While Christian theology must face questions raised by modern science, modern science has excluded from discussion the primary claim of the gospel that the man Jesus was actually the Creator and Sustainer and Lord of the entire universe. If that claim is true, and modern science has chosen to ignore it, then it is guilty of impervious ignorance.

-From False Intimacy by Dr. Harry Schaumburg

Schaumburg in this passage is talking about homosexuality and whether or not it is genetic or natural in its cause. And the point he is making is that if modern science, or any given proponent of modern science, does not factor into his system of knowledge this one all-important fact, then they will be utterly unable to arrive at truth in any other respect; they will be “guilty of impervious ignorance.”

Schaumburg’s book is excellent, by the way, in understanding the root and nature of sexual addiction. But it was another subject that sparked my interest in this- the old intelligent design question, that is so frequently discussed in the blogosphere these days. In particular, this post by Joe Carter and the discussion that followed, called to my mind the intractable nature of the disagreement, just as the disagreement about homosexuality and abortion and so many other things these days seems to be just as fundamentally intractable.

If Jesus really was a real person, who was miraculously conceived in the uterus of a virgin, who performed many miracles, who claimed to be the son of God, who predicted that he would be killed but that he would rise from the dead, and that through these events would be declared to the world to be its lord and king; if these propositions are in fact true, then that changes everything. Literally everything.

I believe that the world was created in six days less than ten thousand years ago. I do not believe this because I looked at the facts and decided they point in this direction. I believe this because the first two chapters of Genesis say that it was, and Jesus said that the Old Testament is the authoritative word of God, and I believe everything that Jesus tells me. It’s really just as simple as that. I feel no need to nuance my belief in this fact to make it look more agreeable to the science of the day, through day-age schemes or framework hypotheses or anything else. At the end of the day, we all have to decide who we’re going to believe, and when given the choice between God and man, I’ll choose God.

I admire guys like Joe Carter and Rusty and many others for trying over and over to get in these discussions with folks like DarkSyde and Panda’s Thumb and Pharyngula, and they try to have these discussions as if they were discussions about commonly held facts, for if we’re going to have a meaningful discussion, as in a court of law, for example, then the first thing we have to do is establish what the facts are, and then move from there to the interpretation of those facts and so on. So we talk about this particular molecule or that protein or the other fossil, and so forth, and the IDC vs. evolution argument tries to pretend that they can come to some common understanding of what those facts are and what they mean.

I say “pretend” on purpose, because there is one fact that they will never agree on, and that is the question of whether Jesus is the Lord of the universe, or not. And as I said, that fact changes everything.

Now of course you might respond by saying that there are adherents to IDC who do not believe in Jesus. And I expect that’s true. But I also know that I no more hold to their position on where the universe came from as I do the atheistic evolutionists. I will not defend some ambiguous “designer” argument that could be Jehovah or Allah or Brahma or someone else. I will defend the account of Scripture, and only that account. And in reference to the particular discussions I’m referring to, Rusty and Joe are also both believers in Jesus and my argument therefore applies to them.

The only way that an unbeliever will come to accept the IDC argument is if they can do so in a way that allows them to still ignore the claims of Jesus, as Edward Flew did recently. And this gets us nowhere. What do I care whether someone believes in some nebulous designer of the universe or not? Disconnected from the true God of the Bible, it’s just a flutter in the mind, and means nothing. People will not get their sins forgiven by IDC. And I can’t work people a step at a time into the kingdom of heaven. Either they accept the claims of Jesus or they do not, and everything hinges on that.

The discussion on EO bears all the hallmarks that I am talking about. A question of fact is brought up by Joe, and immediately the whole discussion devolves into bitter name calling and recrimination. DarkSyde (atheist blogger at UTI and frequent commenter on my blog) says,

“What is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design in regard to eyes or anything else in biodiversity, and what testable predictions does it make? What is the falsification criteria?” and he asks these questions over and over, and says nobody answers him. Now I could bring up the question I keep asking him, which he never answers. But what DS is doing here is setting up a particular criteria for truth, and rejecting whatever doesn’t fall into his box. We evangelicals need to, in one sense, recognize the truth of the attack that DS and the other naturalists are leveling. As long as we agree to the naturalist terms of the debate, we will fail to overcome this objection. There is no way to neutrally examine the facts on the table and come to a common conclusion, because there is that one other fact that will not, indeed cannot be agreed on by both sides, and that one fact fundamentally alters the interpretation of every other fact.

The naturalists may believe that acknowledging this fact is a retreat, but it isn’t. It’s recognizing that if we pretend that facts are neutral, then we’ve already handed the debate to the naturalist, because this is the cornerstone of his philosophy. The Christian philosophy teaches that all things bear witness to God, and only by the word of God can I ever come to accept that fact. Without the saving power of Jesus Christ, I am a blind man, and I will pretend to see all of the facts before me but I will not understand anything.

When the naturalist frames the debate the way he does, he’s asking us to close our eyes and then debate him. He’s asking us to subject ourselves to the same “impervious ignorance” that he is trapped in. If he can get us to agree to do that, then he has won the debate. So I am not going to close my eyes. I am not going to pretend that I believe God created the universe for any other reason than that Jesus is my Lord and Savior, and He told me so.

None of this should be interpreted as criticizing the strength of Joe’s or Rusty’s or anyone else’s argument. I think Joe does a great job in this post and in the comments of debating. But I think we need to understand the intractable nature of the problem that’s before us in convincing anyone of the Biblical account of creation, and to set goals appropriately.

DarkSyde and I, who could disagree about whether the sun rises in the east or not (He’s wrong, BTW, got no epistemological basis for saying it does), have found something to agree on.

I’d like to ask a favor: Regardless of one’s political inclination, irrespective of your confidence in the electoral process employed, or the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, no matter what the outcome, let us all stand united in our admiration for those courageous Iraqi’s who will brave gunfire, RPGs, bombs, and reprisal, to determine their own fate? For they choose to do so in bold defiance of promised violence and certain intimidation.

I absolutely agree. And he’s written a fine article on the subject.

One criticism I have heard frequently from the left is that you can’t create a democracy with bombs. And on that score, they’re correct. But we did give them an opportunity to do so. Whatever all the possible pros and cons of going to war; whatever all the positive or negative consequences this war has for us or for the War on Terror or for our European alliances or for the Middle East; whatever all the moral ramifications of the choices we made; the Iraqis now have a chance to create a democracy for themselves, and it is truly only they who can do so.

I am optimistic. Real progress has been made in Afghanistan, who for all the problems that remain there, have had a real election. Even the Palestinians had an election. It would be an act of courage and hope for an Iraqi to go out into the streets tomorrow and risk death in order to try to create something more hopeful, more free, than has been present in that sad corner of the world for a long time. I am hoping that this last year of insurgency and violence has taught the Iraqis that the Jihadists and Islamists do not have their good in mind, but rather desire to bring them back into the brutal slavery they have endured for so long. Opinion seems to be divided on how positively the Iraqis view us. But that’s not all that important to me in the long run. The main question is, how do they view themselves?

If it fails, it will be because people let their hatred of the other overwhelm their desire for the good of all; and as ultimately irrational as such an impulse is, it has destroyed many societies before.

I’ll add one thing I know DS wouldn’t agree with: May God bless them, and may He work His will in that place, giving them peace and a chance to build a nation that is safe and free.

I was reading a couple of articles on overpopulation, linked from Instapundit. One of them makes a fascinating suggestion:

Governments must also relieve parents from having to pay into social security systems. By raising and educating their children, parents have already contributed hugely (in the form of human capital) to these systems. The cost of their contribution, in both direct expenses and forgone wages, is often measured in the millions. Requiring parents also then to contribute to payroll taxes is not only unfair, but imprudent for societies that are already consuming more human capital than they produce.

I feel this very strongly right now, having just filed my taxes. As a self-employed person, I pay all of my own Social Security taxes, whereas most workers have the true cost of those taxes hidden because the government forces employer to pay half of those taxes (But of course the workers pay those taxes as well whether they realize it or not). At the same time, my wife stays home to raise productive members of society, at high cost to us, who will go a long way toward making up the “baby deficit” from others who have no kids, occasionally by necessity but mostly by choice.

Throughout history, younger workers have paid for the retirement of older workers. Previously, those younger workers were the children of the older workers they were supporting. This gave those older workers tremendous incentives to bear children and train them to be productive members of society. Now the system works on a society-wide basis instead of on an individual basis. That is to say, all of the nation’s younger workers are paying for the support of all of the nation’s older workers. When we changed that system from working on an individual basis to working on a society-wide basis, we created tremendous moral hazard. We created the opportunity for many to benefit tremendously at relatively little cost. Just like it used to be the case that wealthy, more productive people gave charity to the poor, but on an individual voluntary basis; now they do it on a society-wide, compulsory basis.

This has been the pattern of the welfare state, to take actions that used to occur on an individual basis and nationalize them; and actions that used to occur voluntarily and make them mandatory. And the result has been moral hazard. With no accountability to the individuals providing the support, many many millions abuse the system, profiting from it while giving almost nothing back. And it is disproportionately falling on the backs of those who produce the most. Of course, this is why those who support such a governmental system must constantly castigate and attack those most productive people as greedy and selfish, so that the rest of society will continue to vote to rob them.

So often, in so many ways, rich cultures use their wealth to break the causal chain between one’s actions and the effects of those actions, thinking we create a better society by doing so. But reality always catches up. It’s just that if you dodge reality for long enough, when she finally catches up to you, she’s really mad, and by then is carrying quite a bill for you to pay. Anyone who doesn’t think Social Security is just completely busted should come take a look at my tax return.

That’s a simple subject to take on in a blog post, right?

Richard at Philosophy, etc. has posted a thoughtful response to some thoughts I had in my recent interaction with DarkSyde. Richard is concerned to try to establish some objective basis for morality other than religious beliefs, and I applaud him for at least recognizing the dilemma and trying to come to some conclusions. I believe his conclusions to be inadequate, but I’m sure that’s hardly surprising that we would disagree, him being an atheist and me being a theist.

Richard first of all questions my assertion that the existence of a soul renders men equal:

As I understand the rest of his post, Matt seems to be asking for some ability or descriptive/substantive attribute that all people have in equal proportions. But people vary according to just about any measure one might care to imagine. So he suggests we all have equal ‘souls’. I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. Perhaps the ‘soul’ is our innermost self; the part of us that makes difficult decisions, engages in moral deliberation, etc.? If that’s the case, then it just doesn’t seem true that our souls are any more ‘equal’ (in the descriptive sense Matt is after) than the rest of us. Just like some people are faster runners than others, so some make better decisions, are more morally developed, and so forth. So if ‘soul’ means anything like what I suggested above, it cannot do the work Matt demands from it. (And if it doesn’t mean this, then I’m not sure it means anything substantive.)

The Christian concept of the soul is something a good deal more than what Richard suggests, although it certainly means at least that. Our soul is what separates us from the animals. Its mere existence in us is what determines our equality. The fact that I can reason; that I can make moral decisions; and that I can do all the other things that no mere animal can even approximate, demonstrates that I bear the divine stamp on me, and it is on the basis of that divine stamp that I am declared equal. Not because that image of God is equally regarded by others or equally present in all, but because God has commanded that His image be regarded, and that all human beings therefore are regarded as morally equal.

Richard talks about this concept of moral equality, and does a clear job of defining it:

But of course, when we talk about people being ‘created equal’, we’re not talking about any such descriptive equality. Rather, it is meant as an affirmation of moral equality. This might be best understood not as a substantive property possessed by others, but rather a claim about how we ought to treat them. Everyone is (prima facie) worthy of equal consideration. It would be wrong to discount someone else’s interests just because they’re of a different race or religion from you. More succinctly: all count in the moral calculus.

Although very abstract, I think it’s a simple enough concept for any moral agent to understand. It’s not about how fast we can run, how rationally we can think, or any other ability or descriptive property we may possess. It doesn’t require that we have some internal organ that is literally identical or ‘equal’ to our neighbour’s one. So it doesn’t require God-given ‘souls’ – indeed, it doesn’t require religion at all. It’s simply about morality, and how we ought to treat others.

But again, that fails to answer the central question, which is why we ought to treat others that way? My assertion is that in a world in which there is no ultimate authority to say “Thus says the Lord”, there is ultimately no basis on which to make such a statement.

To his credit, Richard has written a post which also seeks to address this issue head-on, here. I read it as central to his thesis that moral value, like other values, may be relative, but that doesn’t mean they’re pure matters of opinion. For example, “up” and “down” are relative matters, but that doesn’t mean that it is a matter of opinion whether Everest is higher than Pikes Peak (I hope I’m understanding you right here, Richard). Given a particular value, there are defininte and fixed ways of achieving that value. But he is still a relativist insofar as he says that those values don’t come from anywhere outside of me- there are no “mind-independent” values.

Richard then defines moral values as those which address not the individual perspective of one person, but that of humanity as a whole. If you are choosing to pursue moral values, this means that you choose to do things in such a way as will benefit all of mankind, not just yourself. So it’s relative, in the sense that which values you choose to pursue are entirely up to you, but it’s objective, insofar as once you have made that decision, there are choices which will definitely advance that objective and others that will detract from it.

It’s a well-thought out position. But there seem to be some serious difficulties with it, nonetheless.

1. Richard has still not established why anyone should be asked to consider the point of view of all mankind, instead of just his own well-being. Perhaps he would say that nobody needs to, it’s just a choice you make. But that fails to answer the reality of why we feel the way we do about people who fail to consider the viewpoint of humanity. I don’t feel outrage when someone does not do things for my benefit. I don’t expect the butcher to give me the meat for free. But when someone acts in such a way as to hurt all mankind (or all of mankind that he’s able to hurt) for his benefit, I feel outrage at that, and pretty much everyone else does too. Where does this compulsion to hold myself and others responsible to consider the wider welfare come from?

2. This view of morality cannot avoid the dilemma of minority rights. If it simply is the welfare of the many over the welfare of the few, doesn’t that imply that it would therefore be moral to take away the rights or well-being of a few if many would profit by it? It’s hard to see how you would avoid things like eugenics with such a moral system.

Richard certainly faces the problem squarely, and has clearly done a lot of thinking about it. I think his formulations fail, but not for lack of trying. They fail because morality without the author of morality really is an unsolvable dilemma.

I’ve spent my whole life in Reformed circles, and serious and sedate ones at that, apart from a little time with Inter Varsity in college. And I’d read some things and heard some things about the dismal state of the church today and especially a lot of the outright fraud, stage magician stuff that goes on, but whenever I’d hear so many in Christianity dismissed as charlatans, my reaction very often would be charitable. I’d say, well, they mean well. We have some different views, but to judge them as out-and-out liars and bunko artists? Well, that’s a little harsh, isn’t it?

But I just now stumbled across this post at Feeble Knees. Read the one from Messy Christian that Feeble Knees links to as well. Just anecdotal, I know. But it confirms much of what I’d heard in my life, from those who warned me in my childhood of the importance of doctrine, and the importance of judging things by the Scriptures. I remember being confronted once by someone questioning my skepticism and saying, How can you question the experience of so many of your Christian brothers and sisters around the world? And the voice of my father came up in my mind, and I said, “I build my theology on the Bible, not on stories.” Facile, I know, but how many seem to have forgotten it.

These posts remind me of just how many have forgotten the principle of judging all by God’s word, and not the word of any man or any experience. Lies dressed up in Christian Spiritual garb are still lies. Lies that make us feel closer to God are still lies. Only the truth can set us free.

This was a good idea. A resolution I have kept, and enjoyed keeping.

I’ve picked up a number of books that people have suggested, including book five of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Wolves of the Calla. I’m about halfway through, and for Stephen King readers, you know that means I’ve already burned through about five hundred pages. I almost forgot what it’s like to read something you can’t put down. Non-fiction never does that. There are of course a lot of books I’ve really enjoyed, but any non-fiction gets me tired after twenty or thirty pages at a stretch. But a really good story- Like I said, I’d almost forgotten.

I think Stephen King is a fantastic storyteller, and the funny thing is that despite the fact that he’s known as a horror writer, most of his best stuff is not horror. I think his best stuff of all is the Gunslinger series, and thank you brother Josh for reminding me to finish it. Josh told me he thought it was good for people to branch out, read lots of different kinds of things, keep the old synapses firing in new and interesting ways. I think he’s right, and I think that was kind of the feeling that led me to make the resolution. It’s nice to get a break from theology, counseling books and blog articles on the war. Really nice.

In response to my previous post, DarkSyde has posted another article on UTI on the question of morality and revelation. In that article, he attacks the premise that I have attempted to bring to bear against him on a number of occasions, the premise that all morality must be based on revelation.

The premise, even if true, is of questionable value in determining what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ in gray areas … unless the deity gets off its ass and speaks up, eh? Otherwise, perception of right V wrong winds up depending on where you’re standing. And BTW, we need to be able to do more than just interview the deity for answers. We need to test it continuously to make sure it’s really what it claims it is. We don’t want just any sleazy, lowlife, land-squid from Vega 3, sneaking onto the earth behind a dazzling array of hi-tech gadgetry, and fooling the primitive humans into thinking it’s God by way of a Cosmic version of the Wizard-of-Oz con, do we?

…

But I am saying “God says so” does not give us anything in the way of absolute morality, let alone an absolute code of anything else. Because it’s not “God says so”, it’s “I claim God says so” and those two items are not even close to the same thing. Religion is flexible enough that it can be used to justify or condemn damn near anything. It has been so used and continues to be.

He is of course exactly correct. “I claim God says so” is not an authoritative statement at all, and “God says so” is no more authoritative a statement of itself. If God did not actually say so then my claiming that He did does not affect anything other than perhaps my own credibility.

But DS is in the first place not addressing my original challenge, which is the question of how any statement at all can be made about right and wrong, if it’s not based on some authority to make such statements? How can any standard of better or worse be derived in a universe made up purely of material? If everything just “is”, how can we talk about what “ought” to be?

DS frequently compares the acquisition of moral perspectives to the acquisition of language, but that still doesn’t tell me what morals are. And we don’t send people to jail for bad grammar.

But there’s another aspect of DS’ claim that I am most interested in addressing here, and that is the “God says so” question, the revelation claim. The point of DS’ statement is that if God is the determiner of right and wrong, then wouldn’t he have told us very clearly and repeatedly what right and wrong is?

And I am absolutely sure that DS would know my answer to that question, but here it is anyway- He has. But what kind of message would you expect? Fifty foot high letters of fire on a mountain somewhere?

In the first place, sometimes people attacking Christianity will point out that the moral code prescribed by Christianity is very similar to that prescribed by most other religions, and they’re right. Jesus’ Golden Rule looks a lot like Confucian ethics and like the Kantian categorical imperative. This is the basic rule that every mother teaches her child – when your son pushes someone over on the playground, you say to him, “Now, would you like it if someone pushed you over?” As I expound in more detail here, rather than any kind of assault on Christianity, this should instead be seen as justifying it. The Bible teaches us that it is God that has implanted our moral character in us and therefore the moral code that we all hold is substantially the same. This is a constant testimony to us of God’s will for our lives. So if you were going to expect a deity to give His creation an understanding of right and wrong, what more effective way is there than to hardwire that sense right into people?

We express this understanding whenever we express revulsion at someone who violates this moral code. Everyone, even an atheist, is disgusted at the murder of a child. Why is that? Why do different people with radically different philosophies still feel the same revulsion at crimes against the innocent? Why do such different people feel the exact same indignation at crimes against themselves? If ethics are derived from philosophy, then our ethics ought to be very different when we hold such radically different philosophies. But I have never heard an atheist just shrug his shoulders and say “well, that’s survival of the fittest, I guess” when he gets mugged. So God has spoken, and he’s spoken undeniably and clearly and in a message that is far more compelling than anything He could have written or spoke verbally. We have His holiness written throughout our very being.

Further, if you’re looking for a verbal revelation, again we have to start with the question, what would you expect? What standards would such a revelation have to have?

It would have to be clear.

It would have to be detailed.

It would have to be understandable to us humans in the context of what we humans go through.

It would have to tell us humans what God has done in the past, what He’s doing now and what He will do in the future.

It would have to be preserved without error throughout history for all mankind to see.

It would have to be obviously the word of God, so that it contains within itself the proof that it was in fact the word of God.

This is precisely our doctrine of Scripture. DarkSyde would argue with me about many of these points, no doubt. I never said that everyone would agree that the Bible is what it is, and the Bible itself recognizes that many will refuse to hear it. But if human beings have any measure of freedom, then it must follow that some will refuse to hear. If they have no measure of freedom, then there’s no point in the whole thing anyway.

But if it’s posited as a flaw in my moral philosophy that there is no undisputable revelation from God regarding right and wrong, then it must be accepted as an answer to that flaw when not just one but two such revelations can be produced. The atheist may choose not to accept those revelations as valid, but he could say that about anything. And he still hasn’t answered the question of where his own rock-solid moral convictions come from, which in their basic elements are the same as everyone else’s, if we are all just purely physical products of a blind natural process.

So it’s true, that the statement “I claim God says so” is not authoritative, and neither is the statement “God says so”, since the second claim is really substantially the same as the first. I claim no authority based on either of those statements. If I tell my congregation “God says so”, and they look up in the Bible and discover that God has not said so, they can and will tell me that I am wrong.

But if God has actually said so, then it is an authoritative statement, and all are bound to listen. This is the question before us- has God actually said so? And if there is no God to say so, then there is no good or evil, no right or wrong, and DarkSyde will have to just accept it if someone knocks him down and takes his money some day. It’s just survival of the fittest.

DarkSyde, from Unscrewing the Inscrutable, has posted a really interesting post today. It starts with the famous quote from Martin Luther King, Jr:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”- I have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why is this interesting? Well, it’s interesting because DarkSyde is an atheist. I know this because it’s practically all he ever talks about. I know that he likes Pink Floyd, because of his net handle, but otherwise, I know he’s an atheist. Here’s a fun quote to support my characterization:

I too, have a dream, a vision of mankind’s destiny. I dream that one day we will throw off the last vestigial illusions of supernatural beings meddling with humanity, and that we will take full responsibility for our own future. No longer will we helplessly huddle in the cave from the lightning Gods and the spirits of wind and rain. No more will we rely on the peculiarities of imagined invisible deities for direction, nor look desperately to miraculous salvation which will never come. We are embedded, for better or for worse, in a physical universe unimpressed and unaffected with the ancient rites of a bronze aged near east mythology. This supernatural artifice of our cultural childhood must be discarded, if we are to attain true liberty and cultivate a desirous future.

He didn’t post the MLK quote in order to fisk it. No, he posted it in order to praise it, and use it as a jumping off point for his own statements.

DarkSyde thinks racism is bad. I do too. But I think it’s bad for precisely the same reasons that MLK thought it was bad- because it was a self-evident truth that all men are created equal.

That “created” part is kind of an important part of the statement. MLK’s belief in God was kind of an important part of his belief system. Without his belief in God, MLK’s beliefs in equality cannot be understood. It is precisely his “imagined invisible deities” and “supernatural artifice” that provide the foundation for MLK’s dream. Therefore, the quote is a little bit problematic for a jumping off point for an anti-religious rant.

Some people think that “self-evident” means “obvious”, which it doesn’t. “Self-evident” means that the idea is self-attesting, or carries its truth within itself, without the need for external proof. But to an atheist, nothing can be self-evident. Everything must be tested, proved, disproved, doubted, suspected, and only very carefully and tentatively accepted. This is because there is no authoritative revelation. The atheist can trust only his own senses and reasoning, and these are notoriously unreliable. If something is “self-evident”, it is a matter of faith. So nothing can be self-evident to the atheist.

In particular, how could it be “self-evident” to the atheist that all men are created equal, when the atheist does not believe that all men are created at all? He does not believe in God, so how could man be said to be created? The best DS could agree with is the statement, “We believe these truths to most likely be correct, that all men are equal.”

But then what is the basis for believing that truth, that equality is something that can be predicated of all men? Our equality is not based on genetics, is it? If so, if someone could prove to DarkSyde that, say, Polish people were genetically inferior to Chinese, would DarkSyde then accept that all people were in fact not equal?

All men are not obviously equal. Some are poor, some are rich. Some are strong or smart or beautiful, and some are weak and stupid and ugly. Some people are born with terrible deficiencies that make rational thought practically impossible for such a person and likely curtails their lifespan quite a bit. Some people have tremendous political power, so that they can command the deaths of thousands at a whim. Some, on the other hand, will be one of those thousands.

Intelligence? Not equal. Power? Not equal. Strength? Beauty? Goodness? Independence, either in a political or biological sense? Not equal.

There is simply no criteria that science can establish by which people can be regarded as equal. If DarkSyde then claims to agree with MLK’s statement, which of course is from our Declaration of Independence, on what basis does he judge that claim? On what basis does he believe that men are in fact equal? What characteristic of man, which must override all other characteristics, is equal in its degree in every single instance of the species “human”? (and by the way, at what point in the womb of their mother does such an instance attain that magic predication of equality, DS?)

Within an evolutionary context, there seems to be no basis at all for the absolute adherence to the creed that racism is bad. If different segments of human beings were largely separated from each other for a period of time, why is it difficult to believe that some races developed more quickly than others? The worst you could say is that racism is a flawed scientific concept, but why should it be castigated as evil?

In MLK’s cosmology, and in mine, all men are equal because all men have souls created in the image of God. That is our source of equality. Take away the soul, and the equality is gone.

So I will ask you, DarkSyde- on what basis do you believe men to be equal? And what scientific evidence could I provide you with to prove to you that different races of people might in fact be unequal?

If there is no scientific evidence that I could provide you with to make that case, then that sounds a lot like religion to me.

I haven’t been following the Armstrong Williams deal very closely. But I know that he is accused of promoting the “No Child Left Behind” act in exchange for undisclosed money from the Education Department. It seems like a pretty indefensible thing to do.

Theophilus agrees, and he’s done a lot more thinking than I have about it.

All this week, I’ve read and listened to various tortured attempts to defend the indefensible — in this case, Armstrong Williams and his deal with the Education Department to shill for the No Child Left Behind Act in his columns, for money, without feeling the need to tell anyone he was doing it. Some defenses have been more tortured than others, but just about all of them have logic, reason and common sense up there on the rack and are pulling on the wheel.

Well said.

Here’s a great article, via Powerline, by a lieutenant colonel in the Army in Iraq. He accuses the press of aiding and abetting the enemy, and he makes a great case.

An excerpt:

As a recent example, the operation in Fallujah delivered an absolutely devastating blow to the insurgency. Though much smaller in scope, clearing Fallujah of insurgents arguably could equate to the Allies’ breakout from the hedgerows in France during World War II. In both cases, our troops overcame a well-prepared and solidly entrenched enemy and began what could be the latter’s last stand. In Fallujah, the enemy death toll has already exceeded 1,500 and still is climbing. Put one in the win column for the good guys, right? Wrong. As soon as there was nothing negative to report about Fallujah, the media shifted its focus to other parts of the country. Just yesterday, a major news agency’s website lead read: “Suicide Bomber Kills Six in Baghdad” and “Seven Marines Die in Iraq Clashes.” True, yes. Comprehensive, no. Did the author of this article bother to mention that Coalition troops killed 50 or so terrorists while incurring those seven losses? Of course not. Nor was there any mention about the substantial progress these offensive operations continue to achieve in defeating the insurgents. Unfortunately, this sort of incomplete reporting has become the norm for the media, whose poor job of presenting a complete picture of what is going on in Iraq borders on being criminal.

It’s long, but well worth your time.