Moral Paralysis

In 2011 (12/5) I ran the following post critical of ethical relativism. Having just talked about that topic recently in my classes I thought it'd be appropriate to run it again:

Denyse O'Leary relates a story told by a Canadian high school philosophy teacher named Stephen Anderson. Anderson recounts what happened when he tried to show students what can happen to women in a culture with no tradition of treating women as human beings:

I was teaching my senior Philosophy class. We had just finished a unit on Metaphysics and were about to get into Ethics, the philosophy of how we make moral judgments. The school had also just had several social-justice-type assemblies—multiculturalism, women’s rights, anti-violence and gay acceptance. So there was no shortage of reference points from which to begin.

I decided to open by simply displaying, without comment, the photo of Bibi Aisha (see below). Aisha was the Afghani teenager who was forced into an abusive marriage with a Taliban fighter, who abused her and kept her with his animals. When she attempted to flee, her family caught her, hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains. After crawling to her grandfather’s house, she was saved by a nearby American hospital. I felt quite sure that my students, seeing the suffering of this poor girl of their own age, would have a clear ethical reaction, from which we could build toward more difficult cases.

The picture is horrific. Aisha’s beautiful eyes stare hauntingly back at you above the mangled hole that was once her nose. Some of my students could not even raise their eyes to look at it. I could see that many were experiencing deep emotions, but I was not prepared for their reaction.

I had expected strong aversion; but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture.

They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.” One student said, “I don’t feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff.” Another said (with no consciousness of self-contradiction), “It’s just wrong to judge other cultures.”

While we may hope some are capable of bridging the gap between principled morality and this ethically vacuous relativism, it is evident that a good many are not. For them, the overriding message is “never judge, never criticize, never take a position.”

This is Bibi Aisha. She was deliberately mutilated by her family because she did not want to stay in a marriage to which she did not consent and in which she was treated like livestock. Anyone who would do this to another human being is evil. Any culture which condones it is degenerate, and any person who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this, or to sympathize with her suffering, is a moral dwarf.

The shocking prevalence of moral dwarfism in our culture should not surprise us, however. Once a society jettisons its Judeo-Christian heritage it no longer has any non-subjective basis for making moral judgments. Its moral sense is stunted, warped, and diminished because it's based on nothing more than one's own subjective feelings. Since no one can say that their feelings are superior to the feelings of the people who did this to Bibi Aisha we hear fatuous insipidities like, "If it's right for them then it's right," or "It's wrong to judge other cultures," or the ultimate criticism, "This sort of thing is inappropriate."

This inability to make moral judgments or to call evil by its name is a form of moral paralysis, and it's a legacy of modernity and the secular Enlightenment.

Naturalism and Nihilism

This is a slightly revised version of a post which appeared on VP on 11/8/13.

French existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once wrote that existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to take atheism to its logical conclusion. Many atheists are reluctant to do this because they can't live consistently with their belief that man is all alone in the cosmos.

Some there are, though, who call upon their fellow non-theists to face up to the gloomy entailments of the belief that nature is all there is. Alex Rosenberg and Joel Marks are two who seek to face squarely the logic of their unbelief. Another example is a commenter at Uncommon Descent who lays out clearly and with no sugar-coating what one should believe if one also embraces atheism, as he (or she) does.

He/she writes:

I’m a nihilist because it shows reality. If there is no higher power, then everything humanity holds dear was constructed by humanity and therefore not real.

Thus there is:

• No objective, absolute, inherent meaning in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent purpose in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent value in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent morality in life or the universe. No good, no evil, no right, no wrong
• No objective, absolute, inherent truth in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent knowledge in life or the universe
• No objective, absolute, inherent logic in life or the universe

There's more:

• We are the cobbled together Frankensteins of billions of years of trial and error
• We have no free-will, mind, consciousness, rationality or reason. They are illusions and [the notions of] personhood, identity and humanity are not real.
• The emotions we express are just chemicals in our brain. The very things we seek in life like happiness, peace, contentment, joy are just chemicals reducing us to nothing more than chemical addicts.
• We are no more important than other animals. A dog is a rat is a pig is a boy.
• There is no afterlife. Once we die, we fade from existence and all our memories, experiences, knowledge etc goes with it. In time, we are forgotten.
• All the things we do in life are just for survival. Learning, loving, seeking, being positive, eating, relating, having fun are created for the sake of ignoring the real reason we are here and that’s to live as long as we can.
• There is no help coming to save humanity as a species or as individuals. We are all alone and on our own. If you can’t survive, you die.

The reader might wonder why anyone would embrace such a melancholy set of beliefs, but if the only alternative to nihilism is to accept that there's a God, then nihilism, as depressing, hopeless, and bleak as it may be, will still be more appealing to a lot of people than the theistic alternative. The writer might reply that atheism is true and we should therefore have the courage to accept its consequences, but why think atheism is true? Could one not reason that it's far more probable that the above list of consequences is not true than that it is true? And if the above consequences are not true then, since they're entailed by atheism, atheism is not true.

Eight Questions about Consciousness

In an article in The Guardian a couple of years ago, Anil Seth listed eight problems concerning consciousness that neuroscientists are investigating. The article presupposes a materialist view of the subject but even one who finds materialism to be an incomplete account of human ontology will find the questions fascinating. Seth lists and gives a brief summary of each of the eight. I've made his summaries even more brief and urge interested readers to visit the link for more detail. Seth writes:

Consciousness is at once the most familiar and the most mysterious feature of our existence. A new science of consciousness is now revealing its biological basis. Here are eight key questions that neuroscientists are now addressing:

1. What are the critical brain regions for consciousness?

We now think that consciousness depends primarily on a specific network of regions in the cortex (the wrinkled surface of the brain) and the thalamus (a walnut-sized structure buried deep in the interior). Some of these regions are important for determining the level of consciousness (the difference between waking and dreamless sleep) while others are involved in shaping conscious content (the specific qualities of any given experience).

2. What are the mechanisms of general anaesthesia?

A good way to study a phenomenon is to see what happens when it disappears. General anaesthesia can be induced by many different substances but the outcome is the same: total loss of consciousness. There is now increasing evidence that anaesthesia involves a disintegration of how different parts of the brain work together, a sort of "cognitive unbinding" rather than a general shutting-down.

A key question now is how similar general anaesthesia is to other states of unconsciousness, such as dreamless sleep.

3. What is the "self"?

Selfhood is a complex phenomenon, encompassing a first-person perspective on the world, a sense of ownership of our body, actions, and thoughts, perceptions of our internal physiological condition, and of course the narrative we tell ourselves about our past experiences and imagined futures.

We now know that these different features depend on different brain mechanisms, and can even be manipulated experimentally (for example, it's possible to generate "out of body" experiences in the lab). Understanding how the brain constructs the conscious self will help us better understand and treat psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, which involve a disintegration of selfhood.

4. What determines experiences of volition and 'will'?

The question of whether "free will" exists is guaranteed to raise philosophical hackles. Neuroscientists have studied this issue since the 1980s by looking for neural signatures of volition (the experience of intending to do something) and agency (the experience of causing an action). A growing consensus now rejects the idea of volition as explicitly causing actions, instead seeing it as involving a particular brain network mediating complex, open decisions between different actions.

5. What is the function of consciousness? What are experiences for?

Researchers have now discovered that many cognitive functions can take place in the absence of consciousness. We can perceive objects, make decisions, and even perform apparently voluntary actions without consciousness intervening. One possibility stands out: consciousness integrates information. According to this view, each of our experiences rules out an enormous number of alternative possibilities, and in doing so generates an incredibly large amount of information.

6. How rich is consciousness?

This evidence may provide a basis for tackling one of the thorniest problems in consciousness science: distinguishing the brain mechanisms of consciousness itself from those involved in being able to relate what we experience.

7. Are other animals conscious?

Mammals share much of the neural machinery important for human consciousness, so it seems a safe bet to assume they are conscious as well, even if they can't tell us that they are. Despite this similarity, animal consciousness is unlikely to involve conscious selfhood in the same sense that humans enjoy.

8. Are vegetative patients conscious?

In the US alone, about 15,000 patients are in a "vegetative state", having suffered massive brain injury. The key feature of this state is that patients' behaviour suggests that they are awake but not aware. Brain imaging has revealed, however, that at least some of these patients are conscious, and has even facilitated communication between these patients and their families and doctors.

Seth closes with what is perhaps the most interesting question: Why is consciousness part of the universe at all? Indeed, even if consciousness can ultimately be explained purely in terms of material processes, something many philosophers deeply doubt, it is hard to imagine how or why it should have arisen in a purely mechanistic, naturalistic world in the first place. So, if not, where did it come from?

If the Republicans Take the Senate

If the Republicans gain control of the Senate tomorrow, an outcome some observers are predicting but which is by no means assured, there will be a number of consequences, two of which are these:

It will signal an end to congressional gridlock. Many Americans complain that Congress can't get anything done and they're correct to think that. However, part of the reason is that when the House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans, passes legislation it must go to the Senate, currently controlled by the Democrats, to be voted on before it becomes law. Currently, there are some 340 pieces of legislation passed by the House which the Democrats in the Senate, whether committee chairs or the Majority Leader, refuse, for various reasons, to bring to the floor for a vote.

If the GOP holds the House (which is pretty much a certainty) and wins a net six Senate seats they'll effectively control both chambers and thus legislation will move much more smoothly through Congress. That's not to say it'll make it into law because it'll still have to be signed by the president, who may not be disposed to sign Republican initiatives, but at least the bottleneck won't be Congress.

The second consequence is that the president will be forced to temper his predilection to nominate appointees who reside on the far left of the political spectrum. Such nominees will not likely be confirmed by a Republican Senate. This will be especially significant for nominees to the federal bench, and a forteriori, to the Supreme Court, where there could be at least two retirements in the next two years.

One fear that many Democrats have about a GOP takeover of the Senate seems to me to be unfounded. The concern is that if the Republicans control both houses they'll seek to impeach President Obama. I doubt this very much unless Mr. Obama does something extraordinarily reckless. The way impeachment works is that the House impeaches the office-holder and then the case goes to the Senate where the impeached individual is essentially put on trial.

In order to convict and have the person removed from office it takes the vote of two-thirds of the Senate. That'd be 67 senators. Even if every Republican voted for it (something that didn't happen when President Clinton was impeached), there would still have to be some fifteen or sixteen Democrats who'd have to join them. The chances of finding this many Democrats who would vote to remove a president of their own party are slimmer than zero.

The Republicans wouldn't waste the resources on such an effort unless they thought it had a chance of success, and it would have such a chance only if the American people and the media were howling for impeachment, a prerequisite that, as of now, seems as remote as the planet Pluto.

A Few Musings on the Electoral Season

1. Why do the media talk incessantly about the GOP's failure to attract women, but rarely talk about the Democrat's failure to attract men? There's almost as much of a male gender gap favoring the GOP as there is a female gender gap favoring the Democrats, but we never seem to hear stories about how Democrats need to do more to reach out to men.

2. What does it mean that people like Congressman Charley Rangel are accusing Republicans of favoring slavery and Senator Mary Landrieu of LA insinuating that her constituents are racist and sexist? Rangel's claim is simply bizarre, but Landrieu's is both bizarre and amusing. She serves in a state that has, in recent memory, had a female governor, an Indian governor, and a female senator (her). Are her allegations in fact an act of desperation to try to salvage a campaign showing signs of sinking?

3. Is it also a sign of desperation that one Republican senatorial candidate, Corey Gardner of Colorado, has been accused by his opponent's supporters of wanting to make condoms illegal, of all things, even though the candidate has called for making birth control available over-the-counter? Do serious people make such allegations? Do serious people believe them?

4. President Obama, in referring to voter ID laws said a week or so ago that attempting to win elections by limiting the number of people who vote is a sign of weakness. Is it not also a sign of weakness that the Democrats depend for electoral success on dragging to the polls the least engaged, most uninformed, and most apathetic segments of the voting public (single women, poor urban minorities, and disaffected young people)? If the base of the party consists largely of people who don't know what's going on and/or don't much care, certainly not enough to take the trouble to obtain an ID card, then what does that tell us about the party?

5. Why will Democrat candidates for office not tell enquirers who they voted for in the last presidential election? Why do they not want Mr. Obama to be anywhere near them as they campaign for office? Is it because he's black and they're white? Lest you scoff we've been told for six years that the Republicans' refusal to cooperate with Mr. Obama is a symptom of racism in the Republican Party. If so, why is it not racist for white candidates to treat the president as if he has Ebola? Why else will they not admit their vote for him? If they do oppose his policies, as some of them are claiming, which of them, exactly, do they oppose and what would they, if elected, be willing and able to do to change them?

6. In Pennsylvania the man who shot and killed a young state trooper and seriously wounded a second before taking to the woods to hide for 48 days from the police has finally been apprehended. The prosecutor has declared that he will seek the death penalty. Every candidate for state-wide office in Pennsylvania, including Governor Corbett and his challenger Tom Wolfe, should be asked to publicly declare whether he/she supports or opposes that decision and why.

7. Every election there's much hand-wringing over how much money is spent to elect the various candidates. This year over $1 billion has been spent on political advertisements, a lot of money, no doubt, but it's less than half of the $2.2 billion dollars Americans spent last month on Halloween candy. Looked at that way the money spent on political advertising doesn't seem like such a big deal.

8. The Democratic state committee in New York has sent all registered Democrats a letter that essentially tells them to vote, or else.... The letter says specifically that “We will be reviewing voting records . . . to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014....If you do not vote this year, we will be interested to hear why not.” Democrats in New York have been outraged at what they see as blatant voter intimidation by their own party. What is the "or else" that would follow a failure to vote, and are people who use such threatening tactics the sort of people we want in positions of power? Come to think of it, is this not the sort of thing many Americans are afraid is happening in the NSA, the IRS, and the DOJ? It seems to be of a piece with Mr. Obama's rhetoric about the need to punish one's political "enemies."

9. Hillary Clinton isn't running for any office just yet but she is campaigning for sundry Democrat candidates. However, she went some distance toward disqualifying herself from being taken seriously, whether as a supporter of candidates or as a candidate herself, when in a prepared speech she declared recently that businesses don't create jobs. If businesses don't create jobs then who does? Perhaps Ms Clinton would be willing to undertake this little thought experiment. Imagine that every business in the U.S. suddenly closed its doors. What would happen to the unemployment number? Perhaps she was telling the truth when she later tried to walk her comment back and make it more palatable, or perhaps she's trying to out-Warren Elizabeth Warren, her prospective rival on the left in 2016.

The Hard Problem

Here's a fascinating video in which one of the foremost philosophers of mind, the Australian David Chalmers, discusses the difficulty of explaining consciousness from an evolutionary materialistic perspective. His point is that as far as natural selection is concerned, we could have evolved to be highly effective automata or zombies, operating strictly on instinct, without the phenomenon of being self-aware added on.

In other words, according to Chalmers, there's nothing about consciousness, as compared to the zombie model, that gives a creature an additional benefit in passing along its genetic legacy to its descendants. In that sense consciousness is superfluous and therefore devilishly hard to explain as a product of unguided evolution. Where then did it come from and how did we come to possess it?

Coming up with an explanation for how material processes like chemical reactions in the brain can actually create sensations - such as the experience of red or sweet or pain - and explaining exactly what these sensations are is what philosophers of mind call the "hard problem" of consciousness. The "easy" problem is mapping the parts of the brain that are involved when various sensations (called qualia)are being experienced. The "easy" problem is "easy" only relative to the difficulty of the "hard" problem.

What to Look For

My friend Jason sends along a link to an article by Charles Lipson, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, in which he discusses what we might look for from the president once Tuesday's election is over. The article requires a subscription unless you google: Lipson: Obama's Post-Election Blowout, but here's a quick synopsis:

1) Immigration. How many millions will the president let in? On what terms? One hint: The Department of Homeland Security recently ordered more than four million green cards and visas for next year and says it might order another 29 million for future years. The cards would give immigrants who are here illegally the right to continue living and working in the U.S. legally—and perhaps receive a variety of federal and state benefits. Should the president unilaterally issue these cards, there will be a brutal debate over the wisdom of this policy, whether it extends to welfare benefits, and whether the president has the constitutional authority to issue so many cards without specific congressional approval.

2) The next U.S. attorney general. The president wants a crusader on progressive causes and a reliable firewall to protect him, just as Eric Holder has done. Rumor has it that he wants Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who has been the point man on racial preferences.

3) Keystone XL Pipeline. Given his druthers, the president almost certainly would prefer to kill this project and appease his environmentalist supporters. But he won’t do that before the final votes are tallied for Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu , who is running for re-election.

4) Bergdahl. The Pentagon has completed a long-delayed report on Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl but won’t tell us what it says. Sgt. Bergdahl walked away from his unit in Afghanistan, was taken in by the Taliban, and was finally swapped for five Taliban leaders who were detained at Guantanamo Bay. If Sgt. Bergdahl is found to have deserted his post, the report will be bad news for the White House. People will ask why the president gave up so much for a turncoat and why the president held a Rose Garden celebration to mark Sgt. Bergdahl’s return.

5) Iraq and Syria. No one knows what the president will do with regard to Islamic State; in fact, it is now virtually impossible to tell who our “friends” are since America’s opposition to ISIS, a Sunni group, makes the U.S. effectively a partner of its Shiite opponents in Tehran and Damascus. The Saudis, who lead the Sunni coalition, are livid and wonder if the U.S. has switched sides in the Persian Gulf, flipping from its longtime partnership with Saudi Arabia to a de facto one with Iran. Everyone wonders what the president’s strategy really is and whether he will stick to it after the election.

6) Iran. This is the big enchilada. If the president cuts a major deal on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program—which will surely include major concessions on U.S. economic sanctions, he will face a storm of controversy among the public and on Capitol Hill. Worse, Mr. Obama might refuse to submit the deal to Congress, claiming that it is an agreement and not a treaty requiring Senate approval. That could generate a true constitutional crisis.

And a constitutional crisis would lead to calls for the President's impeachment, a move Republicans are loath to make and which there's no point in making if they don't win the Senate on Tuesday. Even so, the President is deeply unpopular and his plans are offensive to the vast majority of Americans so it may happen. Lipson concludes:

All of these matters have been high-profile and potentially deeply divisive. That is precisely why the White House is postponing any announcements. When the administration finally does speak, it will unleash a political storm, even if Democrats hold the Senate. If Republicans win, those winds will reach hurricane force, since the president will likely try to ram everything through a lame-duck Congress. If that happens, consider boarding up the windows.

When candidate Obama said in 2008 that he wanted to fundamentally transform the country I wonder how many people realized that this was the sort of thing he had in mind.

The Failed Experiment

With all the crises, scandals, and more mundane sorts of incompetence that comprise the daily fare delivered to our doorstep with the morning paper, it seems that yesterday's hot topic is forgotten as a new one supplants it today.

The scandal of Mr. Obama's use of taxpayer money to reward his corporate cronies and big donors in the government bailout was eclipsed by news of Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice department facilitating the sale of guns to Mexican drug lords, and this remarkable breach of the law was obscured by the administration's refusal to protect American diplomats in Benghazi, which took a back seat to the incredibly botched rollout of Obamacare, which was followed by KGB-style spying on journalists by the Obama administration, which was lost amidst reports of Secret Service shenanigans with hookers in South America, which was overshadowed by the abuses of the IRS against the administration's political foes, which was superceded by the spying of the NSA on American citizens, which was pushed off the front pages by the incompetence of the Veteran's Administration which resulted in perhaps hundreds of unnecessary deaths, which were forgotten amidst the flood of illegal immigrants pouring across our essentially undefended borders, which was quickly overshadowed by the sudden appearance of ISIS in the vacuum left by the unnecessary American withdrawal from Iraq, which was ignored when the CDC seemed to not know what to tell us about Ebola.

Now we're being reminded that 2015 is going to be a critical year for Obamacare, and the portents are not looking favorable. Barbara Boland at CNS News reports that almost a quarter of a million of the nation's doctors are not going to participate in the exchanges for reasons Boland explains in her article:

Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Reimbursements under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) are at bottom-dollar - they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. "It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60," a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. "For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California's Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement by up to 40 percent."

2. Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that's not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. "Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been without insurance for extended periods of time, and therefore will require more of the doctor's time at lower pay," says the study.

The study also points to two reasons that doctors might not get paid at all:

3. An MGMA study indicates that 75% of ACA patients that had seen doctors had chosen plans with high deductibles. Given that most of the patients are low-income, doctors are concerned that the patients cannot meet the deductibles and they, the doctors, will get stuck with the bill.

4. Health and Human Services requires that insurers cover customers for an additional 90 days after they have stopped paying their premiums: the insurer covers the first 30 - but, it's up to the doctor to recoup payment for the last 60 days. This is the number one reason providers are opting to not participate in the exchange plans. Currently, about a million people have failed to pay their premiums and had their plans canceled.

As Boland notes, Obamacare is asking doctors to take on sicker patients for less money, and with the risk of not getting paid at all.

What are the lessons to be learned from all this? Here, in my opinion, are two:

1. When Americans vote they are voting irresponsibly if they don't vote for the person they believe to be the best qualified candidate to lead the country. To vote for someone because he/she speaks well, is young, attractive, the right gender, or the right race or ethnicity is to betray one's responsibility as a voter. To vote for someone on the basis of such factors when that person has nothing in his or her resume that suggests that he or she has the requisite background to lead the country is doubly irresponsible. It's like taking the most popular kid in the senior class and putting him at the helm of an aircraft carrier because he's so cool he'll surely know how to manage the thing.

2. Since WWII the left has been arguing that big, centralized government and European-style socialism is the solution to all of our problems. Their brief has been that when technocrats, bureaucrats, and wonks run our lives we'll be much better off than if we were free to make our own decisions without ivy-league graduates telling us what to do. The left rejoiced when the Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress and the White House in 2008 because now, they believed, they'd finally be able to conduct their grand experiment and prove how effective big government can be. Six years later it takes the blindest of leaps of faith to still believe that, given expanded power, government will be efficient, competent, transparent, and lawful.

Are We Headed for Eco-Catastrophe?

John Coleman, co-founder of the Weather Channel, has added his voice to the growing chorus of scientists who allege that prophecies of imminent climate catastrophe are not based on sound scientific research and are, at best, seriously misleading.

An article in the British Express quotes from an open letter in which Coleman criticizes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading organization of world climatologists, which has been predicting devastating global climate changes for a couple of decades.

He writes that, contrary to the IPCC's claims and predictions of an imminent global calamity:

• The ocean is not rising significantly.
• The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar Bears are increasing in number.
• Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms (in fact storms are diminishing).
• There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past, at least not in the last 18 years, and there is no reason to fear any in the future.
• Efforts to prove the theory that carbon dioxide is a significant greenhouse gas and pollutant causing significant warming or weather effects have failed.

The article goes on to claim that,

Climate expert William Happer, from Princeton University, supported Mr Coleman's claims. He added: "No chemical compound in the atmosphere has a worse reputation than CO2, thanks to the single-minded demonisation of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control and energy production.

"The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science."

In 2010 a high-level inquiry by the InterAcademy Council found there was "little evidence" to support the IPCC's claims about global warming.

It's perhaps relevant that Mr. Coleman's letter comes as the U.S. has, by some measures, experienced the coolest year in its history.

It's hard to know who to believe on this issue, but one thing seems fairly certain. The claim that global warming is "settled science" accepted by all the experts in the field is very hard to credit.

Explanatory Inadequacies

Casey Luskin points us to an interesting problem with naturalistic evolutionary explanations of human behavior. The problem is that Darwinian evolutionists seem to be at a loss to explain morality and language. Luskin writes:

Humans do appear hard-wired for morality, but were we programmed by unguided evolutionary processes? Natural selection cannot explain extreme acts of human kindness. Regardless of background or beliefs, upon finding strangers trapped inside a burning vehicle, people will risk their own lives to help them escape -- with no evolutionary benefit to themselves. For example, evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Schloss explains that Holocaust rescuers took great risks that offered no personal biological benefits:

The rescuer's family, extended family and friends were all in jeopardy, and they were recognized to be in jeopardy by the rescuer. Moreover, even if the family escaped death, they often experienced deprivation of food, space and social commerce; extreme emotional distress; and forfeiture of the rescuer's attention.

Francis Collins gives the example of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who risked his life "to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers." As Collins points out, "That's the opposite of saving his genes." Schloss adds other examples of "radically sacrificial" behavior that "reduces reproductive success" and offers no evolutionary benefit, such as voluntary poverty, celibacy, and martyrdom.

In spite of the claims of evolutionary psychologists, many of humanity's most impressive charitable, artistic, and intellectual abilities outstrip the basic requirements of natural selection. If life is simply about survival and reproduction, why do humans compose symphonies, investigate quantum mechanics, and build cathedrals? Natural Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell explained why evolutionary psychology does not adequately predict human behavior:

Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive -- except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed -- except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery.

Contrary to Darwinism, the evidence indicates that human life isn't about mere survival and reproduction. But in addition to our moral uniqueness, humans are also distinguished by their use of complex language. As MIT linguist Noam Chomsky observes:

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world. If this is so, it is quite senseless to raise the problem of explaining the evolution of human language from more primitive systems of communication that appear at lower levels of intellectual capacity. ... There is no reason to suppose that the "gaps" are bridgeable.

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga has humorously observed that there's no Darwinian explanation for why we should have the intellectual ability to do higher math. The potential ability to do calculus was of no benefit to our primitive ancestors and even today it's only the rare grad student whose reproductive prospects are improved by his ability to solve quadratic equations.

In other words, human intellectual ability must have been latent in the species for millions of years before it ever could have been useful in the struggle for survival, but an ability that serves no useful function will eventually be purged from the genome. It certainly wouldn't be selected for since natural selection only acts upon traits that express themselves to the environment.

Darwinism may ultimately be able to contrive an explanation for phenomena like morality, language, and math aptitude, but it can't do so comfortably. The explanations don't flow smoothly from the theory, a fact which should cause theorists to reflect that perhaps there's something missing in a purely naturalistic, materialistic explanation of the development of the human species.

The Appeal of Radical Islam

The recent shooting in Ottawa has caused us once again to ask what it is about Islam that drives so many of its adherents to murder. Or, conversely, why do so many people inclined to murder gravitate to Islam? Ray Pennings, editor of Comment magazine, comes at the question from a somewhat different angle. He asks what it is about Western culture that alienates so many young people so much that they're eager to embrace a radical jihadist version of Islam in the first place. Part of the answer to this question, Pennings believes, is to be found in the meaninglessness and emptiness of life entailed by a secular worldview:

I would also point out to those who advocate a public secularism, who insist that religion is simply a personal matter and is something of no public consequence, there are a number of “radicalized Islam fundamentalists” who are finding the answers of extreme Islamism more compelling than the emptiness of secularism that says there is no meaning beyond the here and now. These are not simple questions nor do I intend to suggest any sympathy or justification for Islamic fundamentalists. But it would be dishonest to ignore the reality that the nihilism of contemporary secularism is not at least in part the explanation for the appeal of extreme Islamic fundamentalism. Something always trumps nothing when it comes to providing a sense of meaning and purpose for individuals and our shared lives together.

Pennings is right, I think. Given a choice between a muscular worldview that infuses life with meaning, hope, and purpose - even if that worldview is otherwise fraught with error - and an arid worldview that empties life of meaning and purpose, which implies that life is nothing more than "a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing," which reduces love and beauty to neurochemistry, and which insists that hope of an existence beyond death is futile, many young men will find the former far more appealing than the latter.

It's ironic that secularism, the chief champion of the Darwinian view in the Western world, is being assailed around the globe by competing ideologies that seem to be more successful in the Darwinian struggle for survival.

Libet and Determinism

As a complement to yesterday's post on the free will/ determinism question here's a post from the archives on the work of Benjamin Libet who conducted some experiments that seemed to support, even prove, that determinism is true:

Students of psychology, philosophy and other disciplines which touch upon the operations of the mind and the question of free will have probably heard mention of the experiments of Benjamin Libet, a University of California at San Francisco neurobiologist who conducted some remarkable research into the brain and human consciousness in the last decades of the 20th century.

One of Libet's most famous discoveries was that the brain "decides" on a particular choice milliseconds before we ourselves are conscious of deciding. The brain creates an electrochemical "Readiness Potential" (RP) that precedes by milliseconds the conscious decision to do something. This has been seized upon by materialists who use it as proof that our decisions are not really chosen by us but are rather the unconscious product of our brain's neurochemistry. The decision is made before we're even aware of what's going on, they claim, and this fact undermines the notion that we have free will as this video explains:

Michael Egnor, writing at ENV, points out, however, that so far from supporting determinism, Libet himself believed in free will, his research supported that belief, and, what's more, his research also reinforced, in Libet's own words, classical religious views of sin.

Libet discovered that the decision to do X is indeed pre-conscious, but he also found that the decision to do X can be consciously vetoed by us and that no RP precedes that veto. In other words, the decision of the brain to act in a particular way is determined by unconscious factors, but we retain the ability to consciously choose not to follow through with that decision. Our freedom lies in our ability to refuse any or all of the choices our brain presents to us.

Egnor's article is a fascinating piece if you're interested in the question of free will and Libet's contribution to our understanding of it.

Freedom, Determinism, and Compatibilism

In class discussions of free will and determinism, a number of students have asked if there isn't a middle way. One student even dug a post out of the archives that I did on such a via media back in 2008 (12/24). The post starts out by addressing the notion of a kind of compromise position between libertarian free will and determinism, usually referred to as "compatibilism," and ends up summarizing the discussions we've had in class on these different philosophical positions. Here it is:

Barry Arrington at Uncommon Descent offers a succinct rebuttal of compatibilism, i.e. the view that our choices are fully determined and yet at the same time free. As Arrington points out, this certainly sounds like a contradiction.

The compatibilist defines freedom, however, as the lack of coercion, so as long as nothing or no one is compelling your behavior it's completely free even though at the moment you make your decision there's in fact only one possible choice you could make. Your choice is determined by the influence of your past experiences, your environment and your genetic make-up. The feeling you have that you could have chosen something other than what you did choose is simply an illusion, a trick played on us by our brains.

Compatibilism, however, doesn't solve the controversy between determinism and libertarianism (the belief we have free-will). It simply uses a philosophical sleight-of-hand to define it away. As long as it is the case that at any given moment there's just one possible future then our choices are determined by factors beyond our control, and if they're determined it's very difficult to see how we could be responsible for them. Whether we are being compelled by external forces to make a particular choice or not, we are still being compelled by internal factors that make our choice inevitable.

The temptation for the materialist is to simply accept determinism, but not only does this view strip us of any moral responsibility, it seems to be based on a circularity: The determinist says that our choices are the inevitable products of our strongest motives, but if questioned about how we can know what our strongest motives are he would invite us to examine the choices we make. Our actions reveal our strongest motives and our strongest motives are whichever ones we act upon. But, if so, the claim that we always act upon our strongest motives reduces to the tautology that we always act upon the motives we act upon. This is certainly true, but it's not very edifying.

On the other hand, it's also difficult to pin down exactly what a free choice is. It can't be a choice that's completely uncaused because then it wouldn't be a consequence of our character and in what sense would we be responsible for it? But if the choice is a product of our character, and our character is the result of our past experiences, environment, and our genetic make-up, then ultimately our choice is determined by factors over which we have no control and we're back to determinism.

It seems to me that if materialism is true and all we are is a material, physical being, and all of our choices are simply the product of chemical reactions occurring in the brain, then determinism must be true as well, and moral responsibility and human dignity are illusions, and no punishment or reward could ever be justified on grounds of desert.

This all seems completely counter-intuitive so most people hold on to libertarianism, even if they can't explain what a free choice is, but they can only do so by giving up materialism. Only if we have a non-physical, immaterial mind that somehow functions in human volition can there be free will and thus moral responsibility and human dignity.

Opening the Floodgates

Reports have been circulating that the Obama administration is planning on granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens after the November elections. It would be a move of dubious constitutionality and would put enormous stress on the nation's economy and would completely change the nature of the country. The Washington Times explains:

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday threw open the door to as many as 100,000 Haitians, who will now move into the United States without a visa. Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, rightly and accurately denounced enabling Haitians awaiting a U.S. visa to enter the country and legally apply for work permits as “an irresponsible overreach of the executive branch’s authority.”

But this is only the tip of the iceberg that the administration has planned for us:

Earlier this month the immigration agency solicited a printer able to handle a “surge” of 9 million green cards “to support possible future immigration-reform initiative requirements.” In an ordinary year, about 1 million green cards are issued, and over the life of this contract the company is expected to produce up to 34 million cards, a figure representing an increase of the population of the United States by 10 percent.

Set aside the legalities involved and ask, why is the President doing this? Why flood the country with people who'll become eligible for food stamps, health care, and a host of other taxpayer-funded goods and services? Why, in a time of low employment in the U.S., import millions of new workers to compete for the few jobs that are there?

The Times editors assert that these amnestied aliens will eventually be granted full citizenship and with that win the right to vote. Doubtless, they'll choose to vote as Democrats, ensuring Democratic majorities and presidencies for the next three generations if not longer.

But political power is perhaps not the only reason. Many observers believe that Mr. Obama has harbored an antipathy and resentment toward the United States ever since his youth. The most influential people in his life all despised the country, its values, its success, its power, and its influence in the world. If Mr. Obama were intentionally trying to reduce the U.S. to third-world status there'd be no better way to accomplish that than to do what he's doing. As the Times says:

It’s a disaster in the making — indeed already here — for public health and national security, straining the welfare state to its limit. Most Americans want no part of this. A Gallup survey finds that 74 percent of Americans want the level of immigration to stay where it is, or reduce it. Mr. Obama has no support for his amnesty scheme except from those who want to transform America into a nation that no one would recognize.

It's one reason why the election on November 4th is so important. If President Obama has a Democratic Senate for the last two years of his term there'll be no restraints on his power to do whatever he wishes. If Congress is unable to check him he'll certainly succeed in achieving his goal, plainly announced in 2008, of fundamentally transforming the country.

Our Need for Meaning

In his book Man's Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor Victor Frankel observed that men can't live without a purpose. He observed that when people conclude that their lives have no meaning or significance they often lose their will to go on living.

When we're confronted with some tragedy, for example, we seem to instinctively seek some significance, some overall silver lining, something to give the awful event meaning. The thought that there really is no such meaning is almost unbearable. Yet that's the implicit, and sometimes explicit, message modernity relentlessly hammers home to us. Modernity teaches us that there's nothing beyond nature, that the physical is all there is, but if this is true then it's hard to imagine what meaning there could be to human existence.

Konika Banerjee and Paul Bloom of Yale talk about this in an article in the New York Times. They write:

As the phrase goes, everything happens for a reason. Where does this belief come from? One theory is that it reflects religious teachings — we think that events have meaning because we believe in a God that plans for us, sends us messages, rewards the good and punishes the bad.

But research from the Yale Mind and Development Lab, where we work, suggests that this can’t be the whole story. In one series of studies, recently published in the journal Cognition, we asked people to reflect on significant events from their own lives, such as graduations, the births of children, falling in love, the deaths of loved ones and serious illnesses.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of religious believers said they thought that these events happened for a reason and that they had been purposefully designed (presumably by God). But many atheists did so as well, and a majority of atheists in a related study also said that they believed in fate — defined as the view that life events happen for a reason and that there is an underlying order to life that determines how events turn out.

In other studies ...we found that even young children show a bias to believe that life events happen for a reason — to “send a sign” or “to teach a lesson.” This belief exists regardless of how much exposure the children have had to religion at home, and even if they’ve had none at all.

Whatever the origin of our belief in life’s meaning, it might seem to be a blessing. Some people find it reassuring to think that there really are no accidents, that what happens to us — including the most terrible of events — reflects an unfolding plan. But the belief also has some ugly consequences. It tilts us toward the view that the world is a fundamentally fair place, where goodness is rewarded and badness punished. It can lead us to blame those who suffer from disease and who are victims of crimes, and it can motivate a reflexive bias in favor of the status quo — seeing poverty, inequality and oppression as reflecting the workings of a deep and meaningful plan.

Not everyone would go as far as the atheist Richard Dawkins, who has written that the universe exhibits “precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” But even those who are devout should agree that, at least here on Earth, things just don’t naturally work out so that people get what they deserve. If there is such a thing as divine justice or karmic retribution, the world we live in is not the place to find it. Instead, the events of human life unfold in a fair and just manner only when individuals and society work hard to make this happen.

There are a couple of points to make about this. First, the belief that things happen for a reason is logically incompatible with the prevailing cultural embrace of naturalistic materialism. Reasons are products of minds. If there is no mind controlling events, or at least able to control events, there can be no reason for whatever happens. In the universe of the materialist nothing that happens independently of human volition happens for a reason and for a materialist to hold that things do have reasons behind them is simply a case of cognitive dissonance.

If Dawkins is correct in his atheism then he's also correct in his assessment of the meaninglessness of life in a cosmos that cares nothing about us. Nothing the vast majority of us do matters much at all beyond the span of our own lives.

Second, if there is no "divine justice" there's no real justice of any sort. How can the world provide justice for the parents of a child brutally tortured and murdered by someone? Does executing the criminal satisfy justice? Imprisoning him for life? Nothing that could be done to him will ever remove the pain he has implanted in the hearts of those parents.

The secular man is caught between a rock and a hard place. Not willing to acknowledge the existence, or relevance, of God on the one hand, and not willing to give himself over to nihilism on the other, he denies the relevance of God while living nevertheless as if God undergirds his entire world. He hitches a ride on the train of a theistic worldview - living as if there are reasons for what happens in life, living as if his life has meaning, living as if justice exists, living as if there are objective moral duties - until it comes time to acknowledge the only sufficient ground for any of these and at that point the secular man jumps off the train, declaring that the ground, theism, is all foolishness and superstition.

How for example can philosopher Bertrand Russell write this and not be a nihilist:

Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

As Dostoyevsky's character in The Possessed, an atheistic anarchist named Kirillov, asks, "How can a man know there is no God and not kill himself on the spot?" Indeed, Kirillov ultimately shoots himself. Man can't live, at least not happily, with the worldview Russell portrays. He can't live with unyielding despair. Nor does he have to. Why he chooses to try is one of life's great mysteries.

Why Is There No Travel Ban?

A number of nations in West Africa have been, or are about to be, declared Ebola-free. One thing they all have in common is that they imposed a travel ban on the nations in the hot zone, a move which elicits the question, why won't the Obama administration do likewise?

Maybe they have a good reason, but if so they've chosen to keep it to themselves. None of the quasi-reasons they've given make any sense. The head of the Center for Disease Control, Thomas Frieden, the same man who said that you can't contract Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus and then later advised that people who are symptomatic shouldn't use public transportation so as not to infect anyone, has been similarly incoherent on the travel ban question.

Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) summarizes the aberrant logic Mr. Friedan put on display when he appeared recently on Megyn Kelly's show The Kelly File:

Their conversation focused largely on the government’s refusal to stop travel into the United States by citizens of plague nations. “Why not put a travel ban in place,” Ms. Kelly asked, while we shore up the U.S. public-health system?

Dr. Frieden replied that we now have screening at airports, and “we’ve already recommended that all nonessential travel to these countries be stopped for Americans.” He added: “We’re always looking at ways that we can better protect Americans.” “But this is one,” Ms. Kelly responded.

Dr. Frieden implied a travel ban would be harmful: “If we do things that are going to make it harder to stop the epidemic there, it’s going to spread to other parts of—” Ms. Kelly interjected, asking how keeping citizens from the affected regions out of America would make it harder to stop Ebola in Africa.

“Because you can’t get people in and out.”

“Why can’t we have charter flights?”

“You know, charter flights don’t do the same thing commercial airliners do.”

“What do you mean? They fly in and fly out.”

Dr. Frieden replied that limiting travel between African nations would slow relief efforts. “If we isolate these countries, what’s not going to happen is disease staying there. It’s going to spread more all over Africa and we’ll be at higher risk.”

Later in the interview, Ms. Kelly noted that we still have airplanes coming into the U.S. from Liberia, with passengers expected to self-report Ebola exposure.

Dr. Frieden responded: “Ultimately the only way—and you may not like this—but the only way we will get our risk to zero here is to stop the outbreak in Africa.”

Ms. Kelly said yes, that’s why we’re sending troops. But why can’t we do that and have a travel ban?

“If it spreads more in Africa, it’s going to be more of a risk to us here. Our only goal is protecting Americans—that’s our mission. We do that by protecting people here and by stopping threats abroad. That protects Americans.”

Dr. Frieden’s logic was a bit of a heart-stopper. In fact his responses were more non-sequiturs than answers. We cannot ban people at high risk of Ebola from entering the U.S. because people in West Africa have Ebola, and we don’t want it to spread. Huh?

It's both embarrassing and disconcerting to reflect that people who think like this are ensconced in positions of power making life and death decisions for the rest of us.

Anyway, Mr. Obama himself appears to be taking the outbreak seriously enough, having taken the unprecedented step of cancelling a fund-raiser, something he didn't even do when our diplomats were being slain in Benghazi, to meet with his people to discuss developments. Presumably, part of the discussion was on the topic of how to completely flummox the American people on why he won't impose a travel ban. If he cancels a golf outing we'll know we're on the cusp of a serious Ebola calamity in this country.

I don't wish to make light of what is indeed a serious matter, but the absurdity of the administration's rationale for not imposing a travel ban forces us to draw conclusions about their reasons that are themselves bizarre. Some conspiracy mongers have alleged that Mr. Obama actually wants a crisis in this country in order to consolidate his hold on power. I think that's a little nutty.

Others have speculated that part of the reason the President hasn't issued a travel ban is because up till now he thought that all the fuss was over "a boli" and he couldn't imagine how a doughy Italian sandwich could really have precipitated a major medical threat to civilization.

I think that explanation is a little nutty, too. Anyone could have made a similar slip of the tongue, and it's churlish to fault the President for being human, although I do have to wonder how many times we'd have seen this video clip on the television news if it had featured George Bush referring to the virus as eboli?

At any rate the President could put an end to all of this foolish speculation simply by giving us a plausible, coherent reason why he still allows people into this country from places where Ebola is rampant. Until he does, the rest of us are just left to guess, even if the guesses are pretty crazy.

What Kristof Doesn't Understand

One argument sometimes heard when people express dismay at the horrific violence perpetrated by Muslims around the world is that it's unfair to condemn Islam for the crimes of some Muslims. Other religions and ideologies have their criminals, too, you know.

Well, this is true as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Consider Nicholas Kristof's recent column in the New York Times. Kristof was part of a debate on Bill Maher's television show a week or so ago that has received a lot of attention. Here's Kristof's description of the show:

Our conversation degenerated into something close to a shouting match and went viral on the web. Maher and a guest, Sam Harris, argued that Islam is dangerous yet gets a pass from politically correct liberals, while the actor Ben Affleck denounced their comments as “gross” and “racist.” I sided with Affleck....so let me offer three points of nuance.

First, historically, Islam was not particularly intolerant, and it initially elevated the status of women. Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.

These two sentences are odd. If Islam elevated the status of women how bad must they have had it before Islam came on the scene? It's also simply misleading to lump Christians in Europe together with Nazis and Communists as though the Nazis and the Stalinists were Christians. The Nazis were pagans and the Stalinists were atheists. To somehow identify the faith of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the thousands of other Christians who risked their lives to smuggle Jews to safety during the holocaust and the tens of thousands of Christians who were martyred by the communists in the name of 20th century state atheism is an obscenity. But set it aside. Kristoff goes on to give us his second reason:

Second, today the Islamic world includes a strain that truly is disproportionately intolerant and oppressive. Barbarians in the Islamic State cite their faith as the reason for their monstrous behavior — most recently beheading a British aid worker devoted to saving Muslim lives — and give all Islam a bad name. Moreover, of the 10 bottom-ranking countries in the World Economic Forum’s report on women’s rights, nine are majority Muslim. In Afghanistan, Jordan and Egypt, more than three-quarters of Muslims favor the death penalty for Muslims who renounce their faith, according to a Pew survey.

The persecution of Christians, Ahmadis, Yazidis, Bahai — and Shiites — is far too common in the Islamic world. We should speak up about it.

This sounds so tepid a condemnation of evil as to be almost a parody of itself. It's about as mild as if Kristof had said that the beheadings and what not are "inappropriate, and we all might wish the Islamists wouldn't engage in that sort of unpleasantness." Why are liberals so reluctant to use the word "evil"? If that adjective doesn't apply to ISIS and Islamic terrorism in general what does it apply to? Republicans? Dick Cheney?

Third, the Islamic world contains multitudes: It is vast and varied. Yes, almost four out of five Afghans favor the death penalty for apostasy, but most Muslims say that that is nuts. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, only 16 percent of Muslims favor such a penalty. In Albania, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, only 2 percent or fewer Muslims favor it, according to the Pew survey.

Kristoff thinks that because the percentages are small there's nothing much to worry about here. The problem is that if only 10% of Muslims world-wide favor the death penalty for apostasy that's still 100,000,000 people which is quite alot of people, don't you think?

The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete. Remember that those standing up to Muslim fanatics are mostly Muslims. In Pakistan, a gang of Muslim men raped a young Muslim woman named Mukhtar Mai as punishment for a case involving her brother; after testifying against her attackers and winning in the courts, she selflessly used the compensation money she received from the government to start a school for girls in her village. The Taliban gunmen who shot Malala Yousafzai for advocating for education were Muslims; so was Malala.

This touches on a crucially important distinction between Islam and other religions, especially Christianity, and it goes to the fundamental problem that Bill Maher and Sam Harris were trying to get at (I can't believe I'm on the same side as these guys).

If Christians behave barbarously they're violating the core tenets taught by their founder. They're betraying him, the Gospels, and their professed convictions. They cannot be said to be acting like Christ. On the other hand, if Muslims behave barbarously they're actually following in the footsteps of their founder who throughout his life resorted to violence and slaughter. Moreover, their behavior is consistent with much of the Qu'ran. In other words, moderate Muslims lack the theological resources to condemn the behavior of groups like ISIS, which is why it's so difficult for Muslim clerics who oppose ISIS to do so on theological grounds.

ISIS has put moderate Muslims in a very difficult position. In order to oppose the savagery of these terrorists Muslims have to both reinterpret the Qu'ran and ignore the example of the Prophet whom they revere. Maher and Harris understand this, Kristoff and Affleck evidently don't.

The Lure of ISIS

One question that puzzles some readers of the news out of the Middle East is why ISIS is able to attract so many young men to its banner when even other Muslims are calling ISIS barbaric and savage. Islamic scholar Ayman S. Ibrahim at First Things gives three reasons for the appeal ISIS holds for so many Muslims. Here's a brief synopsis:

First, ISIS knows how to use the Qur’ān....To support expelling, mutilating, beheading, and crucifying their enemies, ISIS provides verses such as (Qur’ān 5:33; 8:12; 47:3-6). To encourage their members to participate in jihad and thus inherit the terrific Paradise waiting for them, ISIS recites (Q 47:15).

Second, ISIS knows how to use the early Muslim history to support its claims and military operations. It is noteworthy to mention that the Sunni Muslims view the early years of Islam not only as history, but specifically as a sacred one. Not only the prophet Muhammad, but also his companions were heroes; examples and role models to follow. The years of Muhammad, his prophetic career, his raids and expeditions, and his first four successors (caliphs) are commonly viewed as the best days in Islam, especially among the Sunni.

Third, ISIS is quite appealing to some as it serves as the fulfillment of the long awaited dream of the one unified Muslim umma (community). With the emergence of ISIS, for the first time in centuries, Muslims from many ethnicities and cultural background can claim to be “one” in Allah’s restored caliphate. They pine for the “golden days” of Islam.

This last is especially interesting. For six centuries Arab Muslims and black North African Muslims have seethed in a stew of inferiority vis a vis the infidel West. They feel deeply perplexed that they, having "the truth" and with Allah on their side, nevertheless, lose confrontation after confrontation with the technologically superior West. They were even out-teched during the crusades and only managed to defeat the crusaders because of the long supply lines and lack of support on the home front that the crusaders had to deal with. At any rate the sense that the infidels are somehow superior to them is galling.

So, when a Sunni Muslim army like ISIS seems to be sweeping all before it, seems destined finally to be on the verge of establishing the long-dreamt of caliphate, and of defeating, not only the hated Shia, but eventually the even more deeply hated Israelis and Americans, disaffected Muslims from all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East yearn to be a part of it. The atrocities they're expected to commit are exactly what Allah desires of them, as the Qur'an teaches (see above), and thus whatever qualms they may have they set aside because they are doing Allah's will.

Glory awaits them and for young men whose lives are stultifyingly wretched and hopeless, the promise of that glory is a powerful lure.

Have Some Sympathy

Those readers who follow politics have probably heard that the democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, Alison Lundergen Grimes, has repeatedly refused to admit to having voted for Mr. Obama. Her refusals have reached the parodic stage, and I started to think that maybe the truth is that she actually voted for Mitt Romney or forgot to vote at all and knew that such an admission would destroy her chances of defeating Mitch McConnell. This seems an unlikely explanation, however, since she actually campaigned for Mr. Obama in 2012.

Even so, why the aversion to admitting that she voted for him? I mean, okay, a lot of people don't want to admit they voted for him, and understandably so, because he had no qualifications for the office when he ran in 2008 and appears headed for the distinction of the most incompetent president of the last 100 years, so an admission that one voted for him reflects very poorly on one's judgment. I understand that, but even so, what is she telling her fellow Democrats when she won't admit having voted for a man whose election she worked for? Is Mr. Obama really that politically toxic?

Anyway, Molly Hemmingway has come to her defense, sort of, in a piece at The Federalist. Hemmingway writes:

Here’s the thing. It wasn’t just Grimes who voted for Obama multiple times. It was literally (literally “literally,” not Joe Biden “literally”) tens of millions of other people in this country. They really did it. For real. They put up bumper stickers. They put up yard signs. They called him a light-worker and an enlightened being. They said “He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”

He was given a Nobel Freaking Peace Prize. The award citation reads like satire. Seriously, it’s hi-larious. If you’re ever having a bad day, just recall that President Obama once won a Nobel Peace Prize. If you’re having a really bad day, read the citation. I guarantee your mood will improve.

The media fawned over him. They got thrills up their legs. By any metric, the mainstream media was obsequious in its coverage of the president, only pulling back marginally, quite recently, and in the tiniest few quarters as the crush of scandal and incompetence has continued and grown.

Anyway, point being that it’s not just Grimes who is trying to avoid the uncomfortably truth that she played a role in electing and re-electing Obama.

Pretty much everyone who voted for Obama is looking to change the topic if it comes up. Even the crazy person who lives down my street in a house that looks haunted finally took down his Obama sign. It had been up for years. My Obama-bumper-sticker-saturated neighborhood is nearly Obama bumper sticker free these days. My Democratic friends are all talking more about Obama’s incompetence than the role they played in inflicting our country with his presidency. Yours are, too. Heck, you are, too, if you were one of the majority of voters who voted for Obama. (Or you’re shifting blame desperately in a comment thread as we speak.) Listen, I know the options weren’t great, but that’s still no defense for picking the guy who is bad at everything.

I mean, at this point, we’re down to, like, Ezra Klein and the Vox Crew when we’re counting people who are reluctantly admitting that they were in that group of people. We’re at 2006 levels of people trying to avoid talking about voting for the guy who they made president. Maybe worse. Think about that. We are in the middle of a presidency that is making the Bush administration seem like it was chock full of managerial geniuses and strategic masterminds. Of course you’re going to deny having had anything to do with the presidency that is making the predecessor look competent by comparison.

I don’t blame Grimes one bit for denying she helped elect the guy whose top hits include Solyndra, Obamacare health premiums, the assault on religious liberty, Joe Biden, ISIS sprawl, and a growing list of scandals that make Nixon, Warren G. Harding and Ulysses S. Grant look like choir boys (She might have included the failure to prepare for Ebola in this list-RLC).

So let’s lay off her. She did what she had to do. So are tons of the remaining Obama voters. They made a huge mistake. No need to vote for Grimes, obviously, but have some sympathy.

Point taken, Molly, but until I hear her actually explain why she voted for a man who pretty much just walked into the White House off the street it'll be hard to gin up much sympathy for her.

Ends and Means

During the recent conflict with Hamas a young Palestinian was apprehended by Israeli forces. The prisoner was a bomb expert who possessed a lot of information on the whereabouts of a tunnel from Gaza to an Israeli kibbutz. The Israelis didn't know which kibbutz was threatened but they did know that the tunnel had been packed with explosives timed to detonate at the common dinner hour in the kibbutz. A hundred Israeli families would be wiped out if all went according to Hamas' plan. Such is the nature of the enemy the Israelis have on their border.

At any rate, an Israeli interrogator was brought in to question the terrorist. The interrogator was also a young man, as young as the man he was questioning. He was under enormous pressure to find out where the tunnel is before the explosives were to detonate in a few hours. How did he do it?

You can read the account of this episode from the war here.

As you read the article ask yourself these questions: Did the end justify the means? If so, why? If not, why? What do you suppose eventually happened to Hamid? Would the interrogator have been justified in using physical torture to get the information from the prisoner? If so, why? If not, why not? Is the infliction of physical pain morally distinct from the infliction of emotional pain? If yes, then how?