Ezra Levant Update

Back in January, I urged readers to check out the blog of Canadian journalist Ezra Levant. Levant was subjected to a year-long investigation by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission following a complaint by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities over his publication in the Western Standard of the Danish Muhammad cartoons that had so many other publishers cringing in fear. I'm happy to report that the complaint has finally been dismissed and, as a friend at a forum site I frequent said, Canadians are at least tentatively embracing free speech.

As can never be noted too often, speech about which we already approve doesn't need legal protection.

More to the point, I would refer readers again to Mr. Levant's web site and specifically to his taping of the complaint hearing interview available here. I will repeat what I said originally: Levant’s responses to the bureaucrat seated across the table from him during the taped hearing is precisely how free people should deal with government officials under such circumstances.

Congratulations, Mr. Levant.

Constant Viewer: Prince Caspian

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian continues C.S. Lewis’s well known series of Christian apologetics thinly veiled as children’s literature and it does so neither better nor worse than The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which Constant Viewer also didn't like. Constant Viewer finds it difficult to be objective about the merits of these films because he frankly loathed the books when he (tried to) read (some of) them as a youth. Then again, sentimental drivel of a vaguely Christian nature abounded in Constant Viewer’s youth back when every television series trotted out some sort of saccharine Holiday Special in late December. (And the holiday in question wasn’t Hanukkah, either, Bubala.) These days, by contrast, religious ignorance in America is so rampant that one of CV’s friend's teenage children had never heard the story of Noah and the Ark. It’s gotten so bad that homophobes yelling “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” have to stop and explain who Adam and Eve were.

Sorry. CV ‘went away’ there for a moment, but he’s back now. Where were we? Oh yes, Prince Caspian. There’s certainly no reason not to take the kiddies to see Prince Caspian. The battle scenes aren’t gory -- they aren’t all that exciting, either, sadly enough -- and even the scene in the tomb when the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) tries to escape probably isn’t frightening enough to scare the little ones. Unlike the original books, the movie doesn’t flog the Christian mythos and symbolism incessantly. On the other hand, for all the supposedly magical mystery of Narnia, Prince Caspian is a surprisingly lifeless and nearly joyless affair, three parts medieval warfare to one part talking animals. Worse yet, what few interesting special effects there are seem almost gratuitously trotted out at the end, making the trailer a bit of a ‘bait and switch’ ploy in CV’s opinion. Aslan the Great Lion of Narnia (voice acted by Liam Neeson) has little more than a cameo at the finale, mostly just to summon the walking trees and water giant in the nick of time to vanquish the human army’s catapults. Frankly, there isn’t enough here to sustain nearly two and a half hours and CV wished he had a catapult to hop on, better to flee the theater, Iron Man like, as quickly as possible no matter how painful the landing.

Gene R. Nichol at William & Mary

I’ve said before that the values of the College are not for sale. Neither are ours. – College of William & Mary former president Gene R. Nichol

I rarely post specific biographical information on the internet, but I will make an exception today and note that I am one of the less distinguished graduates of the College of William & Mary in Virginia. I was therefore a recipient this morning of a lengthy and, in my opinion, typically self-serving letter from its now former President Gene R. Nichol. Mr. Nichol's contract the Board of Visitors has declined to renew and who has therefore resigned, effective immediately.

Along with many others, I actively opposed renewal of Mr. Nichol’s contract. I would probably have just silently applauded the BOV’s decision but for certain assertions in his resignation letter. As Mr. Nichol seeks even now to portray himself as a righteous martyr to the forces of troglodyte conservativism, I think it is necessary that some of us who opposed his continued tenure to respond to that portrayal. Mr. Nichol contends his ouster resulted from “four decisions, or sets of decisions,” as follows:

1) His removal of the cross from the Wren Chapel;

2) His refusal to prohibit a “Sex Workers’ Art Show” at the College;

3) His efforts to increase funding to attract lower income students; and

4) His efforts to “increase diversity” at the College.

Taking these in reverse order and obviously speaking only for myself, I will say first that I am largely unaware of whatever efforts Mr. Nichol actually made to “increase diversity” at William & Mary, but if it involved any sort of affirmative action style preferential hiring policy for faculty or staff, then I would have opposed it. I share to some extent Mr. Nichol’s dismay at seeing that among “35 senior administrators of the College [there were] no persons of color.” But the only morally proper solution to such situations is the removal of legal barriers which will then lead to greater diversity occurring as a matter of course over time. In any case, I am also unaware whether whatever he did or tried in this regard stirred much controversy. As far as I know, such efforts didn’t receive much coverage in the press or internet and they certainly didn’t have anything to do one way or the other with my opposition to his presidency.

I frankly applaud anything Mr. Nichol did to increase scholarship funding for low income students. I suspect that his real motives for those efforts were, as they so obviously are in so many other institutions of higher education, merely the attempted end-run around increasing legal barriers to the reverse discrimination of affirmative action. Even so, I believe it is entirely proper that the College seek out on a colorblind basis and provide adequate funding to permit academically worthy, low income students the opportunity to attend.

As for Mr. Nichol’s “[refusal], now on two occasions, to ban from the campus a program funded by our student-fee-based, and student-governed, speaker series,” good for him. If Nichol were being let go simply because of his defense of the students’ right to spend their own student activity fee money on the Sex Workers’ Art Show, I would rise to his defense. As I understand it, the show in question, pornographic or not, is political in nature and thus unquestionably worthy of First Amendment protection. But for all I care, W&M students could have Tijuana style donkey shows on campus. Hell, they could hold the shows in the Wren Chapel -- just please remove the cross first! -- and I’d support their right to do so just as readily. (I recognize, of course, that I'm almost certainly in the minority among Nichol's opponents on this point.)

Finally, in his own words, President Nichol:

altered the way a Christian cross was displayed in a public facility, on a public university campus, in a chapel used regularly for secular College events -- both voluntary and mandatory -- in order to help Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious minorities feel more meaningfully included as members of our broad community. And it was certainly motivated by the desire to extend the College’s welcome more generously to all. We are charged, as state actors, to respect and accommodate all religions, and to endorse none. The decision did no more.

Well, no. In the first place, the (oddly third person) sentence “The decision was likely required by any effective notion of separation of church and state,” is a fine bit of legal weasel-wording. "Likely required"? "Any effective notion"? No one prior to Nichol ever raised a legal challenge in the entire hundred year history of this 300 year old university’s state control. In the second place, if the existence of the cross constituted “endorsement” of Christianity, then why doesn’t the altar, itself? Whatever others may think about a Christian cross sitting on a (still consecrated) Christian altar in what was once a private university, there is scant evidence that non-Christian students somehow felt... what? That they were only meaninglessly included until Gene Nichol came along? In fact, the cross was routinely removed whenever any secular or non-Christian activity took place in the Chapel, anyway, and had been from as long as I, at least, can remember.

There were other highly questionable decisions and actions in his thankfully brief tenure, not the least being his silly and, I believe, hypocritical battle to try to preserve the school’s athletic logo (an Indian feather) and the decision to place an English professor as temporary chair of the philosophy department. Regarding the former, Mr. Nichol apparently was insufficiently concerned about the extent to which this Indian feather logo, far more prominently displayed throughout the College than the Wren cross, might make Native American students feel less than "meaningfully" included.

But it wasn’t Mr. Nichol’s substantive decision regarding the Wren Chapel cross or any particular one of his other such decisions, per se, that led me to oppose his continued tenure as president of the College. Instead, it was Mr. Nichol's leadership style and, more troubling, his character, at least as evidenced by his behavior throughout these controversies. He unilaterally had the cross removed almost literally in the dead of night without so much as a thought for those who might be troubled by his decision, let alone the manner of its accomplishment. No doubt he genuinely did not expect nearly the reaction he got. In any case, his behavior afterwards, especially including his subsequent, highly questionable account of his knowledge regarding the impact of that decision on a pending gift to the College made it more and more clear to me that Mr. Nichol was not the sort of person best suited to lead the first college in the nation to institute an honor code of conduct for students.

Moreover, it became clear that Mr. Nichol came to William & Mary apparently convinced that he and those who agreed entirely with him were in sole possession of the moral high ground against any and all opposition. At least that is the strong impression he gave to this alumnus. Here is one final example of that mindset, a paragraph from his resignation letter:

I add only that, on Sunday, the Board of Visitors offered both my wife and me substantial economic incentives if we would agree “not to characterize [the non-renewal decision] as based on ideological grounds” or make any other statement about my departure without their approval. Some members may have intended this as a gesture of generosity to ease my transition. But the stipulation of censorship made it seem like something else entirely. We, of course, rejected the offer. It would have required that I make statements I believe to be untrue and that I believe most would find non-credible. I’ve said before that the values of the College are not for sale. Neither are ours.

Stipulation of censorship? Apparently, this law professor would have us believe he does not understand the substantive legal (never mind moral) differences between a contractual quid pro quo, one that occurs in litigation settlements all the time, and censorship.

Apparently, also, Mr. Nichol believes that the BOVs decision was “based on ideological grounds.” And perhaps it was. Not being privy to their deliberations, I could not say. I’m not so naïve as to think that some, perhaps many of Nichol’s opponents are not, in fact, paleoconservatives of the first order or that some delegates in Virginia’s state legislature didn’t make untoward threats, veiled or otherwise, to the Board of Visitors. In a just world, the Commonwealth would have approximately 20% say in William & Mary’s affairs, as that is roughly the current percentage of state support. But this isn’t a just world and Nichol, who is no stranger to politics, knows it isn’t.

One more point needs to be made. Both Gene Nichol and his family were subjected to entirely unwarranted and utterly irrelevant personal attacks (e.g., crude and cruel comments about Mr. Nichol’s weight) throughout the course of his controversial administration. Such attacks and those who made them are despicable.

Parts of the blogosphere are already chattering about this turn of events and, as usual, both the Right and the Left are grossly oversimplifying the situation. Suffice it to say here that for at least some of his critics, the controversy that dogged Gene Nichol was not so much about crosses or feathers or diversity or sex workers or any of those specific issues but finally about the man, himself. It is far too facile to frame the controversy exclusively in terms of liberal or conservative politics or policies.

But if Gene Nichol now becomes a poster child for liberalism, then it is liberalism that has been most poorly served.

Ali

Forty years ago, back when Americans enjoyed due process of law even if they were Muslim Americans, in fact, even if they were Black Muslim Americans, Muhammad Ali was convicted on June 20, 1967 in federal court for refusing induction into the United States armed forces. America was, after all, at war, defending itself from encroaching world-wide communist domination and, we were told, if the North Vietnamese won it would have a Domino Effect throughout Asia.

Three years earlier, in the same year he first won the World Heavyweight Boxing championship from Sonny Liston and became a member of the Nation of Islam, Ali had failed to pass the Armed Forces qualifying examination. In 1966, however, the test was revised -- the laws of supply and demand being what they were even then -- and Ali was reclassified 1-A, draft eligible. Ali claimed but was denied conscientious objector status, famously declaring, “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. They never called me a nigger.” After refusing induction, Ali was tried and sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. The conviction was upheld by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals but in 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction.

In the interim, however, Ali was stripped of his title and banned from boxing during what boxing experts believe would have been his prime boxing years. Also in his prime, George Carlin described the situation (roughly, and with apologies to Carlin because I couldn’t find the exact quote) as follows:

Muhammad Ali has a strange job - beating people up – but the government wanted to give him a new job – they wanted him to go to Viet Nam and kill people – but Ali said, “No... that’s where I draw the line. I’ll beat ‘em up but I don’t want to kill ‘em" – and the government said, “If you won’t kill ‘em, we won’t let you beat ‘em up!”

Boxing, it must be said, is a brutal, barbaric sport; the only sport still legal where the primary objective is to injure one’s opponent to unconsciousness. But for Muhammad Ali, I would never have become a fan of boxing at all. After Ali, I quickly lost interest. But Ali became, and remains, the only athlete who ever came close to being a hero to me. It was impossible, for me at least, not to be astonished and delighted by his athleticism, his great speed and agility; impossible also not to admire his uncompromising integrity.

That is, of course, not to say I agree with or approve of everything Ali has done in his life. I’m not about to argue the merits of the Nation of Islam (Ali converted to Sunni Islam in 1975) or whether, on legal or moral grounds, he was entitled to conscientious objector status, nor would I claim that his personal life – he has been married four times – is exemplary.

Most significantly, he fought too many times and took too many blows to the head especially in his later career, resulting in his chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or Parkinson’s Syndrome). Once, and perhaps still, the most famous and beloved man alive, Ali deprived both himself and his literally billions of fans the pleasure of each other’s company after his final fight in 1981, some six years after his last great fight against Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. Ironically, both that fight and his decision to continue boxing afterwards, whatever the reasons at the time, probably cost him tens of millions of dollars if not more, as the public demand for him remains largely unabated even after all these years and in his unfortunate condition today. Last month, for example, in one of his now rare public appearances Ali was given an honorary doctorate by Princeton.

Trite though it is to mention, no one who did not live through the 1960’s can fully appreciate what that decade was like. We speak too easily today about how polarized America has become in the last twenty years, but the truth is that America was far more polarized by both the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement than it is today. It is worth remembering that Muhammad Ali was reviled and despised by much of white America forty years ago, perhaps as much for his refusal to accept control by the white-dominated boxing establishment as for his refusal to serve in what he believed was the white establishment’s war in Southeast Asia. Undaunted, he stood his ground like a true champion and, more importantly, like a man.

Thanks Again to Our "Good Friends and Loyal Allies," the Saudis

How is the fight against Radical Islam going?

All things considered, not badly at all. At least not according to an excellent, must-read article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. Zakaria makes a number of excellent points about how unlike the perceived "global threat" of Islamist extremism is the reality of how small, disorganized, dispersed, unconnected and increasingly inwardly focused the majority of such groups are and how, with few exceptions, the very reason they pursue their objectives with violence is because they have no hopes of swaying the larger Islamic world to their fanaticism.

Still, almost in a throw-away paragraph toward the end, Zakaria mentions that "[t]he current issue of Britain's Prospect magazine has a deeply illuminating profile of the main suicide bomber in the 7/7 London subway attacks, Mohammed Siddique Khan..."

... who at first glance appeared to be a well-integrated, middle-class Briton. The author, Shiv Malik, spent months in the Leeds suburb where Khan grew up, talked to his relatives and pieced together his past. Khan was not driven to become a suicide bomber by poverty, racism or the Iraq War. His is the story of a young man who found he could not be part of the traditional Pakistani-immigrant community of his parents. He had no memories of their Pakistani life. He spoke their language, Urdu, poorly. He rejected an arranged marriage in favor of a love match. And yet, he was also out of place in modern British culture. Khan was slowly seduced by the simple, powerful and total world view of Wahhabi Islam, conveniently provided in easy-to-read English pamphlets (doubtless funded with Saudi money). The ideology fulfilled a young man's desire for protest and rebellion and at the same time gave him a powerful sense of identity. By 1999—before the Iraq War, before 9/11—he was ready to be a terrorist.
[Emphasis added.]

If one seeks, perhaps not the root cause, but certainly both the financial and ideological life-line of Islamist terrorism, one need look no further than the devil's bargain between the Wahhabi movement and our "good friends and loyal allies," the House of Saud.

So, Why Would God's Design Include Malaria In The First Place?

University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne reviews Lehigh University biochemist Michael J. Behe's latest attempted defense of Intelligent Design, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. To no one's surprise, he is unimpressed.

And The Standard Here Would Be... ?

Okay, so by now everyone knows there is a new Creation Museum in Kentucky. Well, it seems they have various videos portraying the Creationist perspective and these videos use actors. Apparently, Eric Linden, the actor who portrays Adam (of "and Eve" fame) in one 40 second spot has been accused of "participation in projects that don't align with ... biblical standards" and the accusations are now being, um, investigated by Creation Museum personnel.

I have two questions:

(1) If by "biblical standards" is meant anything like how the overwhelming majority of persons described in the Bible (okay, Jesus excepted) actually behaved, how high can those standards be?

And,

(2) Investigate? Since when did these folks care about evidence?

Faith & Reason on the Campaign Trail

It’s a variation of an old Groucho Marx line, I know, but when I was in graduate school years ago I heard of a young philosophy PhD who went interviewing for a job at a small Quaker college. He was certainly well enough qualified for the job and they didn’t expect or require their candidates to be members of the Society of Friends, but he went through a very protracted interview process addressing what we might call questions of character and ethics. As some philosophers are wont to do, he danced around most of these questions, giving carefully nuanced and qualified answers requiring more parsing than the school officials cared to do. Finally, one of them said with some exasperation, “What we want to know is whether you are a man of principles.” “Don’t worry, sir,” came the too clever reply, “I have principles I’ve never even used.”

He didn’t get the job.

Fast forward. Polls show that some 40% of the voting population attend some sort of formal worship service weekly. No doubt that is way down from generations previously, and one might question further whether many of those in attendance take it as seriously as the non-churched (to use an insider’s phrase) suspect they all do. In fact, there is a substantial body of evidence that many congregants of various faiths and denominations routinely hold ethical positions contrary to the official teachings of their faith and, indeed, many who regularly attend some sort of organized religious community do so more for the community than for the religion.

The point is that 40% of American voters doing anything is a big deal, especially if you’re trying to get them to vote for you. I suspect few Americans are so parochial in their religious views (or lack thereof) that because they are, say, Baptists or Roman Catholics or atheists they will vote only for fellow Baptists, Roman Catholics or atheists. But it does appear to matter to many voters that prospective candidates, especially for president, pay some sort of deference to religion, preferably of the organized variety. And it obviously is some sort of a disadvantage, though no one can say for sure how much, not to claim to be a mainstream Christian. No one asks whether someone can win the presidency because he’s a Presbyterian or she’s a Methodist, so the mere fact that the question is raised whether a Jew or a Mormon is electable means that it is, to some extent, a real issue.

Thus we have the rather peculiar spectacle, for example, of Mitt Romney attempting simultaneously to downplay the specifics of his faith while emphasizing, when needed, that he is a man of faith. Meanwhile, the Democrats, in their efforts to woo back religious voters without alienating those who view any profession of religious belief at all with varying degrees of scorn and skepticism, are groping for ways of expressing (or at least professing) a political perspective infused by religious faith.

There is no little irony in this latter fact. If liberalism and the Democratic party had any legitimate claim to the “high moral ground” of 20th century politics, it was on the subject of civil rights. But the civil rights movement from the 1950s onward was motivated extensively by religious liberals and “secular humanists” whose ethics were significantly informed by their Judeo-Christian tradition and culture. Of course, that is a tradition and culture also informed by the Enlightenment and, for that matter, by philosophical developments antithetical to the tenets of theism, especially including socialism; but the fact remains that liberalism of the 1950s and 1960s and the civil rights movement in particular found some of their most passionate and persuasive spokesmen and dedicated activists from believers.

But that was then. The number of nonbelievers in America has grown to the point where they now publicly complain about being a discriminated-against minority. (No doubt they always felt that way, but getting burned at the stake is a pretty harsh result for speaking out. How, one wonders, will nonbelievers treat the faithful if and when nonbelievers are in the majority?) Today, the candidate who believes in the Median Voter Theory (and they all do) has the growing dilemma of a sort of naïve Kantianism among both secular and religious voters. It may not be enough for a candidate to claim to believe X is right or wrong, he may also have to try to convince voters that he believes it for the same reasons they do. Those who care about such things as logical rigor and intellectual integrity might find this an impossible challenge. Luckily for them, politicians care about neither. Unluckily for us, one or more of them always do get the job.

What Sam Brownback Thinks About Evolution

Today's New York Times includes an op-ed column by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback explaining in more detail his views on evolution.

Brownback is a lawyer and not the dumbest guy in Congress, but as public intellectual credentials go, not only is he no Daniel Patrick Moynahan, he's not even Newt Gingrich. Whatever good it may do him politically, the column is an intellectual muddle.

First, Brownback sets the stage by asserting "the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason." That's a nice touch, actually. The problem is that "faith" is a very ambiguous term. Faith of what sort and in what, exactly? We might reasonably claim that scientists, themselves, have faith in reason (and in evidence and so forth), but it is certainly not the sort of faith of which Brownback writes. What he means to imply but does not outright say is faith in the truth of certain specific doctrinal beliefs he happens to hold to be true, so it isn't the existence or nonexistence of faith, per se, that is at issue here but faith as belief in the correctness of certain substantive claims. Brownback writes:

The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

Let's dissect that. Why can't we "drive a wedge between faith [as Brownback understands it] and reason"? Because he wholeheartedly believes they cannot be contradictory? Why is that? Here he starts out reasonably well, noting that science and (Brownback's) faith address different questions; namely, questions about how nature operates and what he calls "spiritual truths." That's not so bad so far. If he had gone on to claim that their areas of concern were not complementary but incommensurable or merely that they bore no relationship to each other at all, rather like, say, there is no overlap between questions about auto mechanics and questions about music, I'd gladly agree with him. But he doesn't. What he does instead is simply assert his belief in God's agency. I don't happen to disagree with that belief as such, but the belief itself is no evidence or argument that scientific assertions and theological assertions cannot or do not contradict each other. As Brownback states it, it is merely a conclusion, an assertion of faith, actually, without any supporting argument or evidence. Viewed as an purported argument, it is entirely question begging.

Brownback then shifts from the notion that science and faith are complementary to the notion that faith supplements the scientific method "by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose." Certainly, religious beliefs can provide a context for and even, insofar as they are believed, a rationale for one's values, etc. But they are not the only possible such contexts or rationales, nor is it at all clear how any of these things supplements the scientific method any more than my discussing jazz with my mechanic supplements his ability to fix my car. What Brownback might have said is that, just as a knowledge of both mechanics and jazz lead to a fuller life, a life focused only on the sorts of questions science can answer is a less full life than one that includes other concerns. But that isn't what he said and what he did say, insofar as it is intelligible, is false.

Brownback tips his hand when he writes, "If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true." Implicit in this statement is that he does not believe, in particular, that our species evolved from other species (whether accidentally or not). This, of course, belies his purported belief that science and faith do not contradict each other, but we'll let that alone for now.

He goes on with the fairly typical Intelligent Design gambit of dropping the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis as evidence that real scientific questions remain unanswered in evolutionary theory. As others have written extensively, this is both true and irrelevant. What is especially relevant is Brownback's rejection of "arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality." This is the real heart of the matter and Brownback gets it exactly wrong.

I don't know a single scientist who believes as a matter of science that divine causality is impossible. I know some who do entirely reject the notion of divine causality as I know some who believe in it, but in neither case are they making a scientific claim and in neither case are their views at all relevant to evolutionary theory. The critical point here is that as far as the science of evolutionary theory is concerned, (1) its working hypothesis that divine causation is not necessary to explain how nature works has so far proved successful and (2) it is impossible, in any case, to either verify or falsify divine causation as we have come to understand what that assertion entails. I note, in passing, that some would claim the assertion is unintelligible or incoherent and, thus, incapable of being either true or false, but we'll leave that for another time.

Let's return to my mechanic friend who does not want to discuss why Miles Davis was one of the all time jazz greats but wants me to understand, instead, why I should get the oil changed regularly in my car and so explains how internal combustion engines work. He describes the pistons moving up in their cylinders, compressing gas vapors, then how the vapors are ignited, causing a controlled explosion pushing those pistons back down and, at the same time others on the crankshaft up, etc. He describes how the gears and such transfer that power from the rotating drive shaft to turn the wheels and so forth and why, therefore, the engine must be properly lubricated. Let's pretend I follow him but insist at every point in his explanation that this all happens because my personal deity, Mechano, makes it happen.

My mechanic, a more philosophically astute fellow than most politicians, points out to me that, while Mechano may indeed be the unseen force behind the workings of engines and motors, he does not need to believe in Mechano's existence to understand or to repair automobile engines. Maybe he does believe in Mechano, but none of the repair manuals and none of his training and experience have mentioned Mechano. In that sense, neither my nor his beliefs one way or the other about Mechano either complement or supplement his work. Whether they complement or supplement his or my life outside the area of auto repairs is another matter. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. In any case, this is the rough equivalent to evolutionary theory vis a vis Sen. Brownback's faith and this is why, again only roughly speaking, efforts to include non-evolutionary accounts of the origin of man in biology class curricula are met with the same sort of reaction I would get if I tried to pressure General Motors to include a chapter on Mechano in their service manuals.

There are any number of other problems with Brownback's column, but I'll just make one final point. He writes, "While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order."

Whether the final sentence of that claim is true or not, it is worth noting that one can be certain in one's convictions but nonetheless entirely wrong.

* * * * *

P.S. -- John Derbyshire likens Brownback on evolutionary biology to Paris Hilton on partial differential equations. The Derb goes on, as I did not, to do a nice job of tearing apart the implicit "science" of Brownback's weaseling over "micro" versus "macro" evolution.

At Least Now We Know Why They're Pink

It sounds like the log line for the next John Waters movie -- Gay flamingos pick up chick. "A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organization said Monday," reports the APF. Of course, Andrew Sullivan was one of the early bloggers to cover the story.

I admit to almost invincible ignorance when it comes to animal homosexuality. I mean, I've known lots of gay men and a few lesbians over the years (sure, I've know even more than I know about -- I'm just talking about the ones I knew were homosexual), but aside from these suspiciously recent press reports of allegedly homosexual behavior in animals, this is not a topic I've paid much attention to since I stopped watching the adventures of Yogi Bear and Booboo.

If, in fact, Carlos and Fernando, the flamingos in question, are gay, then following Sullivan's lead I think this raises all sorts of interesting theological issues. I suppose, for example, homosexuality among non-humans could still be considered theologically "disordered" and thus contrary to the will of God. One would be hard pressed to call whatever occurs naturally to be unnatural, however, and the theological nexus between sin, original or otherwise, and free will would seem at the very least to be a bit strained. Indeed, I'm not sure it makes any sense whatever to talk of sinful animals. Yes, I know, the notion of sin among humans is problematic enough for many people, but we're just doing a bit of conceptual analysis here.

On the other hand or wing, as it were, when Carlos and Fernando are referred to as a "gay" couple, does this really mean what, well, what one assumes it means when we're talking about people? I mean, what sort of sex lives do "straight" birds have, for that matter?

Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge near Bristol (a Wodehousean name if there ever was one) representative Jane Waghorn claims that gay flamingos are not uncommon. "If there aren't enough females or they don't hit it off with them, they will pair off with other males," she said.

Of course, if there aren't enough females in, say, prison... well, you know. So there's my question. Were Carlos and Fernando living the avian equivalent of La Cage aux folles these last six years or were they and are similar "gay" flamingo couples merely playing The Odd Couple?

Q: Are We Not Men?

First there was the Lincoln-Douglas debates, then Kennedy-Nixon, and now...

The Hitchens-Sharpton debate!

The question under debate (“Is God great?”) and the speakers — two men who are often depicted in harsh caricatures by their critics — might have caused some to expect something like a circus. Perhaps surprisingly, it turned out to be the public intellectual event of the evening, a bit like Bertrand Russell vs. C. S. Lewis.

Well, maybe if Russell had a reputation for heavy drinking and blistering invective and Lewis was inclined to make slanderous, race-bating charges. (Are those harsh caricatures?) Anyway, these two theological powerhouses squared off not to discuss politics but to get this pesky God business straightened out, so maybe the better historical reference would be Darrow vs. Bryan in that staged celebrated debate better known as the Scopes "Monkey" Trial.

Speaking of monkeys, from the report of the debate neither Hitchens nor Sharpton managed to make nearly as much of a jackanape of himself as one might have expected. At one point, however, Sharpton did show something less than proper liberal respect for ecumenical diversity when he said, “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry, that’s a temporary situation.”

Of course, that might have had more to do with Mitt Romney being a Republican than a Mormon. Still, it looks like Mitt can forget any hopes of getting the National Action Network's endorsement. I guess that also means Romney won't be proxy baptizing the Reverend Al after he goes to his non-Mormon glory. As for Hitch, he wouldn't go anyway, as I'm pretty sure the Latter Day Saints' notion of heaven is an alcohol-free zone.

"Good news, Mr. Socrates! We can offer you an upgrade to Purgatory-Class seating now."

The Roman Catholic Church has put the kibosh on Limbo in a new official document, called "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised." Publication of the document has been authorized by Pope Benedict.

This will come as welcome news to my friend Ron Bailey who has ‘anguished’ over the eschatological disposition of the unborn, although my admittedly vague understanding of Roman Catholic theology is that the question of when exactly ensoulment occurs in a human life in being is itself unclear. It should also be welcome news for those virtuous pagans Dante relegated to limbo and whose status apparently weren't upgraded during Christ's Harrowing of Hell.

It isn’t good form to make light or be critical of someone else’s religious beliefs, at least not beliefs of these sort since they have no bearing on the here and now. The Roman Catholic Church is free to believe and teach whatever it chooses on such matters as, indeed, God is free to dispose of our souls as He sees fit with or without Papal, let alone my concurrence. In any case, to anyone who might be offended by my somewhat flippant manner here, I apologize.

My point is only to observe that our Western collective imagination about such matters as Heaven and Hell derives more from the likes of Dante and his Protestant counterpart, Milton, than they do from Scripture or the musings of theologians, medieval or otherwise. However much we may believe one thing or another about what, if anything, happens to a person after his death, and however much any religious belief on this question may in fact be derived from divine inspiration, none of us can settle the matter once and for all until we pass through those Gates of Larger Life ourselves.

Let’s hope we are all happy with the answer.

Woe Unto Thee, Ye Scribes and Pharasees!

What with Buddy the donkey having made his appearance in a Dallas, Texas courtroom the other day, I guess I should have expected that He who rode an ass into Jerusalem might make a similar visit to the Dallas - Fort Worth Metroplex. Only in our updated story, the man claiming to be God to both a bank teller and a police officer drove a truck in place of a donkey and rather than driving the moneylenders out of the Temple, he (He?) relieved the same of an undisclosed amount of cash from a Fort Worth bank.

He was subsequently located some eight hours later when residents of a private home he was apparently trying to enter called the police. (So much for "Knock and the door shall be opened to you.") During arrest, the man (miraculously?) broke a pair of handcuffs but was eventually subdued by the Sanhedrin police and taken for psychiatric examination to a hospital. The man's truck has since been located but the money has not yet been recovered.

"To Whom It May Concern..."

Having recently moved to the semi-former Republic of Texas, I can report that as ubiquitous as, say, Starbucks is in your average East Coast city, churches are in Dallas. And Dallas, I am occasionally reminded by Texans from other parts of the Lone Star State, is only tenuously a part of Texas anyway. Not as bad as Austin, mind you, but still, as the folks in Fort Worth like to say “where the East peters out.” Even so, should your car ever break down here, I can’t speak for the nearest garage, but I can guarantee you there will be a church within walking distance where you can go and pray for its recovery.

Texas no doubt has many members of other faiths, as well ("Bless their hearts!"), but there’s little doubt that this is the Bible Belt, with a heavy emphasis on the New Testament, by Gawd. Thus the prospect of a Muslim Imam, specifically one Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque, offering the invocation in the Texas Senate with what some bloggers are calling an anti-Jewish and anti-Christian prayer was bound to cause, as they say in these parts, some ruckus. Well, as Bryan at Hot Air reports, the senate is in Austin, and Austin is, after all, “Berkeley in all but name.”

Kavakci is variously alleged to be both a moderate voice and as being sympathetic to some Islamic fundamentalists, and I have frankly neither the time nor the interest in tracing or sorting out these allegations. The key here, to me anyway, is the text of the invocation, itself, which has been translated as follows:

In the name of god, Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. All praise is for Allah, our lord, the lord of the worlds, the compassionate, the merciful, master of the day of judgments. Oh, god, Allah, you alone we worship, and you alone we call on for help. Oh, Allah, guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom you have favored, not of those who have earned your wrath or of those who have lost the way. Our lord, have mercy on us from yourself and guide us in our efforts, strivings, and works.

These same sites report that the penultimate sentence of that prayer is well understood in Islam as referring first to Jews and second to Christians, Islam being the "straight path." “How dare this man offer a non-inclusionary prayer in a public building,” seems to be the gist of the complaint; or, perhaps more accurately, how dare he voice a non-inclusionary, non-Christian prayer!

I’m perfectly willing to accept the ‘anti’-Jewish and ‘anti’-Christian interpretation at face value at least on grounds that any Muslim who doesn’t think Islam is the truth and other religions are therefore in error and risk God’s (or Allah’s) anger wouldn’t be much of a Muslim. And, of course, the same would be true of Jews and Christians, as well. So it basically comes down to that whole Church / State thingie and something Mom used to say about geese and ganders.

Any invocation more theologically specific than (and probably even including) “To whom it may concern, if there’s anybody listening, please help.” will be offensive to someone. This leaves two alternatives. First, permit no prayers of any sort for any public, official events of any sort. Otherwise, permit any and all such prayers, offensive or not, and let God, who probably has better things to do than listen to politicians in the first place, sort it all out.