Top Ten Movies About Jesus

Christianity Today offers a Top Ten list of the best movies ever made about Jesus. We haven't seen them all, but there really are only two films on the list that we could recommend: Franco Zeferelli's 1977 Jesus of Nazareth and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ made in 2004. Nothing else we've ever seen comes close. The others that we have seen seem too stilted, artificial, and implausible to merit a recommendation.

Jesus of Nazareth is much longer (six and a half hours) and has a wider scope, covering most of the life of Christ as revealed in the gospels. The Passion of the Christ depicts only his last twelve hours. Ironically, perhaps, our chief criticism of both Zeferelli's and Gibson's versions is the same: They both present a very unsatisfying portrayal of the resurrection. In both films this incomparable event seems almost like an "Oh, by the way" afterthought. Neither of them film it with the drama and power that one might wish for in such an astonishingly important and miraculous occurrence.

On the other hand, one of the best things about both movies is the actors who play the Christ. Robert Powell and Jim Caveziel do a wonderful job of making Jesus real and their portrayals are appealling and plausible. Both movies also have an outstanding supporting cast and both strive for a realism, or in Gibson's case, a hyperrealism, that avoids the cartoonishness of other films.

We recommend them both with two caveats: Jesus of Nazareth takes a couple of nights to watch and The Passion is not for children.

Resurrection Day

The following is a meditation originally posted on Easter of last year.

Jon Meacham of Newsweek, perhaps chastened by the criticism he received following his foray into Christian theology over Christmas, pens a much less offensive column about the Resurrection of Jesus in the current issue. He notes that the tomb of Christ was almost certainly empty that first Easter morning. If it were not, he observes, the opponents of Christ had only to produce the body to abort the religious turmoil that the sect of Christians was beginning to arouse. This they did not do, a startling historical fact, really, which leads us to the obvious conclusion that they couldn't do it. This leads us in turn to ask why not.

No naturalistic explanation of the empty tomb makes sense. The most common of these is that the disciples stole the corpse, but this hypothesis is credible only if one assumes a priori that non-natural explanations are impossible. To believe that the disciples stole the body one must believe that a band of terrified fishermen overpowered an armed military guard, a crime for which they were never arrested or charged, stole the cadaver, and eventually underwent torture and martyrdom for preaching around the world what they knew to be a lie. People will die for a lie they believe to be true, but only men suffering from some form of dementia would die for a lie they knew to be a lie, and there's no reason to think these men were demented.

Surely, if the authorities believed the disciples had stolen the body they would have brought irresistibly persuasive techniques to bear to coerce them into divulging its whereabouts. Yet there's no indication whatsoever that this was even attempted.

The skeptic says, as was noted above, that no matter how implausible a given naturalistic explanation may be it is still more believable than the claim that a man rose from the dead. This objection, however, rests on the assumption that there is no God, an assumption that is much easier to make than to defend. If, contrary to the skeptical view, it is possible that God exists then miracles are indeed also possible, and if they are possible, we have to examine the evidence for an alleged instance of one, especially one as significant as the resurrection of Jesus, to determine whether it is, in fact, credible. The evidence for the historical, physical revivification of Christ, many scholars have concluded, is at least as powerful as that for any other event in antiquity.

Other attempts to avoid the conclusion that a miracle actually occurred are equally unimpressive. Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code adopts a version of the swoon theory, that after some thirty six hours without medical care, Jesus somehow recovered from his wounds, including the spear thrust, with sufficient vigor to roll away the heavy stone blocking the tomb. He accomplished this astonishing feat without being detected by the Roman guard, and subsequently appeared to the disciples and dozens, even hundreds, of others, looking so hale and hearty that they believed that he had conquered death and was the very Son of God.

Even if something like this could have happened, the disciples would have known that Jesus had not "risen from the dead" in any theologically significant sense. He would have eventually died (or, as Brown has it, absconded to France with his beloved Mary Magdalene), and his dead body would be proof that he was not the Messiah. This, then, brings us back to the question above: Why would people have been willing to be tortured and martyred for a man they would have realized was a false messiah?

Skeptics scoff at miracles, but the most important miracle in the history of Christendom is one which defies any attempt to explain away. The most plausible explanation for the empty tomb, unless one holds an a priori commitment to atheism, is that God actually did raise Jesus from the dead just as we are promised that we will be. Because death did not result in the annihilation of His being we have the hope that neither will it result in ours.

This is the wonderful significance of the event Christians celebrate every Easter. Happy Resurrection Day.

Just Chill

David Ignatius, writing in the Washington Post, demonstrates that he's a heavyweight political pundit by warning the president that he darn well better do what he's already been doing with regard to Iran:

[John] Kennedy's genius was to reject the Cuba options proposed by his advisers, hawk and dove alike, and choose his own peculiar outside-the-box strategy. He issued a deadline but privately delayed it; he answered a first, flexible message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev but not a second unyielding one; he said he would never take U.S. missiles out of Turkey, as the Soviets were demanding, and then secretly did precisely that. Disaster was avoided because Khrushchev believed Kennedy was willing to risk war -- but wanted to avoid it.

The Bush administration needs to be engaged in a similar exercise in creative thinking. The military planners will keep looking for targets (as they must, in a confrontation this serious). But Bush's advisers -- and most of all, the president himself -- must keep searching for ways to escape the inexorable logic that is propelling America and Iran toward war. I take heart from the fact that the counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow, is an expert on the Cuban missile crisis who co-authored the second edition of Allison's "Essence of Decision."

[Zbigniew] Brzezinski urges President Bush to slow down and think carefully about his options -- rather than rushing to stop Iran's nuclear program, which by most estimates is five to 10 years away from building a bomb, even after yesterday's announcement. "Time is on our side," says Brzezinski. "The mullahs aren't the future of Iran, they're the past." As the United States carefully weighs its options, there is every likelihood that the strategic picture will improve.

The Bush administration has demonstrated, in too many ways, that it's better at starting fights than finishing them. It shouldn't make that same mistake again. Threats of war will be more convincing if they come slowly and reluctantly, when it has become clear that truly there is no other choice.

Now what does Ignatius mean by that last sentence? When has the president said anything about going to war with Iran? The only people talking publically about war are bloggers like me and pundits like Ignatius and Seymour Hersh. Bush has tried to do the opposite, in fact, by playing down the war talk that the media has been stoking. The media gets all aflutter about war and then they admonish the president, who hasn't said a word about it, to calm down and take it easy. Nice.

It's also odd that Ignatius turns to a Carter national security advisor for advice on Iran. The man who helped preside over the fall of the Shah, the ascendency of the Ayatollahs, the kidnapping and incarceration of American embassy personel, and the belated and failed attempt to rescue them just doesn't strike us as the most qualified person to be giving the current White House suggestions on how to handle the Iranians.

Nor is it reassuring that Ignatius points to JFK's relinquishment of U.S. missiles in Turkey as a sign of genius. Is he suggesting that it would be a brilliant move if the U.S. should give up some strategic asset in its dickering with Iran? What if the Iranians demand that we get out of the Middle East in return for halting their nuclear weapons production? Would it be a brilliant move, worthy of the sainted JFK himself, to say no, but to quietly do it anyway? More to the point, what do people like Ignatius say the U.S. should do if the Iranians refuse to yield at all?

No matter. Bush must stop the saber-rattling, slow down, take a deep breath and do better. Uh huh. Very constructive advice. We wonder how much the Washington Post pays for this sort of thing.

Good Books

Byron responds to Bill's post of 4/9:

Just looking over some older posts (sorry---I was out of town) and Bill notes Mulholland's book "A Deeper Journey." I couldn't agree more; it is a marvelous study of deeper spirituality. The previous one, "Invitation to a Journey" is excellent as well. I might quibble just a little (maybe, I'm still mulling it over) with his emphasis on authentic selfhood--which begins to sound like psychobabble at some points, in similiar authors---but it is, still, one of the best books of its kind. It is great to see it mentioned here. Thanks.

Anyone interested in learning more about either of these books is invited to contact the good folks at Hearts and Minds Bookstore who will be glad to help.

Courage Overflowing at Comedy Central

The culturally sensitive folks at Comedy Central have refused to allow South Park to show an image of Mohammed out of concern for the sensitivities of Muslims, substituting instead a depiction of Jesus defecating on George Bush and the American flag. Evidently this was judged to fall within the parameters of acceptable social commentary, but showing a cartoon Mohammed was not.

What an odd courage they seem to have at CC. These intrepid souls, who pride themselves on being bold and "edgy," are prepared, if they must, to brave the howling mobs of Christians and Republicans who will surely seek to breach their offices with bombs strapped to their bodies. They are ready to risk their all for their "art" and their freedom to challenge the orthodoxies of the day, but these stalwart heroes of free speech blanche at the thought of offending the gentle devotees of the religion of peace.

Very peculiar, but we're sure they must have had good reasons for caving to the sensibilities of the Islamists while being as crude and insulting as they could toward the beliefs of millions of Americans.

On the other hand, maybe they're just despicable moral invertebrates.

How it Would Begin

Kenneth Timmerman has a piece at Newsmax wherein he discusses how an attack on Iran might unfold and how Iran might respond. His article opens by quoting retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney:

According to the man who helped plan the first air war against Saddam in 1991, U.S. aircraft, armed with conventional bunker-buster bombs, would be more than enough to wipe out Iran's nuclear and missile facilities, and cripple its ability to command and control its military forces.

McInerney believes that U.S. air power is so massive, precise, and stealthy, it can effectively disarm Iran with just limited assistance from covert operators on the ground whose task would be to light up enemy targets.

In his "Big George" scenario, the United States would attack 1,000 targets in Iran. Fifteen B2 stealth bombers based in the United States and another 45 F117s and F-22s based in the region would carry out the initial waves of the attack, crippling Iran's long-range radar and strategic air defenses.

Massive, additional waves of carrier-based F-18s, as well as F-15s and F-16s launching from ground bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Bahrain, would take out Iran's known nuclear and missile sites.

"Big George" would also target command and control facilities - Revolutionary Guards command centers, key clerics, and other regime-sensitive sites - in the hope of triggering a revolt against the clerical regime by opposition groups inside Iran.

The massive strike scenario could be carried out in just two days, McInerney told an audience of intelligence specialists recently in Washington. "We must destroy and damage Iran's nuclear capability for at least five years," McInerney said.

Timmerman goes on at some length to discuss possible Iranian counter-measures and other difficulties, including the Sy Hersh allegations about alleged American plans to use nuclear weapons. It's a very informative article.

We reiterate something we've said previously on the matter of war with Iran. Before any military option is exercised the administration needs to be sure that the Democrats have gone on record as either opposing the use of force or endorsing it. If they are not compelled to announce their position on what should be done in the event that diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons fail, it is certain that whatever Bush does, the Dems will split the country and seek to undermine his policy by proclaiming that he should have done the opposite. They cannot be allowed the rhetorical space to do this.

It is time to insist that they take a stand on what course of action they recommend to the president should diplomacy fail, as, of course, it almost surely will.

The Passion of the Christ

My daughter and I observed Good Friday with Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Despite the excessiveness of the portrayal of the physical punishment that Jesus absorbed - no one could have survived what Gibson depicts in the flogging scene, much less all the other punches and maltreatment - and despite the cavils of those critics who thought the movie was anti-semitic, I think it's a powerful and important depiction of what is perhaps the most critical event in all of history. Indeed, Jesus' death would doubtless be the most momentous event ever recorded even if Christians are mistaken about his divinity.

One of the most powerful scenes in the movie, in my opinion, was at the end when Jesus has been taken down from the cross and Mary (Maia Morgenstern) cradles his body in her lap. She stares out at the camera - not at the Romans, not at the Jews but at the viewer -with a look on her face that says, "See what you have done!" The camera holds her in that stare for several moments and the effect is gripping. The bloody, shredded body of Jesus is a consequence not merely of the perfidy of the Pharisees and the brutality of the Romans, but of the selfishness and cruelty that lies in the heart of each of us. It was not just Peter who disavowed him and not just Judas who sold him out. It was each of us, and Mary's silent gaze convicts us of our guilt more effectively than could 10,000 words.

In Christian theology, Jesus endured the hell of crucifixion so that each of us might have our hearts washed clean of the selfishness, pride, carnality, and hurtfulness they harbor. The cross presses upon us a forced option, an inescapable question: How do we respond to this astonishing act of complete selflessness?

The Significance of Good Friday

This is a meditation I posted on Good Friday last year:

I sit at my computer on this Good Friday listening to Bach's St. Matthew's Passion and Henryk Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, looking forward to this evening when I have a "date" with my daughter to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, and I wonder. I wonder if I, or anyone, can possibly understand the significance of Good Friday. Can I ever comprehend what it means that God, the creator of worlds, would care enough about me to endure what He did, so that I could have the hope that death does not have the final word about human life.

My existence, the existence of each of us, is astonishing enough. That mere matter could be so arranged as to generate a consciousness, a self-awareness, a rational mind, is, when one thinks about it, a truly amazing thing. That this consciousness might survive death in another reality, another world, is even more astounding. For some it's too astounding to be credible.

And yet if it's true...if it's in fact true that our eternal survival is a gift from God, purchased by Jesus Christ at a cost we may never be able to fully appreciate, it is a breath-taking, ineffable truth.

Some people think the Christian narrative is simply the apotheosis of an ancient myth, that a truly sophisticated, omniscient God would have found some way other than a primitive blood sacrifice to usher us into eternal joy. I don't know if there were other means at God's disposal or not, but it seems to me that the way the Bible tells us He chose is perfect for what He wanted to accomplish.

In the Christian account, God made us as an object of His love. He desires to live in a love relationship with us, but for whatever reason we often want no part of such a relationship. It's too confining, it involves too much self-abnegation, it entails too much of a constraint on our Dionysian appetites, it's too much of an affront to our pride, reason and dignity. Confident in our independence, we don't need God. In our autonomy we distort God's purposes and design plan for human life in order to suit and pursue our own selfish ends.

Nevertheless, God would not be dissuaded or put off. He persists in His relentless attempts to show us that all of our rationalizations for demanding our Promethean emancipation are just so many childish and foolish masks we put on to conceal the fact that we just don't want Him in our lives. He chooses to woo us to Himself not with threats or fear but with love. He chooses to demonstrate in an extraordinarily vivid way that His love for us is deeper than we could ever imagine.

To this end he does something totally unexpected and supererogatory. He becomes a man like one of us, shares in our humanity, our sufferings and joys, and ultimately endures the pain and horror of crucifixion. His life and death is the price that He is willing to pay, for reasons that we cannot understand this side of eternity, to secure eternal life and to make it available to everyone. He didn't have to do it, He could have left us alone to destroy ourselves and our planet, to fade into the cosmic oblivion that rejection of our Creator would have warranted. But because He did do it, He shows us not only that He is not simply some abstract deity, too transcendent to matter, but that He is personal and immanent, and that His love is not just a theoretical exercise, but has consequences which can change a life now and forever.

Charles Dickens captures something of the Divine love in the climax of his Tale of Two Cities when he has Sydney Carton, moved by his deep love for Lucie, smuggle himself into prison to take the place of Charles Darnay, the man Lucie really loves, knowing full well that his love is ultimately going to bring him to the guillotine. Carton substitutes himself for Charles and goes to the death to which Charles was sentenced in an expression of almost superhuman love.

Out of the depths of His love, God substituted Himself for us, submitting to torture and humiliation at the hands of His own creation, and enduring a horrific death so that we could live. He asks of us in return only our love.

We are in the position of a man clinging by his fingers to the edge of a cliff and slowly, inexorably losing his grip. The abyss of nihilism, of meaninglessness, emptiness and death, lies far below, but because of the cross there's a chance to be rescued. God stands above the struggling man, kneels and holds out His hand, urging the man to seize it. It's up to the man about to die, it's up to us, to accept the rescue that God offers. God has done all He can to persuade us, but He won't force us to grasp His hand. He won't override our will. He allows us to make the final decision whether to live or die.

That, at any rate, is the best I can do to explain my own wholly inadequate understanding of the Christian story and the meaning of Good Friday.

Does ID Entail a Supernatural Designer?

Elliot Sober thinks so and believes that that entailment makes Intelligent Design a religious hypothesis. He also states that, unlike ID, evolution is silent on the matter of whether there is a supernatural designer of the universe.

Here is an outline of his argument for concluding that ID entails a supernatural designer. He states that he doesn't advocate the argument himself, but that it is nevertheless one to which ID theorists need to respond:

1. If a system found in nature is irreducibly complex, then it was caused to exist by an intelligent designer.

2. Some of the minds found in nature are irreducibly complex.

3. Therefore some of the minds found in nature were caused to exist by an intelligent designer.

4. Any mind in nature that designs and builds an irreducibly complex system is itself irreducibly complex.

5. If the universe is finitely old and if cause precedes effect, then at least one of the minds found in nature was not created by any mind found in nature.

6. The universe is finitely old.

7. Causes precede their effects.

8. Therefore, there exists a supernatural intelligent designer.

In this argument, Sober writes, apparently non-religious premises lead to an apparently religious conclusion.

There are a couple of problems with this. For example, what does Sober mean by "supernatural"? He seems to be saying that any designer which transcends this universe would be ipso facto supernatural, but would it? Many physicists speculate about the existence of other universes besides our own. Some are inclined to think that there may be a nearly infinite number of such worlds. Are these scientists engaging in religious speculation when they hypothesize the existence of other worlds? Are these other universes supernatural ab defino?

If they are not supernatural then why must a designer who, like those other worlds, transcends this world and who may, for all we know, be an inhabitant of one of those other worlds, be considered a supernatural being?

And if those other worlds are supernatural realms then we can safely conclude that it must be appropriate for scientists to talk about and study the supernatural because they do it all the time, at least cosmologists do. Why would it be "scientific" to talk about supernatural worlds but not scientific to talk about supernatural beings?

At any rate, whether Sober's argument works or not he is clearly mistaken when he says that evolution is silent on the matter of whether there is a supernatural intelligent designer. He writes:

"the Darwinian theory of evolution is silent on the question of whether a supernatural intelligent designer exists. This is not true of the mini-ID theory. In terms of the contents of theories, it is ID theory, not evolutionary theory, that has implications concerning the existence of supernatural designers."

But this is clearly mistaken. Darwinian evolution states that living things were not designed by an intelligent agent, that they are wholly explicable in terms of unconscious mechanisms. Thus Darwinian evolution most certainly has implications for the existence of an intelligent designer of life, i.e. it states flatly that there isn't one.

Darwinian evolutionists might not (or at least should not) take a position on whether a God exists, but they do take a position on whether a God has designed the living things of the biosphere. To the extent that they deny that living things are intentionally designed, they deny the existence of a supernatural designer. One simply can not deny that living things are designed without denying that there is a designer of living things.

More On Energy

I see that oil today hit $70 per barrel and at the local gas station I paid $3.00 per gallon to fill up the car. Last month I posted an article on energy that can be found here.

It seems like the price of gasoline is going back up to the days after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This is odd unless one believes that the threat of an imminent attack on Iran might be driving gasoline prices higher and the markets are betting that way. And that may be.

So let's looks at this possibility a litter closer. As I have stated before, oil is denominated in U.S. dollars. Every country in the world that buys oil must pay for their oil with U.S. dollars. This creates demand for dollars which ultimately increases the value of the U.S. dollar. Keep this thought in mind.

It's a known fact that the entire world is either diversifying their reserves out of dollars or considering to do so. This would negatively impact the value of the dollar and result in the dollar losing value against international currencies.

But if the price of oil continues to climb upward, foreign countries would have to forgo their plans to diversify out of the dollar so as to have sufficient dollars to enable them to acquire their oil. Either that or there is a re-pricing by oil producing countries of oil in another, more "friendly" currency like the euro.

Wouldn't it be amazing if it's the case that our government leaders are intentionally driving the price of oil higher via the Iran threat simply to create demand for and to protect the dollar? Perhaps this is the true reason for the U.S. belligerence towards Iran. Whether we strike Iran or not, the dollar is preserved...at least for the time being.

If all of this sounds bizarre, consider that the SUV, the greatest gas guzzler in America today, is classified by our government as a truck and therefore not subject to emission standards applied to all other passenger vehicles. As a matter of fact, if you buy a great gas guzzler like a Hummer, you can be eligible for a tax credit!

All speculation aside, one thing is for certain, any military action on Iran is certain to drive the price of oil much, much higher.

McKinney-Brawley Syndrome at Duke

It's amazing how real life sometimes patterns itself after fiction. Tom Clancy writes a novel that features a terrorist flying a jet airliner into the Capitol Building (Debt of Honor) and a couple of years later real-life terrorists attempt the same thing, succeeding in New York and at the Pentagon but failing to strike the Capitol.

A couple of years ago Tom Wolfe wrote a novel (I Am Charlotte Simmons) about privileged athletes and sexual licentiousness at DuPont U., a thinly disguised stand-in for Duke, and a month ago that very campus was set awhirl by allegations of group rape of a black stripper by Duke lacrosse players.

Actually the accounts of the goings-on at Duke take us back to another Wolfe book of years ago called Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers. Wolfe describes in this early work how militant blacks exploit white liberal guilt essentially to extort money, favor, and status from them. A similar type of pressure may be what we're seeing happening at Duke. We might call it the Cynthia McKinney-Tawana Brawley strategy.

Anyway, Peter Bradley at The American Thinker offers up a nice summation of the apparent travesty enmeshing the Duke University lacrosse team. He notes that a month after the original allegations there is still no evidence that the woman's claims to have been assaulted and raped have any merit, but that hasn't stop the true believers among the politically correct from all but castrating the Duke athletes.

He points out that there's been a long and ignominious history of gullible, guilt-ridden whites happy to swallow almost any accusation of racist, sexist, elitist impropriety. For example:

During the 40th anniversary of the integration at Ole Miss, two black students found racial insults scrawled on the doors of their dorm rooms: "F**g Nigger" and "F**g Hoe [sic] Nigger." Similar messages turned up in other locations across the campus. Students organized a "Say No to Racism" march, and race activists demanded "programs and procedures" to instill racial sensitivity. A spate of national news coverage commented on how little Ole Miss had changed in 40 years.When the perpetrators were found to be black students, Ole Miss chancellor Robert Khayat made it clear there would be no criminal charges, even though the students caused over $600 worth of damage and harmed race relations at the school.

When a hate crime was reported last year at Trinity International University near Chicago there was a flood of indignation on campus. Students at the mostly white school wore yellow shirts to symbolize solidarity with blacks who had received a stream of hate mail. Jesse Jackson spoke on campus. Over 40 students were evacuated to an unnamed hotel for their own safety and security was beefed up at the college. Counselors were made available and students held prayer vigils.

But when the culprit turned out to be Alicia Hardin, a black student who wanted to transfer out of Trinity to be closer to her friends, the story-and the campus outrage-faded away. University president Greg Waybright even announced that he felt "a sense of relief" because the incident was "resolved." He warned that the hoax should not reflect on any particular ethnic group.

Also last year, students at Wooster College in Ohio awoke to find swastikas and racist messages written on dorm walls. Angry protestors raged against "typical white males" until the writers of the slurs turned out to be a group of lefty students led by a black studies major.

A similar incident happened at the University of Louisville in 2004. Students endured racial graffiti and racist fliers passed out on cars. Protesters held rallies and handed a list of demands to U of L president Jim Ramsey. The incident quietly faded away when black students admitted to passing out the fliers as a "prank."

And then, of course, there was the infamous Tawana Brawley episode which so disgraced, or should have disgraced, were he capable of it, Al Sharpton. It seems there is no shortage of white naivete and gullibility nor is there a lack of black cynicism and willingness to exploit the dread whites have of being labelled racist.

We're not saying that no crime was committed in the Duke affair. We don't know, but we do know that there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence, and the reaction of a lot of people in this incident, from the Duke administration to many in the Durham community, suggests that that presumption has, for whatever reason, in this instance been waived.

Indeed, there's no doubt that the lacrosse players indulged in disgraceful conduct, but disgraceful conduct is not necessarily criminal conduct. There's a lot of doubt that they actually did what their accuser claims they did and not much reason yet to indict them of having committed anything that rises to the level of a crime. Bradley's essay explains why.

Get Them on the Record

Does this sound like the talk of people who have just made a breakthrough on peaceful, non-lethal uses of nuclear fuel?

A defiant Iran vowed that nothing could halt its controversial nuclear program, in a direct challenge to the UN Security Council that could risk international sanctions.

With the country basking in national pride after regime scientists successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel -- a milestone in its atomic drive -- officials pledged to move rapidly to industrial-scale work.

"When a people master nuclear technology and nuclear fuel, nothing can be done against them," boasted armed forces joint chief of staff, General Hassan Firouzabadi.

"The nuclear fuel cycle is complete, the beginnings of a powerful Iran," the conservative Iranian daily Resalat trumpeted, calling for a week of "national celebration" and a new annual public holiday to mark the event.

State television was broadcasting non-stop images of nuclear sites accompanied by rousing patriotic music.

The question needs to be put to the Kennedy/Kerry/Pelosi/Gore/Dean wing of the Democratic party: What precisely should the U.S. do if all diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability fail? Should the U.S. acquiesce in Iran's possession of these weapons or should they take steps to eliminate them, even if this necessitates the use of military force? Nobody's asking them this, as far as we know, but they very much need to be put on record.

Will They Do it?

Mark Steyn makes the case in City Journal for doing whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. His essay is a bit longish, but here are some excerpts:

If Belgium becomes a nuclear power, the Dutch have no reason to believe it would be a factor in, say, negotiations over a joint highway project. But Iran's nukes will be a factor in everything. If you think, for example, the European Union and others have been fairly craven over those Danish cartoons, imagine what they'd be like if a nuclear Tehran had demanded a formal apology, a suitable punishment for the newspaper, and blasphemy laws specifically outlawing representations of the Prophet. Iran with nukes will be a suicide bomber with a radioactive waist.

Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration has begun promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a reassuring name. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs-our strengths. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower-their strengths, and our great weakness. Even a loser can win when he's up against a defeatist. A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it's dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us? If you add to the advantages of will and manpower a nuclear capability, the odds shift dramatically.

Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:

1. contempt for the most basic international conventions;

2. long-reach extraterritoriality;

3. effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;

4. a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);

5. an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

Yet the Europeans remain in denial. Iran was supposedly the Middle Eastern state they could work with. And the chancellors and foreign ministers jetted in to court the mullahs so assiduously that they're reluctant to give up on the strategy just because a relatively peripheral figure like the, er, head of state is sounding off about Armageddon.

What's the difference between a hothead and a moderate? Well, the extremist Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," while the moderate Rafsanjani has declared that Israel is "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" in one blast, because "a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." Evidently wiping Israel off the map seems to be one of those rare points of bipartisan consensus in Tehran, the Iranian equivalent of a prescription drug plan for seniors: we're just arguing over the details.

So the question is: Will they do it?

And the minute you have to ask, you know the answer. If, say, Norway or Ireland acquired nuclear weapons, we might regret the "proliferation," but we wouldn't have to contemplate mushroom clouds over neighboring states. In that sense, the civilized world has already lost: to enter into negotiations with a jurisdiction headed by a Holocaust-denying millenarian nut-job is, in itself, an act of profound weakness - the first concession, regardless of what weaselly settlement might eventually emerge.

Back when nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, your average Western progressive was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute. The mushroom cloud was one of the most familiar images in the culture, a recurring feature of novels and album covers and movie posters. There were bestselling dystopian picture books for children, in which the handful of survivors spent their last days walking in a nuclear winter wonderland.

Now a state openly committed to the annihilation of a neighboring nation has nukes, and we shrug: Can't be helped. Just the way things are. One hears sophisticated arguments that perhaps the best thing is to let everyone get 'em, and then no one will use them. And if Iran's head of state happens to threaten to wipe Israel off the map, we should understand that this is a rhetorical stylistic device that's part of the Persian oral narrative tradition, and it would be a grossly Eurocentric misinterpretation to take it literally.

Once again, we face a choice between bad and worse options. There can be no "surgical" strike in any meaningful sense: Iran's clients on the ground will retaliate in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Europe. Nor should we put much stock in the country's allegedly "pro-American" youth. This shouldn't be a touchy-feely nation-building exercise: rehabilitation may be a bonus, but the primary objective should be punishment - and incarceration. It's up to the Iranian people how nutty a government they want to live with, but extraterritorial nuttiness has to be shown not to pay. That means swift, massive, devastating force that decapitates the regime - but no occupation.

The cost of de-nuking Iran will be high now but significantly higher with every year it's postponed. The lesson of the Danish cartoons is the clearest reminder that what is at stake here is the credibility of our civilization. Whether or not we end the nuclearization of the Islamic Republic will be an act that defines our time.

And time seems to be short and getting shorter. Read Steyn's entire essay at the above link. It's very good.

Conjectures and Refutations

It is often said that Intelligent Design (ID) isn't science because it does not lend itself to testing. There is, we are told, no way to falsify the claim that intelligence was involved in the development of living things and therefore the suggestion that it was is scientifically vacuous. This is the conventional wisdom, but it seems to me to be mistaken.

As Karl Popper instructed us, science proceeds by what he called conjectures and refutations. Scientists offer a conjecture that some phenomenon can be explained in a particular fashion and then other scientists set about trying to show that the conjecture is false. If there is no way that the conjecture can be tested then it's considered (by some but by no means all scientists) to be outside the domain of science.

As long as a testable conjecture withstands the scrutiny to which it is subjected, it remains scientifically viable. It remains a legitimate scientific hypothesis until evidence for its falsity, or its unliklihood, accumulates to the point where a consensus of scientists becomes persuaded that the conjecture is improbable. At that point it doesn't cease to be a scientific hypothesis, rather it falls into the category of "bad science." Even this is not a death sentence, however, since future investigators may resurrect it as new evidence becomes available and the old conjecture, perhaps modified, is seen as a compelling explanation for that new evidence.

Intelligent Design, or at least that argument for it based upon irreducible complexity (IC), lends itself nicely to the Popperian model.

Let some structure, system, or process (S) be adduced which exhibits at least prima facie design in the form of what appears to be irreducible complexity. The ID position is twofold: It asserts 1. that there are at least some (S) that are irreducibly complex, and that, 2. if these instances of (S) do in fact exhibit IC then whatever processes might be ultimately responsible for (S) must include as part of the mix intelligent guidance or agency (I). The latter claim is not especially controversial, but the first claim is.

Thus it is this claim that biologists must refute in order to discredit IC (and derivatively, ID), and this claim, that some (S) are irreducibly complex, is testable.

Once the claim that a particular (S) possesses IC is made then biologists set about trying to come up with a plausible pathway or set of mechanisms that could have produced (S) independently of (I). The solution must be plausible and not merely logically possible.

If they are successful in formulating a plausible naturalistic pathway for the construction of (S) then the ID option in this case will be effectively refuted. If they are repeatedly successful over a wide range of examples of (S) then ID, at least in its biological dimension, will, over time, be seen as falsified. Failing such a demonstration, however, the conjecture that (S) could not have arisen apart from (I) should be accepted as a valid scientific hypothesis.

Indeed, it is this very process of seeking to refute the conjectures of irreducible complexity that biologists are undertaking in labs all across the country. The most recent example is the work of Bridgham, et al. at the University of Oregon whose paper is being touted as a refutation of claims of IC in the endocrine system (ID theorists maintain that their work does no such thing).

Whether the Bridgham paper accomplishes what its promoters say it does or not, the important point here is that it argues that ID, at least in this one instance, is false. The critics of ID can't have it both ways, however. They can't say that ID isn't falsifiable while simultaneously crowing that it is false. There is irony in the fact that the very attempt to show that ID is false confirms that ID can be tested and is therefore a legitimate scientific hypothesis.

Judge John Jones might not think ID is science, the witnesses who appeared for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover may have argued that it's not science, but real scientists are certainly acting as if it is. They're trying very hard to falsify it, and this is exactly as it should be. It's what science is all about.

Emergentism

An interesting and helpful essay on the theories of strong and weak emergence that have taken on a certain cachet among philosophers and scientists in recent years can be found at Science and Theology News.

The more interesting of the two is strong emergentism which, briefly put, is the view that there are laws which produce increasing complexity in the world and that complex systems are not explicable simply in terms of their component parts:

Among those who think about emergence, said Australian philosopher David J. Chalmers, two main positions have developed: strong emergence and weak emergence. Supporters of weak emergence make the claim that the more fundamental theory can in principle explain the phenomena of the higher-level theory. And many also argue that emergent laws and properties, even if they do exist, don't cause anything on a lower level of reality to change in any way.

According to this view, mind, for example would be an epiphenomenon of the material brain and if we knew how the material substrate worked in all of its detail we'd understand exactly what mind is.

Those who favor strong emergence, meanwhile, search for examples of emergence where the emergent property, or alleged law, cannot be reduced in this way. To use a common emergentist phrase, the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts - and the whole really causes things to happen among lower-level parts. "In the broadest sense, as elements combine into complex structures, new properties emerge that are surprising and not present in earlier, simpler stages, that new things come about through the appearance of complex structures," said William Hasker, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Huntington University in Huntington, Ind. "As such, these new things are not added from the outside but through the complex structure itself."

In this view, mind is not reducible simply to chemical reactions in the brain. It is a higher order phenomenon that actually affects the lower order phenomena of the brain which in turn exerts control obver the even lower order phenomena of the physical body. In strong emergent thinking there is a hierarchy to nature and no level in the hierarchy is completely reducible to lower levels.

Supporters of weak emergence say that stronger forms leave the door open to an unwarranted intrusion of religion into science, even though many atheists also believe in strong emergence.

Indeed, it does leave the door open, and it looks as if the more we learn about the natural world the harder it will be to keep that door shut.

Update: See this interview for more on the emergent paradigm.

The Wrong Time to Quit

Given the following facts about the war it's hard to understand why the Last Helicopter folk are so strident in their calls for us to get out of the country:

First off, US soldiers killed in Iraq continues to fall. This is the 5th straight month.

Even IED deaths, after a brief surge in February are down to their lowest level since I started keeping track.

Each month, there are more Iraqi troops available.

Slightly more Iraqi police were killed in March then in February, but the trend has plateaued at about 200 fatalities a month.

Meanwhile, March was actually one of the more peaceful months in Iraq since the insurgency began, even for civilians.

This could all change over night, of course, but the trend lines are certainly pointing in the right direction. It seems awfully foolish to be calling on the United States to quit while it's ahead, yet that's exactly what Kerry, Murtha, Pelosi and other Democrats are doing. I don't think this is true of Murtha, but it certainly seems true of others that their biggest fear in Iraq is that the U.S. will win, and that winning will embolden us to use force again. At least some on the left want us to fail so that we will be too chastened and weakened to resort to military intervention again any time soon. The aversion to force is understandable, if wrongheaded, but the means some are willing to employ in order to produce it are reprehensible.

Bearing the Brunt

From time to time critics of the war will make the claim that the soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq are from the lower echelons of the social order and are people who had no good alternatives to military service. In other words, we are given to understand, they're not really volunteers. Often the implication is that the casualties are largely members of minority groups who disproportionately shoulder the burden for the white man's wars.

This study of American fatalities in Iraq strongly suggests that those assumptions are uninformed nonsense.

This is the breakdown of fatalities by ethnicity:

American Indian or Alaska Native: 25

Asian: 37

Black or African American: 231

Hispanic or Latino: 248

Multiple races, pending or unknown: 29

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 23

White: 1,654

This is a rough breakdown of where soldiers killed between March of 2003 and March of 2005 came from in the U.S.:

26.2% were from cities and large towns in the U.S.

40.5% were from suburbs in the U.S.

33.3% were from rural areas in the U.S.

The picture that emerges from this data shows that, contrary to the picture of the average KIA as a poor, non-white, urban male, the casualties of this war are overwhelmingly white suburbanites.

Neuhaus to be on Meet the Press

This notice comes from Richard Neuhaus, author of The Naked Public Square and editor of First Things:

Wednesday morning I'm involved in taping with Tim Russert a special edition of NBC's "Meet the Press" that will be shown Easter Sunday morning. I gather he's bringing together a motley crew of "religious leaders." I will do my best to see that Christianity-as in Christ crucified and risen-gets a hearing.

It sounds like sandwiching Meet the Press in between church services and other family activities on Easter morning might be spiritually profitable. Neuhaus is a first-rate intellect and a prolific commentator on matters resting at the intersection of religion and contemporary culture. It'll be worth hearing what he has to say.

The Knockout Punch

Jesus Wed to Mary Magdalene! Jesus Walks on Ice! New Gospel of Judas Discovered! Judas and Jesus in Cahoots! Prayer Doesn't Work! Now, after this rapid succession of blows to the staggering body of orthodox Christian faith comes this devastating upper cut. It may well be the punch that delivers the knockout to many a believer's faith. Here's the story from Catholic World News:

Newark, Apr. 8 (CWNews.com) - Archeological researchers in Ridgewood, New Jersey, have discovered an ancient Christian document that offers a radically new account of the founding of the Catholic Church.

The newly discovered document, which scholars have named "The Gospel of Skip and Muffy," was found in an abandoned row house in New Brunswick, New Jersey, which had formerly housed a Rutgers sorority.

Theologians and anthropologists agree that "The Gospel of Skip and Muffy" is likely to cause intense debate among Christians, forcing a complete re-examination of all Catholic teachings.

There is no possible debate, however, about the authenticity of the document. "It was typed on an IBM Selectric II," reported Dr. Ernest Litewaite, an associate professor of Contemporary Archeology at Kutztown State. "Using a Courier 72 10-pitch element." The document is believed to be a copy of an earlier statement, crafted by students at an East Coast private college sometime around 1970.

"The Gospel of Skip and Muffy" is an extended dialogue between two young theologians who take a startling new approach to the faith. The document suggests that young Christians of the 1970s generation did not accept Church teachings on some controversial moral issues.

B.F.D. Zeitgeist, a Professor of Serious Christianity at Dupont University, said that the Gospel of Skip and Muffy will force Christians to re-examine the nature of Church authority. He pointed to one key passage in the manuscript:

"The Church is-- I mean-- it's just a bunch of, like, rules and stuff," said Muffy.

"Yeah," Skip replied. "I mean, really. Hey, don't let that thing go out."

Ultraconservative Catholic officials may not accept the validity of the new Gospel. Spokespersons for the Newark archdiocese did not immediately return a reporter's phone call. But Msgr. Pius Gr�mbling, a pastor in Hoboken, replied to queries by saying: "OK, that's right. We do not accept the validity of this document."

But Professor Zeitgeist doubts that Church officials will be able to stop parishioners from raising questions about the new document. He cites "astonishing new insights" such as the one contained in this passage:

"Have you ever thought," said Skip, "that the solar system is just like an atom in this really gigantic alternate universe, and the planets are just, like, electrons spinning around, and the sun is, like, the nucleus?"

"Wow," said Muffy. "Heavy. And then we'd be, like, just tiny little, like, specks that you can't even see."

"Riiight," said Skip, exhaling slowly. "Far out, huh?"

"This document will force Christians to re-examine all of their basic moral principles," said Professor Zeitgeist, "starting with the outmoded and inhumane taboo that prevents teachers from having love affairs with their students."

"Or with reporters," the professor added, smiling. "Would you care for a daiquiri?"

Professor Litewaite said that he had found the manuscript of the Gospel of Skip and Muffy several months ago. "The significance of the discovery was immediately obvious," he said. "But my publicist suggested that I should wait until Holy Week to make it public."

This discovery has pushed us here at Viewpoint to the brink of a crisis of faith. Wait till Newsweek gets hold of the story. Or Dan Brown. Or Ingmar Bergman. Christianity may be finished for good.

European Quagmire

Jamie Glazov of Front Page Mag interviews Claire Berlinski about her new book titled The Menace in Europe. Berlinski has many interesting things to say in the interview about the cultural, social, and spiritual difficulties Europe finds itself in today. Inter alia, she says the following:

Berlinski: Europe does not seem to be able to offer its Muslim immigrants an attractive alternative, an attractive future. Muslims have done very poorly, socio-economically speaking, in Europe. This is an ongoing source of humiliation. When a viral ideology is at large, humiliation and poverty-poverty, at least, compared with the ambient society; even the poorest Muslims in Europe are still better off than Muslims in, say, Sudan-constitute a growth medium for its propagation. In the United States, Moslems have for the most part been successfully integrated into American political culture; they have been very economically successful, like most immigrants in the US. This is not so in Europe. Europe's Moslems remain for the most part uneducated and poor. Crime rates in Moslem neighborhoods are high. Unemployment in those neighborhoods vastly exceeds national averages-Moslems comprise 50 percent of France's unemployed, for example.

This marginalization extends to the political sphere. The percentage of Moslems in France exceeds that of African-Americans in the United States, but not one single Moslem sits in France's 577-seat Chamber of Deputies.

FP: So why has Europe been such a failure in coping with the threat of Islamic radicalism?

Berlinski: Well, for one thing, they generally refuse to acknowledge it. The problem is seen, but it isn't recognized, its gravity has not been suitably assessed. This passivity or indifference to the threat of Islamic radicalism has complex roots, and I discuss them at greater length in my book, but essentially I believe the answer is this: Europeans have in recent memory suffered two great losses, that of their religious faith and that of its replacements-ideologies involving the idea of human perfectibility absent supernatural guidance.

The failure of European experiments in Utopianism-which not only failed to provide the promised paradise but indeed gave rise to the most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race-has left Europeans paralyzed by shame and self-doubt. They have retreated into a kind of cocoon of technological and physical comfort; they bathe themselves in vapid clich�s about "tolerance." It would be almost unimaginable, for example, for a European politician to say of Islamic radicalism, "this is an unspeakably evil belief system and we must fight it to our last breath." Unfortunately, not much short of that kind of resolve is of much use when you're in a battle against what is, indeed, an unspeakably evil belief system....

Some Europeans are serious, rational and sober critics of American foreign policy, but a large number and even a majority, it seems to me, are responding to something that has nothing to do with America. We have to explain the completely disproportionate animus. Where, for example, was all this political energy when Europeans were confronted with the disintegration of Yugoslavia? Nowhere to be seen. Europe was indifferent. The members of the European Community squabbled. Genocide in Europe-once again-was halted only by American intervention. And a decade later, no one even talks about it.

Saddam Hussein's regime was rooted in the aftereffects of European fascism and anti-Semitism, but his annihilation of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs left Europeans indifferent. The American invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam, however, outraged them. Genocide in Sudan? No one in Europe cares. But the majority of Europeans earnestly believe that the United States is the second-greatest threat to world peace....

Right now economic initiative throughout Europe is crippled by excessive taxation, rigid labor laws, labyrinthine bureaucratic regulation. The European Union issues some 80,00 pages of regulations a year. It requires far more paperwork to start a small business in most European countries than it does to become inscribed on the welfare registers. Venture capitalists steer clear of Europe, preferring to invest in the United States.

Scientific initiative and scholarship is stifled in Europe too -between 1900 and 1920, France produced 20 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners and the United States produced three percent. Between 1980 and 2000, France produced only three percent of the prize winners; the United States, 58 percent. The world's great universities are no longer in Paris and Heidelberg and Bologna. They're in the United States. Europe's most talented scientists and researchers have moved en masse to the America, where funding is more generous, facilities are superior and the culture more meritocratic.

I have a friend in Paris who was working as a contractor for Total. They fired him after two years because French labor law prohibits employing contractors for more than two years; this to ensure that no corporation can evade paying a laborer his enormous due in social security. They declined to hire him as a permanent employee because it would then have been nearly impossible, under French labor law, ever to fire him. No one could be found with equivalent knowledge and competence to replace him at his salary, so they had to hire two inexperienced new contractors to do his job. So my friend is on the dole, where, by law, he is paid a percentage of the salary of both new contractors-130 percent of his former salary! Needless to say, he is not looking for a new job.

And to think that in the last election we were told more than once that we should be more like the Europeans and more sensitive to their opinions of us. We have to wonder why.