Rick Santorum

The New York Times has a column by David Brooks that a friend passed along and which one wishes every Pennsylvanian, indeed every American, would read. The complete essay follows:

Every poll suggests that Rick Santorum will lose his race to return to the U.S. Senate. That's probably good news in Pennsylvania's bobo suburbs, where folks regard Santorum as an ideological misfit and a social blight. But it's certainly bad for poor people around the world.

For there has been at least one constant in Washington over the past 12 years: almost every time a serious piece of antipoverty legislation surfaces in Congress, Rick Santorum is there playing a leadership role.

In the mid-1990s, he was a floor manager for welfare reform, the most successful piece of domestic legislation of the past 10 years. He then helped found the Renewal Alliance to help charitable groups with funding and parents with flextime legislation.

More recently, he has pushed through a stream of legislation to help the underprivileged, often with Democratic partners. With Dick Durbin and Joe Biden, Santorum has sponsored a series of laws to fight global AIDS and offer third world debt relief. With Chuck Schumer and Harold Ford, he's pushed to offer savings accounts to children from low-income families. With John Kerry, he's proposed homeownership tax credits. With Chris Dodd, he backed legislation authorizing $860 million for autism research. With Joe Lieberman he pushed legislation to reward savings by low-income families.

In addition, he's issued a torrent of proposals, many of which have become law: efforts to fight tuberculosis; to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; to provide housing for people with AIDS; to increase funding for Social Services Block Grants and organizations like Healthy Start and the Children's Aid Society; to finance community health centers; to combat genocide in Sudan.

I could fill this column, if not this entire page, with a list of ideas, proposals and laws Santorum has poured out over the past dozen years. It's hard to think of another politician who has been so active and so productive on these issues.

Like many people who admire his output, I disagree with Santorum on key matters like immigration, abortion, gay marriage. I'm often put off by his unnecessarily slashing style and his culture war rhetoric.

But government is ultimately not about the theater or the light shows of public controversy, it's about legislation and results. And the substance of Santorum's work is impressive. Bono, who has worked closely with him over the years, got it right: "I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette's disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable."

Santorum doesn't have the jocular manner of most politicians. His colleagues' eyes can glaze over as he lectures them on the need to, say, devote a week of Senate floor time to poverty. He's not the most social member of the club. Many politicians praise family values and seem to spend as little time as possible with their own families, but Santorum is at home almost constantly. And there is sometimes a humorlessness to his missionary zeal.

But no one can doubt his rigor. Jonathan Rauch of The National Journal wrote the smartest review of Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family." Rauch noted that while Goldwaterite conservatives see the individual as the essential unit of society, Santorum sees the family as the essential unit.

Rauch observed, "Where Goldwater denounced collectivism as the enemy of the individual, Santorum denounces individualism as the enemy of the family." That belief has led Santorum in interesting and sometimes problematical directions, but the argument itself is a serious one. His discussion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is as sophisticated as anything in Barack Obama's recent book. If Santorum were pro-choice, he'd be a media star and a campus hero.

The bottom line is this: If serious antipoverty work is going to be done, it's going to emerge from a coalition of liberals and religious conservatives. Without Santorum, that's less likely to happen. If senators are going to be honestly appraised, it's going to require commentators who can look beyond the theater of public controversy and at least pretend to care about actual legislation. Santorum has never gotten a fair shake from the media.

And so after Election Day, the underprivileged will probably have lost one of their least cuddly but most effective champions.

Santorum is a wonderful example of "compassionate conservatism". He embodies so much of what voters claim they want their politicians to be, but he's about to fall victim to an adversary media and an uninformed public. The media doesn't care about qualifications or accomplishments but cares only about three things: Party label, the candidate's stance on abortion, and his stance on the war.

Thus Santorum has three strikes against him and, short of a surge in Republican turnout, he will be replaced next week by a man, Bob Casey, whose only qualifications for the office seem to be that he has the right party affiliation, the right stance on getting out of Iraq, and his daddy was a popular governor. Santorum will lose the election, if he does, largely because the public simply hasn't taken the trouble to compare him with his opponent. It's the sort of thing that sours people on American politics.

The Milk of Human Kindness

Mike Adams reports on an abortive confrontation with uber-Darwinian P.Z. Myers at TownHall.com. Myers is widely known for his kind, gentle and irenic demeanor evidenced by this excerpt from his blog the day before Adams' lecture at Myers' university:

"Mike S. Adams, columnist for TownHall, Horowitzian shill, anti-feminist, creationist clown, homophobic bigot, warrior for free speech, professional racist, gun kook, academic-by-accident, beauty contest judge, and just generally contemptible far, far right-wing nutcase."

"I'm very disappointed in our students. We're far off the beaten track and we don't get that many speakers passing through our area, and they had to go exhibit the poor taste to invite this sorry sack of rethuglican excreta to our campus. Couldn't they have at least tried to find an intelligent conservative to bring out here? Why'd they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for this guy? At least we're seeing our rather dismal right-wing campus rag's fading credibility implode with their sponsorship of such a low-wattage guest speaker."

Well, okay, maybe he's not exactly kind, but such qualities are relative among the victims of arrested development who travel in Prof. Myers' political circles. I mean it could have been worse. He could have called him a "Bush-lover".

Read how the confrontation between the two antagonists ended up at the link. Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Feedback

A number of thoughtful responses to recent posts grace our Feedback page. Check them out.

Do They Want Us to Win?

Byron takes us to task on the Feedback page for oversimplifying a complex issue in Yes or No. In that post I wondered why people like Letterman seem unwilling to give a straight answer to the question of whether they want the U.S. to win in Iraq. Winning in Iraq means, of course, accomplishing our stated goals (What else could it mean?), and these from the beginning have been to establish a free nation based on democratic principles, human and civil rights, and a stable government free from the threat of terrorism.

I don't think the question is nearly as complicated as Byron does, but you can be the judge.

Naturalism is Intellectual Suicide

At a recent book signing for his new anti-religion rant The God Delusion (see here and here for our thoughts on the book), Richard Dawkins was asked by American Enterprise Institute's Joe Manzari how he could square his naturalism with taking credit for his book and blaming those who believe in religion for their choice to believe. After all, Manzari pointed out, if materialism is true then everything is subject to a machine-like, inescapable determinacy which renders praise and blame meaningless and inappropriate:

Manzari: Dr. Dawkins thank you for your comments. The thing I have appreciated most about your comments is your consistency in the things I've seen you've written. One of the areas that I wanted to ask you about, and the place where I think there is an inconsistency, and I hoped you would clarify, is that in what I've read you seem to take a position of a strong determinist who says that what we see around us is the product of physical laws playing themselves out; but on the other hand it would seem that you would do things like taking credit for writing this book and things like that. But it would seem, and this isn't to be funny, that the consistent position would be that necessarily the authoring of this book, from the initial conditions of the big bang, it was set that this would be the product of what we see today. I would take it that that would be the consistent position but I wanted to know what you thought about that.

Dawkins: The philosophical question of determinism is a very difficult question. It's not one I discuss in this book, indeed in any other book that I've ever talked about. Now an extreme determinist, as the questioner says, might say that everything we do, everything we think, everything that we write has been determined from the beginning of time in which case the very idea of taking credit for anything doesn't seem to make any sense. Now I don't actually know what I actually think about that, I haven't taken up a position about that, it's not part of my remit to talk about the philosophical issue of determinism. What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do. None of us ever actually as a matter of fact says, "Oh well he couldn't help doing it, he was determined by his molecules." Maybe we should... I sometimes... Um... You probably remember many of you would have seen Fawlty Towers. The episode where Basil where his car won't start and he gives it fair warning, counts up to three, and then gets out of the car and picks up a tree branch and thrashes it within an edge of his life. Maybe that's what we all ought to... Maybe the way we laugh at Basil Fawlty, we ought to laugh in the same way at people who blame humans. I mean when we punish people for doing the most horrible murders, maybe the attitude we should take is "Oh they were just determined by their molecules." It's stupid to punish them. What we should do is say "This unit has a faulty motherboard which needs to be replaced." I can't bring myself to do that. I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit, or I might be more charitable and say this individual who has committed murders or child abuse of whatever it is was really abused in his own childhood. And so again I might take a ...

Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views?

Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. But it has nothing to do with my views on religion it is an entirely separate issue.

Nothing to do with his views on religion? It has everything to do with them. If determinism is true then his views on religion are based on what he has been caused to believe by the environmental and genetic factors that have shaped all of his beliefs since he was conceived. The truth of determinism is perhaps a factor in that belief, but it is only one factor among many, and his decision to oppose religion was not freely chosen by him but rather a decision which he could not escape.

This is the great dilemma of naturalism. If it is true it entails determinism, as Dawkins affirms, but if determinism is true it destroys intellectual and moral life. Someday perhaps naturalists like Dawkins will see the absolutely suicidal nature of their embrace of atheism.

Yes or No

Why do people on the Left have a hard time giving a straight yes or no answer to the question whether they want the U.S. to actually win in Iraq? Is it that they really don't know whether they do or not?

Do They Know What They're Getting?

My friend Byron promises me that I will enjoy this article by Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standard about James Webb. Webb is the unlikely Democratic challenger contesting Republican George Allen's Virginia senate seat in November. Byron is right about Ferguson having written a good article, and he does a nice job of showing how the Democrats in Virginia are swallowing an awful lot of principle in order to support Webb who is about as far right as a politician gets these days. Webb's only attraction for the Democrats is that although he is a hawk and a decorated Vietnam war hero he has been against the Iraq war from the beginning. Such a stance, in the eyes of Democrats, evidently covers a host of other sins which are conveniently papered over by the media.

But there's more to Webb than even Ferguson's piece brings to light. It all works together to make this Virginia race especially fun to watch. As I wrote to Byron:

Webb certainly is an anomaly, and it's amusing to watch the liberal networks try to dance around the problems he poses for the Democrat party. Not only are there problems such as were outlined in the WS article, but just when the media was blasting his opponent, George Allen, for displaying a Confederate flag in his office, it was discovered that Webb named his son after Robert E. Lee. Just when the media was delighting in Allen's use of the epithet macaca, it was revealed that Webb used to drive with his teenage buddies through Watts during the riot years yelling "nigger" at blacks and aiming toy guns at them to scare them witless. Just when the media were soaring in the throes of ecstasy recounting James Foley's disgusting e-correspondence with boys, they find out that Webb's novels are laced with disgusting allusions to pederastic sex and other forms of socially unacceptable sexual expression.

Even so, he's not a Republican, and so lots of people will vote for him despite the fact that they strongly disagree with him on almost everything he stands for except the Iraq war, ignoring the fact that he's probably a bigger hawk than anyone in the current administration.

Recommended Reading

If you happen to be looking for something to read for a spiritual shot in the arm, check out anything by Andrew Murray (1828-1917). If you're not, check it out anyway. Some background can be found here.

Murray was a prolific writer. I saw over 45 titles on a web site and I would suggest that any serious Christian's library is incomplete without at least one of them.

Recently a dear friend lent me Andrew Murray on Prayer which is actually a collection of six of his books. The first book in Andrew Murray on Prayer is titled Abide In Christ. It's divided into 31 chapters each one being like a mini-sermon, intended to be read one for each day of the month as a devotional. Here's chapter 3 of Abide in Christ, Trusting Him to Keep You.

"I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus." - Phil. 3:12

More than one admits that it is a sacred duty and a blessed privilege to abide in Christ, but shrinks back continually before the question: Is it possible, a life of unbroken fellowship with the Saviour? Eminent Christians, to whom special opportunities of cultivating this grace have been granted, may attain to it; for the large majority of disciples, whose life, by a divine appointment, is so fully occupied with the affairs of this life, it can scarce be expected. The more they hear of this life, the deeper their sense of its glory and blessedness, and there is nothing they would not sacrifice to be made partakers of it. But they are too weak, too unfaithful - they never can attain to it.

Dear souls! how little they know that the abiding in Christ is just meant for the weak, and so beautifully suited to their feebleness. It is not the doing of some great thing, and does not demand that we first lead a very holy and devoted life. No, it is simply weakness entrusting itself to a Mighty One to be kept - the unfaithful one casting self on One who is altogether trustworthy and true. Abiding in Him is not a work that we have to do as the condition for enjoying His salvation, but a consenting to let Him do all for us, and in us, and through us. It is a work He does for us - the fruit and the power of His redeeming love. Our part is simply to yield, to trust, and to wait for what He has engaged to perform.

It is this quiet expectation and confidence, resting on the word of Christ that in Him there is an abiding place prepared, which is so sadly wanting among Christians. They scarce take the time or the trouble to realize that when He says "Abide IN ME," He offers Himself, the Keeper of Israel that slumbers not nor sleeps, with all His power and love, as the living home of the soul, where the mighty influences of His grace will be stronger to keep than all their feebleness to lead astray. The idea they have of grace is this - that their conversion and pardon are God's work, but that now, in gratitude to God, it is their work to live as Christians, and follow Jesus. There is always the thought of a work that has to be done, and even though they pray for help, still the work is theirs. They fail continually, and become hopeless; and the despondency only increases the helplessness. No, wandering one; as it was Jesus who drew you when He spake "Come," so it is Jesus who keeps you when He says "Abide." The grace to come and the grace to abide are alike from Him alone. That word Come, heard, meditated on, accepted, was the cord of love that drew you nigh; that word Abide is even so the band with which He holds you fast and binds you to Himself. Let the soul but take time to listen to the voice of Jesus. "In me," He says, "is thy place - in my almighty arms. It is I who love thee so, who speak Abide in me; surely thou canst trust me." The voice of Jesus entering and dwelling in the soul cannot but call for the response: "Yes, Saviour, in Thee I can, I will abide."

Abide in me: These words are no law of Moses, demanding from the sinful what they cannot perform. They are the command of love, which is ever only a promise in a different shape. Think of this until all feeling of burden and fear and despair pass away, and the first thought that comes as you hear of abiding in Jesus be one of bright and joyous hope: it is for me, I know I shall enjoy it. You are not under the law, with its inexorable Do, but under grace, with its blessed Believe what Christ will do for you. And if the question be asked, "But surely there is something for us to do?" the answer is, "Our doing and working are but the fruit of Christ's work in us." It is when the soul becomes utterly passive, looking and resting on what Christ is to do, that its energies are stirred to their highest activity, and that we work most effectually because we know that He works in us. It is as we see in that word IN ME the mighty energies of love reaching out after us to have us and to hold us, that all the strength of our will is roused to abide in Him.

This connection between Christ's work and our work is beautifully expressed in the words of Paul: "I follow after, if that I may apprehend that whereunto I also am apprehended of Christ Jesus." It was because he knew that the mighty and the faithful One had grasped him with the glorious purpose of making him one with Himself, that he did his utmost to grasp the glorious prize. The faith, the experience, the full assurance, "Christ hath apprehended me," gave him the courage and the strength to press on and apprehend that whereunto he was apprehended. Each new insight of the great end for which Christ had apprehended and was holding him, roused him afresh to aim at nothing less.

Paul's expression, and its application to the Christian life, can be best understood if we think of a father helping his child to mount the side of some steep precipice. The father stands above, and has taken the son by the hand to help him on. He points him to the spot on which he will help him to plant his feet, as he leaps upward. The leap would be too high and dangerous for the child alone; but the father's hand is his trust, and he leaps to get hold of the point for which his father has taken hold of him. It is the father's strength that secures him and lifts him up, and so urges him to use his utmost strength.

Such is the relation between Christ and you, O weak and trembling believer! Fix first your eyes on the whereunto for which He has apprehended you. It is nothing less than a life of abiding, unbroken fellowship with Himself to which He is seeking to lift you up. All that you have already received - pardon and peace, the Spirit and His grace - are but preliminary to this. And all that you see promised to you in the future - holiness and fruitfulness and glory everlasting - are but its natural outcome. Union with Himself, and so with the Father, is His highest object. Fix your eye on this, and gaze until it stand out before you clear and unmistakeable: Christ's aim is to have me abiding in Him.

And then let the second thought enter your heart: Unto this 1 am apprehended of Christ. His almighty power hath laid hold on me, and offers now to lift me up to where He would have me. Fix your eyes on Christ. Gaze on the love that beams in those eyes, and that asks whether you cannot trust Him, who sought and found and brought you nigh, now to keep you. Gaze on that arm of power, and say whether you have reason to be assured that He is indeed able to keep you abiding in Him.

And as you think of the spot whither He points - the blessed whereunto for which He apprehended you - and keep your gaze fixed on Himself, holding you and waiting to lift you up, O say, could you not this very day take the upward step, and rise to enter upon this blessed life of abiding in Christ? Yes, begin at once, and say, "O my Jesus, if Thou biddest me, and if Thou engagest to lift and keep me there, I will venture. Trembling, but trusting, I will say: Jesus, I do abide in Thee."

My beloved fellow-believer, go, and take time alone with Jesus, and say this to Him. I dare not speak to you about abiding in Him for the mere sake of calling forth a pleasing religious sentiment. God's truth must at once be acted on. O yield yourself this very day to the blessed Saviour in the surrender of the one thing He asks of you: give up yourself to abide in Him. He Himself will work it in you. You can trust Him to keep you trusting and abiding.

And if ever doubts again arise, or the bitter experience of failure tempt you to despair, just remember where Paul found His strength: "I am apprehended of Jesus Christ." In that assurance you have a fountain of strength. From that you can look up to the whereunto on which He has set His heart, and set yours there too. From that you gather confidence that the good work He bath begun He will also perform. And in that confidence you will gather courage, day by day, afresh to say, " 'I follow on, that I may also apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.' It is because Jesus has taken hold of me, and because Jesus keeps me, that I dare to say: Saviour, I abide in Thee."

I believe our friends at Hearts and Minds can help you out if you'd like to read more from Mr. Murray.

He Wants Our Vote

Cartoonist Glenn McCoy reads Osama's mind:

Red-Letter Christians

Mark D. Tooley writes a mostly straightforward and informative piece on "Red-Letter Christians" for Front Page Mag. The term Red-Letter Christians refers to the fact that in many Bibles the words of Jesus are printed in red and, Tooley informs us, "these new 'red-letter' communicators and activists want to steer Christians away from concerns about marriage and abortion and towards anti-war activism and environmental causes":

Red-Letter evangelist Tony Campolo, in a column for Beliefnet.com, explained earlier this year what this new activist group is all about:

"We are evangelicals who are troubled by what is happening to poor people in America; who are disturbed over environmental policies that are contributing to global warming; who are dismayed over the increasing arrogance of power shown in our country's militarism; who are outraged because government funding is being reduced for schools where students, often from impoverished and dysfunctional homes, are testing poorly; who are upset with the fact that of the 22 industrialized nations America is next to last in the proportion of its national budget (less than two-tenths of 1 percent) that is designated to help the poor of third-world countries; and who are broken-hearted over discrimination against women, people of color, and those who suffer because of their sexual orientation."

Campolo insists that his fellow Red-Letters are not Republicans or Democrats but are simply people of faith who want to "jump-start a religious movement that will transcend partisan politics."

Toward the end of his essay, Tooley expresses his own concerns about the movement:

In short, Red Letter Christians want to demote the issues to which the Bible speaks directly in favor of other issues dear to the secular Left that rely on a grossly expansionist interpretation of the Bible. For the Red Letter crowd, Jesus' concern about the poor means a larger federal welfare state. The Bible's story of God's creation of the earth must mean that the U.S. has to endorse the Kyoto Accord. Messianic prophecies about world peace are interpreted to demand disarmament and abrogation of U.S. sovereignty.

In reality, the Bible and Christian tradition outline the plan of salvation and a code for decent living. They offer broad principles for ordering human life; they do not, as the Red Letter crowd wants to claim, offer specific legislative policy demands that conform conveniently with the platform of the Democratic Party.

In other words, the Bible commands us to do justice and care for the poor. It doesn't instruct us on what, in our particular socio-historical circumstance, is the most effective or just way to carry out that mandate. Good people can disagree on whether tax cuts for the better off are, or are not, an effective way to deal with poverty. The Red-Letter folk, however, seem to impose their liberalism on Scripture, interpreting it as demanding of us pretty much what modern liberals want to see enacted into law. They sometimes seem genuinely puzzled by the fact, for example, that other Christians don't see in the Bible a mandate for the modern social welfare state or for pacifism.

The irony of this is that Leftist Christians often complain that Republicans identify conservative ideology with the will of God which, they rightly say, is a form of idolatry. But then they turn around and write books like God's Politics in which they argue that if God were president he'd run the country pretty much the way Ted Kennedy would.

I think this is a problem people like Jim Wallis and others who claim to be offering a political third way create for themselves. Their ideological alternative, when articulated, sounds very much like a Nancy Pelosi speech and, as such, causes some to wonder whether their third way follows from a faithful rendering of Scripture or whether Scripture is being interpreted to conform to their political convictions.

<i>The God Delusion</i>

A review of Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion by atheist Kenan Malik in the UK Telegraph is as revealing about Malik in particular and atheism in general as it is about Dawkins' book. Malik, who, like most reviewers, doesn't care for the book, nevertheless thinks that Dawkins offers devastating arguments against belief in God:

Dawkins is Britain's most famous atheist and in The God Delusion he gives eloquent vent to his uncompromising views. He begins by demolishing the two major arguments in favour of religion. For many people it is impossible to imagine how the complexity and intricate design of the natural world could have arisen by chance. Hence the need for a conscious designer - God.

It is true, Dawkins responds, that the probability of life having arisen by chance is as vanishingly small as the likelihood of a Jumbo Jet having being constructed by a hurricane sweeping through a scrap yard. But how much more improbable is the idea of an intelligent designer capable of taking all that scrap and turning it into a 747? After all, that intelligent designer, a far more complex entity than a Jumbo Jet, had himself somehow to be created. Evolution, Dawkins suggests, provides the only coherent alternative to both blind chance and 'intelligent design' because it creates complexity through innumerable small steps, each of which is 'slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so.'

There is so much askew with this analysis that I despair of being able to fit it all in one post. Nevertheless, I'll try:

1. How does one assign a probablitity to the scenario of a designer turning scrap into a jet? How do Dawkins and Malik know that such a feat by a cosmic designer is improbable? Clearly, they don't. They apparently assume that God doesn't exist and then conclude from that fact that it's therefore highly improbable that a designer created the universe. In other words they employ as a premise the very conclusion they want the reader to accept. This is called begging the question.

2. Why does Dawkins say, and Malik tacitly agree, that the designer has to have been created? Why do they assume that the designer could not have necessary existence? That is, why assume that the designer is not a being which does not depend upon anything else for its existence? It is certainly possible that such a being exist and that it is ontologically responsible for the design of our world.

3. Even if it is granted that the designer might require a cause how does that help the atheist? Dawkins is in the position of demanding that someone be able to say who designed the computer before he is permitted to claim that the computer is designed. The demand appears for all the world like an instance of changing the subject rather than having to meet the evidence for design head on.

We have good reason to believe that the universe requires a cause (i.e. it has contingent existence), and it may be that the cause of the universe is itself also caused, but so what? Once Dawkins grants that the universe has a cause beyond itself, a transcendent creator, he's pretty much forfeited the argument to the Intelligent Design people. What the ID theorists want to assert is simply that the universe is designed by an intelligent agent. Dawkins replies: "Okay, but what designed the intelligent agent?" - not seeing that the question comes too late to salvage his argument. The obvious answer that the IDer can give to the question is that he has no idea who or what designed the designer, nor does it matter. All he's arguing for is the proposition that the universe is intentionally designed. More than that he neither does, nor can, say.

4. Dawkins and Malik seem to misunderstand the nature of probablities. Probabilities are not additive, they are multiplicative. An innumerable number of very small probabilities does not add up to a large probability. It yields, rather, an impossibly tiny probability. In other words, the probablity of three events occuring together, if the probability of each event is 50%, is not 150%, it's .5 x .5 x .5 = .125 or 12.5 %. Increasing the number of highly improbable events does not make them more probable, it makes them less so. Surely Dawkins and Malik understand this.

The second major argument for God is that He is a necessary source of moral values. 'If God is dead, everything is permitted,' as Dostoevsky put it. In fact research shows that the moral sentiments of believers and atheists are not that distinct.

Malik misses the point here. The problem is not that believers and atheists hold different moral values, it is that if atheism is true there is no significant meaning to the concept of moral right and wrong. Atheists in their personal lives can certainly adopt the same values as believers, but the decision to do so is purely arbitrary. They could as easily adopt the opposite values and there would have been nothing wrong with doing so, because right and wrong are purely subjective in a Godless world.

Take, for example, the value of not hurting others. Why should someone adopt this rule of conduct? Why is it wrong to hurt people? Some might say it's wrong because we don't want people to hurt us, and that is certainly true, but that's not a reason to refrain from hurting others. There's no reason why I shouldn't hurt someone if I want to and if I can get away with it. It's certainly not wrong to do so, unless there's a moral authority which transcends human autonomy which forbids us from treating others unjustly.

Morality flows out of God's nature like light flows out of the sun. Were the sun not to exist neither would sunlight. Were God not to exist neither would moral value. Nothing, as Dostoyevsky noted, would be "wrong" in a moral sense.

In any case, Dawkins points out, moral values are not fixed but have changed over time. Where once slavery was justified through Biblical invocation, today most Christians believe that the practice is contrary to God's will. It is not that God has changed his mind but rather that, as social beliefs have progressed, so Christians have begun interpreting God's word differently. But if we can make up our own minds as to what is right and wrong, Dawkins asks, why do we need God in the first place?

This is rather surprising coming from someone of Dawkins' eminence. That opinions of what constitutes right and wrong behavior change is no argument against the assertion that God is a necessary condition for moral value. At most it suggests only that God's existence is not a sufficient condition for a proper apprehension of what is right and what is wrong. Moreover, there are certain moral principles that do not evolve over time, like the principles of doing justice and showing compassion. These are timeless although the way we implement them in any given age may change with circumstances.

The important point, however, is that if God does not exist there is nothing wrong with being unjust or uncompassionate. Others may not like that you choose injustice over justice, but what they like or dislike is not morally binding upon you.

Take, for instance, Dawkins's claim that religion is a form of child abuse. He believes with the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey that children 'have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas' and that 'we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe in the literal truth of the Bible than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out'.

If parents are going to be prevented by law from teaching their children bad ideas we might start with the idea that we have emerged by sheer happenstance out of the cosmic goop and that as finely tuned as the universe is, and as living things are, it's all just a colossal accident. We may also, if we're going to ban bad ideas, forbid parents from teaching their children that right and wrong, meaning and purpose, justice and injustice, human rights and dignity can all exist even if there is no God. That's more than just a bad idea, it elevates an impossibility to the status of a conviction.

Malik closes with this:

The moral of the story is that if you want an understanding of evolution or an argument for atheism, there are few better guides than Richard Dawkins.

If Dawkins is the expert who instructs us in how to demolish theism the theist certainly has little to fear. The explosives he employs as instruments of demolition are more dud than dynamite.

The Real Story

Talk radio host Glenn Beck narrates this short video which presents what he calls the real story of Iraq. What the video tells us is important, but it should be kept in mind that there's much more good news about Iraq that the MSM isn't telling us than what Beck can fit into this clip.

The Democratic Lineup

The coming November elections are enormously important for the future of this country which is why it is so distressing that the Democrats seem poised to take over the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. It's not so much that the Democrats are simply not prepared nor qualified to lead the nation in times such as these, but that the campaign they have waged in this election cycle has been so empty of substantive ideas. They have not sought to offer a competing vision of what our nation should be so much as they have simply offered themselves as the "un-Bush".

The fact that the Democrats are touting Barack Obama as presidential timber for 2008 shows the thinness of their talent. With few qualified candidates they must rely on Hillary Clinton, currently a freshman senator from New York, and Obama, who has completed just two years in the Senate and has accomplished next to nothing in that position so far.

The Democrats are a party bereft of ideas. Listening to their candidates in debates and in interviews is frustrating because they rarely give a direct or relevant answer to a question. Sometimes they say nothing in very attractive fashion as Barack Obama does, but it's still nothing. They seem to be counting not on the power of their ideas to sweep them into office but rather on the power of their media allies to convince the public that it's time for a change.

Bob Casey campaigns against Rick Santorum almost solely on the basis of Santorum's record of voting with George Bush 98% of the time. That, and the fact that Santorum maintains a residence near D.C. He refuses to answer simple questions in interviews about what he would do differently than Santorum and how he would do it. Reading his non-answer to questions put to him by a Philadelphia Inquirer interviewer induces in one the uneasy feeling that this potential U.S. senator is little more than an empty suit running on his father's reputation. Worse, in order to achieve that lofty perch he will have to unseat one of the best qualified, best informed, and most effective legislators in the Senate in Rick Santorum. Watch Tim Russert's interview of these two men, compare Casey's answers to those of Santorum, and you'll get a sense of the vast distance between the two.

Another Democratic senatorial candidate, Harold Ford of Tennessee, first denied and then admitted he was at a Playboy Super Bowl party last January. There may have been nothing wrong with being at the party, but if so, why did he deny being there? It's bad enough that politicians lie about the big stuff, but it's crazy that they lie about things they apparently feel they have no reason to feel guilty about. "I like football and I like girls," Ford informs us by way of exculpation, but this just makes him sound Clintonesque and that's not a reassuring quality.

Democrat John Murtha, one of the leading anti-war voices in their party, has been revealed on a never-before-released FBI videotape negotiating a bribe in 1980 about which he has been lying for the past twenty five years. He thinks he's talking to a representative of a rich Saudi, but it's in fact an FBI agent. The serious conversations start at about the twenty minute mark on the tape. Murtha was on the House Ethics committee at the time and intends to run for House majority leader if the Democrats win in November. One supposes that he'll be able to negotiate a lot of bribes from that office. Watch the tape. It'll turn your stomach. And this is the guy passing moral judgment on Bush's policy in Iraq.

Alcee Hastings, who was once impeached by a Democratic Congress for bribery and malfeasance, is in line to chair the House Intelligence Committee should the Democrats succeed in gaining control of the House.

The fact that these two miscreants, Hastings and Murtha, are in line for such important positions if the Democrats prevail on November 7th confirms Republican charges that Democrats don't take national security seriously and certainly can't be trusted with it.

Possible Cancer Cure

Here's good news concerning the ongoing search for cures for cancer:

South Korean [scientists] have said they have developed a new genetically altered strain of virus which is highly efficient in targeting and killing cancer cells. The new therapy developed by the team from Yonsei University uses a genetically-engineered form of the adenovirus, which normally causes colds. When injected into cancerous tumors, the virus quickly multiplies in the cancer cells and kills them, the team said.

The new adenovirus can target only cancer cells and does not harm normal cells. Following three rounds of injections, more than 90 percent of cancer cells in the brains, liver, lungs and womb of mice disappeared within 60 days.

There are still many more tests to be done and treatment for humans is probably several years away, but this certainly sounds on the face of it like a wonderful breakthrough.

Happy Quds Day

Even Germany at its nadir in the late 1930s and early 40s never had a celebration as grotesque, as moronic, or as evil as that which Steven Stalinsky reports on in this piece for The New York Sun:

It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.

It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan.

Most of the Western press outlets that reported on the popular holiday simply downplayed it as just another "anti-Israel" day. However, this year's revelries focused both on calling for the annihilation of America and embracing Iran's nuclear program.

Among the notable scenes captured were children in Condoleezza Rice costumes; effigies of President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert, and Prime Minister Blair being lit on fire and dragged through the streets; the burning of American and Israeli flags; and hundreds of posters of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah featuring the caption "I swear to Allah that Israel is weaker than [a] spider house." The posters called for a boycott of such "Israeli" goods as McDonald's, Kit Kat bars, Intel, L'Oreal, Nestl�, Disney, and Marlboro.

"The president of America is like us. That is, he too is inspired ... but [his] inspiration is of the satanic kind. Satan gives inspiration to the president of America."

Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with the global arrogance."

In another speech, he said Israel was "doomed" and promised that the Israeli "regime will be gone, definitely."

The words "the Zionist regime is a cancerous gland that needs to be uprooted" were written in a communiqu� from the Iranian Foreign Ministry in honor of the holiday. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held a meeting for other Islamic countries' ambassadors to Iran and told them that Israel's existence would be shattered and that death bells were tolling for the Zionists.

A who's who of the Iranian leadership marched in the main Quds Day parade before crowds chanting "death to Israel" and "death to America."

The chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi...."The world arrogance and Zionism today are shivering from Muslim vigilance and are on the threshold of annihilation," he added.

Mr. Rafsanjani also led Quds Day prayers on December 14, 2001. Then, he warned of a coming confrontation between the "pious and martyrdom-seeking forces" and the "highest forces of colonialism," which "might inflame a third World War."

Sadly, Mr. Rafsanjani is considered one of Iran's more moderate leaders.

Sure, these people are buffoons, but buffoons over-flowing with hatred and armed with nuclear weapons are frightfully dangerous buffoons.

Try, if you can, to imagine Americans, or any Western people, celebrating a holiday in such a fashion, and you catch a glimpse of the vast moral and civilizational gulf that exists between the West and the world of Iranian Islam.

Shepherd of the Flock

Jordan Hylden attends a public lecture given by Bishop Gene Robinson, the prelate, you'll remember, who left his wife to live with his boyfriend, and who, perhaps due to his boldness in being willing to sacrifice his family and renounce his marriage vows in order to better accommodate his sexual orientation, subsequently qualified for ordination as a bishop in the Episcopal church.

Mr. Hylden came away from the address somewhat confused by all that he heard there and writes about his puzzlements at First Things. It's at once both a sad and amusing tale.

Do As They Say, Not As They Do

A friend directs us to this link at which we are let in on the transportation habits of a few of Hollywood's demigods who urge us to cut back on our consumption of fuel, who admonish us to stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and who ask us to follow their example and drive smaller more fuel efficient vehicles like they do.

But then why do they fly by private jet?

Is Jesus a Liberal?

Joe Carter takes on the interesting question whether Jesus is a Liberal. He examines Jesus in the light of ten criteria suggested by law professor Geoffrey Stone which define what it means to be a liberal and concludes that the answer is .... yes and no.

I think Carter's analysis based on Stone's ten criteria is correct, but I have some disagreements with Stone's criteria. For instance, the first one states that:

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others.

It's true of classical liberalism that its adherents embraced this principle, but it's not the case that those who call themselves liberals today hold self-criticism and open-minded inquiry to be a value. Indeed, it is in the strongholds of contemporary liberalism, the universities, where we find this ideal most frequently ravaged and stultified by political correctness and inquisitorial speech codes.

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference.

Unfortunately, the modern liberal is himself tolerant and respectful only of those things of which he approves. He is completely intolerant, in many cases, of things like racism, sexism, homophobia, tobacco, gun rights, and religion. He is tolerant of those who praise and support left-wing totalitarianisms but absolutely intolerant of anyone who might support right-wing authoritarianism.

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate.

Perhaps so, but when incidents like the Columbia University episode occur in which speakers are prevented from presenting their views by thuggish tactics, there's usually very little said about it by liberals. When public debates or lectures are disrupted it's invariably people of the left who do it.

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind.

This may have been true prior to 1970, but since then liberals have sought to have their legislative agenda enacted not through the peoples' congress but through the courts where the people have no voice. Liberals oppose the overturn of the constitutionally egregious Roe v. Wade because they fear having the issue thrown back into the state legislatures where the people have far more influence than they do with the Supreme Court.

Anyway, read Carter's assessment of whether or not Jesus was a liberal at the link.

More Rudeness on the Left

Too bad Connecticut Republican senatorial candidate Alan Schlesinger doesn't have a snowball's chance of winning on November 7th. We could use people like him in the Senate, but sadly, a vote for Schlesinger only makes more likely a victory for Ned (the Red) Lamont.

At a recent debate between the candidates a couple of hecklers tried to shout down Independent Joe Leiberman, who unfortunately reacted with a somewhat hang-dog wimpishness. Of course, Lamont didn't react at all because, after all, these were his peeps out in the audience shouting Old Joe down, but Schlesinger did.

Watch the episode here.

Parenthetically, why are people who try to prevent others from voicing their ideas invariably people on the left? Is there something about being a liberal/lefty that carries with it a penchant for rudeness and obnoxiousness? Just asking.

Demolishing the Pillars of Modernity

Bruce Chapman at Evolution News and Views has a piece about a review by atheistic philosopher Thomas Nagel of Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion, which Nagel finds unsatisfying. He begins his review with this observation:

In his new book, he [Dawkins] attacks religion with all the weapons at his disposal, and as a result the book is a very uneven collection of scriptural ridicule, amateur philosophy, historical and contemporary horror stories, anthropological speculations, and cosmological scientific argument.

The review itself is available at The New Republic (by subscription), but Chapman provides a good summary of it:

Examining the inevitable clash of chance and necessity with design, Nagel describes the "overwhelming improbability of (an original self-replicating molecule)...coming into existence by chance, simply through the laws of physics...Dawkins (he goes on) recognizes the problem, but his response to it is pure hand-waving."

Darwinism and Dawkins reach a theoretical as well as factual dead end on origins. "That is why the argument from design is still alive, and why scientists who find the conclusion of that argument unacceptable feel there must be a purely physical explanation of why the origin of life is not as physically improbable as it seems." Multiverse theories are merely an unpersuasive and "desperate device to avoid the demand for a real explanation."

He agrees with Dawkins that "the issue of design versus purely physical causation is a scientific question." (We agree with them both on that. Would someone please tell Judge Jones and the ACLU?) But, paradoxically, to try to win the debate on that question, Dawkins and other neo-Darwinists are reduced to the philosophical "reductionist project" that Nagel says "tries to reclaim some of the originally excluded aspects of the world, by analyzing them in physical-that is, behavioral or neurophysiological-terms; but it denies reality to what cannot be so reduced. I believe the project is doomed-that conscious experience, thought, value, and so forth are not illusions, even though they cannot be identified with physical facts..."

Dawkins also would yoke all religion to the sins of the kind of fanatics who attacked on 9/11. Of course, fanatical religionists are bad, Nagel notes, but that is hardly an argument against design. "Blind faith and dogma are dangerous; the view that we can make ultimate sense of the world only by understanding it as the expression of mind or purpose is not," he concludes.

As Chapman points out in the beginning of his article, much of the best intellectual work done in the last half century has been in the service of deconstructing, refuting and discrediting the intellectual edifices built by the great architects of modernity, particularly Marx and Freud. It certainly looks as if Darwin is next on the list.

Viewpoint will have more on The God Delusion this weekend.