Panda-monium

Go here to play Panda-monium, a game in which Darwinian pandas attack the redoubts of the Discovery Institute with some of their favorite cliches. The player scores points for every panda shot out of the sky. Great fun.

Longing For a Lost Past

Mark Lilla writes winsomely in the New York Times Magazine about his journey from faith to skepticism. It is in some ways, whether he intended it or not, a very sad story, filled with a sense of loss and nostalgia. His criticisms of the faith he left behind are respectful, gentle and usually accurate, as though he were writing about a marriage which gave him many fond memories but which just didn't work out.

I did find one riff more than a little difficult to accept, however. He writes:

Visit any Christian bookstore and you will see that they [Christians] are gluttons for learning - of a certain kind. They belong to Bible-study groups; they buy works of scriptural interpretation; they sit through tedious courses on cassette, CD or DVD; they take notes during sermons and highlight passages in their Bibles. If anything, it is their thirst for knowledge that undoes them. Like so many Americans, they know little about history, science, secular literature or, unless they are immigrants, foreign cultures. Yet their thirst for answers to the most urgent moral and existential questions is overwhelming. So they grab for the only glass in the room: God's revealed Word.

A half-century ago, an American Christian seeking assistance could have turned to the popularizing works of serious religious thinkers like Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Courtney Murray, Thomas Merton, Jacques Maritain and even Martin Buber and Will Herberg. Those writers were steeped in philosophy and the theological traditions of their faiths, which they brought to bear on the vital spiritual concerns of ordinary believers - ethics, death, prayer, doubt and despair. But intellectual figures like these have disappeared from the American landscape and have been replaced by half-educated evangelical gurus who either publish vacant, cheery self-help books or are politically motivated. If an evangelical wants to satisfy his taste for truth today, it's strictly self-service.

This claim belies a profound lack of familiarity with the astonishing amount of work being done by Christians who write serious books for audiences of both professionals and laity. Just a few of the dozens of names which come to mind are William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, J.P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Mark Noll, George Marsden, William Dembski, William Alston, Jay Budzisewski, N.T. Wright, Stephen Barr, Del Ratzsch, and many, many other Christian philosophers, historians, scientists, theologians and intellectuals of all stripes.

Mr. Lilla might reply that these are not all Americans nor are they "evangelicals", but neither were many of the men on his list "evangelicals" in the contemporary sense of the term. Nor were they all Americans. To call these writers, and the dozens of others who deserve to be on the list, "half-educated evangelical gurus who either publish vacant, cheery self-help books or are politically motivated" is so far at variance with the truth as to be bizarre.

Mr. Lilla closes his otherwise artfully written essay with an interesting question: Why do religious skeptics like himself feel the need to prosyletize? Why do they care? A Christian might seek to convert a complete stranger because he believes that that person's eternal soul is at risk and because he believes he's carrying out a divine mandate by sharing the gospel with him, but an atheist believes neither of these things. Lilla admits that he has no good answer to the question:

But the curious thing about skepticism is that its adherents, ancient and modern, have so often been proselytizers. In reading them, I've often wanted to ask, "Why do you care?" Their skepticism offers no good answer to that question. And I don't have one for myself.

At the risk of committing the sin of bad psychology, I wonder if part of the answer to his question doesn't lie in the fact that when others believe what we believe it reinforces and reaffirms the rightness of our beliefs. Both believers and skeptics, if they are thoughtful, live with a deep-down existential angst, a dread, a doubt. It might be that we are wrong, and it is a comfort when other people are persuaded to join us in our belief or our skepticism. For some it might almost be a relief. The angst must be particularly acute for a man who is keenly aware, because of his youthful background in the faith, that he is placing his eternal destiny on the line in his choice of commitments and that, should he be wrong, his loss could be immeasurable.

I should note a comment by Douglas LeBlanc at GetReligion.com who wonders how long it will be before the Times prints an article written by someone who makes the journey from skepticism to faith. There are lots of such stories out there, of course, but we won't be going on a fast waiting for the Times to tell us about them.

Anyway, read Lilla's essay. It's long, but it's quite good.

Political Scorecard

A left-wing website, Progressive Punch, has ranked all members of the Senate and House according to a rating which gives the member a score of 100% if they have a perfect liberal voting record. The more conservative the member is the closer is their score to zero.

I don't know whether their ranking system is reliable, but one interesting result they show is this: There is not a single Democrat in the House or Senate who scores under 50% (except Ben Nelson who scores 49.4%) and not a single Republican who scores over it. That's a pretty stark division. I wonder if a similar polarization would have been the case twenty five years ago.

It's also interesting to note that four Senate Republicans are far more liberal than the rest of their caucus, although they're still well below the fifty percent mark. See if you can guess who they are before you check out the rankings here.

Scapegoats

When Katrina devastated the Mississippi coast earlier this month Robert Kennedy, Jr. suggested that it was God's judgment on governor Haley Barbor for having once written a memo to George Bush critical of the Kyoto Treaty.

Now another category 4 storm heads toward Galveston. No doubt the good people along the Texas coast are pleading with governor Rick Perry to fire off a memo to Washington praising the Kyoto accords and urging the president to sign them before God punishes Bush by clobbering the poor Texans along the Gulf.

Even so, we tend to agree with the near-unanimous opinion of the nation's meteorologists that these storms have nothing to do with global warming. We think instead that those people are correct who assert that the weather is God's judgment on American decadence. We were told, for example, that Katrina was punishment for the vice that infests Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Unfortunately for this hypothesis, though, the hurricane destroyed almost everything in an area the size of Minnesota except the French Quarter - the heart of the city's decadence, but we're sure the denizens of this den of iniquity got the message all the same.

Now He appears to be sending hurricane Rita to pummel Galveston, perhaps as punishment for the sins of Las Vegas. Maybe, this is the Old Testament scapegoat principle at work, where innocent victims are made to pay the price for the sins of the wealthy.

In any event, those Las Vegans better be paying careful attention to what's happening to Galveston while they cavort in their night clubs this weekend. If they don't, the next hurricane might be aimed right at Mexico.

The Main Event

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters is typical among conservative bloggers in his assessment that Harry Reid's public decision to vote against John Roberts makes it a lot easier to nominate another Scalia/Thomas to replace O'Connor.

The reasoning goes like this:

If Reid can't cast a vote for John Roberts, one of the most uniquely and undeniably talented and qualified prospects for the Supreme Court at hand, then Reid and the Democrats who follow him will never cast a vote for any Republican nominee. Reid gives no incentive whatsoever to negotiate or to consult with the Democrats on selections in the future; no matter what happens or how well qualified the nominee, they will oppose him or her.

The favorite among the folks at ConfirmThem.com is Michael Luttig, but Michael McConnell and Edith Jones are also popular.

Read the whole post at Captain's Quarters if the looming battle for the Supreme Court interests you. It's pretty good.

Martian Warming

Mars is getting warmer, but what else could we expect with Halliburton's friend in the White House refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty?

The Situation in Sudan

John Eibner and Joe Madison write a concise update on the current situation in the Sudan. It's difficult for Americans to stay focused on a region where there is no obvious national interest at stake, and it's easy to avoid thinking about the suffering of the people there when their plight gives way on the evening news to feckless murder investigations in Aruba and Cindy Sheehan's quixotic crusade in Crawford.

The absence of a manifest national interest was the argument for staying out of Bosnia and Kosovo and Rwanda in the nineties. It was the crux of the case for neutrality in 1940. It is not a trivial argument. Even so, power carries with it some measure of responsibility. We should not stand by and do nothing while people are starved and slaughtered if it is within our capacitites to do something to stop it that would not make matters worse. In other words, there is a moral case, even in this amoral post-modern world, for bringing our power to bear on behalf of those trapped in the third world hells that befoul our globe like so many toxic pustules.

The debate should not be whether we should intervene to help desperate people. The debate should be about how we might most effectively accomplish that goal. It should center around how we can produce the greatest amount of good with the least amount of evil.

Hopefully, moral suasion, diplomatic pressure and economic incentives will bring about a surcease of the suffering of the victims of the despots and petty tyrants who populate the third world, but sometimes, as in Bosnia and Rwanda, it might take the application of military force. That should be a last resort, but, provided it can be reasonably expected to work and produce a better result than would capitulation, it should always be an option.

It was indeed an option in Bosnia, to our credit and the credit of the Clinton administration. It evidently was not an option in Rwanda, to our and president Clinton's everlasting shame. You may, of course, disagree, but if so, at least watch the movie Hotel Rwanda and see if that doesn't cause you to rethink your opinion.

How the Terrorists Can Win in Iraq

This is the sort of disheartening news that will cause the American people to drop their support of the Iraq effort quicker than anything.

Almost the entire procurement budget allocated to Iraq's defense ministry has been stolen. It amounts to 1.3 billion dollars. It's going to be awful hard for the Bush administration to ask the American taxpayer to come up with that kind of money again, but if the money is not replaced the progress of the Iraqi military toward self-sufficiency will be seriously impaired.

Americans have been generous because they believe that Iraq is on the road to being able to fend for itself. If we see our investment just disappearing down a rat-hole, enthusiasm for saving Iraq will evaporate like morning mist, and the most bitter consequences for both us and the world will ensue.

Say it Ain't So!

The Bush administration evidently needs to return to first principles, and the very first principle of a leader is that you surround yourself with the most competent people you can find. A good leader doesn't play patronage games with important appointments and especially not with homeland security. It is astonishing that key positions at HS seem to be doled out on the basis of nepotism and cronyism, as though the task of securing our citizens from terrorism was no more critical a post than the ambassadorship to the Solomon Islands.

Unfortunately, the Bushies, having already been scorched by the Michael Brown appointment at FEMA, seem to have learned nothing from the experience and appear to be angling for a reprise of their embarrassment in the nomination of Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in the Department of Homeland Security.

Michelle Malkin can't believe this is happening and wonders what on earth the Bush people are thinking. Malkin has the relevant background on Ms Myers, and it's pretty depressing.

For our part, we wonder to what extent, if any, Bush himself was involved in this nomination. Say you didn't know, Dubya!

Reaping Retribution

To discover what's really going on in Iraq one must forget the evening news and turn instead to the milblogs (military blogs) which specialize in covering military matters in general and operations in Iraq in particular. One blog that provides a perspective that you won't ever get from ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN is StrategyPage.com. Their post from last Sunday, for example, gives us some good insight into the recent upsurge in deaths among Iraqi civilians. Here's part of that post:

September 18, 2005: The al Qaeda "war" against Iraqi Shia is now five days old. Some 250 Iraqis have been killed so far, most on the first day, and most of them civilians and Shia. But a growing number of the dead bodies found are Sunni Arabs, and it appears that some of the newly trained Shia police and soldiers are moonlighting as death squads. Sunni Arabs complain of raids, sometimes by men in uniform, that efficiently remove Sunni Arab men, who later turn up dead, and often showing signs of torture (indicating interrogation to obtain more information on who is attacking Shia civilians.) The government is not making a particularly strong effort to find out who the moonlighting police are, and stop them.

The government keeps telling the Sunni Arab leadership that these al Qaeda attacks on Shia civilians can only end badly for the Sunni Arab population. While many Sunni Arab groups, still loyal to the Baath Party (or Saddam Hussein), and determined to have Sunni Arabs running the country again, continue to attack Shia Arabs, the victims are increasingly attacking right back. Terrorism, it appears, works both ways in Iraq. But instead of spectacular car bombs, the Shia Arab and Kurd "avengers" (as they see themselves) stalk individual Sunni Arabs (known to have been killers of Saddam, or terrorists today), and shoot them dead. Sunni Arab men known, or believed to be involved in terrorist operations, are rounded up at night, usually to be never seen alive again. All of this is in addition to legitimate counter-terrorist operations, where the people rounded up survive the process.

Follow the link to read the rest of it.

Major News Breaks, MSM Yawns

A major non-event in the American media is nevertheless a significant event for American foreign policy. Oxblog reports on it for us:

The principal news coming out of Aghanistan is that there is little news out of Aghanistan, and this is a remarkable thing. Voting in today's elections for parliamentary and provincial office passed without major incident (among the minor incidents, there were nineteen Taliban-linked attacks upon polling stations, in most instances before they were opened, with three voters being injured); officials of the Aghan-UN Joint Electoral Management Body report long queues of women voters; and all but 16 of the 6,200 polling centres established across Afghanistan were operational on voting day (this a marked improvement from last October's presidential election, where security considerations forced the closure of all polling centres in a significant number of Afghan regions).

Turnout might have been higher, and seven election candidates died in militant-linked violence over the last half year, but the elections are in general being hailed as a major success nonetheless, and include such poignant images as long queues of women waiting to vote in the former Taliban capital of Kandahar.

Too bad Sean Penn or Cindy Sheehan didn't show up over there. Maybe then the elections would've gotten some coverage.

Publius also has a lot more on the election here.

The Most Violent Country

If you were to guess which country in the world was the most violent how would you answer? Whatever answer you give, it's probably wrong according to a United Nations study. I'm a little skeptical of the methodology of this study, but, for what its worth, its findings were surprising. The Times Online has the story:

A United Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America. England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest.

The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week, almost ten times the official police figures. They include non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assaults.

Violent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years and levels, per head of population, are now comparable with cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Tbilisi.

The attacks have been fuelled by a "booze and blades" culture in the west of Scotland which has claimed more than 160 lives over the past five years. Since January there have been 13 murders, 145 attempted murders and 1,100 serious assaults involving knives in the west of Scotland. The problem is made worse by sectarian violence, with hospitals reporting higher admissions following Old Firm matches.

David Ritchie, an accident and emergency consultant at Glasgow's Victoria Infirmary, said that the figures were a national disgrace. "I am embarrassed as a Scot that we are seeing this level of violence. Politicians must do something about this problem. This is a serious public health issue. Violence is a cancer in this part of the world," he said.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the Strathclyde Police's violence reduction unit, said the problem was chronic and restricting access to drink and limiting the sale of knives would at least reduce the problem.

The study, by the UN's crime research institute, found that 3 per cent of Scots had been victims of assault compared with 1.2 per cent in America and just 0.1 per cent in Japan, 0.2 per cent in Italy and 0.8 per cent in Austria. In England and Wales the figure was 2.8 per cent.

Scotland was eighth for total crime, 13th for property crime, 12th for robbery and 14th for sexual assault. New Zealand had the most property crimes and sexual assaults, while Poland had the most robberies.

Chief Constable Peter Wilson, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, questioned the figures. "It must be near impossible to compare assault figures from one country to the next based on phone calls," he said.

I agree with the constable, but still..., Scotland??

Urging the Dems to Vote No

E.J. Dionne thinks that the Senate should vote no on judge John Roberts, not because he doesn't think Roberts qualified, but because he doesn't think he was sufficiently forthcoming in the Senate judicial committee hearings about his "core beliefs." We should end the charade that these hearings have become, Dionne argues, by refusing to confirm those who make it such a farce.

Even if one agrees with Dionne that Roberts' beliefs about Roe v. Wade are indeed a legitimate concern, he still looks a little silly raising the matter now. He evidently wasn't too bothered that neither Sandra Day O'Connor nor Ruth Bader Ginsburg were any more forthcoming in their hearings than Roberts was in his. If those nominees didn't have to answer questions about where they stood on matters likely to come before the court why make Roberts jump over that bar? Dionne's frustration with Roberts seems more than a little partisan, being reserved, as it is, for a conservative judge who might vote to overturn Roe.

There really is only one question that Roberts should be expected to answer, and that concerns the principles which will guide him in forming his judgments about the cases he hears. How flexible in his mind is the constitution? How strictly will he interpret it? Will he seek to interpret in the light of foreign law? Will he read into it principles that are currently fashionable but not mentioned in the constitution itself? Everything else we need to know about his experience, his integrity, his judicial competence are all discovered through venues other than hearings. If no questions arise when the candidate is vetted by the FBI, if there are no hints of scandal or incompetence, then all the judiciary committee need worry about are his answers to those questions.

That would, of course, make for what the senators would consider an unacceptably short hearing, and that would not sit well with those pompous, self-important bloviators on the judiciary committee who treasure their time preening before the cameras and pampering their super-sized egos by delivering questions in the form of speeches. More than the nominees, the judiciary committee members are the reason the hearings have become a charade.

The Uniter

Donna Brazile managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000 so she's no fan of George Bush, or at least she wasn't until last Thursday night. Bush always said he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider, but unfortunately his political opposition wouldn't go along. As soon as he proposed anything or tried to accomplish anything the opposition took exception to it and claimed that their disagreement with the president was proof that he was dividing the nation.

That sort of silliness is going to be hard to maintain after Thursday night, and Donna Brazile's column is a good illustration of why that is so.

As Mississippi and Louisiana are, like Lazarus, raised up from their devastation it will be hard not to remember who was primarily responsible for it. As long as the president doesn't bankrupt the nation in the doing of it, he will surely be remembered, despite the political tensions of our time, as the man who united the nation to rebuild the Gulf coast and New Orleans.

A Call For Balance

Byron Borger, a dear friend and valued critic of occasional posts on Viewpoint has taken exception to some of what I wrote here and here. His comments can be found in the Feedback forum. My reply follows with passages from Byron's critique in block quotes:

By,

Thanks for your criticisms of my view of poverty in America. I know that the opionions I express are controversial and that some will find them offensive. Nevertheless, I stand by them as I think them to be largely correct insofar as they describe the situation of a significant percentage, perhaps even a majority, of the chronically poor in this country.

Those who are poor in the U.S. have suffered from the influence of a culture that has seduced them into adopting behaviors that are guaranteed to keep them poor, a prevailing social science that has provided excuses for them to rationalize their poverty, and government policies (like some welfare programs) which have encouraged values that lead to trans-generational poverty.

You wrote that:

[My kids] spent some time this summer on a church mission trip doing some renovation in a very rural and poor part of Appalachia. Unbelievable lack of local resources and no jobs. No tax revenue, poor schools, little opportunity. The cycle of poverty and the ensuing social deterioration causes an ethos and environment...well, I don't have to tell you. Or do I? I think you are way, way off the mark here.

I do not doubt that those who dwell in such regions have few resources and job opportunities. That doesn't mean that there are no opportunities for them anywhere. In the 18th and 19th century millions of Irish in even worse situations than those in Appalachia emigrated at great hazard to themselves and their families to this country to find or create opportunities to improve their lives. During the 1930s "Dust Bowl" hundreds of thousands of "Okies" and others migrated from the mid-west to the west coast to find or make opportunities for themselves. Today one of our most serious problems and perhaps Bush's greatest failure is the problem of illegal immigration brought about by the fact that millions of poor know that there are jobs in this country that will allow them to provide for their families if only they are able to get to them and are willing to work them. And so they come.

Just because there are no jobs in one's town or neighborhood does not mean there are no jobs at all. People are faced with a trade-off. They can move, perhaps with great difficulty, to where work is or stay where they feel they have roots. It's their choice to make. One choice gives them a chance, one doesn't.

But to just blame poverty on poor choices is not matching up with my (albeit) limited experience. And it sure doesn't square with what the Bible says are the causes of poverty (personal immorality or poor choices being only one of the less mentioned causes.)

Poverty in Biblical times was not like poverty today. It was, in fact, completely different. Biblical poverty was more like what people endured in this country during the Great Depression when there really weren't any jobs. In Biblical times the masses were poor and a small minority were well off, usually because they exploited the poor. Today's poor live in the wealthiest country with the largest middle class, the greatest opportunity for socio-economic mobility, the greatest economic freedom, and one of the most just societies in the history of the world.

In terms of health care, comforts like refrigeration, air conditioning, heat, entertainment, and transportation, today's poor are rich beyond the wildest dreams of anyone living in a Biblical culture. They have access to public libraries and public schools, they are eligible for government programs that buy their groceries, pay their energy and medical bills, and subsidize their housing. To compare the causes of American poverty today to the causes of poverty in Biblical times, or even the poverty that exists in modern times throughout much of the rest of the world, is to compare apples and oranges.

You also say:

These drastic statements though, that will sound less than charitable to those that work or live among the poor, will just turn them off.

A lot of these sorts of people, though maybe not a majority of them, if they know they can speak freely and not be hooted down, would agree with what I'm saying. I've talked to people who do social work, who are police officers in poor neighborhoods, who are teachers in poor schools, and pastors who counsel poor people. Their experience has made them some of the most discouraged people I know. They do their jobs with compassion and professionalism, but they feel their task is like trying to bail the water out of the Titanic with a bucket because the culture of poverty is so ingrained in people that they will simply not make the choices they have to make to rise out of it.

You then write:

That post about the debate in England between some wild and crazy lefties who then had even crazier people in the audience. Have you EVER met anybody anywhere who would say "who cares?" about helping people in Afghan?...Which makes me (a) worry a bit about the veracity of the report and (b) wonder why you post such stuff....Anybody that is that hard, hard left is just so much on the fringe that they do not deserve to be given the time of day..

George Galloway is very far to the left, but he's not that far that he's of no consequence. You might remember that he's the British politician that somebody at Gideon's blog said he admired for his anti-war stance, and you and I had an exchange about it. Galloway is one of the most prominent critics in England of Tony Blair and the Iraq war, and has a large following. Christopher Hitchens is one of the most well-known journalists in the United States among intellectuals. They may be wild and crazy (though I wouldn't say that about Hitchens, as much as I disagree with him), but they are men of consequence and their debate was widely reported on. That's why I post such stuff.

As for whether I've ever met anyone who would say "who cares" about the people in Afghanistan (or Iraq), the answer is that I've read about lots of them and talked with a few. Almost everyone who says we need to pull out of Afghanistan (or Iraq) right now is tacitly saying "who cares about those people," we've got to look out for ourselves. Everyone who has said that our involvement there is costing too much money and that we should be spending that money at home is tacitly saying "who cares about those people."

Has the left adequately protested brutal leftist regimes? Not adequately, although you are historically wrong to suggest that they haven't at all. (Whether they've reached your ears is not quite the issue, really.) Has the right adequately protested brutal rightist regimes? Not adequately. either. So what is your point? That the left never really cares but the right wing does? Hmmmm.

Nice put down, By, although I don't recall making myself the issue. I simply meant to say that if leftists have been seriously critical of leftist states, other than the obligatory acknowledgments that "of course, Kim Il Sung is a despot, but..." sort of thing, it hasn't been particularly obvious. The issue is that the left sees anyone who is an enemy of the U.S. as their friend (See Paul Berman's book Terrorism and Liberalism) or at least has a hard time seeing him as an enemy. I do not dispute that the right suffers, mutatis mutandis, from a similar blindness, but the fact of the matter is, as your own examples attest, one has to go back 20 to 25 years to come up with an example of a tyrannical rightist government that conservatives were not critical of.

Or the silence of the American conservatives on those scores doesn't get your goat the way it does mine?

Perhaps if I had had my blog going 25 years ago there would have been occasion to condemn the lack of outrage at some of the atrocities committed by our Central American surrogates. As it is, you might remember from our years of discussing these things that I was very much opposed to many of the horrific rightist governments around the world and supported measures to defeat them. I opposed South African apartheid, I supported Britain's war against Argentina and Clinton's war against Milosevic as well as Clinton's and others' attempts to end fascism in Haiti. I also supported Bush '41 when he went to war against the fascist Hussein and Bush '43 when he went to war against the extremely conservative Islamo-fascist Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's socialist fascism (a sort of Arab naziism) again in 2003.

I think most conservatives, with the exception of many paleo-cons, also supported these actions. In fact, I think the conservative record against rightist tyranny is a lot stronger than the left's record against leftist tyranny, and has been ever since liberals changed their mind about Vietnam.

(And here is another concern: the liberals whose silence about human rights abuses on the left didn't cause it, really, as if you can blame red diaper babies for Stalin, or Jane Fonda for the Khmer Rouge. But you can blame those who voted for Mr. Reagan, say, for the contras brutalities in villages in Nicaragua. You can blame U.S. magazines on the right for advocating and getting financial support for Pinochet, for the horrors of the Shah, for passing bills that funded military support of dictators like Marcos and the torture chambers of apartheid era South Afriica....But when you fail to offer similiar critique of the right who really could have spoken out against their own guys, the ones they sent arms to your imbalance becomes disconcerting.

I think your premise is mistaken. To the extent that the left crippled American administrations and hindered them from taking strong action against communist tyrants, they encouraged them in their tyranny. Every time anti-war protestors marched or Jane Fonda called American soldiers war criminals, it gave hope and encouragement to the communists in Hanoi. The failure of the leftist dominated media to speak out strongly against Stalin's crimes and instead to apologize for them, emboldened him to commit new ones. Every time some naive leftist returned from Havana or Managua to tell the rest of us what wonderful people the Castroites and the Ortegans were and what a wonderful society they were building, it just stripped the Armando Valladares of the world, languishing in their filthy gulags, of hope.

I do not deny that conservatives have, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not, found themselves in bed with unsavory people, but the fact that such things happened 25 years ago is no reason not to call to account people who are hopping into bed with unsavory people today, and today it's almost exclusively the left who is doing it. Nor do I feel that I have to qualify my criticisms of this by saying "I know that conservatives have done this in the past, too." That's the same sort of silliness that afflicts people who feel they have to preface every discussion of race by acknowledging that there's still lots of racism around to be condemned. I don't think it's necessary in addressing the difficulties of the world we face in the 21st century to revisit the arguments we had in the 1970s and 80s over whether we should have been supporting the contras and in what fashion. That argument is interminable.

If you want to cite an example from the contemporary world of how conservatives are behaving abominably and ask me why, in the interest of balance, I don't post on that I'll certainly examine it as sincerely as I can.

BTW, the one example of execrable behavior on the right that I can think of offhand was Pat Robertson's call to assassinate Hugo Chavez. I wrote several very critical posts on that. Perhaps you missed them.

Best,

Dick

Free Will

Last week we noted Joe Carter's list of fifty propositions that comprise his religious creed. Evidently, some of his readers have questioned him about a couple of those theses, focusing their criticism on #38 and #39. Joe seeks to answer their concerns here.

The discussion is essentially over whether God determines or predestines who will be saved and who will be lost. Joe accepts the Calvinist view that one's eternal destiny is completely chosen by God.

I have enormous respect for those in the Reformed tradition, which embraces the Calvinist view of predestination, but even though there are verses in the Bible which support their view of predestination, I have problems reconciling that doctrine with other things that the Bible teaches about God. Let me try to explain:

The question of whether we are free to choose in the sphere of morals or religion is perplexing because for one thing it's hard to describe what a completely free choice would be like. It certainly wouldn't be an uncaused choice so if the choice is caused then we need to ask whether the cause determines or compels the choice. If not, how do explain a choice which is caused by something, say, environmental factors, but is nevertheless free.

The second reason it's perplexing is that the Bible in some places certainly seems to teach that our spiritual fate is predestined (eg. Rom.8:29, 30). Yet in other places it seems to strongly imply that we have freedom to choose our destiny for ourselves (Rev. 3:16). So there's a tension that has troubled philosophers and theologians for two thousand years. Let's start with a basic premise upon which all Christians can agree:

God is perfectly good and supremely just.

We might also agree that since we are made in God's image our concepts of both goodness and justice are similar to His and there's no conflict between them. If there were then it would make no sense for God to adjure us to love goodness and justice since we'd have no idea what exactly He was talking about and what was expected of us.

Now what follows from this? If God has predestined every choice people make in their lives, then:

1. God is responsible for our evil choices. He has predestined them to happen. It's not merely that He allows evil as a consequence of man's Fall, it's that He actually produces it Himself from before the creation of the world. Christians often attribute suffering, grief and death caused by human volition to man's wickedness, or to Satan, but if predestination is true the source of these evils is neither of those. It's God. This, however, seems impossible to reconcile with God's perfect goodness.

2. If God has predestined who will be lost and who will be saved, then God has, in effect, created some of us to live for a relative few short years, programmed us to reject Him and His plan of salvation, and then He punishes us for doing what He compelled us to do by condemning us to suffer hell forever. Imagine writing a software program for a computer which the computer runs perfectly but with which you, the programmer, are dissatisfied. Where is the fault? With the computer or with the programmer? The Calvinist says it is with the computer, and that the programmer is being completely reasonable if he destroys the computer because it did what he programmed it to do. This seems to me to be incoherent.

3. There is no real moral responsibility. Moral responsibility requires personal, metaphysical freedom. Someone who suffers from Tourette's syndrome is not at fault if he blurts out obscenities. His condition robs him of control over certain behaviors so we absolve him of blame for them. Likewise, if we are incapable of choosing to do good then we, like the Tourette's sufferer, are not really responsible for what we do choose.

Reformed theologians respond by saying that we are free to do what is right, but that because we have a corrupt nature (which, of course, we can't help), we don't make good choices. We don't chose to do what is right. We had no alternative but to be what God destined us to be, but we're nevertheless free to choose what He has destined us to choose, which is to do evil. How this constitutes genuine freedom and responsibility escapes me.

The only way I can see to reconcile God's goodness and justice with predestination is to adopt the doctrine of universal salvation which would mean that ultimately God saves everyone, no matter who they are and what they did. If no one is punished for their sin, if no one is eternally lost, then God might be just in making us to be whatever kind of person He wants us to be, since our "wickedness" would be but an infinitesimally brief period of time relative to eternity. However, since I don't think universalism is Biblical, I don't think that particular solution is open to the predestinarian.

Predestinarians recognize these difficulties, but they insist that God's sovereignty is such that we have no right to question Him. They will often cite Rom. 9:19 - 21 where Paul says that the pot doesn't ask the potter why he has made it thus. Nonetheless, whatever Paul is talking about in this passage, if he's talking about our personal salvation then its hard to see the aptness of the analogy.

A clay pot does not have an eternal soul, it doesn't have feelings, it's not loved by others, nor does it experience pain and suffering. It's one thing to mold clay for whatever purpose one pleases, it's something else entirely to create a human being only to have it live a few years and then be damned for an eternity. As I said, I have difficulty reconciling that with what I believe about God's goodness and justice.

The Calvinist believes that the sort of human freedom we're talking about here would somehow diminish God's sovereignty, but our freedom to choose is a gift God Himself bestows. He could revoke it if He wished. His sovereignty consists in being able to do whatever He cares to. His sovereignty is in no way subject or subordinate to our freedom.

In summary, there are two basic positions on the question of human free will and predestination: The Calvinist or Reformed view is largely the product of the work of John Calvin (1509 -1564) who believed that man is totally corrupt and cannot do anything to save himself. If he could then he would not need God and Christ's sacrifice was unnecessary. If a man could save himself, the Calvinist believes, then salvation would be based on what he did, it would not be based on faith, and the man might have something about which to "boast."

Thus God chooses some from among those He creates to work in their hearts. He changes their heart so that they are then able to accept Christ's offer of eternal life, which they will inevitably do since God has predestined them to do so.

The other view is called Arminianism after James Arminius (1560 - 1609). According to this view man is lost, as if stuck in quicksand. He's sinking and can't extricate himself. All men are in this predicament, but God reaches down and offers each a hand. Some reach up to grasp it, some refuse it. The choice is up to each. Those who take God's offer of rescue are not doing anything meritorious, any more than a drowning man can claim some sort of virtue in seizing the life preserver thrown to him. He may not recognize the seriousness of his peril, but he knows he's in trouble, so he takes hold of the hand offered to him.

Which of these two views is correct, I can't say for certain, but for the reasons I discussed above, I lean strongly toward the Arminian side. If it should turn out, though, that the Calvinist position is correct then I can hardly be blamed for not accepting it. God will have predetermined me to believe what I do, and I never really had any choice in the matter.

Carter closes with a question aimed at the Arminian Christian. He asks this:

If Christians believe that God is omniscient then it is only reasonable that he would know, even before they were born, which people would accept him and which would reject him. Since this is the case, why would he even bother to create those He knows will reject the gift of salvation? Why didn't he merely decide to only create those who will accept his gracious offer, providing, in effect, universal salvation?

This is the question that plagues non-Calvinists. They must either reject the notion that God is omniscient or they must proffer an explanation for how God could have known who would be saved if it is completely within the human's will to accept or reject him.

It's a bit surprising that Joe would ask this question since he's familiar with the arguments of Alvin Plantinga and others which show that there's no genuine logical conflict between human free will and God's foreknowledge. To know in advance that a particular choice will be made is not inconsistent with the freedom of the agent to do otherwise than what God knows he will do. Viewpoint has previously discussed the problem here and here.

Another answer to Carter's question is that offered by what is called Open Theism which is discussed briefly here.

With Friends Like These

A group of 38 Nobel winners, led by Elie Wiesel (Elie Weisel?!) have written a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education asking them to keep any criticism of evolution out of the state science standards.

Thirty eight Nobel winners might sound like a powerful voice advocating on behalf of evolution, but we shouldn't be too hasty to allow ourselves to be impressed. The letter contains these words:

Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.

Thirty eight Nobel winners, 34 of them scientists, signed off on this definition. Why is this remarkable? Two reasons: The first is that this statement accurately defines Darwinian evolution, but it does not define a scientific theory. How can the claim that evolution is unguided and unplanned ever be subjected to testing? What experiments or observations would count for or against it? The answer, of course, is that there are none. These brilliant scientists are in effect calling for schools to teach metaphysics in public school science classes while at the same time demanding that a competing metaphysical theory, Intelligent Design, be banished from science classes because it can't be scientifically tested.

The second problem with this definition is that it contradicts the assurance that evolutionists keep offering to the public that there is no real conflict between evolution and religion. Evolutionists like Eugenie Scott, president of the National Council for Science Education, spend a good deal of time seeking to allay parents' concerns that their children will be given the impression in their science classes that God is either non-existent or irrelevant. If, however, The Nobel winners' definition is correct, and it certainly does define Darwinism, then the truth is out, and Scott and her accomplices must be beside themselves wondering why they need enemies with friends like these.

The evolutionists, or at least the Darwinian variety, may have thirty eight Nobel Prize winners on their side, but it doesn't seem to be helping the cause much.

The New Flu

As if we didn't have enough to worry about along comes this very disturbing report. We apparently face a distinct possibility this winter of an outbreak of virulent avian flu that kills 55% of the people who are infected, and we don't have any vaccine and only a limited amount of the only effective drug for treating it.

Once again we are unprepared for a natural disaster, only this one could make Katrina seem like a summer-time zephyr by comparison. At present avian flu is transmitted only through birds, but scientists fear it will mutate to a form that allows it to be transmitted from human to human. If it does it could kill a billion people worldwide and hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, in the U.S.

Sleep tight.

Strange Reasoning

The Republican mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, puts ideology above competency as he delivers himself of a strange piece of constitutional reasoning:

"In July, following the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court, I stated clearly that I wanted to hear a clear indication that Judge Roberts accepts Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. After days of testimony and intense questioning at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Americans have had a glimpse into the thinking of Judge Roberts.

"While I am impressed with the deep intellect and understanding of the law that Judge Roberts has shown and believe him to be a man of integrity, I am unconvinced that Judge Roberts accepts the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling as settled law. What I was waiting for, as were many Americans, was a clear affirmation that the life-altering decision as to whether or not to have a child must be a woman's decision. Unfortunately, Judge Roberts' response did not indicate a commitment to protect a woman's right to choose.

"At the hearings, Judge Roberts spoke with clarity and, of course, correctly, that he agreed with the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. And this most important decision, the evil practice of segregation, is now considered settled law.

"What I was hoping to hear was the same simple affirmation of Roe v. Wade, a decision which has had a long-lasting, profound impact in improving women's health and lives. There can be no turning back and for that reason I oppose the nomination of Judge Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."

In other words, Roberts has a deep intellect and understanding of the law and is a man of integrity, but he seems insufficiently convinced that the founding fathers really did insert a right for mothers to kill their unborn children into the constitution, so Bloomberg can't support him.

Maybe the mayor's right. We can't have people on the Supreme Court, no matter how bright, honest, and knowledgeable they are about the law, if they think their job is to determine what the constitution actually says rather than what people like Bloomberg wish it said.

A Real Slugfest

Clive Davies has comments from people who were in attendance at the big debate between far, far left British politician George Galloway and just plain far left-wing British journalist Christopher Hitchens in New York the other night. Some of the commentators remarked about the crowd's responses. Unsurprisingly, some of the Galloway supporters were notable for their abominable rudeness in general and for this reaction in particular. It is as incredible as it is disgusting:

The guys behind us, greying, rumpled academic types, were definitely Galloway dittoheads. Some were downright rabid. When Hitchens requested a moment of silence for the Iraqis who were sadistically murdered by the insurgency, they were among those shouting "NO! NO!" When Hitch praised the US for making life better for the Afghan people, they shouted "Who cares?"

Well, of course lefties, or at least these representatives of it, don't care about the plight of real people. How else to explain the left's indifference to the atrocities committed by communist governments throughout the twentieth century that resulted in the deaths of over 100 million people and the suffering of untold millions more. The misery continues today in the gulags of China, North Korea and Cuba, but if the left has ever expressed any outrage about these awful abuses the sound of their protest hasn't carried to our ears.

Another member of the audience, himself a man of the left, makes this observation:

I've got lots of mates on the left... who are democratic and civil in the best sense, highly attentive to what other people say and respecting someone else's right to disagree and to say so. But tonight demonstrated that some on the hard left, the ones who congratulate themselves that they are not evangelical fundamentalists, and who tell themselves that they are the more sophisticated, more nuanced ones, are the ones who turn out to be the most intolerant, the most intimidatory and the most anti-democratic in their attitude to debate. And in their tactics. They turned up not to hear and engage, but to shout down people who disagree. Because, you see, they are so, so right that there isn't time for this messy dialogue thing.

For a more detailed report on the debate read Alex Massie's column at National Review Online. According to Massie the vitriol flowed freely between the two antagonists, making the debate a contest to see who could deliver the most cleverly devastating insult.

For example, Massie writes:

Citing Hitchens's transformation from an opponent of the 1991 Gulf War to an ardent supporter of regime change in Iraq now, Galloway claimed that "What you have witnessed is something unique in natural history - the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug" and that "the one thing a slug leaves behind it is a trail of slime." Later, Galloway accused his opponent of "Goebellian" tactics and asked, "are there any depths to which you will not sink? You've fallen out of the gutter and into the sewer."

Sounds like it was a lively, if not a particularly edifying, evening.