Barack Obama — or at least his speech writer:

[N]o matter how much responsibility we have, how fancy our titles, how much power we think we hold, we are imperfect vessels. We can all benefit from turning to our Creator, listening to Him. Avoiding phony religiosity, listening to Him.

I agree. But what is "phony religiosity"? Isn't that using the form of religion for another purpose entirely?

Later, talking about "the golden rule" — love your neighbor as yourself:

And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren't discriminating against those who are already sick... I do it because ... I believe in God's command to "love thy neighbor as thyself."

Wait a second: the "golden rule" isn't a laundry list of "progressive" policies. Nor does it inform us whether such policies really work or not. And is it really appropriate for a politician to stand up, at a "prayer breakfast", and inform us that his pursuit of his party's policies is evidence of his personal devotion to God? I'm not sure I've ever heard of a featured speaker doing something quite that self-promoting (not to mention partisan) at the prayer breakfast before.

And, yet again:

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I'm willing to give something up as somebody who's been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that "for unto whom much is given, much shall be required." It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who've been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

How odd: Obama hears "much will be required", and he that is due to Caesar, not God. Of course the beliefs sound similar, but with a crucial distinction: Jesus was talking about God, whereas Obama reflexively puts "the state" into that same slot.

And I really have trouble believing Jesus would want people to give money to Obama's supporters in Solyndra, or the BATF to use for gun distribution, or for high-speed trains which follow routes no-one wants to use. And that he would want it done, and handed out in the name of "Progressivism" or Obama*, rather than his own name.

(* This is easy to check: when Obama talks about who to give credit to for these policies, and any good results — does he say: "This was done in the Name of Jesus?" No, he says people ought to thank him.)

Given that, I guess this is the perfect ending:

In the words of C.S. Lewis, "Christianity has not, and does not profess to have a detailed political program. It is meant for all men at all times, and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another." Our goal should not be to declare our policies as biblical.

One is tempted to imagine that whoever wrote the opening and closing remarks hadn't also read the middle part. But in fact this is an old rhetorical trick: insist you're not doing something while you're doing it.

So, I was glad to learn so much about God from Obama's speech. It followed the form of religion, but really spoke about politics, and promoted the good his administration is doing.

A nice demonstration of how to avoid phony religion, don't you think?

One of the reasons "Intelligent Design" is not a form of science, I'm told, is that it doesn't make any predictions. If something has no predictive power, it's not a "scientific" idea. (Aside: ID must be exactly as predictive as scientific materialism, because one is simply the negation of the other.)

From a review of What Darwin Got Wrong, which was written by a couple of atheist biologists:

The third main argument, which I find more convincing is that NS is an empty theory b/c it rests on a number of circular definitions. Fitness is generally defined as the set of traits that confer greater reproductive advantage for a given creature. Thus, saying that those creatures that are more fit survive and reproduce more is circular, because this is simply the definition of fitness. In other words, if we ask what is fitness, we are told it is characterized by greater reproductive success and if we ask what leads to greater reproductive success we are told it is fitness. This argument has been made by many other thinkers, including some prominent biologists like T.H. Morgan. Similarly, to say that a creature is adapted to its niche or its ecology (distinguished from the environment as a whole) is circular because niche and ecology can only be described in terms of those forces that act on, or are relevant to, the given creature. Thus, to say that a creature is adapted to a niche is an empty statement because the niche is defined precisely by the features of the environment that are relevant to the creature.

The solution to these problems is, according to [the authors], to jettison NS and adaptationism entirely and acknowledge that explaining how creatures have evolved is a matter for natural history only. And natural history is "just one damned thing after another." There is no theory in natural history; it's just narrative. That is, there is no theory that can explain evolution, there is only historical examination (history). Once we have explained the natural history of each creature examined, there is no further natural theory that can explain how Nature worked its magic.

And later:

... in reading through the various responses by evolutionary biologists (Gould and many others) and philosophers, I am now shocked that the tautology argument has not caused natural selection to be jettisoned as a theory. Natural selection, as a theory of how species change, is as insightful as saying that "the candidate who received the most votes won the election." No matter how we defined natural selection, as "survival of the fittest," or as "differential reproduction," or as "the spread of adaptive traits," we end up back with tautology because all of these statements have no more information than "the candidate who obtained the most votes won the election."

I think the problem here we're trying to use "natural selection" as a key part of explaining how lower life forms evolved into more complex life forms. So we define more complex life forms as more "adaptive", and, often subtly, then use "Hey, look at the fossil record!" as evidence that "Evolution works!" — not realizing the circularity of what we're doing.

But is intelligence actually advantageous?

When people make these probabilistic equations, like the Drake Equation, which you're familiar with -- they introduce variables for the frequency of earth-like planets, for the evolution of life on those planets, and so on. The question remains as to how often, after life evolves, you'll have intelligent life capable of making technology. What people haven't seemed to notice is that on earth, of all the billions of species that have evolved, only one has developed intelligence to the level of producing technology. Which means that kind of intelligence is really not very useful. It's not actually, in the general case, of much evolutionary value. We tend to think, because we love to think of ourselves, human beings, as the top of the evolutionary ladder, that the intelligence we have, that makes us human beings, is the thing that all of evolution is striving toward. But what we know is that that's not true. Obviously it doesn't matter that much if you're a beetle, that you be really smart. If it were, evolution would have produced much more intelligent beetles. We have no empirical data to suggest that there's a high probability that evolution on another planet would lead to technological intelligence. There is just too much we don't know.

What if we wipe ourselves out two dozen years from now? At the moment, we're busy arguing "intelligence" must be this massively adaptive trait. But if a lone scientist survived, he would be forced to conclude that since intelligence didn't survive (any more than the dinosaurs did) it couldn't actually have been a very "successful" trait. Obviously, it couldn't have been both, and since we don't know the future, we can't actually argue for its ultimate utility.

Meanwhile, daddy longlegs haven't changed one iota in at least 300 million years. For another illustration of the silliness of this sort of argument check out the closing section of that article:

The researchers can't pinpoint why these little creatures stayed so similar over time while most of their comrades, like ancient spiders and scorpions, changed so much from relatively primitive forms. Garwood said of harvestmen, "It may be because they evolved early to be good at what they do, and their bodies did not need to change any further."

So daddy longlegs survived (and didn't evolve) because they were "good at what they do." But other kinds of "ancient spiders and scorpions" survived (and evolved) because they were not (comparatively) "good at what they do." As David Berlinski puts it: "What survives, survives." That is (by definition) an accurate statement of what happened, but it doesn't confer any predictive power on its own.

And if natural selection isn't "scientific" then how can Darwinism — which is built upon natural selection — also possibly be science?

Regarding the human tendency to worship material things (at that time, statues shaped like people or animals, as well as money), the Christian Apostle Paul wrote:

Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. - Romans 1:20

That's a very, very old argument. It's consistent with what Jesus taught: after death, people will be called to account on the basis of their own morality — what they themselves understood and did — not something beyond their experience or knowledge. Outside of absolute materialism (you have no purpose, there is no ultimate morality) it's also the only morally just arrangement possible.

Unless there is no real morality at all, there must be an afterlife, and some kind of ultimate moral judgment, for all intelligent beings:

1. Morality requires (or is defined as) the possibility of goodness and evil.
2. Ultimate morality requires an ultimate moral law-giver.
3. A universe-creator which was moral would have to punish and reward.
4. The part of existence we can see is not moral nor just. People die with unrewarded or unpunished deeds.
5. Therefore ultimate moral justice requires both a judgment (in which to decide what's owed, morally) and afterlife (in which to balance the accounts, and repay each)

Likewise, just as God couldn't rightly judge us on moral standards we couldn't understand, so also God can only judge us on evidence we could access. In other words, God would have to judge us on subjective arguments and evidence: things we personally know and believe.

So is there subjective evidence, available to all human beings, which demonstrates God's existence? That's something a guy writing a blog can't prove definitively, but I can produce good evidence for a "yes."

For example, Richard Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker, suggests "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, agrees: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." Both these eminent atheist biologists confirm that life communicates a "constant" impression of having been designed, with purpose, by a super-intelligence.

Likewise, the term "multiverse" itself provides evidence for Paul's assertion. As Wikipedia notes: "The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain why our universe seems to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it."

Spelled out, the reasoning goes something like this:

1. This universe appears improbable — designed for life, even
2. A designer doesn't exist
3. Therefore there must be other universes — or many undetectable regions of this universe — which weren't designed for life, so that this what we see is no longer really 'improbable'

(Analogy: If a man said he could guess any number (1-100) you were thinking, and did so three times in a row, you might be impressed, and think he could read minds. But if you later learned he'd been trying this his whole life, and always failed except in your lucky case, you'd then stop being impressed. By adding more "attempts", the seemingly-unlikely appears more likely. So we add more universes — an obscenely large number — to answer the 'problem' that this universe appears so intricately designed and unlikely.)

In Dawkins' case, his assertion that God doesn't exist (and thus that we know things aren't really designed) turns out to be circular. I suspect as much for many advocates of the multiverse. But either way, the concession is made: a good number of leading non-theist cosmologists and biologists admit, directly or otherwise, that what they see and learn via science seems to strongly implies a divine creator.

More evidence arises from our sense of morality. Richard Dawkins, for example, calls the biblical God "an evil monster", says "faith is evil", and so on. Others argue that the existence of evil poses a philosophical "problem" for religious believers.

To the contrary, the "problem" of evil is actually a problem for the atheist making the complaint. As Ravi Zacharias notes, "evil" implies moral absolutes — and absolute morality is simply another way of saying "God", since morality is a product of mind, not material. (And thus ultimate morality implies an ultimate mind.) So an atheist cannot rationally call God "evil" or suggest (as Dawkins does) that evil actually exists. He or she can only suggest they personally don't prefer that depiction of God, and personally don't like certain things.

Yet most atheists act and speak as though there really is such a thing as absolute morality. (See above for examples.) For example, the Democratic Party in the US, which is about 2/3rds non-religious, often makes claims like "George Bush is evil!!" — and not "George Bush holds values which differ from ours!!!" (Truthful arguments don't sound as impressive, do they?)

There are other examples, too, such as a healthy person's tendency to treat human beings as something other than machines. Yet if we have no soul, then we must be mere machines. And if we're machines, then why want to punish us for acting wrong? We have no "free will", and you might as well want vengeance against a rock you stubbed your foot on. ("Free will" presents another huge problem as well. Why oppose the death penalty? Do we argue against disposing of malfunctioning cars and computers?)

Again: Does an atheist argue for "human rights"? If so, where do they come from? Inalienable rights must be conferred by something higher than a society or government. If so, the argument for "animal rights" is even more illogical.

There are innumerable such traps. So many so that it seem nearly impossible for an atheist to live in a manner which is even remotely consistent with his purported philosophical beliefs. This is ironic: contrary to incessant allegations that religion is "irrational", the theist actually lives more in agreement with her beliefs than the atheist. The atheist is constantly contradicting his beliefs, whereas the theist is only acting irrationally when sinning.

So I agree with Paul: while it's logically possible that God might not exist, all human beings, including atheists*, perceive the world, and act in a manner which implies something like God must exist. This, then, places a burden on them to explain why their philosophy denies that which their actions and judgments demand.

God help us all, and God bless you all. Theist and atheist alike.

(* Perhaps even "especially", given that many atheists seem far more moralistic than theists. I don't condemn Richard Dawkins as an evil child-abuser — nor does any Christian I know — but that is how he speaks of his opponents.)

Two decades ago — and for all recorded history, for that matter — "marriage" was defined as a relationship between people of opposite gender. (Certainly, many societies permitted (or even glorified) same-sex relationships, but they didn't seek to define them as "marriage." That's entirely modern.)

Today, the desire is to define "marriage" as a relationship between two people:

Marriage is the process by which two people who love each other make their relationship public, official, and permanent. It is the joining of two people in a bond... [Psychology Today]

So, what's the big deal? If two people love each other, shouldn't they be allowed the same rights, privileges and responsibilities, no matter their genders? [link]

Marriage is a ritual or ceremony which legally binds two people together. Marriage can be achieved through judicial means of applying for a license, as well as religiously through a clerics consent to espouse. After marriage, two people are joined together in a legal, social and often religious contract... [link]

But, wait, what happened to polygamy? In the US, polygamy was always believed to be a form of marriage (nobody ever said it "wasn't marriage"), but just one which wasn't legally recognized, nor encouraged. Oddly, now we are claiming, under the pretended new definition, that polygamy isn't even a form of marriage.

If we really believed this to be the definition of 'marriage', we could not say that Mohammad had multiple wives. Those who purport to accept the new definition of marriage must say that Mohammad had one wife (again, marriage is a relationship between two people) and simply slept with the other women. (Now try saying this in Saudi Arabia!)

Obviously, nobody speaks this way about polygamy — which means that everyone — including promoters of same-sex marriage — actually believe that the term "marriage" includes polygamy. They just refuse to grant polygamists those marriages same legal standing they want for same-sex couples.

In contrast, a Christian (including myself) might say that marriage is a bond between people of opposite sex (as all people in history have believed), and also argue God's ideal for marriage was one man, one woman, as long as both live. This doesn't mean that I won't call two divorced people "married." Failing to be an ideal or perfect X doesn't mean you're not X at all. A polygamous marriage (or a third marriage) is still a marriage. A flawed human being is still a human being.

One solution to this is to fall back to admitting other definitions of marriage (and scrapping their current one), but only wanting the two-person part to be legal. But how is that defended? The Christian defends the two-person part by citing Jesus — who also, annoying, defined them as being of opposite gender. So the same-sex marriage advocate can't use that, nor the Jewish (nor Muslim, nor Hindu) understanding of marriage.

On what grounds, then, to exclude Muslims, and other polygamists? On the grounds of "love"? What if one man truly loves two women, or at least claims he does? (Or all three love each other?) How do you prove such a thing can't happen?

Or do we fall back on the "it's not good for society" argument? Based on what research? Same-sex marriage activists have spent a long time explaining that marriage is about individual needs, not society — although I suppose one can always do an about-face.

I can see no rational basis for both throwing out the all-of-history definition of marriage as being about joining two different sexes, while simultaneously all forms of polygamy from fitting the definition of marriage, much less legal sanction.

Of course we can always fall back on unevaluated hypocrisy and contradiction. That's sustainable, at least for a while. :-)

Most corporations are built by makers — people who want to get ahead by building things, innovating, working, creating new products and services. Politically, makers can be anywhere on the spectrum: left (Bill Gates), right (Sam Walton), or anywhere else (Steve Jobs).

As staff grows, social networking becomes increasingly important: not so much what you do, but how many (and how powerful) allies you can attract. And as profits grow, these corporations attract takers — people who want to get ahead by any other means. These people are not necessarily unethical or bad — its just that ethics are not a primary concern. They won't necessarily break the law, or even do anything overtly immoral — but will promote actions which are collectively harmful (perhaps only a little bit) — but useful for their own, local ends. We might say they tend towards the pragmatic rather than ethical.

Note that both groups (there's a spectrum, really) want to get ahead: they just embrace different means. Both might desire wealth equally, but one also has a set of ethical checks (or motivations) operating, and where another has fewer constraints.

In the short term (and sometimes the long term), pragmatists will often be more effective than the makers — not because they're more intelligent or socially ept, but because they are more likely choose the most effective means to reach their goal. Let's admit it: it's easier to move ahead by fudging the numbers a little, pretending to know something you don't, empire-building (adding headcount, whether you need it or not), taking credit (and so on) than by doing things better and more efficiently (which is difficult). And if there's a danger of exposure, moving to another corporation (often with a promotion) more than solves the problem.

There is an American political movement which shares the same pragmatic approach (bold added):

"At its core," John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress writes, "progressivism is a non-ideological, pragmatic system of thought grounded in solving problems and maintaining strong values within society." Progressivism is practical and driven by the values that define America morality and have made our country stronger and better. It's a dynamic concept giving the leadership of an up-and-coming generation of politicos - you - the tools to make this nation's future brighter for all....

The first key to understanding progressivism is that it's not the same as liberalism, as many might assume. "Progressivism is an orientation towards politics," Halpin said in an interview with Campus Progress. "It's not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept ... that accepts the world as dynamic." Progressivism is not an ideology at all, but an attitude towards the world of politics that is far less black-and-white than conservatism or liberalism...

In researching this story, I asked several young progressives (including Geoff) what 'progressive' means to them. Many, along with Halpin, emphasized how progressive thought is above all pragmatic and flexible.

The goals are not fixed, and the means are not constant: what matters is the continuous desire to make things better, without getting too precise about what "better" is, how it differs from yesterday's version of "better", and which means are acceptable or wrong for reaching it — at the moment. So there's a natural affinity of thought (and technique) between corporate pragmatists and political pragmatists.

Not all corporate pragmatists will give to Democrats, of course. An unethical head of a defense contracting company might give much more to Republicans, if they're giving strictly to make money. No, the odd paradox is that when pragmatists become idealistic and altruistic, they're more likely to lean left. If it's strictly a matter of profit, they'll support the highest bidder — it's only when they start trying to improve the world that they're going to be drawn to the left.

And why not? They got ahead in the first place by doing "whatever worked"... now that they want to 'give back', why not use the same mechanisms? And since their values are somewhat flexible*, they can be influenced by fads and contemporary sentiments — which, again, aligns precisely with "progressive" programs.

(* I don't mean they'd go out an murder someone, but they'll easily shift from believing (for example) that "marriage" is defined as a committed relationship between men and women (including polygamy), to believing it's a relationship between any two loving people (which, strangely, would now exclude polygamy). Or embrace faddish crises, such as "global cooling", "global warming", or the belief we need more laws telling us which toilets or light bulbs we may use.)

Amazing, though, that you can read it in the Times:

The television interview of Marianne Gingrich, a former wife of Newt Gingrich, that will be broadcast on Thursday night was initiated back in November, when ABC News was looking into an old federal investigation that involved the family.

The investigation was closed in 1997, but ABC's curiosity about it led the network to court Ms. Gingrich for an interview. Weeks of conversations ensued, and last week she agreed to go on camera on Jan. 13 in Washington.

Oh. Curiosity? Sounds like they were practically begging her to go on camera and say negative things. Perfect timing.

Let's recall that this it the same media which worked as it as it could not to report the John Edwards story. (Or stories, plural, it could be argued, given that even I knew about the misuse of funds while it was happening.) Also recall that Drudge got his start when several major media outlets knew about Clinton affair, but sat on the story for months. And don't get me started about Reverend Wright and the now-buried tape of Obama's anti-Israel dinner and speech with PLO terrorists.

So, yeah, sex sells, so the media can't help but report it, right? "This is an important story! People are talking about this! The public has a right to know." Don't gimme that: you'll manufacture a story when one is not forthcoming, and bury/hide one that's plainly dynamite. The determining factor is the letter after the candidate's name — certainly not any higher principle.

You can learn a lot about a news outlet's prejudices by comparing the headline with the content.

The large print giveth...

Study: Occasional pot smoking not as damaging as cigarettes...

The small print taketh away...

Pletcher notes that his team was surprised to find that subjects who smoked limited amounts of marijuana actually were able to blow large volumes of air into the spirometer.... Subjects who smoked larger amounts of marijuana, which Pletcher described as smoking one joint per day, did show evidence of reduced pulmonary function.

Oh. So if you smoke pot almost never, you're not doing as much damage as smoking cigarettes incessantly. Who would have guessed it? And of course, they're only looking for one small effect (how much air you can blow) not odds of cancer, or anything terribly useful.

It's so odd that many of those who want to ban cigarettes (they're unhealthy!) are also those who want pot legalized. A "war against drugs" is wrong-headed, but a war against trans fats, salts, incandescent light bulbs, cigarettes, good-tasting foods, unsafe infant seating, keeping score in soccer games... ad nauseum — that war is good and necessary.

This is a must-see.

The video is so astounding that I thought she had to be in on the joke (you can see her getting in the elevator without a cameraman, and then see them inside, thus with cameraman) — so, trying to be fair, I checked her blog. She knew it was coming, and remarked "Sure, much of my careful reasoning ended up on the cutting room floor, but it was fun."

She supplied this link to explain further. This, combined with her defense (in the video) of her "colorful language" in editorials, seems to be her key point:

My definition of incivility is nonfactual and uninformed opinions hidden in anonymity or false identities, and Internet forums overflow with them. When the comments gush in from orchestrated campaigns, other thoughtful views get lost in the flood.

Ah. I see. Calling someone you disagree with a "terrorist" isn't uncivil. (To the contrary, she maintains her charge against the Tea Party is actually true: their opinions would have hurt the country, so you should rightly call them "terrorists.") You're only being "uncivil" if you post "uninformed" or "nonfactual" opinions in an anonymous fashion. And no doubt "uninformed" or "nonfactual" translates, in practice, to: "Assertions with which Froma Harrop disagrees."

So I'm being uncivil, while not calling her names (but I'm writing anonymously! I hold opinions she doesn't share!) — and she's being civil, while calling me a murderer.

Got it.

I also enjoyed her suggestion that a good way to encourage civility was to chain an opponent up and scream at them for an hour.

City Journal, on Obama outdoing the Bush administration:

He has already explained that "where Congress is not willing to act, we're going to go ahead and do it ourselves." On a variety of issues, from immigration to the environment to labor law, that's just what he's been doing — and he may try it even more boldly should he win reelection. This "go it alone" philosophy reflects an authoritarian trend emerging on the political left since the conservative triumph in the 2010 elections.

Cheney's belief in a "unitary executive" never went quite this far.

Also consider Obama's use of wiretaps ("No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way."), rendition ("may expand", intelligence experts say), actual torture, etc.

Democrats who are concerned about centralization of power in the executive branch should vote for Republicans. (a) Republicans apparently aren't as bad as Democrats, in this regard, and (b) even if they were, the media demands accountability from Republicans — where it says nothing when Democrats do the same thing or worse.

Sadly, it doesn't seem most Democrats are actually concerned about centralization of power. (Those in the aforementioned media, for example.) Apparently the issue for them is centralization of power other than by their leaders.

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. - Richard Dawkins

This is a really stupid (and telling) assertion — and I marvel that so many (including myself, until this moment) haven't noticed.

What is Dawkins saying here?

One, he's implying that if some major question remains unanswered (or, worse, seems best answered by "God") an atheist should rightly be 'intellectually unfulfilled'.

Two, he's implying that the question of the origin of the species was the biggest barrier to intellectual fulfillment for atheists. Imagine the thoughts of an atheist divided into two regions: one labeled "fulfilled", and one labeled "unfulfilled." (Relative size is irrelevant.) That "unfilled" region was apparently mostly occupied with the question of the origin of the species. After Darwin, it migrated (Dawkins says) from "unfulfilled" to "fulfilled", leaving little or nothing behind in the "unfulfilled" category.

This proposal raises a number of reasonable questions:

Why is the atheist (as described by Dawkins) only interested in the origin of species? Isn't the origin of life a much bigger question? Yet when asked, Dawkins admits he doesn't know how life arose.

So, let me get this straight: Knowing how a wolf becomes a dog answers all the "big questions" for an atheist (a la Dawkins), but not knowing how life itself arose is somehow, in comparison, not an interesting or important question?

And what of the origin of the universe? (Or universes, if one is so inclined.) Wouldn't that be much, much more important than the question of the origin of life, and thus exponentially more significant than how earthworm varieties develop? (And you cannot suggest that whatever latest theory about the universe now solves that need.* Richard is saying that after Darwin, no such intellectual need existed.)

And what about a basis for objective morality and ethics? Or the question of whether life has meaning? Or free will? All of these remain serious problems for materialists after Darwin — perhaps worse than without him. One can hardly describe these issues as trivial, given that societies stand or fall on such questions.

The atheist described by Dawkins is an exceedingly strange creature: imagine a group of chefs fixated on baking, but not concerned, at all, with any other stage of food preparation — or US historians who are deeply interested in the precise manner in which founding documents were written and signed, while admitting to knowing nothing of the reason for the split with England.

What's going on here?

The comment marked with an asterisk (above) hints at an answer: it suggests the point is to move goalposts, not ponder meaningful questions honestly. If a question is presently unanswered, no matter how significant (origin of life?), it apparently occupies little to no mental space in Dawkins' head. Then, when a materialistic answer is proposed, the question assumes a new level of importance.

Done once, this can be convincing. Too often, and you give the game away. Darwin dispensed with God. But then what about Freud? And evolutionary psychology? Just recently, Stephen Hawking again announced that God was finished. (Oddly, Hawking killed God after he'd already decided he was done for.) But if God has been intellectually dead since Nietzsche, why do we need to keep killing him again and again?

(As a child, I noticed Time and Newsweek, every Easter (and sometimes on Christmas) would announce new evidence overturning our traditional understanding of Christianity. (Very respectful timing: if they really want to be serious about that kind of thing, try it with Mohammad during Ramadan.) Every Easter. "What happened to last year's big revelation?" I began to wonder.)

Nothing changes, of course: the same questions just get pushed back. God wasn't needed to create the species. But then how did life start? God wasn't needed to create the universe, the "laws" (of the universe!) somehow created it — it created itself. (Circular reasoning is apparently now "logic".) And, even if so, how did that situation arise? No wait: the universe was produced by a complex multiverse-producing 'machine' — which needs to be more finely-tuned (it turns out) than the universe it purports to explain.

It seems the goal of these moves is not to answer core questions, but to distract the self, and perhaps others, from thinking clearly about them. Indeed, that's the point of every logical fallacy, isn't it? You choose the answer you want first, without thinking about your motives, and then find a reason which sounds comforting, whether it really makes sense or not. At least you've convinced yourself.

David Berlinski:

On the masthead of the Daily Hitchens, there is the legend: What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. The difficulty with this assertion is straightforward. If it has been asserted without proof, why should it be believed, and if not, where is the proof? I asked Hitchens about this during a break in our debate. We had retreated to a forlorn hotel loading ramp in order to have a cigarette. "Well, yes," he said, "it's just a sentence."

Oh. That explains it. It's just a sentence.

But wasn't it also his core philosophy?

An associate once told me he only accepted as true which could be proven, scientifically. I pointed out that maxim, itself, wasn't provable, scientifically. He didn't seem overly troubled by the potential that his core alleged commitment to truth was itself a fallacy.

"Reason" makes for a lonely idol. Her would-be worshipers proclaim her name, while worshiping their own intellect. Even in their idolatry, they are unfaithful. She was clearly never meant for such.

Via The Guardian (bold added):

The Wukan case says a lot about the serious tension between state and society in the fast urbanising China. It is difficult to play the land requisition game fairly under the current system, since farmers are neither allowed to negotiate directly on the compensation package, nor are they allowed to develop their own land for non-agricultural purposes. They have to sell their land to local government first, which defines the price then leases the land to industrial and commercial/residential users for a profit. As land prices keep rising in China, it is not surprising that farmers with rising expectations are becoming increasingly unhappy.

How unfair. You'd be unhappy too.

Note: "leases" — even the industrialists don't own the land. It apparently it becomes the exclusive property of the Communist Party.

But how many people here share that mentality? That is, how many believe that the government owns everything, and only allows us to use it? Listening to the most popular rhetoric (Elisabeth Warren enthusiasts, for example), "far too many" seems to be the answer.

Hitchens:

"If I could convert everyone in the world, not convert, if I could convince to be a nonbeliever, and I'd really done brilliantly, and there's only one left, one more and then it'd be done, there'd be no more religion in the world, no more deism, theism," Hitchens stated, "I wouldn't do it."

"And Dawkins said, 'What do you mean you wouldn't do it?'" he recalled. "I said I don't quite know why I wouldn't do it. And it's not just because there'd be nothing left to argue with and no one left to argue with. It's not just that. Though it would be that."

"Somehow if I could drive it out of the world, I wouldn't," Hitchens revealed to Wilson. "And the incredulity with which he (Dawkins) looked at me, stays with me still, I've got to say."

For a man who argued "Religion Poisons Everything", Christopher Hitchens was certainly beloved by so many of the people he chose as his enemies.

God, for the record, agrees with Hitchens: He could have created a world without atheism, and He certainly didn't choose to do that. I agree as well. Of course, any caring person who believes something, and believes it to be universally helpful, and loves someone else would also want that other person to benefit. But freedom is important, and that includes the freedom to hold views that are the opposite of ours. Christopher Hitchens, I think, understood that, and held true to that, even at a gut level. Dawkins does not.

Barker is a former pastor who didn't find Christianity intellectually credible. Now, instead, he utters wisdom like this:

"By the way, why was Jesus even born?" Barker asks. "To save us from our sin. What an insult to say we are degraded and depraved human beings."

Get that? It would be an "insult" to say that say that humans sin.

But, um, do we? Are we more prone to goodness or wrongdoing? It's not hard to look at my own motives, the behavior of myself and those around me, and history and conclude humans are prone to great evil. Barker seems to imply that if bad news can be called "insulting" then it can't also be true.

I see Barker's organization also offers its own, um, interesting version of history:

The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion. In modern times the first to speak out for prison reform, for humane treatment of the mentally ill, for abolition of capital punishment, for women's right to vote, for death with dignity for the terminally ill, and for the right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion have been freethinkers, just as they were the first to call for an end to slavery.

It's certainly true that "freethinkers" (ironically, people constrained to respect only one theological outlook) were at the forefront of promoting abortion, sterilization — and euthanasia. That was called the "progressive" movement, and if they want to own it, have at it. And yes, we have the severely mentally ill on the streets now because of "freethinkers" at the ACLU, who argued (quite successfully, in court) that it was inhuman to restrain anyone.

But what about rest?

Prison reform? Look at the Wikipedia entry on the history of reform in the US. The first reform mentioned, the so-called Auburn System, was promoted by the Whig Party — the same group that produced the Republican Party (more later) and the Auburn Theological seminary. The next listed movement towards reform is a "monumental report" by Enoch Wines (a Christian pastor) and Theodore Dwight (a prominent theologian). Next, is the Elmira Reformatory, focusing on courses in "religion and ethics." Wikipedia also notes: "Within Britain, prison reform was spearheaded by the Quakers..."

Women's suffrage? After listing a number of earlier reforms (happening among Christians), Wikipedia note Elizabeth Cady Stanton (atheist), Lucretia Mott (Quaker), and Susan B. Anthony (an agnostic).

Freeing Slaves? Again, simply go read the history: it begins with a Dominican priest, Quakers, and "evangelical religious groups" agitating to end slavery. The British Anti-Slavery Society was founded by "nine Quakers, and three pioneering Anglicans — Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce — all evangelical Christians." In the USA, the "first American movement to abolish slavery came in the spring of 1688 when German and Dutch Quakers..." (Read the rest, religion is everywhere...) One should also note that Christians had already abolished slavery among themselves in Europe, before 1400.

Trying to be as fair as possible, I should also mention Leopold II, who clashed with the Roman Catholic Church (though not a "freethinker"), who abolished the death penalty and enacted a system of humane treatment for the mentally ill.

What Barker omits is interesting, too: he only says "freethinkers" "spoke out" against slavery (placing it last in his list), and skips crucial topics such as the development of technology, science, hospitals, and so on. And "moral progress"? What progress in morality can be traced to prominent atheists? Barker doesn't explain.

So yes, there were a few "freethinkers" involved in abortion and birth control (Margaret Sanger, who even Planned Parenthood doesn't like to mention too often), and the womens' movement (the same women who brought us prohibition — though, Barker doesn't mention that...).

Yet it's striking to note that the very social reforms Barker cites arose (inconveniently, for his thesis) from a Christian civilization, not a more atheistic one (say, like China, where many of the ruling mandarins were essentially atheists). Barker seems to be trying to claim — exclusively for the credit of atheism — work which was mostly done by devoutly religious people. Certainly, we should give credit where due, and also credit atheists among those reformers — but doesn't seem convenient to Barker's narrative.

Given this, Barker probably shouldn't hold himself out as an example of the intellectual clarity (much less social grace!) one will experience once one has purged all traces of God-belief.

The talk show host (a Christian) kicked Barker off for insulting Jesus. I don't agree: Jesus was merciful to those who insulted him, and Christians should act likewise towards their critics.

But I would have kicked off Barker nonetheless — but rather because he failed to focus on the topic at hand. When asked about public displays of religion, he apparently veered into unhinged, off-topic rants about the evils of Jesus and the wonders of atheism. That's not helpful on a talk show, and I think, as a society, we should have far less tolerance for the topic-dodgers among us who prevent serious consideration of any subject by resorting to shrill non-sequiturs and ad hominem invective. In short, anti-intellectual responses.

I also find the name of Barker's foundation more than a little troubling: the "Freedom From Religion Foundation." Freedom OF religion (or non-religion) is a natural right: anyone may think or speak according to his or her conscience. But freedom FROM religion implies we must control religion as if it were pollution: can't have any of your neighbor's speech or displays of piety drifting into your space. (Step outside when you Tebow, and keep it more than fifteen feet from the door.) The former is accomplished by maximizing individual liberty, the later, through collective coercion.

Your paradise is calling. Consider relocating immediately.

One of the fun things about Intelligent Design is the way it seemingly drives its opponents to madness. Strangely, this effect is not limited to materialists — even its theistic opponents appear to lose rational clarity when the topic comes up.

For example, here's Ed Feser, discussing Stephen Law's "evil god challenge", which seems to require a drive down a cul-de-sac in order to kick the ID guys a few more times.

[The "evil god challenge"] applies at most only to one, historically idiosyncratic version of theism. So, suppose you regard the divine attributes as in principle metaphysically separable -- that something that is, for example, omnipotent or omniscient could nevertheless fail to be all-good. Suppose also that you regard good and evil as on a metaphysical par, neither more fundamental than the other. And suppose that you consider the grounds for belief in God to consist in an inductive inference to the effect that God is the best explanation of various bits of evidence -- the orderliness of the world, the good we find in it, etc. Given those specific metaphysical and epistemological assumptions -- the sort that might be made by someone beholden to a "theistic personalist" conception of God and who thinks Paley-style "design arguments" and the like are the best reason to believe in God -- Law's challenge might be a problem.

Applying Paley's argument to Feser's: You're walking through the woods. You find a watch. Or toad. Or tree. You open it up, examine its inner workings in great detail, and observe that it appears to be intricately designed. You conclude it must have been produced by an intelligence. You mention this to your atheist friend...

Congratulations! You have committed the heresy of "theistic personalism." (A heresy apparently also committed by Paul in Romans 1, when he used inductive reasoning to argue that men should know God from visible aspects of his creation.) Apparently, you also now also "regard good and evil as on a metaphysical par"! Who knew! All because you thought a design argument was a good one to mention to your atheist-friend. (Who, by the way, rejects the notion of final causes...)

It's a long way from saying: "We can infer this frog was designed, but we can't prove the designer was the Christian God", to saying, as Feser seems:

(1) If you argue in a way which doesn't require the designer of X have the attributes of the classical Christian God, and (2) I believe you are thinking the designer of X is God, then (3) You must be saying the designer of X is a god who does not have the attributes of the classical Christian God.

This is nuts. Since Feser likes goofy analogies (as do I), let's use one:

Imagine the Ford Fiesta was designed by my friend Ferb. Ferb, by the way, is married to Frieda, likes Froot Loops, and is an honest man. I point out that the word "Ferb" is actually cleverly imprinted into the folds of the Fiesta's floorboards. I also point out several other features which also seem characteristic of my friend Ferb. But hey, we can't, from those folded floorboards — to "Ferb loves Frieda", or "Fed like Froot Loops".

(Heck, I can't even prove it's the exact same "Ferb" as my friend!)

So have I argued that Ferb is not married to Frieda? Or doesn't like Froot Loops? Or isn't an honest man? No: a failure to assert X isn't the same as an assertion of not-X. If I should happen to cite the Ford Fiesta as evidence Ferb exists, I'm not denying Ferb's other attributes.

Nor are Intelligent Design advocates denying God's classical attributes when they use an inductive argument from design to suggest that a designer — which could be the classical Christian God, but doesn't necessarily have to be — seems to be responsible for creation, toads, and trees.

This seems blindly obvious.

Ed Feser, waaay down in the comments:

[Question:] If this point, that (philosophical) nothingness is an impossibility, is something that theists, agnostics, and atheists agree upon, then it appears to be non-nonsensical to ask "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

[Answer:] "X is impossible" does not entail "It is nonsensical to ask why X is impossible."

Nor is the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" comparable to "What caused God?", asked about the God of classical theism. What would be comparable is the question "Why is the God of classical theism the sort of thing that couldn't have been caused?" That is a reasonable question, and it has a straightforward answer.

(The reason is that to be caused requires going in some way from potentiality to actuality, but God as conceived of in classical theism is, essentially, pure actuality and thus has no potentiality that could be actualized. That, by the way, is also why there couldn't have been nothing. Whatever the fundamental reality is -- that which accounts for everything else -- has to be something that just is, without even in principle having to be made, for if it had to be made then it wouldn't be fundamental. And that entails that it is something purely actual. Which entails that it could never have come into being or go out of being. Which entails that there never could have been nothing.)

Jerry Coyne, deploys the ever-popular "my enemies secretly agree with me (but lie about it!)" attack against critic David Berlinski. In response to Berlinski's assertion that the fossil record doesn't conform to Darwin's theory:

We have the once-missing intermediates between terrestrial artiodactyls and whales: a fine fossil series. And, of course, we have all those fossils in the hominin family tree, from early australopithecines with apelike skulls and more modern human-like postcranial skeletons to more modern forms that closely resemble modern humans in nearly every feature. None of these were known in Darwin's time.

For Berlinski to pretend that the fossil evidence doesn't support Darwin, when every bloody fossilized tooth, bone, leaf, and integument cries out "evolution", is the height of stupidity. Or, since I don't think Berlinski is stupid, let's say the height of intellectual dishonesty. Berlinkski knows of the fossil record, and pretends it doesn't exist. He's a liar.

Wikipedia, on the evolution of whales:

The pakicetids are hoofed mammals that are the earliest whales, with Indohyus from family Raoellidae being the closest sister group. They lived in the early Eocene, around 53 million years ago.... pakicetids most likely lived in an arid environment with ephemeral streams and moderately developed floodplains millions of years ago.

Reading the rest of the article, we see the other proposed intermediate forms (in chronological order) 49 million years ago (Ambulocetidae), 41 to 35 million years ago (Basilosauridae, "the oldest known obligate aquatic cetaceans"), Squalodon (introducing echolocation, 33-14 million years ago), and so on. (Nice diagram here.)

Next, MSNBC, a month ago:

The jawbone of an ancient whale found in Antarctica may be the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered, Argentine scientists said Tuesday.... Argentine paleontologist Marcelo Reguero, who led a joint Argentine-Swedish team, said the fossilized archaeocete jawbone found in February dates back 49 million years.

So: Pakicetids, dated to about 53 mya, are the ancestors of modern whales. Then, just four million years afterwards, they had already turned into full aquatic cetaceans. (Millions of years before the alleged later transitional forms?) This is the "fine fossil series" Coyne suggests above? Given the new find, we have a direct jump, fossil-wise, from a dog-like animal, walking on all fours and living in the desert — to an arctic whale. Yes, that's exactly the sort of gradual series of modifications we'd expect, given the Darwinian mechanism.

Ah, but Berlinski secretly agrees with Dr. Coyne, but is lying through his teeth about harboring doubts.

From L. Russ Bush, who sounds like a very nice and deeply devout man, so it pains me, as a Christian, to disagree with his argument:

Reason itself, in the naturalistic world view, is nothing more than the natural and random result of a particular randomly changing original bit of matter. Reason is not really an independent evaluative process that can critique itself. Reason is only what the chemistry allows through self-arrangement and self-organization.... No intrinsic truth would exist, and yet naturalists claim that naturalism itself is true. But how could that claim avoid the inevitable skeptical conclusion. Nothing can be known for sure to be objectively true, for there is no standard other than the chemical pattern one happens to be using at the time. Why should reason be trusted? How could naturalism be known to be true? The answer is: it can't.

Ignore, for the moment, the debate whether random processes can produce life and intelligence. I object to Bush's claims (a) that naturalism means no intrinsic truth can exist, and (b) that there would be no reason to trust "reason" if intelligence arose naturally.

Consider mathematics. Imagine a godless universe with no life: would one plus one still equal two? I think so — even if there was no-one there to call something "two", we could imagine, say, that two (one + one) stars could still orbit each other — even with no-one there to observe them. So why should other truths fail to exist?

Indeed, it seems to me that Bush is getting things backwards: if intelligence arose randomly, it would be true that it arose randomly. That's not merely a claim made by naturalists — it would be true. The claim that such a process would exclude human reason comes from Bush, not materialists — so the contradiction is his, not theirs.

I think a more reasonable claim would be not that objective truth couldn't exist, but rather that reason, as a thought process, couldn't be produced by chance. But, again, even if so: why? If something like a human mind could be produced by random processes, then couldn't also a calculator, which is much simpler? Calculators don't think, but they do perform math accurately. Likewise a "reasoning machine" wouldn't even need to be intelligent or self-aware in order to churn correct logical transformations. Computers do it all the time, and they're much simpler than human brains — and thus far more likely to arise by chance.

Put another way: Imagine my brain arose, exactly as it is today, by two alternatives histories. In scenario C it arose by chance. In scenario G, it was created, ultimately, by God. Why would brain C produce untrustworthy results, while brain G — which has the exact same configuration — produce reliable answers? Since Bush has allowed (at least for the sake of argument) scenario C, he must now explain the distinction.

I suspect Dr. Bush is doing another argument badly — one which renowned philosopher John Cleese answered best, in my opinion. The argument is made that belief in God should be discounted because it arose by chance, through evolutionary processes. Of course, if belief in God can be thus dismissed, then what other beliefs must go? Surely a belief in genetic determinism, itself, must be subject to the same criticism!

Cleese's argument works because he's pointing out the hypocrisy of trying to have it both ways. (That is, saying some beliefs can be trusted if they rose by chance, but others cannot.) He doesn't address whether either argument is more valid.

Bush, on the other hand, is agreeing with one of those two arguments: that random processes can't produce a "machine" which could turn out accurate results. That's fine, and maybe its even true (and, indeed, many atheists seem to agree, at least when convenient) — but then the burden is on him to show why that would be true — which he doesn't seem to do.

Usually, Christians take the other side in this debate. Atheists argue that a desire for God must have arisen by evolution, so it must be false. Christians counter by pointing out that we also desire food, love, truth, justice, too — so food doesn't exist? Love doesn't exist?

For the record, I don't think this universe or life arose by chance — much less the human mind. I can't exactly prove that, but the evidence is so overwhelmingly in favor of my side that our opponents must hypothesize a mind-bogglingly-large number of other universes (which we can't detect or interact with) in order to try to tilt the odds in their favor — meaning that they themselves agree, by their actions, that the odds are, given what we know (this universe) far, far, far in favor of theism.

I also don't suspect the human mind could have arisen by chance: it strikes me as being very different than a computer. "We" look out from inside our eyes — there's no reason to think a computer has that experience. No amount of software (or faster computation, or more memory) would produce such an emergent phenomenon "inside" the computer: the "soul" inside us is qualitatively different than anything a software developer can produce.

A final question is whether (or why) we should trust ourselves to do logic or math. This is a profound question, but it has nothing to do with God. God could exist, and we could still be "off our rocker", but unable to see it, because our self-perception is so damaged we can't detect what's going wrong. Happens to stroke victims, narcissists, and drunks all the time.

Here.

What strikes me about the video is the activists' almost slavish reliance upon (and appeal to) argument from authority: unless her critic is a scientist, his opinions are invalid. Amusingly, even when she discovers he (Alex Epstein) is a scientist, she then seems to demand that he must be in at top of his class before she will take his assertions seriously. (Unfortunately for her, he is that, too.)

It doesn't seem to occur to her that she, herself scores well below zero by the criteria she demands of others. If she's at all serious about needing credentials, she shouldn't listen to a single thing she herself says. She seemingly lacks any knowledge about even the most basic aspects of physics: she sincerely believes that a "perpetual battery" is possible. (She seem to think one has to understand "quantum information theory" to know the basic laws of thermodynamics...)

Epstein points out that if they succeed, they will deprive society of 95% of the power on which it runs. The green activists seem to think a clever response (which, sadly, seems to distract Epstein) is to argue that we will run out of fossil fuels at some point in the future. So since we will run out some day, we should force ourselves to run out right now?

If only their passion could be linked with something like a desire to learn.

Finally, the activist suggests that his perspective must arise from bad motives: perhaps he has investments in nuclear power? Perhaps he also suffers from "greed"? She: "When something is cheap, it undermines a working society..." Ask how cheap her rather expensive-looking glasses, earrings and coat were, and whether she should have paid ten times as much for them.

Epstein also doesn't play up his concern for humans. Freedom is good, but "freedom", unlinked to any kind of moral argument, is meaningless. He has a good moral argument — it could be used more effectively.