Iran Threatened by Harry Potter

I don't think Barbie poses much of a threat to Iran's theocratic, oppressive government. But Harry Potter may be another story. The stories' anti-totalitarianism and strong themes of intellectual independence rightly make Iranian officials nervous.

The New York Times reports (via Titanic Deck Chairs):

Iran's prosecutor general railed on Sunday against the invasion of Barbie, Batman, Spider-Man and Harry Potter and demanded that the country's young be protected against them, Agence France-Presse reported. Urging measures to safeguard "Islamic culture and revolutionary values," the prosecutor, Ghorban-Ali Dorri Najafabadi [criticized the figures]... In July 2007 "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" went on sale in Tehran. Two years ago the police raided toy shops and put black stickers on the packaging of Barbie dolls to hide their bodies.

Iran had better go ahead and ban Deathly Hallows, before it's too late!

Back to Barber

A few days ago, I discussed Matt Barber's bigotry toward homosexuals. Today I want to reply to another article by Barber, "'Gay' Sex Kills." He writes:

Can you imagine officials at a middle school, junior high or high school setting aside a day to promote "tolerance" for heavy smoking and drinking among children? How about a day where teachers encourage kids to "embrace who they are," pick up that crack pipe and give it a stiff toke? ...

That's exactly what the homosexual activist "Day of Silence" is all about -- advancing, through clever, feel-good propaganda, full acceptance among children of the homosexual lifestyle.

Barber's comparison of homosexuality to smoking and drinking is ridiculous. People can choose whether to smoke or drink; those things are not inherent in one's character. Homosexuality, by contrast, is a deeply ingrained characteristic. I don't know whether homosexuality has a genetic component, but whether or not it does, it is deeply embedded in personality. (That said, I favor market education in which, I suspect, most schools would eschew political activism in favor of learning.)

One can form a psychological addiction to smoking or drinking, but such addictions can be formed and broken. Homosexuality is entirely dissimilar. Sexual orientation precedes puberty; it is latent from a very young age. Of course, a homosexual can choose not to practice homosexuality, just as a heterosexual can choose to practice gay sex or to become celibate. (At some point we might distinguish between a homosexual orientation and homosexual practice; for example, prison rape hardly indicates an orientation.) While it is obviously possible to choose to have sex with people of different genders, homosexuality as an orientation seems to be unalterable or very close to it.

Moreover, there's nothing inherently wrong with homosexuality. Insofar as homosexuality can lead to loving relationships and healthy sex, it can be a good thing, just as heterosexuality can be a good thing.

Barber notes that male homosexuality is associated with AIDS:

By recently admitting that "HIV is a gay disease," Matt Foreman, outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, acknowledged what the medical community has known for decades: the homosexual lifestyle is extremely high-risk and often leads to disease and even death.

In fact, multiple studies have established that homosexual conduct, especially among males, is considerably more hazardous to one's health than a lifetime of chain smoking.

To the consternation of "gay" activist flat-earthers and homosexual AIDS holocaust deniers everywhere, one such study -- conducted by pro-"gay" researchers in Canada -- was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) in 1997.

While the medical consensus is that smoking knocks from two to 10 years off an individual’s life expectancy, the IJE study found that homosexual conduct shortens the lifespan of "gays" by an astounding "8 to 20 years" -- more than twice that of smoking.

"[U]nder even the most liberal assumptions," concluded the study, "gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871. ... [L]ife expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men."

This morose reality makes a strong case for a fitting redefinition of so-called "homophobia," that being "Homophobia: The rational fear that 'gay sex' will kill you!"

No one doubts that male gay sex is associated with a higher incidence of AIDS. But this does not establish Barber's point. Female gay sex is not so associated; does Barber therefore approve of female but not male homosexuality? Furthermore, unsafe heterosexual relations with multiple partners is also associated with a higher incidence of various diseases, while monogamous homosexual relations are not.

Barber's comparison of homosexuality to chain smoking fails. Chain smoking harms the health of anyone who tries it, though the magnitude of the harm depends a great deal upon genetics and luck. Male homosexuality, on the other hand, is risky only with partners who might have AIDS. Two healthy men who enter a monogamous relationship have no more chance of getting AIDS than Barber does.

D'Souza Versus Rights

Dinesh D'Souza is a cheerleader for religion, and most any religion will do. His favored religion is Christianity, but short of that, he prefers a religious orientation to a secular one. In a recent article, he continues to find common cause with the Blame America First crowd of the radical left, discussing Islamist terrorism not in the context of problems within modern Islam that cause such terrorism, but in the context of alleged American failures.

D'Souza claims that Americans who advocate "the right to blaspheme, the complete exclusion of religious symbols from the public square, the right of teenage boys and girls to receive sex education and contraceptives, the right to abortion, prostitution as a worker's right, pornography as a protected form of expression, gay rights and gay marriage, and so on... are producing a powerful 'blowback' from the House of Islam."

The first thing to notice is that American domestic politics are hardly the legitimate concern of non-American Muslims. I agree with D'Souza that Islamists hate America for its freedoms, but D'Souza is wrong to suggest that any part of the fault lies with America. Certainly we should not alter our domestic policies in a shortsighted attempt to prevent "blowback" from Islamist terrorists.

D'Souza, in criticizing leftists, also packages items that do not fit together logically. I think that people have the right to blaspheme. Women have the right to get an abortion. Consenting adults have the right to trade sex for money (as I've argued,) produce and view pornography, engage in homosexuality, and partner romantically with whom they choose. I do not advocate "the complete exclusion of religious symbols from the public square," but neither do I think that Christian symbols should dominate that square. I think that non-abusive parents have the right to raise their children and to set policies concerning sex education and contraceptives.

What is the alternative to the liberties that I endorse? To blaspheme means "to speak impiously or irreverently of (God or sacred things)." For example, the phrases "God damn it" and "God does not exist" are blasphemous. The alternative to the right to blaspheme is the imposition of legal penalties for blasphemy; for example, some Americans call for the death penalty for blasphemers. The alternative to the right to abortion is the imposition of legal penalties on doctors and women involved with abortion. The alternative to legal prostitution is today's hypocritical prohibition that fosters violence and disease. (However, most American "liberals" do not favor legal prostitution, as D'Souza suggests.) The alternative to legal pornography is censorship. While calls for censorship are in vogue among both the left and the right, they are incompatible with freedom of speech. The alternatives to gay rights and gay unions are legal penalties for homosexuality (in the "House of Islam" homosexuals often are killed) and discriminatory contract law.

In a future article, perhaps D'Souza can explain precisely what legal penalties he believes Americans should adopt against blasphemy, abortion, pornography, and homosexuality. Otherwise, perhaps he can explain why he thinks some such liberties deserve legal protections while others don't.

Lake of Fire

Lake of Fire is a documentary that explores the issue of abortion in America. It gives plenty of time to both sides, but it also allows religious extremists in the debate to indict themselves. The documentary is worth viewing not only for those interested in the issue on both sides, but for those interested in the nasty turns that religion can take. Various Christians shown throughout the movie literally advocate and/or commit murder and terrorism in the name of God.

The main problem with the documentary is its editing. It is severely disjointed; it keeps jumping back and forth between issues, speakers, and stories for no apparent reason. I lost track of the number of superfluous songs included in it. (If I wanted to watch music videos, I'd get MTV.) A number of the clips, such as from Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes, are completely pointless (and the bit from Keyes is also taken out of context). At 152 minutes, the film is painfully long; I yearned for it to end. Cut of its fluff, it easily could have fit within an hour and forty-five minutes.

The documentary contains three main parts (mashed together). It explores the views of opponents of abortion, tracks a thoughtful but incomplete debate among left-leaning intellectuals, and shows abortion procedures.

The views of opponents of abortion fall into two main categories: abortion should be outlawed, and abortion should be violently protested as well as outlawed. Most prominent of the legislation-only camp is Norma McCorvey, otherwise known as Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade fame. McCorvey describes how, following her episodes of self-mutilation and involvement with new-age mysticism, she found Jesus and changed her mind on abortion. "I'm a servant of Christ now," she says at an event.

The general theme among the religious opponents of abortion is that "life" begins at conception and that God prohibits abortion.

What the documentary does not do is explore nuances of opinion. Many people only want some restrictions on late-term abortions, yet nobody from that camp was interviewed for the film.

The film is downright frightening when it shows interviews and talks by those who favor violence. Following are several of the scary quotes:

"We will not back down on upholding the law of God. If this nation, if Bill Clinton, is going to reject the law of God, then this nation is going to die [i.e., self-destruct]."

"I think they should execute blasphemers [including those who say "god damn it"]... because that's what the Bible teaches."

"Abortionists should be executed."

"They've been seduced by Satan... We're coming right into the middle of Satan's territory up here in Colorado..."

One fellow (who also offered the quote directly above) argues that advocates of legal abortion consist of three types of people: satan worshippers, homosexuals, and "the pro-death." But this guy clearly is delusional; he also claims that he's seen employees of abortion clinics barbecue the aborted fetuses. I don't think interviewing insane people contributes much to the discussion.

Much of the documentary reviews the various murders committed by Christian opponents of abortion. When one of the murderers is sentenced to execution, several people supported the murderer. The film interviews one woman who was a victim of a bombing of an abortion clinic.

One person discusses Christian Reconstructionism, the movement of Rushdoony. The goal of the movement, according to the documentary, is to establish religious law; implement the death penalty for abortion, homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, heresy, apostasy, and witchcraft (among other things); and generally to establish a Christian theocracy.

Much of the film is dated and seems so; at this point the religious right has fairly effectively dampened calls for violence against the "abortion industry."

The left-leaning intellectuals include Nat Hentoff -- who, notably, opposes abortion on secular grounds -- Alan Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, and Peter Singer. Not surprisingly, the overriding theme of these people is moral ambiguity and subjectivism. Dershowitz argues, "Everybody is right;" it's "very, very difficult" to draw "black and white lines." Chomsky says, "The values we hold are not absolute."

Of course there is a gray boundary here; even Ayn Rand, who adamantly favored legal abortion, drew a distinction between embryos and fetuses just before birth (see Ayn Rand Answers, page 17). But, for Rand, the emphasis was on the morally clear regions -- particularly the early stages versus an independent child at birth. (See her additional comments.) Those interviewed for the film emphasize the moral grayness at the expense of the morally certain.

However, the documentary is obviously editing content to make a point. One woman claims that we should move away from the language of rights, which implies right and wrong. The film pits the view of moral relativism and subjectivism against Christian absolutist dogma. The film ignores -- or includes only incidentally -- the possibility that moral clarity may be reached outside of the context of religious dogma.

The film conflates general moral ambiguity with the fact that women should choose whether to get an abortion based on their personal conditions. But those are two separate issues. The claim that women have an absolute moral right to get an abortion has nothing to do with whether a particular woman should choose to get an abortion. Similarly, freedom of speech says nothing about whether an individual should go into journalism.

The film's greatest failing is to never bring to the forefront the distinction between a potential and an actual person. Hentoff, the outlier, argues that an embryo is "a developing human being," and no one debates this. But the relevant distinction is that an embryo is a potential person, whereas a born child is an actual, independent person. The documentary should have included interviews with people who argue this position.

All of the film's favored intellectuals, of course, endorse welfare statism, regardless of their stance on abortion. Chomsky, for instance, derides the U.S. for not giving more in foreign aid.

The film contrasts the secular left-wingers with the Bible-thumping anti-government types. One fellow argues that we should establish laws "as outlined by God," which, for him, entails the right to keep and bear arms, the abolition of the IRS, and "constitutional government" (whatever that means for him). Never have I been so struck by the danger of affiliating with kooks who hold superficially similar political positions. As a secularist, I support both legal abortion and economic liberty. I have practically nothing in common with Chomsky, but I have even less in common with those who think that welfare should be abolished because it violates God's will for our allegedly "Christian Nation." Of course, my perspective is not one that the documentary chooses to explore, for it has its own agenda.

The film also shows two women getting abortions. One woman gets hers relatively late, at five months, while another gets hers early. One problem with the film is that it does not discuss how many abortions occur within the first trimester, why some abortions are performed later, or what Roe v. Wade has to say about late-term abortions. The unfortunate impression left by the film, then, is that abortions typically or often involve fully-developed fetuses, which is simply not the case.

Still, the documentary is worth viewing despite its many faults and shortcomings, so long as viewers are aware of those issues.

Barber the Bigot

Matt Barber is the policy director for cultural issues with Concerned Women for America, a group "helping our members across the country bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy." Barber thinks that gay people deserve the "due penalty for their perversion," including death.

Writing for the conservative Townhall, Barber writes:

[T]here are those who... with haughty hearts and sardonic “pride,” willfully choose sin over Christ; death over life.

It's a self-evident reality which is bolstered by medical science, but Scripture additionally reminds us in both the Old and New Testaments that those who choose to engage in homosexual conduct do so at their own peril.

Consider Romans 1:26-27...

It's sad when people yield to disordered sexual temptations that can literally kill them spiritually, emotionally and physically. Nobody with any compassion enjoys watching others "[receive] in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." But a corollary to free will is living (or dying) with the choices we've made.

Barber here makes three basic errors. First, he thinks that we should guide our lives according to bigoted comments in an ancient book of mythology. Second, he assumes that homosexuality is sinful temptation, rather than a fundamental orientation of a person developed at least from childhood. Third, he conflates risky sexual activity with homosexuality.

I accept at face value Barber's claims that male homosexuals (he conveniently forgets about female homosexuals for this point) have higher incidences of various diseases. But the problem is risky sexual behavior with multiple partners (coupled with the greater chance of sharing blood via anal sex), not homosexuality per se.

Heterosexuals who engage in risky sex with multiple partners have a higher incidence of various diseases than do monogamous homosexuals.

Barber moves to a discussion of blood donations. He rightly criticizes "militant homosexual activists" in South Africa who "have been 'protesting' by deliberately and surreptitiously violating that nation's blood ban" of male homosexual donations (again taking his claim at face value).

However, Barber is wrong to paint all homosexuals with the same brush. The fact that a Christian has murdered a practitioner of abortion does not make all Christians murderers.

I'm all for protecting the blood supply; I certainly don't want to get HIV should I need a transfusion. But a ban on male homosexual donations does not get to the root of the problem, for it prohibits some low-risk people from donating blood, and it allows some high-risk people to donate (though I assume that high-risk heterosexuals are also screened out). The more effective screening question would be: "Have you had anal sex with more than one partner within the last X years?" (A follow-up question could ask about the partner.)

But such a question, though objectively more relevant, doesn't mention homosexuality, and so it does not fit Barber's bigoted agenda.

Barber continues:

...Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern has been viciously attacked and ruthlessly maligned, even receiving death threats, for saying publicly that "the homosexual agenda is destroying the nation." She even went so far as to say that, in her estimation, homosexual behaviors and "gay" activism pose a greater threat than terrorism.

Reasonable people can debate that opinion...

Reasonable people can endorse only one side of that opinion. Anyone who thinks that homosexuals pose a greater threat than Islamic terrorists is suffering from self-induced insanity.

But I do have a couple of questions for Barber, given his faith-based approach to homosexuality. Do you believe that any literature or speech pertaining to homosexuality (including, but not limited to, pornography) should be censored? Do you believe that consenting adults should be subjected to any criminal penalties for practicing homosexuality?

In fact, those would be good questions to ask anyone who claims that homosexuality is prohibited by the Bible.

More Problems with Expelled

Scientific American reveals more problems with the Creationist documentary Expelled, which I've criticized previously. I'll review only one of the six main points from the article.

The article points out that Expelled offers a rather selective review of the case of Richard Sternberg. "According to the film, after Sternberg approved the publication of a pro-ID paper by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute, he lost his editorship, was demoted at the Smithsonian, was moved to a more remote office, and suffered other professional setbacks."

However:

Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg's decision to "peer-review" and approve Meyer's paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it.

The further implication is that Sternberg abused his editorial position to advance his pseudo-scientific ideological position, which implies that his treatment was altogether too forgiving.

Speculations about Jesus' Birth

How did Mary get pregnant? Fox reports new speculation:

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue called Verhoeven's claim "laughable."

"Here we go again with idle speculation grounded in absolutely nothing," Donohue told FOXNews.com. "He has no empirical evidence to support his claim, which is why they say 'may have.'"

I basically agree with Donohue's criticism.

But what is Donohue's alternative account? The Gospel of Luke claims (1:35): "And the angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

Because the claim that Mary was impregnated by a supernatural being is supported by so much more empirical evidence than the claim that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.

Americans Wary of Atheists

The good news for atheists is that they're more popular than Scientologists (a fact for which they can thank God for Tom Cruise). A new Gallup poll (via Paul Hsieh) reveals U.S. attitudes toward "religious and spiritual groups." While 52 percent of the population views Scientology negatively, a mere 45 percent so view atheism.

I guess the good news is that 54 percent of the population has a positive (13 percent) or neutral (41 percent) view of atheists. I can live with neutral, because, as I've pointed out previously, atheism is not a positive philosophy; it does not indicate what a person does believe. Thus, without knowing the particular views of an atheist, it is impossible to form a positive or negative evaluation of that atheist. (The rest of the categories indicate a philosophical orientation, except the one for "Jews," which can indicate both a religion and an ethnicity.)

For the same reason, the high negative rating is troublesome, as it indicates a prejudice. Just as most Christians in the U.S. are basically good people, so are most atheists. Indeed, some of the finest people I've ever met are atheists. Yet many people view atheists negatively because they are taught by various Christian leaders that atheism is synonymous with socialism, subjectivism, Peter Singer, etc., which is simply not the case. All of the atheists that I personally know support capitalism, individual rights, and objective morality.

Fourth Awakening Getting Sleepy?

In a recent article for Reason, Ronald Bailey asks, "Is the Fourth Great Awakening finally coming to a close?" He writes:

Perhaps the best evidence that the evangelical phase of the Fourth Great Awakening is winding down is that large numbers of young Americans are falling away from organized religion, just as the country did in the period between the first two awakenings. In the 1970s, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that between 5 percent and 7 percent of the public declared they were not religiously affiliated. By 2006 that figure had risen to 17 percent. The trend is especially apparent among younger Americans: In 2006 nearly a quarter (23 percent) of Americans in their 20s and almost as many (19 percent) of those in their 30s said they were nonaffiliated.

The Barna Group finds that only 60 percent of 16-to-29-year-olds identify themselves as Christians. By contrast, 77 percent of Americans over age 60 call themselves Christian. That is “a momentous shift,” the firm’s president told the Ventura County Star. "Each generation is becoming increasingly secular."

I disagree with various aspects of Bailey's analysis. For instance, by pitting religious "moralism" against "tolerance," Bailey falls into the common stereotype of secularists as relativists and subjectivists.

While the information Bailey reviews in the quoted material is very interesting, various Objectivists rightly point out that the real battle is not between secularism and religion; it is between reason and unreason. If the younger generations are turning away from organized Christianity in favor of new-age mysticism and environmentalism that attributes to untouched nature intrinsic moral value, that's hardly an improvement. Indeed, Bailey recognizes that "the Fourth Great Awakening might simply be taking a left turn." If, as a society, we swap Christian fervor for crackpot mysticism and socialism, we are merely setting ourselves up for social decay and eventual dictatorship.

Nevertheless, there are some signs of renewed interest in a pro-human, pro-reason philosophy; to take but one example, sales of Ayn Rand's books "recently reached the mark of 25 million copies."

By the way, Bailey (whom I recently criticized on my other blog) also criticizes the pro-creationist film Expelled.

Shermer, Lockitch Flunk 'Expelled'

Recently I made a few comments about the pro-creationist film Expelled, based on the preview. But I didn't realize that the film is horrid, rather than merely stupid.

Gus Van Horn points to an article by Michael Shermer, who begins:

n 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University... It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein’s anti-evolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with [Stein] addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.

Actually they didn’t. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein’s screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, Associate Provost for Research and Chair of Natural Science at Pepperdine, “the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus” but that “the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and the staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein’s lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university.” And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film.

This is of particular interest to me, because I went to Pepperdine, too.

Shermer also points out the propagandistic nature of the film:

Even more disturbing than these distortions is the film’s other thesis that Darwinism inexorably leads to atheism, Communism, Fascism and the Holocaust. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of religious believers fully accept the theory of evolution, Stein claims that we are in an ideological war between a scientific natural worldview that leads to the gulag archipelago and Nazi gas chambers, and a religious supernatural worldview that leads to freedom, justice and the American way. The film’s visual motifs leave no doubt in the viewer’s emotional brain that Darwinism is leading America into an immoral quagmire. ... Cleverly edited interview excerpts from scientists are interspersed with various black-and-white clips for guilt by association with: bullies beating up on a 98-pound weakling... East Germans captured trying to scale the Berlin Wall, and Nazi crematoria remains and Holocaust victims being bulldozed into mass graves.

The film, then, is intellectually dishonest, because there is no logical connection between the biological theory of evolution and the various forms of socialism. There is, however, a logical link between religion and and the Inquisition, the Taliban, the Dark Ages, etc.

In addition, today's most enthusiastic champions of economic liberty and individual rights are those inspired by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which also shows that legitimate moral absolutes can only be established through reason, not religious faith. (Shermer has slammed Rand, but his prejudice against her seems to flow from the Brandens' lies about Rand -- reviewed in James Valiant's Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics -- and a basic misunderstanding of the content of Rand's philosophy.)

Speaking of Rand, Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute makes some additional comments about the film:

"The premise of Expelled is that proponents of 'intelligent design' have been shunned, denied tenure, and even fired because of a conspiracy to quash the scientific evidence supporting their theory," said Dr. Keith Lockitch, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But the truth is: there is no evidence supporting their theory. Intelligent design is completely devoid of any positive scientific content, and consists of nothing more than a religiously motivated attack on evolution. To the extent intelligent design advocates are facing obstacles in academia it is because they are not doing real science: they haven't been 'expelled' they have flunked out of the scientific community, just as a faith healer would flunk out of medical school.

"Observe that intelligent design advocates have pumped millions into publicity-seeking, rather than appealing to scientists with facts and logical arguments. They have spent more time at Christian 'apologetics seminars' than scientific conferences, and have attempted to use the courts to force schools to teach their ideas. Now they are hoping to dupe the movie-going public with a film that misrepresents Darwin's theory and the array of facts that support it -- just as the makers of Expelled misrepresented the nature of the film in order to bamboozle respected evolutionary scientists into participating in it."

I had been thinking of seeing Expelled for the same reason that I saw two of Michael Moore's films. But I've decided to avoid Expelled for the same reason that I refused to watch Moore's latest: at a certain point, unless a complete viewing is required for a review, I don't want to spend my resources to support intellectual dishonesty.

Darwin Online

Paul Hsieh has pointed me to an outstanding resource: "The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online."

Wow. It's just stunning that such a rich collection of material is available to the public, at no charge. And to think that, when I was a child, the internet did not even exist.

This seems like a good time point out that, on its registered users' page, the Ayn Rand Institute hosts Keith Lockitch's lecture, "Darwin and the Discovery of Evolution;" see the Complete Video Collection.

Though Darwin is subject to increasingly shrill attacks from the evangelical movement, the rest of us owe him a debt of gratitude for ushering in the modern science of biology.

Ben Stein's Expelled

I sort of like actor Ben Stein, but I think he's taken on more than he can handle with a new documentary that he co-wrote called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Judging from the preview available at the film's web page, the documentary is a rather silly defense of "intelligent design," the fancy name for dressed-up creationism.

In a "gotcha" moment, Stein gets "new atheist" Richard Dawkins to admit that he doesn't know how life began. Well, so what? "I don't know how life began, therefore, God, QED." Scientists have been able to determine much of the evolutionary course of life on earth from the fossil record and other evidence. But there is simply no such evidence remaining of the first forms of life, so far as anyone knows. Even if scientists someday manage to create conditions in which life emerges from non-life, that won't prove conclusively that life on earth actually began in just that way. Besides, Christians would merely push God into the new gap: "But who set in motion those original conditions?"

A lack of knowledge does not justify an arbitrary assertion. At one point, people didn't know what caused lightening. "I don't know what causes lightening, therefore, God, QED." (Greg Perkins also uses the lightening example.) Before genetic science, people didn't know the mechanism by which evolution worked. At the dawn of humanity, people knew practically nothing. But the fact that knowledge is necessarily limited does not mean that knowledge is flawed or useless, nor does it justify arbitrary leaps beyond knowledge. And arbitrary claims about God also happen to involve logical absurdities and metaphysical impossibilities.

If Matt Barber's rah-rah review is correct, Dawkins himself entertains the arbitrary:

In one segment, he sits down with Stein for a heart-to-heart. After dancing around several pointed questions about how life began, Dawkins finds himself at a logical impasse with no surplus of sci-fi rhetoric. He's finally forced to concede that, indeed, an intelligent being may have created life on earth. However, that being could not have been “God,” but rather, it must have been some organic, alien life form. Of course, that alien life form has to have been a product of “Darwinian evolution.”

I have not yet heard the discussion in context. However, Dawkins seems to allow for arbitrary claims. That said, there is an appropriate use of the "alien" example, which is to point out that the advocates of "intelligent design" have a particularly supernatural designer in mind.

Barber also repeats the by-now standard ad hominem attack against atheists:

They don't want to upset the morally relative applecart, which is loosely held together by the notion that we're all just a bunch of monkeys with an instinctive, biological excuse for all our behavioral choices. To them, life's a whole lot easier under the theory of evolution. Without a sovereign Creator to answer to, we get to scoot along and party hearty, free from accountability.

The irony is that Barber's intellectually-dishonest attack occurs in his essay claiming that Christians are persecuted. Barber is simply fibbing when he claims that all atheists are relativists and/or determinists who, in effect, reject God because they want to party.

I call on responsible Christians to discourage the sort of bigoted nonsense that Barber displays here.

Various criticisms of Expelled have sprung up. One web page is devoted to criticizing the film; it also contains a list of publications about it. Colorado Confidential hosts a number of articles about the film. Chris Heard points out that various Christians accept evolution as fact. Ad Hoc blogs about the film.

The upshot is that Christians devoted to creationism will view the film with a sense of validation. The rest of us will soon forget about it.

Michael Medved's Anti-Atheist Bias

If somebody claimed that a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Mormon, or member of any other mainstream religion, was not qualified to hold political office merely by virtue of that religious affiliation, regardless of the broader moral and political beliefs and statements of the candidate, the critic's claims would be laughed off as silly prejudice. While it's true that Mitt Romney's Mormon religion hurt his candidacy, it's also true that Mike Huckabee's slights against Mormonism hurt Huckabee's candidacy.

But, in the world of Christian political apologetics, Michael Medved can grotesquely misrepresent the nature of atheism and claim with a straight face that no atheist should be elected president. Medved writes:

Actually, there's little chance that atheists will succeed in placing one of their own in the White House at any time in the foreseeable future, and it continues to make powerful sense for voters to shun potential presidents who deny the existence of God. An atheist may be a good person, a good politician, a good family man (or woman), and even a good patriot, but a publicly proclaimed non-believer as president would, for three reasons, be bad for the country.

I agree that there's little chance of an atheist being elected as president any time in the near future. But Medved's reasons for why that's a good thing are absurd.

Medved's first error, contained in the quoted paragraph above, is to presume that atheism is a unifying doctrine; atheists, by his lights, recognize and support "their own." But atheism is not an ideology. It does not indicate what a person believes. It indicates only one thing that a person does not believe. I have more in common with many Christians than I do with some atheists. I could develop a long list of Christians that I would support politically over a list of particular atheists.

So what are Medved's three reasons?

First, he claims that an atheist president would suffer "hollowness and hypocrisy at state occassions." "For instance, try to imagine an atheist president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation –-the Indians in Massachusetts?" Yet I've heard atheists give very powerful, highly moving talks. On the topic of Thanksgiving, Craig Biddle writes, "Rational, productive people -- whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself -- are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend." While Biddle's strong criticisms of religion would not be appropriate for a president's speech, his answer regarding whom should be thanked could be appropriately adapted to a presidential address. To take another example, Alex Epstein has written a moving tribute to America's veterans.

Second, Medved claims, an atheist could not connect with the people. Medved writes:

[E]mbrace of Jewish or Mormon practices doesn't show contempt for the Protestant or Catholic faith of the majority, but affirmation of atheism does. ... A chief executive who publicly discards the core belief in God that drives the life and work of most of his countrymen can never achieve that sort of connection. A president with a mandate doesn't have to be a regular church-goer, or even a convinced believer; but he can't openly reject the religious sensibility of nearly all his predecessors and nearly all his fellow citizens. A leader who touts his non-belief will, even with the best of intentions, give the impression that he looks down on the people who elected him.

But holding that a person's belief in God is unwarranted is not the same thing as "looking down" on the person. For example, Ayn Rand was an atheist, and yet she held and expressed enormous respect for the American "sense of life" and for the common sense often displayed by the American public. Indeed, often Rand was most critical of the atheistic (and socialistic) elite.

The difference between atheists and religionists is, in this context, hardly more significant than the difference among peoples of different religions or different political ideologies. For example, as an atheist, I think that Catholics are wrong to believe in God. But when I was a Protestant, I was taught as a child that Catholics will burn for all eternity in Hell. (Only some people in my church held that view.) Obviously, the tensions between people of different religions can be much more severe than the tensions between atheists and religionists. To take another example, the differences between Barack Obama and conservative Christians are enormous.

Finally, Medved argues, atheists cannot win the war against Islamist terrorism. "[T]he ongoing war on terror represents a furious battle of ideas and we face devastating handicaps if we attempt to beat something with nothing." Here Medved makes two errors. First, he assumes that atheists believe in nothing, which is ridiculous. Again, atheism does not define one's positive beliefs. Second, Medved supposes that religionists are better-equipped to take on the terrorists. But Bush has failed to stop terrorist advances precisely because of his faith-based war, which places altruistic nation-building ahead of American defense. Numerous publications by the Ayn Rand Institute point to the problems with Bush's approach and the path to a rational alternative.

Americans should not elect an atheist because he or she is an atheist, any more than Americans should elect a Christian because he or she is a Christian. Instead, Americans should elect somebody who understands the nature of individual rights and is prepared to defend the rights of every American, regardless of religious belief.

Anti-Abortion Group Sues Google

As I've pointed out, Google's ad policies are completely arbitrary and in fact violated by Google itself. I wrote,

If Google flagrantly violates its own stated policy for ads, then clearly that particular policy is meaningless. However, if, as one of the comments on an earlier post alleges, Google has pulled its ads from another web page because of that page's arguments, is Google opening itself up to potential legal action?

However, I'm not sure that a recent law suit has much merit. Fox reports:

A Christian group in Britain is suing Google over the search engine's alleged refusal to place an ad related to abortion.

According to the Christian Institute, the text ad would have popped up on the right side of a user's screen whenever the word "abortion" was searched for or prominently appeared.

It would have read: "UK abortion law: Key views and news on abortion law from The Christian Institute. www.christian.org.uk". ...

Google rejected the ad with the statement, "Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'abortion and religion-related content,'" according to the Christian Institute's press release.

The Christian Institute counters that "Google is happy to allow adverts for non-religious sites with views on abortion," and is taking the Internet giant to court on grounds of religious discrimination. ...

Searches for "abortion" on both the American and British Google Web sites bring up ads for abortion providers, but none to political, advocacy or religious groups on either side of the issue.

Both Google sites, however, include an ad for StandUpGirl.com, a Web site aimed at talking teenage girls out of having abortions.

I'll try to briefly untangle the issue. A suit based on "religious discrimination" is illegitimate. Google has property rights, and thus it has the right to set whatever ad policies it deems fit. To take a local example, some Colorado publications refuse to run ads for firearms.

The potential problem involves contract. Is Google effectively making a contradictory offer to would-be ad purchasers? If Google is simultaneously saying, through its actions, that ads about abortion are fine, but then indicating that certain ads about abortion are forbidden, that could be a problem. Then the issue would be that people spend their resources to set up ads with Google that Google may then arbitrarily deny. Unfortunately, I was not able to locate Google's policies regarding ads pertaining to abortion.

What this is not is a free-speech issue. If Google refuses to do business with certain advertisers, Google is not thereby violating free speech. Freedom of speech protects people from government censorship; it does not impose a duty on some to publicize the speech of others. Indeed, forcing one party to promote the views of others violates that party's freedom of speech.

However, it might be a fairness issue. Google ought not arbitrarily deny some ads but not others or impose contradictory standards.

Moreover, it seems to me that in the rough-and-tumble world of the internet, it's a bit silly for a large company to refuse to do business with Christians with an anti-abortion agenda. I go back to the Ann Coulter test: if Google will let Coulter display Google ads, can Google reasonably exclude others with less contentious views?

'Only' 90 Million Islamic Supporters of 9/11?

We can now rest peacefully, knowing that only around 90 million Islamists "identified with the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C." See? No problem. The "Religion of Peace" has everything under control.

The figure comes from Jerd Smith's Rocky Mountain News write-up of the 60th Annual Conference on World Affairs in Boulder:

Now head of the non-partisan Middle East Institute, [Wendy] Chamberlin [former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan] was the first female U.S. ambassador appointed to a post in a Muslim country and she was in Pakistan on Sept. 11.

Chamberlin's mission Monday is to give World Affairs conference-goers a bit of a primer on Muslims. ...

"It is absolutely necessary that we try to reshape our relations with the Middle East and the larger Muslim world," she says. "We need to acknowledge the Muslim world is a very diverse community. There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. Arab's are only a small minority. The most populous Muslim country isn't even in the Middle East. It's Indonesia."

"Too often our politicians focus on one extremely small fraction of the Muslim community, the militant jihadists. We don't talk enough about the mainstream Muslims who are most decidedly not violent, not radical and not extremists."

Key facts: International polls conducted worldwide indicate that 93 percent of Muslims abhorred what happened on 9/11, while only a small minority, 7 percent, identified with the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C.

"What are Muslims like?" Chamberlin asked. "They're like most Americans. They're family people. They practice their faith. Most are young (under 30). They want better education. They want jobs. The polls show the majority want to improve law and order and they want to promote democratic ideals in their own political systems," she said.

"The clear majority also want legal rights for women. For millions of Muslims their religion is a religion of peace and they're outraged at the notion that their mosques are used for violence."

Ah, how comforting that a mere 7 percent of all Muslims approve of the slaughter of Americans.

Vincent Carroll replied:

[I]f someone told you that a suicide bomber just blew himself up along with 30 customers in a London bank lobby, it would be reasonable for you to strongly suspect that the terrorist was Muslim.

It would be reasonable, moreover, even if you readily agreed, as I do, that most Muslims are like most people everywhere and want nothing more than lives of peace.

Unfortunately, the figures are not as rosy as Chamberlin would have us believe.

In his book The End of Faith, Sam Harris reviews statistics collected by the Pew Research Center in 2002 (see pages 124-26). Here was the question:

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.... Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?

Responses for "often" or "sometimes" justified ranged from 73 percent in Lebanon to 13 percent in Turkey. However, as Harris points out, if the responses for "rarely justified" are added to the mix, the figures for those who believe that "suicide bombing in defense of Islam" is "ever justifiable" rises to 82 percent in Lebanon and 20 percent in Turkey. The next-highest response rate is Pakistan with 38 percent.

The figures for Indonesia, which Chamberlin specifically mentions, are 27 percent ("often" or "sometimes") and 43 percent ("often," "sometimes," or "rarely.")

No matter how one slices the figures, a huge minority of Muslims worldwide -- at least scores of millions of people -- think it's a good idea to slaughter innocents in the name of their religion.

Birth Tragedy Seen as Divine

In the industrial world, we know that birth defects are caused by some combination of genetic and environmental factors. The Associated Press reported that a baby born in Saini Sunpura, India, "Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces."

If the infant had been born in the U.S., she and the family would have received sympathy, understanding, and assistance. In India, the infant "is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said today."

Lali has caused a sensation in the dusty village of Saini Sunpura, 25 miles east of New Delhi. When she left the hospital, eight hours after a normal delivery on March 11, she was swarmed by villagers, said Sabir Ali, the director of Saifi Hospital. ...

Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.

In a way I can understand the mythology; the tragedy is given a positive angle, and the family and infant are saved from social shunning. I can imagine other societies in which the birth might have been seen as the work of the Devil. But far better to live in a world of science and advanced medicine, in which birth defects are minimized and in some cases correctable.

The Hindu myth is not entirely without a political slant; the AP adds: "'I am writing to the state government to provide money to build the temple and help the parents look after their daughter,' [Village chief Daulat] Ram said."

'You Have No Right to Be Here'

A state legislator told an atheist at a public hearing, "You have no right to be here!"

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune reports (via Pharyngula via Mike at Obloggers):

Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) interrupted atheist activist Rob Sherman during his testimony Wednesday afternoon before the House State Government Administration Committee in Springfield and told him, "What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous... it's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

"This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God," Davis said. "Get out of that seat... You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

Sherman, a Green candidate with whom I no doubt disagree on many issues, relates the following about the story at his web page:

On Wednesday, April 2nd (my 55th birthday), I testified in Springfield before the House State Government Administration Committee. My testimony was that Governor Blagojevich's plan to donate one million tax dollars to Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago is unconstitutional. For background, see the March 4th update, below. Representative Monique Davis responded for the committee. She accused me of hating god. She said that the state should donate the million tax dollars to Pilgrim Baptist Church because the people of Illinois believe that there is a god. At a time when we are in the midst of a decades-long pervasive epidemic of Roman Catholic priests raping America's children, Representative Davis said that I was a danger to the children of Illinois because I tell them that there is no god. She said that I had no right to inform children of that perspective. She then ordered me out of the witness chair, screaming, repeatedly, "Get out of that seat," because I'm an atheist. Made me feel like Rosa Parks, who also was told, "Get out of that seat," and arrested when she didn't give up her seat on the bus to Whitey. Now that [African Americans] like Representative Monique Davis have political power, it seems that they have no problem at all with discrimination, just as long as it isn't them who are being discriminated against. On the 40th anniversary, today, of his murder, I'm sure that my boyhood hero, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been appalled at Rep. Davis' bigotry. Eric Zorn wrote a column, yesterday, about the exchange between Rep. Davis and myself. His column is complete with both a printed transcript of part of the exchange between Rep. Davis and me, as well as a link to an audio recording of most of the exchange. Here is a link to Eric Zorn's column. Here is a direct link to the audio recording, courtesy of Eric Zorn...

In this story, Sherman's shrill web comments and his political views are irrelevant; he has as much right to testify at a public hearing as anyone. Needless to say, any legislator who told someone of any religious faith to "get out of that seat" would gain instant national infamy.

As an aside, though, apparently the church in question burned down, and the subsidy was intended to help rebuild the church. I have to wonder why this wasn't covered by insurance. In my view, the government has no business subsidizing the rebuilding of any private facility that the government did not itself destroy.

Taliban Murders Young Couple

Various practitioners of Islam continue to perpetrate and advocate murder in the name of their religion. Following are two recent stories reported by Fox.

The first story involves the murder of a young couple for the "crime" of getting married without the consent of their parents:

A couple found guilty of adultery by an Islamic "qazi" court was stoned to death by Taliban militants in Pakistan's northwest border region, according to a report in Dawn, Pakistan's English-language newspaper.

The execution, which reportedly took place Monday [March 31], is the first by stoning reported in the region, which borders Afghanistan. "Qazi" courts, which are allowed to administer Islamic law outside the Pakistani judicial system, traditionally have ordered execution by firing squad in cases of adultery.

The married woman, identified as Shano, had allegedly eloped on March 15 with Daulat Khan Malikdeenkhel.

A spokesman for the Taliban said a complaint had been received from the woman's family that she had been abducted by Daulat Khan. They later changed the report to say she had run away with him.

What a bunch of despicable barbarians.

But such insanity exists only in backward cultures of the Middle East, right? The second story, which cites Islam Watch, quotes two European Islamists:

A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.

"Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet," the Imam says, according to the report. "If you don't believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain."

The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam's position, saying that all Muslims are innocent. ... Choudary said he would not condemn a Muslim for any action.

What's astounding is how many people in the West can continue to ignore such warnings.

'Religion of Peace' Kills Again

The main story for today's post regards a "Saudi woman killed for chatting on Facebook." But first I want to mention two other stories on related topics that I've mentioned previously.

Israel National News reports (via Little Green Footballs via Diana Hsieh):

(IsraelNN.com) Dr. Wafa Sultan has been forced to go into hiding with her family following a fatwa (religious edict) from an Islamic scholar, according to Omedia. Sultan faces the fatwa following a recent debate on Al-Jazeera in which she challenged Egyptian Islamist Talat Rheim over Dutch cartoons of Mohammed, who Muslims revere as a prophet. Sultan argued that Denmark had the right to print the cartoons.

Sultan joins a growing list of public critics of radical Islam facing death threats. Her supporters have asked the American public to join them in writing to the embassy of Qatar, the country which sponsors Al-Jazeera, as well as to United States President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking them to defend Sultan's right to free speech and personal safety.

I've quoted from the debate in question.

Next, Pat Condell has a new video out about Fitna (via Footballs via Howard R.), a film that I discussed a couple days ago. The producer of that film has also been threatened with death.

For a "religion of peace," Islam seems to get more than its share of attention for some of its followers murdering people and threatening to murder people in the name of Islam.

Which brings us to the story about another so-called "honor killing" to hit the news.

The Telegraph reports (via 1000 Papercuts):

Saudi woman killed for chatting on Facebook
By Damien McElroy Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:46am BST 01/04/2008

A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged.

The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man, the al-Arabiya website reported.

The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the "strife" the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation.

Saudi preacher Ali al-Maliki has emerged as the leading critic of Facebook, claiming the network is corrupting the youth of the nation. ...

The woman was murdered in August but her death was highlighted following Maliki's comments. ...

Critics also allege that Facebook is an avenue for the promotion of homosexual relations in Saudi Arabia. More than 6,500 people have signed the online petition in a bid to stop the conservative Muslim kingdom following Syria in banning access to the network from local internet servers.

What's odd about this story is that the only reason we know about it is that it was used by the locals as an example of why Facebook is bad. Facebook causes "strife." And fathers beating and shooting their daughters to death? Isn't that the more obvious and morally culpable cause of "strife?" Shouldn't violence against women, rather than internet communication, be effectively banned by the government?

Meanwhile, Western leaders are falling all over themselves to appease various followers of the "religion of peace," lest those followers start murdering people and destroying property again -- for the cause of "peace," of course.

Hamas Promotes Terror Against Israel

This year's April Fools belong to the Bush administration for believing that they can pander to Islamic terrorists and expect the outcome to be peace.

A New York Times article by Steven Erlanger dated April 1, "In Gaza, Hamas's Fiery Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Effort," discusses some of the problems in the region. All quotations are from that article.

Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas said of the Jews: "Their fate is their vanishing."

At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the "Crusaders," or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs," while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control.

Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children's programs praise "martyrdom," teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.

Consider the insanity of the the imam simultaneously cursing the Danish cartoons, which either criticized actual problems within Islam or merely depicted Muhammad in a neutral way, and spewing overt bigotry against Jews.

The film Fitna, which I discussed yesterday, shows a video of a little girl repeating, at the encouragement of an adult woman, the same bigotry against Jews. Yet some Muslims decry Fitna as "hate speech" -- without breathing a word against the actual hate speech by Muslims against Jews.

The article continues:

[I]n a column in the weekly Al Risalah, Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that "suffering by fire is the Jews' destiny in this world and the next."

"The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting retribution for what they have done," Mr. Astal wrote on March 13. "But the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of burning in this world, before the great punishment" of hell? Many religious leaders believe so, he said, adding, "Therefore we are sure that the holocaust is still to come upon the Jews."

One point of Fitna is precisely that some modern Muslims draw a violent message from the Quran. Yet some Muslims direct their anger against Fitna, rather than against those Muslims who do, in fact, draw a violent message from the Quran.

Is it not obvious that, for peace to succeed in the Middle East, Muslims there have to stop murdering Jews and advocating the annihilation of Israel?