Temporal Convection

A while ago, I published this post, listing all of the proposed amendments to the Constitution by that nasty Republican Congress. They ranged from the amusing to the inane. Let's see how our new and improved Democratic Congress is doing.

In the House

HJRes #1, 7, 10: Balanced budget

HJRes #2: Citizens of territories and commonwealths can vote

HJRes #4, 36: Abolish of the electoral college and allow direct citizen votes

HJRes #5: Congress and States can define limits on the amount of money any given electoral campaign may receive

HJRes #6: Make the "population" count for determining number of Representatives more specific: only citizens count

HJRes #8: Repeal the 22nd Amendment, eliminating the Presidential term limit

HJRes #9: Define the act of flag burning or desecration as an unconstitutional form of speech

HJRes #11: Informational amendment asserting that school prayer is A-OK

HJRes #17: Establish English as the official language of the United States

HJRes #23: Prevent governments from acting as businesses by forbidding them to enter contracts

HJRes #24: Enforce a Congressional term limit of six consecutive terms

HJRes #28: All resident citizens will have the right to vote (?)

Resolutions 29 through 36 were all proposed by Mr. Jackson of Illinois.

HJRes #29: Promote equality in education to a citizen's right

HJRes #30, 42: Promote equality in health care to a citizen's right

HJRes #31: Promote equality in abortion to a citizen's right

HJRes #32: Promote safe, affordable, and comfortable housing to a citizen's right

HJRes #33: Promote a safe, clean, and sustainable environment to a citizen's right

HJRes #34: Forces Congress to produce progressive taxes, whereby the wealthy are taxed more than the poor

HJRes #35: Promote "equal pay for equal work" to a citizen's right

HJRes #38: Allow a line item veto

HJRes #39: Affirm equal rights for men and women (with about 60 signatories)

HJRes #40: Clarify that the Constitution neither requires prayer in school nor explicitly bans it

HJRes #43: Not really an amendment, but it increased the statutory limit on the public debt to $9,815,000,000,000. Yikes.

HJRes #46: Eliminate the citizenship allowance for babies born inside US borders, unless the parents are citizens or permanent residents

HJRes #48: Require a 2/3 vote on the Supreme Court to affirm any Presidential pardon or reprieve

HJRes #56: Allow each representative to designate a list of three replacements in case of his or her untimely death

HJRes #57: Create the office of Alternate Representative, with a role similar to the Vice President

In the Senate

SJRes #1: Enforce a balanced budget to protect Social Security surpluses

SJRes #2: Establish a Congressional term limit of six non-consecutive terms

SJRes #19: Require that the expenditures of the government not exceed its income and that it not exceed 120% of the previous year's gross national product.

Summary

It's really not quite as bad. There isn't one gay marriage amendment in there! I guess it's not such a hot button issue now that the elections are over for the time being.

I did notice, however, that none of these amendments have been discussed by the legislature. They were all referred to committee and killed. However, a bill requiring international negotiation to determine national rights to migratory fish has received considerable discussion for the past two months.

I've been having a lot of conversations lately on the abortion topic. As an evangelical Christian, I'm supposed to be violently pro-life, to preserve the millions of human lives which are destroyed in this procedure every year. I have some doubts about the ramifications of this particular belief. However, if it is indeed a commandment of God, then I have no choice but to assume that God is correct and that his commandments do indeed serve a vital purpose for humanity.

Right and Illegal

First, I would like to make clear that whether abortion should be legal is an entirely separate question from whether it is sinful, unethical, or wrong. Americans in general believe that the law determines right and wrong, and vice versa. Take, for example, insider trading. I can easily see how somebody could believe that insider trader doesn't actually hurt anybody. It's the fault of the other investors that they, too, didn't have friends on the inside. Using inside information to make money is just wisely using my available resources.

However, insider trading is illegal, and bulky safeguards are in place to prevent it from happening on large scales. If you surveyed Americans in the 1910s, before the stock market crash and subsequent legislation came about, I suspect that most of them would tell you that what we call insider trading was A-OK. (They would use that phrase because it was the 1910s.) If you asked people a mere 15 years later, or today, they spew bile at its evil nature. This is not because something changed in the nature of insider trading, but rather because it is no longer legal.

Abortion is the same way. When it was illegal in the 1950s, only a few dared question the law. After all, if it was illegal, it was wrong! The only woman who ever succeeded in the challenge did so anonymously. (Jane Roe is the female version of John Doe.) It was, by virtue of being illegal, completely wrong. Today, after several Supreme Court decisions concluding that abortion is, in fact, legal, few pro-choice advocates argue that abortion is right. They argue that it is the mother's decision, or that it is a legal medical procedure and so should be left alone. It is no surprise, given the American psyche, that both sides of this debate want to pass laws supporting their views.

So, for now, we will ignore the question of whether abortion should be legal and return to the question of whether it is sinful. Those of you who already believe that abortion is sinful and wrong are probably already conjuring up images comparing abortion clinics to Hannibal Lecter and the Son of Sam. Those of you who don't are conjuring up images of stuffy Puritans in belt-buckle hats telling one another that everything from sex to skipping church is sinful. Let's try to avoid those images for a while, because they are purely emotional responses to something about which we should use logic. Besides, unless you've skipped ahead, you don't know what conclusion we're going to reach. We may agree with you!

We'll come back to legality later.

Evidence from Scripture

To get a good idea of the sin involved, we should go to the Bible. After all, if it is sinful, we need to be able to find support for this idea in the Bible. Otherwise, we might be mixing up modern cultural beliefs in the vitality of the fetus with our genuine Biblical beliefs, thus creating an unnecessary mess. I have obtained all of these references from pro-life web pages. I would like to say to the authors of those pages that showing me photos of aborted fetuses is not going to keep me on your page long enough to read your argument. Ew! It is, after all, quite important to report to our listeners why we believe abortion is sinful, not merely that it is icky or that it makes us mad.

Unfortunately, many websites also assume that their view is true before arguing that it is true. For instance, my major reference for this section consistently cites verses related to the killing of children, when the issue in whether is exactly whether fetuses and children are identical. Certainly, if we can show that to be the case, then killing a fetus is indeed morally equivalent to killing a child. However, first we must do that!

Our first exhibit comes from the book of Exodus:

"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
(Exodus 21:22-25, NIV)

This is describing an accidental miscarriage, but the rest of the situation is rather vague. The verse says "but there is no serious injury", but does not specify who must be seriously injured. Other translations imply that the serious injury refers to the fetus. If the serious injury belongs to the woman and not to the fetus, then these verses clearly distinguish between the value of a fetus and the value of a woman. The punishment for essentially destroying the fetus is a fine, just like destroying somebody's property. The punishment for harming the woman is the same punishment that applies elsewhere to harming innocent people. However, if the injuries belong to the fetus, then this verse is a clear example showing that fetuses were considered equal to other people by applying eye-for-an-eye punishments to somebody who causes the death or injury of one.

Unfortunately, there is very little information distinguishing the two cases. It is notable that a premature baby, regardless of what we now call trimester, probably would not have survived. Even today, a premature baby often requires extensive medical care, which simply didn't exist until a hundred years ago. In Moses's time, the baby would've been exposed instantly to thousands of pathogens, both from the parents' dirty skin and from the environment. If the baby required warmth, he had better receive it during the day, because in open areas like Israel, the temperature can drop considerably at night. (Even today, with our amazing medical system, thousands of newborns die every year because they were premature.)

So we're not going to get any clear answer out of this Scripture excerpt. It doesn't seem to offer us any helpful information by itself, so let's look at a few other verses:

"Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward."
(Psalm 127:3, ESV)

This verse is used by one pro-life website to argue that God values children. I agree. God protects and nurtures children more than any other type of person, except perhaps his prophets. However, this verse is also not helpful to our argument because it is clearly talking about already-born children, as I will show.

The Hebrew in this verse literally says "fruit of the womb". The word translated fruit here is PRY (pronounced per-ee). It most often refers to the product of fruit-bearing trees and fruit-bearing plants. It is the same word used many times during the unfortunate incident in the Garden of Eden. The fruit of the vine is a fully formed grape ready for consumption or transformation into wine. Used figuratively, the word refers to the end result of a process. In the NASV, the same word is translated "offspring" a dozen times and "results" twice.

Then Jacob's anger burned against Rachel, and he said, "Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?"
(Genesis 30:2)

Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock.
(Deuteronomy 28:4)

So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be satiated with their own devices.
(Proverbs 1:31)

With the fruit of a man's mouth his stomach will be satisfied; he will be satisfied with the product of his lips.
(Proverbs 18:20)

In each of these figurative examples, PRY clearly refers to the "end product" of a process. The fruit of one's labor or deviance is the end result, the finished product. The fruit of the vine is the finished grape. Cain, who offered God a sampling of his "fruit of the ground" in Genesis 4:3, probably wasn't offering unripe eggplant.

Now, we come to the 800-pound gorilla of pro-life verses. We'll look at several different translations of this verse. You'll see why in a minute. First, the NIV:

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."
(Psalm 139:13-16, NIV)

Now, the King James:

"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."
(Psalm 139:13-16, KJV)

Now, the Amplified Bible. The English Standard Version and NASB are similarly translated.

"For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother's womb."
(Psalm 139:13, Amplified Bible)

"For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother's womb."
(Psalm 139:13, NASB)

The Message picks a side:

"Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother's womb.
I thank you, High God—you're breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I'd even lived one day."
(Psalm 139:13-16, The Message)

And finally, Young's Literal Translation:

"For Thou -- Thou hast possessed my reins, Thou dost cover me in my mother's belly. I confess Thee, because that [with] wonders I have been distinguished. Wonderful [are] Thy works, And my soul is knowing [it] well. My substance was not hid from Thee, When I was made in secret, Curiously wrought in the lower part of earth. Mine unformed substance Thine eyes saw, And on Thy book all of them are written, The days they were formed -- And not one among them."
(Psalm 139:13-16, YLT)

As you can see, translators aren't entirely in agreement on interpreting this particular section of Scripture. (In fact, translators should not be doing any interpretation at all, but that's almost unavoidable with the Hebrew.) However, these verses do present a compelling argument! The psalmist, maybe David, argues that God knew him before he was born and, according to some translators, that God actually formed him in his mother's womb.

Incidentally, the word translated "inward parts" and "reins" actually means "kidneys". The ancient Hebrews thought that the kidneys were the seat of the desires. David here is saying that God possesses his innermost desires; God is ruler of them.

One commentator writes as follows about verse 13:

"... as God had made him -- as he had formed his members, and united them in a bodily frame and form before he was born -- he must be able to understand all his thoughts and feelings. As he was not concealed from God before he saw the light, so he could not be anywhere."
(The Treasury of David)

It is clear, at least, that David assumed that God knew him in the womb. He even claims that God assembled his body using some kind of weaving or knitting technique. Furthermore, it is clear that David believed that he was still David before he was born. This verse is indeed the 800-pound gorilla and is a fairly solid argument for the pro-life movement. We're going to move on now, but I want leave this verse with a few lingering questions: Did God know him the entire time he was in the womb, from the moment of conception to the moment of delivery? Is this actually true, or merely a poetic device or an assumption on the part of David? Does God's omniscient knowledge of all future things play into this at all?

We'll move on with the assumption that Psalm 139 presents an argument in favor of a fetus being a human being, at least at some stage during its development.

Next, we jump to the New Testament, which we find to be is curiously silent. There are prohibitions of infanticide, but we have not yet demonstrated that a delivered infant is the same as an undeveloped fetus. There are also prohibitions of murder, but these too do not seem to apply. They refer to the murder of adults. Overall, despite the prevalence of medical abortion in the Gentile world, nobody even mentions it in passing.

A curious episode does occur in the beginning of Luke: the tale of the leaping fetus! Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Not only does Elizabeth's fetus recognize the presence of Jesus, it reacts by willfully "leaping in the womb," squirming forcefully enough that Elizabeth could feel it moving around. Mary responds by bursting into song and dance, Broadway-style. Elizabeth was, at this point, about six months pregnant - she was entering her third trimester.

Most curious here is the Greek itself. The word used for fetus John is the same word translated "infant" elsewhere: brephos. The infant, or baby, leaped in her womb. Now, I'm not sure if the Greeks had a separate word for fetus. The Gentiles did practice abortion on a regular basis, so the absence of such a word cannot be used as an indication that the practice was frowned upon or that the two were considered equivalent. English speakers distinguish easily between 119 different meanings for the noun set. Obviously, Hippocrates and his followers did not find it to be particularly appealing - the Hippocratic Oath forbids a doctor to take part in it - but not every Greek-speaking doctor was a follower of Hippocrates.

We also cannot assume that the case of John and Jesus - two people carefully monitored and developed by God - is necessarily indicative of other individuals. These were two very special guys. John was declared a special prophet before he was even conceived, and Jesus is special for eternity. Incidentally, God knowing a person and his existence prior even to his conception forms another issue altogether, which we won't get into here. Mormon theology has a lot to say on this topic.

Let's give these verses the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of argument. Since Elizabeth is six months pregnant, let's say that any fetus greater than about six months pregnant is considered equivalent to a brephos. This is consistent with our conclusions on Psalm 139 and also with the earlier laws in Exodus, clearing up the ambiguity in that verse. An infant prematurely born between six and eight months has a small, but real, chance of survival. So, now we've discovered the most detailed pro-life argument we can make from Scripture. This instilling of life-value happens before the sixth month, but after conception, and we cannot say precisely when.

Quickening

The infant developing vitality in the middle of the pregnancy turns out to be what British lawmakers concluded almost 300 years ago. Quickening, in terms of pregnancy, refers to the first time that a mother can feel the baby moving of its own accord in her womb. According to Dictionary.com, "quicken" means "to become alive; receive life" and also "to enter that stage of pregnancy in which the fetus gives indications of life".

William Blackstone, establisher of the British "Common Law", wrote in 1765:

"Life ... begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor."
(Blackstone, William. Commentaries, 1:120--41 (1765), taken from Wikipedia)

Notice, also, that deliberate abortion was not considered equivalent with murder, but still remained a "very heinous misdemeanor"! This was the case also in the United States, which still uses Blackstone's common law as a basis for our own laws, until the middle of the 19th century. One law professor, teaching during this time period, published a copy of one of his lectures:

"In Massachusetts, [abortion] is not even an indictable offense, prior to quickening. At common law, it not punishable at all, if done before quickening, and with the consent of the mother. The State of New York has, however, been aroused from this indifference to human life, and has presented a better example to her confederates in our Federal Union. By her revised statutes, criminal abortion, before quickening, is punishable by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and imprisonment for one year. If the woman be quick, then it is punishable as manslaughter in the second degree."
(Hodge, Hugh Lenox. Foeticide: Or Criminal Abortion, 27 (1869), from Google Books)

The British changed their laws in 1803 to reflect this religious and cultural trend. According to the new law, abortion prior to quickening was a felony punishable by a great variety of things, including fines, prison time, being shipped off to Australia, public whipping, and time spent in the pillory. After quickening, abortion was considered murder and punished as such.

According to medical studies, a woman pregnant for the first time feels the fetal movement in her uterine muscles as late as 20-21 weeks, independent of her own body shape. A woman pregnant for the second time can feel the fetus moving as early as 14 weeks. So, this quickening takes place as early as 2.5 months and as late as 4. The woman knows that she is pregnant as early as a couple of weeks after conception, but the fetus wasn't considered quick (alive) until as much as four months later.

Zoe and Thelema

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that what the British, what Luke, what David, and what the author of Exodus were considering was the will of the child. No, this isn't directly supported by any of those, but bear with me. Throughout history, will, judgment, mind, and life have all been considered synonymous. The Greek word pneuma - spirit - refers to the ability to will one's own body to move. Even in modern English, a spirited person is one with a strong and forceful will. The Greek word psuche (soul) can also be translated breath. The soul was said to manifest itself through the action of willful breath.

In Greek, there are two words for life: bios and zoe. Bios is the biological life - simple worldly "being alive" - shared by animals and humans. It is characterized by such things as a beating heart, working reflexes, seeking nourishment, etc. It is sustained by such things as wealth, possession, food, drink, and shelter. Zoe is the life of the spirit. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal zoe." It is characterized by such things as will, activity, and vigor. It is sustained by such things as salvation. A person can have either, both, or neither. When a person dies, his zoe may live on. When an animal dies, its zoe and bios simultaneously end.

(Biology, from bios, is the study of life. Zoology, from zoe, is the study of living things.)

Curiously, ending somebody's bios is considered murder, even though that person's zoe may still be around, but Christians are encouraged to live as though they had only zoe. A fetus develops its bios fairly early in the pregnancy. The fetal heart begins to beat about 22 days after conception. Within another month, the heart consists of four chambers, like any other human, and its beating is audible using a special instrument. The brain has also started to develop, but definitely is not capable of anything resembling human activity. Incidentally, in another month, the mother experiences her earliest possible quickening. Imagine that.

Conclusion on morality

Based on Bible verses, medical science, and the distinction between bios and zoe, I think it's safe to say that the colonial British were onto something. 10 weeks, 1.5 months, is the latest possible time that we can consider a fetus to have no independent bios. (It shares its mothers bios.) A few weeks after that, at quickening, is the latest possible time that our infant has no independent zoe. In each case, the actual onset of life may very well be weeks or months earlier. It remains possible, though biologically unlikely, that both begin at conception.

We can safely conclude that 1.5 months is the latest conceivable time at which a woman can have an abortion and still be within God's guidelines. The actual onset of independent bios may be somewhat earlier, as early as 22 days after conception, translating the actual divine deadline back several weeks. In other words, as soon as your menstrual cycle is late by one week, it may be too late. Your baby has detached itself from your bios and begun to develop its own. Levonorgestrel or forever hold your child.

This is consistent, also, with reality. If a woman miscarries during or before the fifth week after her last period, she has no way of knowing whether she miscarried or whether she simply is experiencing her normal menstrual cycle (albeit a little late). After she misses one cycle, she can assume that she is pregnant and any future events are miscarriages.

Legality

I told you earlier that we'd come back to this. We've concluded, reading each Bible verse as consistently with scientific discoveries as possible, that 22 days is the absolute latest at which a human embryo can be morally killed. It may be earlier! Now, we must decide whether it is reasonable or even possible to outlaw such immoral acts. We must keep several guidelines in mind:

1. As Christians, it is our job to spread the gospel of peace through gentle and respectful means.
   
   
2. A Christian government should uphold the will of God. (A non-Christian or mixed-faith government is under no such obligation.)
   
   
3. Christians should be loving.
   

Now, should we decide to pass a law against abortion, the law can do one of several things:

1. It can outlaw abortions entirely, leaving no room for doubt about our interpretations.
   
   
2. It can outlaw medical abortions, but still allow drugs like Plan B.
   
   
3. It can outlaw medical abortions at a certain point during the pregnancy.
   
   
4. It can allow all medical abortions.

The law may also have restrictions based on the father's consent and restrictions on who may tell whom that an abortion has taken place. It may also place restrictions on who is allowed to perform an abortion and what types of procedures they are allowed to perform.

Let's look at each option in turn.

A Christian-controlled Congress could outlaw abortions entirely. This is based on the idea that all embryos, including those which do not have independent heartbeats, are human lives that cannot be destroyed. The legal ramifications of making this declaration are numerous.

We would have to conclude that all miscarriages, including unknown miscarriages, are accidental deaths. If a person accidentally causes the death of another person, he or she can be charged with manslaughter. A mother whose 3-year-old child dies due to nutritional deficiencies can be charged in his death. Should a mother who didn't eat quite right during her pregnancy, resulting in a flawed fetus and a miscarriage, be charged with a crime? When the cause of a late-term miscarriage is unknown, should the grieving parents be subject to an intense police investigation for possible criminal activity?

We would also, in the process, outlaw all in vitro or artificial fertilizations because these generally result in a large number of unviable fetuses. Parents who are unable to conceive via intercourse, due to a medical problem in either parent (e.g. low sperm count), would now be forced to live without children forever.

There is, incidentally, a perfect case study of outlawing all abortions. The South American country of Chile has done exactly that. They will not even perform an abortion if it would save the mother's life. During the 1950s, 118 in 100,000 live births resulted in the mother's death after she attempted an unsafe abortion. It is unknown how many attempted unsafe abortions resulted in the death of the child and also the death or injury of the mother. Furthermore, a mother who was caught attempting abortion could be in legal trouble, placing a strain on the public child care systems of an already-poor country.

(To be continued...)

In the following entry, I am recording my own experiences, along with what I assume are the experiences of others. Obviously, since you and I are not neighbors, I cannot speak directly to your life experience. However, I hope this entry resonates with you. If it does not, simply replace "we" with me.

(Draft 3)

Modern social commentators often speak of a great longing for that which has come and gone, or that which once was but is no longer. We hear of nostalgia for the good old days, before corruption, before modern conveniences, and before the spread of "secular" ideas throughout our society. We long for something more, something deeper than the surface pleasures of our supremely mechanical society.

We occasionally catch glimpses of that something in modern cinema. We, even the men, absorb "chick flicks" and shows about family togetherness with a fond remembrance for something better. These become our favorite movies, to watch again and again.

Holiday traditions, whether they be watching A Christmas Carol on an old VHS or actually singing Christmas carols with one's neighborhood, evoke the same sensation. It floods our bodies when we return home after a long trip, smelling the familliar old house-smell, walking up to the familiar old porch, or feeling the warm greetings of the familiar old pets. It is the feeling of home.

The home-feeling often comes as a childlike comfort, the comfort of a toddler clinging to his mother's familiar sleeve. The feeling compels us to continue doing and saying the same things with the same people year after year, when dozens of alternatives have become available in the meantime. It drives us to reunite after twenty years with former fellow soldiers, former co-workers, and former high school classmates. When are we more aware of the absence of a dear friend or family member than during these ritual reenactments of an era of our lives long gone?

And then, one day, quite suddenly, often while we are still quite unaware of the feeling itself, it vanishes. We're left with a gaping wound that we desperately try to fill with success, with new pets and new things, with new friends, and with new camaraderie. But these new things never quite mend the gash left when the old home-feeling is ripped from our souls like a scab from an old scrape. Oh yes, sometimes we think we feel it for a while, when beginning a new relationship journey, when meeting a new friend, or when moving to a new house. We want to believe that if we set up our things just so, or arrange our lives just so, that the feeling will remain with us. But it only remains as long as the acquisitions remain new and wonderous. When the new-wonder fades, so, too, does the home-feeling.

By now, you've probably noticed my deliberate spattering of the adjective old throughout the preceding paragraphs. Indeed, many of the things associated with the home-feeling can be described using the adjective old. Others may require the childish adverb always. A family friend or a neighbor who had always been there, as long as we can remember, often evokes the home-feeling.

In his scholarly treatise The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes a type of love that the ancient Greeks called storge and that he calls natural affection. It is a need we share with the rest of the animal kingdom. Affection, Lewis says, is the feeling one associates with old shirts, old jokes, old memories, and old traditions. It is the shared bond between people who exist together, not by choice, but by circumstance. It causes us to accept abuse from a dear friend but reject the help of a friendly stranger. It does not require attraction, similarity, or even sympathy. Often, too, it is humbled by its associations. How many of us are fond of the crazy old friend or family member that we would not want to meet our new girlfriends or boyfriends? How nervous are we the first time a dear friend from university meets our family? How many dogs would admit to curling up with a cat each night?

I believe that storge and what I've called the home-feeling are one and the same. Feeling it evokes the sensation of the always-been-such and the old-so-and-so. Furthermore, I argue that modern society seems dedicated to eradicating it through just about every one of our so-called conveniences. The home-feeling, writes Lewis, is threatened by change, particularly personal change. A person who has always-been-such is now some other way, perhaps by education, by a new hobby, by a move, or by a religious conversion. The Christian family thus alienates or shuns the atheist son who has been stolen by some other group. He must have been deceived, they say. He wouldn't reject us!

Modern society, on the other hand, is based almost entirely on that kind of fluidity. "Dynamic content!" is the battle cry of the technology sector. The Internet disconnects us from our friends and families, providing them with ever-changing names and faces. JaneGirl83's name is familiar only as long as she decides not to change it. Instant messages allow us to keep track of our friends on a daily basis, but we often choose to talk about nothing but ourselves. After all, no situation, no bond, is keeping us together now. Most of us, after all, know more things about Hollywood, New York, and Washington than we know about our own cities and regions.

Quick: When was the last mayoral election in the nearest city? Who won? What have they done since then?

The automobile industry, assisted by government roads, has focused for a century on enabling us to drive farther while spending less money. When our children are grown, we fully expect them to move some three hundred miles away to attend a college we've visited only twice, and from which we know they may never return. Each of their childhood friends makes a similar decision, and a friendship born of the bonds of nearness and convenience is torn apart by distance and long distance charges. Childhood hobbies, dreams, and interests are replaced by their grown-up versions, which naturally differ enormously.

We develop psychological conditions to explain our emotions. We are depressed, we say, or perhaps we simply have some condition that renders us unable to interact properly with other people. We're too shy, too rude, too demanding. Our attention spans are too short, or too long, leaving us looking flighty or creepy. In short, only something wrong with us can explain the distance and the separation we're feeling. If nothing was wrong, we'd still feel the same way, right?

Next, we assume that maybe change is good, and that we don't feel right because things don't change enough! So we buy things. We accumulate antiques and strange family heirlooms as our beloved relatives pass away. We buy DVR systems and Nintendo consoles. We become a generation of 20- and 30-somethings playing with the same toys as middle school children. We take expensive vacations to the seashore, to the desert, to the mountains. We travel to other nations, and then feel good because we claim to comprehend their cultures. Even if we aren't quite satisfied, at least we're not as closed-minded as that other guy, right?

After a while, we reject consumerism altogether, citing its damaging effects on our psyche. The post-modern backlash against the consumerism of our parents' generation is one that has reverberated through every distant outpost of tradition, from church to family to television commericals. Modern products, as advertised, claim to put the power to make decisions about our taxes, our insurance, our children, our time, and our ideologies back into our hands - the hands of the consumer. Damn the producer who tries to entertain us on his schedule! Everything from Saturday night church services to TiVo are formulated to fulfill our supreme desire. We watch movies like Fight Club and nod our heads knowingly when Tyler Durden sarcastically comments about Swedish furniture.

We come to believe that if we can just hike the Appalachian Trail, manage our own television schedules, or backpack through the European countryside, everything will be okay. We will control our own destinies, going where the wind takes us! We will see fantastic sights which with awe like a child. Naturally, in such a desirable situation, the home-feeling we remember so fondly from childhood will return. Right?

But it doesn't.

Throughout all of this, we boldly march on, developing new relationships, new jokes, and new traditions. Often, we adopt the traditions and relationships of our significant others, but they are not quite the same. Sometimes, we encounter something old, something always in somebody else's life, and the familiar feeling floods back into us. We feel at ease around it, comfortable, at home. But then the bond breaks, the old-and-always goes away, and we are tossed back into the empty space between loneliness and longing.

When does it end? Will marriage solve the problem? Having a child? Buying a dog? I cannot answer that yet. I can only hope that because not everybody seems to feel this way, there is resolution for those of us who feel like we're clinging to a collection of driftwood, the only remnants of a beautiful ship that no longer exists, floating alone in the deep and unfamiliar water.

Maybe the answer is that everything new becomes old with time.

Maybe I need only to be patient.

Maybe I just need to let go.

But I like my driftwood.

It's always been there.

The title of this entry means, essentially, "It is of the highest advantage to learn from the insanity of others." (Isn't it nice how Latin compresses all of that into four simple words while English requires fourteen, including eight articles, pronouns, and prepositions?)

In 1964, American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an article entitled The Paranoid Style in American Politics, in which he laid out his case showing that American politics have been routinely influenced by fears and trepidations of unknown and unknowable forces tampering with freedoms and liberties. From the earliest days, Americans feared the Illuminati, then the monarchists, then the Papists (Catholics), then the European monarchies, then the Masons, then, variously, the Whigs, Republicans, Democrats, Populists, and international rings of commodity dealers. Conspiracies involving Jesuits (and, of course, Papists) were popular in the 19th century. By the 1880s, commodity dealers, wealthy industrialists, and party bosses topped the list of those charged with undue influence in legislative and executive dealings.

In the 20th century, it became popular to blame non-democratic governments for the world's troubles, beginning with fascists. By the 1950s, it was popular to blame the communists, and, once again, the Catholics. During the 1960s, political parties (but never your political party!) became a popular target. Democrats blamed Republicans, accused them of industrial conspiracy, corruption, and even, on occasion, stopped just short of accusing them of treason. Republicans, on the other hand, accused Democrats of the same vices, but also added an inherent desire to corrupt the sacred and the traditional American way of life.

Over the past decade, the feverish accusations have only increased with the onset of easy Internet access, 24-hour cable news networks, and nightly televangelism sermons. Everything happens, according to these modern fountains of infinite wisdom, for two reasons: somebody wants to either damage his enemy or increase his own power, or both.

American politicians now speak of a terrorist threat to our civilization unlike any hazard in American history. These people threaten to infiltrate our land and our culture, and, if we let them, destroy those great institutions which grant Americans their vital freedoms. Like the Masons, Jesuits, monarchists, and Illuminati before them, this powerful coalition of evil could attack us at any moment. They desire, according to those who report the threat, only to demolish the American way of life and replace it with a foreign ethic, one in which the freedom to speak freely, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to criticize sacred truths are largely eliminated.

On the other side, American politicians also speak of excesses by the United States government, led by, according to these critics, a cabal of international oil barons, who seek only to consolidate their own political power for personal gain. Words like "despot", "dictator" and "fascist" are thrown around with a level of inaccuracy not witnessed in this country since the 1940s. Some accuse this this powerful coalition of evil, this modern Illuminati, of manufacturing crises on a regular basis. They desire, according to those who report the threat, only to demolish the American way of life and replace it with a foreign ethic, one in which the freedom to speak freely, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to criticize sacred truths are largely eliminated.

According to the intelligentsia of the Internet generation, these fears are novel, an artifact of modern politics that did not exist prior to the election of President Bush.

In his 1964 article, Hofstadter eloquently described the enemy:

"The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced."

Is the modern period really any different than any period in the past, during which an enemy was "clearly delineated", distinguished by key features, suspected of modifying historic events, accused of profiting from the misery and misfortune of others? I believe it is not. Our modern crises are recycled hysterias from 20, 50, 100, 150, and 200 years of Western history.

During the 1950s, a prominent Senator named Joseph McCarthy had this to say about conspiracy to demolish the American way of life:

"How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men. ... What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. ... The laws of probability would dictate that part of ... [the] decisions would serve the country’s interest."
(Senator McCarthy, 1951)

Moving back 50 years, to the Populist era, we find a whole slew of accusations thrown from party to party, from platform to platform, from speechmaker to speechmaker:

"We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder ... We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. ... They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the uproar of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle ..."
(Republican Campaign Text-book, 1896)

"For nearly thirty years these conspirators have kept the people quarreling over less important matters while they have pursued with unrelenting zeal their one central purpose. ... Every device of treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and the financial and commercial independence of the country."
(Populist manifesto, 1895)

During the 1870s and 1880s, America was undergoing the convulsions of rapid industrialization and also healing the wounds torn open by the Civil War. Mark Twain famously called this era the "Gilded Age", referring to how attractive and shiny it appeared on the surface, while it was rusty and deficient under a thin layer of gold.

During this era, politics and politicians were equally dirty:

"Many of these [quotations] were credited to persons, publications and organizations that were created by the Republicans out of their own imaginations for the mere purpose of giving to the forgeries an appearance of being genuine, some were given no particular parentage, and others were alleged to be the utterances of well-known men and newspapers. The true character of these extracts was exposed over and over again, but the only perceptible effect of the exposure was the strengthening of the Republican determination to give the forgeries greater currency."
(Democratic Campaign Text-book, 1888)

"Democratic hatred of Union soldiers"
(Section of a Republican Campaign Text-book of the same year, which detailed the ways in which Union veterans were denied jobs in federal Democrat-led bureaucracies)

Some even denied it was possible to cleanse the corruption that had seized the legislature:

"The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force. Politics is a battle for supremacy. Parties are the armies. The [Ten Commandments] and the golden rule have no place in a political campaign. The object is success. To defeat the antagonist and expel the party in power is the purpose. ... This modern [talk] about the corruption in politics is fatiguing in the extreme."
(Senator John James Ingalls, 1887)

Election fraud, particularly in the South, was apparently quite rampant:

"At Robinson's Crossroads, Montgomery County, a record of the Republican votes was kept by M. Dillard, one of the oldest and best citizens of that precinct, and it showed 580 Republican votes were polled. The Democratic votes at the outside limit did not exceed 50. [A skirmish with firearms between two men allegedly invalidated the poll. The election inspectors] then closed up the polling place, carried off the box containing the ballots, and from that time to this, no information has been received in any official quarter as to the votes in that box."
(Republican Campaign Text-book, 1880, paraphrased in [ ]; the book cites a dozen other examples)

During the late 1860s, the first President to suffer impeachment was accused of violence against his own countrymen:

"It has been the misfortune of the Republican party that the events of the past few years have given it so much power that it has been able to shackle the Executive, to trammel the judiciary, and carry out the views of the most unwise and violent of its members."
(Democratic Speakers' Hand-book, 1868)

A few years earlier, during the latter portion of the Civil War, Democrats in the North, named everything from "copperheads" to traitors, suffered enormously under the hand of an increasingly hostile government and public. Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeus corpus, leading a great variety of commentators to paint him as a dictator or despot. The 1868 Democratic Speakers' Hand-book lists no fewer than thirty-five instances in which a Northern newspaper was demolished or destroyed ("suppressed") by soldiers or angry mobs of citizens in 1864 alone. One author was particularly vocal on the subject:

"Senator T.O. Howe in his celebrated Ripon (Wis.) speech said:

'I reply that if free speech be stifled upon any one subject, the Union is already absolutely and inevitably lost.'

This is none the less true because Senator Howe now upholds a dynasty that has stricken down free speech - mobbed and destroyed a free press, and claims the right to annihilate both at pleasure."
(Logic of History: Five Hundred Political Texts, 1864)

"If it be true that any opposition to the measures of the Administration is 'aid and comfort to the enemy', then it is treason as defined by the Constitution, and no matter what the President may do or propose, the least opposition is treason. Such a doctrine would land us in the lower depths of despotism."
(Same book, 1864, referring to the article below)

"In times of war, every blow struck at the measures of the Government, though designed only to affect a change of Administration, really affords aid and comfort to the enemy."
(New York Tribune, 1863)

Perhaps not remarkably, one could publish these quotes in a major newspaper today and they would coincide almost perfectly with material produced by conservative and liberal political commentators. One would only have to change the names.

Prior to the latter half of the 1850s, extending backward almost thirty years, there was no clear crisis, or enemy of the state. Therefore, the people invented several, for the sake of having something to vote against:

"It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism."
(Texas newspaper, 1855, cited in Hofstadter's article)

"Every government in the civilized world is at present tottering; and society, like a ship in a dark tempest is torn and tossed by contending elements."
(A Political Register: Setting Forth the Principles of the Whig and Locofoco Parties in the United States, 1844)

"If any doubt the truth of this position, let the melancholy history of Gen. Jackson's most diasterous dynasty, and that of his successor whom his Despotism installed, array the evidence."
(Same book, 1844)

Samuel Morse was an avid conspiracy theorist. He railed in an 1835 publication against the spread of European despotic ideas into America. He wrote that skirmishes between European nations should not concern Americans, but that no ocean could protect us from the influence their ideas. Since his book is cited by at least three modern histories and commentaries on American politics, it is safe to say that others shared (and even today share) his beliefs:

"Is not the evidence I have exhibited in my previous numbers sufficiently strong to prove to my countrymen the existence of a ... conspiracy against the liberties of the country? Does the nature of the case admit of stronger evidence? or must we wait for some positive, undisguised acts of oppression, before we will believe that we are attacked and in danger? ... The serpent has already commenced his coil about our limbs, and the lethargy of his poison is creeping over us. ... The house is on fire; can we not believe it, till the flames have touched our flesh? ... Have not the wily [maneuverings] of despotism already commenced? ... It is Liberty itself that is in danger, not the liberty of a single state, no, nor of the United States, but the liberty of the world."
(Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, 1835)

Should we wait or should we act? Is the threat not clear enough to alarm any number of American voters? Will we wait until it is too late? Could we not find a dozen similar quotations in modern publications, usually citing Nazi Germany?

Americans, of course, were not alone in suspecting conspiracy or engaging in paranoid politics:

"Of all the privileges enjoyed under the British Constitution, the most valuable is ... a fair and impartial trial. This privilege is even more valuable than the protection which the constitution affords to all who live under it, against every act of despotism on the part of government. For the instances in which individuals are likely to be injured by a despotic use of the powers of government are few, and of rare occurance; and they are scarcely ever to be found in the private walks of life. But every individual, at all times, wants the protection which can only be afforded by a fair and an impartial administration of justice."
(Review of the Proceedings of the Legislature of Lower Canada in the Session of 1831, 1832)

It seems, even in the early 19th century, that the (British) government sought to conceal vital facts from the public, for the sake of reputation:

"The number of idle tales spread about by the industry of faction, and by the zeal of foolish good-intention, and greedily devoured by the malignant credulity of mankind, tends infinitely to aggrevate prejudices, which, in themselves, are more than sufficiently strong. In that state of affairs ... the first thing the goverment owes to us, the people, is information."
(Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 1804)

Moving back several more years, we encounter the notorious tale of the Alien and Sedition Acts, famously passed (and expired) during the administration of John Adams, which restricted the rights of immigrants while simultaneously extinguishing the free speech of American citizens. To criticize the government in any significant way was considered a punishable offense during the tenure of this legislation.

Fewer people are aware of other scandals during the Adams administration, including his allegedly fraudulent election:

"In Pennsylvania, Mr. Adams gained a vote by a trick of the postmaster, who stopped the mail in Greene county until the poll was closed at Philadelphia. In Maryland, he gained a second, by the folly of one Plater, who balloted for both him and Mr. Jefferson, from an anxiety that Mr. Adams should be Vice President. In Maryland, he gained a third suffrage in the western district of that state, owing to negligence on one side and knavery on the other. ... Putting these facts together, it will appear that Mr. Jefferson, and not Mr. Adams, was the choice of America."
(The Suppressed History of the Administration of John Adams, allegedly published and suppressed in 1801)

Let us not restrict the course of this discussion to mysterious threats and elections, though! Let's venture into other areas which many claim are modern developments in American politics. First, we'll tackle the claim that the wealthy have an air of superiority, feeling that they, when elected or promoted to some high office, suddenly become better than their new inferiors:

"Men who have arisen to high elevation of rank or fortune seem to think that their nature has undergone a real metamorphosis; that they are refined by a kind of chemical process, sublimed by the sunshine of royal favour, and separated from the feces, the dross, and the dregs of ordinary humanity."
(The Spirit of Despotism, 1821)

During the 1840s, many religious groups joined the abolitionist movement. The ethic of church-state separation was stronger than today, and this advocacy brought criticism from commentators and other preachers, who felt that the church should not get involved in such a battle. From today's perspective, it seems ludicrous that a religious group should not oppose slavery, but the debate at the time was similar to the abortion question today. In addition to being a moral issue, it was also a partisan issue. Some people felt slavery was moral or natural, while others felt it was a great injustice, and others felt it was downright evil.

One pastor, arguing for a separation between church affairs and state affairs, said:

"Let our church courts [ever] throw themselves into the vortex of party politics, then farewell to peace and harmony - farewell to respectability and public confidence. If individual ministers feel themselves called to soil their cloth in this strife - let them bear the responsibility, and sink alone under the ban of public reprobation."

He was a pro-slavery pastor trying to keep his church from taking an anti-slavery stance.

I don't wonder why modern Americans feel that they are uniquely persecuted.

People throughout history have felt as though their contemporary oppressions, persecutions, and insecurities were the first, or, if not the first, at least the worst. The present monsters are always more salient than the imaginary demons of the distant past. In 50 years, though, our modern insecurities may appear to be just as ridiculous as the worry over Papists, Illuminati, and Whigs. Our modern political strife may feel just as strange to our great-grandchildren as the idea that church should not oppose slavery.

Viewing the present as tomorrow's history, from the perspective of history's tomorrow, can be very comforting. Partisan politics become less important than individual issues, and present crises become less important than general trends.

I leave you with Hofstadter's observations on war:

"Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all."

Your world will survive.

Good luck.

America's preoccupation with religion baffles many countries across the world. That a struggle between church and state seems imminent in this day and age is almost backwards - it defies either our modern conception of continuous progress or our definition of progress as secularization, or both! The highlight of this struggle, and the item most often seized by the contemporary press, is the struggle between evolutionary biology and young-earth creationism.

Young-earth creationism (YEC), at its core, is an application of the Protestant Bible, the first sentence of which is:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

For those who believe the Bible's text to be literally true, the subsequent genaeologies in the books of Genesis and Exodus lead to the conclusion that the world is only a few thousand years old. One bishop a few centuries ago calculated the date of creation to be 4444 BC, although most modern creationists reject that date, instead calculating the creation to have occurred anywhere between 6000 and 10000 years ago. It is impossible, they say, to know the precise date, since the genaeologies of the Hebrews are known to have holes. However, they outright reject the idea that evolutionary or geological time periods have occurred since the world came into being, disdainfully calling that fundamental concept the millions of years hypothesis.

YECs also tend to believe in a literal flood in the book of Genesis. Creationist theorists have devised a set of events, from an original flood, to a levelling of the earth, to a subsequent rapid continental shift, to explain in terms of a recent global cataclysm the geological features of the planet that appear to have been formed over millions of years. Another theory explains discrepancies in dating methods by producing examples in which they have been vastly mistaken.

YECs frequently explain the popular explanations using long time periods by pointing out that nothing in the evidence itself suggests long time periods, only our interpretation of the evidence. For instance, nothing in the fossil record suggests that layer X represents 65 million years ago while layer Y represents 250 million years ago. They are simply bones buried in rocks. An alien looking at a slab of sediment, knowing nothing about geology or paleontology, would not see vast time periods.

Our interpretation of fossil, geological, and other evidence, however, has led us to assign vast time periods to different rock layers and to use certain fossils as markers for those time periods. YECs also point out that at least one former marker critter, the Coelecanth, believed to show that rocks were 200 million years old, was found alive and well in the 20th century.

However, equivocal evidence notwithstanding, most YEC "proofs" are unscientific or even fallacious, frequently pointing not to evidence for YEC but evidence against evolution or long time periods (in their opinion).

It is important to note that not all version of creationism imply that the Earth is newly created. Many people who believe that God is the ultimate Creator do not believe that the Earth is only 6000 or 10000 or even 10 million years old. These people are called, variously, long-age creationists, old-earth creationists, progressive creationists, theistic evolutionists, and ID advocates. Intelligent design, in particular, is unique because it postulates only that an intelligence is necessary to explain some intricate biochemical features and systems.

Regardless of the truth of any sort of creationism, most scientists - religious or not - have accepted the theory of evolution by natural selection and its requisite long ages. Many Americans have also accepted the scientific reasoning behind the theory. Around the world, the theory of evolution by natural selection is considered as factual as the theory of gravity.

Scientists and science-promoting organizations have attempted to educate the public for decades by pointing out flaws in creationist reasoning and argumentation, and by presenting evolutionary biology in what they consider to be a simple layman's format. Many have been convinced by dumbed-down versions of evolutionary biology.

And yet the battle rages on. In the past six years, there have been nearly a dozen cases in which religious people have tried to insert intelligent design into state or local school curriculums, much to the chagrin of church-state separation advocates and many scientists. (Ironically, in some parts of Europe and Canada, where creationist beliefs are much less common, the government will pay for private schools which teach creationist curriculums.)

Why is this debate still raging on, almost 150 years after it began? And why does it seem to be isolated to the United States?

1. Many Americans believe that the Bible is literally or figuratively true.

This means that the text of the Bible contains true statements, including the statement that God created the universe. If one has been convinced through personal or other evidence that the Bible is true, or that God exists and influenced the Bible's authorship, it is difficult to convince such a person that something else is more true than the Bible. After all, why should mere humans be able to produce truths that are more true than the actual teachings of God? What makes humanity more qualified to say what is true than the creator of the universe?

In other countries, belief in the literal or figurative truth of the Bible is not held so dearly. Citizens of most European nations are more inclined to mix and match religious beliefs than Americans. Additionally, more of them tend to be atheists than their American counterparts at similar education levels. (In all countries, more educated people are more likely to be atheists than less educated people.)

2. Science is adaptive and fluid, and people are smart enough to recognize this.

Far from the absolute truth of religious dogma, scientific truths can change from day to day. A widely accepted theory, like the Big Bang and inflation, may be overturned by a single discovery at any time. This does not provide much security to those who feel that truths should be true. Why should they trust scientists over what they believe to the Word of God, when the scientific findings could be overturned tomorrow? Why not stick to what they "know" to be the actual truth?

Americans like their lives to be static. Their culture has evolved (?) in such a way that social changes are resisted tooth and nail by people who found older systems more comfortable. As a whole, social change in America takes place very slowly and on very small scales. In some areas, it is an entirely foreign concept. On the other hand, Europe saw enormous social change during the 20th century, leading to a much more fluid culture that can handle day-to-day changes in scientific thought.

3. Creationists phrase the battle in terms of a debate, not a scientific search

Americans are all about justice, and are fiercely independent, an artifact of their exploratory history. They love it when things are fair, when both parties get a chance to speak their minds, and when people are allowed to decide for themselves between two ideas. If one side won't let the other side speak, Americans assume that they must be hiding something. As Eugenie Scott, an avid defender of evolution, writes:

Another important reason that has enabled antievolutionism to take root is that America has a tradition of free speech, fairness, and letting everyone have their say. This admirable cultural quality is a great advantage when making political and social decisions about which opinion should be considered. It is, however, irrelevant in science. Whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth is not a matter of opinion. [1]

Creationists frequently appeal to interpretation of the evidence as being separate from the evidence itself. Scientific types tend to fiercely deny this, arguing that their interpretation is backed by years of research and hundreds of other scientists. Intelligent design advocates argue that if they were only allowed to present their interpretation in the schools, students could decide which interpretation they favored based on the evidence available.

The idea of an individual decision, backed by competing interpretations, appeals to the American people, who wonder what scientists are trying to hide by restricting access to ID and creationist materials.

4. Evolution proponents often point out that other creation stories exist

People who are creationists will usually not accept the validity of other creation stories. Since they believe in the truth of the Biblical text, they will argue that while those stories are myths, while their story is the real story and should be taught. This argument should be abandoned, because it only increases the suspicion that evolution proponents consider no creation story to be true, making them functional atheists. After all, considering every creation story to be equivalently valid is only possible if one believes none of those stories, giving each an equal validity rating of zero.

To many fundamentalist Christians, there is nothing more Satanic than an atheist. Even believers in other gods are considered to be more sane than believers in no god, because at least the believers recognize what Carl Sagan called the Numinous.

5. Evolution proponents often argue that many Christians (and the Roman Catholic Church) have accepted evolution

Fundamentalist groups often consider these people to be compromisers, apostates, or sometimes not even Christians at all. Arguing that Christians have accepted evolution seems like arguing that fish have accepted that they have lungs. Since many American evangelicals will go out of their way to avoid doctrinal similarities to Catholicism, which many view as corrupt or even evil, the Pope's acceptance of evolution is damning evidence against it.

(Some evangelical theology books even insinuate that the Catholic Church is either the Beast or the Whore in the book of Revelations.)

6. Demands for evidence often turn up "evolution of the gaps"

Since the beginning, evolution has been sorely lacking for evidence, largely thanks to lack of competing explanations. As one scientist writes:

Only lack of competition could produce a synthesis where: (1) many evolutionary biologists, beginning with Huxley, failed to distinguish individual advantage from the good of the group or the species – George Williams was the first to make this distinction generally recognized; (2) many [biologists in the 1980s] wondered whether the synthesis was testable; (3) Gould claimed that selection within populations was irrelevant to macroevolution; and (4) many failed to distinguish the phenomena of evolution and adaptation from their causes. (emphasis mine) [2]

Since natural selection is the only explanation for evolution, it is the one that has been attacked mostly strongly by creationists. They have argued in terms of irreducible complexity, parts that cannot function without the other parts in a whole. Evolutionary replies to these claims often argue that if events proceeded in exactly such-and-such a way, the irreducibly complex item is, in fact, reducible by natural selection. And, naturally, since creatures did evolve, and these complex items do exist, then that must actually be the way events did happen.

Since creationists don't accept the initial proposition - that creatures did evolve - and really have no philosophical reason to consider a natural explanation over their existing explanation, this argument is wholly unconvincing. Natural selection, in this case, is used in the same sense as the intelligent designer, merely becoming the stupid designer (or the "blind watchmaker", as Richard Dawkins put it). Textbooks and journal articles often state, without any reservation (or evidence), that evolution or natural selection has provided creatures or biochemical systems with a certain capability. From a natural perspective, there is no plausible alternative, since natural selection has no scientific competitor. It is only natural that, if something exists, natural selection provided it. However, a paranormal or supernatural perspective does provide several alternatives, and it would be impossible to distinguish between the two. (See point 11.)

Creationists call this "evolution-of-the gaps" in a parody of the oft-ridiculed "god-of-the-gaps". Saying that we don't know how it happened, but surely natural selection did it is frequently no more convincing and appears no less faith-based than saying that surely God did it.

In arguing for evolution, one should be content to admit that we don't know whether natural selection led to a particular development, although scientists must assume it did. Emphasizing that this is an assumption will convince many more people than making a blind assertion of faith.

7. Demands for evidence often turn up complex articles

Most creationists are not biologists. Most are not scientists. Similarly, most who accept evolution are not scientists, either, since we're talking about the American public at large.

Replying to requests for evidence by citing articles with titles like "Methylglyoxal Modification of mSin3A Links Glycolysis to Angiopoietin-2 Transcription" does not convince anybody. Only a few words in that title (modification, of, links, to) are even recognizable by laypeople. None of the concepts are comprehensible without a significant background in organic chemistry and biochemisty - two years of undergraduate study.

It would be like replying to a request for a summary of the evangelical Christian salvation message with an article title "Imminent incarnation of infinite solitude ontologically links Christ's transcendent transfiguration to the Kantian omniscient Biblical utilitarian complex".

Requests for evidence should be granted by explanations in layman's terms. The inability to describe one's views without using buzzwords often reflects a poor comprehension of the view.

8. Arguments and evidences often conflate "could" and "did"

The fact is that nobody really knows what happened in the development of life on Earth. Evolution provides us with a plausible natural explanation, provided we assume that natural selection did indeed perform the momentous feats credited to it. However, the abundance of evidence credited to evolution might more readily be called an abundance of evidence for a progressive developmental framework, in which creatures have changed over time to become more suited to their changing environment.

At the present time, evolution by natural selection is the only plausible natural developmental framework. Thus, scientists are forced to conclude that because evolution could explain the origin of species, evolution does explain the origin of species. There is simply no plausible alternative. However, those with religious viewpoints disagree, and can provide several other plausible alternatives within their supernatural framework. Arguing that all evidence for progressive development points to evolution is meaningless in this case. To those working from a supernatural framework, leaping from "could evolve" to "did evolve" is a non sequitur.

(Obviously, leaping from "could create" to "did create" is not rejected quite as strongly!)

9. Evolutionary research does not use the "standard" scientific method

Most Americans are not scientists. Therefore, when they learn the scientific method in high school, they assume forever that that is the way that scientists actually work in all cases. They feel that every scientific study should consist of a hypothesis, an experiment, results, and a conclusion. They also feel that each such experiment should be replicable by other scientists. Their views are further supported by the fact that physics and chemistry often do work that way.

However, evolution research is not largely experimental. Since most of the events being studied took place in the past, it is usually difficult, expensive, or impossible to perform a repetitive experiment demonstrating the truth of the matter and eliminating confounding factors. Even actual experiments involving, for instance, irradiating bacteria to induce mutation, do not include the same precise measurements as chemical reactions.

This lack of an experimental method makes evolutionary research seem less reliable than physical research. I can't duplicate the origin of a species in my living room, but I can slide a block down a ramp or mix two chemicals.

How can someone not committed to mechanistic explanations of evolution be convinced that natural selection of random mutations drives adaptive evolution? This problem is not easy. We cannot ‘postdict’ adaptive radiations in the same way that physicists predict movement of planets, development of stars or even (perhaps) the universe’s first three minutes. The synthesis is testable, but its tests have produced no verification as triumphant as the precise analogy between an apple’s fall and the motion of Mars. [2]

In other words, yes, evolution researchers do use chemical analysis and other experimental fields in their research. In this sense, it is a forensic science, like using the chemistry of a hair to determine the culprit in a murder case.

10. Arguments often conflate "natural selection" and "evolution"

Darwin's theory is called "evolution by natural selection". As I've written numerous times, natural selection is presently the only natural explanation for evolution. Functionally, the two terms are considered identical, but semantically, they are not. Natural selection is the means by which scientists claim evolution proceeded, but it could have proceeded via other means. Evolution, on the other hand, is the theory that all life on Earth developed from a single unicellular source creature (or set of similar source creatures). So evolution is the process of biogenesis and development while natural selection is the means by which it occurred.

Creationists separate the two terms. Very few creationists would doubt or even bother questioning whether natural selection shifts the distribution of alleles in the population, or even that it drives certain alleles into extinction. This is Darwin's most obvious conclusion and humans have been using it for thousands of years in breeding crops and animals.

However, they severely criticize the assumption that small-scale natural selection can be extended to explain full-scale evolution. Most arguments on this topic are based on faulty reasoning, so it must be said that creationist arguments against this extension are largely faith-based. However, there is no good scientific reason to assume that we can make this extension, except that there is no scientific alternative.

The primary problem with the synthesis is that its makers established natural selection as the director of adaptive evolution by eliminating competing explanations, not by providing evidence that natural selection among ‘random’ mutations could, or did, account for observed adaptation. [2]

As these non-Darwinian explanations were refuted during the synthesis ... natural selection automatically became the universal explanation of evolutionary change (together with chance factors). [3, as cited in 2]

11. Indistinguishability of theories

This is particularly in reference to intelligent design. The ID theory usually postulates that certain structures are too complicated to have been designed via natural selection, and so some intelligent manipulation was required to achieve those results. Sometimes, the intelligent designer is invoked without mentioning natural selection. This is not inherently a religious theory, although those who hear it inevitably replace the intelligent designer with God.

The problem with the theory is this: There is no way to distinguish it from natural selection. If an intelligent designer did manipulate ancient (or modern) DNA to produce its desired results, how would we know? Would it leave a signature in the DNA? Is there any evidence it could leave that we could not later explain with all-powerful natural selection?

So it comes back to faith: If you want to believe in an intelligent designer, you can. Nothing is stopping you, since the observed result is identical. If you don't, that's fine, too.

12. Naive theories of biology

When people who have a transformational theory of biology hear about evolution, it makes sense intuitively. One creature slowly, over successive generations, transforms into another, which transforms into another, etc. Under the transformational model, a white moth can be expected to have a slightly less white offspring, which in turn has a slightly less white offspring, until all of the moths are black.

However, this is not the theory of natural selection as stated by Darwin, and not the theory that people use today. The actual theory of natural selection states that certain traits lead to better chances of reproduction. The actual theory deals mainly with statistical predictions and observations of allele distribution within a fixed population, along with mutations adding new alleles to the set. In the allele shifting and mutation model, the white moth can have a black offspring, which has several black offspring of its own, etc.

As children, we naturally tend to develop the transformational model, and studies have shown that religious people tend to keep it throughout adulthood.

13. Scientists are not theologians, and vice versa

Scientists often have no authority to make the assertions they make about Biblical or theological topics. Christianity is probably not their area of expertise, and they often make foolish-sounding charges against Christians or religion in general. When Watson and Crick discovered DNA, they triumphantly declared the defeat of the "God hypothesis", whatever that meant. Additionally, scientists arguing against religion (or any supernatural/paranormal hypothesis) often forget that facts are true even if they are not scientifically proven. The laws of nature do not change when we discover them, and God exists (or doesn't) whether we can scientifically prove his existence or not.

Theologians, particularly law theologians, on the other hand, are not biologists. They often parrot the ideas of actual theologians without understanding, or confuse a scientific experiment with a debate. (Debates, after all, are common in their field.) They make assertions about the "theory status" of evolution without understanding the scientific definition of theory. They use arguments about moon dust that were discredited in the 1960s. Furthermore, they try to use fallacious understandings of evolution as silver bullets (such as "Why are there still monkeys?").

These arguments make each side look ridiculous to the other. Instead of sticking to research, scientists fall into the debate trap, while creationists hammer them with fallacious arguments. All in all, both sides look pretty silly to neutral observers, and each other, when the smoke clears. (Answers in Genesis, admirably, advises its followers not to use many of these ridiculous arguments.)

14. Ockham's Razor

Ockham's Razor is famously used to resolve the indistinguishability conundrum. The famous statement argues that given two theories that equally explain the available evidence, we should prefer the one which makes the fewest assumptions. In the case of intelligent design, the biggest such assumption, the elephant in the room, is the existence of such a designer. According to Ockham's Razor, we should prefer the explanation that does not require us to postulate an unknown designer (that is, natural selection).

Of course, some people's assurance in the external designer (God) is certain beyond any reasonable doubt. In that case, both theories are once again equivalent, in terms of evidence they can explain. We cannot say that natural selection did create the species, because we have an alternative. However, we cannot say that that alternative is correct, either. Ockham's Razor does not help us here.

We must in that case turn to some additional evidence - a text that claims to be an actual message from the designer, the author's signature on the world - and analyze that for authenticity. If we are convinced that the text is what it claims to be, we can use its claim that the designer did indeed create the species to choose a theory (ID).

As an example, ancient people once postulated that the earth was the center of the universe, and that everything else revolved around it. To model the sky, they used a system of concentric circles called spheres, on which the planets travelled while rotating in a second set of circles called epicycles. Each planet's sphere was a different size, as was its epicycle. The result, viewed from above, was a sort of looping movement that easily explained the movement of the planets in the night sky. Let me repeat that: The Ptolemaic geocentric model of the universe explained and accurately predicted the movement of the planets and stars in the night sky. In other words, it was a very successful model.

Until things started to change. The orbits of the planets are not entirely elliptical, and the Earth slowly wobbles. After some time, the model got out of kilter with the reality, so during the Middle Ages, scholars added additional epicycles until the model matched the present reality and also all past recorded evidence. Eventually, a scholar came along who suggested that a heliocentric (Sun-centered) universe might be more accurate. After a while, people discovered that the math was easier if they assumed heliocentrism, and dumped the geocentric theory.

Of course, it's not always so easy. Fact is never that easy.

Ockham's Razor doesn't determine truth. Sometimes the simpler theory is simply wrong.



References:

[1] Scott, Eugenie C. Creationism and Evolution: It's the American Way. Cell 124, February 10, 2006.

[2] Leigh, Egbert Giles, Jr. The modern synthesis, Ronald Fisher, and creationism. TREE vol. 14, no 12. December 1999.

[3] Mayr, E. (1998) Preface, 1998, in The Evolutionary Synthesis (2nd edn) (Mayr, E. and Provine, W.B., eds), pp. ix–xiii, Harvard University Press


The title means, essentially, "to damn something without understanding it".