Echoes in Eternity

Now this is possibly the funniest thing I've read in quite some time. It appears that driving is actually better for the environment than walking or riding your bike, since the energy you burn walking has to be replaced with extra intakes of food, much of which takes considerable energy to produce. Read the entire article, it's worth it. I find it fun to see the global warming community reduced to levels of absurdity not seen since Jonathan Swift satirically penned his "Modest Proposal." Speaking of which, perhaps Swift's idea would be useful in such a time as this.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled...

Here is an interesting link that I saw on a friend's blog. It flips the evolution/creation debate on its head and shows Creationism in a scientific light while depicting evolutionary theory with very religious overtones. Very cool idea!

As mentioned in the Zeal for Truth article that I linked to earlier this week, children are now being targeted as the next area needing to be "reduced" to help combat global warming, just like we're told that we must reduce our gasoline use, light bulb consumption, etc. Now, the "science" is pouring in to support that ideological idea. First, a study done in Utah indicates that more kids are bad for their parents' health, with couples who have more children dying earlier in life. Now, researchers in Britain have discovered that children from large families are shorter than those with few siblings. Nevermind that height is not the most significant factor in a child's life.

Dr Lawson stressed that his work did not look at whether a child is happier as part of a larger family.

It's interesting that, as so many Western populations approach the "lowest-low" point of no return with their birth rates, many intellectuals want to further limit the amount of children. This disdain for kids is seeping out of the intelligentsia and into the general public; I routinely hear acquaintances and co-workers gripe about or sneer at any couple who DARES to have more than a couple of children. Even in the Christian community, I consistently see at least a glimmer of antipathy toward large families. And it's not just a "I don't know how they do it, I sure couldn't" sentiment; sometimes I can detect a little scorn in their voice.

Minnesota Public Radio has a survey on its website that allows you to answer a few questions on your political beliefs and then it shows you how you match up with all of the presidential candidates. My results? Not including Tom Tancredo or Duncan Hunter (since both don't have a chance of winning), the candidate that best matched my views is Fred Thompson.

The United Nations (that venerable institution which brought you the wonderful Rwandan Genocide... nearly intervened during the Second Congo War, deciding instead to allow 5 million people to be killed... led the Oil-for-Food scheme that allowed Saddam to get rich during sanctions... and personally wet themselves when faced with the Darfur crisis) met earlier this month to discuss the best methods to fight global warming. Unfortunately, they are about 5-10 years behind the science, which is steadily beginning to show that global warming is most likely [worldview buster alert] 100% NATURAL. To help open their eyes, 101 leading scientists from throughout the world wrote an open letter to Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary-General of the U.N.

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.
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Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

z Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

z The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

z Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed... to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions... Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the "precautionary principle" because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

The current UN focus on "fighting climate change"... is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.

Yours faithfully,

The signatories of the letter come from a broad band of the scientific community; they include the President of the World Federation of Scientists, the former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, the former President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization, the President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. In all, 85 PhDs were in the list.

Today's article on Zeal for Truth is pretty good, so you should read it.

Global warming is perhaps the most discussed “global” issue in news media today. Turn on the radio, television, or hop onto the internet and somehow the issue of global warming is waiting to be debated or touted as the impending crisis of the 21st century. However, the real crisis behind the issue of global warming is freedom.

Never mind that global warming proponents would like to control your car, where and how often you drive, how much energy you consume, where you live, and all things livestock related, society nods their head and tips their hat to such notions. After all, no one really minds as long as these are suggestions or “encouragements.” Enthusiasts discuss their ideas and most people replace at least one light bulb in their house.
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Stop to consider for a moment what would happen if these aforementioned “encouragements” became law. How these laws would be enforced? The only way to enforce climate change laws is to restrict the freedom of individuals. Once a suggestion becomes law, the choice to comply is removed or rather, it is becomes a non-choice of compliance or penalty. Perhaps many people would not mind small penalties for using non-incandescent bulbs in their homes. In fact, most people don’t mind that cars are mandated to be more fuel efficient. Yet, the philosophy behind global climate change legislation is dangerous. The implication behind the “need” for such laws is that of removing the choice from individuals and giving control to governing authorities.

It grows immediately more concerning when such ideas potentially impact entire families on a personal level. Recently, politicians and professors in both Australia and Britain suggested that population control and baby carbon taxes should be strongly considered.
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The viewpoint of regulating individual actions is based on the idea that others have the right and responsibility to control your choices and penalize you accordingly. It goes beyond choosing to calculate your carbon footprint to deciding who has a right to reproduce and breathe air. It assumes that life is owned by a collective group of strangers rather than one’s self.

“While every individual should be cherished, mankind’s reproduction is akin to the replication of a virus. We are swamping the planet and devouring its resources.”-North West England MEP, Chris Davies

The first loss of personal freedom may just be a light bulb, or car, however it when carried further it will inevitably lead to the marginalization of the natural rights to life and liberty and possibly the loss of both.

So, it appears that as the number of pirates has dropped in the last 200 years, global temperatures have risen. Hmm, this is truly an inconvenient truth. Arr, Matey!

The marvelous Mark Steyn...

The holiday season is here, and that means it's time to engage in the time-honored Christmas tradition of objecting to every time-honored Christmas tradition. Australia is a gazillion time zones ahead of the United States – it may even be Boxing Day there already – so they got in first this year with a truly fantastic headline:

"Santas Warned 'Ho Ho Ho' Offensive To Women."
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If I were a female resident of Sydney, I think I'd be more offended by the assumption that Australian women and U.S. prostitutes are that easily confused.
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But the point is that the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, all are as nothing compared with the universal right to freedom from offense. It's surely only a matter of time before "sensitivity training" is matched by equally rigorous "inoffensiveness training" courses.
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For example, when I said the right not to be offended is now the most "sacred" right in the world, I certainly didn't mean to offend persons of a nontheistic persuasion. In Hanover, N.H., home to Dartmouth College, an atheist and an agnostic known only as "Jan and Pat Doe" (which is which is hard to say) are suing because their three schoolchildren are forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Well, OK, they're not forced to say it. The pledge is voluntary. You're allowed to sit down, or, more discreetly, stand silently, which is what the taciturn Yankee menfolk who think it's uncool to sing do during the hymns at my local church. But that's not enough for "the Does." Because the pledge mentions God, their children are forced, as it were, not to say it. And, as "Mr. and Mrs. Doe" put it in their complaint, having to opt out of participation in a voluntary act exposes their children to potential "peer pressure" from the other students.
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Let us now cross from the New Hampshire school system to the Sudanese school system. Or as The Associated Press headline put it:

"Thousands In Sudan Call For British Teddy Bear Teacher's Execution."

Last week, Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher working in Khartoum, one of the crumbiest basket-case dumps on the planet – whoops, I mean one of the most lively and vibrant strands in the rich tapestry of our multicultural world – anyway, Mrs. Gibbons was sentenced last week to 15 days in jail because she was guilty of, er, allowing a teddy bear to be named "Mohammed." She wasn't so foolish as to name the teddy Mohammed herself. But, in an ill-advised Sudanese foray into democracy, she'd let her grade-school students vote on what name they wanted to give the classroom teddy, and being good Muslims they voted for their favorite name: Mohammed.

Big mistake. There's apparently a whole section in the Quran about how, if you name cuddly toys after the Prophet you have to be decapitated. Well, actually there isn't. But why let theological pedantry deprive you of the opportunity to stick it to the infidel? Mrs. Gibbons is regarded as lucky to get 15 days in jail, when the court could have imposed six months and 40 lashes. But even that wouldn't have been good enough for the mob in Khartoum. The protesters shouted "No tolerance. Execution" and "Kill her. Kill her by firing squad" and "Shame, shame to the U.K." – which persists in sending out imperialist schoolmarms to impose idolatrous teddy bears on the youth of Sudan.
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Still, at exactly the time Gillian Gibbons caught the eye of the Sudanese authorities, a 19-year-old Saudi woman was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail. Her crime? She'd been abducted and gang-raped by seven men. Originally, she'd been sentenced to 90 lashes, but her lawyer had appealed and so the court increased it to 200 and jail time. Anybody on the streets in Sudan or anywhere else in the Muslim world who wants to protest that?

East is east, and west is west, and in both we take offense at anything: Santas saying "Ho ho ho," teddy bears called Mohammed. And yet the difference is very telling: The now-annual Santa lawsuits in the "war on Christmas" and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture. By contrast, the teddy bear rubbish is a crude demonstration of cultural muscle intended to cow and intimidate. When east meets west, when offended Muslims find themselves operating in Western nations, they discover that both techniques are useful: Some march in the streets, Khartoum-style, calling for the pope to be beheaded, others use the mechanisms of the West's litigious, perpetual grievance culture to harass opponents into silence.

Perhaps somewhere in Sydney there's a woman who's genuinely offended by hearing Santa say "ho ho ho" just as those New Hampshire atheists claim to be genuinely offended by the Pledge of Allegiance. But their complaints are frivolous and decadent, and more determined groups are using the patterns they've established to shut down debate on things we should be talking about. The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan.

It was a long (and short) night for Favre.

I'm traveling to Indy a lot now (every other week), and the project is coming along nicely.

Mark Steyn writes today on the crime epidemic in Britain, specifically in the metal department. It seems that anything metal (especially made of lead or copper) is being stolen, right down to the door knockers and number plates on people's homes.

But “crime prevention” measures cannot in and of themselves prevent crime. When I lived in England, not so long ago, one of the minor pleasures of rural life was walking across a couple of fields, along a public footpath through a copse, discovering a small medieval country church, and going inside to contemplate the divine for a few minutes. In those days, the churches were unlocked. They’re not anymore. Presumably there were local lads who would steal from the Lord even then, but not a significant segment of the population who targeted houses of worship. So today there’s wire mesh over the beautiful (one assumes) stained glass to stop thieves pinching the lead from the windows. It’s a small loss, but a telling one. The police have no leads, and the buildings have no lead. Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it was stolen last Thursday.

Back in the Seventies, it was discovered that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were illegally burning the barns of Quebec separatists. And the then Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, remarked with his customary glibness that if people were upset by the illegal barn-burning perhaps he’d make it legal for the Mounties to burn barns. As George Jonas observed, M. Trudeau had missed the point: barn-burning wasn’t wrong because it was illegal; it was illegal because it was wrong. Once that distinction is lost, civil society becomes all but impossible – because a broadly agreed morality plays a big role in social cohesion. Today in the western world, more and more things are illegal but we’re less and less clear what’s wrong. And everywhere but America, where any metal thief who attempts to steal your doorknob risks staggering away with at least as much metal lodged in his vital organs as in his swag bag, the state doesn’t trust its citizens to defend their property and in doing so uphold what’s right.

Britain’s metal crime is a poignant image of social disintegration: The very infrastructure of society – the manhole covers, the pipes, the cables on the transportation system, the fittings of the courthouse – is being cannibalized and melted down. When there’s no longer a sufficiently strong moral consensus and when the state actively disapproves of a self-reliant citizenry, what’s left is the law. And law detached from any other social pillars is not enough, and never can be.

Here is a good and serious discussion regarding the question "who would Jesus bomb?"

I have just begun reading From the Gulag to the Killing Fields, a compilation by Paul Hollander of "personal accounts of political violence and repression in communist states." I actually am still in the introduction, since the intro totals about 50 pages. I am looking forward to this book, as my knowledge of the full ugliness of communism is really quite minimal (much of this due to the fact that the Western world doesn't promote such knowledge). I just came across an overwhelmingly horrible fact in the introduction that I had to share and perhaps tie back to one of my past posts. According to records, possibly 1 in every 10 Hungarian women were raped by Soviet troops during World War II. TEN PERCENT! A few months ago, I linked to a map of Europe which showed the extremely high (20% or higher in some countries) abortion rates in those countries which used to be under Soviet rule. After reading what Soviet troops did to so many of those women, is it any wonder that abortion is so prevalent there today? All their dignity, value, and worth (both for themselves and the generations to come) was destroyed in those couple years of war. How many children were born from those ghastly crimes that felt only disdain from their mothers for the crimes of their fathers? And in turn, how many of those children grew to believe that kids were a curse? When asked whether anything should be done about the rapes and murders, Stalin replied that the troops should be allowed to have their "fun."

America's premier political pastor and some white evangelicals' answer to Al Sharpton, Pat Robertson, today endorsed Rudy Giuliani for President. This from the man who blamed the 9/11 attacks on our abortion-crazed, decadent society. He endorses the Republican candidate LEAST likely to do anything positive on the cultural front. Then again, Pat Robertson long ago put himself on a pedestal higher than God. God is merely his puppet, whose name he invokes to gather support for his personal crusades. He used to be a faith healer, much like the disgusting Benny Hinn. He called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez (an adolescent tyrant, but that is beside the point). Robertson also claimed to be able to leg press 2,000 pounds so he could sell his energy drink.

He also has made many TRULY racist, hateful ("[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers."), and generally un-Christian comments ("Presbyterians are the spirit of the Antichrist."). The man is a charlatan and a pig and is the main reason why so many people think that a person's faith should be removed from his political beliefs. Pat Robertson has no idea what the work of the Holy Spirit looks like, or what loving one's neighbor means. For this reason, he will be barely remembered ten years past his burial.

Many people claimed Jerry Falwell was the same hateful man that Robertson is, but they are wrong. He did have his moments where the power and prestige of his political position got to his head, but in general, he knew how to love.

Last week, I posted on Theodore Dalrymple's atheism essay. This week, he has followed that writing with a related piece entitled "A Strange Alliance." In it, he further discusses religion and atheism, as well as his speculation on the reason behind the significant number of popular atheistic screeds.

I haven’t written much about religion, but I have been surprised by the vehemence, not to say the violence, of the response to that little that I have written. This vehemence has been provoked by the fact that, though not religious myself, I am no longer anti-religious as I was when it occurred to me as a child and then a teenager that God might not or did not exist. Indeed, I can see many advantages, both personal and social, to a religious outlook. The usefulness of religious claims is not evidence of their truth, of course, though that usefulness probably depends upon a belief in their truth.

Probably, but not certainly. Gibbon tells us that in Rome, religious observance, highly syncretic in nature, was adhered to by people who did not accept the truth of the beliefs that supposedly underlay their observance. They continued with their observance because of the social value of religion: in other words, truth was less important to them than social coherence. Before we denounce those Romans as hypocrites and liars, we should remember how often, for the sake of social ease and convenience, we say and do things that are neither true nor convenient to us personally. Show me a man who is sincere all the time, and I will show you an insufferable boor.

A young and cultivated Dutchman of my acquaintance, appalled by the thinness and superficiality of modern culture and its deliberate disconnection from the glories of the past of our civilisation, recently told me that he was going to convert to Catholicism. He was far from a believer but, rightly or wrongly, he saw the church as the only possible bastion against the tide of cultural barbarism that is engulfing most of Europe.

He told me also that he played the music of Bach (one of the supreme artistic achievements of our civilisation) on the piano every day, and hoped to do so until he died; and this led me to suppose that he did not altogether exclude as a possibility the existence of God, for Bach’s music, which he loved, was surely inspired in very large part by the belief in God, and indeed is inconceivable without that belief. The connection between the music and belief in God was a psychological one rather than a logical one, but was a strong one nonetheless; and, as Pascal said, the heart hath its reasons which reason knows not of. This, after all, is true of most of us most of the time.

And once my young Dutch acquaintance was open to the possibility of the existence of God, I suggested, it was also possible that the belief would come with the observance rather than the other way around. If it did, I could see only advantages to him. It seems to me that a sense of a transcendent meaning or purpose to existence is a great comfort, and something that is sorely lacking for the great majority of young Europeans.

This is not at all the same thing as wishing to live under a theocracy, in which conformity to the outward observances of belief are enforced. But some of the responses I received to an article I wrote recently for The City Journal, in which I suggested that the best-selling books by militant atheists, that have appeared with the suddenness of a change of hemlines in the fashion world, did not advance any new arguments against the existence of God (indeed, you would have by now to be a very great philosopher to advance a new argument either for or against), and that used a historiography of religion that was fundamentally flawed and dishonest, were so vehement that you might have supposed that I was Torquemada or Khomenei rather than a mere scribbler expressing an opinion that was, in effect, a plea for greater subtlety of understanding.

I do not want to repeat my arguments here. Instead, I ask the question why these books... have appeared all of a sudden, and sold so well, when...they say little that is new.

Fashions are not unknown in publishing, of course.
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Still, something more than fashion needs to be invoked, I suspect, to explain not only the appearance but the success of the new atheistic books.
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Let me here say, to avoid the charge of resorting to ad hominem arguments, that the reasons for the appearance and success of these books is evidence neither of the validity nor of the invalidity of their arguments, which must be assessed by quite other means and on quite other grounds. But this does not mean that the question of the reason for their appearance and success now, at this conjuncture, is unimportant or uninteresting. My speculations are not susceptible to rigorous proof, but if we were allowed to think about only those things susceptible to such proof, our minds would soon be empty.

I think there are two conjunctures, one mainly American, and one global, that explain the appearance and success of these books.

The rise of evangelical Christianity as a political force in America has provoked a reaction by the freethinking intelligentsia that sees in that rise a threat of theocracy. Whether this threat is real and genuinely feared I rather doubt; surely the American political tradition and the Constitution itself are strong enough to prevent a theocracy from ever arising in America. But all intellectuals love bogeymen to shadow-box: I do so myself on occasion.

It is true that the evangelicals exert a strong influence; but that is what democracy is about. There are, after all, a lot of them in the country and they cannot be disenfranchised. No doubt they have a moral vision that they wish to impose on the country, but so does everybody else. To argue that a woman has a right to an abortion because she is sovereign over her own body is no less a moral position than that to kill a conceptus is ethically equivalent to shooting a man in cold blood in the street. Personally I think that both these positions are wrong, and that so long as the debate is posed in these terms it will remain crude and generate a lot of hatred. But evangelical Christian political influence in a democracy in which there are millions of evangelicals is perfectly normal, and implies no slide into theocracy; and it is worth remembering that the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

The second conjuncture is, of course, the rise of Islam as a global force for a new totalitarianism.
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Islamism is a real threat, made far worse by the cowardly response to it by most western governments, including that of the United States. From the European perspective, the war in Iraq is but a trivial sideshow by comparison with the Danish cartoon crisis, which was much more significant for our civilisation and way of life in the long run. There the British and American governments failed the test miserably; de facto, they gave aid and succour to the Islamists.

The new atheists are quite right to see the threat of theocracy in Islamism. But in attacking all religion, they are like the French government which banned not only the wearing of the headscarf in schools, but the wearing of all religious insignia whatsoever, despite the fact that wearing a Star of David or a crucifix has and had a completely different social signification from wearing a headscarf. In the name of non-discrimination, the French government failed to discriminate properly: and proper discrimination is, or ought to be, practically the whole business of life. If there were large numbers of Christians or Jews who were in favour of establishing a theocracy in France, who had a recent record of terrorism, and who terrorised each other into the wearing of crucifixes and Stars of David, then the banning of those insignia would have been justified too. The wearing of the headscarf should be permitted again when Islam has become merely one personal confession among others, without the political significance that it has now.

In attacking all religion so indiscriminately, the atheist authors are, I am sure inadvertently and unintentionally, strengthening the hand of the Islamists. In arguing, for example, that for parents to bring up a child in any religious tradition, even the mildest of Anglicanism, is to abuse a child, with the natural corollary that the law should forbid it (for how can the law permit child abuse?), some of the authors are giving ammunition to the Islamists, who will be able with justice to say to their fellow-religionists, See, it is all or nothing. If you give the secularists an inch, they will take a mile. No compromise with secularism is possible, therefore; cleave unto us.

Islamism is a worthy target, of course, but by now one that has been pretty well aimed at... To suggest, however, that all forms of religion are equal, that they are all murderous and dangerous, is not to serve the cause of freedom and tolerance. It is to play into the hands of the very people we should most detest; it is to hand them the rhetorical tools with which they can tell the gullible that our freedoms are not genuine and that our tolerance is a masquerade. It is to do what I should previously have thought was impossible, namely in this respect to put them in the right.