Human = Chimp

In a piece at ENV, biologist Ann Gauger debunks the notion, widespread in the popular press, that humans and chimps are genetically almost identical. The oft repeated figure is that the two species share 99% of their genes which implies a very close evolutionary relationship. There are numerous faults with this reasoning, however. Gauger explains:

You have probably heard that our DNA, the stuff that makes us human, is only 1% different from chimps. The claim that we are little more than apes is now part of the Zeitgeist of our culture, having been propagated in the popular press for nearly forty years. However, that statement and the conclusions drawn from it are false.

Let's look at the first claim, that we are only 1% different from chimps. That measurement only compares base changes in human and chimp DNA. It doesn't include other kinds of changes to the DNA, like deletions and insertions or rearrangements. In addition, because of the sequencing methods used, repetitive DNA is not included. Now that complete or nearly complete genome sequences for humans and chimps are available, a better picture of our differences and similarities is emerging. A 2007 essay in the journal Science, says this:

Researchers are finding that on top of the 1% distinction, chunks of missing DNA, extra genes, altered connections in gene networks, and the very structure of chromosomes confound any quantification of "humanness" versus "chimpness."

To be specific, in addition to the 1% distinction already noted, entire genes are either duplicated or deleted between the two species, sometimes in long stretches called segmental duplications. Such duplications represent a 6.4% difference between chimps and humans. There are also insertions and deletions within genes, which affect the structure and function of the proteins they encode. That contributes another 3%, according to some estimates. And there are entirely new genes, specific to humans.

This is just the beginning of the differences. Go to the link for the rest of Gauger's catalog of variances between the two species. The reason some are so interested in showing a close genetic relationship between humans and chimps, of course, is the more closely we are alike genetically the easier it is to draw the conclusion that we are biologically related and descended from a common ancestor.

This is predicated on the assumption, however, that DNA is what makes species different (or alike). Evidence is mounting that DNA is only one factor, maybe not even a major factor, in establishing the characteristics of a species. Gauger talks about some of these other factors and then concludes:

And that brings me to another false assumption underlying the mismeasure of man -- that genes make us who we are. Many things beyond our genes contribute to making us who we are. Our genes do not control us. Certainly, they can influence our predisposition to disease, the shape of our nose, or the color of our eyes, but they do not specify how we will respond to the challenge of disease, or what spouse we will choose.

Our experience and our moral character have something to contribute to those things. New studies in psychology indicate, for example, that we can rewire our own brains to think in new patterns; those new thoughts actually change the underlying neural connections. The choices we make matter. And this is a very non-Darwinian thought.

None of this means that chimps and humans did not descend from a common ancestor, but what it does mean is that there's good reason to doubt the notion, common in some circles, that we are "just" a naked ape, that we are "just" an animal pretty much like every other mammal. It also confirms the suspicion that so much of what we thought we knew about our evolutionary past is simply not true.

Review of Cosmos

Let me start by saying that I encourage people to watch the Cosmos remake that's running on Sunday nights on Fox and National Geographic. Based on last night's initial installment there's much to like about it. The CGI is very good and the series will present a lot of information about the universe in which we live in an entertaining and very accessible fashion.

Unfortunately, I have to issue a caveat. The creators of the series are, like their progenitor Carl Sagan, metaphysical naturalists who evidently feel the need to not only present the science in attractive ways but also to disparage competing metaphysical views in ways that are misleading and unfair.

In last night's episode they spent an inordinate amount of time on the Giordani Bruno matter. Bruno was a 16th century Italian Catholic monk who was imprisoned and eventually burned as a heretic. This is tragic enough, but the narrator, Neil deGrasse Tyson, made it sound as if Bruno was a martyr to science. This is very misleading. Bruno was executed not because he promoted heterodox views about the universe, but because he denied most of the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

From Wikipedia:

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of the Trinity, denial of the divinity of Christ, denial of virginity of Mary, and denial of Transubstantiation. The Inquisition found him guilty, and in 1600 he was burned at the stake. After his death he gained considerable fame, particularly among 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who, focusing on his astronomical beliefs, regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas. However, scholars note that Bruno's ideas about the universe played a small role in his trial compared to his pantheist beliefs, which differed from the interpretations and scope of God held by the Catholic Church.

Tyson also makes much of the intolerance of religious thinkers toward people like Bruno and how we're much better off today now that we have a separation of church and state, but as Casey Luskin reminds us at Evolution News and Views, there sure is an awful lot of intolerance today. The difference between the 16th century and now is that today the intolerance is manifested by those who are hostile to religion, and they lack the political clout to actually imprison or execute their victims. Nevertheless, as a perusal of Luskin's essay will show, there are plenty of Giordano Brunos among those who are skeptical of Darwinian materialism and naturalism. Luskin lists the cases and the litany of repression, punishment, and closed-mindedness he documents is appalling.

Nor does Tyson mention that many if not most of the great scientists in the history of the discipline were themselves devout Christians, at least until the twentieth century.

Finally, Tyson avers that the qualities of science that have made it successful include the fact that science encourages its practitioners to follow the evidence wherever it leads and to question everything. Sadly, those who actually try to do this in the study of the history of life and the universe find that there are definite limits to exactly what sorts of data are allowed to count as evidence and what sorts of things one is allowed to call into question. Anything that challenges the naturalistic orthodoxy will be met with reprisals, and those who do question that orthodoxy are treated as heretics.

The Inquisition still lives today. It's just headquartered in American universities and media editorial offices rather than in the Vatican.

Even so, watch the second installment of Cosmos next Sunday. Just be aware of the metaphysical biases that are being smuggled into the science.

Cosmos

Several decades ago astronomer Carl Sagan produced and narrated a series of science shows for PBS titled Cosmos. It was a smash.

Now the series is being reprised with Neil deGrasse Tyson, a disciple of Sagan's, filling the late astronomer's role. The series starts tomorrow night on Fox (9:00 Eastern) and should be quite good as long as it sticks to the science.

Unfortunately, if the opening statement in the trailer is any indication - it's Sagan's famous summarization of metaphysical naturalism in his own voice - the show will probably interlace the science with metaphysical assumptions presented as the deliverances of modern science. It'll take an alert viewer to filter out the metaphysics from the science.

But I'm just guessing. Maybe Tyson and the script writers, unlike those who wrote the original Cosmos, will just stick to the science. Here's the trailer:

Tomatoe and Rspect

Readers of a certain age will remember, perhaps vividly, how the media forever stigmatized Dan Quayle as a dunce because he couldn't recall, off the cuff, whether there was an 'e' at the end of the word 'tomato' or not. When a Republican vice-president gets a brain freeze that causes him to flub a spelling, it becomes an iconic moment in American political history, and the hapless Republican is never allowed to live down the embarrassment.

That's what the media does to Republicans, but don't they do the same thing to Democrats who stumble over words that any reasonably intelligent fourth grader can spell? Well, not so much. You probably hadn't even heard of this example of mind-lock until you watched this video:

I'm not making fun of the president. Anyone could suffer the same sort of lapse. I know I have, and that's the point. Journalistic hypocrites in the media skewered a good man like Dan Quayle for experiencing what they themselves have doubtless also experienced. They held him up to derision, portraying him as a dope, simply because he's a conservative, but they go into media mute mode when progressives like Mr. Obama commit the same faux pas.

That sort of double standard, the willingness to ridicule the other side for trivial slips to which everyone succumbs, is why many journalists or commentators, whether liberal or conservative, have so little credibility with anyone on the other side of the ideological divide.

Here's a suggestion: Before we tear down someone with whom we disagree for a goof like President Obama's or Vice-President Quayle's, let's ask whether we would tear the person down if he were someone on our side. If the honest answer is "no," then let's grant our opponent the same grace and forbearance we'd grant our ally. If we're not willing to do this then we don't deserve to be listened to.

This is not to say that we shouldn't civilly criticize what we see as errant policies or behavior among our political class. We absolutely should do so, but it does mean that we shouldn't criticize harmless human foibles to which everyone falls prey, just to make our political opponents look bad.

The Ontology of Time

Anthony Aguirre at Big Questions Online discusses the two theories of time. His discussion is difficult to follow unless one is familiar with quantum mechanics and relativity theory, but he does give a clear explanation of the two basic theories on offer. What he calls below the "Unitary Block" theory is sometimes referred to as the B-Theory of time. What he calls the "Experienced World" is the A-Theory.

When we step back, we thus seem to have two rather different and contrary views of time’s nature. In one, the ‘Unitary Block’, spacetime and quantum states are laid out ‘all at once’, specified once and for all by some set of boundary conditions. Everything at any time is uniquely determined by — and thus implicitly contained in — any other time, and the world exhibits no distinction between past and future. At the same time, the ‘Experienced World’ we actually inhabit and observe has a very clear distinction between past, present, and future, produces entropy, and allows branching between a single present reality and several possible future realities.

Among knowledgeable and thoughtful people, there seem to be three basic views of this paradox:

1.The Unitary Block is the fundamental, and by implication more true description; things such as the arrow of time, definite experimental outcomes, etc., are emergent phenomena that, if we only could make precise enough computations, could be reduced to ‘nothing but’ the fundamental description.

2.The Unitary Block is wrong in some essential way; a more correct view would be much more like — and much more readily reconciled with — the Experienced World.

3.The Experienced World is more fundamental than the Unitary Block, which is just the correct description of regularities in the Experienced World in very particular regimes.

View 1 is by far the most common amongst my theoretical physicist colleagues, but I’ll make three arguments as to why we should think carefully before embracing it.

His arguments for considering the Experienced World (A-Theory) to be fundamental can be read at the link. One might wonder why scientists even think there is a Unitary Block. The answer has to do with Einstein's discoveries about relativity:

Right now, this second, an old man is exhaling his last breath. Elsewhere, two young lovers exchange their first kiss. Farther afield, two asteroids silently collide. Sunrise comes to a planet orbiting a neighboring star. This very second, a supernova detonates in a faraway galaxy.

And yet ‘this very second’ across the universe apparently does not really exist! Our best fundamental theory of space-time, Einstein’s Relativity, expressly precludes a single, objective definition of simultaneity. Events occurring ‘now’ by one observer’s estimation can — with equal validity — be said to occur at different times according to another observer who is far away and/or in motion relative to the first. We don’t notice this issue much here on Earth, but it becomes very obvious for example in cosmology, where how one defines ‘now’ can determine whether the universe looks uniform or not, and even if it is finite or infinite!

It's all very fascinating stuff with fascinating implications. For example, if the Unitary Block theory is correct I'm not sure what sense it makes to talk about the age of the universe. Every moment of time would have come into being at the instant that the universe was created. If that's so, then what does it mean to say that the universe is 14 billion years old?

Can One Know That God Doesn't Exist? (Pt. III)

In his interview with atheistic philosopher Louise Antony Notre Dame philosopher Gary Gutting suggests that Ms Antony sounds as though she doesn't think it much matters whether we believe in God or not. Here's her reply to Gutting's suggestion:

Well, I do wonder about that. Why do theists care so much about belief in God? Disagreement over that question is really no more than a difference in philosophical opinion. Specifically, it’s just a disagreement about ontology — about what kinds of things exist. Why should a disagreement like that bear any moral significance? Why shouldn’t theists just look for allies among us atheists in the battles that matter — the ones concerned with justice, civil rights, peace, etc. — and forget about our differences with respect to such arcane matters as the origins of the universe?

Professor Antony simply doesn't appear to understand the significance of the question. She seems to think that the question of God's existence is of the same sort as the question of life elsewhere in the universe - interesting as a sort of philosophical exercise or as a topic for sci-fi movies but not particularly important to real life. I think she couldn't be more wrong.

In my novel In the Absence of God (see link at top right of this page) I argue that how we answer the question of God's existence informs everything we believe about the possibility of meaning in life, the possibility of moral obligation, our view of humanity, our belief in ultimate justice, and much else besides. All of these are ontologically dependent upon the existence of God. If Antony thinks they're not then she should explain why she does not, but it's simply incorrect to allege that the question of God's existence doesn't have any practical importance.

Atheistic scientist Steven Weinberg outlines what life looks for those like himself who seek to substitute science for God:

[T]he worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.

And that's "at our best."

Dostoyevsky, writing over a hundred years earlier, responds to Weinberg in his novel The Possessed in which he has the atheist Kirillov, who is planning suicide, exclaim: "I can't understand how an atheist can know there is no God and not kill himself on the spot." What Kirillov grasps, and Professor Antony evidently does not, is that the question of God's existence is a matter of life and death for anyone who really thinks about it and that if God doesn't exist then, as Weinberg admits, there's nothing left but meaninglessness, nihilism, and despair.

Scroll down to read Parts I and II in this series.

Can One Know That God Doesn't Exist? (Pt. II)

Monday's post on Gary Gutting's interview with UMass philosopher Louise Antony ended with the claim that there are dozens of good reasons for believing that God exists. One such reason is the modern argument from design, but Professor Antony tries to anticipate that argument in the interview:

Many theists think they’re home free with something like the argument from design: that there is empirical evidence of a purposeful design in nature. But it’s one thing to argue that the universe must be the product of some kind of intelligent agent; it’s quite something else to argue that this designer was all-knowing and omnipotent. Why is that a better hypothesis than that the designer was pretty smart but made a few mistakes? Maybe (I’m just cribbing from Hume here) there was a committee of intelligent creators, who didn’t quite agree on everything. Maybe the creator was a student god, and only got a B- on this project.

The problem with this objection is that the concession that the designer exists but is a bit incompetent is that it concedes too much. Once we grant the existence of a designer (or a committee of designers), even if the designer(s) seems to be unable to create a perfect world, then the atheist has essentially lost the argument. She's conceding that something beyond this universe exists which is powerful enough and intelligent enough to create this universe, even though imperfect. That's a concession that an atheist cannot afford to make.

Moreover, we may assume that this creator is also personal, since it has created personality embodied in beings like you and I. So it's plausible to believe that any designer of the universe would have to be transcendent, unimaginably powerful, unimaginably intelligent, and probably personal. If so, we're getting pretty close to the God of traditional theism. Too, close, certainly, for the comfort of most atheists.

Even a less than perfect designer is still a designer that transcends this universe. Even a team of designers are still designers which transcend this universe. It may not be possible to logically identify such a designer with the God of theism, but the existence of a transcendent designer(s) of any sort is certainly much more compatible with that God than it is with the naturalists' claim that the universe is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.

G.G.: Would you say, then, that believers who think they have good reasons for theism are deceiving themselves, that they are actually moved by, say, hopes and fears — emotions — rather than reasons?

L.A.: I realize that some atheists do say things like “theists are just engaged in wishful thinking — they can’t accept that death is the end.” Theists are insulted by such conjectures (which is all they are) and I don’t blame them. It’s presumptuous to tell someone else why she believes what she believes — if you want to know, start by asking her.

When atheists allege that theism is an expression of wishful thinking it should be noted that if so - and I have little doubt that that's part of why many theists hold to their convictions - it must also be the case that atheism is also an expression of wishful thinking. If wishful thinking lies behind the believer's faith then it also lies behind the unbeliever's lack of faith. In other words, the atheist disbelieves because she simply doesn't want there to be a God. You can read a couple of very bright atheists admitting this themselves here.

The claim that theism is just wishful thinking is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways. As such it reminded me a little of mathematician John Lennox's retort to atheist biologist Richard Dawkins in a debate between the two. Dawkins averred that theists believe in God because they're afraid of the dark. Lennox responded by saying that atheists disbelieve in God because they're afraid of the light.

Part(III) tomorrow.

A More Dangerous World

Vladimir Putin knows precisely how to poke his thumb in Mr. Obama's eye. He knows that the U.S. is not going to contest his move into Crimea militarily, and he also knows that whatever economic consequences ensue, they won't last long. Mr. Obama has shown himself to have little appetite for economic sanctions or punishments, as has been made clear in Iran. Nor does he have a taste, nor should he, for enforcing ill-conceived red lines, as was evident in Syria.

There are economic punishments at Mr. Obama's disposal should he choose to use them. One which might be especially effective would be to open the spigots of our petroleum resources to sell oil to Europe. This would undercut a vast Russian market and weaken the Russian economy to the extent that Putin, perhaps, would be forced to temper his aggression. But this would involve increasing our oil production and Mr. Obama has demonstrated a decided aversion to doing anything which would increase the amount of carbon in the world.

Crimea was pretty much low hanging fruit for the Russians. Mr. Putin has taken the measure of Mr. Obama and is evidently unimpressed. Mr. Obama's sundry vacillations, appeasements, and unseriousness in the past have given Putin no reason to expect serious opposition from him now. Men like Putin spend their time pondering how to acquire more power and how to reassert Russian influence in the world. They're not apt to feel particularly intimidated by a president who spends his time reflecting upon how to promote gay marriage, reduce the size of our military, improve his golf game, and defeat Republicans.

One question the recent actions by Russia raises is whether China will be emboldened by Putin's demarche to seize some territory of its own. If Mr. Obama fails to respond to the Russian move with anything other than lassitude and a reluctance to make aggressors pay for their aggression will the Chinese gamble that they can seize Taiwan with impunity? Will they calculate that the U.S., despite being treaty-bound to come to the aid of the island nation, will find reasons not to?

Indeed, how many Americans would be willing to go to war with China over Taiwan anyway? Most Americans have scarcely heard of it and probably couldn't find it on a map. There'd be as little stomach for war with China over Taiwan as there is for war with Russia over the Crimea.

Mr. Obama faces very serious problems - in Ukraine, in Asia, and in the Middle East - and has decided nevertheless to cut the size of our army to pre-WWII levels. This will surely embolden various actors on the world stage to take advantage of our inability to project force or to sustain extended military operations.

By presiding over a flaccid economy and the downsizing and weakening of the American military, Mr. Obama is making the world less stable, not more, and more volatile, not less. For sixty years the United States was a force for stability in the world, and as the U.S. fades as an economic and military power the world is going to become a much more dangerous place.

War on Humans: The Documentary

A post the other day focused on Wesley J. Smith's book The War on Humans. The book is an indictment of radical environmentalism and its goal of granting to nature the same legal status as humans. The book is actually a companion to a thirty-one minute documentary by the same name which can be viewed below. If you don't have thirty-one minutes to give to it just watch the first five. They afford a pretty good insight into where the radical left wishes to take us:

It's ironic that the left, or at least this segment of it, is eager to grant personhood and the rights that go with it to plants, but they deny personhood and its attendant rights to unborn human beings and consider it a good thing that the unborn human being has almost no legal protection at all.

There's something very strange and very disturbing about people who consider the lives of plants to be more sacred than the lives of humans.

Can One Know That God Doesn't Exist?

At the Opinionator philosopher Gary Gutting of Notre Dame interviews atheist philosopher Louise Antony, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The interview is interesting for a number of things Ms Antony asserts, including her claim that she knows there is no God:

Gary Gutting: You’ve taken a strong stand as an atheist, so you obviously don’t think there are any good reasons to believe in God. But I imagine there are philosophers whose rational abilities you respect who are theists. How do you explain their disagreement with you? Are they just not thinking clearly on this topic?

Louise Antony: I’m not sure what you mean by saying that I’ve taken a “strong stand as an atheist.” I don’t consider myself an agnostic; I claim to know that God doesn’t exist, if that’s what you mean.

G.G.: That is what I mean.

L.A.: O.K. So the question is, why do I say that theism is false, rather than just unproven? Because the question has been settled to my satisfaction. I say “there is no God” with the same confidence I say “there are no ghosts” or “there is no magic.” The main issue is supernaturalism — I deny that there are beings or phenomena outside the scope of natural law.

With due respect to Ms Antony, I simply don't see how anyone can know such a thing. It's a bit like saying that one knows there are no living beings elsewhere in the universe. One can believe this, one can be skeptical or doubtful that there are any such beings, but how one can know that a transcendent mind does not exist is not at all clear, at least not to me.

Nevertheless, she doubles down on her claim a bit further on in the interview:

G.G.: O.K., .... But the question still remains, why are you so certain that God doesn’t exist?

L.A.: Knowledge in the real world does not entail either certainty or infallibility. When I claim to know that there is no God, I mean that the question is settled to my satisfaction. I don’t have any doubts. I don’t say that I’m agnostic, because I disagree with those who say it’s not possible to know whether or not God exists. I think it’s possible to know. And I think the balance of evidence and argument has a definite tilt.

But a "definite tilt" to the evidence, even if such a tilt existed, hardly warrants a claim to knowledge. Gutting goes on to ask her what sort of evidence she has in mind:

L.A.: I find the “argument from evil” overwhelming — that is, I think the probability that the world we experience was designed by an omnipotent and benevolent being is a zillion times lower than that it is the product of mindless natural laws acting on mindless matter.

Most philosophers would agree with her that if the only evidence we had was the evil and suffering in the world, then it would be extremely unlikely that a benevolent, omnipotent deity exists, but the evil in the world is far from the only evidence we have. It's only one element in what philosophers call our evidential set.

Imagine, for example, that every Chinese man you met on a trip to China was under six feet tall. If that experience was the only relevant evidence you had you might be justified in doubting that there are seven footers who are Chinese. But suppose you subsequently acquired several other bits of evidence. You learn, for example, that some Chinese play basketball, that some have even played in the NBA, and that some have even played center in the NBA. Perhaps you also read about a man named Yao Ming. As your evidential set expands, the force of the original piece of evidence begins to diminish.

Likewise with the argument from evil. It's only one element in our evidential set. There are dozens of good reasons for thinking that a God exists, and there are also ways of answering the argument from evil which lessen its force. When considered as just one part of the entire body of evidence the existence of evil is not nearly as dispositive as Ms. Antony suggests.

I'll have more to say about Gutting's interview with Professor Antony tomorrow.

The War on Humans

I was delighted to read an article in the New York Times magazine on attempts to "de-extinct" creatures like the Passenger Pigeon using genetic techniques reminiscent of Jurassic Park. It's fascinating to read of the ambition to repopulate the earth with long gone creatures like woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and Great auks. Certain ethical concerns notwithstanding, this is the sort of work that thrills those like myself who believe in conservation and who love the planet and its rich flora and fauna.

Then I turned to a piece in First Things by Wesley J. Smith who talks about the darker side of environmentalism.

Smith has written a book that documents the war being waged against humanity by the radical environmental left. If the goals of these people weren't so chilling they'd provide us with much opportunity for mirth and merry-making. Here are some excerpts from Smith's summary of the book's thesis.

Beginning in the late 1960s, a subversive misanthropy began to gestate within environmentalism. This view does not see the earth and the fullness thereof—in the Biblical turn of phrase—as ours to develop responsibly for human benefit, but instead castigates humans as a “disease” (or “parasites,” “maggots,” “cancer,” take your pick) afflicting the planet, best treated with the antibiotic of radical human depopulation and implacable opposition to economic growth.

....Reasonable people can differ on the persuasiveness of the evidence for man-caused global warming and the extent of danger that it might present. But there should be no disagreement that children should not be taught to hate humanity in the cause of preventing a feared climate catastrophe.

In one advocacy commercial, an elementary school teacher asks how many of her students are willing to commit to the cause. All but two raise their hand. She smiles at the two dissenters and pushes a big red button: BLAM! They explode so violently and graphically that their classmates are splatted with blood and sheets of flesh.

In a similar vein, the Website of the Australian Broadcasting Network featured a children’s game called “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator,” a now erased on-line game that determines the age at which the player—remember, this was aimed at children—should die because they had exhausted their individual share of the world’s resources.

Misanthropy in the name of preventing climate change is only the beginning. The “nature rights” movement seeks to grant flora and fauna a “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles”—essentially a right to life that explicitly erases the moral distinction between humans and all other life forms.

The putative rights of nature may also extend to inanimate matter. The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Nature announces that the rights of nature are “inalienable . . . without distinction of any kind, such as may be made between organic and inorganic beings, origin, use to human beings, or any other state.”

The movement has made astonishing inroads in just a few years. Nature has already been granted “rights” by Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as in some thirty U.S. municipalities, including Santa Monica, California. Ban ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations has thrown his support behind the movement, and nature rights has been proposed for inclusion in an eventual UN treaty to fight climate change.

The “ecocide” movement seeks to punish large scale projects like the Alberta Tar Sands as an international crime akin to genocide and ethnic cleansing. A river in New Zealand has been granted full rights of “personhood,” as an “integrated, living whole” possessing “rights and interests.” Mainstream environmentalists, such as Sir David Attenborough, have extolled China’s tyrannical one-child policy that includes forced abortion and female infanticide.

Declaring war on humans won’t make for a cleaner planet. To the contrary, the green misanthropes harm the cause by undermining environmentalism’s good public standing. It’s time for responsible environmentalists to push the anti-humanists back to the movement’s fringe, where they belong.

Radical environmentalists are just one part of a much larger, more comprehensive assault on the traditional American way of life. Every institution in the country - education, community, marriage, family, church - is under intense pressure, and being rocked by repeated and relentless challenges to its very legitimacy. It has been the ambition of the left at least since Engels and Marx wrote their Communist Manifesto in 1848 to destroy the traditional way of life, as well as the capitalist economic system which has been a blessing to so many of the world's people, and replace these with a centralized command economy populated by atomized, individualized workers alienated and isolated from every association and institution which vies with the state for the individual's loyalty.

The role being played by radical environmentalists in dehumanizing man is just one battle in the long struggle to destroy our understanding of ourselves as creatures with unique dignity, worth, and specialness, a specialness that derives from the belief that we are created in the image of God.

Once belief in God is no longer viable, then belief that man holds a unique place in the cosmos soon becomes obsolete as well. Man will then be seen as a mere animal just like any other mammal, with no special status, rights or prerogatives. He'll be ineluctably reduced to the status of livestock - herded, manipulated, controlled, and, when it suits the whim of the state, slaughtered.

That's the trajectory we've been on in the U.S. for several generations now and in the last twenty years the pace of our dehumanization and atomization seems to have accelerated. It will continue to accelerate unless more people realize what's happening and, like Wesley Smith, stand firmly against it.

His book is available on Kindle and Nook.

Natural Camouflage

Nature constantly amazes with incredible design. Here's an example via Uncommon Descent. You might have to watch the video twice:

Another Obamacare Tragedy

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has delivered himself of some strange and offensive statements over the years, but what he said yesterday takes the gold medal either for clumsiness or for unkindness, or both. In an attempt to discredit the Koch brothers, two wealthy magnates who fund Republican causes and candidates, he insisted that all of the many accounts of people losing their insurance under Obamacare are lies, and by inference, that the ordinary people who are suffering under the new law are themselves liars.

Here he is on the floor of the Senate:

Senator Reid could have alleged that some of the stories may not be completely accurate, although the one's he cites have received pretty strong confirmation. In fact, though, the senator claims that all these people are liars. He's willing to besmirch and libel innocent people in order to get in a few shots at his political opponents. This is not the behavior of a good and noble man.

I can't vouch for the veracity of every single one of the stories that have been publicized over the last couple of months, but for the Majority Leader to call these Americans, people who are in some cases in deep despair because of the effects of the legislation he and his party passed, is itself, it seems to me, a sign of desperation.

In any case, here's an account that's typical of those that are emerging almost daily of a genuine tragedy wrought by the Affordable Care Act which Senator Reid has been instrumental in foisting upon the nation. I wonder if he thinks this story, too, is a lie. It's written by a man who is the president of Ralston College in Georgia:

When my mother was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2005, when she was 49, it came as a lightning shock. Her mother, at 76, had yet to go gray, and her mother's mother, at 95, was still playing bingo in her nursing home. My mother had always been, despite her diminutive frame, a titanic and irrepressible force of vitality and love. She had given birth to me and my nine younger siblings, and juggled kids, home and my father's medical practice with humor and grace for three decades. She swam three times a week in the early mornings, ate healthily and never smoked.

And now, cancer? Anyone who's been there knows that a cancer diagnosis is terrifying. A lot goes through your mind and heart: the deep pang of possible loss (what would my father and all of us do without her?), and the anguish and anger at what feels like injustice (after decades of mothering and managing dad's practice, she was just then going back to school).

We, as a family, were scared and angry, but from the beginning we knew we would do all we could to fight this disease. We became involved with fundraising for research, through the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation in Boston; we blogged; we did triathlons (my mother's idea) and cherished our time together as never before.

Carcinoid, a form of neuroendocrine cancer, is a terminal disease but generally responds well to treatment by Sandostatin, a drug that slows tumor growth and reduces (but does not eliminate) the symptoms of fatigue, nausea and gastrointestinal dysfunction. My mother received a painful shot twice a month and often couldn't sit comfortably for days afterward.

As with most cancers, one thing led to another. There have been several more surgeries, metastases, bone deterioration, a terrible bout of thyroiditis (an inflammation of the thyroid gland), and much more. But my mother has kept fighting, determined to make the most of life, no matter what it brings. She has an indomitable will and is by far the toughest person I've ever met. But she wouldn't still be here without that semimonthly Sandostatin shot that slows the onslaught of her disease. And then in November, along with millions of other Americans, she lost her health insurance. She'd had a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for nearly 20 years. It was expensive, but given that it covered her very expensive treatment, it was a terrific plan. It gave her access to any specialist or surgeon, and to the Sandostatin and other medications that were keeping her alive.

And then, because our lawmakers and president thought they could do better, she had nothing. Her old plan, now considered illegal under the new health law, had been canceled.

Because the exchange website in her state (Virginia) was not working, she went directly to insurers' websites and telephoned them, one by one, over dozens of hours. As a medical-office manager, she had decades of experience navigating the enormous problems of even our pre-ObamaCare system. But nothing could have prepared her for the bureaucratic morass she now had to traverse.

The repeated and prolonged phone waits were Sisyphean, the competence and customer service abysmal. When finally she found a plan that looked like it would cover her Sandostatin and other cancer treatments, she called the insurer, Humana, to confirm that it would do so. The enrollment agent said that after she met her deductible, all treatments and medications—including those for her cancer—would be covered at 100%.

Because, however, the enrollment agents did not — unbelievable though this may seem — have access to the "coverage formularies" for the plans they were selling, they said the only way to find out in detail what was in the plan was to buy the plan. (Does that remind you of anyone?)

With no other options, she bought the plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay.

The news was dumbfounding. This is a woman who had an affordable health plan that covered her condition. Our lawmakers weren't happy with that because . . . they wanted plans that were affordable and covered her condition. So they gave her a new one. It doesn't cover her condition and it's completely unaffordable.

You can read the rest at the link. There are doubtless some people who are benefiting from Obamacare, to be sure, but is it justice to help those who are benefiting by taking away from others, like this woman, the insurance she had and causing her to suffer? Is it justice to promise people repeatedly, as the President did, that if they liked their insurance plan they'd be able to keep it while at the same time making many of the plans that people had and liked illegal under the new law so that people couldn't keep them? That's not justice. It's cruelty.

Rubio Puts Tyranny in Perspective

The progressive left in America has always had a soft spot in its heart for left-wing tyrannies. This may seem like an exaggeration, it may seem hard to believe, but it's demonstrably true. It was true in the days of Stalin when the New York Times ran fawning reports of the Soviet worker's paradise written by Walter Duranty and others who turned a blind eye to the horrors of life under the communists, and it's still true today.

Progressives have always supported Marxist socialist governments in the western hemisphere whether in Central America, Cuba, or South America because Marxist socialist government is their ambition for the United States as well. It's their ideal.

Recently Iowa's liberal Democratic senator, Tom Harkin, returned from a trip to Cuba and gave a glowing report on the floor of the U.S. Senate on what he found in this Caribbean paradise. His speech was too much for Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban refugees, to let pass. Rubio took the floor and gave a devastating rebuttal to Harkin with just a few slides and almost no notes.

Everyone who believes that places like Cuba and Venezuela are the future, or is sympathetic to the left-wing socialist governments that are oppressing their people in these countries - as is not only a significant chunk of the academic left but also a large segment of the Democrat party including much of the current administration - should watch all 14 minutes of Rubio's speech:

If you'd rather read the text than watch the video it follows below courtesy of Senator Rubio's office via Hot Air. It really is worth reading unless one already knows all of this or else doesn't care to know it. Here's the text of senator Rubio's speech:

A few moments ago, the body was treated to a report from the senator from Iowa about his recent trip to Cuba. Sounded like he had a wonderful trip visiting, what he described as, a real paradise. He bragged about a number of things that he learned on his trip to Cuba that I’d like to address briefly. He bragged about their health care system, medical school is free, doctors are free, clinics are free, their infant mortality rate may be even lower than ours.

I wonder if the senator, however, was informed, number one, that the infant mortality rate of Cuba is completely calculated on figures provided by the Cuban government. And, by the way, totalitarian communist regimes don’t have the best history of accurately reporting things. I wonder if he was informed that before Castro, Cuba, by the way, was 13th in the whole world in infant mortality. I wonder if the government officials who hosted him, informed him that in Cuba there are instances reported, including by defectors, that if a child only lives a few hours after birth, they’re not counted as a person who ever lived and therefore don’t count against the mortality rate.

I wonder if our visitors to Cuba were informed that in Cuba, any time there is any sort of problem with the child in utero they are strongly encouraged to undergo abortions, and that’s why they have an abortion rate that skyrockets, and some say, is perhaps the highest the world. I heard him also talk about these great doctors that they have in Cuba. I have no doubt they’re very talented. I’ve met a bunch of them. You know where I met them? In the United States because they defected. Because in Cuba, doctors would rather drive a taxi cab or work in a hotel than be a doctor. I wonder if they spoke to him about the outbreak of cholera that they’ve been unable to control, or about the three-tiered system of health care that exists where foreigners and government officials get health care much better than that that’s available to the general population.

I also heard him speak about baseball and I know that Cubans love baseball, since my parents were from there and I grew up in a community surrounded by it. He talked about these great baseball players that are coming from Cuba — and they are. But I wonder if they informed him — in fact, I bet you they didn’t talk about those players to him because every single one of those guys playing in the Major Leagues defected. They left Cuba to play here.

He also talked about how people would come up to him in the streets and not a single person said anything negative about America. Nobody came up to him wagging their fingers saying, ‘You Americans and your embargo is hurting us.’ I’m glad to hear that. Because everyone who wants to lift the embargo is constantly telling us that the Castros use that to turn the people against us. So obviously, that’s not true. So I’m glad to hear confirmation of what I already knew to be true.

I heard about their wonderful literacy rate, how everyone in Cuba knows how to read. That’s fantastic. Here’s the problem: they can only read censored stuff. They’re not allowed access to the Internet. The only newspapers they’re allowed to read are Granma or the ones produced by the government.

I wish that someone on that trip would have asked the average Cuban, ‘With your wonderful literacy skills, are you allowed to read The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any blog, for that matter?’ Because the answer’s, ‘No.’ So it’s great to have literacy, but if you don’t have access to the information, what’s the point of it? So I wish somebody would have asked about that on that trip.

We heard about Mr. Gross, who is not in jail. He’s not a prisoner. He is a hostage. He is a hostage. And in the speech I heard a moment ago, I heard allusions to the idea that maybe we should — he didn’t say it, but I know the language, I know the code in this — that maybe there should be a spy swap. Here’s the problem: Mr. Gross was not a spy. You know what his crime was, if that’s what you can call it? He went to Cuba to hand out satellite radios to the Jewish community. But, we’re glad to hear that the Cubans are so nice to him that they let him walk 10,000 steps a day and do pull-ups and they let him build a necklace out of bottle cap tops. Very nice of them to allow him to do those things. How generous.

I wonder if anybody asked about terrorism, because Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. I wonder if anybody asked about the fact that, just a few months ago, a North Korean ship going from Cuba to North Korea was stopped in the Panama Canal and it contained items in violation of international sanctions against a government in North Korea that, a report just came out confirming what we already knew, has death camps and prison camps. And the Cubans are allowing them to evade these sanctions. Did that come up in any of the wonderful conversations in this socialist paradise in the Caribbean? I bet you it didn’t.

Let me tell you what the Cubans are really good at, because they don’t know how to run their economy, they don’t know how to build, they don’t know how to govern a people. What they are really good at is repression. What they are really good at is shutting off information to the Internet and to radio and television and social media. That’s what they’re really good at. And they’re not just good at it domestically, they’re good exporters of these things. And you want to see exhibit A, B, C and D? I’m going to show them to you right now. They have exported repression in real-time, in our hemisphere, right now.

Let me show you the first slide here. This gentleman here is the former mayor of a municipality in Caracas. His name is Leopoldo Lopez. And this is the National Guard of Venezuela pulling him into an armored truck last week. You know why? Because he’s protesting against the government. He’s protesting against the government of Venezuela, which are puppets of Havana, completely infiltrated by Cubans and agents from Havana. Not agents, openly, foreign military affairs officials involved in Venezuela. You know why? Because the Venezuela government is giving them cheap oil and free oil, in exchange for help during these sorts of repressions. So here he is, he’s sitting in jail right now because he’s protesting against the government. He’s sitting in jail right now.

So here’s the next slide. This is Genesis Carmona. She’s a beauty queen and a student in a city called Valencia. She’s on that motorcycle because the government in Venezuela and the thug, these so-called civilian groups that they’ve armed — another export from Cuba, a model the Cubans follow — they shot her in the head. She died last week. This is the government that the Cubans support. Not just verbally, not just emotionally, but with training and tactics. This is who they export — this is what they do. And she’s dead. And this is her being taken on a motorcycle to the hospital where they were unable to save her life because she was shot in the head by Venezuelan security forces.

Here’s another slide. Remember I showed you Mr. Lopez? These are his supporters being hit with water cannons — by water cannons in the street because they’re protesting against the government. This has been going on now for two weeks. This is the allies of Cuba, Venezuela, the puppets of Cuba. And this is what they do to their own people. Water cannons knocking people to the ground. Why? Because they’re protesting the government.

Let me show you the next slide. Here’s a demonstrator detained by police. Look how they drag him through the streets. This is in Caracas, Venezuela. Let me show you another demonstrator. This is a student — by the way, these are all students in the street. You see this young man here? He was also shot in the head by security forces and pro-government groups in Caracas. This happened on February 11. This is what they do in Venezuela. This is what the allies of the Castro regime does, this is what they export. This is what they teach. This is what they support. And it doesn’t stop here.

Who are Cuba’s allies in the world? North Korea. Before he fell, the dictator in Libya, the dictator in Syria, the tyrant in Moscow. This is who they line up with. This is this wonderful paradise? By the way, this in and of itself deserves attention, what’s happening in Venezuela, in our own hemisphere. It is shameful that only three heads of state in this hemisphere have spoken out forcefully against what’s happening. It is shameful that many members of Congress who traveled to Venezuela and were friendly with Chavez, some even went to his funeral, sit by saying nothing while this is happening in our own hemisphere. And this wonderful Cuban paradise government that we heard about? This is what they support. Just this morning, the dictator that calls himself a president — never been elected to anything, Raul Castro — announced he is there for whatever they need to help them do this.

I listen to this stuff about Cuba and I listen to what’s happening in Venezuela, they’re very similar. Not just in the repression part, but the economics part. You know Venezuela’s an oil-rich country with hardworking people? They have a shortage — we don’t have an embargo against Venezuela. They have a shortage of toilet paper and tooth paste. Why? Because they are incompetent. Because communism doesn’t work. They look more and more like Cuba economically and politically every single day.

What’s the first thing the Venezuelan government did when these broke out? They cut off access to Twitter and Facebook and the Internet. They ran CNN out of there. They closed down the only Colombian station. Years before, they had closed down all the independent media outlets that criticized the government. Where did they learn that from? From Cuba. And yet we have to listen to what a paradise Cuba is. Well, I wonder how come I never read about boatloads of American refugees going to Cuba? Why have close to one and a half million people left Cuba to come here? But the only people that leave here to move there, are fugitives from the law and people that steal money from Medicare that go there to hide? Why? How come no American baseball players defect to Cuba? Why don’t any American doctors defect to Cuba if it’s such a paradise?

He cited a poll, ‘More Americans want normal relations with Cuba.’ So do I — a democratic and free Cuba. But you want us to reach out and develop friendly relationships with a serial violator of human rights, who supports what’s going on in Venezuela and every other atrocity on the planet? On issue after issue, they are always on the side of the tyrants. Look it up. And this is who we should be opening up to? Why don’t they change? Why doesn’t the Cuban government change? Why doesn’t the Venezuelan government change?

Throughout this week, I will be outlining proposals and ideas about what we need to do, the sanctions we should be pursuing against the individuals responsible for these atrocities. So with North Korea, we have sanctions. Why? Because they’re a terrorist government and an illegitimate one. Against Iran we have sanctions. Why? Because they support terrorism and they’re an illegitimate government. And against the Cubans we have sanctions. Why? Well, you just saw why. Sanctions are a tool in our foreign policy toolbox, and we, as the freest nation on Earth, are looked to by people in this country, and all around the world, to stand by them in their moment of need when they clamor for freedom and liberty and human rights. They look for America to be on their side, not for America to be cutting geopolitical deals or making it easier to sell tractors to the government there. We should be clear about these things.

But here’s the great news. I don’t know if they get C-SPAN in Cuba. I bet you the government people do. I hope you see that in America, we’re a free society. You’re allowed to come on the floor and you’re allowed to say and spread whatever you want. You think Cuba’s a paradise? You think it’s an example and a model that we should be following? You’re free to say that, here, in the press and anywhere you want. But we’re also free to come here and tell the truth. We’re also free to come here and denounce the violations of human rights and brutality. And I would suggest to my colleagues, the next time they go to Cuba, ask to meet with the Ladies in White. Ask to meet with Yoani Sanchez. Ask to meet with the dissidents and the human rights activists that are jailed and repressed and exiled. Ask to meet with them. I bet you’re going to hear something very different than what you got from your hosts on your last trip to the wonderful Cuba, this extraordinary socialist paradise. Because it’s a joke. It’s a farce.

And I don’t think we should stand by here with our arms crossed, watching these things happen in our hemisphere and say nothing about them. I can close by saying this: Over the last week, I have tweeted about these issues. I get thousands of retweets from students and young people, until they shut them out, in Venezuela who are encouraged by the fact that we are on their side. What they want is what we have, the freedom and the liberty. That’s what all people want. And if America and its policy-makers are not going to be firmly on the side of freedom and liberty, who in the world is? Who on this planet will? If this nation is not firmly on the side of human rights and freedom and the dignity of all people, what nation on the Earth will? And if we’re prepared to walk away from that, then I submit to you that this century is going to be a dangerous and dark one. But I don’t believe that’s what the American people want from us. Nor the majority of my colleagues.

W.T. Stace on the Loss of Moral Duty

Philosopher W.T. Stace writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 1948 gives a concise summary of how we came to be where we are in the modern world, i.e. adrift in a sea of moral subjectivism and anomie. He asserts that:

The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called "final causes"...[belief in which] was not the invention of Christianity [but] was basic to the whole of Western civilization, whether in the ancient pagan world or in Christendom, from the time of Socrates to the rise of science in the seventeenth century....They did this on the [basis that] inquiry into purposes is useless for what science aims at: namely, the prediction and control of events.

....The conception of purpose in the world was ignored and frowned upon. This, though silent and almost unnoticed, was the greatest revolution in human history, far outweighing in importance any of the political revolutions whose thunder has reverberated around the world....

The world, according to this new picture, is purposeless, senseless, meaningless. Nature is nothing but matter in motion. The motions of matter are governed, not by any purpose, but by blind forces and laws....[But] if the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends - money, fame, art, science - and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center.

Hence, the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless spirit of modern man....Along with the ruin of the religious vision there went the ruin of moral principles and indeed of all values....If our moral rules do not proceed from something outside us in the nature of the universe - whether we say it is God or simply the universe itself - then they must be our own inventions.

Thus it came to be believed that moral rules must be merely an expression of our own likes and dislikes. But likes and dislikes are notoriously variable. What pleases one man, people, or culture, displeases another. Therefore, morals are wholly relative.

On one point I would wish to quibble with Stace's summary. He writes in the penultimate paragraph above that, "If our moral rules do not proceed from something outside us in the nature of the universe - whether we say it is God or simply the universe itself - then they must be our own inventions."

I think, however, that if our moral rules derive from the universe they're no more binding or authoritative than if they are our own inventions. The only thing that can impose a moral duty is a personal being, and the only being that has the authority and ability to impose an objective moral duty is one that transcends human finitude. Neither the universe nor any entity comprised of other humans qualifies.

Unless God exists there simply are no objective moral duties. Thus, if one believes we all have a duty to be kind rather than cruel, to refrain from, say, rape or child abuse or other forms of violence, then one must either accept that God exists or explain how such obligations can exist in a world where man is simply the product of blind, impersonal forces, plus chance, plus time.

Put simply, in the world of Darwinian naturalism, no grounds exist for saying that hurting people is wrong. Indeed, no grounds exist for saying anything is wrong.

It's not just that modernity and the erosion of theistic belief in the West has led to moral relativism. It's that modernity and the concomitant loss of any genuine moral authority in the world leads ineluctably to moral nihilism.

This is one of the themes I present in my novel In the Absence of God which you can read about by clicking on the link at the top right of this page.

Ted Nugent and Selective Outrage

Let's get the necessary formalities out of the way. Rocker Ted Nugent's recent description of the President (He called him "a subhuman mongrel") was inexcusably vulgar, cruel, degrading, stupid, and despicable. It has disqualified him, in my mind, from ever being listened to again (not that I ever listened to him before). Such talk should have no place in our public life, and Nugent would do well to retreat to one of his favorite hunting cabins and meditate on why he would say something like that about another human being, much less the President of the United States. Mr. Obama may be doing an awful job as president, in the minds of some, but whether he is or isn't, he still deserves respect both as a man and as our nation's elected leader. His policies and behavior are fair targets. His humanity is not.

Having said that I have to agree with Derek Hunter at Townhall about the justifiable but selective outrage that has accompanied Nugent's ugly outburst. It seems that the left is disgusted by such talk only when it comes from people associated with the right. They're like the three monkeys covering their eyes, ears, and mouths when such talk emanates, as it does with disturbing frequency, from the "progressive" precincts of the media.

It was common during the Bush years, for example, to hear George Bush referred to as "a chimp," an insult that perhaps lacks the punch of Nugent's odious description, but which says essentially the same thing. For sheer ugliness, though, it's hard to exceed former MSNBC host Martin Bashir's suggestion on national television that someone should defecate in Sarah Palin's mouth. Or Bill Maher's predilection for reducing conservative women to their female parts. Yet Maher is feted regularly by the progressive media which has no objection to his use of anatomical vulgarities to describe conservative women and which was as quiet as mice after Bashir's repulsive dehumanization of Palin.

Here's part of Hunter's column on this. Speaking of the reaction to Nugent's words Hunter writes:

The offended class in the media sprang into action, drooling like heroin junkies when they hear that flame hit the bottom of the spoon. It was deemed one of the worst things ever said, by people who make their living declaring things said by others awful – one of the few growth industries in Obama’s economy.

CNN dedicated hour upon hour of coverage to the words of a man whose actions for charity they’ve ignored for decades. Current Texas Gov. Rick Perry went on with Wolf Blitzer and was badgered for 2 1/2 minutes to denounce these words, then denounce them in stronger terms, and again, as if Perry has said them himself. Republicans were nearly trampled by “journalists” demanding they react to and answer for something said in an entirely different time zone.

Meanwhile, taking a break from calling Republicans all manner of potty-mouth names, Bill Maher has made the rounds of cable television as if he knows anything about this beyond what he read on Daily Kos. Imagine the feigned outrage if Maher talked about progressives – any progressives – the way he has talked about Sarah Palin and her children.

This misogynistic bigot gives $1 million to President Obama’s reelection PAC, yet he is greeted as an insightful and unbiased commentator by Blitzer and others. And no progressives – not him nor any of the others – ever is demanded to denounce his attacks. When it comes to progressive racism, misogyny, hatred and violent rhetoric, the referees swallow their whistles, as they say in basketball.

Greg Abbott and Rick Perry are no more responsible for the words of Ted Nugent than progressives are for the words of Bill Maher. But although Abbott and Perry were forced to answer for Nugent, President Obama cashes Maher’s check and his cabinet secretaries, advisors and elected Democrats from Nancy Pelosi on down beat a path to the stage of the man who calls conservative women “c--ts” without question or repercussion.

When people like Maher, Bashir, and Nugent say the things they do their words should be condemned by both liberals and conservatives. The offenders should be shunned by both sides until they prove themselves capable of engaging in civil discourse. This would accomplish several things: It would certainly inhibit such fetid talk in our politics and elevate our national discourse, thereby. It would also increase the credibility of those in the commentariat when they show themselves to be impartially concerned with public decency and less concerned with protecting their ideological allies.

It's unfortunate that a large segment of our population seems unable to critique ideas without lacing their critique with invective designed to demean the person who holds the ideas. I don't know why that is, but it's as common, especially on the internet, as it is repulsive and childish.

There's nothing wrong with criticizing the policies, ideas, or behavior of a president, or anyone for that matter (note to the left: criticism of President Obama's policies, ideas, or behavior, despite what is often alleged, is not prima facie evidence that one is a racist). But criticism and insults that dehumanize the person, as Nugent's, Maher's, and Bashir's do, should be treated with contempt, especially by those who otherwise share the same ideological assumptions as the offender. That would go a long way to stopping this sort of thing and making us a kinder, better people.

Theological Aversion to the Big Bang

It may sound strange, especially to those who've grown up believing that science is solely concerned with following the evidence wherever it leads and that the scientific enterprise has nothing to do with religion or philosophy, but in fact for many scientists their science is driven and guided by their theology.

I'm not talking about creationists who make no secret of their desire to harmonize the empirical evidence for origins with the scriptural narrative. I'm talking rather about those scientists who consider themselves naturalists and who insist that science rules out God.

It seems fair to say that for many of these men and women what they accept as sound science must conform to their atheistic worldview or else they'll dismiss it as implausible. The reception some scientists gave to the idea that the universe began in a cosmic explosion is an example. Facetiously dubbed the Big Bang theory by Fred Hoyle in the 1940s it received its most astonishing evidential support fifty years ago this year so perhaps it's fitting to use it as an illustration of how scientists are directed by their theological beliefs.

Denyse O'Leary, writing at Evolution News and Views last October reminds us of a number of revealing statements by prominent scientists which demonstrate the extent to which they and/or their colleagues are influenced by their theology, or in this case, their atheology:

Physicist Arthur Eddington exclaimed in 1933, "I feel almost an indignation that anyone should believe in it [i.e. a cosmic beginning] -- except myself." Why? Because "The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural."

"These men and women have built their entire worldview on atheism," says cosmologist Frank Tipler referring to his colleagues: "When I was a student at MIT in the late 1960s, I audited a course in cosmology from the physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg. He told his class that of the theories of cosmology, he preferred the Steady State Theory because 'it least resembled the account in Genesis.'"

In 1989, Nature's physics editor John Maddox predicted, "Apart from being philosophically [i.e. theologically] unacceptable, the Big Bang is an over-simple view of how the Universe began, and it is unlikely to survive the decade ahead."

Stephen Hawking opined in 1996, "Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. ... There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang."

Quantum cosmologist Christopher Isham recalls: "Perhaps the best argument in favor of the thesis that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas, such as continuous creation or an oscillating universe, being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his/her theory."

For many scientists their science is shaped by their metaphysical worldview, not vice versa. This would not be particularly troubling if it weren't for the fact that so many of them insist that the only thing that shapes their science is the evidence. The popular notion is that scientists have no philosophical axes to grind and that they only deal in cold, hard facts, but this is simply not the case.

It'd be well to keep this in mind when we hear people like Al Gore pronounce that the science on, say, climate change or Darwinism, is "settled." Science is never settled, and it's foolish to claim that it is. One's likely motive for doing so is to try to protect a philosophical position that the claimant doesn't wish to have exposed to scrutiny.

Leaving the Left

British journalist Melanie Phillips was a committed member of the ideological left in England, a writer for the Progressive British paper The Guardian, but she eventually realized that the left was not at all what it portrays itself as being. She left the left, so to speak, and has written a book about her experience titled Guardian Angel.

The book is essentially an unmasking of the left, its true nature and intentions. Ten excerpts from the book, in a piece by Brad Weinstein at The Blaze, give a good idea of Phillips' case against her former comrades.

Here are a few excerpts, but the reader interested in understanding the nature of the ideological struggle being waged in our culture today would do well to go to the original and read the whole thing. It'll be an eye-opener.

On Political Tactics:

”I always believed in the duty of a journalist to uphold truth over lies, follow the evidence where it led and fight abuses of power wherever they were to be found. I gradually realised, however, that the left was not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promoted ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodied it.Through demonising its enemies in this way, the left has undermined the possibility of finding common ground and all but destroyed rational discourse. This is because, as shown by its reaction to Lady Thatcher’s death, it substitutes insult and abuse for argument and reasoned disagreement.”

”More devastatingly still, by twisting the meaning of words such as liberal, compassion, justice and many others into their opposites, it has hijacked the centre-ground of politics. Left-wing ideology is now falsely said to constitute the moderate centre-ground, while the true centre-ground is now vilified as ‘the right’. This is as mind-bending as it is destructive, for it has introduced a fatal confusion into political debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Redefining the true middle ground of politics as ‘right-wing’ has served to besmirch and toxify the commitment to truth, reason, decency, and reality which characterises where most people happen to situate their thinking.

On Anti-Israeli Bias:

”In a leader conference one day, I asked why the Guardian appeared to be pursuing a double standard in its coverage of the Middle East. Why did it afford next-to-no coverage of Arab atrocities against other Arabs while devoting acres of space to attacking Israel for defending itself against terrorism? The answer I received from my colleagues that day stunned me. Of course there was a double standard, they said. How could there not be? The Third World did not subscribe to the same ethical beliefs as the West about the value of human life. The West therefore was not entitled to judge any mass killings in the Third World by its own standards. That would be racist.

I was most deeply shocked. The views they had just expressed amounted to pure racism. They were in effect saying that citizens of a Third World country were not entitled to the same assumptions of human rights, life, and liberty as those in the developed world. But how could this be? This was the Guardian, shrine of anti-racism, custodian of social conscience, embodiment of virtue. How then could they be guilty of racism – and moreover, dress it up as anti-racism? Of course, this is the core of what we now know today as ‘political correctness’ – where concepts are turned into their polar opposite in order to give miscreants a free pass if they belong to certain groups designated by the left as ‘victims’. They are thus deemed to be incapable of doing anything wrong, while groups designated as ‘oppressors’ can do no right.

According to this double-think it was simply impossible for the Guardian folk to be guilty of racism, since they championed the victims of the Third World against their Western capitalist oppressors. But when those Third World unfortunates became the victims of the Third World tyrants ruling over them, the left remained silent – since to criticise any Third World person was said to be ‘racism’. This twisted thinking is what now passes for ‘progressive’ thinking in Britain and America.

On Education:

”By now I had been looking for schools for my own children and I could see for myself that teaching had been hijacked by left-wing ideology. Instead of being taught to read and write, children were being left to play in various states of anarchy on the grounds that any exercise of adult authority was oppressive and would destroy the innate creativity of the child. Galvanised by the reaction which suggested that things were far worse than I had realised, I wrote more about education. I wrote about the refusal to teach Standard English on the grounds that this was ‘elitist’. How could this be? I had seen firsthand in my own under-educated family that an inability to control the language meant an inability to control their own lives. My Polish grandmother had not been able to fill in an official form without help; my father just didn’t have the words to express complicated thoughts, and would always lose out against those who looked down at him from their educated pedestal.

I also observed that those putting such pressure on these teachers from the education establishment were the supercilious upper middle classes, who had no personal experience whatsoever of what it was actually like to be poor and uneducated or an immigrant but were nevertheless imposing their own ideological fantasies onto the vulnerable – and harming them as a result. Teachers wrote to me in despair at the pressure not to impose Standard English on children on the grounds that this was discriminatory. They knew that, on the contrary, this was to abandon those children to permanent servitude and ignorance…Most teachers, I wrote, were unaware that they were the unwitting troops of a cultural revolution, being now taught to teach according to doctrines whose core aim was to subvert the fundamental tenets of Western society. A generation of activists had captured academia, and, in accordance with the strategy of cultural subversion advocated by Antonin Gramsci, had successfully suborned education to a far-left agenda.”

On The Family:

Rising numbers of people were abandoning their spouses and children, or breaking up other people’s families, or bringing children into the world without a father around at all. The left claimed that these activities made the women and children happy and were a refreshing change from the bad old days when simply everyone was miserable because marriage chained women to men who – as everyone with the correct view knew – were basically feckless wife-beaters and child abusers as well as being irrationally prejudiced against the opposite sex. Since marriage, by and large, was a protection for both children and adults, I thought the state should promote it as a social good. For this I was told I was reactionary, authoritarian and, of course, right-wing. Yet how could it be progressive to encourage deceit, betrayal of trust, breaking of promises and harm to children?

On issues such as education and family, I believed I was doing no more than stating the obvious. To my amazement, however, I found that I was now branded an extremist for doing so. Astoundingly, truth, evidence, and reason had become right-wing concepts. I was now deemed to have become ‘the right’ and even ‘the extreme right’. And when I started writing about family breakdown, I was also called an ‘Old Testament fundamentalist’. At the time, I shrugged this aside as merely a gratuitous bit of bigotry. Much later, however, I came to realise that it was actually a rather precise insult. My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand – that the destruction of the traditional family had as its real target the destruction of Biblical morality. I thought I was merely standing up for evidence, duty and the protection of the vulnerable. But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites.

I saw this as nothing less than outright nihilism which threatened to destroy the West. If all common bonds of tradition, custom, culture, morality, and so forth were destroyed, there would no social glue to keep society together. It would gradually fracture into a set of disparate tribes with competing agendas, and thus eventually would destroy itself. And as I was coming to realise, just about every issue on which I was so embattled – family, education, nation, and many more – were all salients on the great battleground of the culture wars, on which the defenders of the West were losing hands down.”

On The Islamic Challenge:

”Like most others, I had not seen 9/11 coming. Yet two days earlier, in a column about the decline of Christianity in Britain, I wrote, ‘Liberal values will be protected only if Christianity holds the line as our dominant culture. A society which professes neutrality between cultures would create a void which Islam, with its militant political creed, would attempt to fill’

[I]mmediately after the Twin Towers collapsed, I realised that what the West was facing was different from ordinary terrorism; and different again from war by one state on another. This was something more akin to a cancer in the global bloodstream which had to be fought with all the weapons, both military and cultural, at our disposal. And yet in that moment I also realised that the West would flinch from this fight, because it no longer recognised the difference between good and evil or the validity of preferring some cultures to others, but had decided instead that all such concepts were relative. And so it would most likely take the path of appeasement rather than the measures needed to defend itself from the attempt to destroy it. And so it has proved."

On Hope:

“All, however, is not lost. A culture can pull back from the brink if it tears off its suicidal blinders in time. This can still be achieved — but it requires a recognition above all of the paradox that so many fail to understand, that freedom only exists within clear boundaries, and that preserving the values of Western civilisation requires a robust reassertion of the Judeo-Christian principles on which its foundations rest. And that requires moral, political, and religious leadership of the highest order — and buckets of courage.”

Ok Go and Arguments for the Existence of God

Watch this video of This Too Shall Pass by Ok Go and ask yourself what would have happened if there had been no first cause to initiate the sequence of events it depicts.

If there were no first cause in the sequence of cause and effect then there simply would be no subsequent effects. This is essentially a version of the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God called the Kalam Cosmological Argument:

For a simple explanation of the Kalam argument you might want to watch this video (although the video doesn't use the word "Kalam" it's the Kalam version of the Cosmological Argument that it's describing.)

The people shown cheering at the end of the Ok Go video are the students who designed and constructed the apparatus which leads to another question worth pondering. Could such an apparatus have resulted from the random action of blind chance and natural law or did it require intelligent engineers to put it all together. This question highlights a version of another argument for the existence of God based on the design inherent in the cosmos as well as in living things.

Once life appeared on earth then perhaps it could have proliferated and diversified via mutation and natural selection, but how did the first living things, cells far more intricate and complex than the Rube Goldberg apparatus in the video, ever come to be in the first place? Are blind, purposeless processes a sufficient explanation or do those first life forms, like the Rube Goldberg device, require the input of an intelligent agent?

Doubting Thomas

Microbiologist Kas Thomas is no creationist. Indeed, he's a Darwinian evolutionist, but he's one of an increasing number of such scientists who's growing disenchanted with Darwinism's inability to satisfactorily respond to the scientific challenges posed by intelligent design advocates.

He talks about his concerns at Big Think and, because he has given voice to doubts about the theoretical efficacy of Darwinism, he's greeted with a tidal wave of scorn and derision in the comments section. Here's the crux of his piece:

I find it horrifying that there are college-educated people in the U.S. (and around the world) who believe the earth is 6,000 years old; and yet at the same time, I have a certain amount of discomfort, myself, with evolutionary theory—not because it demeans the nobility of man or denies the Bible, or anything of that sort, but because it's such an incomplete and unsatisfying theory on purely scientific grounds. (Many physicists feel much the same way about quantum theory.)

Almost everything in evolutionary theory is based on "survival of the fittest," a tautology that explains nothing. ("Fittest" means most able to survive. Survival of the fittest means survival of those who survive.) The means by which new survival skills emerge is, at best, murky.... the fact is, even today we have a hard time figuring out how things like a bacterial flagellum first appeared.

When I was in school, we were taught that mutations in DNA are the driving force behind evolution, an idea that is now thoroughly discredited. The overwhelming majority of non-neutral mutations are deleterious (reducing, not increasing, survival). This is easily demonstrated in the lab. Most mutations lead to loss of function, not gain of function. Evolutionary theory, it turns out, is great at explaining things like the loss of eyesight, over time, by cave-dwelling creatures. It's terrible at explaining gain of function.

It's also terrible at explaining the speed at which speciation occurs. (Of course, The Origin of Species is entirely silent on the subject of how life arose from abiotic conditions in the first place.) It doesn't explain the Cambrian Explosion, for example, or the sudden appearance of intelligence in hominids, or the rapid recovery (and net expansion) of the biosphere in the wake of at least five super-massive extinction events in the most recent 15% of Earth's existence.

Despite these shortcomings, Thomas isn't willing to give up on the theory because there's no other naturalistic explanation for the problems he highlights:

Of course, the fact that classical evolutionary theory doesn't explain these sorts of things doesn't mean we should abandon the entire theory. There's a difference between a theory being wrong and being incomplete. In science, we cling to incomplete theories all the time. Especially when the alternative is complete ignorance.

Perhaps the theory is incomplete because it excludes intelligent agency as a creative factor, but be that as it may one of the ironies of this post by Thomas is the hostility it has provoked in the comments section. What is it about doubts of Darwinism that cause such emotional reactions in people who would never dream of reacting so vehemently to a post expressing doubts about, say, quantum theory, relativity, or Big Bang cosmology? It's almost as if Thomas' doubts call into question his critics' most deeply held religious convictions. Come to think of it, perhaps they do.