Crawley and Dawkins (Pt. I)

William Crawley of the BBC conducts an excellent interview with Richard Dawkins. Anyone wishing to get an idea of what the controversy surrounding Dawkins' views is all about will find this session to be a useful introduction.

In the course of the interview Dawkins makes some interesting claims. For example, there's this one:

"Before Darwin it was very hard (intellectually) to be an atheist. After Darwin it was very hard not to be one. Darwinism makes it very hard to be a theist."

So much for efforts by those who believe that one can be both a Darwinian and a theist to find common ground with the anti-theist Darwinians. For people like Dawkins there is no common ground. One is either a complete naturalistic materialist or a superstitious ignoramus.

It should be mentioned that the word "Darwinism" isn't strictly synonomous with "evolution." Darwinism is the metaphysical belief that materialistic, natural processes and forces are adequate by themselves to account for all aspects of life. It is possible to be both a theist and an evolutionist, but I agree with Dawkins that it is very difficult to be a Darwinian evolutionist and a theist.

Dawkins then wonders:

"Why should there be a point to life? The meaning of life is whatever you make it. From a Darwinian point of view it is to propagate the species."

In other words, as long as you don't give the question of purpose too much thought you can avoid the depression and despair that seeps into the psyche when it begins to dawn on people that their lives are merely "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Dawkins seems to recognize that materialism strips life of any real meaning or purpose and leaves us to try to find some reason for getting out of bed in the morning. For Dawkins meaning comes from trying to prove there is no God, but as I think C.S. Lewis pointed out, there's something peculiar about making it one's purpose to prove that there is no purpose.

He adds that:

"It doesn't make much sense to go around and count the number of people who believe something in order to decide whether [a belief] is a delusion or not. The best thing to do is to look at the arguments for or against a belief."

Precisely. Which is why it's somewhat beside the point to insist, as so many anti-IDers do, that ID is bogus because no top scientists believe it. This is a diversion and a fallacy. What's important is not whether a majority of scientists believe something but rather the reasons why they believe it or don't beleive it. In many cases Darwinism is embraced because it is a necessary crutch to sustain a materialist metaphysics. In other words, as Dawkins has said elsewhere, Darwinism makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

In response to the extraordinary fine-tuning of the universe Dawkins offers three counter-arguments:

He first raises the question of where the designer comes from. If God designed the universe, he asks, then what designed God?

His second reply, which he conflates with the third but which is really a distinct argument, is what is called the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP). It says that we should not think it so very special that the universe is as it is for were it not, we would not be around to notice it. The fact that we exist means that the universe must be tuned as precisely as it is.

Sensing perhaps, the absurdity of the WAP he quickly imports a completely unscientific, non-empirical speculative hypothesis called the Multiverse theory. According to this, our universe is just one of an innumerable array of universes each having different parameters, values and laws. Given the existence of so many worlds it becomes more likely, even probable, that one world will be structured the way ours is.

Think of it this way: The chances that somebody is going to be holding the winning lottery ticket increase as the number of tickets sold increases. The more tickets/universes, the more likely one of them will have just the right sequence of numbers.

I'd like to consider these three arguments in another post.

RLC

Precipitous Drop in Violence

This article contains some important good news:

Brigadier Qassim Moussawi, Iraqi military spokesman, said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad in the 30 days since Operation Enforcing the Law began was 265, down from 1,440 killed in the previous month. He said that the number of attacks in surrounding provinces had increased, although he did not provide figures.

Major General William Caldwell, US military spokesman, meanwhile said: "Murders and executions have come down by over 50 per cent [in Baghdad]."

He acknowledged there had been a slight climb in the number killed in the last seven days, but not as much as at the equivalent point in the cycle of previous Baghdad security plans. "This past week is normally the week in which the number of murders goes back to their previous levels," he said.

And this with only two of the five brigades called for by the surge tactic currently in place. Perhaps we might ask a question of those of our friends who opposed George Bush's troop increase: If the murder rate continues to decline in Baghdad or to remain at low levels, was the Presidents' tactic the right thing to do?

Perhaps congressman Murtha might like to entertain the question.

RLC

Iranian Defections

Things are getting very curious in Iran. Now come reports that yet another high ranking Iranian military officer has disappeared along with his family. Whether he has defected or whether he has been eliminated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for unknown derelictions is not known, but a lot of people in Iran, from the top on down, must be wondering whom they can trust. This whole article is fascinating, especially the last several paragraphs:

Three weeks ago the Iranian armed forces command in Teheran lost contact with a senior officer who had been serving in Iraq with the al-Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to a senior Iranian official cited in the Wednesday edition of the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.

The Iranian source said that it is still unclear why contact with the officer, Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, was lost. "It is possible that the American forces in Iraq arrested him along with a group of 13 Iranian military and intelligence officials," he said, adding that this is just one of the scenarios being investigated by Tehran.

The lack of word from the al-Quds officer is attracting heightened interest because of the mysterious disappearance - or perhaps defection - of Iran's former Deputy Defense Minister, General Ali Reza Asgari , a week ago.

An Iranian source denied reports circulating in Iran that Asgari was being held prisoner by the Americans and is being tortured. "The people investigating the affair have no new information about him. Such reports are part of a propaganda campaign intended to ... prevent other high-ranking Iranian officials who may be thinking of defecting from doing so," the source told the Iranian news agency FARS.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that a Tehran military court sentenced to death a colonel in Iranian military intelligence who recently returned from service in Iraq. The officer was accused of collaborating with American forces and providing them with details on the deployment and activities of the al-Quds unit and Iranian military intelligence operatives. He was also accused of providing the Americans with classified documents, photographs and maps related to Iran's nuclear program and armed forces.

The newspaper reported that over the past three years, dozens of members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and military intelligence units have defected to the American forces in Iraq.

Officers from various branches of Iran's armed forces operate in Iraq in both covert and overt roles. The United States accuses Iranian agents of aiding Shiite militias in Iraq with training, weapons and funding. Over the past few months, American forces in Iraq have arrested a number of Iranian officers.

I'd like to think that somehow the good guys are behind all these defections and disappearances and that we are reaping an intelligence bonanza from it.

HT: HotAir which has more on the story.

RLC

Coulter's Evil, Rock's Cool

According to Drudge when LIFE recently asked comic Chris Rock if America is ready for an African American president, Rock told LIFE: "It's ready for a retarded president, why wouldn't it be ready for an African American president?"

Well, now. Perhaps in liberal salons there are nuances punctiliously limned and fine distinctions carefully drawn between calling a politician a "faggot" and calling a president "retarded." Indeed, we might conclude that they must be different sorts of attributions altogether since we heard all about Ann Coulter's insensitivity and coarseness when she referred to John Edwards as a faggot, but we haven't heard a peep of liberal criticism of Chris Rock for calling George Bush retarded. Nor, of course, do we expect to.

The difference between the Coulter and Rock episodes is telling. Coulter's slur made news primarily because it is in fact so unusual to hear a highly placed conservative indulge in such unseemly rhetoric. Rock's insult, however, is not news, at least not on the left, because such rhetoric is almost de rigueur among liberals. It's so commonplace and so widely accepted that it scarcely gets noticed.

RLC

Same As the Old Boss

There is a civil war simmering in the Democratic party and this will not help soothe the hostilities:

Senate Democrats will unveil a 2008 budget today that would boost spending for uninsured children, students and veterans without cutting funds for defense or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The budget also would not roll back any of President Bush's tax cuts after 2010, when they are set to expire. It says the tax cuts can be extended if they are paid for.

The Democrats have been proclaiming since last November that they have a mandate from the people to end the war and repeal the Bush tax cuts. It turns out the leadership is inclined to do neither. Lots of folks in the rank and file, however, are incensed at what they see as a massive betrayal by the people they elevated to power in November. We expect that pretty soon there'll be open warfare on the left. It'll be fun.

RLC

The NAE on Torture (Pt. I)

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has released an 18 page document laying out the theological, moral and legal basis for its opposition to any resort to torture. It is in many ways a fine document and in some ways an unfortunate one. The document is commendable for its affirmation of human dignity and human rights grounded in divine revelation and the imago dei, but it really does not grapple convincingly with the matter of torture. It's biggest failing, though not its only failing, is that it absolutizes its proscription of torture and makes no allowance for the motive or reason for which torture is employed.

It is certainly true that for Christians subjecting someone to torture for the purpose of punishment, revenge, or the amusement of the torturer is absolutely and heinously wrong, but there are circumstances in which, in our opinion, a ban on torture makes no moral sense.

Over the course of several posts we'll critique the reasoning in the NAE's document and try to show why we think it to be inadequate. We begin with this claim:

We believe that a scrupulous commitment to human rights, among which is the right not to be tortured, is one of these Christian moral convictions.

There is of course for the Christian a prima facie right of all persons to be secure and safe in their person, but that this right can never be forfeit is obviously false. We do not feel that a policeman is violating someone's rights when he kills an attacker in self-defense, for example. In other words, no human right is absolute, inviolable, or inalienable. My right to life and liberty does not confer upon me a further right to commit crime with impunity. A man's right not to be harmed is surrendered the moment he sets out to harm another.

The sanctity of life is the conviction that all human beings, in any and every state of consciousness or self-awareness, of any and every race, color, ethnicity, level of intelligence, religion, language, nationality, gender, character, behavior, physical ability/disability, potential, class, social status, etc., of any and every particular quality of relationship to the viewing subject, are to be perceived as sacred, as persons of equal and immeasurable worth and of inviolable dignity. Therefore they must be treated with the reverence and respect commensurate with this elevated moral status. This begins with a commitment to the preservation of their lives and protection of their basic rights. Understood in all of its fullness, it includes a commitment to the flourishing of every person's life.

All of this is, of course, entailed by Jesus' command to love our neighbor. It does not follow, however, that a commitment to "the preservation of their lives and protection of their basic rights ... [and] to the flourishing of every person's life" is absolute. If it did then we would be enjoined by such a commitment to abjure always and everywhere the use of force in defense of ourselves and in defense of others. There are some who strive to make the case that Scripture enjoins this degree of pacifism upon us, but I find their arguments to be in direct conflict with the law of love and the command to do justice.

It is not loving to permit an aggressor to harm one's family when the harm could be prevented by using force against the attacker. It is foolish to insist that police not use force to restrain criminals. It would be suicidal, given the world in which we live, to do away with our military, and it is unjust to refuse to punish criminals. Yet were we to follow the logic of the NAE's argument we would have to renounce the use of force in every situation and bend to the will of the criminals in our midst, suffering their depredations, rapes, and murders while refusing to take up arms to prevent them.

If we hesitate to follow the NAE logic this far, as I think all but a few would, then we must acknowledge that there are times when force against another human being is legitimate. The question then is what kinds of force are legitimate and under what circumstances may it be employed?

We'll take up those questions as we continue to examine the NAE statement. Meanwhile interested readers may want to peruse the document at the above link.

RLC

The Religion of Global Warming

Is there unanimity among scientists about global warming?This British program answers with a very firm "no."

The feature is over an hour long but if you watch just the first six minutes you'll get the feeling that a lot of what you've been told about global warming is probably not true. This is an important documentary for anyone who wants to hear a side of the story not often publicized in the MSM.

RLC

We Need a Scorecard

It seems that when Arab Muslims can't kill Jews or Americans they content themselves with killing each other. Killing in the Arab world is a sport much like soccer or basketball in the civilized world. Take Palestine, for example. Fatah and Hamas were at each other's throats for months until they decided to attempt a rapprochement. This triggered a rebellion among those Hamas members who wanted to destroy Fatah. These malcontents are now killing other Hamas as well as Fatah.

Then the local branch of al Qaeda decided to join in the fun and has declared that it wants to kill all of them, both Hamas and Fatah, and has proclaimed itself at war with both groups. DEBKAfile gives us the play-by-play:

As Palestinian and Israeli leaders, Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert finished discussing the Gaza Strip's fate Sunday, March 11, three events showed how little they and Hamas are in control.

Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahri issued a declaration of war on the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in a videotape aired by the Arabic TV Al Jazeera.

An hour later, the Islamic Brotherhood of Justice (another name for al Qaeda's operational branch in the Gaza Strip) announced the launching of its Operation White Land, targeting the political and military leaders of Fatah and Hamas.

DEBKAfile's military sources also reveal that a rebellion has sprung up against the top Hamas leadership.

Olmert and Abbas nonetheless continue to act out a Pan-Arab diplomatic process at Washington's behest (see separate item on this page), which has as much chance of getting off the ground in Gaza as Fatah's Abbas' assurance that the kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilead Shalit, would be freed very soon.

The Zuwahri statement assailed the legitimacy Saudi Arabia extended to moves for a Palestinian unity government at the Mecca peace conference as recently as Feb. 8. Negotiations between the two factions are bogged down anyway.

"The leadership of Hamas government has committed an aggression against the rights of the Islamic nation by respecting international agreements," thundered Ayman Zawahri Sunday. "I am sorry to have to offer the Islamic nation my condolences for the Hamas leadership as it has fallen into the quagmire of surrender."

The Gaza al Qaeda cell then defined the four missions of Operation White Land:

1. Targeting the most senior figures of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders.

2. Focusing on group abductions rather than individuals, especially symbols of political corruption.

3. Beheading is ordained for members of these groups. Their executions and confessions will be videotaped and aired as they are in Iraq.

4. Blowing up Internet cafes and businesses selling alcohol; putting prostitutes to death to cleanse the streets of Gaza of prostitution.

Announcing these missions have won the sanction of Palestinian religious scholars, the communiqu� ends with the words: "Operation White Land has begun."

As for the revolt in Hamas, its Executive Force chief Jemal Jarah and his deputy, Yusouf a-Zahar (brother of Hamas foreign minister Mahmoud a-Zahar), accuse prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of being too soft with Abbas and Fatah and failing to follow through to victory on the battles they fought for weeks against Fatah. Determined to finish the job, Hamas rebels were back on the streets of Gaza this week, shooting and abducting their rivals, the Mecca Reconciliation Accords already a dead letter.

It'll soon be every man for himself in Gaza as the aborigines take to the streets to see how many heads they can lop off before they themselves are killed. I guess you have to be an Arab to appreciate the attractions of such sport.

RLC

Only One?

The Secular Coalition for America has done some investigating and come up with this:

There is only one member of Congress who is on record as not holding a god-belief.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a member of Congress since 1973, acknowledged his nontheism in response to an inquiry by the Secular Coalition for America. Rep. Stark is a senior member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is Chair of the Health Subcommittee.

Although the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office, the Coalition's research reveals that Rep. Stark is the first open nontheist in the history of the Congress.

Surveys vary in the percentage of atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheists in the U.S, with about 10% (30 million people) a fair middle point. "If the number of nontheists in Congress reflected the percentage of nontheists in the population," Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition, observes, "there would be 53-54 nontheistic Congress members instead of one."

Given the number of congresspersons who seem to be completely bereft of any sense of ethical obligation or conscience I suspect that Ms Brown's estimate is a little low.

RLC

Highway to Heaven

Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, seems determined to confirm the opinion of those who think him to be little more than a knave and buffoon. This statement which he delivered last weekend suggests that the future of Venezuela is in the hands of a man completely oblivious to modern economic realities:

"Those who want to go directly to hell, they can follow capitalism," Mr Chavez said in the town of Trinidad in Bolivia. "And those of us who want to build heaven here on earth, we will follow socialism," he added.

Which country, especially in the Spanish speaking world, has ever followed socialism to heaven on earth? How many times does the left have to relearn the lesson that attempts to coercively establish socialist paradises almost always end in firing squads, tyranny and dystopia.

On the other hand, though their achievements are certainly more modest than the establishment of "heaven on earth," the greatest engines of high standards of living for all its citizens have been capitalist societies: England in the 19th century, the U.S. in the 20th century along with Asian economic successes like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. Historian Rodney Stark makes the point exceptionally well in his book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success: Everywhere free markets and private property are protected there is prosperity, at least until governments can no longer resist the temptation to levy onerous taxes and kill the goose laying the golden eggs.

Socialism deadens economic growth because it sucks wealth from those who produce it and thus provides not only a disincentive to produce (why create if the state is going to take it), but it also prevents businesses from investing in improvements and research and development because the funds needed for these projects have been siphoned off by a parasitic state. Socialist governments kill off wealth production in other ways by burdening businesses with heavy regulations, onerous paper work, litigation and other barriers to success that businessmen find too difficult to surmount. Often they just give up, sell their businesses, and get a government job so they can live off the tax revenues imposed upon their former colleagues.

Socialist countries are often economically moribund, as we see in large swaths across Europe, and although there may be some people, usually state employees, who do well, most who live in socialist societies would dispute Chavez's characterization that they are heaven on earth. When socialism is combined with despotism, as it was in the communist world, and as it appears it may soon be in Venezuela, it becomes a literal hell.

Chavez aspires to be another Castro. No doubt he hopes to turn Venezuela into another Cuba. We should keep the Venezuelan people in our prayers.

RLC

Massive Retreat

Stephen Weinberg, a brilliant cosmologist, makes some very puzzling assertions in his favorable review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Indeed, if Weinberg weren't such a brilliant scientist I'd almost think some of what he says is kind of dopey. Take this excerpt for instance:

[Dawkins] calls the God of the Old Testament "the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully". As for the New Testament, he quotes with approval the opinion of Thomas Jefferson, that "The Christian God is a being of a terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust". This is strong stuff, and Dawkins obviously intends to shock the reader, but his invective has a constructive purpose. By attacking the God of sacred Scripture, he is trying to weaken the authority of that God's commands ....

Well. Which commands would Dawkins and Weinberg wish to weaken, I wonder. The command not to murder? The command not to commit sexual infidelity, or steal, or lie? The command to honor our parents? Maybe it's the command to love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves that Messers. Dawkins and Weinberg find offensive.

Maybe these two prominent atheists want to weaken all of God's commands the better to facilitate the creation of an atheist paradise. Of course, should they manage to bring such a utopia about they'd have to build a Berlin wall to keep people from trying to escape it.

Weinberg goes on to meditate on the mass retreat from Christianity he sees reflected in the high degree of religious tolerance he finds everywhere in the U.S.:

Most Christian groups have historically taught that there is no salvation without faith in Christ. If you are really sure that anyone without such faith is doomed to an eternity of Hell, then propagating that faith and suppressing disbelief would logically be the most important thing in the world - far more important than any merely secular virtues like religious toleration.

How does it follow that suppressing unbelief would follow from a conviction that unbelievers are eternally lost? Why not think instead that Christians recognize that a belief that is not freely accepted is not genuine belief and that the suppression of dissenting views does nothing to change the hearts of those inclined toward unbelief.

Weinberg has more:

Yet religious toleration is rampant in America .... My many good friends in Texas who are professed Christians do not even try to convert me. This might be taken as evidence that they don't really mind if I spend eternity in Hell, but I prefer to think (and Baptists and Presbyterians have admitted it to me) that they are not all that certain about Hell and Heaven. I have often heard the remark (once from an American priest) that it is not so important what one believes; the important thing is how we treat each other. Of course, I applaud this sentiment, but imagine trying to explain "not important what one believes" to Luther or Calvin or St Paul. Remarks like this show a massive retreat of Christianity from the ground it once occupied, a retreat that can be attributed to no new revelation, but only to a loss of certitude.

Of course there are people in the church who say that it doesn't matter what you believe, and of course religious toleration is rampant in America, but why conclude from that that there's a massive retreat from Christianity going on? It could be as easily assumed that professor Weinberg's Christian friends pray for him often and believe his salvation is in God's hands, not their's. It might also be the case that professor Weinberg's friends are only nominal Christians.

In any event, the most interesting part of his statement is his use of the phrase "loss of certitude."

It's not at all clear what he means by this. Is Professor Weinberg claiming that American Christians are less sure today than in earlier times that God exists? Does he think that Christians are losing their confidence that there is an afterlife? If so, I doubt very much that he's correct. I don't think that Christians are any less convinced of the truth of these beliefs than they ever were.

Perhaps what Professor Weinberg means is that Christians are not as certain about the fate of non-Christians as they once were, but if they are (and I think they are)that's hardly indicative of a massive retreat from Christianity. For an atheist to take hope that Christianity is weakening because Christians are not as soteriologically exclusive as they were in the early 20th century is to doom oneself to a frustrated hope. It'd be like a 16th century atheist hoping that the Reformation's challenge to the doctrine of papal infallibility would result in the collapse of the Christian faith.

Since we're talking about hopes, I hope Weinberg's Christian friends haven't given up on him, but I have to admit that it'd take a miracle to bring him to belief.

RLC

Barking Mad

You have doubtless heard by now of the unfortunate confrontation between House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) and some anti-war folks in the hallway outside his office. Unaware that he was being taped, Obey candidly demonstrated the disdain our public servants sometimes have for their constituents who pay their salaries. It appears that liberals cannot even be civil to each other. Michelle has the video and the transcript at the link.

A little background: Obey is trying to end the war in Iraq through a piece of legislation that will remove the president's authority to wage the war. The citizens he encounters in the hallway are apparently anti-war activists who want him simply to vote to defund the war. Obey doesn't want to do that because it will put the troops in the field in jeopardy and take resources away from veterans' programs and hospitals.

Obey quickly grew impatient with the woman, who is evidently the mother of an Iraq war vet in his third deployment there, and acts pretty much like the south end of a north-bound horse in this intramural squabble among opponents to the Iraq war. In the process he offers some choice descriptions of those groups who are pressuring congressional Democrats to take more radically decisive action to end the war - at one point calling them "idiot liberals."

The incident reminded us of Peggy Noonan's quip that elected officials of both parties are contemptuous of their base but that Democrats tend to think of theirs as "barking mad."

Obey later apologized when he learned that his whole ugly performance is now on YouTube.

RLC

Environmental Ethics

The following exchange took place in the course of an interview with Mike Huckabee, formerly Republican Governor of Arkansas and likely Presidential candidate. Huckabee articulates a view one wishes all conservatives shared:

Q: "But do you believe there's a human role in climate change?

A: There may be. But whether there is or there isn't, it doesn't release us from the responsibility to be good stewards of the environment. It's the old boy scout rule: you leave your campsite in as good or better shape than how you found it. It's a spiritual issue. [The earth] belongs to God. I have no right to destroy it. I think we work toward alternative energy sources. [We need to make it] like the Manhattan Project or going to the moon. We need to accelerate our energy independence."

We could vote for a guy like that.

HT: Prosthesis

RLC

Sudden Impact

Those who wish a vivid reminder of how the war against terrorists is being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are invited to watch this video of a recent action against enemy combatants who made the mistake of firing on American aircraft. R.I.P.

RLC

The Good News

I just finished reading Beginning at Moses by Michael P.V. Barrett several weeks ago. It's about finding Christ in the Old Testament. Mr. Barrett is talking about Psalm 22 on page 312.

The Lord expresses His confidence that His prayers have been heard and then in the next section begins to detail the answer to those prayers. It becomes clear in the second division that all the suffering of the first division was not in vain. As you meditate your way through this Psalm, do so with what should become an overwhelming impression that you are reading what the blessed Savior said, thought, and prayed while He was suffering vicariously for His people on the cross. The New Testament reveals that the initial lament was audible: 'My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?' (see Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). There is no indication that men could hear the rest of the prayer, but God heard. In this Psalm, we are allowed into the mind and soul of the Savior. You can see why I say that this is holy ground.

The first division highlights three spheres of suffering endured by the Savior. He suffered before the holy God (1-5), by cruel men (6-11), and in His whole person, body and soul (12-18) The opening stanza brings us to the heart of the atonement. The simple answer to Christ's agonizing question 'Why has thou forsaken me?' is that God forsook His Son in order that He might forgive us. With our sin and guilt imputed to Him, He who knew no sin, having become sin for us, took the full force of God's just and necessary wrath against our sin. While Christ was suffering on the cross, God dealt with Him in terms of us. I confess a total inability to explain the utter dereliction of Christ that is expressed by this statement. It boggles the mind. It declares how absolutely offensive sin is to the holiness of God and how absolutely gracious God is in giving His dear Son to be the only Savior. How dare any man say that there is any other way to God!

Well, it would be silly of me to try to add anything to that.

What it Would Take

How can the President get the media to pay attention to all the important things going on in the world? Perhaps the best way, maybe the only way, would not be popular with GW. At least Ramirez doesn't think it would:

RLC

Dumb and Dumber

George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinks that the new generation of atheists is angrier and dumber than their intellectual forbears. I don't know about dumber, but they certainly are angrier.

RLC

Idealism

The blog Conscious Entities has an interesting post on Idealism and also one on the moral, intellectual, and phenomenal gaps between animals and humans.

Idealism is the view that everything we encounter in the world is ultimately reducible to ideas in minds. There is no material substratum to reality.

It was given its most notable expression by George Berkeley (1685-1753) in Principles of Human Knowledge where he argues that all we can experience are sensory phenomena like color, fragrance, sound, etc. But these sensory phenomena exist only in minds, thus all we can have experience of are ideas in our minds. It follows that if knowledge is a product of experience then all we can know are these ideas. A material "stuff" that generates the phenomena of experience is not only absurd but unknowable.

Since Berkeley was an empiricist and believed that all of our knowledge comes through sense experience, he concluded that we can know nothing of anything other than these ideas in our minds. We have no experience of, and therefore no knowledge of, matter. The notion that there is a material world behind the phenomena of our senses is superfluous and should therefore fall victim to Occam's Razor.

All that exists, according to Berkeley, are ideas in minds, and for Berkeley the entire world exists as idea in the mind of God. The world is a virtual reality generated by God, which may be one way to read Hebrews 1:3 and Colossians 1:13.

RLC

Why Are Students Bored?

So why do American kids find school boring? Is it because of poor teaching as the No Left Turns guys say? Probably to some extent, but there's more to it than that, as many of our readers have pointed out.

American kids are jaded by affluence. It takes a lot to excite young people surrounded by stimulants that appeal to their hedonism and materialism. Having never wanted for anything, many students find any kind of intellectual work unappealing and unnecessary. They do enough to get by, but any glimmer of concern for the life of the mind is easily extinguished by social and extra-curricular concerns.

Schools minimize academics. In many schools today only lip-service is paid to the importance of academics. Everything else the school does implicitly sends students the message that the least important thing they do in their school day is what they do in the classroom. At the school at which I taught for thirty-five years a student could be taken out of an academic class for almost any activity imaginable, but a teacher of an academic subject dare not insist that the student remain in class nor could he take the student out of another activity to do academic work. For instance, if the band needed to rehearse, or the swim team had a meet, or the student council had an activity students could leave class to participate, but a classroom teacher was not permitted to take the student out of band class, or swim practice, or student council to tutor him/her on what was missed.

In other words, every activity trumped the academic program in my school, and, I suspect, the same situation exists at most schools. When the school administration tacitly communicates to the student the lesson that academics are the school's lowest priority, only the exceptional students can be expected to take a particular interest in them.

Modern culture devalues great literature, art, history, and philosophy. The value of these disciplines is intrinsic, not instrumental. One studies them for the intellectual satisfaction and enrichment one gains from them, not because they'll enable the student to one day buy a new Lexus. Our culture, however, tacitly disdains any curriculum which is not oriented toward a career or the making of money. Subjects which are pursued for their own sake are deemed less important than those which are more utilitarian. Students realize this and take such classes only because they are a state requirement, and they embark upon it with the attitude that they'll put forth the minimum effort necessary to get whatever grade they feel they need.

Finally, many kids in many schools come from homes and neighborhoods which are so dysfunctional that the student starts out way behind and can never catch up. He/she has no idea what's going on in the classroom and tunes it out. This starts in the earliest grades and continues all through school. By the time the student is in tenth grade he/she is often languishing at a second or third grade level. Understanding nothing of what's going on in the classroom it's little wonder they're bored.

So, to Peters Lawler and Schramm at No Left Turns, yes, there are too many teachers in classrooms who are uninspiring and apathetic, but that situation certainly exists in schools in India and Asia. It's in fact probably worse there than it is here. So why do those kids do so well and ours perform sub-optimally? Look at the affluence, look at the importance placed on academics and the life of the mind, and look at the culture.

RLC

Astonishing Human Being

This young man is perhaps the most astonishing human being you will ever see. I started watching the documentary about him (at Telic Thoughts) and couldn't stop. It's 48 minutes long, but it only takes about five minutes to realize that you're watching something that is both incredible and spooky at the same time.

At the end of the film one man observes that he wonders what abilities are latent in the human mind that most of us cannot use. I wondered the same thing as I watched the video, and wondered, too, if perhaps we will ever be able to access those capacities.

RLC