My reading this year was broadened by my participation in a book club that consists of a group of eight men whose ages range from late twenties to early sixties. Such a group is bound to represent a diversity of reading interests and tastes, and so I found myself reading works I probably never would have picked up on my own (and some I probably wouldn't pick up again).

At any rate, here's a list of books that I managed to complete in 2009. I list them without giving an evaluation because I don't like to give a blanket recommendation of books. Even more than movies, a book requires a considerable investment in time and effort, and more than with films, I think, the reader usually has to have an interest in the topic to find a book worthwhile. This is especially so if the book is non-fiction, as are many of the entries on this list.

So here without comment is my reading list for 2009:

If you watched a movie or read a book that you found particularly good this past year write and tell us about it.

It's sometimes hard to avoid thinking that liberals are masters of Freudian projection. They peer into their own minds and project whatever unseemliness they find there onto their political opponents. That's essentially the message of a pair of essays, one by Noemie Emery and the other by Robin of Berkeley.

Emery's is the better of the two, but Robin's is interesting because it's based on her personal experience as a leftist atheist turned conservative believer. Emery's essay includes example after example of how liberals in the media simply assume that any opposition to Obama is ipso facto rooted in a profound racism. She writes:

There are many more examples of this sort of liberal mind reading at the link.

Robin talks about her personal search for God after she had left the Left and her desire to find a synagogue/church where she could worship on Christmas:

Some may think the rest of Robin's piece a bit overstated, and perhaps it is, but she touches on a fascinating irony. Churches which preach tolerance of all God's children are often very intolerant of conservative (either political or theological) opinion. Among "progressives" who make a fetish of tolerance it often turns out that it's only for those who already agree with them.

I didn't have much time in 2009 to watch movies, but I did get to squeeze in a few. Some of them were excellent, some were good, some were okay, and some were awful. Here's a list with an asterisk denoting my opinion of them. No asterisk means I don't recommend it:

Minority Report**, Dark Knight*** (again), War Dance**, Wall-E***, Traitor**, Secondhand Lions*, Lions for Lambs*, Arranged***, The Counterfeiters***, American Carol, Doubt***, Tell No One**, Quantum of Solace*, Slumdog Millionaire***, Sense and Sensibility***, Unbreakable*, Signs*, Taken***, Gran Torino***, Ray***, John Q. Public**, Equilibrium**, Namesake**, Boondock Saints, State of Play**

Pat Buchanan wonders why, if we're really serious about improving job prospects for the unemployed, we allow immigrants to continue flowing into the country at a rate of 125,000 a month:

Buchanan's metaphor of a family taking care of its own is apt. By continuing to allow immigration, especially illegal immigration, into this country during a time of high joblessness we are like a parent who takes food and medicine from his own child to give it to others. That is arguably compassionate if one's own children have enough, but it's perverse in an economy in which so many of one's own children are facing destitution.

Buchanan suggests renewed legal pressure on those who employ illegal aliens and an immediate moratorium on all immigration until unemployment drops to under 6%. Until the Obama administration takes steps like these, Buchanan avers, they can not persuasively argue that they're really concerned about Americans out of work.

It's a good column.

New Scientist has a reprise of the best science videos of 2009. They include video of robotic insects and penguins, plasma ejections from the sun and a simulation of what it would be like to fall into a black hole. Pretty cool:

Rasmussen shows that President Obama's approval numbers are almost as bad today as they were good eleven months ago:

Perhaps the following chart at least partially accounts for the disparity:

We were told that the stimulus was necessary to keep joblessness at around 8%, but as the red line shows joblessness is much higher than it was projected to be had there been no stimulus at all. In other words, part of the President's problem is that his policies are exactly the opposite of what are needed to create lasting jobs.

By confronting businesses with looming tax hikes, environmental regulations, and higher employee insurance costs, the President has guaranteed that employers will choose not to risk taking on workers that they'll not be able to afford.

What can the policy makers and shapers in the White House possibly be thinking?

All I can say is that it's a good thing for Senator Baucus that they don't administer breathalyzer tests to U.S. senators before they speak on the Senate floor, but perhaps they should:

Let's see. Senator Baucus is criticizing Republicans for not defying their leadership and voting for a bill that the American people don't want, even though no Democrats defied their leadership by voting against the bill that Americans don't want. Apparently, a strict party line vote is bad when Republicans do it and good when Democrats do it.

Maybe you have to be inebriated to think this way. Maybe inebriation explains why the Democrats are so insistent upon foisting this bill on the American people in the first place.

Thanks to Hot Air for the video.

A student recommended this old half hour Twilight Zone episode as having a certain relevance to events we see unfolding today. It's pretty good.

To those who think it a bit far-fetched to suggest that we are threatened with the sort of Orwellian world depicted in this episode in which religion and books have been abolished needs, well, to read Orwell. Or a history of the twentieth century.

The totalitarian temptation is evidently fixed in the human genome, and there will always be men who seek to exert power and control over others, to strip away their freedom, and to rob them of that which is most precious to them. Such men, when they acquire the power, cannot forbear that others have the freedom to think in ways contrary to how they themselves think. They cannot tolerate any opposition to their vision of how society should be ordered. For such men those who defy their dreams must be crushed, and contrary ideas must be eliminated. Total uniformity must be imposed. This is and has been the goal of the left for 150 years, and, as the Chancellor says in the episode, the error of men like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao wasn't that they went too far but that they didn't go far enough. They failed to purge their societies of all of the undesirables and to rid themselves of the "obsolete men."

Thanks to Ashley for the link.

Megan McCardle writes at Asymmetrical Information under the pseudonym "Jane Galt." She's a libertarian and has posted a marvelous meditation on how the Law of Unintended Consequences has haunted liberal "reforms" of the last fifty years and is likely to haunt others in the years ahead. Her main point is that attempts by liberals (and libertarians) to tinker with traditional marriage by expanding it to include same-sex couples could well have deeply regrettable consequences. It's happened before.

She writes:

What follows should daunt the enthusiasm of the most reckless liberal bent on reforming something or another in our polity, but you'll need to read it for yourself.

Society is like a delicate explosive and reformers are often like those who tinker with them in their basements without knowing exactly what they're doing. Sometimes they succeed only in blowing up themselves and everything around them.

One of the selling points for the current health care legislation is that it'll reduce the deficit by $132 billion dollars over ten years while insuring 30 million more Americans. How might such blessings be achieved?

Randall Hoven at American Thinker does the math. It turns out that the Democrat plan assumes cuts of about $483 billion dollars from medicare, medicaid, and SCHIP. In other words, the Democrats are going to take benefits away from the poor, the young and the elderly in order to pay for their extravagance.

Moreover, the plan will raise costs for businesses which will put more people, mostly marginal employees, out of work which will in turn hurt the poor even more.

Here's Hoven:

Hoven then goes on to explain briefly the unfunded mandates contained in the bill:

The bill still contains a provision that's essentially a pathway to a "public option:"

And even contains a path to the dreaded "death panels:"

Here's a question we might all ask ourselves: If a Republican had made a proposal that would cut medicare and profoundly impact the poor and children would we favor it or oppose it? If we would oppose cutting benefits to these groups had those cuts been suggested by Republicans then should we not oppose them just as vigorously if they been proposed by Democrats?

Mary Eberstadt has an article in First Things titled "How Pedophilia Lost its Cool" in which she assesses the increasing intolerance in our society, even among the liberal elites, for the sexual exploitation of children. You might be shocked to read this thinking that sex with children has always been a taboo, but not so, at least not so among those who fancy themselves enlightened on such matters. Eberstadt offers four examples:

So, in the nineties pederasty and other forms of pedophilia were not seen as morally repulsive, mostly because no sexual behavior was seen as morally repulsive. But, in a fine example of how moral relativism works, that consensus has shifted, except in Hollywood, of course, and now many of the former defenders of exotic exploitative sex are appalled by it.

The question Eberstadt then assays to answer for us is what caused the change?

Talk about your silver linings. The scandal of Catholic priests exploiting boys for sex forced the elites to confront a hard choice. Wanting to seize the opportunity to excoriate Catholicism they found the revelations of priestly perversion a wonderful pretext, but it wasn't possible to condemn Catholic priests without condemning the behavior they indulged in. Nor was it possible to condemn the behavior when priests did it but not when others did it:

Presumably, had it not been Catholic priests who were involved in pederasty such behavior would still have its defenders, but since the elites want to be able to condemn Catholic priests and, by extension, Catholicism, their tolerance for adult/child sex had to be sacrificed. We can be thankful for the result if not for the reason for it.

You might have already seen this but if not you can't help being amazed at this girl's artistry. She was the winner of the 2009 Ukraine's Got Talent show. Her performance depicts the ravages of WWII on her country:

An air raid in Yemen Thursday morning is believed to have taken out thirty al Qaeda, including some pretty big fish. Among the latter were the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wahayshi, his No. 2, Saeed al-Shehri, and Anwar al-Awlaki (although there's some doubt about this last one).

Awlaki is the man whom Hasan Nidal, the Fort Hood shooter, had emailed asking for guidance on whether it was permissible under Islamic law to kill American soldiers.

Awlaki said the query was a year before the Fort Hood shooting, making him "astonished. Where was American intelligence that claimed once that it can read any car plate number anywhere in the world?"

Well, perhaps Thursday morning he received his answer.

Saeed al-Shehri was a prisoner at Gitmo who was released by the Bush administration in 2007 and underwent jihadi rehab in Saudi Arabia, a kind of 12 step program designed to detoxify jihadis. After graduating from the program he promptly popped up in Yemen where he was planning the murders of more Americans. So much for the Saudis' rehabilitation program.

It's not very comforting to know that President Obama plans to release a hundred more detainees as soon as he can find a place to send them. On the other hand, maybe it's a bit like releasing caged game birds. As soon as they fly free into the open air they get blown to smithereens by the shotguns of the waiting sportsmen.

I suspect that a lot of detainees, reflecting on the fate of their brother al-Shehri, might decide that they're perfectly happy to remain in the comfy confines of perhaps the most commodious prison facility in the world rather than risk having their body parts strewn across the desert by a hellfire missile.

In any event, innocent people are a little bit safer today than they were a few days ago if these psychopaths really have been eliminated. It's perhaps the most effective method of jihadi rehab on offer.

Some readers have noted similarities between the story of Michael in Why Christians Celebrate Christmas (see post below) and the movie Taken. Lest anyone think that our story was borrowed from the movie we should point out that our tale first appeared on Viewpoint on December 24th, 2006 - two years before Taken was released - under the title True Fiction.

No doubt the film's screenwriters read Viewpoint, saw the story, and liked it so much that they wrote it into a movie. Well, it's possible, isn't it?

In this season of shopping and feasting it's easy to lose sight of why Christians celebrate Christmas. The following allegory, which we've run on Viewpoint several times in the past, is a modest attempt to put the season into perspective. Apologies in advance to those who may be a little squeamish:

And that's why Christians celebrate Christmas.

May all our readers have a wonderful and meaningful Christmas this year.

Like Marc Hauser, whose essay we critiqued earlier this week (see here for links), Alex Rosenberg is a naturalist. That is to say he's a philosopher who believes that the natural universe, matter and energy, is all that is. There's nothing else.

Rosenberg believes that everything that exists can, in principle, be explained in terms of the laws of physics, and he's written an essay in which he faces squarely the consequences of the naturalistic worldview. Rosenberg admits that they're not pretty. Indeed, he argues - correctly, I think - that naturalism leads him to deny the existence of meaning in life, morality, consciousness, the self, and free will.

Unlike Hauser's, Rosenberg's conclusions are logically consistent with his starting point. Naturalism does lead to the denial of much of what makes us human. It leads, in fact, to nihilism, the view that nothing has meaning, nothing has value, nothing matters. That we recoil from these consequences, that we have deep-seated yearnings for meaning, morality, significance, etc., should suggest that naturalism itself is not true. Why, after all, would nature shape us in such a way that our deepest longings are unfulfillable and incompatible with the way reality is?

The unpleasant consequences of naturalism (which may be considered a synonym for atheism) should lead us to wonder whether nature really is all there is. They should lead us to wonder whether our deepest yearnings really are capable of being fulfilled, and if so what must reality be like in order to be able to satisfy them?

Read the essay as well as the comments which follow, and then reflect on the astonishing fact that atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens argue vociferously that it's Christianity which is harmful to human flourishing and that their nihilistic naturalism is what we should all eagerly embrace. It certainly is one of the peculiarities of modern intellectual life that a belief system that exalts humanity, offers meaning and purpose, a ground for morality, an explanation for beauty, and a hope for eternal life is considered harmful while a worldview that leads to nihilism and hopelessness is thought to be liberating.

If nothing matters why is it so crucially important to these men that we embrace such a depressing view of life? Why take away people's hope, even if it's a false hope, if in the end it makes no difference what one has believed? Perhaps the answer is no more complicated than that misery loves company.

Millions of people rely on aspirin to keep their blood thin to prevent heart attacks and strokes, but aspirin often causes stomach problems. It turns out that a natural blood thinner has been found in the gel that surrounds tomato seeds. In Britain a product called Fruitflow is made from an extract of this gel and has none of the side effects of aspirin.

Check it out here.

Here's the crux of the article:

The article doesn't say how long it will be before this product is available in the U.S.

To help you get into the spirit of Christmas, sort of, a group of "silent monks" perform one of the greatest pieces of music ever written - Handel's Hallelujah chorus. Enjoy.

The American Museum of Natural History takes us on a quick tour of the known universe. Fasten your seat belts:

Thanks to Bill Dembski at Uncommon Descent for posting the video.

Maybe it's not too much of a stretch to estimate that there are about 280 Americans who favor ObamaCare. They're all Democrats and they're all in Congress. No one who'll have to pay for it seems to want it, but that's not stopping the Democrats from ramming it down our throats and forcing us to accept their plan to nationalize about 16% of our total economy. The Wall Street Journal is particularly incensed, as would be anyone who has followed the sordid details of how Harry Reid has bribed and bought enough Senators to win passage of a bill that will cripple the economic prospects of our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and destroy the best health care system in the world.

But don't take my word for that. Read the bill of particulars that the WSJ brings against the Democrats' plan. Here's the lede:

A detailed criticism of the bill follows and is worth reading. Perhaps the most stunning part is this:

Will you be able to afford having your insurance premiums double? Then there's this:

If the editors at the WSJ are correct President Obama and his left-wing allies in Congress are taking us canoeing over Niagara Falls. I guess the lesson to be learned by all those young voters who were so swept up in the hopeychangey rhetoric, the charisma, and the thrill of electing our first black president, is that fine speeches and skin pigment are extremely poor reasons for electing a man to our nation's highest office. What matters is what he has already accomplished in his public life and what he plans to do if elected, and in Mr. Obama's case all that was perfectly clear in the summer of 2008. Unfortunately, too much of the electorate was too love-struck to take notice.

Perhaps when the full import of the 2008 election starts to sink in people will finally shake off their infatuation with Mr. Obama's "cool," and, like the girl on the morning after, wonder what in the world they could possibly have been thinking. Either that or they'll somehow blame George Bush and Dick Cheney for the debacle.

By the way, I live in a state with two Democratic senators and as far as I know they got nothing for their votes on this bill. What's up with that? For that reason alone they should both be booted out of office next time they're up for reelection. What good is a senator who's too dumb to put his vote up for sale like many of his colleagues?

Nat Hentoff, no conservative Republican he (he wrote a weekly column for the Village Voice for fifty years), has some pretty strong words concerning our President in an interview he did with the Rutherford Institute. When Nat Hentoff says about Mr. Obama what he says in this interview the liberals and moderates who elected him better sit up and pay attention:

There is much more to this interview that I wish I could include in the post. Read the whole thing at the link.

For the thoughts of another remorseful Obama voter see Michael Goodwin's column at The New York Post.

We often hear complaints about those officious Christians who are always going about trying to impose their values, especially sexual values, on the rest of society. Religion and religious reasons are excluded from public discourse, we are told, by the requirements of both good taste and the First Amendment, and people who insist on offering religious objections to certain matters are offending social and Constitutional propriety.

Of course, the complainers are usually pretty selective in their criticism. When Christians speak out against war, or in favor of human and civil rights, or on behalf of the poor, the complainers suddenly go silent. As long as the issue is one the secularists themselves favor, why, then Christians are speaking prophetically and have every right to be heard. When, however, Christians speak out against something the secularist supports, like abortion on demand or gay marriage, then the meddlesome Christians are sternly instructed to keep their opinions out of the public square.

A recent example of the secularists' selective outrage might be illustrated by a controversy brewing in, of all places, Uganda. The Ugandan church largely supports passage of a bill that would make homosexual conduct punishable by either life in prison or death, and American Christians are roundly condemning it. This disagreement is causing a lot of tension between Ugandan and American Christians, but the Americans are arguing on theological grounds that such a law violates the biblical demands for both justice and compassion.

Given this insertion of religious arguments into a debate occuring in a foreign country we might ask our secularist friends why they're not demanding that Christians just keep their religious opinions to themselves and stay out of Ugandan affairs. I doubt, though, that very many secularists will raise such objections because they're just as appalled by the bill as are the American Christians who are risking a rift with their Ugandan brethren over it. Nevertheless, if these same Christians were to speak out against gay marriage they'd be quickly and loudly condemned for "intolerance," gay-bashing, and breaching the wall of separation between church and state. They'd have their tax-exempt status threatened and told to keep their bibles out of politics.

For the secularist religion is just fine if employed in a cause which they themselves wish to advance, but they find it abhorrent and out of place in a pluralist society when employed in causes they oppose. In other words, religious arguments have no place in our political debates except when they do.

It's amusing to listen to these people.

Michelle Malkin notes that AARP offers the only health coverage that under "ObamaCare" would be exempt from having to accept clients with medical pre-conditions. Their Medigap program rakes in $400 million a year and will not be required to incur the expense of insuring those whose medical conditions make it a near certainty that the insurer will have to pay out huge sums for treatment. What did AARP do to get this favored status?

The intrepid Jason Mattera chases down an AARP officer to get an answer to that question and others. He wonders whether the exemption has anything to do with AARP's support of the health care reform bill currently before Congress. Needless to say, he doesn't get much satisfaction:

This post concludes our discussion of Marc Hauser's essay Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality in which he attempts to argue that morality can be, and should be, based upon our biological nature. You can read Parts I and II here and here.

Mr. Hauser's essay continues by presenting us with examples of moral dilemmas from which he draws the wrong conclusion:

Well, maybe, but it shouldn't be. I would be among the last to say that moral choices are never excruciatingly difficult, but, in the cases that Hauser cites, not so much. The Christian is guided by one overarching principle: Always do the act which maximizes compassion and justice. In the scenarios that Hauser constructs it would be manifestly unjust to take organs from an unwilling passerby and equally unjust to push someone into the vent to save others, even if the others were children, even if they were your own children (surely an individual should jump into the vent himself rather than push another into it).

Hauser assumes, apparently, that everyone thinks in utilitarian terms which require of us that we produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. A utilitarian could superficially justify sacrificing the happiness of one innocent person in order to maximize the happiness of many, but a Christian cannot.

Actually the answer is because atheism offers us no reason why we should not submit to our emotions, nor does it offer us any reason why we should care about anyone but ourselves, but that aside, on what biological or evolutionary grounds does Mr. Hauser condemn in-group favoritism or out-group hatred? These behaviors are as natural to our species as breathing. They've been encoded in our DNA by millenia of evolution. Why, in an atheistic view of things, are they wrong? What is the standard Mr. Hauser is smuggling in here in order to judge them as wrong?

It can't be that he finds warrant for disdaining them in our biological nature because these behaviors are fundamentally ingrained in that nature. It can't be that evolution gives him reason to condemn them because on his view evolution is responsible for their existence.

Mr. Hauser wants to say that out-group hatred is wrong but he can't tell us why. He wants to say, in effect, that there is a natural law written on our hearts that forbids such behavior, but no natural "law" rooted in our evolutionary development can be morally obligatory (see part II). Favoritism or hatred can only be wrong if the source of the natural law is a transcendent moral authority, and that's something Hauser's atheism does not allow.

In fact, if naturalism is true we should all be moral psychopaths. Remorse, guilt, shame, etc. are simply illusions that deceive us into thinking we've done something terribly wrong when in fact we haven't. Now that we're enlightened and realize, as atheist Michael Ruse puts it, that "morality is just an illusion fobbed off upon us by our genes in order to get us to cooperate," we should shed these emotions like a growing child sheds his fear of the dark and face the fact that we have nothing to feel guilty about because there's no such thing as guilt.

Guilt can only exist in a world in which our behavior stands condemned by a competent moral judge. In the world of the naturalist there are no moral judges, only, in Richard Dawkins' words, "blind, pitiless indifference."

A while ago we made brief mention of the increasing popularity of microfinance as a great way to help poor entrepreneurs get enough capital to start or maintain their businesses. In the post we touted an organization called Kiva which is involved in this sort of work. I've since come across an article about Kiva in Christianity Today that some of you might like to check out. It's a wonderful way to do something truly meaningful this Christmas season.

In a post we did a week or so ago I mentioned the injustice of court martialing three navy SEALs who were accused of punching a terrorist and then trying to cover it up. In my opinion the people who ought to be court martialed are the Navy poobahs who are charging these men. Surely fatheadedness among the brass is a court-martial-worthy offense, and if it's not it should be.

Clifford May has a piece on this at National Review Online that's worth reading if you want to see how wimpish the higher echelons of our military have become. May writes:

Read the whole article. The more I read about political correctness in the military the more convinced I am that our troops are made of far sterner stuff than are those who command them.

Since the filched emails from East Anglia were released a month ago we've come to learn a lot about the scientific method, at least as it is practiced by some leading global warming enthusiasts. Consider this graph, for example, which shows temperature data at Darwin, Australia for the twentieth century:

The red line is alarming indeed. It shows temperatures in a runaway ascent, but there's a catch. Although the red line is what's usually cited when the global warming folk want to put a good scare into school children, it actually represents what is called "adjusted" data. In other words, the field measurements are deemed in need of adjusting to account for all sorts of factors like the implementation of new equipment or moving the recording apparatus to a different location, etc. So the climatologists throw into the data mix an eye of newt and a wing of bat and out comes adjusted temperatures that'll frighten the bejabbers out of you.

On the graph the black line represents the adjustment factor. The raw data, the measurements that were actually recorded by the instruments at Darwin, are in blue, and notice that these temperatures have been essentially flat throughout the twentieth century.

It's not until the global warming alchemists have applied their ministrations to the raw data that we get something that Al Gore can sell books about. In the meantime, it looks like the raw data show no real change occurring at all, at least not in Darwin.

Go to the link for a more thorough analysis.

This post continues our discussion of Marc Hauser's essay Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality in which he attempts to argue that morality can be, and should be, based upon our biological nature. You can read Part I here.

Hauser writes:

But why should we care about our "shared humanity?" Why should we practice compassion? Hauser never tells us. He just assumes that this is the right thing to do, but we need to ask him what fact of evolution or our biology is he basing this assumption upon? Indeed, what fact of our biology tells us that we should not act in our self-interest? To such questions Hauser gives no answer.

He adds this:

This is fascinating. It sounds exactly like what natural law philosophers and theologians have been saying for centuries. Indeed St. Paul writing to the church at Rome in the first century observed that everyone has a moral law "written on their hearts" (See Romans 2: 15).

But the question is not whether we have such a moral code or moral sense but rather where it comes from. This makes all the difference as to whether it is in any way incumbent upon us. If the code is inscribed on our hearts by God then it is presumably morally obligatory, but if it's the product of evolution then we're no more obligated to observe it than we are obligated to cover our mouth when yawning. If this law that Mr. Hauser thinks he has discovered is the product of blind chance and purposelessness which somehow conspired to fit us for life in the stone age then why should we live our lives by it today? It's merely an evolutionary vestige, like a man's beard, and can be ignored or removed with just as little moral consequence.

To argue that because we have a moral sense we are therefore bound to live by it is to commit the fallacy of deriving an "ought" from an "is" (sometimes called the naturalistic fallacy). It simply does not follow that because something is a certain way it therefore ought to be that way. Just because in some situations we feel compassion for others does not mean that if we didn't feel compassion we'd be in some sense morally wrong.

Moreover, evolution-based ethics are highly selective in what they deem right and wrong. On what basis, for instance, do we determine which of our evolved behaviors are morally good and which are not? Men are just as likely, perhaps more likely, to be selfish, cruel and violent as they are to be generous, kind, and peaceful. Both tendencies, according to Hauser's view, are part of our biological makeup and must result from our evolutionary development as a species. On what basis, then, does he prefer one behavior over the other? On what basis does he decide that we're required to do one and required to avoid the other? Why, exactly, should I care about the poor or care about the world my great-grandchildren will inherit? Why shouldn't I just live for myself and let the poor or future generations worry about their own survival? What answer based upon our biological make-up can Hauser possibly give to these questions?

The fact is that naturalistic, evolutionary ethics provide us no basis, other than one's individual feelings, for judging one behavior to be morally better than another and certainly no reason for thinking that we're in any way obligated to do one thing rather than its opposite. As a guide to moral behavior it is utterly useless.

More tomorrow.

I don't know what to make of the Shroud of Turin, the famous burial cloth that bears the scientifically inexplicable imprint of a man whose wounds appear consonant with those which Jesus is described as suffering during his execution.

The Shroud is believed by many to be the actual burial cloth of Christ and the imprint is believed to have been preternaturally impressed into the fabric. Perhaps. I'm not in a position to say. What I can say, however, is that arguments like the one below which purport to debunk the Shroud as spurious are risibly dumb.

According to an article in Science Daily another burial shroud has been unearthed in Jerusalem dating to the first century. The shroud is apparently that of a man who was a leper and who died of tuberculosis, all of which is pretty interesting, but then the article quotes the researchers as claiming that the leper's shroud proves that the Turin Shroud could not be that of Jesus:

In other words, we can assume that the leper's shroud had a weave typical of the period and since the Turin Shroud had a more sophisticated weave it must have dated from a more recent era or a different place.

If the researchers are being accurately represented in the article theirs is a remarkably shallow argument. What reason is there for making the assumption that the weave of the leper's shroud is typical? How many such linens have we discovered that we can make such a determination? And even if it were typical of the common folk to use such shrouds do we know that the more expensive weave was not preferred by the well-to-do? Why could it not be that Jesus was buried in a fabric typically imported for purchase and use by the wealthy from outside Jerusalem? Why could it not be that the rich man who donated the grave for Jesus' burial also donated the shroud? It was also typical of that time that the garments people wore were stitched together from numerous strips of cloth and thus had many seams, but Jesus' garment was seamless and thus considered unusual enough by his executioners for them to gamble for it. Should we assume that this story is false because it suggests that Jesus wore a garment not typical of that worn in the region at the time?

Sometimes in their eagerness to discredit Christian belief skeptics resort to the most desperate reasoning and wind up saying the silliest things. The Shroud of Turin may not be what its devotees believe it to be, but it'll take a lot more than the reasons offered in this article to convince them of that.

The idea that our moral sense is a product of human evolution has been around ever since Darwin, but in all those years it has never managed to convince most philosophers that it's plausible. Marc Hauser at Edge takes another stab at it in an article titled Biology (Not Religion) Equals Morality. There's much to think about (and to criticize) in his essay so I'd like to offer an analysis over the next several days. This post will be part I of the series.

Hauser writes:

Actually, it's not so much a lack of religious education which casts one adrift, it's the lack of any objective ground for moral judgment and moral obligation. If morality is not rooted in the goodness of a transcendent moral authority then it's entirely rooted in human subjectivity and what's moral is simply a matter of whatever feels right to me. Any ethics that seeks to ground itself in something other than God ultimately founders on the shoals of subjectivity, and, as we'll see Hauser's attempt is no exception.

Well, at least those who understand Christianity do. The "extra accessories" that the Christian has at her disposal are the twin motivators of love for, and gratitude to, God. The reason why there are relatively few charities run by atheists is that motives rooted in evolution will almost always drive people toward egoism rather than altruism. Love and gratitude, especially when directed toward something or someone beyond ourselves, are the most powerful incentives anyone has for caring about others, and the atheist has denied himself access to these resources.

The obvious question Hauser raises for himself here is what standard is he using to judge compassion, forgiveness, and altruism as laudatory and ethnic cleansing as outrageous? Where does he get the idea that the former are good and the latter is bad? What is he basing this evaluation upon? The answer has to be either evolution or his own feelings, but if so how can either of these tell us that something is good or bad?

Indeed, an ethic based on evolution should see ethnic cleansing as a natural expression of the survival of the fittest gene pool. It should view suicide bombers as altruists sacrificing their own lives to promote the survival of the genes of the larger group of which he is a part.

In other words, Hauser wants to ground morality in the evolution of humanity, but as soon as he starts making moral judgments he finds himself forced to import values that have their source elsewhere. This is a problem that many naturalists face. They simply cannot consistently reconcile their naturalism with their moral sense. They see where the train of naturalist morality is taking them, and they don't like it so they make an irrational leap onto the back of Christian morality, and hope no one will notice as they piggyback upon the very assumptions they wish to discredit.

More tomorrow.

Jason sends along a cartoon that's both depressing and funny:

There's more than a bit of truth to this. President Obama insists he wants to create jobs, but nothing he's done so far has worked. The reason joblessness is still over 10% is that businesses won't hire when they fear their taxes, i.e. their costs, are going to go up in a few months. Yet the current Congress and administration seems unconcerned about this common sense impediment to job creation as they push legislation that will elevate taxes to levels that will be a disincentive for many businesses to increase their workforce.

If the President wishes to stimulate job creation, rather than throw money at programs that pay people to rake leaves, he should drop health care reform (at least in its current form) and cap and trade. If employers are confident that there won't be huge levies waiting for them down the road they'll be much more likely to hire workers today.

Unfortunately, the Democrats' solution to our economic woes has been to sink the nation further into debt, throw more money at pointless jobs, provide health care for those who don't have it, tax industry for using energy, and then raise taxes on everyone to try to pay for it all. The irony is that raising taxes simply means more people will be out of work and unable to afford health care so that more people will be dependent upon government to pay for their care, which means that taxes on everyone else will have to be raised even higher.

It doesn't make much sense.

Jim Hoft has been documenting the career of Kevin Jennings, President Obama's Safe Schools czar, and has the latest here. In 2000 Mr. Jennings apparently organized and led a conference for teenagers in which almost every imaginable sexual deviancy was promoted to the teens. Among these were ... well, you'll have to read it for yourself if you have the stomach for it.

That the administration would deem this man suitable to put in charge of children shows an appalling lack of judgment. The man is an embarrassment to the President, and the longer he's allowed to hang around the more unavoidable will be the conclusion that the President actually wants him around.

Read the article (or this one) and see if this is the sort of man you want supervising your children's safety.

Telic Thoughts directs us to an article which reports on a study that assesses how complex the simplest functional cell would have to be. What the researchers found is that the simplest biologically viable cell is still very complex indeed:

The rest of the article explains the complexity. The significance of this is that before the mechanisms of evolution could take over and generate, at least theoretically, all of the diversity of living things we see today, blind, purposeless chance still had to produce a structure which was highly integrated and organized and which possessed enormous information content (see video below).

Perhaps a non-biologist, uninitiated in the mysteries of the discipline, might be forgiven for thinking this is all a bit far-fetched. It seems rather like constructing a computer, together with its operating system, by shaking together a random assortment of its parts. It's not as if we see such prodigies happening every day, after all.

The irony is that those who believe that the feat of producing an information-rich, highly organized and functional systems like the one in the video requires the agency of an intentional mind - and who point to the fact that every time we see similar structures manufactured there's always a mind behind it - are nevertheless called superstitious. But those who claim that random chance and physical law can somehow create such a marvel, and have probably done so countless times across the cosmos - even though no one has ever actually observed chance or physical law producing information and no one knows how it could possibly have been accomplished - are said to be enlightened. It's pretty funny.

This article that Bill passes along will fill you with hope for change. Here's the nut of it:

Read the rest at the link, but make sure you're not near any open windows or sharp objects.

Doc at The Autopsy has put together an interesting video that puts the global warming "hockey stick" into perspective. The "hockey stick" is the name given to the way a graph of temperatures over the past century or so stays fairly constant and then suddenly shoots upward like a hockey stick lying on the ground with its blade pointing up. What the video does is start with a graph that shows recent temperature changes and then keeps putting those changes into greater and greater historical context. The longer the reach of the data the less significant the hockey stick appears:

If this is accurate it makes all of the "sky-is-falling" panic about global warming seem rather melodramatic and overblown.

Planned Parenthood continues to embarrass itself. This undercover video filmed in a Wisconsin PP clinic shows a counselor and doctor providing a young mother inaccurate information and even resorting to scare tactics to persuade her to terminate the pregnancy:

LiveAction.org observes that:

Hey, what's a little truth-stretching when there's a boodle of money to be made? There's more on this at the link.

According to Ben Smith at Politico.com things are President Obama's popularity is in serious decline. For example:

Less than a year in office and President Obama is making the country wish George Bush was back. By this time next year he may be making the country wish Jimmy Carter was back.

I heard on the radio yesterday, though I haven't been able to find it documented anywhere, that 20% of Americans would support impeachment of the President. As harmful as I think the President's policies are, as much as I fear that he is deliberately driving us toward bankruptcy in order to fulfill his ambition of destroying capitalism and imposing socialism, I nevertheless find impeachment a ludicrous solution.

Like it or not, the President isn't doing anything that he didn't tell us he would do during the campaign. Voters had every indication that he was a radical leftist, that he favored a radical redistribution of wealth and that he would fundamentally change our economic structure, but, in a free and open election, the majority cast their ballots for him anyway.

His policies may be extremely harmful (though no moreso than those of the Congress whose lead he follows), but they are what the nation voted for. To now say that he deserves to be impeached because he's doing what anyone who was paying attention knew he would do is to make a mockery of our Constitution and to turn the U.S. into a banana republic.

The best way to stop the President is at the ballot box by voting progressives out of Congress in 2010, and voting for Mr. Obama's opponent in 2012. Maybe next time voters will take their franchise seriously, pay attention to what's being said and who is saying it, and not be so impressed by a candidate whose résumé is as empty as his speeches are stirring.

Here are some beautiful pictures of living things so tiny that most of us never see them.

Here's one of my favorites. It's a unicellular algae called Penium:

Stephen Meyer has been awarded World magazine's "Daniel" award for 2009, presented to the man or woman who withstands intense opposition, often in the form of personal assaults, with grace and resolve:

The article goes on to trace Meyer's journey through those four stages, and it's quite interesting. Also interesting is the note that the author, Marvin Olasky, appends to the end of the essay:

For all their bluster and bravado about slaying the dragons of superstition and exposing the ridiculousness of theistic belief the atheistic Darwinians, and even some of their theistic allies, really want nothing to do with the ID people (see the post below this one). They know such battles, especially if held in public fora, would be as hard on their scholarly reputations as they'd be on their egos.

Bill Dembski at Uncommon Descent introduces the brief video clip below with these words:

This is another example of how the smack-talkers among the new atheists would prefer to attack straw men in the comfort of their study rather than venture out to wage face-to-face combat with a real opponent. One wonders what rank and file atheists must think when they see their champions eager to embarrass liberal bishops who don't know what they believe or why they believe it but flinching from encounters with formidable Christian thinkers like Craig.

Richard Weikert, the historian who wrote the excellent study (From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany) of how the Darwinian worldview prepared the intellectual and moral ground for eugenics and eventually the Holocaust, writes about a conference he attended recently at San Diego State. The convocation was given to celebrating the theme, "150 Years of Evolution: Darwin's Impact on the Humanities and the Social Sciences." At the event he had a couple of disconcerting conversations. Here's his account:

Weikert's conversations illustrate a crucial moral problem that faces us in the 21st century: How can subjectivism be avoided in a secular society? If there's no God then there's no ground for moral obligation, no ground for moral judgment of right and wrong other than one's own personal feelings. For now most people are unaware that when they make a moral judgment they're really not talking about anything other than their own tastes. They simply assume that there's an objective right and wrong, that they're just stating t6he obvious when the say we should help the poor or that Hitler was evil, but they've never really asked themselves how this could possibly be. Once it begins to dawn on society at large that moral talk is just a bunch of hocus pocus if we reject the existence of a transcendent moral ground, once we find that there's no real basis for saying that the Adolf Hitlers of the world are evil men, society will lose whatever cohesion it has and begin to unravel. It will start with the elites first. Indeed, it's already well along the way.

You might recall the voter intimidation carried out by a group called the New Black Panthers at a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 election. The Department of Justice attorneys brought several charges against the thugs involved in this illegal activity, but last spring they were instructed by higher ups to drop the case. This has apparently had a demoralizing effect on the Holder Justice Department, as it should, and three top attorneys have resigned. The Washington Times has an editorial claiming that the Attorney General's department is actually imploding as a result of what some see as an attempt to protect political allies from prosecution.

The Times story on this can be read here. This seems to be just another example of how justice seems to be undergoing a redefinition in the age of Obama. A young couple surreptitiously videotape Obama's old friends at ACORN counselling them how to break the law, and it's the videotapers who face a lawsuit. Three Navy SEALS are facing a court martial because the terrorist who planned and carried out the kidnapping, torture, and murder of several American security personnel in Iraq claims one of them punched him in the stomach after they captured him and that the others lied about it to cover it up. Hackers uncover damning emails on the computers of the world's leading climate-change scientists and Senator Barbara Boxer wants the hackers hunted down and prosecuted. I wonder if back in 1971 she demanded that Daniel Ellsberg and the others who leaked the top secret Pentagon Papers be prosecuted. I'm sure she would have because Ms Boxer is nothing if not fair and consistent.

This is not to say that the SEALS shouldn't be disciplined or the hackers should be allowed to go unpunished (Though I do say that the young couple who videotaped the ACORN sleaziness should be given a Pulitzer instead of being slapped with a lawsuit), but surely there are reprimands for military personnel that fall far short of court martial, and surely Ms Boxer should at this point in time be more focussed on what the emails reveal than how we came to be in possession of them, particularly since it's not even clear that a crime was committed or if it was that it was committed in the U.S.

The people we should be praising and thanking for the service they're performing to the country and to truth are being turned somehow into the bad guys and the people who really are the bad guys are made to look like victims. What's happening to us?

Listen to this 911 call and discuss with your friends (or yourself if you have no friends) whether this woman, who exhibits a calm and courage that seems quite remarkable, should be prosecuted. She lives in New York so it's iffy. If you're a pacifist what do you think she should have done?

According to Hot Air, the intruder may have been under the influence of some potent pharmaceutical products. That would certainly explain his behavior.

Byron writes to clarify that contrary to the impression our post on the Manhattan Declaration may have given, Ron Sider did sign it and does support it. My point was that Sider thought it should have included other issues as well as those it did include, but I may have given the misleading impression that for this reason he didn't sign it.

In his very fine book on the Argument from Reason for God's existence (C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea), Victor Reppert invites us to imagine the reaction of the intellectual world should a proponent of the inerrancy of the Bible say something like the following:

Such a defense of the doctrine of inerrancy would render the opinion of any individual who mounted it irrelevant in any setting outside the church. Certainly such a person would be treated with derision in the secular academy. Critics would reasonably charge that such a belief is based solely upon religious faith, and blind faith at that. It is religious fideism - the idea that we should just believe regardless of the evidence arrayed against our belief or, for that matter, the evidence in favor of it - and fideism is an abdication of our intellectual responsibility to submit our beliefs to the evidence.

Yet this is exactly, mutatis mutandis, what atheistic evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin once said about his commitment to materialism. His commitment, and that of those for whom he speaks, is simply scientific fideism based on blind, irrational faith. Here are Lewontin's words:

This is from the pen of the same man who has criticized Creationists for a prior commitment to the truth of Genesis and who has said that that commitment disqualifies creationism as science and makes creationists irrelevant to the discussion of origins. But how is an unfalsifiable, apriori faith commitment to Genesis any different than an unfalsifiable, apriori faith commitment to materialism? If creationists are not credible because they will believe Genesis no matter what the evidence how is their view different from Lewontin's position that he will cling to materialism no matter what the evidence against it? How is the creationist any more closed-minded, any more anti-intellectual than is Lewontin?

The answer is that he is not. Lewontin, and many other Darwinians, are just as religious as any creationist except that their religion is materialism. They hold to it with a tenacity that is impervious to argument and immune to evidence.

Reppert goes on to quote atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel who makes this faith commitment even more explicit:

Nagel's materialism is based on his wish that God not exist. A Christian's theism is based, let's just say for argument's sake, on his desire that God does exist. Why is the latter considered somehow more intellectually disreputable than the former? Why is one kind of faith considered unacceptable in the public square when the other kind is not?

Do you get weary of hearing what a terrible train of death and destruction the Christian Church has wreaked upon the world? Me too.

To be sure, there have been black spots in the history of the Church, the most infamous, perhaps being the inquisitions in which several thousand people died over several centuries. But as bad as they were the inquisitions were scarcely a drop in the ocean of atrocious behavior compared to the legacy bequeathed us by state atheism in the eighty years from 1920 to 2000.

The Black Book of Communism documents the carnage wrought by atheists in pursuit of the millenial kingdom they tried to usher into the world under the banner of Marxist-Leninism. Here's the tally:

The statistics of victims includes executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor. It's quite a record - 94 million people - all in the space of a single lifetime.

When the Church has engaged in murderous behavior it was acting contrary to the principles upon which it was founded. There is no justification in the teaching of Christ or the apostles for persecuting and murdering those with whom one has theological disagreements. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

When atheists engage in mass murder on a scale almost impossible to imagine, however, there is no contradiction whatsoever with the basic assumptions of their worldview. If atheism is true might makes right, and whatever those who have the power do to achieve their goals is simply the way things are.

Lenin put it this way:

Lenin also observed once that in order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs. Ninety four million is a lot of eggs. Remember that number the next time someone harangues you about the terrible atrocities committed by the Christian Church.

Who in the Republican party has the experience, the seriousness, the respect, the gravitas, the intelligence and the worldview to run for president in 2012? Right now there's only one person who comes to mind - Dick Cheney. Will he run? No. At least he says not, and his heart condition makes it doubtful that he's being coy. Could he win if he did run? Depends. If Obama fails to get health care reform it's doubtful that he'll get much else. It's hard to imagine that after flopping on health care that he'd get cap and trade or immigration reform or a restructuring of the financial industry.

Moreover, our economic woes show no signs of abating any time soon and almost certainly will be made far worse than they had to be by the extraordinary indebtedness into which the current administration has pushed us. Add to this a sense that our foes around the globe are taking the measure of Mr. Obama and finding him unthreatening, and it's likely that we'll begin soon to suffer some foreign policy challenges that could haunt the administration into 2012.

Given all that voters in 2012 will be looking for a man with a proven record of strength, maturity, experience and seriousness and of all the people on the current scene, Dick Cheney is the man most closely associated with those virtues.

As things are shaping up almost any Republican who projects competence could win in 2012. Unfortunately, there are few who have the national name recognition and a record of accomplishment to capture the nation's attention. Dick Cheney is one who does [Haley Barbor, governor of Mississippi, is another], and there may be such a clamor for him to throw his hat in the ring that he finds it difficult to demur.

If Obama continues to flounder, and especially if we come under another terrorist attack on our soil, look for Republicans to pressure both Cheney and Barbor to consider running next time around. It would certainly be an impressive ticket.

Jason sends along a link to a Weekly Standard article that makes an interesting comparison between Texas and California as widely disparate economic models. The two states have followed quite different paths in developing (or devastating) their economies:

In other words, California has pursued a policy of massive spending and high taxes and the result is that productive citizens and businesses are either crushed or have fled the state. Texas is much more business friendly and is consequently in much better fiscal shape with much better employment numbers.

So, which of the two models are the Democrats in Washington determined to impose on the country? Silly question.

The other shoe appears to be ready to drop:

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

There are more details at the link. Maybe there's nothing to NASA's refusal to comply with Mr. Horner's FOIA request, but if they have nothing to hide it sure makes one wonder why they appear so resolved to hide it.

One need not be a philosopher to appreciate the irony of this:

The APA (American Philosophical Association) strives to establish an anti-discrimination policy that, as Alexander Pruss points out, winds up protecting the very behavior it sought to do away with. The policy seeks to prevent philosophy departments from discriminating in their hiring practices against anyone on the basis of:

Pruss observes that such a policy is ironic in that the very conduct which the policy was intended to eliminate becomes protected by the policy:

There's more on this at the link. Pruss takes the matter pretty seriously, and I suppose he should, but it amuses me that the more people try to formulate codes to articulate their tolerance of every difference imaginable, the more the law of unintended consequences rises up to bite them. Wouldn't it be easier to simply state that hiring will be based primarily on the candidate's qualifications and character, and let it go at that?

A coalition of 150 Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical leaders have recently signed their names to a manifesto declaring their rejection of any attempt by secular authorities to impose laws which would force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage and other ideas that conflict with their religious beliefs or that would force them to mute their criticism of either the abortion culture or gay marriage.

The 4,700-word document is called the "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience," and signatories include many well-known evangelical leaders (though there are some notable omissions) in company with a number of Catholic leaders. The Declaration calls on Christians to engage in civil disobedience, if necessary, to defend their right to proclaim and practice their faith.

Charles Colson, one of the drafters of the document, says that abortion, marriage, and religious liberty are the three most important issues facing believers today.

The Declaration proclaims that "We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them." It goes on to list the "fundamental truths" as the "sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the rights of conscience and religious liberty."

The document also declares that "Throughout the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required," and cites as an exemplar Martin Luther King and his willingness to go to jail for his beliefs.

Not all Christians agree with Declaration's emphasis, however. Some, such as Ron Sider, argue that these three issues, though crucially important, are no more important than fighting poverty and racism, and promoting the dignity of women. Others take the Declaration to task for not offering more guidance on how best to respond to a secularized culture that seems bent on diminishing our rights and liberties.

Be that as it may, the Manhattan Declaration is an important statement of the concern that many are feeling at the erosion of the moral fabric of our nation and the threat to our First Amendment rights posed by our infatuation with political correctness.

You can find the document here, and you can read more about it here. If you'd like to express your support of the Declaration's principles you can sign it here.

Andrew Sullivan, who writes at the Daily Dish, offers us a manifesto explaining why he can no longer call himself a conservative. The wonder is, given what he says, that he ever did call himself one. Here are his reasons with some remarks interspersed:

Not only does Mr. Sullivan not enumerate the dictatorial powwers of which he speaks he makes no attempt to explain how conservatives are implicated in such treasonous activity. In fact, he uses this rhetorical device several times in his manifesto. He levels an accusation at conservatives and thereby gives the impression that conservatives are actually guilty of something, but he never explains precisely how they're guilty of the errors for which he faults them.

This, of course, is specious. Conservatives did not explode spending and borrowing. Republicans started the practice under Bush and the Obama folks escalated it by orders of magnitude. Conservatives have consistently opposed the spend and borrow regime under both parties.

Once again he conflates conservatives with Republicans. This is both naive and misleading. Most conservatives, it is true, vote Republican, but only because the alternatives are so much worse.

"Core value"? What on earth is he talking about?

Perhaps Mr. Sullivan would favor us with an example to illustrate what he's talking about here. It's hard to imagine any civil political decision that is not informed by one's religious views, whether theist or secularist, but perhaps Mr. Sullivan can think of one.

It gives off a racist vibe because its opponents relentlessly accuse it of being racist. It's a defense mechanism employed by the left because they know that if minorities actually knew what conservatives stood for they'd leave the Democratic party in large numbers. Better to keep the blacks on the plantation by making them think that the alternative is full of racists and bigots. Unfortunately, the strategy works.

As for homophobia, Mr. Sullivan levels the charge at conservatives because conservatives don't agree with his conviction that marriage should be an option for gays, a point, by the way, upon which most minorities agree with conservatives. Conservatives also don't believe that polygamy should be an option. Does that make conservatives polygaphobic? Is that bad? Why?

This is another instance of that neat, if dishonest, rhetorical trick I mentioned above. By stating his inability to support such a movement he gives the impression that conservatism is such a movement. The charge stands unsupported, of course, because he offers no examples of how conservatives actually engage in this sort of skullduggery. And while he's at it maybe he ought to take a look at how the other side plays politics. It's not conservatives who sought to ram "stimulus" legislation through Congress without allowing for serious debate. It's not conservatives that support organizations like ACORN and others that corrupt the political process. It's not conservatives that have been lying about the need for climate change legislation nor conservatives who keep deceiving us about what's really in the health care reform bill.

Well, what's the alternative when Muslims around the world have declared war on us and do not quit the fight just because we say we're tired of fighting? Should we just ignore them as they fly their hijacked planes into our skyscrapers so we can bask in the glory of our "liberal democratic norms"? What does Mr. Sullivan recommend as an alternative to a protracted war on Islamist terrorism?

Specifically, how do conservatives do this? Many legislatures, including our federal legislature, are in the hands of liberal Democrats. If conservatives are the bogeymen in this regard why don't these legislatures simply decriminalize private drug use?

No? Would he support a movement that would back a presidential candidate who was "manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism." Which unqualified candidate did Mr. Sullivan vote for in 2008? The Democrat or the Republican? We might also ask Mr. Sullivan how we would be worse off today had McCain/Palin been elected last year rather than Obama/Biden.

!?

Well, here again Mr. Sullivan needs to be much more clear. What does he mean by the "fact" of evolution? I wonder if he even knows. Conservatives are all over the map on this question, but most of them agree that whatever the explanation for how life developed, it didn't just happen as a result of blind, mechanistic processes acting solely by chance. If this position grieves Mr. Sullivan so then I'd like to ask him how he knows it to be a fact that this belief is wrong.

Ooops. Perhaps he's been away the last week or so and hasn't been following the news out of East Anglia.

Now he's clearly gone over the edge. Conservatives have been nothing if not adamant that we must reduce spending and the size of government. It's been liberal Democrats who have blocked consistently blocked attempts to accomplish this every time it's tried.

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

I wonder if Mr. Sullivan is a little jealous because he's not as popular as the demagogue or the nutjob. What he needs to do is to tell us not what he thinks of the character and sanity of these men but what it is about what they say that's wrong. Just calling them names doesn't make them wrong.

I'm beginning to wonder what planet Mr. Sullivan's living on. No one wants to be, or thinks we can be, the world's policeman, but conservatives do think that if you're going to fight terrorists it's better to fight them over there than over here. Assuming Mr. Sullivan believes we should continue to wage the war against terrorists what alternative to fighting them overseas would he like to see us implement?

I doubt that Mr. Sullivan can show that the principles of the conservative movement have changed much at all over the past fifty years. If he was attracted to those principles in the past and is no longer attracted to them today then it really is he who has changed, not the principles.

I also doubt that Mr. Sullivan was ever a part of the conservative movement to begin with. He's a libertarian and has been one at least for the last decade when I've been reading him. To allege that conservatives have somehow betrayed him is disingenuous. He's like an Episcopalian who spends years in a Baptist church and who finally decides to leave because he can't persuade the Baptists to become more like Episcopalians. On his way out the door he allows as how he's not really leaving the church, the church is leaving him. It's pretty silly.

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is just plain tired of civil discourse between believers and unbelievers and thinks it's time to "try H. L. Mencken's way" of dealing with Christian theists:

I had to laugh as I read this quote a second time through because the first time I read it I thought Mencken was talking about Darwinians. The description in the second paragraph, especially, certainly fit.

Anyway, it's an odd bit of advice that Coyne is urging upon his atheist confreres, given that it's the atheistic Darwinians who so often refuse to engage creationists or intelligent design advocates in open debate. Their reluctance is warranted, perhaps, by the fact that when one of their number, like Christopher Hitchens, does sally forth to do battle with the unwashed dolts, he often gets trounced.

So, to Mr. Coyne I say I hope you're successful in convincing your brethren to engage the best Christian theists in debate, but I caution you to be careful what you wish for.

From Uncommon Descent:

Pretty funny. I'll bet Al Gore isn't laughing, though.

The next time someone tells you that people are better off under socialized health care plans you might cite some statistics to them:

So, why is Congress and the White House pushing a health care reform bill that would essentially make us more like Britain and Canada? Go figure.

There's been a lot of controversy over President Obama's Afghanistan speech Tuesday night. Lefties fault him for agreeing to send more troops, and conservatives fault him for setting a deadline after which the troops will be pulled out. There's even more controversy about how sincere the president was with his deadline, given that he's been notorious for setting deadlines which he promptly proceeds to ignore (Iraq, Guantanamo Bay).

My problem with the speech, other than it seemed as if his heart wasn't really in it, is that the whole idea of a deadline strikes me as foolhardy. I don't see the point in telling the enemy how long you're prepared to fight, nor do I see how it can avoid having a negative impact both on the morale of the troops who know that as the deadline approaches they're putting their lives on the line for a mission that will be ending in a couple of weeks, and on that of Afghans who will be very reluctant, knowing that the Americans will be leaving, to be seen being friendly or helpful to U.S. troops. Who wants to go on a dangerous mission when soon none of it will matter? What Afghan wants to be seen helping the Americans when after they leave the Taliban will be free to seek retribution?

Nor do I see the logic in saying that we'll begin to withdraw on a date certain but that the withdrawal will be based on conditions on the ground. What does that mean? If the conditions don't permit a withdrawal will we stay there? If so, what's the point in setting the deadline in the first place?

My biggest objection to setting the withdrawal date, though, is this: If Afghanistan really is crucial to our national security then we should be there as long as it takes to pacify the place. If Mr. Obama is not going to stay until the task is successfully completed then, we can reasonably assume, he believes the war is not really critical to our security. And if that's what Obama believes then it's absolutely reprehensible that he doesn't pull out immediately before one more serviceman or woman is killed or maimed.

Either Afghanistan is crucial to our national security, and we should be prepared to be there for as long as it takes to end the threat, or it's not crucial, and we should be getting out ASAP. By setting a deadline, Mr. Obama is tacitly revealing that the latter is the case so for him to nevertheless spill more blood and waste more treasure there is unconscionable.

Mr. Obama's speech Tuesday night was a muddle of conflicting messages and incoherent ideas. Like the administration's baffling defense of its decision to bring Kalid Sheik Mohammed to New York to be tried in federal court, it reflects a White House more concerned about the political impact of what is said and done than with doing what is right.

The best I can say of the President's Afghanistan policy is that it seems amateurish, and his speech certainly wasn't the sort of effort one would expect from a President whose brilliance his admirers never tire of extolling.

It's hard to keep up with all the terrible arguments being introduced into the public square by today's atheists, but one does what one can. I recently came across a particularly unfortunate example in the British DailyMail by Andrew Alexander. He begins his column with this lede:

Mr. Alexander then goes on to explain that because Charles Darwin sailed to the Galapagos, because there are exegetical problems with the Gospels, because some popes did bad things, and because pagans had stories about gods coming back to life, therefore we may safely conclude that Christianity is false. Perhaps that's how a logical mind works, I don't know, but Mr. Alexander's conclusion seems to me to be far grander than his premises warrant.

But let's pause for a moment to ask Mr. Alexander how he happens to come by the logical mind which he is so pleased to put on display for our benefit.

Presumably by "logical mind" he is referring to the ability to draw rational inferences, but I wonder if it ever occurred to him that if naturalism (the view that nature is all there is) is true then rationality is not only inexplicable, it's pretty much untrustworthy.

If naturalism is true then our minds are the product of non-rational processes that shaped us to survive life in the stone age, but, we should ask, how do non-rational processes like chance, natural selection, genetic mutation and the laws of physics produce a rational mind? How does the rational arise from the non-rational? Regrettably, Mr. Alexander doesn't even seem to be aware of the problem, much less offer an answer to it.

Suppose, though, that rationality somehow did manage to appear among early Homo sapiens. If so, our minds would have been selected for by evolution to aid our survival, not necessarily to discover truth, particularly metaphysical truth. Our minds are just as likely to hold false beliefs as true ones as long as the false beliefs have survival value.

Thus we have no reason to think that our beliefs, especially those which do not lend themselves to empirical verification, like our belief in naturalism, for example, are true, or that our reason is trustworthy. Indeed, in order to argue that reason is trustworthy we have to employ our reason, and thus we have to assume that reason is trustworthy in order to argue that it is trustworthy. This may seem perfectly sensible to Mr. Alexander's logical mind, but it sounds like a circular argument to me.

Mr. Alexander goes on:

If it is true that atheism is the highest form of skepticism wouldn't it be the case, then, that to be skeptical of atheism would be the greatest form of skepticism of all? Is Mr. Alexander skeptical of atheism? If not, why not?

No, I don't think that's true. Christians find atheism sad, perhaps, or pathetic, or desperate, or intellectually destitute, but I doubt many thoughtful Christians are shocked by it. We see it too often to be shocked.

Well, maybe, but many Greeks rooted their morality in the will of the gods. Their moral authority was something beyond themselves. Others, like Aristotle, embraced a kind of virtue ethics which reduces essentially to subjectivism. He believed we should behave virtuously, but not only could he give no satisfactory answer to the question why the virtues are obligatory upon us and the vices are not, he couldn't even give us a principle by which we can reliably identify the virtues. It turns out that what is virtuous is relative to what a society, or individuals in a society, think it is, but if this is so morality is purely a matter of social consensus, like women's fashion.

The fact is that any attempt to develop an ethics rooted in a naturalistic worldview is doomed to founder on the shoals of subjectivism: What's right is what feels right to me. What's right is what works for me. What's right is whatever makes me happy. Those are the rules that the human race works out for itself when it rejects God. "Look out for #1" is the common expression of the rules, and concern for others at the expense of oneself makes no sense, either in ethical or evolutionary terms.

It may be that there is no God, but if one such as Mr. Alexander really believes this then let's have no flummery from him about how we can all be moral anyway, as if we had any idea at all what that means in a world without God.

I'm surprised someone as logical as Mr. Alexander doesn't see the problem.

Now that Honduras has held an election, and the winner has been declared we wonder whether the U.S. will recognize the new government.

Earlier, Brazil and Argentina said they would not recognize the election results. Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica said they would accept them.

U.S. officials have indicated the election is a key step forward for Honduras, but they have not said whether they will accept the outcome.

Perhaps the better question is how the Obama administration can not recognize the new government in Honduras, even if he thinks that the whole process was unjust. After all, he offered congratulations to the thugs in Iran following their sham of an election and the popular uprising it ignited. Why would he scruple to withhold his imprimatur from the freely-elected new Honduran government? Will President Obama now side with the people of Honduras as he clearly failed to do in Iran? Or will he continue to express his dudgeon over the Hondurans' removal from office of a man, Manuel Zelaya, whose leftist proclivities Mr. Obama finds congenial?

The new President of Honduras is Porfirio Lobo a wealthy rancher who narrowly lost to Zelaya four years ago. Zelaya, a leftist in the mold of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, was removed from office on charges of treason and abuse of power. The removal precipitated international condemnation of what was incorrectly portrayed, even by our own state department, as a military coup.

Zelaya is currently living in the Brazilian embassy to avoid arrest by the Honduran authorities, but now that the people of Honduras have spoken perhaps Mr. Obama will invite him to take up residence in the White House.

I was amused by the responses to the post on Twilight's Unfortunate Messages based on a critique by John Lewinski. The male respondents were in almost universal agreement with Lewinski whereas many females sounded like they wanted to strangle him.

I haven't read the books nor seen the movies, so I make no judgment of them, but I was a little surprised by some of the reasons many of the respondents gave in defense of the films. These included the fact that the messages promoted by the latest movie are nothing new, the story is just harmless fantasy, there's lots worse stuff out there, most people can handle bad themes without doing damage to their psyches, and the claim that Lewinski focuses too much on the negatives rather than trying to see the positives of the film.

This was interesting to me because though all of this may be true these are essentially the same justifications men use to rationalize looking at pornography.

Not that I'm saying Twilight is pornographic, mind you - again, I don't know much about it - but pornography in film is not just a matter of the visuals. Pornography is a matter of the messages that the movie sends. The problem with pornography, the thing that makes it really insidious, is not just that it makes public what should be private, not just that it perverts sex by focusing exclusively on the physical to the exclusion of the emotional, psychological, and spiritual elements of our sexuality, what's really harmful is that it creates in a young man a completely unrealistic expectation of what romance should be and what his wife should be like.

A young man who has spent many hours viewing pornography often sets a standard for the woman in his life that she simply cannot attain or does not want to attain. He tends to see women primarily as opportunities for sexual gratification, he sees them as objects rather than as persons, and he's often profoundly disappointed when they do not measure up, either in appearance or behavior, to what he has viewed on the screen. That's why pornography is often a marriage-wrecker.

But any book or film that sends messages to the viewer which pervert romance and create unrealistic expectations of the opposite sex commits essentially the same sin. Books or movies that present adulterous affairs in a positive light (does Twilight do this?) or that create an image of a man or woman to which most people could never measure up even if they wanted to, are sending messages that are every bit as harmful as those of Hustler magazine. Any book or movie that sends the messages that Lewinski imputes to Twilight is distorting romance, creating unrealistic expectations, and setting girls and women up for big disappointments in their own relationships with men.

So, the reply to Lewinski should not be that the movie is just a harmless fantasy, that most people know it's fantasy, that there's worse fantasies out there, that most girls can handle the fantasy, and that the fantasy is nothing new. All this can be said of pornography. The reply should be that the movie does not, in fact, send the messages about men and women that Lewinski says it does. Unfortunately, too many of our respondents agreed that the movie does indeed send these messages, but they liked it anyway.

That sounds a lot like something a college kid sitting in front of his computer thrilling to video of some sexual debauch might say.