Evidence-Free Physics

In order to escape the overwhelming evidence that cosmic fine-tuning offers to those who believe the universe to be intelligently designed, many skeptics have staked their money, or at least their professional reputations, on the concept of a multiverse, for which there's scarcely any evidence at all. The multiverse, however, seems to be suggested by string theory, for which there's also scarcely any evidence, but it remains a popular hypothesis in some circles nonetheless.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this popularity is due to the fact that without it the multiverse would be seen as sheer fantasy, and without the multiverse there's no escaping the conclusion that our universe appears to have been intentionally designed for life by a mathematical supergenius.

Cosmologist Bernard Carr once said that “If there is only one universe you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.” Of course, there could be both, but if there is a multiverse it obviates one of the best arguments for the existence of God, i.e. the argument based on cosmic fine-tuning.*(see below)

Denyse O'Leary brings us a nice summary of some of what's being said about string theory in an article at Evolution News and Views. She begins with the relationship of string theory to multiverse theory:

[S]tring theory... undergirds the concept of a multiverse: There are more universes than particles in our known universe.

How so? To work at all, string theory requires at least nine spatial dimensions (six of which are curled up out of our sight) plus time. But if our universe (three spatial dimensions plus time) arose randomly among the ten dimensions of possibilities (the “string landscape"), theorists reckon that there should be about 10^500 universes (or more). [If there are that many different worlds then] literally anything can happen, has happened, and will happen over and over again.

The sheer number suffocates the evidence for fine-tuning. Our universe happens to look fine-tuned? But the theoretical others don’t. New Scientist spells it out: “This concept of a ‘multiverse’ could explain a puzzling mystery — why dark energy, the furtive force that is accelerating the expansion of space, appears improbably fine-tuned for life. With a large number of universes, there is bound to be one that has a dark energy value like ours.”

O'Leary goes on to discuss the theory of Supersymmetry, for which there's scarcely any evidence either, and notes the opinion of Peter Higgs, the physicist who predicted the existence of the Higgs Boson:

Curiously, Peter Higgs...is not a believer in either supersymmetry or the multiverse: “It’s hard enough to have a theory for one universe,” he says. As the Economist pointed out in 2016, “Supersymmetry is a beautiful idea. But no evidence supports it.”

The lack of evidence and the inability to test these theories is starting to embarrass some science writers and critics:

Critics, perhaps less imaginative than the theorists, decry string theory’s lack of testability. Science writer Philip Ball complains, “Proposing something as dramatic as seven extra dimensions, without offering the slightest prospect of testing to see if they are there, is a step too far for some physicists.” ....Physicist Ethan Siegel tells us bluntly at Forbes that string theory is not science: It cannot be tested.

Physicist Frank Close is blunt: “[M]any physicists have developed theories of great mathematical elegance, but which are beyond the reach of empirical falsification, even in principle. The uncomfortable question that arises is whether they can still be regarded as science.”

Science writer John Horgan, even blunter, scoffs [at the proliferation of untestable hypotheses in physics] “At its best, physics is the most potent and precise of all scientific fields, and yet it surpasses even psychology in its capacity for bull****.”

Evidence or no, string theory remains popular. Skeptical Columbia mathematician Peter Woit wonders why: “The result of tens of thousands of papers and more than 30 years of work is that all the evidence is that if you can get something this way that looks at all like the Standard Model, you can get anything. Normally when that happens you simply acknowledge the problem and give up, but for some reason that hasn’t happened.”

If science-based reasoning doesn’t explain string theory, cultural history might: A culture might wish a multiverse into existence despite the facts, to satisfy emotional needs such as making naturalism appear to work. As Philip Ball says, “[N]ailing your flag to the mast of string theory has come to be seen as an expression of faith rather than reason, and physics has become polarised into believers and sceptics.”

The string theory/multiverse complex resists being thrown into the dustbin of discarded scientific ideas because for metaphysical naturalists it's really the only game in town. If there's only one universe then, as Bernard Carr said over a decade ago, you pretty much have to accept that it was intelligently designed. The improbability of so many conditions, force values, parameters, etc. being calibrated within tolerances so fine that deviations in some cases of just one part in 10^120 would have prevented the universe from existing at all is so astronomical as to make the notion that our universe is just an accident literally incredible.

* Here are just a few examples of cosmic traits which must be set to the precise values they have or life as we know it would be impossible:

• Stars like the sun produce energy by fusing two hydrogen atoms into a single helium atom. During that reaction, 0.007 percent of the mass of the hydrogen atoms is converted into energy, via Einstein’s famous e = mc2 equation. But if that percentage were, say, 0.006 or 0.008, the universe would be far more hostile to life. The lower number would result in a universe filled only with hydrogen; the higher number would leave a universe with no hydrogen (and therefore no water) and no stars like the sun.
• The early universe was delicately poised between runaway expansion and terminal collapse. Had the universe contained much more matter, additional gravity would have made it implode. If it contained less, the universe would have expanded too quickly for galaxies to form.
• Had matter in the universe been more evenly distributed, it would not have clumped together to form galaxies. Had matter been clumpier, it would have condensed into black holes.
• Atomic nuclei are bound together by the so-called strong force. If that force were slightly more powerful, all the protons in the early universe would have paired off and there would be no hydrogen, which fuels long-lived stars. Water would not exist, nor would any known form of life.

Mis-critiquing Intelligent Design

J. B. Stump, who works for the BioLogos Foundation and teaches philosophy at Bethel College in Indiana, wrote a review a while back for Christian Century of a book by Benjamin Jantzen titled An Introduction to Design Arguments. Neither the reviewer nor Jantzen is terribly sympathetic to this family of arguments for the existence of God and so we read passages like this one critical of Michael Behe's notion of irreducible complexity:

Of course, there are many things we don’t yet understand about evolutionary history. So if Behe were to produce an example of an irreducibly complex structure for which scientists had no compelling evolutionary account, would that be enough to generate the conclusion that it must have been designed? No, says Jantzen; there is another problem with the argument. When Behe claims that irreducible complexity is best explained by a designer, Jantzen reminds us that "best" is a comparative term and can only mean “best among the known explanations.” If history is any guide here, we should expect that we don’t yet know all the possible explanations, so Behe’s claim is considerably weakened.

This is a very odd criticism. Practitioners in every field always embrace the best theory available at the time, if only tentatively. Rarely do we find scientists holding back from working with a hypothesis because, though it's the best extant, they hope there may be better ones down the road. It's the best theories that make it into the textbooks and that popularizers of science advance in their books and articles. It's true that theories are often held with a light hand, but it's simply weird to think that we should refrain from concluding, for the time being at least, that something is designed even though that's the best explanation for what we see, because there may be a better explanation in the future.

Stump also says this which seems quite wide of the mark:

The ID camp does a disservice to the predominantly conservative Christian community to which it appeals by conditioning that community to mistrust science. Its arguments depend on accepted, settled science getting things wrong. So now an alarming number of Christians also reject the conclusions of scientific experts on climate change and vaccines. Of course experts make mistakes. The trick is to realize that they can be trustworthy as well as fallible.

This is just false. I'd challenge Stump to explain how it is that Intelligent Design theorists condition people to mistrust science. ID is not anti-science. Many of the ID people are themselves scientists or philosophers of science. Behe is a biochemist. They embrace and practice science. What they oppose are the metaphysical assumptions that naturalistic scientists smuggle into their interpretations of the empirical data. The conflict is not between ID and science, it's between ID and naturalism. It's a metaphysical, or perhaps methodological disagreement, but both IDers and non-IDers use the same scientific data and neither holds science in any higher esteem than the other.

Stump exacerbates the error by claiming that because of ID people are skeptical of climate change and vaccines, but this is ridiculous. People are skeptical of the claims of some climatologists that the globe is warming at dangerous rates because they find that a) some of the people making these claims have a personal or political stake in the issue, b) some of them have fudged data and forfeited their credibility, and c) there are other climatologists who have come to different conclusions. None of this has anything to do with ID. Likewise with those who are leery of vaccinating children. They agree with Stump's last sentence above, that experts can be both trustworthy and fallible. They just don't want the experts making their mistakes on their children.

Stump does take Jantzen to task for a very serious omission. According to Stump, Jantzen completely elides mention of Stephen Meyer's books:

It is a curious omission that there is no treatment at all of intelligent design’s currently most prominent figure, Stephen Meyer. His books Signature in the Cell (2009) and Darwin’s Doubt (2013) have become the leading edge of the movement. I suspect that Meyer’s work came along too late in the development of Jantzen’s book, which is clearly the fruit of many years of engagement with the material. It is regrettable, though, that what aims to be a comprehensive treatment of design arguments does not include the most important contemporary exemplar.

Stump's attempt to provide Jantzen with an excuse here is hard to credit. Meyer's first book came out in 2009, the second in 2013. Jantzen's book was released in February of 2014. He certainly had time to treat the first one, even if he had no time to add an appendix to offer some thoughts on the second. The fact that he ignored Meyer's work is indeed very unfortunate.

Europe's Refugee Crime Crisis

A lengthy column by Dr. Cheryl Bernard in The National Interest describes Austria's experience with Afghan refugees and demonstrates precisely why so many people support President Trump's call for "extreme vetting".

This is not an article that has been fun for me to write. I have worked on issues related to refugees for much of my professional life, from the Pakistani camps during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to Yemen, Sudan, Thailand, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Lebanon, Bosnia, Nicaragua and Iraq, and have deep sympathy for their plight.

But nowhere had I encountered a phenomenon like this one. I had seen refugees trapped in circumstances that made them vulnerable to rape, by camp guards or soldiers. But for refugees to become perpetrators of this crime in the place that had given them asylum? That was something new.

A few weeks ago, the Austrian city of Tulln declared a full stop to any further refugee admissions. As the mayor made clear, that decision was aimed at Afghans, but for legal and administrative reasons it could only be promulgated in a global way. That had not been the city’s intention—to the contrary, it had just completed the construction of an expensive, brand-new facility for incoming asylum seekers, which would now, the mayor declared, be given over to another purpose.

His exact words: “We’ve had it.” The tipping point, after a series of disturbing incidents all emanating from Afghans, was the brutal gang rape of a fifteen-year-old girl, snatched from the street on her way home, dragged away and serially abused by Afghan refugees.

Her description of the rape and the subsequent fate of the victim is horrific, and, as she adds, it's just a solitary example of what is an epidemic of outrageous attacks by refugees on women all across Europe (See here, for example)

It took a while for the Austrian media, cowering before the intimidating visage of political correctness, to start identifying the perpetrators as refugees, but the situation is now so bad they can no longer ignore it. It's not only assaults on women that these ungrateful wretches are subjecting the Austrian people to, there's also widespread abuse of their welfare system as well.

When young men have been taught all their lives that women are essentially property, when they've been taught to hate the West and everything about it, the only surprise in what Dr. Bernard describes is that anyone would be surprised:

This brings us to a third, more compelling and quite disturbing theory [for why these crimes are happening] — the one that my Afghan friend, the court translator, puts forward. On the basis of his hundreds of interactions with these young men in his professional capacity over the past several years, he believes to have discovered that they are motivated by a deep and abiding contempt for Western civilization.

To them, Europeans are the enemy, and their women are legitimate spoils, as are all the other things one can take from them: housing, money, passports.

Their laws don’t matter, their culture is uninteresting and, ultimately, their civilization is going to fall anyway to the horde of which one is the spearhead. No need to assimilate, or work hard, or try to build a decent life here for yourself — these Europeans are too soft to seriously punish you for a transgression, and their days are numbered.

And it’s not just the sex crimes, my friend notes. Those may agitate public sentiment the most, but the deliberate, insidious abuse of the welfare system is just as consequential. Afghan refugees, he says, have a particular proclivity to play the system: to lie about their age, to lie about their circumstances, to pretend to be younger, to be handicapped, to belong to an ethnic minority when even the tired eye of an Austrian judge can distinguish the delicate features of a Hazara from those of a Pashtun.

Dr. Bernard concludes with this thought:

Finally, the Left has to do a bit of hard thinking. It’s fine to be warm, fuzzy and sentimental about strangers arriving on your shores, but let’s also spare some warm, fuzzy and sentimental thoughts for our own values, freedoms and lifestyle. Girls and women should continue to feel safe in public spaces, be able to attend festivals, wear clothing appropriate to the weather and their own liking, travel on trains, go to the park, walk their dogs and live their lives.

This is a wonderful Western achievement, and one that is worth defending.

We have a moral obligation, I believe, to help those who suffer, but let's be sure that those we're helping are genuinely in need of our assistance, and let's help them where they are. No one has a duty to succor the homeless by bringing them into their homes, neither must we bring millions of moral illiterates into our communities, putting our wives and daughters at risk, in order to rescue them from tyranny in their homelands.

If there are those who think it too strong to call the perpetrators of the crimes described in Dr. Bernard's essay "moral illiterates" then her article is, for them, "must reading".

Why Aren't Men Working?

In a piece at First Things (subscription required) Irish writer John Waters cites some depressing statistics about male employment in the U.S. The good news is that there are plenty of jobs for people who want to work. The bad news is that evidently fewer men than ever want to work:

In a recent book, Men Without Work, Nicholas Eberstadt shows that, although unemployment in the U.S. has been falling in what he calls this “second Gilded Age,” there is simultaneously a “flight from work” by men in their prime.

Even while manufacturers are finding it difficult to fill vacancies, the percentage of working men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four is now lower than it was at the end of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Approximately one in eight men in their prime has left the workforce altogether, and about one in six is without paid work, a trend that has been visible since the mid-1960s. The graph of this male exodus from the workplace is an almost straight upward line, regardless of booms or recessions, indicating that weakening market demand is not the critical factor.

Nearly seven million American men in their prime have left behind—it seems of their own volition—the idea of trading their skills and talents in the marketplace, and many have turned their backs on all forms of commitment and responsibility. Some are ex-cons, but the greater part is composed of single men without parental responsibilities and with limited formal education, a significant quotient of these being African Americans.

Marriage trumps race as an indicator of employment, as does being a recent immigrant. For every man in his prime deemed unemployed, there are three others who are neither working nor looking for work. Almost three in five of these men are receiving at least one disability benefit, a factor that Eberstadt concedes may not be driving the phenomenon but is certainly financing it.

Men who marry or who have taken the trouble to immigrate are much less likely to be unemployed than those who eschew marriage. This isn't surprising, but it is distressing. How are these millions of single men surviving? Who's paying their room board and medical expenses? The answer, of course, is those who do work. It's very kind of those struggling to eke out a living for their own families to turn over a chunk of their paycheck to subsidize those whom Waters describes thus:

We observe, then, the depths of an existential rather than an economic or purely social crisis, with most of these men wasting away for an average of 2,100 hours a year in front of screens, binging on TV, pornography, sugar, and painkillers, no longer feeling that America has a place for their humanity. They don’t do civic society, religion, or volunteerism.

Actually, I'm not sure if that last clause in the first sentence is accurate. I doubt these men feel anything of the sort. I suspect rather that they simply don't care. Men who aren't willing to commit to family, church, or community aren't likely to care about much else beyond themselves and certainly don't care whether "America has a place for their humanity".

Waters concludes his treatment of Eberstadt's book with this:

If 1965 work rates pertained in the U.S. today there would be approximately 10 million more men with paid work than there are now. ­He professes to find this baffling, given that national wealth has doubled since the turn of the millennium. He expresses ­similar incomprehension about the fact that, ­globalization and deindustrialization notwithstanding, this precise syndrome has not afflicted other Western ­societies to anything like the same extent. He calls it the “quiet catastrophe,” ignored by politicians and commentators.

Little wonder the catastrophe is ignored by politicians and commentators. If a conservative politician were to call attention to some of these facts he'd doubtless be excoriated as a bigot, or an elitist, or a racist and remanded to the re-education camps we euphemistically call sensitivity training.

Nor are progressives likely to speak out too loudly about the calamity that's been visited upon us since for fifty years or so many of these folks have been working like Stakhanovites to undo the American family. They've largely succeeded, at least with the lower socio-economic classes, and as Charles Murray points out in his book Coming Apart, the results are indeed devastating.

Usually, people responsible for a catastrophe don't have too much to say about the damage they've inflicted.

What Do People Really Think?

A column in USA Today by Tom Krattenmaker discusses a recent Gallup poll which shows a decline in the number of people who support "Creationism" and an uptick in the number of people embracing naturalistic evolution. By "Creationism" Krattenmaker means "young-earth creationism":

New polling data show that for the first time in a long time there’s a notable decline in the percentage of Americans — including Christians — who hold to the “Young Earth” creationist view that humankind was created in its present form in the past 10,000 years, evolution playing no part.

According to a Gallup poll conducted in May, the portion of the American public taking this position now stands at 38%, a new low in Gallup’s periodic surveys. Fifty-seven percent accept the validity of the scientific consensus that human beings evolved from less advanced forms of life over millions of years.

Does this mean that those 57% are embracing naturalistic evolution? Not necessarily, according to Gallup:

As the poll reveals, the biggest factor in the shift is a jump in the number of Christians who are reconciling faith and evolution. They are coming to see evolution as their God’s way of creating life on Earth and continuing to shape it today.

Gallup has been asking the same questions on this poll since the 1980s so it's not obvious to the casual observer why Christians are finding it easier to reconcile "faith and evolution". The reason is, perhaps, that many Christians are finding very intellectually satisfying another explanation that wasn't so well-known back in the 80s and thus didn't show up on Gallup surveys.

That alternative, Intelligent Design, is proving to be a very attractive option both philosophically and theologically because it takes no formal position on who designed the universe, how long ago the designer designed the universe, and how the designer managed to accomplish the feat. It simply asserts that the universe and living things both exhibit the signs of having been intelligently engineered and that impersonal, mechanistic processes are inadequate as explanations for the massive evidence of design that scientists discover almost daily.

In other words, whether the designer employed evolutionary processes or some other creative means, cosmic fine-tuning, the origin of life, and the high information content of living things are inexplicable apart from intentional, intelligent agency.

The question then for many is not a simple Evolution vs. Creation binary. The question (at least as it pertains to life) is between the efficacy of random mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection vs. the efficacy of intelligent agency in accounting for the origin and subsequent biological information. Gallup would give us a clearer picture of where people stood on this issue if they formulated their questions to reflect that dichotomy.

Calling for a Muslim Reformation

In her book Heretic Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls for a reformation among Muslims, a reformation she compares to that which occurred in Christianity in the 16th century. She's doubtless correct that Islam needs a reformation but I'm not sure comparisons to the Christian reformation are quite apposite.

For one thing, the Christian reformation was a call to the Church to set aside papal authority and tradition and return instead to the teaching of Christ and the authority of the Bible. It would seem that precisely the opposite is needed in Islam. The radicals are those who are committed to the Prophet and the Koran, and the reformers are in the position of having to entice them away from some of the more embarrassing teachings of both.

Indeed, it's hard to see how a reformed Islam, one in which both Mohammad and the Koran are subjected to critical examination, can survive. If Muslims come to believe that Mohammad is not a perfect model for their emulation and that the Koran contains much that must be rejected, Islam, being a religion based on a conviction of the perfection of both, would doubtless lose much of its attraction.

In any case, there are other courageous Muslim reformers out there besides Hirsi Ali, and one such is a physician, author, and former naval officer named Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. Dr. Jasser was interviewed for The Federalist last January by Steve Postal.

The whole interview is enlightening, but a couple of things are worth highlighting here. For example, Dr. Jasser supports what he calls Trump's "travel pause" and adds this:

Some studies report around 23 percent of those seeking refuge here have sympathies for ISIS. Those individuals have no right to come to the United States. Those who come to the United States should not do so solely out of humanitarian need, but also to share our values. Those with sympathies for Islamists (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood or ISIS) as well as those with sympathies for fascist dictatorships (e.g., Assadists or those with allegiances to the Russian government) should never be given the freedom to come to the U.S.

He also believes that reform must change people's minds, not just subdue those who take up arms and resort to terror:

Islamists know that the greatest threat to their supremacist program is when we advance the ideas of liberty, freedom, and universal values of human rights protected by secular national identity. That is the only antidote to Islamism (political Islam and the idea of an Islamic state). The means of terror has now morphed from suicide belts and bombs to vehicular jihad and machetes. While we must learn to confront this changing landscape, we must see all these attacks for what they are: the very tip of the iceberg, the militant violent expressions of the massive global Islamist movement.

We can and will continue to fight this war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya. But victories there are only pyrrhic and fleeting. In order for the West to see a day free from wars against Islamist terror and its caliphate(s), we must wage an ideological war to influence the minds of Muslims against political Islam.

This seems right. All the military victories over Islamic extremists our armed forces can achieve will not entirely remove the threat, it will only push it underground. Islamist violence will subside only happen when Muslims, both the violent jihadis, those who sympathize with them, and those on the fence are convinced that murder and torture is not at all the will of God. The belief that holy war and killing is what God wills is what motivates them, our previous administration's unwillingness to acknowledge this uncomfortable fact notwithstanding, and it is only when Muslims come to question the basis for that motivation that acts of violence will diminish.

This means an active global effort to counter Islamic doctrine as it relates to violence should be undertaken, an effort which engages the resources of both our government and private institutions like mosques, churches and schools. The Church, in particular, is in an especially propitious position to educate the American people, who are still largely ignorant of the nature of Islam, on the threat posed by sharia to our basic freedoms like freedom of religion, speech and press, as well as the threat it poses to the dignity of women.

In my opinion, the Church is the only institution which can offer devout Muslims, who not unreasonably deplore many of the fruits of Western secularism, a compelling religious alternative to violence and conquest, but it must do so with love and humility.

The left, of course, will see the foregoing as anti-Muslim bigotry. That's an absurd allegation but one nevertheless sufficient to provoke loud protests among Islamist groups like CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and intimidate those in government and elsewhere who lack confidence in the values articulated by our Founding Fathers.

Perhaps the Trump administration will prove itself to be comprised of people with stiffer spines and stronger convictions than we've seen in our public servants heretofore.

In any event, read the rest of the interview with Dr. Jasser at the link. It's very good.

Are Ethics Self-Evident?

Philosopher Patrick Grim offers a Lecture for the Great Courses series in which he asks by way of introduction what kind of knowledge ethical knowledge is. In other words, is our knowledge that it's wrong to abuse children like our scientific knowledge - subject to empirical verification? Or is it more like the intuitive knowledge we have upon reflection, like the axioms of geometry? He begins his query with this:

We do know things about ethics. We know that human life is important and valuable. We know that people have rights; rights to take their own paths in life. We know it is ethically wrong to violate those rights. We know we have obligations to our family, to our friends, to humanity at large. I take that to be an important kind of knowledge, but a normal kind of knowledge.

The question, as I see it, is not whether we have that kind of knowledge. The question is a reflective question about what kind of knowledge that is.

Not having heard the lecture series, I don't know where Grim eventually comes down on this question, but I'd say two things about it here. First, I'm not sure we do know the things Grim says we know, although it's certainly true that many of us believe those things. Secondly, in order for those beliefs we hold to be knowledge they have to have some warrant or justification, and that leads us to a crucial question: What warrant do we have for thinking that our beliefs - for example, that others have rights - are true beliefs, i.e. knowledge?

If someone claims that other people have rights then we might ask where those rights come from. If our rights are inherent in us because we're human then it'd be wrong for anyone to deprive us of them, but where do "inherent" rights come from, and what do we mean when we say that depriving someone of an inherent right is "wrong"?

If the human species is nothing other than the end-product of a blind, naturalistic process of development that occurred over eons of time then to say something is wrong is to say little more than "I don't like it", but if "wrong" is just what someone else doesn't like then why should anyone care about refraining from doing what others don't like if it doesn't suit them to do so?

Philosopher David Hume in his book The Treatise of Human Nature came to the conclusion that right and wrong are simply whatever wins the general approbation or disapprobation of one's fellows, but if that's all we mean by right and wrong then the terms are synonymous with "socially fashionable". To accuse someone of doing wrong is like accusing them of gaucherie because they slurp their soup. Such behavior may be unconventional and distasteful, but it's not wrong. When we say that child abuse is wrong, however, we surely want to say more than that it's unconventional and distasteful behavior. We want to say that it's evil.

Ethics are indeed self-evident, and we do have intuitive knowledge of right and wrong, but only because, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, we've been endowed by our Creator with a law, in the words of St. Paul, "written on our hearts". That law, being the gift of a perfectly good and wise being who will ultimately hold us accountable to it, is the source of all our moral understanding.

It's binding upon us only because it's bestowed by a personal being. If it were merely the product of impersonal evolutionary forces we would be no more obligated to observe it than we are obligated to refrain from flying in an airplane because it flouts the law of gravity.

If, as Grim says, we know that human life is important and valuable, that people have rights; rights to take their own paths in life, that it's ethically wrong to violate those rights, and that we have obligations to our family, to our friends, and to humanity at large, then we are tacitly acknowledging that there must be a God who has bestowed those rights and obligations upon us.

Either that or we're trying to hold on to the belief in right and wrong while discarding the only suitable foundation for that belief. It's like pulling the table out from under the dinner setting and expecting the dishware to all remain in place.

We Are Not a Simulation

I have occasionally written (see most recently here and here) on the fascinating notion that the universe we live in is actually not "real" but is rather a computer simulation designed by some intelligent creatures living in a different world altogether. This theory has been popularized, perhaps most notably, by philosopher Nick Bostrom.

I find the theory fascinating not because I think it's plausible but because those who do are actually trying to account for the enormous amount of apparently intelligent engineering and design manifested by the fine-tuning of our universe without having to concede that theism is true. They are right, I think, to see an intelligence behind the universe, but wrong if they conclude that the intelligence is anything less than the maximally great being posited by theism.

There's a good article by computer expert Peter Kassan at Skeptic.com in which he explains the simulation hypothesis and offers several criticisms of it.

Kassan gives us a summary of the argument for thinking we live in a simulation:

• The universe contains a vast number of stars.
• Some of these stars have planets.
• Some of these planets must be like Earth.
• Since intelligent life arose and eventually invented computers on Earth, intelligent life must have arisen and invented computers on some of these planets.
• It is (or inevitably will be) possible to simulate intelligent life inhabiting a simulated reality on a computer.
• Since it’s possible, it must have been done.
• There must be a vast number of such simulations on a vast number of computers on a vast number of planets.
• Since there’s only one real universe but there’s a vast number of simulations, the probability that you’re living in a simulation approaches one, while the probability that you’re living in the real universe approaches zero.

As Kassan observes there is no empirical evidence for, or testable implications of, this argument. It's therefore not a scientific hypothesis. It's more akin to science fiction or theology. Kassan calls it "cybernetic solipsism". There’s little reason, he says, to argue that anyone else in your simulated universe is conscious—to achieve verisimilitude, there’d be no need to actually program anyone else’s consciousness but yours.

More than that, though, even an immensely powerful computer would not be able to program human consciousness:

But even a superdupercomputer wouldn’t produce even a single conscious being. The crucial move in the argument is that the simulation of a human mind would actually be conscious in the same sense that you and I are. Your computer simulation wouldn’t simply behave exactly like a real person, it would actually feel pain, pleasure, lust, fear, anger, love, nausea, angst, ennui, and everything else you can feel. It would actually experience the same optical (and other sensory) illusions you do. It would feel what you feel when you get sick, or when you drink or take drugs. It would fall asleep and dream, and then wake up to realize that it was only dreaming. Presumably, it would even die.

In other words, the qualia of sensory experience would have to somehow emerge from the whirrings of the computer's hard drive, but a physical computer can only produce physical outputs, and our sensations - pain, color, sound, etc. - are not physical or material. They're produced by physical stimuli, they're generated by electrochemical reactions in our nervous system, but the sensation of blueness when we look at the sky, to take one example, is not itself physical.

Kassan looks at another aspect of the problem of how a material device like a computer can produce immaterial effects when he considers how a computer can generate what philosophers call intentionality:

The argument that a sufficiently complex computer program would be conscious in the same way you and I are goes something like this:

• The brain is an information processor.
• A computer is an information processor.
• A computer can be programmed to process the same sort of information the brain processes in the same way that the brain processes information.
• The conscious mind arises from information processing in the brain.
• Therefore, a conscious mind will arise from equivalent information processing on a computer.

The argument depends crucially on the concept of information. A computer contains, processes, and displays data like a highway road sign consisting of a rectangular array of light bulbs. As we drive by, we can interpret the pattern of light as letters and words, but the message we read is actually nowhere contained in the display. Imagine a space alien interpreting the display as a binary code, with each column of eight light bulbs conveying one byte. How would they interpret a sign that to us read DANGER—CONSTRUCTION AHEAD? A computer is processing data (information) only because we interpret it as doing so; a brain behaves as it does without interpretation.

In other words, the arrangement of the bulbs in the sign has a meaning to us, but how do the reactions in our brains when we see the sign generate that meaning? The brain is just an enormously complex system of neurons. Where does the meaning come from? There's no meaning in the chemical reactions that fill the brain when we observe the sign. Nor does a computer generate meaning. It simply produces data. Meaning is the product of conscious observers.

Kassan finishes with a couple more thoughts about all this:

There’s another irony concerning the notion that we’re all just computer simulations. If you believe you’re living in a computer simulation, then everything you think you know about the world—including its vastness, the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and even the very existence of computers—is part of that simulation, and so is completely worthless. The evidence on which the entire chain of reasoning depends, in short, is illusory—and so nothing at all can be argued from it.

None of our beliefs are reliable since they're all just beliefs we hold because we've been programmed to do so. Among those simulated beliefs are our moral beliefs:

If we believe we’re just simulations, how should we behave? Should we treat everyone around us as if they’re just a figment of someone else’s imagination, shamelessly manipulating them for our own pleasure or gain? Should we take careless risks, knowing we’ll live again in another simulation or after a reboot? Should we even bother to get out of bed, knowing that it is all unreal? I think not.

If the universe is a simulation then we're all programmed to live the way we do. No behavior is wrong in any meaningful sense. There's no free will, no morality, no meaning to our existence, no justice or injustice. We're all just actors on a stage manipulated by an intelligent programmer for his own purposes. Thus, there is nor can there be, any value to our lives. This, by the way, would be true as well if the programmer were a God who preordains every aspect of our lives.

Belief in a real world and other minds besides our own is properly basic. We are within our epistemic rights to believe that the world exists objectively unless and until we are confronted with a compelling defeater for that belief. The simulation hypothesis falls short of being a compelling defeater.

Simple Rules for Avoiding Poverty

The headline of George Will's recent column in the Washington Post reads "What if the Major Causes of Poverty Are Behavioral?" Huh. Despite the fact that a lot of people have been insisting for a long time that much of the poverty in America is largely a result of the choices and behavior of those who find themselves stuck in it, progressives have turned a contemptuous ear to the very idea that people are in large measure responsible for their station in life.

It's therefore encouraging to see the WaPo entertain the notion that that idea may very well be correct after all.

Will begins by describing the collapse of communities like the Bronx in New York into intergenerational poverty. He notes that perhaps the chief cause is the disintegration of the American family and goes on to remark about what a pair of University of Virginia researchers have called the "success sequence" for Millenials:

Something now seems indisputable: Among today’s young adults, the “success sequence” is insurance against poverty. The evidence is in “The Millennial Success Sequence,” published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies and written by Wendy Wang of the IFS and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and AEI.

The success sequence, previously suggested in research by, among others, Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, is this: First get at least a high-school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. Wang and Wilcox, focusing on Millennials ages 28 to 34, the oldest members of the nation’s largest generation, have found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor. A comparably stunning 55 percent of this age cohort have had children before marriage. Only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) did that.

Eighty-six percent of the Wang-Wilcox Millennials who put “marriage before the baby carriage” have family incomes in the middle or top third of incomes. Forty-seven percent who did not follow the sequence are in the bottom third.

Progressives tend to scoff at this prescription for success because it smacks of bourgeois values, but such disdain puts ideology ahead of people. It derides the means of escape from poverty simply because it's the means that have worked for a class of people they don't like. Some leftist African Americans also sneer at the success sequence because it implies that blacks should live the way white people do.

Well, yes. But a lot of whites don't live this way and are poor and a lot of blacks do live this way and aren't poor. What's more important, racial ideology or getting people out of poverty?

I would add to what Will says about the success sequence just a couple of things (in italics): 1. Get a meaningful diploma. Make sure you can at least read on a high school level when you graduate. 2. Get a job and don't leave it unless it's for something better. Be the best employee you can be. 3. Get married before having children and stay married, especially after having children. 4. Stay away from drugs and alcohol. 5. Regularly attend a good church.

There may be people who've followed this prescription who are still living below the poverty line, but I'll wager that one would have to look awfully hard to find them, and it's worth mentioning that, except for education, none of this costs the taxpayers a penny.

A Philosophical Dead End

Over the last several decades a number of theistic philosophers have developed a powerful argument the conclusion of which is that naturalism - the view that material nature is all there is - is self-refuting. They argue that if we believe naturalism is true then we must believe that none of our beliefs, including our belief in naturalism, is trustworthy.

The foremost proponent of this argument has been Alvin Plantinga who presents a lecture on it here. The lecture is in six parts and is perhaps too long for those with limited time so as an alternative interested readers might check out this short summary: Lest one criticize the video for its theistic bias against naturalism it might be mentioned that a lot of naturalists have implicitly and explicitly agreed with the thesis of the video.

Naturalist philosopher Thomas Nagel in his book Mind and Cosmos acknowledges that materialist versions of evolution simply can't explain cognition, value, or consciousness.

Evolutionary cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has written that “Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth; sometimes the truth is adaptive, sometimes it is not.”

As an example of how a false belief may have survival value, at least for our genes, imagine a prehistoric society in which arises a genetic mutation inclining the possessor of the mutation toward the belief that the more children one has the greater will be one's reward in the afterlife. Such a belief would be expected to produce large numbers of progeny, and the factors responsible for it, if they're genetic, will, over the course of time, eventually dominate in the society. Yet the belief is false.

As Plantinga says, one can believe in natural selection or one can believe in naturalism, but one can't believe in both. If natural selection has produced our cognitive faculties in a way consonant with naturalism then those faculties evolved to promote survival not to ascertain truth. Thus we have no good reason to think that our belief in naturalism is true.

On the other hand, if natural selection was superintended by an intelligent agent then we have reason to think that the process shaped our cognitive faculties to discern truth. That allows us to still believe in natural selection, but, of course, the existence of the intelligent agent means that the basic metaphysical assumption of naturalism, that nature is all there is, is false.

Naturalism appears to be a philosophical dead end. Followed to its logical conclusion it results in epistemological and moral nihilism.

Propagandist for Oppression

Some people are completely tone deaf to irony. Some are completely indifferent to their own hypocrisy, and some unfortunate individuals, like Linda Sarsour, are both. Sarsour is an American Muslim woman who was co-organizer of the recent Women's March.

One might think that such a woman would be a strong advocate of women's rights, but Sarsour is also a devout Muslim and proponent of sharia - Islamic law based on the Koran and the Hadiths - which only someone steeped in Orwellian newspeak could see as being compatible with women's rights.

It's not that under sharia women have no rights. They do. They have the right to be beaten and raped by their husbands. They have the right to marry the man chosen for them by their families. They have the right to be prohibited from marrying outside the Muslim faith. They have the right to inherit only half of what a man can inherit, or to have their court testimony count less than that of a man. They have the right to marry only one man who himself may marry four women. In short, they have the right not to have any rights.

Their rights are certainly not the sort most women in the West would wish to have, and it's therefore odd that this woman would be praised as a champion of women's rights. But that's not all there is to say about Ms. Sarsour. Ben Shapiro gives us a fuller description of the lady:

Sarsour, who was called a “Champion of Change” by the Obama White House, has a long history of speaking kindly of shariah law and terrorists. Sarsour stated that underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a CIA agent; she supports attacks on the Israeli Defense Force; she stated that “the sacrifice the black Muslims slaves went through in this country is nothing compared to Islamophobia today”; she stated that Brigitte Gabriel and victim of Islamic genital mutilation Ayaan Hirsi Ali didn’t deserve to be called women, explaining, ‘I wish I could take their vaginas away – they don’t deserve to be women.”

Indeed. Well, Ms. Sarsour recently made news when she gave a speech in which she began by praising a known terrorist sympathizer and then called for "jihad" against the White House which, she averred, was occupied by "fascists", "white supremacists", "islamophobes" and other nefarious types.

This from a woman who adheres to a form of Islam that wishes to impose sharia on everyone in the world, which sees itself as the supreme and only truth, and which allows for the oppression, if not murder, of anyone who disagrees. How is that not just a variety of the fascist, supremacist, phobia she thinks resides in the White House?

Sharia, Sarsour has claimed, is nothing more than refraining from alcohol and pork and following the Islamic way. Apparently, following the Islamic way includes, inter multi alia, being disingenuous about what sharia really is. She doesn't mention, for example, that under sharia homosexuals are to be executed, women can be beaten for going out of the house without being properly covered or without their male guardian's permission. They can also be stoned to death for adultery and flogged for lesser offenses.

Under sharia in Saudi Arabia women aren't allowed to drive cars. A joke in Israel, a nation she despises, has it that more women fly F-15s in Israel than drive cars in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, under sharia there would be no freedom of religion - apostates from Islam can be killed - no freedom of speech, and no separation of church and state.

If a white Western male advocated for women what sharia demands of women he'd be treated with utter contempt, but when a Muslim advocates these things, explicitly or implicitly, he/she is invited by good progressives to lead marches for women and to speak at conferences and commencement services. Logical and moral consistency is perhaps not a prerequisite to being a progressive nor a feminist:

The reason Ms. Sarsour so despises Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that both have been outspoken in exposing exactly what sharia and Koran-based Islam entail. Gabriel was born in Lebanon and had her eyes opened by her experience there:

She recalls that during the Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by shrapnel in the attack. She says that she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food. She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.

At one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days. They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters, one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.

Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against the Jews she saw as a child. She is quoted as saying of her experience:

I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen...These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and lived under Islamic law until she managed to escape as a young woman to Holland. Read her memoir Infidel or her call for an Islamic Reformation titled Heretic and you'll wonder why any woman who wants to be treated not as property but as a human being equal under the law to men could possibly sympathize with sharia or Linda Sarsour.

Cosmic Insignificance

Irish Philosopher Nick Hughes contemplates how teensy tiny we are compared to the vastness of the cosmos and wonders whether we have any significance sub specie aeternitatis:

Humanity occupies a very small place in an unfathomably vast Universe. Travelling at the speed of light – 671 million miles per hour – it would take us 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way. But we still wouldn’t have gone very far. By recent estimates, the Milky Way is just one of 2 trillion galaxies in the observable Universe, and the region of space that they occupy spans at least 90 billion light-years.

If you imagine Earth shrunk down to the size of a single grain of sand, and you imagine the size of that grain of sand relative to the entirety of the Sahara Desert, you are still nowhere near to comprehending how infinitesimally small a position we occupy in space. The American astronomer Carl Sagan put the point vividly in 1994 when discussing the famous ‘Pale Blue Dot’ photograph taken by Voyager 1. Our planet, he said, is nothing more than ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’.

And that’s just the spatial dimension. The observable Universe has existed for around 13.8 billion years. If we shrink that span of time down to a single year, with the Big Bang occurring at midnight on 1 January, the first Homo sapiens made an appearance at 22:24 on 31 December. It’s now 23:59:59, as it has been for the past 438 years, and at the rate we’re going it’s entirely possible that we’ll be gone before midnight strikes again. The Universe, on the other hand, might well continue existing forever, for all we know. ...our time on this mote of dust will amount to nothing more than a blip. In the grand scheme of things we are very, very small.

For Sagan, the Pale Blue Dot underscores our responsibility to treat one another with kindness and compassion. But reflection on the vastness of the Universe and our physical and temporal smallness within it often takes on an altogether darker hue. If the Universe is so large, and we are so small and so fleeting, doesn’t it follow that we are utterly insignificant and inconsequential?

This thought can be a spur to nihilism. If we are so insignificant, if our existence is so trivial, how could anything we do or are – our successes and failures, our anxiety and sadness and joy, all our busy ambition and toil and endeavour, all that makes up the material of our lives – how could any of that possibly matter?

Well, it doesn't. At least it doesn't given both Hughes' and Sagan's atheism. Significance cannot be conferred on humanity by the cosmos any more than it can be conferred on us, to borrow Hughes' comparison, by a pile of rocks. It can only be conferred by a person who values us, but then we are only significant to that person (and to ourselves, too, I assume). For humanity as a whole to have significance it must have value to a person who stands outside humanity.

Hughes suggests that this is at least part of the appeal of theism. If there is no God then humanity has no more significance than a swarm of bacteria in a fetid pond. If, however, there is a God who created us and all else then how big we are and how big the cosmos is by comparison are simply irrelevant facts, as are the facts about how distressingly short our life span is. What matters is that we have value, and therefore significance, to the God who made us.

Hughes doesn't believe there is a God, though, so he's understandably reluctant to accept this solution to his problem:

The pessimistic view, then, is that, because we occupy such a small and brief place in the cosmos, we and the things we do are insignificant and inconsequential. But is that right? Are we insignificant and inconsequential? And if we are, should we respond with despair and nihilism?

Nihilism and despair would seem to be a rational, though not very attractive, response, but Hughes spends the balance of his essay trying to avoid it. He mentions, but doesn't agree with, an analogy put forward by Guy Kahane, a philosopher at Oxford:

A single diamond sitting on display in a huge empty warehouse might be small by comparison with its surroundings, but that doesn’t mean that it’s insignificant or that it merits no attention. Since, Kahane argues, the primary source of value is intelligent life, it follows that our cosmic significance depends on how much intelligent life there is out there. If the Universe is teeming with it, if we are just one diamond among millions or billions of others, many of which are just as large and bright, or more so, then we are indeed cosmically insignificant. If, however, we are the sole exemplars of intelligent life, then we are of immense cosmic significance: we are a single diamond shining forth, surrounded by nothingness, like an incandescent beacon of light in the Stygian night.

This seems wrong to me. The only reason a solitary diamond has any significance at all is because we assign it value. If a solitary diamond were surrounded by an endless void it would have no significance at all, and if we're surrounded by nothing but mindless, impersonal atoms then neither do we.

Hughes concludes his essay on a melancholy note. I think he intends it to be a brave affirmation of significance, but it sounds more like whistling past the graveyard. He concedes that we might be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but we still have things that matter to us,

[T]he things that we care about most – our relationships, our projects and goals, our shared experiences, social justice, the pursuit of knowledge, the creation and appreciation of art, music and literature, and the future and fate of ours and other species – do not depend to any considerable extent on our having control over a vast but largely irrelevant Universe.

Yes, these things matter to us, or at least some of us, but why should they? If we're all just doomed specks of dust what does our music and social justice matter? Is not our insistence on the significance of these things like the insistence of a condemned man that it's important that he make the bed in his jail cell before being led off to the gallows? The significance we give these things is little more than an arbitrary valuation. They are valuable because they divert our minds from the sheer pointlessness and emptiness of human existence - a condition that lies at the logical endpoint of Hughes' naturalism.

Can the Brain Explain it All?

Michael Egnor is a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon who has long been haunted, in his words, by the question whether our material brains are all that's responsible for our cognitive experience or whether in addition to the material brain we also possess an immaterial mind. In an article at First Things he describes a disconcerting experience he had while operating on a patient who was talking to him while he was in the process of removing her frontal lobes.

He writes:

Francis Crick, neuroscientist and co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA, expressed the widespread view that the mind is a function of material stuff: “A person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influenced them.”

But, Egnor goes on to ask, if that materialist view is true, "How is it possible to converse with someone while removing the large portions of her brain that serve thought and reasoning?"

Egnor explains why he's skeptical that the materialist view is correct:

I’m a neuroscientist and professor of neurosurgery. The mind-brain question haunts me. Neurosurgeons alter the brain on a daily basis, and what we find doesn’t fit the prevailing view that the brain runs the mind as computer hardware runs software.

I have scores of patients who are missing large areas of their brains, yet who have quite good minds. I have a patient born with two-thirds of her brain absent. She’s a normal junior high kid who loves to play soccer. Another patient, missing a similar amount of brain tissue, is an accomplished musician with a master’s degree in English.

How can this be? It wasn’t until I read Thomas Aquinas that I began to understand.

The human soul also has intellect and will, powers of a wholly different kind. With our intellect, we can think of universal concepts, such as mercy and justice and abstract mathematics. With our will, we can act on abstract principles. Because thinking of abstract concepts entails thoughts removed from particular things, Aquinas reasoned, intellect couldn’t be a material thing. Intellect and will are immaterial powers.

Aquinas taught that our soul’s immaterial powers are only facilitated by matter, not caused by it, and the correlation is loose. His insight presaged certain findings of modern neuroscience.

Wilder Penfield, an early-twentieth-century neurosurgeon who pioneered seizure surgery, noted that during brain stimulation on awake patients, he was never able to stimulate the mind itself—the sense of “I”—but only fragmented sensations and perceptions and movements and memories. Our core identity cannot be evoked or altered by physical stimulation of the brain.

Relatedly, Penfield observed that spontaneous electrical discharges in the brain cause involuntary sensations and movements and even emotions, but never abstract reasoning or calculation. There are no “calculus” seizures or “moral” seizures, in which patients involuntarily take second derivatives or ponder mercy.

One objection to the suggestion that we possess an immaterial mind is that interaction between the material and the immaterial seems incomprehensible. That may be true, but that's not a reason to think that they don't interact. After all, we can't comprehend how a material object like a star can warp an immaterial entity like space, but ever since Einstein we believe it happens. Nor can we comprehend how striking our thumb with a hammer, a material action, can cause the immaterial sensation of pain, but we know it does.

Egnor injects a very disturbing bit of research into his essay when he reminds us of the discovery that at least some comatose individuals are actually conscious:

In the past decade, British researcher Adrian Owen has found using fMRI imaging that some patients with such severe brain damage that they are considered to be in a persistent vegetative state are actually capable of sophisticated thought. The “comatose” patients’ brain scans show that, in reply to questions by an examiner, the patients are in fact thinking and imagining.

This is disturbing because it means that at least some people in comas are actually aware and thinking, but completely unable to communicate with the outside world. They're trapped in their bodies, which must be a hellish condition.

Egnor concludes with this asseveration:

Materialism, the view that matter is all that exists, is the premise of much contemporary thinking about what a human being is. Yet evidence from the laboratory, operating room, and clinical experience points to a less fashionable conclusion: Human beings straddle the material and immaterial realms.

If he's correct then it could well be that we are possessed of a mind which very well could be immune to the death of the body. In other words, contrary to the pronouncements of materialists like Francis Crick, and as hard as it may be for some of them to believe, our physical death may not be the end of our existence.

Who Wants to Live Forever?

I sometimes ask my students if they wouldn't want to live forever and often receive the reply, even from students who are religious, strangely enough, that they don't want to live forever. Yet so much that we do in life seems to be an attempt to stave off death.

If you had a terminal illness and a cure was discovered would you not want to avail yourself of the cure? Do not many of us exercise and diet in a perhaps futile effort to extend our years? The idea of eternal life is what gives most major religions their appeal (except for some of my students, apparently) and it's what drives a relatively recent secular movement called Transhumanism.

An article by Philip Bunn in which he discusses a book about transhumanism explains the goals of, and rationale for, the movement. Here are some excerpts:

Mark O’Connell’s excellent new book “To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death” follows the author’s interactions and interviews with self-professed transhumanists.

This eclectic collection of scientists, tech giants, journalists, and enthusiasts are prophets of a coming post-human species that embraces technology as the means to transcend present biological and psychological limitations. ...

The book serves a more important purpose than simply describing transhumanism, however: O’Connell’s interactions with transhumanists show that modern man is not prepared to argue against transhumanism. He must either accept it or find a theological alternative.

It seems that, sociologically speaking, transhumanism springs from the same part of man that desires to create religion. Man fears death, so must overcome it in some way. From this fear, the social scientists tell us, man creates fantasies about deities and paradises, resurrection and glorification. In its own way, transhumanism becomes religious insofar as it represents another in a long line of sets of belief adopted by man in hopes of overcoming his mortality. This time, man seeks help not from mystical transcendent beings but from his own will, instantiated in technology.

Some religious sects like Mormonism have made a place for transhumanist ideas, but transhumanists like Max More have made clear that traditional Christian doctrine and transhumanism are largely incompatible, given the difficulty of reconciling both sets of claims. However, on at least one point, the transhumanist and the Christian agree: death is an enemy to be conquered. The Christian New Testament claims “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Transhumanists concur, and propose that if death can be conquered through technology, death should be conquered through technology.

.... In his research, O’Connell encounters scientists who tell him that living to extreme ages will be possible soon, within his and his child’s lifetime. Some subjects interviewed even theorize that eventually we could theoretically “upload” consciousness and become more machine than man. ...

Like my students, O'Connell himself refuses to accept that an eternal life is desirable:

Despite hearing the arguments and understanding their source, O’Connell refuses to accept transhumanism. This is not because he thinks transhumanist ideals are unachievable, but because he cannot stomach the idea of living forever, or being himself in any other physical form. He ultimately objects not to the practicality of the transhumanist project but to the propriety of it.

O’Connell’s resistance to transhumanism culminates in a fascinating exchange in the book where O’Connell is forced to defend death and mortality as preferable to eternal life and vitality. He mounts standard arguments: Life’s brevity is what gives it value. Impending death makes our continued existence meaningful in some way. Also, life sucks; why extend it?

O’Connell’s transhumanist companions deftly deflect his objections. “There [is] no beauty in finitude,” they say. They argue that O’Connell’s qualms come from an essential human need to grapple with death and somehow justify it as good so we can avoid constant dread and despair. And, O’Connell admits, the transhumanists are right. There is something palpably absurd about defending death as some sort of human good....

Even if, as O’Connell theorizes, “the idea of meaning [is] itself an illusion, a necessary human fiction,” man has continued maintaining that illusion for millennia and seems to persist in preferring life to death. Unless O’Connell and others like him are prepared and able to convince the bulk of humanity that death is a happy end to be embraced, not fought against, it seems a choice has presented itself. This choice is between different religions that offer escape from death. Transhumanism offers the materialist a religion through which to conquer death; other religions offer the same to those who have faith in gods other than technology.

Quite so, but death cannot be conquered completely through technology. Even were we to become machines no machine is indestructible. We will still die through accident, murder and war, and our deaths will be all the more tragic since we could have lived indefinitely longer than we did. A child's death is always much more grievous than that of an elderly person for that very reason.

Moreover, the sense of despair and grief at the death of loved ones would not be alleviated in a transhumanist world because there'd still be no hope, on transhumanism's atheistic materialism, of ever being reunited with those we've lost again. The loss would be eternal.

Perhaps the problem with the transhumanist project isn't the desirability of living forever. The problem is the indefinite extension of a meaningless life. Even if a few generations from now people were to live for two hundred years their lives would be no more meaningful or happier for being longer. Meaning, significance, and purpose are what makes life worth living and these are not qualities we acquire by making ourselves more machine-like. To live just to live would be tedious and boring. Whether we live eighty years or eight hundred years the important question is "what are we living for?"

The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre in his novel The Nausea describes a man sitting in a restaurant thinking to himself, "Here we are eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence, and there's nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing." Living forever would do nothing to fill the existential emptiness in the soul of modern man.

Whether we are materialistic transhumanists or we believe the traditional Christian version of eternal life the eternity to which we aspire must be meaningful and immensely satisfying. Otherwise, it'd be hell.

An Independence Day Meditation

Tomorrow Americans celebrate their Independence Day, the day set aside to commemorate the signing of our Declaration of Independence from the Mother Country and the commencement of our experiment as a constitutional republic.

Citizens of most of the world's nations can point to aspects of their history of which they're justly proud and other aspects which they could wish never happened. Americans are no different. There's much to be proud of and some things we could wish were not part of our history. Even so, the cavils of malcontents primarily in our universities notwithstanding, we have much to celebrate.

America was founded on certain principles which are rarely enough observed, even in this modern era, despite the lip-service often paid to them. Our Founders declared that all men are created equal, a claim that made the eventual emancipation of slaves and full citizenship of women inevitable.

They forged a nation based on the principles that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed and that human beings are endowed by God with inherent rights that can't be taken away without due process.

These two principles were alien to the communist and socialist totalitarianisms of the 20th century, a circumstance which resulted in two world wars, countless smaller conflicts, and over 100 million corpses. Our Founders also guaranteed that we'd have the right to free speech and the freedom to practice our religion, two essential rights without which no society can be truly free.

Yes, there are black marks. We treated the Indians horribly, practiced chattel slavery for seventy years after becoming a nation, and contemporary urban crime and dysfunction is as distressing as it is undeniable, but though it may sound like boastfulness or chauvinism (I truly don't mean it to be), it's hard to think of any nation or empire in history that has been more powerful, brought greater prosperity to its people and those of the world, and has at the same time exceeded America in terms of sheer moral goodness.

The point has been made by others that America is one of the few countries where one can immigrate from anywhere in the world and become an American. What's meant by that is this: Moving to Japan doesn't make you Japanese. Moving to China doesn't make you Chinese. Moving to Mexico doesn't make you Mexican and moving to France doesn't make you French, at least not in the sense that moving to America makes you American.

The very fact that so many people want to come here, that the free world looks to America for leadership - moral, political, and military - is compelling evidence for the conviction that America is indispensable. Indeed, the fact that so many want to come here gives the lie to the left's portrayal of America as irredeemably racist, oppressive, and corrupt.

If America ceased to exist what would be the likely consequence? Europe would eventually become a vassal to an expansionist Russia; North Korea would undoubtedly swallow up South Korea and perhaps Japan; China would certainly grab Taiwan and perhaps Indonesia and the Philippines; India and Pakistan, two nuclear nations, would seek to settle old scores; Radical Muslim groups would turn much of the world into an abattoir; and Israel would be in a fight for its existence against much of the Muslim world, a fight that'd probably also result in nuclear war.

It's not unrealistic to fear that without America much of the world would spiral into a state of darkness and violent chaos, with freedom flickering out almost everywhere.

On this Fourth of July let's humbly and gratefully celebrate the fact that America is still the hope of freedom-loving people everywhere. Let's all work, those of us who are Americans, to keep it that way and to strive continuously to be worthy citizens of this great nation.

Kate's Law

Today marks the two-year "anniversary" of the murder of Kate Steinle. Kate was a young woman walking on a pier in San Francisco with her family when an illegal immigrant named Francisco Sanchez, a man who had been deported five times and had seven felony convictions but who had nevertheless been released from jail onto the streets of the sanctuary city that is San Francisco, walked up and shot her in the back.

She died in her father's arms. Her last words were "Help me, Daddy."

As Attorney Jeff Sessions said on Wednesday:

Lopez-Sanchez should never have been on that pier with Kate. He should have been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And he would have been if San Francisco had only notified ICE of his release from the city’s custody, as ICE had requested. But San Francisco refused to do so. The city continues to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. In fact, it’s city policy.

Kate Steinle

In memory of Kate and all the other victims of illegal aliens in this country, the House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation called "Kate's Law". Under the bill, if a deported alien reentered the U.S. illegally with a felony conviction or three misdemeanors on their record, he or she would go to federal prison for up to 10 years. Someone who is caught illegally crossing the border after having been deported three or more times would also serve up to 10 years.

The bill passed with a vote of 257 to 157, with one Republican voting no and 24 Democrats voting yes.

An earlier bill that would deny federal funds to "sanctuary cities" which refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities, passed with a vote of 228-195 with 3 Democrats voting yes and 7 Republicans voting no.

Both bills must also be passed by the Senate where they will get very little Democrat support and will likely fail since Democrats have already said they will filibuster them and they already blocked an earlier version of Kate's Law in the Senate last year.

It's very difficult to understand why anyone who cares about the Kate Steinles of this nation would oppose this legislation, but everyone, from President Obama to the mayor and sheriff of San Francisco, who refused to enforce our immigration laws, must share responsibility for her death.

Moreover, responsibility for whatever tragedies befall any American citizens in the future at the hands of illegal aliens must be borne by every legislator who refuses to support legislation that would keep those aliens, especially those with criminal records, off our streets.

Earlier on Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas D. Homan and U.S. Attorney for Utah John W. Huber made their case for the bills during the White House press briefing.

Huber said 40 percent of Utah’s current felony caseload involves criminal alien prosecutions and the number is increasing.

The bills, Huber asserted, would “advance the ball for law enforcement in keeping our communities safe” and “would give officers and prosecutors more tools to protect the public.

Many immigration rights groups have characterized efforts to crack down on sanctuary cities as “anti-immigrant,” but Attorney General Jeff Sessions says it is not sound policy to allow sanctuary cities to flout federal immigration laws.

According to Homan, ICE already has arrested nearly 66,000 individuals this year that were either known or suspected to be in the country illegally. Of those arrested, 48,000 were convicted criminal aliens.

On Wednesday, President Trump highlighted other cases during a White House meeting with more than a dozen families of people who had been victimized by illegal immigrants, including Jamiel Shaw Sr.

Shaw’s 17-year-old son Jamiel was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant in California in March 2008.

“He was living the dream," Shaw said during the meeting. "That was squashed out.”

Why is it "anti-immigrant" to want to take common-sense measures to lessen the chances that there will be more Jamiel Shaws and Kate Steinles in the future? How many of those who oppose these bills would oppose them had Kate or Jamiel been their own daughter or son?

The Democrats can oppose this legislation if they choose, but it's hard to imagine how doing so will help their candidates running for office in 2018.

A Hero You've Never Heard About Before

Oscar Schindler was a German businessman in the early 1940s who was a member in good standing of the Nazi party. Distressed by the horror of what he saw his government doing to Jews he secretly undertook to save as many of them as he could. His story is recorded in the excellent Steven Spielberg movie Schindler's List which, if you haven't ever seen it, you should.

There's a Jewish businessman in Montreal named Steve Maman who owns a luxury car and motorcycle dealership who has been called the Jewish Schindler. In November 2014, Maman founded the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI) to free hostages from ISIS.

Bradley Martin at The Federalist tells the story of how a wealthy Jewish car dealer in Canada got involved in rescuing Christians and Yazidis.

Here's Martin's lede:

At a high-end car and motorcycle dealership in Montreal, a Canadian-Jewish businessman has made it his mission to save Christian and Yazidi girls from ISIS. What began as just another business venture for Steve Maman, a car dealer specializing in luxury automobiles, would turn into saving the lives of thousands of people.

Born in Morocco and immigrating to Canada at a very young age, Maman describes himself as an Orthodox Jew who grew up with “a great sense of being proudly Jewish.” Maman’s journey began following the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, sons of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Aside from their horrifying reputations consisting of rape, murder, and torture, the brothers also had a voracious appetite for fine automobiles.“

[Uday and Qusay] traveled the world to collect fine cars,” said Maman. “They had over 500 cars in their collection – the most valuable cars in the world – Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, you name it. They even had a 1958 Bentley Continental Dropped Coupe, which is worth several million dollars."

At the time, Iraq would not allow any of these cars to leave the country. But Maman’s business inquiries resulted in a close friendship with Canon Andrew White, the former Anglican vicar of Baghdad’s St. George’s Church, known by many simply as “the Vicar of Baghdad.”

During one of their conversations, White told Maman of the dangerous situation facing the last five Iraqi Jews who lived in Baghdad. With a history stretching as far back as biblical times, the Iraqi Jewish population once numbered 150,000. This remnant celebrated Shabbat at St. George’s Church under White’s protection. White even recounted how they would celebrate Jewish holidays at the American embassy in Baghdad, alongside American Jews serving in the U.S military.

White also spoke to Maman about the genocide taking place against Christians and Yazidis in Iraq. The vicar gave an account of the thousands of women and children ISIS was holding captive. Amidst the beheadings, torture, and other horrors of the genocide, thousands of women were being sold into sexual slavery. Maman knew he had to do something. “From 1939-1945, Jews were being murdered during the Holocaust,” said Maman, “despite the fact that everyone around knew it was going on. It was three years into the genocide [of Christians and Yazidis] yet nobody acted. That is why I did what I did. I didn’t trust anyone else to do it.” In November 2014, Maman founded the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI) to free hostages from ISIS territory.

In early 2015, Maman was part of a delegation that met with then-Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. After his speech, Maman approached Harper, praising him as a hero for his strong pro-Israel stance and “all he had done for Jews.” According to Maman, “Harper had tears in his eyes and was very touched.” During their meeting, Maman then reported of his plans to rescue women and children from ISIS territory.

“Harper loved the idea,” said Maman. “The [Canadian] federal government and [former Canadian minister of National Defense] Jason Kenney provided support to the rescue efforts under his leadership. We will leave it at that.”

When the vicar left Baghdad in November 2014, he left behind a security team that was integrated into CYCI’s rescue operations. Through a variety of methods, Maman set about trying to liberate as many of the estimated 10,000 women who were being sold in Iraqi slave markets as he possibly could. When ISIS terrorists were away from their homes, civilians would be hired to extract enslaved women and bring them to safety. In total, 140 women and girls were liberated.

“When you see a girl being rescued, you cry,” says Maman. “I don’t care how tough you are, you cry.”

Please read the rest of Martin's account at the link.

Steve Maman

Maman and his organization are doing wonderful work, as is the team led by Jeremy Courtney whose organization Preemptive Love I wrote about a year ago. These people and others like them are the real heroes in our world today, but living as we do in a superficial culture infatuated with celebrity and the trivial we rarely hear about them. This post is a small attempt to rectify that.

Who Believes in White Privilege?

Are all whites beneficiaries of white privilege? Are all whites racists? Is it wrong to categorize an entire group of people? Do all African Americans consider themselves victims of white privilege and racism?

Ami Horowitz interviews both white liberals and black "men (and women) on the street" and comes up with what may be some surprising answers to these questions - surprising in the sense that the white liberals and the minority folks in the video have very different takes on the questions. The video was edited, of course, but even so it's interesting, not to mention humorous.

Listen closely:

Frankly, I'm skeptical of the whole "white privilege" meme. It seems to me little more than a convenient hammer used to drive the nail of white guilt into our collective psyches. I share some thoughts about white privilege in more detail here.

Why It's Not a Right

Last month I put up a post on Viewpoint defending the claim that health care (or health insurance) is neither a right nor a privilege. A friend wrote to ask me to expand on my reasons for holding this view, and I thought I'd share on Viewpoint my response to him.

Here's my reply edited and somewhat expanded. The arguments are the same, I think, whether we're talking about health care or health insurance:

If everyone has a right to have health care provided for them then why do we not also have a right to have a home, food, transportation, clothing, etc. provided for us? All of these are just as important as health care to our well-being, but if we maintain that people have a right to these things that implies that others have an obligation to provide them. We may, as compassionate people, choose to provide them for others, but if so, it's an act of personal or corporate charity, not an obligation imposed on us by others.

If we do think of it as an obligation then the recipient need feel no gratitude, nor is the donor being virtuous or compassionate if all he's doing is meeting a state-imposed requirement.

You yourself made a truly wonderful choice a few years ago to donate a kidney to enable someone to live, and what made your decision so marvelous is precisely that you didn't have a duty or an obligation to do it. It was completely gratuitous.

If, however, you had been coerced by the state to provide the organ then compassion would've been no part of your act. There would've been no more virtue in it than there is in paying your taxes. Likewise, though I'm sure the recipient of your kidney was extremely grateful for your sacrifice, if he/she believed that you had a duty to make that donation, gratitude would've been out of place. That's a major problem with our welfare system, by the way, it stifles both compassion and gratitude by making support of the needy something to which they feel entitled.

Parenthetically, if people have a right to health care do people who are in need of an organ have a right to be given that organ? If so, doesn't that mean that we have an obligation to provide our organs to them, at least if, like kidneys, we have more than we need? If they have a right to our money to subsidize their health care why would they not have a right to our organs, especially those organs of which we have a surplus?

Another difficulty is that a "right" to health care is not like other rights that are intrinsic to our being human - rights like the right to life, liberty, etc. Those rights impose no duties upon others beyond obligating them to refrain from impeding us in our exercise of the right (within reasonable limits, of course). A right to health care, however, imposes an obligation on other people to provide it.

Suppose I live an irresponsible lifestyle that causes me to develop diabetes with all its concomitant health complications. Then you, essentially, have a duty to subsidize my irresponsible lifestyle by providing insurance for me against those complications. In my opinion, you should be no more required to pay for my irresponsible lifestyle choices than you should be required to pay my grocery bill or mortgage. You may choose to do so (and you, being the sort of man you are, probably would), but it would be an act of grace, not of duty.

Suppose, too, that society can't afford to pay for health care for everyone and can no longer insure it without bankrupting itself. What are the reasonable limits on one's right to health care? If no money was available to fund it we wouldn't claim that individuals' rights were being denied because their health care was no longer being subsidized, but then health care would be a basic human right only if our nation can afford it.

At what point, then, do we decide that providing health care for others is no longer affordable? Surely, at some point the right to keep one's property overrides another person's right to have health care. If we deny that then we're saying that we must provide health care coverage even if it means confiscating everyone else's property in order to pay for it, or if it means forcing medical professionals to provide care for free.

Health care is like owning a house. We all have the right to own a house - no one can legally prevent us from purchasing one - but we don't have the right to demand that others buy the house for us no matter how badly we might need it. If we can't afford housing then people may wish to provide shelter for us, but we don't have the right to demand it of them.

At least that's how I see it.

Understand, this is not an argument against single-payer or Obamacare. We may as a society comprised of good and generous people decide we want to provide health coverage for everyone, to the extent that a wise, affordable program can be crafted. It is an argument, however, against the assertion that anyone has an inherent human right to such coverage.