders what rank and file atheists must think when they see their champions eager to embarrass liberal bishops who don't know what they believe or why they believe it but flinching from encounters with formidable Christian thinkers like Craig.

RLC

Who's to Say?

Richard Weikert, the historian who wrote the excellent study (From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany) of how the Darwinian worldview prepared the intellectual and moral ground for eugenics and eventually the Holocaust, writes about a conference he attended recently at San Diego State. The convocation was given to celebrating the theme, "150 Years of Evolution: Darwin's Impact on the Humanities and the Social Sciences." At the event he had a couple of disconcerting conversations. Here's his account:

A young man was performing rap songs on evolutionary themes that he had been commissioned to write and perform for the Darwin celebrations in Britain. He told us between his songs that in some species, such as praying mantises and black widows, the females kill their mates after procreating. This is an evolutionary adaptation. The rapper then continued by saying that it is only chance-like the flip of a coin, he said-that our own species does not exhibit such a behavior. He then stated that if we did act this way, our moral systems and religions would revolve around females killing their mates. (Take-home lesson: Morality and religion are contingent products of mindless processes).

This view may sound bizarre, but it is actually very similar to a statement Darwin made in the Origin of Species, where he mentioned that some species commit infanticide. He then stated that if we as humans had been raised with their instincts, infanticide would then be moral. Darwin's own moral relativism was even more apparent in Descent of Man, where he argued that sexual morality had evolved over human history. At one point in the human past, he argued, "promiscuous intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world." Polygamy and monogamy were later evolutionary adaptations, he thought. Similar ideas are commonplace today in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, both influential movements in intellectual circles.

At a dinner at the close of the conference, I spoke with a philosophy graduate student who told me that because empathy and thus morality were traits produced by evolution, he was convinced that morality was relative. When I asked him if he then thought Hitler was not evil, he told me that even though he personally finds Hitler repugnant, that repugnance has no objective validity, so, he stated, "Hitler was OK." He then told me that he doesn't want his rational belief in relativistic morality to influence his own moral standards, but he still considered his moral standards evolved traits that are purely subjective. I told him that I thought the reason his "instincts" and rationality about morality were at odds was because morality really is objective, but he didn't see it that way.

This was not the first time I had heard someone defend moral relativism-even to the point of claiming Hitler was neither right nor wrong, but still I am horrified by this display of moral blindness. However, if one buys into the relevant presuppositions, I'm not sure his position is so philosophically outlandish....If evolution produced morality, as many Darwinists think, what fulcrum could possibly exist to condemn Hitler objectively for pursuing his ideals?

Weikert's conversations illustrate a crucial moral problem that faces us in the 21st century: How can subjectivism be avoided in a secular society? If there's no God then there's no ground for moral obligation, no ground for moral judgment of right and wrong other than one's own personal feelings. For now most people are unaware that when they make a moral judgment they're really not talking about anything other than their own tastes. They simply assume that there's an objective right and wrong, that they're just stating t6he obvious when the say we should help the poor or that Hitler was evil, but they've never really asked themselves how this could possibly be. Once it begins to dawn on society at large that moral talk is just a bunch of hocus pocus if we reject the existence of a transcendent moral ground, once we find that there's no real basis for saying that the Adolf Hitlers of the world are evil men, society will lose whatever cohesion it has and begin to unravel. It will start with the elites first. Indeed, it's already well along the way.

RLC

Imploding Justice

You might recall the voter intimidation carried out by a group called the New Black Panthers at a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 election. The Department of Justice attorneys brought several charges against the thugs involved in this illegal activity, but last spring they were instructed by higher ups to drop the case. This has apparently had a demoralizing effect on the Holder Justice Department, as it should, and three top attorneys have resigned. The Washington Times has an editorial claiming that the Attorney General's department is actually imploding as a result of what some see as an attempt to protect political allies from prosecution.

The Times story on this can be read here. This seems to be just another example of how justice seems to be undergoing a redefinition in the age of Obama. A young couple surreptitiously videotape Obama's old friends at ACORN counselling them how to break the law, and it's the videotapers who face a lawsuit. Three Navy SEALS are facing a court martial because the terrorist who planned and carried out the kidnapping, torture, and murder of several American security personnel in Iraq claims one of them punched him in the stomach after they captured him and that the others lied about it to cover it up. Hackers uncover damning emails on the computers of the world's leading climate-change scientists and Senator Barbara Boxer wants the hackers hunted down and prosecuted. I wonder if back in 1971 she demanded that Daniel Ellsberg and the others who leaked the top secret Pentagon Papers be prosecuted. I'm sure she would have because Ms Boxer is nothing if not fair and consistent.

This is not to say that the SEALS shouldn't be disciplined or the hackers should be allowed to go unpunished (Though I do say that the young couple who videotaped the ACORN sleaziness should be given a Pulitzer instead of being slapped with a lawsuit), but surely there are reprimands for military personnel that fall far short of court martial, and surely Ms Boxer should at this point in time be more focussed on what the emails reveal than how we came to be in possession of them, particularly since it's not even clear that a crime was committed or if it was that it was committed in the U.S.

The people we should be praising and thanking for the service they're performing to the country and to truth are being turned somehow into the bad guys and the people who really are the bad guys are made to look like victims. What's happening to us?

RLC