Different Strokes

Even after all we've learned in the last couple of decades about how people in the rest of the world live their lives, there are still some liberal-minded folk who like to tell us that we in the West shouldn't think that our way of life is superior to that of people living elsewhere around the globe. All cultures and ways of life are equally worthy of celebration, the multiculturalists and cultural relativists insist, we're all patches in the brightly colored quilt of human expression and no patch is of better quality or more importance than another.

This sentiment makes for warm feelings in university faculty lounges and classrooms and may prompt us to break into a treacly chorus or two of Up with People or We Are the World, but it's an awfully hard belief to maintain once we start looking at how so many of the world's people actually live.

We've spoken on numerous occasions here at Viewpoint, for instance, about honor killings, a practice that occurs throughout the Arab/Muslim world. Women who've in some way "dishonored" their families, usually by seeing men of whom the family disapproves, are murdered, often in brutal fashion and with the tacit consent of the community, by male relatives.

Recently Al Arabiya reported that there were almost 1000 such murders in Pakistan alone last year. This tally is up from almost 900 in 2010. Here are some "highlights" from the Al Arabiya story:

At least 943 Pakistani women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honor, the country’s leading human rights group said Thursday. The statistics highlight the growing scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are frequently treated as second-class citizens and there is no law against domestic violence.

Despite progress on better protecting women’s rights, activists say the government needs to do more to prosecute murderers in cases largely dismissed by police as private, family affairs. “At least 943 women were killed in the name of honor, of which 93 were minors,” wrote the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its annual report.

Seven Christian and two Hindu women were among the victims.

The Commission reported 791 “honor killings” in 2010. Around 595 of the women killed in 2011 were accused of having “illicit relations” and 219 of marrying without permission. Some victims were raped or gang raped before being killed. Most of the women were killed by their brothers and husbands.

Only 20 of 943 killed were reported to have been provided medical aid before they died.

Contra the multicultis, we need to affirm that in fact some ways of life really are better than others and some cultures are quite simply degenerate. A society which treats the rape, torture, and murder of its young women as nothing more than a private domestic squabble is, not to put too fine a point on it, depraved.

I urge anyone still in the grip of the multicultural fantasy to rent the movie The Stoning of Soroya M. which is based on a true story. Watch the film and then see if you still think it's all just a matter of "different strokes for different folks".

Botched Job

Sunday was the anniversary of the Obama administration's decision to intervene in Libya under the guise of protecting Libyan citizens from Col. Qaddafi's threats to destroy them. The anniversary passed with little comment from the president's spokespersons and for good reason, I suppose.

This intervention followed hard upon our political intervention in Egypt taking the side of those who wished to depose Hosni Mubarak. That intervention followed our refusal to intervene to help the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran who were being shot in the streets by thugs loyal to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. All of these preceded (still with me?) our refusal to intervene in Syria where yet another tyrant is slaughtering his people by the thousands.

Perhaps there's a coherent foreign policy here, but if so it's difficult to say what it might be. What are the principles which govern Mr. Obama's decisions about whom to help and whom to let die? Why did we have a "Responsibility to Protect" Libyan civilians but no such responsibility vis a vis Syrian civilians?

Where we did intervene, of course, we made a mess of things. Egypt is now being ruled by Islamists who are hostile to both their own Coptic Christians and the Israelis. They're merrily murdering the Copts, burning their churches, and threatening to murder the Israelis.

Libya is governed, if one can call it that, by rival militias who've smuggled guns and other weaponry to Islamic insurgents in Mali, a country on Libya's southern border which had been a firm ally of ours in the war on terror. Now the military has deposed the government in a coup, and soldiers and others are plundering the capital. A relatively stable African country is in chaos largely as a consequence of our intervention in Libya.

Remember how the Democrats derided George Bush for commending his FEMA director for a job well done in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when by all appearances the director had botched the job? The mockery went on for years. When will the Democrats start deriding the Obama administration for a feckless, helter skelter foreign policy that has botched North Africa far worse than anything FEMA ever did?

Spring Break

I don't know if President Obama will win in November or not, but whichever turns out to be the case it doesn't look like he'll have a lock on the Spring Break college crowd this time around.

I hope the parents of these kids don't see this video. It'd be terribly depressing to consider how much money they're spending to send their offspring off to school to have them learn so little about the world.

The Bomb and the Bomber

This piece by Ari Shavit in the New York Times is perhaps the best concise explanation I've seen for why an Israeli attack on Iran would be perilous and why failure to attack would be calamitous.

Shavit starts out by stating that a nuclear Iran will change the world:

An Iranian atom bomb will force Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt to acquire their own atom bombs. Thus a multipolar nuclear arena will be established in the most volatile region on earth. Sooner or later, this unprecedented development will produce a nuclear event. The world we know will cease to be the world we know after Tehran, Riyadh, Cairo or Tel Aviv become the 21st century’s Hiroshima.

An Iranian bomb will bring about universal nuclear proliferation. Humanity’s greatest achievement since 1945 was controlling nuclear armament by limiting the number of members in the exclusive nuclear club. This unfair arrangement created a world order that guaranteed relative world peace.

But if Iran goes nuclear and the Middle East goes nuclear so will the Third World. If the ayatollahs are allowed to have Robert Oppenheimer’s deadly toy, every emerging power in Asia and Africa will be entitled to have it. The 60-year-old world order that guaranteed world peace will collapse.

Not only will every tyrant with enough cash on hand to buy a nuke on the black market obtain one, but in a world glutted with the things so will every Islamic terrorist organization. It will also give Iran hegemony over the entire Middle East, at least until other countries catch up.

Even so, an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear weapons program will also change the world:

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will create the most dramatic international crisis of the post-cold war era. As the Jewish state and the Shiite republic exchange blows, the Middle East will be rattled. Tensions will rise between pro-Iranian Russia, China and India and anti-Iranian United States, Britain, France and Germany. As oil prices soar higher (to $250-$300 a barrel), financial markets will panic and the world economy will experience a real setback.

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will unleash a regional war whose consequences might be catastrophic. Iran will strike back with all it has: Hezbollah, Hamas, Shahab missiles, strategic surprises. Iran will block the Strait of Hormuz and call upon all Muslims to come to its rescue. Although most Arab regimes will be secretly supportive of the Israeli operation, the Arab masses might rise.

Throughout the world, millions of Muslims will see the attack on Iran as an attack on their own dignity and pride. The religious struggle provoked by the Israeli action might go on for decades.

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities might drag the United States into war. Israel has limited air power. Israeli cities are threatened by 200,000 rockets. If an Iranian-led counteroffensive sets Tel Aviv ablaze and kills thousands of Israeli civilians, the U.S. will feel obliged to intervene. Rather than initiate a well-planned and internationally backed American surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear project, America will become captive of an Israeli-Iranian war spiraling out of control.

There's more to Shavit's analysis at the link.

United States' policy toward Iran has been until recently little more than a hope that the Iranians will come to their senses. It seems to have been predicated on the delusion that when the Iranians say they want to destroy Israel they don't really mean it. It turns out now that they apparently do mean it, and our response may well be too little too late to avert catastrophe.

At this point it seems that war is inevitable. The question is to what extent President Obama will involve us and whether Israel can by itself degrade Iran's nuclear program sufficiently to prevent them from obtaining the capacity to incinerate Tel Aviv.

China Coup?

Our Chinese readers (yes, we have some) are probably already aware of this, but others may also be interested in rumors coming out of Beijing of unusual police and military activity in the city suggesting a possible coup attempt. Here's the lede of the Washington Times' report:

U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring China’s Internet say that from March 14 to Wednesday bloggers circulated alarming reports of tanks entering Beijing and shots being fired in the city as part of what is said to have been a high-level political battle among party leaders - and even a possible military coup.

The Internet discussions included photos posted online of tanks and other military vehicles moving around Beijing.

The reports followed the ouster last week of senior Politburo member and Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, who was linked to corruption, but who is said to remain close to China’s increasingly nationalistic military.

Chinese microblogging sites Sina Weibo, QQ Weibo, and the bulletin board of the search engine Baidu all reported “abnormalities” in Beijing on the night of March 19.

The comments included rumors of the downfall of the Shanghai leadership faction and a possible “military coup,” along with reports of gunfire on Beijing’s Changan Street. The reports were quickly removed by Chinese censors shortly after postings and could no longer be accessed by Wednesday.

The unusual postings included reports that military vehicles were sent to control Changan Street, along with plainclothes police officers and metal barriers. Another posting quoted internal sources as saying senior Communist Party leaders are divided over the ouster of Mr. Bo. The divide was said to pit Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and against party security forces and Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang.

Late Wednesday, another alarming indicator came when Beijing authorities ordered all levels of public-security and internal-security forces under Mr. Zhou to conduct nationwide study sessions, although Mr. Zhou’s name was not on the order - a sign his future may be in doubt.

Additional references on Chinese social media included vague mention of high-level party political struggles and related police activity in Beijing.

One posting referred to a mysterious atmosphere in Beijing and a reported shooting Tuesday night. The posting was quickly censored by authorities.

There's more at the link.

The Hunger Games

I belong to a small group of men who meet monthly to discuss a book selected each month by a member of the group. The book selected for our most recent meeting was The Hunger Games by Susan Collins. It wasn't a book I would've picked, but after reading it I'm glad for a couple of reasons that I did. First, it's immensely popular with younger readers, and I like to stay in touch, when I can, with what young people are reading, and secondly, I think it offers, perhaps inadvertently, a very important and significant message.

There were two things about the story which jumped out at me. First, the society in which it takes place is one of horrific cruelty and savagery. Second, there's no evidence anywhere in the book of any trace of religious conviction. The two, in my opinion, are not unrelated.

Human nature is fundamentally brutal. That brutality, particularly in the West, has been mitigated to some extent by the belief that we are commanded by God to do justice and love our neighbor. Where that belief has had purchase on the hearts of people civilization has advanced and humankind's basest impulses have been sublimated. Wherever it has failed to gain a grip on the conscience, however, life has been nasty, brutish, bestial, and short.

Just as in ancient Rome where men had no reason to think that the gods cared at all about how they behaved, they behaved with shocking sadism and barbarism, so it has been, at least in the West, up to our own day. The twentieth century was the high water mark of philosophical materialism, and it was also the bloodiest, most inhumane century since the days of the Roman Coliseum. The legacy of atheism, whether in fascist Germany, communist Europe and Asia, or anywhere else in the modern world, is unparalleled for it's horrors and fascination with death.

The dystopia Collins envisions is nothing new. It's simply a somewhat futuristic version of ancient Rome. It's what men become when they no longer feel bound to the commands of a transcendent moral lawgiver. It might also be noted that nowhere in the tale Collins spins for us, at least so far as I can remember, does anyone express moral outrage at the injustice and depravity of the festival. It's as if no one in Panem thinks in terms of moral categories. They resent what's happening to them, of course, they hate the people responsible for their predicament, but they seem to accept the evil as the natural way of things.

No one voices the opinion that it's a moral abomination, and, of course, in a world that has lost a vision of the transcendent, of God, moral reticence makes perfect sense. If there's no moral authority then there's no moral right and wrong, no good or evil, just nature red in tooth and claw.

If you haven't read the book yet, I commend it, not as literature - it's not that - but as an allegory. Whether Collins intended it or not her book is an allegory of the degeneration of a civilization that has lost its belief that anything matters other than power and pleasure. It's a vivid picture of what the world becomes when God is shut out.

The movie, which I'm told is very faithful to the book, comes out this week:

Meaning and Beauty

Michael Baruzzini writing at First Things recalls the recent exchange between Richard Dawkins and Archbishop Rowan Williams in which Dawkins admitted that he was an agnostic about God, not, strictly speaking, an atheist. Much was made of the admission in the media despite the fact that it was a trivial distinction as Baruzzini explains:

This admission, though it caught the notice of the media, was not really anything new for Dawkins, who has made similar concessions in the past. Dawkins’ approach to all knowledge is strictly scientific. And since scientific knowledge is always technically tentative, so too must his ostensibly scientific opinion of the non-existence of God. Dawkins dismisses God because he finds no scientific evidence for God, but he must make allowances for the fact that scientific knowledge is always expanding.

Dawkins is still an atheist, after all, because agnosticism is simply a species of the genus atheism. Atheism is the lack of belief in a God and agnostics lack a belief in God. They are what might be called soft atheists because, unlike the hard atheist, they don't make the very strong and undemonstrable claim that God doesn't exist. They simply hold that the evidence is insufficient to justify believing that He does.

It was another comment that Dawkins made in the same discussion that I found much more interesting:

Speaking to his believing conversational companion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Dawkins said, “What I can’t understand is why you can’t see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing—that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”

I don't think Dawkins is quite right about this. Beauty ultimately depends upon meaning. Meaningless form and color may please the senses, it may be pretty, but it doesn't rise to the level of beauty unless there's meaning to it. Just as a meaningless sexual experience, though it may afford some degree of pleasure, is hardly beautiful, a world full of things for which we've evolved an aesthetic appreciation may be intriguing, but it's ultimately beautiful because it exudes meaning from every nook, cranny, and pore.

Baruzzini puts the point somewhat differently:

The archbishop, rather than disputing, agreed with Dawkins about the beauty of the scientific description of the development of life. But he then explained that God was not an extra that was “shoehorned” onto the scientific explanation. Dawkins’ mistake, the archbishop attempted to show, was to suppose that the scientific explanation suffices, and the religious one is an unnecessary complication. The beauty that Dawkins finds in science is not challenged by belief in God; it presupposes it.

Beauty is something reasonable. The beauty of scientific explanation comes from seeing that the arrangement of things is so ordered to produce the phenomena we observe. The scientist begins with a mess of clues and an unfinished puzzle. He begins with a mystery. He seeks that moment when the pieces fall into place. Dawkins’ picture of scientific beauty comes from seeing just this arrangement in evolution, in the material development of the universe. But where creation presents a unified theme returning, finally, to reason, atheistic scientism must insist that at bottom [there] is only unreason.

If it all has no meaning, no purpose, if it's all simply the effluent of a cosmic belch, the beauty drains out of it.

Baruzzini goes on to make a further point about Dawkins' views that should be emphasized. He asserts that:

Dawkins supposes that the doctrine of creation requires a Divine Tinkerer, interfering with or co-opting the natural beauty present in the workings of the natural world. Whether or not God tinkered with creation in the manner envisioned by creationism or some versions of intelligent design, such tinkering is neither necessary to the doctrine of creation nor is it the source of the beauty seen by the believer.

To use an analogy previously developed by Stephen Barr, to ask whether God or evolution created life is like asking whether Shakespeare or Hamlet killed Polonius. If there is no Shakespeare, Hamlet’s act is meaningless. It is merely the accidental arrangement of ink on a page. If there is a Shakespeare, however, his existence as the creator of the literary Denmark does not obviate the drama of the play. It is rather a necessary prerequisite for it. Shakespeare, as a playwright, is not a competitor with the drama of the play.

There's more at the link, but I want to return for a moment to the matter of beauty: Philosophers going back to Plato have affirmed that the highest ideals are the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, but if the world is nothing more than atoms spinning in the void then there really is no Good, no Truth that matters, and no Beauty. The awe we feel when we look at mountains or a sunset or a galaxy is just the perturbations of chemicals in our brains triggered by a particular visual pattern.

It's only when we somehow see meaning in what we observe that we experience its beauty, but there can only be meaning if behind the experience there is a mind that has intentionally created it. Take away the author, the painter, the composer, the architect and there is no meaning and thus no beauty for us to enjoy. A novel filled with eloquently turned phrases and well-crafted sentences nevertheless lacks beauty if the story makes no sense.

The world and life are beautiful because they're filled by it's composer/author with deep, profound meaning.

What Is Philosophy?

Plato gives us perhaps the earliest definition of philosophy when he has Socrates say in The Republic that philosophy is the love of wisdom. Unfortunately, that definition doesn't shed much light on exactly what it is philosophers actually do.

Paul Pardi pitches in to help provide a fuller explanation and thereby does a service for introductory philosophy students everywhere by tackling the question of what philosophy is (and isn't) in a post at Philosophy News. He begins by explaining why philosophy is not science, psychology, linguistics, nor theology even though philosophers address issues common to those disciplines.

What philosophy is, Pardi writes, is a practical framework that leads to truth and which constitutes the foundation of all other subjects. This by itself might not help much, but in his post he explains in more detail what he means by this.

His explanation should be helpful to students trying to figure out what the heck it is they're supposed to be learning in philosophy class.

Reason Rally

Philosopher Edward Feser discusses the upcoming "Reason Rally" scheduled to be held on the Washington Mall on March 24th. It's to be a gathering of atheists out to demonstrate their profound wish to live life according to the dictates of Reason rather than embracing the spurious superstitions held by religious people.

Feser holds such gatherings in pretty low esteem for reasons he articulates in his post, but the most salient reason, perhaps, is that Reason is often the first casualty of mass demonstrations.

His post is amusing and witty, and he even manages to link the reader to some video that shows the Rally organizers practicing for one of their most popular Rally activities. Of course, Feser says he's just kidding, but given the vitriol on some atheistic web sites one has little trouble imagining a Two-Minutes Hate on the agenda.

Anyway, here's his lede:

I have always hated mobs. Thus I dislike mass demonstrations with their slogans and banners, marches and sit-ins, and all the rest of the obnoxious apparatus of modern protest. Usually the cause is bad, and the participants are ignorant yahoos. But I dislike such rallies even when the cause is good and the participants well-meaning. They may sometimes be necessary, but they are always regrettable and to be avoided if possible.

The reason is that reason is impossible with a crowd. Serious matters require calm reflection, sufficient background knowledge, careful distinctions, the give and take of objections and replies, and always the willingness to submit oneself to superior arguments and objective truth. But the thinking of a crowd is, in the best circumstances, dumbed down, slipshod, and banal; and at its worst there is no madness or evil to which a crowd might not descend. A crowd shouts, chants, emotes, and is always, always demanding this or that -- it is appetitive rather than cognitive.

In a crowd, the rational in rational animal is always in danger of giving way, leaving just the animal, indeed a herd of animals. The individual, or a small group of friends, can dispute with Socrates about the good, the true, and the beautiful. The crowd votes to execute him. The individual, or a small group of disciples, can have their hearts moved by Christ. The crowd shouts for His crucifixion.

How fitting, then, that the Counter-Religion that is the New Atheism has now decided to make of itself a mob. Something called the “Reason Rally” is scheduled for March 24 at the National Mall in Washington, D. C. and the Counter-Prophet Richard Dawkins is headlining as chief rouser of the “rationalist” rabble. The name alone exposes it for the farce that it is -- a “Reason Rally” being (for the reasons just given) somewhat akin to a “Chastity Orgy” or a “Temperance Kegger.” As always, the New Atheist satirizes himself before you can do it for him.

You'll have to read the rest at the link. Meanwhile, I've always been mystified by why atheists claim the banner of Reason, or, more precisely, how they're allowed to get away with it. What, for example is reasonable about:

• embracing the completely untestable idea that there are an infinite number of universes simply to escape the conclusion that this exquisitely calibrated universe is the product of an intelligent agent.
• believing that an enormous amount of biological information arose purely by the chance collocation of blind, unguided forces in the form of ancient living cells which then proliferated producing marvels like human consciousness when never in human experience have we ever seen complex specified information produced by anything other than minds.
• affirming that life is meaningful on one hand while on the other insisting that we're just the accidental by-product of unthinking material forces and that death is the end of our existence.
• thinking that our moral judgments actually mean something while at the same time asserting that morality is an illusion that has evolved over hundreds of millenia to help us get along.
• promoting the notion that there are objective human rights which somehow really exist and are not just arbitrary make-believe constructs that we talk about but have no basis for believing in.

Maybe some speaker at the Reason Rally will be able to explain to the assembled unbelievers how they can be rational on the one hand while still believing any of these things on the other. If so, I look forward to hearing it.

Why We Celebrate St. Patrick

Millions of Americans, many of them descendents of Irish immigrants, celebrate their Irish heritage by observing St. Patrick's Day today. We are indebted to Thomas Cahill and his best-selling book How The Irish Saved Civilization for explaining to us why Patrick's is a life worth commemorating. As improbable as his title may sound, Cahill weaves a fascinating and compelling tale of how the Irish in general, and Patrick and his spiritual heirs in particular, served as a tenuous but crucial cultural bridge from the classical world to the medieval age and, by so doing, made Western civilization possible.

Born a Roman citizen in 390 B.C., Patrick had been kidnapped as a boy of sixteen from his home on the coast of Britain and taken by Irish barbarians to Ireland. There he languished in slavery until he was able to escape six years later. Upon his homecoming he became a Christian, studied for the priesthood, and eventually returned to Ireland where he would spend the rest of his life laboring to persuade the Irish to accept the Gospel and to abolish slavery. Patrick was the first person in history, in fact, to speak out unequivocally against slavery and, according to Cahill, the last person to do so until the 17th century.

Meanwhile, Roman control of Europe had begun to collapse. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 A.D. and barbarians were sweeping across the continent, forcing the Romans back to Italy, and plunging Europe into the Dark Ages. Throughout the continent unwashed, illiterate hordes descended on the once grand Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books. Learning ground to a halt and the literary heritage of the classical world was burned or moldered into dust. Almost all of it, Cahill claims, would surely have been lost if not for the Irish.

Having been converted to Christianity through the labors of Patrick, the Irish took with gusto to reading, writing and learning. They delighted in letters and bookmaking and painstakingly created indescribably beautiful Biblical manuscripts such as the Book of Kells which is on display today in the library of Trinity College in Dublin. Aware that the great works of the past were disappearing, they applied themselves assiduously to the daunting task of copying all surviving Western literature - everything they could lay their hands on.

For a century after the fall of Rome, Irish monks sequestered themselves in cold, damp, cramped mud huts called scriptoria, so remote and isolated from the world that they were seldom threatened by the marauding pagans. Here these men spent their entire adult lives reproducing the old manuscripts and preserving literacy and learning for the time when people would be once again ready to receive them.

These scribes and their successors served as the conduits through which the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the benighted tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruin of the civilization they had recently overwhelmed. Around the late 6th century, three generations after Patrick, Irish missionaries with names like Columcille, Aidan, and Columbanus began to venture out from their monasteries and refuges, clutching their precious books to their hearts, sailing to England and the continent, founding their own monasteries and schools among the barbarians and teaching them how to read, write and make books of their own.

Absent the willingness of these courageous men to endure deprivations and hardships of every kind for the sake of the Gospel and learning, Cahill argues, the world that came after them would have been completely different. It would likely have been a world without books. Europe almost certainly would have been illiterate, and it would probably have been unable to resist the Muslim incursions that arrived a few centuries later.

The Europeans, starved for knowledge, soaked up everything the Irish missionaries could give them. From such seeds as these modern Western civilization germinated. From the Greeks the descendents of the Goths and Vandals learned philosophy, from the Romans they learned about law, from the Bible they learned of the worth of the individual who, created and loved by God, is therefore significant and not merely a brutish aggregation of matter.

From the Bible, too, they learned that the universe was created by a rational Mind and was thus not capricious, random, or chaotic. It would yield its secrets to rational investigation. Out of these assumptions, once their implications were finally and fully developed, grew historically unprecedented views of the value of the individual and the flowering of modern science.

Our cultural heritage is thus, in a very important sense, a legacy from the Irish. A legacy from Patrick. It is worth pondering on this St. Patrick's Day what the world would be like today had it not been for those early Irish scribes and missionaries thirteen centuries ago.

Buiochas le Dia ar son na nGaeil (Thank God for the Irish), and I hope you have a great St. Patrick's Day.

Mr. Obama's Misleading 2%

Mr. Obama has consistently argued that we cannot lower gas prices by increasing the oil supply, and that drilling new wells would not help us. But he's now reported to be considering opening the national petroleum reserve in order to increase the supply so gas prices will come down. There seems to be a contradiction in there somewhere.

The president has also stated that we use 20% of the world's oil but have only 2% of the world's reserves. This, it turns out, is very misleading. Here's an explanation from John Merline at Investor's Business Daily:

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump.

"Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said. "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves." Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices.

It's the same rhetoric President Obama is using now, as gas prices hit $4 again, except now he puts the figure at 2%. "With only 2% of the world's oil reserves, we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices," he said. "Not when we consume 20% of the world's oil."

The claim makes it appear as though the U.S. is an oil-barren nation, perpetually dependent on foreign oil and high prices unless we can cut our own use and develop alternative energy sources like algae.

But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all the country's oil needs for hundreds of years.

The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world's proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves "are a small subset of recoverable resources," because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.

When you look at the whole picture, it turns out that there are vast supplies of oil in the U.S., according to various government reports. Among them:

• At least 86 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf yet to be discovered, according to the government's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
• About 24 billion barrels in shale deposits in the lower 48 states, according to EIA.
• Up to 2 billion barrels of oil in shale deposits in Alaska's North Slope, says the U.S. Geological Survey.
• Up to 12 billion barrels in ANWR, according to the USGS.
• As much as 19 billion barrels in the Utah tar sands, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Then, there's the massive Green River Formation in Wyoming, which according to the USGS contains a stunning 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale — a type of oil released from sedimentary rock after it's heated.

A separate Rand Corp. study found that about 800 billion barrels of oil shale in Wyoming and neighboring states is "technically recoverable," which means it could be extracted using existing technology. That's more than triple the known reserves in Saudi Arabia.

All told, the U.S. has access to 400 billion barrels of crude that could be recovered using existing drilling technologies, according to a 2006 Energy Department report.

When you include oil shale, the U.S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research, enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years, without any imports.

And even this number could be low, since such estimates tend to go up over time.

Merline goes on to explain why we're not utilizing these resources. There's a pyramid accompanying his article that shows all the domestic petroleum in the U.S., and the 2% the president refers to is the very tip of the pyramid:

One thing Merline doesn't mention but which should be pointed out is that when the president claims we're drilling more than ever what he omits is that the current drilling is occurring under leases granted by the Bush administration or is taking place on private land. Under Mr. Obama it has become extremely difficult to get drilling permits for federal lands where so much of the recoverable oil has been found.

The fact is that the Obama administration, despite protestations to the contrary, really does want higher gas prices because they want to force us toward acceptance of green energy alternatives. They know that if fuel is cheap green energy simply will not be economically attractive and will not be able to compete.

This is why Energy Secretary Steven Chu admitted that he wanted gas prices equal to those of Europe (about $9/gallon).

At least he was saying this until recently when he apparently got a memo from the White House to shut up about it.

Progressive Utopianism

Progressive leftists are fond of dreaming up ways to create utopian societies, but often the brave new worlds they conjure up turn out to be dystopic prisons.

The communist prison states of the twentieth and twenty first centuries were the product of leftist attempts to produce perfect societies. Even if the dreamers seem like a sweet, kind souls the future they envision is often a dehumanizing, totalitarian nightmare. B.F. Skinner's Walden II comes to mind as does Peter Singer's vision of a future in which mothers are free to kill their young children.

Now comes The Atlantic with an essay on the thoughts of an academic by the name of S. Matthew Liao, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. Mr. Liao believes that at least part of the solution to our pending environmental troubles is to re-engineer human beings so that they leave a diminished carbon footprint. Here's The Atlantic's lede:

The threat of global climate change has prompted us to redesign many of our technologies to be more energy-efficient. From lightweight hybrid cars to long-lasting LED's, engineers have made well-known products smaller and less wasteful. But tinkering with our tools will only get us so far, because however smart our technologies become, the human body has its own ecological footprint, and there are more of them than ever before.

So, some scholars are asking, what if we could engineer human beings to be more energy efficient? A new paper to be published in Ethics, Policy & Environment proposes a series of biomedical modifications that could help humans, themselves, consume less.

Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating.

Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children.

Liao is keen to point out that the paper is not meant to advocate for any particular human modifications, or even human engineering generally; rather, it is only meant to introduce human engineering as one possible, partial solution to climate change.

He also emphasized the voluntary nature of the proposed modifications. Neither Liao or his co-authors, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache of Oxford, approve of any coercive human engineering; they favor modifications borne of individual choices, not technocratic mandates.

Of course. Brave new worlds always start out sounding reasonable and non-coercive, but it's not long until, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, it all turns ugly. When people choose not to genetically rejigger their children or to wear the meat patch the state will decide to do something "reasonable" like set limits to how much carbon you can consume, or they'll tell you they'll not provide insurance coverage for more than two child births, or they'll not provide health care for people over a certain bodyweight, etc.

In the end they won't tell you that you'll have to do the things Liao suggests, you'll be free to ignore the wise advice of the government planners and statists if you wish, but you won't be able to afford to. You'll have been coerced by Big Brother into participating in their dehumanized society without even realizing it was happening.

Here are some of the "options" Liao proposes:

• A "meat patch" that makes you vomit when you eat meat.
• Hormones that retard your children's growth.
• Drugs that make you want to write checks (to charities, of course).
• Genetically engineering humans to grow "cat eyes" so we don't need light bulbs.

It all sounds so reasonable. Just like Mephistopheles' bargain sounded so reasonable to Dr. Faustus.

Young Nihilists

Thomas Kidd at Patheos reviews a book by sociologist Christian Smith that should be of interest to every parent and future parent. Kidd writes:

Endless consumer choices, easy access to drugs and alcohol, and an increasing lack of taboos in sexuality, all make it critical that emerging adults have a moral framework for making wholesome choices. But Smith shows that this foundational framework is exactly what the majority of his interviewees do not have. Sixty percent of them said that morality was in the eye of the beholder, and about half subscribed, as best they understood it, to the concept of moral relativism.

When pushed, most would concede that some actions, like rape and murder, were wrong almost regardless of circumstances. Some were not even prepared to concede such absolutes, however. One interviewee said he did not know if you were ever obligated to help a person in need: "I don't ever stop when I see somebody on the side of the road," he said; "maybe if someone is burning in the car, you should try to pull them out, but, no, not really." One in three had no idea what made something right or wrong. Many of those interviewed simply could not understand questions about their sources of morality, no matter how the interviewer rephrased them.

Interviewees displayed distressingly high rates of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as high-risk sexual behavior. About half of those studied had engaged in binge drinking within the past two weeks. Almost three quarters of the non-married emerging adults had experienced sexual intercourse a number of times with a variety of partners, typically beginning around age 16. Especially for women, this pattern of reckless sexuality has fostered deep regrets, insecurity, and trauma from abortions or sexually-transmitted diseases. Other emerging adults, especially some men, seem to sense no regrets whatsoever about their amorous escapades.

Smith's research is distressing but not surprising. Generation Xers have been variously described as morally adrift, nihilistic, lost in a sea of post-modern subjectivism, and so on, but why are they? When people have no categories for making moral judgments other than their own feelings, moral judgments quickly come to be seen as fluid, groundless, and arbitrary. It's an inevitable denouement in a culture that has cut itself free of the moorings of religion which has traditionally provided the only non-arbitrary, objective ground for moral standards and duties.

Check out the rest of Kidd's review at the link.

Why Stop with Contraception?

Those who follow the news know that the left is upset over conservatives' unreasonable unwillingness to require insurance companies and private employers to cover birth control expenses and to, in effect, subsidize the sex lives of their employees. In the left's typically understated rhetoric, the Republican reluctance to jettison the First Amendment's guarantee of a freedom of religion from state interference is proof that they're waging a "War on Women".

Allysia Finley, in a humorous piece in the Wall Street Journal, thinks mandating birth control coverage is not going far enough, actually. There are many other things that the government should require stingy insurance companies and employers to cover for their employees. She presents her proposals in a witty, tongue-in-cheek letter to President Obama. Here's part of it:

Dear President Obama,

Can you believe the nerve of employers? Many of them still seem to think that they should be allowed to determine the benefits they offer. I guess they haven't read your 2,000-page health law. It's the government's job now.

That's a good thing, too. Employers for too long have been able to restrict our access to essential health services like contraception by making us pay some of the bill. Really, it's amazing that we aren't all dead. Now, thanks to you, we'll enjoy free and universal access to preventative care just like workers do in Cuba. Even so, there are still many essential benefits that the government must mandate to make the U.S. the freest country in the world.

Fitness club memberships. Most doctors agree that exercising is one of the best ways to prevent disease. However, gym memberships can run between $240 and $1,800 per year. Such high prices force us to choose between exercising and buying groceries. While we could walk or jog outside, many of us prefer not to. Therefore, employers should be required to pay for workers' gym memberships. Doing so might even reduce employers' health costs, which is why many companies already subsidize memberships. Those that don't are limiting our freedom to exercise.

Coffee. Studies show that coffee can ward off depression, Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes and sleepiness—which makes it one of the most powerful preventive treatments. Workers who drink java are also more productive and pleasant. While many offices have coffee makers, some employers—most notably those affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—continue to deny workers this essential benefit. All employers should have to provide workers with freshly brewed coffee. Oh, and workers must also be able to choose the kind of coffee regardless of the price.

Republicans might argue that requiring Mormon charities to serve coffee is a violation of "religious liberty" since the Mormon church's doctrine proscribes coffee, but this argument is a red herring. Leading medical experts recommend drinking coffee. Moreover, 99% of adults have drunk coffee at one point in their lives (including most Mormons).

Finley has more amusing suggestions at the link. She argues, for instance, that insurance companies should be required to cover employee massage therapy and salad bars in the workplace. She recognizes, of course, that getting Republicans to go along with mandating these coverages would be difficult, but, she concludes, if the president can justify a mandate on individuals to buy health insurance what she's proposing should be "a piece of cake".

Re: Wheeling, Dealing, and Looking Venal

A few days ago we discussed some of the behind the scenes deal-making going on between the U.S. and Israel over Iran. The post mentioned that the U.S. was providing some military hardware and weaponry to Israel in exchange for a pledge not to attack Iran until after the November election.

I suggested that, if the report was accurate, it implied that the president was subordinating matters of great national importance to his own electoral fortunes. This elicited an informative response from a reader named Keith who thought there is another possible explanation for why an attack on Iran might be delayed until 2013. Keith wrote:

With regards to the 2013 comment, I would be very surprised if it actually has anything to do with the election. The weapons promised to Israel, which will be a very good deterrent to Iran, will probably not be ready until sometime into late 2013. I'm guessing the bunker busting bombs promised are the MOP GBU-57. Testing for those bombs is not slated to be completed until sometime this year. The MOP was developed for the type of application that may be required if there is an attack on Iran. These bombs are designed to penetrate farther into hardened sites than any other bomb before and pack more explosives than any other - including the MOAB GBU-43.

As for the [mid-air refueling] tankers, after nine years, the Air Force finally got through the hurdles with being able to order replacements for the KC-135. The KC-X program has been marred with protests by the general contractors, GAO accounting related issues, and criminal investigations. It has only been about a year since the Air Force has placed orders to replace our fleet, which has been flying since the Eisenhower administration.

In both of these cases, export versions will likely have to be developed before being delivered to Israel. The United States typically only ships variants to what our military uses. Yes Israel's Air Force using F-16's (as do we). But the versions sold to them, do not have the most powerful, fuel efficient engines as ours [do]. The navigation systems are not as good as ours. The list goes on.

Bottom line: I strongly believe the 2013 statement has nothing to do with our election and more to do with weapons availability. The underlying statement from the U.S. is, "Don't start something now and expect we are going to deliver the weapons technology as soon as things start going bad for you."

This sounds plausible, and it certainly puts the Obama administration in a better light than does the claim that they're pressuring Israel to delay an attack on Iran for political reasons. Even so, whether the White House is tailoring their demands upon Israel to suit their political ambitions or whether, as Keith says, they're simply bending to logistical necessity, war between Israel and Iran would in fact cause oil prices to soar and that would almost surely diminish Mr. Obama's reelection prospects.

Ants

There's a fascinating piece in Biology News Net about the amazing variety of tools ants use to navigate their way home from a foraging trip:

Desert ants have adapted to a life in a barren environment which only provides very few landmarks for orientation. Apart from visual cues and odors the ants use the polarized sunlight as a compass and count their steps in order to return safely to their home after searching for food.

In experiments with ants of the genus Cataglyphis in their natural habitats in Tunisia and Turkey, behavioral scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now discovered that ants can also use magnetic and vibrational landmarks in order to find their way back to their nest − a small hole in the desert ground. In addition, carbon dioxide produced by their nestmates' breathing also helps homing ants to pinpoint their nest entrance. Hence, the ants' navigational skills prove enormously adaptable to their inhospitable environment.

Visual cues, chemical odors, polarized light, counting into the hundreds if not thousands, magnetic fields, vibrations, and CO2 density gradients - all this processed in a brain scarcely larger than the period at the end of this sentence.

I never cease to be awed by the power of dumb luck and natural selection to produce the most astonishing prodigies in nature. If I hadn't read my Dawkins and my Dennett, and been reassured by these worthies that this sort of thing is child's play for unguided natural processes, I'd be sure there must be some kind of intelligent guidance behind the appearance of such marvels in so tiny an organism.

This video gives an inkling of Cataglyphis' many talents:

Political Agility

You have to hand it to the Obama folks. They're nothing if not politically nimble. It helps, of course, to have the media in your vest pocket and to be unconcerned about truth, but the ease with which they've turned a loser position into a winner is amazing. Here's an overview:

President Obama launches an assault on the first amendment in general, and freedom of religion in particular, by requiring Catholic institutions to violate their conscience and provide birth control for female employees, something they've never before done. The ploy blows up in their faces when Catholics resist this blatant infringement on their freedom to hold to their religious convictions.

The president's waterboys in the media immediately rush to his aid by framing the Church's objections as an attempt to deny women birth control when, of course, it was nothing of the kind.

George Stephanapoulis asks Mitt Romney out of the blue whether he thinks a state has the right to ban birth control. No one has ever proposed such a thing. Romney wonders why on earth Stephanapoulis is asking such a question, and the exchange makes news.

Now it's all over television that Mitt Romney is talking about birth control. The media then dredge up Santorum's personal opinions on birth control, which are the same as those his church has held for a thousand years, and which he articulated in speeches as a private citizen to Catholic audiences before becoming a candidate.

The media press Santorum to clarify his views on the matter. The candidate, out of politeness, answers their questions which spurs the media to ask him why he's talking so much about contraception. Does he intend to ban it, they inquire. He insists that he does not, but it's too late. The very question, added to his personal, religious objection to contraception, serves as reason enough to suspect that he does.

Republican candidates are subsequently grilled with the question. The media keeps bringing it up even though the candidates want to talk about the economy and the catastrophe we're headed toward unless we stop spending and borrowing money. The media, however, is obsessed with the topic of birth control, they ask about little else, and then can't figure out why, if the candidates really don't want to ban it, they're talking about it so much.

The reason they're talking about it, of course, is that the media ask the questions, and that's what they're asking about. They're using contraception as a foil to deflect and forestall substantive criticisms of the incumbent's record. The Republicans, too late, seem to realize what's going on, but choosing not to answer the questions affords no way out for the hapless candidates.

Mitt Romney, for instance, is asked what he thinks about Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke. Romney doesn't want to get anywhere close to a discussion on birth control so he answers somewhat tepidly. The Democrats then lower the boom on him for being so lukewarm about Limbaugh's offensive comments, even though these same Democrats have been almost totally indifferent toward the misogyny that's almost epidemic among their own media personalities.

So now a clumsy attack by President Obama on the first amendment has morphed into the perception that the Republicans are campaigning to deny women the right to buy birth control and are, in fact, waging "a war" against women.

And women, even Republican women, incredibly enough, are duped by the ploy. Here's part of a somewhat giddy New York Times report on how politically independent and GOP women are fleeing the Republicans:

As baby showers go, the party Mary Russell attended to celebrate her niece’s first child was sweet, with about a dozen women offering congratulations over ice cream and cake.

But somewhere between the baby name game and the gifts, what had been light conversation took a sharp turn toward the personal and political — specifically, the battle over access to birth control and other women’s health issues that have sprung to life on the Republican campaign trail in recent weeks.

“We all agreed that this seemed like a throwback to 40 years ago,” said Ms. Russell, 57, a retired teacher from Iowa City who describes herself as an evangelical Christian and “old school” Republican of the moderate mold.

Until the baby shower, just two weeks ago, she had favored Mitt Romney for president. Not anymore. She said she might vote for President Obama now.

“I didn’t realize I had a strong viewpoint on this until these conversations,” Ms. Russell said. As for the Republican presidential candidates, she added: “If they’re going to decide on women’s reproductive issues, I’m not going to vote for any of them. Women’s reproduction is our own business.”

In Iowa, one of the crucial battlegrounds in the coming presidential election, and in other states, dozens of interviews in recent weeks have found that moderate Republican and independent women — one of the most important electoral swing groups — are disenchanted by the Republican focus on social issues like contraception and abortion in an election that, until recently, had been mostly dominated by the economy.

And in what appears to be an abrupt shift, some Republican-leaning women like Ms. Russell said they might switch sides and vote for Mr. Obama — if they turn out to vote at all.

“Everybody is so busy telling us how we should act in the bedroom, they’re letting the country fall through the cracks,” said Fran Kelley, a retired public school worker in Seattle who voted for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama in the 2008 election. Of the Republican candidates this year, she added, “They’re nothing but hatemongers trying to control everyone, saying, ‘Live as I live.’ ”

She continued, “If Republicans would stop all this ridiculous talk about contraception, I’d consider voting in November.”

[I]n a New York Times/CBS News poll last month, the president finished ahead of Mr. Romney among all women by 57 percent to 37 percent. He held much the same advantage over Mr. Santorum.

Last week Joyce Kimball, a retired secretary in Greenville, Ill., who voted for Mr. McCain in 2008, said she had recently become “fed up,” adding that it was not out of the question for her to vote for a Democrat in November. “I’m looking to hear how the candidates propose to put people back to work, not what they think about contraception,” she said. “I hope to God they stop talking about this.”

Even more than Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum has made himself a champion of the traditional family with two parents, arguing in speeches that single motherhood increases a child’s chances of poverty and related problems.

The stance particularly vexes Meredith Warren, a Republican strategist in Andover, Mass. “Well, guess what?” she said. “There are a lot of single moms out there. That’s reality. I don’t think he does himself any favors denigrating that situation.”

Ms. Warren said her job had not been made any easier lately. “A lot of my younger friends are Democrats, and it’s hard for them to understand how, as a woman, you can be a member of the Republican Party,” she said.

Ms. Russell, who changed her political views at the baby shower, said she was impressed with how Mr. Obama handled his administration’s compromise over the much-debated birth control policy, saying, “I think he’s more of a women’s candidate.”

A rally for women’s rights in San Diego on Thursday drew Jessica Lopez, 27, a registered independent who said she voted for President George W. Bush in 2004. Ms. Lopez said her choice this year became clear amid the Republican debate on contraception and abortion. “This has really energized me, that I need to get more involved with the Obama campaign,” she said.

Ms. Lopez added: “The G.O.P. has never been so clear about their agenda for women. I’m afraid if we get a Republican president, my health will be up to their personal discretion.”

It is so sad that so many can be so easily snookered by a media so intent on insuring Mr. Obama's reelection.

Slaughtering Wildlife in the Name of Green Energy

Seventy Golden eagles are killed annually at a single wind turbine site in California. Yet there are no fines, no jail time, no demands from enviros to shut them down. Bald eagles, osprey, and peregrine falcons nest comfortably and successfully in close proximity to both coal and nuclear power plants all up and down the Susquehanna river in Pennsylvania, but in Altamont California flying close to "green" energy sources is suicide for raptors:

Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.

But the Obama administration — like the Bush administration before it — has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines. A violation of either law can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for two years...

Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.

...Bats are getting whacked, too. The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that wind turbines killed more than 10,000 bats in the state in 2010.

Despite the deleterious effect that the windmills are having on wildlife, the wind industry is pushing to keep both its carte blanche and generous subsidies. According to Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer who wrote a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “It‘s absolutely clear that there’s been a mandate from the top” not to prosecute the wind industry for violating wildlife laws. “To me,” he said, “that’s appalling public policy.”

It's a good thing for the wind industry that they slaughter their birds without using hydraulic fracking or oil pipelines. If they did they'd have been shut down years ago, but since they don't use fossil fuels they can continue to dispatch eagles as fast as they please and nothing will be done to stop them.

And don't bother calling the EPA, by the way. They're too busy trying to find ways to shut down the gas drilling industry in Pennsylvania, an industry which in some five or six decades has not killed a single eagle.

GCB

Maybe somebody more connected to the current vernacular can explain to me what the significant difference is between ABC referring to women as "bitches" and Rush Limbaugh referring to a particular woman as a "slut."

ABC has a show coming out titled GCB which stands for "Good Christian Bitches." The show is about nominally Christian women behaving badly. I haven't seen it, but those who have say that it's pretty offensive. If so, I wonder if there'll be any phone calls from Mr. Obama about how demeaning it is to call women "bitches" and how offensive it is to portray Christians behaving as if they lived by the standards of Hollywood celebrities.

Newt Gingrich makes the point that these folks would never dream of producing a show titled GMB about Muslims, and he's right. That would not only be insensitive, of course, but also dangerous, and Hollywood types are more noted for praising each other's courage than for actually being courageous.

Nor, for that matter, would they produce a show about "good black bitches," since this would certainly justify suspicions of racism, and members of the entertainment industry would rather contract AIDs than be called racists.

No, white Christian women are a safe vehicle by which to vent their inane little bigotries. There's no risk. No one will issue death threats and no one will call them racists. Anyone whose IQ is low enough to freeze water will have little difficulty in making it through an hour of GCB and will doubtless laugh heartily at the mindless, insipid "humor," and have their prejudices about both Christians and women reinforced. And Mr. Obama will have nothing to say about it.

Maybe if Rush Limbaugh had produced the show that'd be different.

Man's Uniqueness

Years ago Nobel Prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi introduced something called the Fermi Paradox. He wondered why, if the probability of life being common in the universe is so high, we don't find evidence of it anywhere but on earth. Tom Bethell explores that very question in an article in the Washington Times. Bethell begins with this puzzling fact:

Almost daily there are new reports of distant planets. They may outnumber the 100 billion stars in our galaxy. What we’re looking for, of course, is extraterrestrial intelligence, not just orbiting rocks. But nothing has been found. The silence in outer space “is maddening,” Charles Krauthammer has written. It “makes no sense.”

One of the great dogmas of our age is that there is nothing unusual about the human race. We are told that only in degree do we differ from the apes. The belief that nature and human nature form a continuum came to prominence with Charles Darwin, whose avowed aim was to bring man and nature “under one point of view.”

Yet the evidence for that continuum is still missing - despite a search that has persisted for over a century.

If humans are not exceptional, intelligence at the human level should be widespread and easily detected. But we are still looking. We have still not been able to find any trace of the intelligence that children display by the age of 3.

The Hubble telescope searches outer space; we refine our machines, add “memory” to our computers. Maybe one day they will become conscious. We coax chimpanzees in animal labs. Perhaps one day they will speak. Still nothing.

Fifty years ago, a mathematical exercise called the Drake Equation posited that extraterrestrial civilizations should be numerous. Carl Sagan thought there might be a million advanced civilizations in our own galaxy. But the numbers in the Drake Equation were guesses, and they were skewed by Sagan himself. They deliberately boosted the odds that life can arise by chance from non-life. As far as we know, life has only appeared here, and perhaps not by chance.

The quest for artificial intelligence (AI) began in earnest at about the same time. A conference at Dartmouth College in 1956 was organized by mathematicians John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. The problem of creating artificial intelligence would be solved within a few years, they believed. It took much longer than that for failed experiments to show that the world of human intelligence can’t be reduced to math.

Like the search for extraterrestrial life, the development of artificial intelligence seems to have stalled. Likewise, the quest to develop language in apes seems to have hit a wall. Man still stands, as far as we know, as a unique being in all of the cosmos. Some find this galling.

They consider it laughably chauvinistic and anthropocentric to think that perhaps in all the universe we are the only living, intelligent, conscious beings. Sagan derided “our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe.” It must be frustrating to those who follow Sagan's thinking that almost every scientific discovery, and non-discovery, seems to conform to this delusional prejudice.

Perhaps the evidence is out there that intelligence, reason, consciousness, and life are commonplace in the cosmos, but the expectation that it'll be found seems to grow dimmer every year. And if it turns out that we and our planet really are unique then that raises some fascinating "how and why" questions.

I suspect that part of what motivates people like Sagan to find life elsewhere is a desire to avoid those very questions. Perhaps they don't like where they see them leading.

I'm reminded of the lines by the late Robert Jastrow, an astronomer who authored God and the Astronomers. Jastrow wrote:

The scientist has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he's greeted by a band of theologians who've been sitting there for centuries.

I imagine that would be irritating.