Two Options

Biological animator Drew Berry gave a TED talk in 2011 in which he described his work. In the lecture he displays some of his breath-taking animations of processes that occur around the clock in every cell of our bodies.

Keep in mind as you wonder at the precision and complexity of these molecular machines and the operations they perform that there are only two viable explanations for how they came to be. Either blind forces and chance mutations resulted in these amazingly choreographed molecular dances or they were intentionally designed by an intelligent agent:

The only reason anyone would opt for the first explanation, in my opinion, is that they've ruled out a priori the possibility of there being an intelligent agent capable of having directed the creation of life. Moreover, the primary reason, perhaps, for ruling out such an agent a priori is the fact that one simply doesn't want such a being to exist.

Philosopher Thomas Nagel provides a clear example of this when he writes the following in his book The Last Word:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

I suspect that most people, believers and non-believers alike, hope that God exists or that he doesn't. What I don't understand is why people like Nagel would hope that he doesn't.

Gutter Politics

It's sad, but we've come to expect high stakes political campaigns to be pretty sleazy. We expect character assassination, libel, and other offenses against propriety and civility. What we don't expect is that private, tax-exempt organizations will undertake, for political reasons, the systematic destruction of a television news network by any means that lies at hand. This is, however, what the progressive organization Media Matters for America (MMFA) has undertaken to do to Fox News.

The Daily Caller has been running a series of articles based on revelations from employees and former employees of MMFA detailing exactly what and how they're trying to smear and discredit Fox News and the lengths to which they're willing to go to harass and intimidate Fox's employees.

It's a pretty sordid tale but then the MMFA folks are progressives, after all, and progressives, or at least many of them, are firm believers in the principle that the end justifies the means.

The DC exposé makes for fascinating reading for those familiar with some of the players, and it's certainly important that people be aware of the sorts of things that are being done to insure Mr. Obama's reelection. Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz even observed that all of this is going to backfire and that MMFA will single-handedly cause Mr. Obama's defeat in November because he'll inevitably be associated with, and soiled by, MMFA's squalid tactics. We'll see.

Meanwhile, check out the series at the Daily Caller website. The links to the installments are below the picture of MMFA president and founder David Brock at the top of the DC home page.

UPDATE: The Daily Caller's page has changed so the best way to access their series on MMFA is to go here.

Is it Fair?

Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore notes that President Obama's main criterion for measuring the value of a policy is "fairness." That being so, he writes, it is perhaps worthwhile to ask about the fairness of much of what the president and his party are doing, or would like to do, in the realm of public policy. I leave it to you to decide how fair the following of Moore's facts are:

• Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
• Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
• Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?
• Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?
• Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?
• Is it fair that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel and other leading Democrats who preach tax fairness underpaid their own taxes?
• Is it fair that after the first three years of Obamanomics, the poor are poorer, the poverty rate is rising, the middle class is losing income, and some 5.5 million fewer Americans have jobs today than in 2007?
• Is it fair that roughly 88% of political contributions from supposedly impartial network television reporters, producers and other employees in 2008 went to Democrats?
• Is it fair that the three counties with America's highest median family income just happen to be located in the Washington, D.C., metro area?
• Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy—pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is "subsidized"?
• Is it fair that those who work full-time jobs (and sometimes more) to make ends meet have to pay taxes to support up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for those who don't work?
• Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?
• Is it fair that thousands of workers won't have jobs because the president sided with environmentalists and blocked the shovel-ready Keystone XL oil pipeline?
• Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama's largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees on their investments in renewable energy projects that went bust?
• Is it fair that federal employees receive benefits that are nearly 50% higher than those of private-sector workers whose taxes pay their salaries, according to the Congressional Budget Office?
• Is it fair that soon almost half the federal budget will take income from young working people and redistribute it to old non-working people, even though those over age 65 are already among the wealthiest Americans?
• Is it fair that in 27 states workers can be compelled to join a union in order to keep their jobs?
• Is it fair that nearly four out of 10 American households now pay no federal income tax at all—a number that has risen every year under Mr. Obama?
• Is it fair that Boeing, a private company, was threatened by a federal agency when it sought to add jobs in a right-to-work state rather than in a forced-union state?
• Is it fair that our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids—who never voted for Mr. Obama—will have to pay off the $5 trillion of debt accumulated over the past four years, without any benefits to them?

Fairness often seems to be in the eye of the beholder. It's a bit annoying of the president and his epigones to insist, for example, that the rich need to pay their "fair share" of taxes but never tell us what's unfair about the rates they now pay and what rates they should pay. No one disagrees that tax rates should be fair, but telling us the "rich need to pay their fair share" is simple-minded demagoguery unless it's accompanied by an explanation of what exactly their fair share would be and why that amount is more fair than what they're currently contributing.

To assert that the rich need to pay their fair share is to imply that they should be paying more than the 40% of the total taxes paid by Americans they now pay even though they comprise less than 1% of the population. Why is it "fair" to demand they do more? Just because they can?

We need to have this discussion about fairness and taxes, but we need to go beyond silly sound bites and no one who's talking about "everyone paying their fair share," least of all the president, seems willing to do that.

Stay Away From Black Holes

One never knows when one might be traveling through space and encounter a black hole. Here's a simulation of what it might look like should such a calamity ever befall you:

Platypus Walk

Whatever you might think of Mr. Obama's politics and leadership there's one thing about this administration that I think is beyond doubt. Mrs. Obama is surely the best dancer of any First Lady in the history of the republic:

Thanks to The Blaze.com for the video.

What's the Difference?

I'm one who believes that the Obama administration was wrong to attempt to compel the Catholic Church to bend to its will on the matter of contraception coverage. I also agree with those who find the subsequent "compromise" little more than a ridiculous charade. For more on why it's all smoke and mirrors read this piece by Hanna Smith at National Review Online. Mr. Obama seems to be telling the Catholic Church that if they don't want to eat their peas that's okay, but he's going to put the peas in a salad and make them eat the salad.

But this post isn't about that. I have a question that no one yet seems to have addressed. How is a government mandate that requires people to violate their conscience by forcing employers to provide coverage for morally problematic products and procedures substantively different from the government requiring people who are opposed on religious grounds to war and capital punishment to pay taxes to support those? Is there a significant difference between being forced by the state to pay for birth control and abortions and being forced by the state to pay for military action and criminal executions when one opposes all of them?

If religious groups can be exempted from mandates to provide certain kinds of insurance coverage on grounds of conscience (which they should) why aren't religious believers exempted from paying taxes on similar grounds? William James once said that "A difference, in order to be a difference, has to make a difference." So what's the difference here that makes a difference?

I'm just asking the question. I don't have an answer.

Conservatism

A panel of mostly young conservatives discusses what it is to be a conservative, particularly in the context of the current Republican primary race:

Conservatives often refer to themselves as classical liberals which sometimes confuses people. This is addressed briefly at the end of the clip and it's pointed out that the values embraced by conservatives were, a century and a half ago, considered liberal.

The ideological spectrum has since then shifted so far to the left, however, that people who today call themselves liberal would have been considered socialists or communists in the 19th century and people who call themselves conservatives today would have been considered liberal in that earlier age.

Thanks to The Blaze.com for the video.

The Mysterious Epigenome

Recall your tenth grade biology class wherein you learned that the code or blueprint for building a living organism was contained in the DNA in the nucleus of the cell. Segments of DNA form genes and these code for proteins and those build the body of the organism. Well, biologists are learning that that's only part of the story, and maybe a very small part at that. It's beginning to look as if the information that directs the construction and maintenance of the organism is dispersed throughout the cell and maybe even throughout the organism.

This is the thesis of a new book by Thomas Woodward and James Gills who argue that beyond the organism's genome (the set of genetic instructions contained in DNA) there is a deeper level of instruction, the epigenome, that is to the genome what the submerged part of an iceberg is to its tip.

Their book is titled The Mysterious Epigenome and according to Casy Luskin who reviews the book at Evolution News and Views, it's a very accessible introduction which is geared toward the layman interested in the biological sciences. Luskin quotes the authors:

In probing the operation of DNA, scientists have learned much more about a second biological encyclopedia of information that resides above the primary information stored within our DNA. Researchers have discovered a complex system in the cell -- sophisticated "software" situated beyond DNA -- that directs DNA's functions and is responsible for our embryonic development and the differentiation of a single, fertilized egg cell into more than two hundred cell types in a mature body.

This higher control system is also implicated in aging processes, cancer, and many other diseases. It guides the expression of DNA, telling different kinds of cells to use different genes, and to use them in the precise ways that meet the needs of those different cells. This "information beyond DNA" plays a crucial role in each of our sixty trillion cells, telling the genes exactly when, where, and how they are to be expressed.

[T]he living cell possesses vast riches of life-enabling codes, which go far beyond the spiral thread of DNA itself. Information, in a diversity of usable forms, is lodged in virtually every corner of the cell, from the outer cortex to the centrosome, with its system of microtubules, to the histones with their decorated tails, to the methylation patterns attached to DNA. The mutual integration of these systems and layers of information is a marvel to behold. Unraveling these complex relationships will surely occupy the diligent study of biologists for decades to come.

Luskin himself asks the question that is inevitably raised by the discovery of this new layer of information in the cell:

Could this newly discovered information arise by the Darwinian mechanism? A key issue addressed by the book has to do with the implications of the epigenome for the debate over Darwinian theory and intelligent design. The authors believe this new information points to "irreducible complexity" in the cell, and ask: "How can scientists account for a nature-driven origin of the cell's complexity when they stumble upon new layers of information -- a whole new system of coded-language -- above and beyond the cell's DNA?"

Woodward and Giles close by pointing out the challenge posed by the epigenetic revolution to materialist views of evolution:

[T]he epigenome adds tremendous pressure to the already-weak Darwinian explanatory apparatus. Random changes, inherited over generations, must not just explain the explosion of DNA as one moves up the purported tree of life; one must also now explain by these mindless mechanisms the rise of each sophisticated layer of the epigenome.

Biologists are just beginning to understand this new source of information. Indeed, the whole field is really on the cutting edge of a fascinating biological frontier. As Luskin says:

The newly discovered layers of cellular complexity they discuss are astounding. What's even more astounding is the likelihood that if Woodward and Gills were to rewrite this book in another five years, they would have much more to add about known levels of cellular epigenetic information.

The deeper we probe, the more we learn, the more complex, the more information-rich, we find living cells to be. It makes the old 20th century materialism seem almost quaint.

Here's a computer animation which shows in greatly simplified form how the cell constructs proteins. The question that it raises is how the cell knows how and when to perform all these operations? What's the "control center," so to speak, that coordinates and directs all of this activity, and how did such an amazing thing ever evolve?

The amazing choreography of all this makes one wonder if perhaps the panpsychists (those who believe that everything is pervaded by mind) aren't on to something.

Iron Man, Marching Bands, and Embryos

The other night I paused as I was flipping through the channels to watch a part of the Iron Man movie where Robert Downey, Jr. is encased in his hi-tech iron man suit. As all of the robotic assemblers timed and coordinated their operations with magnificent precision to construct the suit around Downey's body I was reminded of an article I'd read that afternoon which describes how a developing human embryo is assembled in pretty much the same way.

The coordination, timing and precision needed to assemble the iron man suit, as exacting as it is, is really a pretty simple affair compared to that which takes place in every developing child. After all, the iron man assembly process was presumably intelligently designed by human engineers, but embryonic assembly is designed to unfold by .... what? Accident?

Here's the article's lede:

Embryonic development unfolds as if it were a symphony and the members of the orchestra were the various genes that are turned on and off in the course of development. Every player must perform his part at the right moment and in the right way, otherwise the delicate balance of turning on and off signals will be disrupted, with catastrophic results. Scientists have been uncovering layer upon layer of complexity that seems to point to a symphony of processes that could only have been orchestrated by design.

In the embryo, cell processes, like musicians in an orchestra, are turning on and off with astonishing precision, but even more astonishing, perhaps, is that while they're doing this they're also migrating to precise locations around the embryo. Embryonic cell activity is actually more like a highly accomplished marching band performing a halftime show than it is like a stationary orchestra.

Imagine a band instructor leaving to chance whether the band members will play their instruments properly while moving to their assigned spots on the field at just the right time. How long would it take for a band of several hundred members to hit upon just the right pattern if every time the wrong pattern was formed the band is disqualified and another band takes its place? After all, if an evolving embryonic process gets it wrong the embryo dies.

It takes enormous faith, blind faith, in chance and serendipity to think that such a process evolved naturalistically, but blind faith is not in short supply among naturalists.

Nietzsche and the Death of God

Giles Fraser at the U.K. Guardian discloses the interesting autobiographical tidbit that it was through reading the work of atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that he was prompted to convert from atheism to Christianity. Giles doesn't explain exactly how such a counterintuitive result came about, veering off course just as he seemed about to tell us, but he does go into a lot of illuminating detail about Nietzsche's hostility toward Christian theism. Here's part of his column:

The Big Ideas series has for several months now explored the meaning of a number of familiar intellectual phrases, among them Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message", Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil" and Adam Smith's "invisible hand". But none of these feels quite as big an idea as Friedrich Nietzsche's "God is dead". After centuries of Christianity, a new dawn is being announced. And the language Nietzsche uses in his famous passage from The Gay Science reflects the enormity of his discovery: "How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?" Nothing again will ever be the same.

But what is his discovery? It isn't a eureka moment in which Nietzsche comes to understand that God does not exist. Indeed, he is not all that interested in the question of God's existence. The Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson recently told me that he would be an atheist even if God walked into the restaurant. Similarly for Nietzsche, it's not a question of evidence or the lack of it.

He is in a completely different place to the new atheist brigade of Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. If God walked into the room, Nietzsche would stab him – for his "God is dead" revelation is that humanity can only become free if it rejects the idea of the divine. Christianity is not a mistake. It is wickedness dressed up as virtue.

Nietzsche chafed at the constraints Christian morality places on man's natural inclinations and appetites. To read Nietzsche straightforwardly is to read a call for the "overmen" - the supermen, such as himself - to give free reign to his passion, his selfishness, and his cruelty.

Nietzsche's case against Christianity was that it kept people down; that it smothered them with morality and self-loathing. His ideal human is one who is free to express himself (yes, he's sexist), like a great artist or a Viking warrior. Morality is for the little people. It's the way the weak manipulate the strong. The people Nietzsche most admired and aspired to be like were those who were able to reinvent themselves through some tremendous act of will.

I have never seen anything to admire in Nietzsche's view of morality or immorality. He was badly interpreted by the Nazis. But his ethics, if one can call them that, are founded on the admiration of power as the ultimate form of abundant creativity. His hatred of Christianity comes mostly from his hatred of renunciation and the promotion of selflessness.

Jesus was a genius for having the imaginative power to reinvent Judaism but a dangerous idiot for basing this reinvention on the idea that there is virtue to be had in weakness. The weak, Nietzsche insists, are nasty and cruel. They take out their frustration on those who have the power of genuine self-expression.

It's ironic that nastiness and cruelty are not really wrong in Nietzsche's world. He despises the Christian, in fact, for influencing the strong and noble to suppress their own nastiness and cruelty. These, for Nietzsche are the prerogatives of the strong, and the weak have no business usurping them or imposing a sense of guilt on the strong who would, but for their feelings of guilt, exercise them.

Giles writes an interesting article that serves as a good introduction to the thought of the man who is considered by some to be the first modern existentialist. Give it a read.

Wisconsin Recall

This spring we'll be hearing a lot about the effort in Wisconsin to unseat their governor, Republican Scott Walker, via a special recall election. Who's trying to do this and why?

Christian Schneider at explains. He opens with this lede:

One morning last February, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker called his staff into his office. “Guys,” he warned, “it’s going to be a tough week.” Walker had recently sent a letter to state employees proposing steps—ranging from restricting collective bargaining to requiring workers to start contributing to their own pension accounts—to eliminate the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. That day in February was when Walker would announce his plan publicly.

It turned out to be a tough year. The state immediately erupted into a national spectacle, with tens of thousands of citizens, led by Wisconsin’s public-employee unions, seizing control of the capitol for weeks to protest the reforms. By early March, the crowds grew as big as 100,000, police estimated. Protesters set up encampments in the statehouse, openly drinking and engaging in drug use beneath the marble dome. Democratic state senators fled Wisconsin to prevent a vote on Walker’s plan. Eventually, the Senate did manage to pass the reforms, which survived a legal challenge and became law in July.

The unions aren’t done yet: they’re now trying to recall Walker from office. To do so, they will try to convince Wisconsin voters that Walker’s reforms have rendered the state ungovernable. But the evidence, so far, contradicts that claim — and Wisconsinites seem to realize it.

So how have Walker's reforms been working out for the people of Wisconsin? You'll have to read the rest of Schneider's piece to get the details, but the short version is this: In just six months Wisconsin has balanced the state budget, saved the taxpayers of the Wisconsin millions of dollars, and saved the jobs of hundreds of people.

It's not a bad record. It'd be nice if the folks in Washington would follow Walker's example.

Unpersuasive

The Obama administration and HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius have come under severe criticism from both the Catholic church and some civil libertarians for their decision to compel Catholic organizations to cover birth control and abortifacients in the insurance they provide their employees. The other day Joan Vennochi, writing for the Boston Globe (subscription required), sought to defend the administration, but in my view she only managed to show how weak the administration's position is. The crux of her case is this graph:

Not all employees of Catholic institutions are Catholics. Why should their employers impose their religious beliefs on them and deny coverage for birth control and other medical care (the other medical care was abortions)? As long as those Catholic institutions are getting taxpayer money, they should follow secular rules. That's the Obama administration's argument and it makes sense.

Well, maybe to some people it makes sense, but not to me. In the first place, birth control and the morning after pill are not health care, or at least not primarily so. They're primary use addresses no physiological malady. Although they may be prescribed for certain health conditions like depression or irregular menstruation, that's not why most women buy them.

Secondly, Catholic employers are not imposing their religious beliefs on anyone. On the contrary, they're trying to live by those beliefs themselves. President Obama is saying, in essence, that Catholics can no longer be Catholic. The government will dictate to which of their beliefs they can adhere and which they can't.

Nor do Catholic employers tell their non-Catholic employees that they can't use birth control or have abortions. They're simply telling them that they, Catholic employers, aren't going to pay for them. If anyone is forcing their beliefs on others in this episode it's Kathleen Sebelius and her boss Barack Obama forcing their beliefs on the Catholic church, telling the church that its employers must ignore whatever religious convictions they have about the morality of birth control and abortion and subsidize them. They're telling Catholics, essentially, that they can no longer be Catholics.

I don't know whether the affected organizations receive taxpayer support or not, but why does that matter? If they do receive it it's because they perform a valuable service to society which we want them to continue. If the government forces them to choose between violating their conscience or shutting down everyone will suffer. One in six hospital patients in this country are currently cared for by Catholic hospitals. Close every Catholic hospital, school, adoption agency and other charitable institution run by the Catholic church and their public counterparts would be swamped. Maybe Ms. Vennochio thinks it makes sense to force all those patients into public hospitals, but it's not at all clear to me what's sensible about it.

She closes with this:

Obama isn't trying to regulate religion or undermine Catholicism. He's telling Catholic leaders they can't regulate the beliefs of other faiths. That's fitting in a country that treasures religious freedom, but also values separation of church and state.

Exactly how is it regulating the beliefs of people of other faiths to decline to compensate one's employees for doing things that one believes on religious grounds to be morally wrong? The employee knows when she applies for and accepts employment what her insurance will cover and what it won't. She doesn't have to seek the job, she doesn't have to accept it, nor does she have to remain at the job if she doesn't like the coverage she receives. By taking the job and keeping it she has tacitly consented to the employer's provisions for her and she shouldn't now have the right to demand that the employer start paying for what he considers to be moral vices.

Mandating coverage of morally problematic products and procedures is not the same as the government passing laws about working conditions or minimum wage. Compelling employers to provide work breaks or to pay a certain wage does nothing to violate their conscience or their religion. By treating matters of conscience as if they were the same sort of thing as matters of pay equity or work safety the administration has put us on a slippery slope to eventually dictating to religious organizations how they will be able to practice all their religious beliefs.

Perhaps next the government will require churches, whatever they may believe about gay marriage, to marry gays or lose their tax exemption. Mr. Obama's mandate brings us closer to the day when the Church is entirely in thrall to the state and the statists.

Anyone who values separation of church and state, as Ms. Vennochio implies she does, should be appalled at this unprecedented move by the Obama administration to extend the aegis of government over matters of conscience and the contempt it shows for the principles that undergird the First Amendment to our Constitution.

Michael Ramirez expresses his judgment on the matter in this finely detailed piece of artistry:

Calling for Armageddon

If this report is accurate (it's from World Net Daily, after all, which is not always a sober news source) the Iranians have just made it impossible for the Israelis to refrain from launching an attack on the Iranian nuclear and military facilities. By calling for the complete annihilation of Israel and all Israelis in a massive pre-emptive missile strike against Israel's cities they have pretty much forced Israel to launch their own massive strike against Iran before the Iranians can carry out their plan.

The call for a pre-emption and annihilation seems to have come from surrogates of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, and although it could just be bluster and bluff, how can Israeli leaders afford to take the chance that they're not serious?

If there's any chance that this threat accurately reflects the thinking of Iran's leadership, Israel surely will not wait until Iran's missiles are in the air. It would take less than ten minutes for Israel to be laid waste. Let Reza Kahlili, a former CIA operative in the Iranian Republican Guards, tell the story:

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people. The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.

On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel.

Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.

The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]... and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles.

In order to attack Iran, the article says, Israel needs the approval and assistance of America, and under the current passive climate in the United States, the opportunity must not be lost to wipe out Israel before it attacks Iran.

Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants.

The radicals ruling Iran today not only posses over 1,000 ballistic missiles but are on the verge of ICBM delivery and have sufficient enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs even as they continue to highly enrich uranium despite four sets of U.N. sanctions.

The Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.

There's more at the link. The Iranians also threaten to destroy the United States in the piece. It's talk like this that makes war a matter of when rather than if. The Israelis must be thinking that they simply cannot afford to ignore it. An attack on Iran, the Israeli planners must reason, may have disastrous consequences for the world but the consequences of not attacking would be far worse. One way or another the fanatics in Tehran seem determined to precipitate Armageddon.

Holy Grail

Perhaps you've heard the news that a planet 4.5 times as massive as the earth has been discovered occupying the habitable zone of a relatively nearby star.

Artist's rendering of the alien planet GJ 667Cc, which is located in what could well be the habitable zone of its parent sun in a triple-star system.

The properties of the planet and it's star have led to the claim that this star is the best candidate ever for being able to support life, but the author of Privileged Planet, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, dissents:

Here are a couple important points about this particular system. First, the planets orbit an M dwarf star. M dwarfs provide very poor environments for life. They show erratic brightness fluctuations, and they produce powerful flares with dangerous radiation. Planets in the habitable zone of an M dwarf will spin down fairly quickly, leading to a "tidally-locked" situation that leads to all sorts of problems.

Second, terrestrial planets more massive than Earth are likely less habitable than Earth for several reasons. For instance, they will have less surface relief, which makes it less likely they will have dry land.

Some astronomers are eager to discover planets that can support life because if they do it'll be an important step in discrediting the modern argument for an Intelligent Designer. As it is there's no reason to doubt that our planet is unique, perhaps not just in our galaxy, but in the universe. Books like Rare Earth and Privileged Planet make this case pretty convincingly by identifying a raft of characteristics any life supporting planet (and its star and galaxy) must possess.

These books support the claim - inadvertently, perhaps, in the case of Rare Earth - that the earth is extraordinarily special, that in some sense we really are at the center of the universe, at least ontologically.

If it were discovered that our planet is not privileged, however, that it's not special, not unique, then the design argument is rendered a little less compelling. Thus the search for other suitable planets is the "Holy Grail of exoplanet research," not only for those astronomers curious to learn as much as they can about the cosmos and life, but also of those astronomers seeking, for whatever reason, to discredit the belief that the earth is a very special place.

Why the West Is Best

Over the years it's been dispiriting to encounter students who no longer feel confident that they live in the greatest country in the history of human civilization. Their lack of confidence in American exceptionalism is as unwarranted as it is sad.

Of course, anyone who bases their opinion of America upon Super Bowl ads, political ads, or television in general, can be forgiven for scoffing at the claim that the United States is a great nation. Even so, it is. No nation in modern times has been as a great a force for good in the world as has the United States.

It's ironic, therefore, that proclaiming the greatness of the West in general, and of America in particular, falls to foreign-born writers like former Muslim Ibn Warraq. Pamela Geller talks about Warraq's new book Why the West Is Best at The American Thinker. After quoting a passage from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (perhaps a regrettable selection on Geller's part) she says this:

But what about slavery? What about colonialism? What about the usual laundry list of the evils of the West that America-hating leftists trot out at every possible opportunity? This is what they're learning in our own universities these days: that America and the West are the worst things that ever happened to this planet, and if we just gave up and gave it all back to the Native Americans, the world would be better off.

Ibn Warraq shows in Why the West Is Best that the sins of the West are common to the whole world: plenty of other cultures have histories of conquest and colonialism, as well as slavery and exploitation. Only in the Western Judeo-Christian context, however, did the principles of free speech and free inquiry develop to the point that longstanding societal and cultural practices could be questioned and ultimately rejected.

Muslims took plenty of slaves, but only in the Western world did there ever arise an abolitionist movement. Muslim countries have been home to plenty of tyrants, but only in the West did free speech become a valued and protected principle, as one of society's foremost protections against regimes that could do whatever they wanted, no matter how much it outraged the will of the people.

There's more at the link. I hope liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reads Warraq's book. She recently made the baffling assertion to an Egyptian audience that Arabs contemplating a new constitution should not look to the American constitution as their model.

More importantly, I hope Warraq's message about the West percolates through American culture to the point where young Americans take pride in the accomplishments of this country and in what our country means, not only to it's own people, but to the people of the world. No other nation has ever been as powerful, as free, as prosperous, and as just.

Some nations may be able to match the U.S. in one or two of these qualities, but no nation has ever come close to matching America in all four.

Singer's Peculiar Argument

Princeton ethicist Peter Singer certainly is led to some odd conclusions given his premises that there is no God and that human life is not inherently valuable. He's argued in the past that infanticide should be legal and that people suffering from dementia should be euthanized, and his latest foray into the ethics of life is equally controversial. Singer believes it's immoral for the navy to use dolphins to detect mines because it endangers the lives of the dolphins. He writes:

According to earlier reports, the US Navy has trained about 80 dolphins to detect mines. Some reports say that the dolphins only locate the mines and drop acoustic transponders nearby, so that humans can destroy the mines, but it is also possible for the dolphins to set off the mines and die in the resulting explosion, and, of course, using the dolphins in this way makes them – and any other dolphins in the area – targets for the Iranians to destroy if they can.

Animals, or at least those who are conscious and capable of suffering or enjoying their lives, are not things for us to use in whatever way we find convenient. To believe that, because they are members of a different species, we can ignore or discount their interests is speciesism, a form of prejudice against beings who are not "us" that is akin to racism and sexism. We should give equal consideration to the interests of any sentient being, where their interests are similar to our own.

Dolphins are social mammals, capable of enjoying their lives. They form close bonds with other members of their group. They respond to images of themselves in a mirror, and use the mirror to examine marks on parts of their body that they cannot otherwise see – a test that is widely taken to be a sign of self-awareness, which human children cannot pass until they are somewhere between 18 months and two years of age.

The United States no longer conscripts its citizens to fight its wars. All its human troops are volunteers. But even conscripts have some basic rights. The dolphins have none.

Late last year, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, together with three international orca experts, and two former orca trainers asked a federal court in San Diego to declare that five orcas held and forced to perform by SeaWorld are held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution that outlaws slavery. The suit has yet to be heard, but a similar case might be made against the US Navy for its use of dolphins.

I'm a bit surprised that PETA wants to extend constitutional protections to orcas inasmuch as I don't think the drafters of the 13th amendment had orcas in mind when they drafted the prohibition against slavery. Indeed, the logic employed by Singer and PETA would make it both immoral and unconstitutional for Amish farmers to use mules to pull their plows, for police to use dogs to sniff out contraband, and for zoos to keep animals in cages.

I'm also a bit surprised that Singer bases his argument for banning the use of dolphins on these missions on the high intelligence of these animals. If they're so intelligent, and they don't want to do what the navy trains them to do, then they can simply swim off.

Singer concludes with this:

Various civilizations have, at times, enslaved human beings and forced them to fight for their oppressors. That despicable practice is now rightly condemned, as far as human beings are concerned, but the enslavement of other species continues, in many areas of human life, and the use of slaves in war continues in the United States Navy.

What makes a slave a slave is that they are kept against their will and forced against their will to serve their master. How does Singer know that the navy's dolphins meet either criterion?

He doesn't, of course, but the main point to be made here is this: Singer is assuming that people will agree with him that it's wrong - immoral - to place in harm's way intelligent animals against their will, but why, given Singer's atheism, does he think that this is wrong, or, for that matter, that anything is wrong?

Neither Singer nor anyone else who shares his naturalistic worldview can say that there is any moral right and wrong. All they can say is that they don't like how the navy's treating dolphins, but why should anyone care what Professor Singer likes about this any more than we should care what flavor ice cream he prefers? It's absurd for Singer, given his rejection of any ground for objective moral values, to argue for anything on moral grounds, but he does it all the same. It's a very peculiar argument.

The Existential Christian

Philosopher Paul Pardi pens an excellent series of essays at his website Philosophy News on questions of religious faith and reason. He's specifically interested in defending the claim that religious belief is grounded existentially but subsequently argued for rationally.

Students interested in existentialism, Kierkegaard, and the relationship of faith and reason should check it out. Here is the list of topics he discusses:

• Unlocking the Tension Between Faith and Reason
• The Ground of Faith
• How do Faith and Reason Relate?
• Faith and Reason in Existentialist Thought
• Is Faith Practical?
• Faith and Reason in Tension
• Kierkegaard and the Modern Religious Mind
• The Irrational Faith--Proof, Intuitions, and Religious Belief
• Interview with Dr. Paul Moser: On Knowing God
• Interview with Dr. C. Stephen Evans: Kierkegaard, Natural Signs, and Knowing God

One of his key points throughout the series is that it's the failure to comprehend the existential grounding of belief that causes so many atheist writers to go astray in their critiques of Christian theism.

By "existential grounding" he means something like the following taken from his essay on Kierkegaard and the Modern Religious Mind:

I met my wife-to-be when I was 17 and she 14. She was from Oregon, I was from New York. She grew up in a middle-class town consisting mainly of residents of Irish, Scottish, and German descent. I was raised lower-middle class in a homogenous population of second and third generation Italian-Americans. She loved sushi, salsa, smoked salmon, and lima beans. I subsisted mainly on pasta with red sauce and Iceberg lettuce salads. Distance, age, family background, economics, and a long list of other circumstances should have kept us apart. Yet we found ourselves spending a summer together and connected on wholly irrelevant grounds: we both are identical twins. Our relationship made little sense and most everyone we knew let us know it.

My mother regularly reminded me of my full-blooded Italian heritage and the implications of “breaking the chain.” Her father, with a knowing grin on his face, thought that “dating” a scrawny boy of 17 who lived 3000 miles away wouldn’t last more than 3 months. Our twin siblings, amused by the quaint letter writing and phone calls, didn’t get it. Our worlds couldn’t have been more distant. Our families couldn’t have been more different. Yet we were in love. Damn the critics and naysayers and all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. We didn’t care what was reasonable. We cared about each other and we wanted nothing more than to be together and spend each waking minute with each other.

For Søren Kierkegaard, being a Christian is like falling in love. Most passionate, erotic relationships are not rational nor should they be. They are not strictly irrational though reason doesn’t seem to apply to them. When two people fall in love, they may know very little about one another but this is not relevant; in fact its part of its virtue. Common sense becomes a ballast and the lovers discard it, intentionally or not, for the possibility that all the promises they hope are true will be realized.

To those on the outside, their relationship may seem silly at best and dangerous or harmful at worst. Yet they jump in with both feet, critics and naysayers be damned. Theirs is a voyage christened by passion and driven by the excitement of a lifetime of discovery and private, personal moments that only the two will share. Their relationship is lived each moment, and only analyzed or talked about or reasoned with when disaster strikes. They have nothing to prove to outsiders and seek to be true only to themselves and what they’ve committed to each other.

If one is to be a true Christian, says Kierkegaard, one must take a similar leap of faith.

In other words, arguments against Christian belief that are based on reason, to the extent that the argument itself has any validity, is not going to be particularly effective because Christian commitment is a matter of the heart, not of the head. It's much more like falling in love than it is like working a problem in geometry.

The critic can tell the believer that his belief is irrational, just like friends and family can tell a person in love that his love is irrational, but the effort is usually pointless and unavailing.

White Tribes

Charles Murray is a sociologist of some repute having to his credit several very prominent books on race and class (The Bell Curve, Losing Ground). His newest book, like his others, is generating a considerable amount of discussion.

Bradford Wilcox, for example, has a piece about it in the Wall Street Journal and David Brooks writes on it in the New York Times.

It's often assumed, at least by conservatives, that the repository of traditional values (faith, work, family), and the key supporters of traditional institutions (church, family), had always been the middle class and that the greatest threat to these values came from liberal elites in the upper middle class and higher. What Murray has shown is that this paradigm is not true, or at least is no longer true. Today it's the upper classes which cherish the traditional values of religion, family, work, etc. and the lower classes that are sloughing them off, at least this is the case among whites (Murray didn't study other racial or ethnic groups).

His book is titled Coming Apart: The State of White America, and its message is important.

Here are some excerpts from Wilcox's column:

Mr. Murray contends that a large swath of white America—poor and working-class whites, who make up approximately 30% of the white population—is turning away from the core values that have sustained the American experiment. At the same time, the top 20% of the white population has quietly been recovering its cultural moorings after a flirtation with the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, argues Mr. Murray in his elegiac book, the greatest source of inequality in America now is not economic; it is cultural.

He is particularly concerned with the ways in which working-class whites are losing touch with what he calls the four "founding virtues"—industriousness, honesty (including abiding by the law), marriage and religion, all of which have played a vital role in the life of the republic.

Consider what has happened with marriage. The destructive family revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s has gradually eased—at least in the nation's most privileged precincts. In the past 20 years, divorce rates have come down, marital quality (self-reported happiness in marriage) has risen and non-marital childbearing (out-of-wedlock births) is a rare occurrence among the white upper class. Marriage is not losing ground in America's best neighborhoods.

But it's a very different story in blue-collar America. Since the 1980s, divorce rates have risen, marital quality has fallen and non-marital childbearing is skyrocketing among the white lower class. Less than 5% of white college-educated women have children outside of marriage, compared with approximately 40% of white women with just a high-school diploma. The bottom line is that a growing marriage divide now runs through the heart of white America.

Who would have guessed, for instance, that the white upper class is now much more likely to be found in church on any given Sunday than the white working class? Or that, just before the recession struck, white men in the 30-49 age bracket with a high-school diploma were about four times more likely to have simply stopped looking for work, compared with their college-educated peers? By Mr. Murray's account, faith and industriousness are in increasingly short supply among working-class whites.

Mr. Murray's sobering portrait is of a nation where millions of people are losing touch with the founding virtues that have long lent American lives purpose, direction and happiness.

As I read this I found myself wondering which way the cause and effect arrow points here. Has the loss of values created poverty and unhappiness, or is it the other way around? I suspect it's largely the former. When people no longer value family, hard work, and faith they, or their children, almost inevitably wind up inhabiting the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder, but the reverse is far from true. People who value the traditional virtues may start out poor, but they're often able to rise out of it.

In any event, David Brooks adds these thoughts:

I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart.” I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.

America has polarized. The word “class” doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes. You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.

People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.

Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Members of the lower tribe...live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

All of this is fascinating and perhaps - for those of us of a certain age and sociological background - counterintuitive. Brooks, however, isn't content to simply describe Murray's analysis. He feels compelled to give voice to his inner progressive and offer a typically liberal solution to the problem:

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.

Egads. This prescription is absolutely execrable. People work hard and sacrifice so that they can get away from those who don't, but Brooks calls for government to force them to live together whether they want to or not. Like so many on the Left Brooks labors under the delusion that if you throw people with weak values and lousy social habits together with those who possess strong values and good social habits the good will pull the bad up to their level. Perhaps no dogma in the liberal catechism has been more thoroughly discredited by human experience than this one.

It flies in the face of the accumulated wisdom of centuries. Good apples don't make bad apples good. Good money doesn't drive out bad. Putting weak students in classrooms with good students only slows down the good students and frustrates the weak students even more. The examples are legion.

But Brooks is a liberal and liberals cling to their fantasies and superstitions regardless of what traditional wisdom teaches or empirical facts demonstrate. His solution has all the attractiveness and merit of the old forced busing nostrums of the 1970s.

Mr. Brooks opines that the solution to our increasing tribalism is to forcibly "jam the tribes together." I wonder how economically diverse his own neighborhood is.

Obama's War on Religious Conscience

Michael Gerson is one of the most irenic, even-tempered columnists in journalism. He's a man who eschews fiery, over-heated rhetoric and scarcely ever utters a cross word. So when he writes a column in which he sounds like he's angry there's probably good reason to be angry. It turns out that in this case there is, and he's not the only one who's upset.

The column in question was animated by the latest assault on the First Amendment and freedom of conscience by the Obama administration. It comes on the heels of a decision by Democrats in the state of Illinois to give Catholic adoption agencies the choice of going out of business or placing children with gay parents.

Soon thereafter President Obama's Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, cut funding to an organization that works with girls rescued from the sex trade because the organization would not recommend abortion services.

Now Secretary Sebelius has refused to grant exemptions to religious organizations (such as hospitals and universities) which hire people of other faiths from provisions in Obamacare which require them to violate their conscience and provide free contraception and abortifacient coverage in their health care plans. Mr. Obama could have issued a waiver for religious organizations but chose not to, earning him a storm of condign criticism.

Rod Dreher, for instance, quotes a friend, a liberal lawyer and Obama supporter, who is astonished at this move:

But Obama, to placate the abortion lobby, has decided to not merely ignore Catholic concerns as he already did, but now to affirmatively attack them. It is unimaginable that he could be this politically stupid. He now provides evidence that makes me (largely a liberal Democrat) wonder if this administration and elements in the Democratic Party are not in fact pursuing a wider agenda to reduce religious voice and presence in the public square. Until now, I had left that kind of theorizing to the conservative talk shows — but what else explains this move?

Dreher's friend has a lot more venting to do at the link.

Here are some excerpts from Gerson's column:

In politics, the timing is often the message. On Jan. 20 -- three days before the annual March for Life -- the Obama administration announced its final decision that Catholic universities, hospitals and charities will be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.

Catholic leaders are still trying to process the implications of this ambush. The president had every opportunity to back down from confrontation. In the recent Hosanna-Tabor ruling, a unanimous Supreme Court reaffirmed a broad religious autonomy right rooted in the Constitution. President Barack Obama could have taken the decision as justification for retreat.

And it would have been a minor retreat. The administration was on the verge of mandating nearly universal contraceptive coverage through Obamacare without public notice. There would have been no controversy at all if Obama had simply exempted religious institutions and ministries. But the administration insisted that the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary's Hospital be forced to pay for the privilege of violating their convictions.

Obama chose to substantially burden a religious belief, by the most intrusive means, for a less-than-compelling state purpose -- a marginal increase in access to contraceptives that are easily available elsewhere. The religious exemption granted by Obamacare is narrower than anywhere else in federal law -- essentially covering the delivery of homilies and the distribution of sacraments. Serving the poor and healing the sick are regarded as secular pursuits -- a determination that would have surprised Christianity's founder.

Both radicalism and maliciousness are at work in Obama's decision -- an edict delivered with a sneer. It is the most transparently anti-Catholic maneuver by the federal government since the Blaine Amendment was proposed in 1875 -- a measure designed to diminish public tolerance of Romanism, then regarded as foreign, authoritarian and illiberal. Modern liberalism has progressed to the point of adopting the attitudes and methods of 19th-century Republican nativists.

Obama is claiming the executive authority to determine which missions of believers are religious and which are not -- and then to aggressively regulate institutions the government declares to be secular. It is a view of religious liberty so narrow and privatized that it barely covers the space between a believer's ears.

Obama's decision also reflects a certain view of liberalism. Classical liberalism was concerned with the freedom to hold and practice beliefs at odds with a public consensus. Modern liberalism uses the power of the state to impose liberal values on institutions it regards as backward. It is the difference between pluralism and anti-clericalism.

The administration's ultimate motivation is uncertain. Has it adopted a radical secularism out of conviction, or is it cynically appealing to radical secularists? In either case, the war on religion is now formally declared.

Whatever Mr. Obama's motivations, if he has his way Catholic institutions will be a fading presence on our cultural landscape, and all of us, Catholic and non-Catholic, will be the poorer for it.

The Vote Pump

Here's an entire course explaining why we're in deep economic trouble contained in a six minute video by Bill Whittle:

If you're a young person just entering the workforce .... good luck. These problems were bad when Mr. Obama came to office, and, to his everlasting credit, he has worked assiduously to make them infinitely worse.