Matt 24 watch, 82: The Gathering Storm -- yet again . . .

Recently, thanks to a kind donation from an expatriate, the local public library has acquired Sir Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the second world war. (NB: This work is best understood as memoirs by a principal, and as a source on otherwise inaccessible first hand information and associated interpretations by one in the midst of the train of events.)

The first volume bears the title, The Gathering Storm, and has the theme: "How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm."

In it, we may re-learn some key lessons of fairly recent (but all too easily forgotten) history:

1 --> How Germany, long since chafing under the Versailles treaty restrictions (designed to prevent a resurgence of the aggression that under the Kaiser threw the world into chaos and bloody turmoil), first ended up in the hands of a charismatic ex corporal as dictator, then how he bluffed France and Britain into allowing him to re-militarise the Rhineland. After all, Germans were "just going back into their backyard."

2 --> But once the Rhineland was re-occupied militarily, a fortress line was put down that recalled to a France with lingering wounds the formidable German lines that it had cost so many hundreds of thousands of French soldiers their lives to fruitlessly assault; ultimately provoking the nearly fatal mutinies of 1917. And, with the "back-door" to France and Britain thus locked and barred, Hitler felt free to rearm and indulge his appetites for expansionism in Eastern Europe.

3 --> At the first, he was rebuffed, not by Britain and France, but by Italy under Mussolini; who sent Italian troops to the Brenner Pass when Nazis in Austria tried to subvert that state in 1934, murdering its leader.

4 --> But then, Mussolini attacked Ethiopia, and neither Britain nor France nor the League of Nations that they led had the backbone to stop him. Symbolic sanctions were imposed, but they were not crippling, just provocative, driving Mussolini straight into Hitler's waiting arms.

5 --> So, soon enough, Hitler re-armed, building the army, air force and U-boat (submarine) fleet that would soon plunge the world into an even worse nightmare than the First World War. At each step, on the fear of or revulsion to war and the hope that he would be appeased, he was allowed to get away with the build-up to war. Then, in 1938 he was allowed to step by step engulf Austria, then the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, both of which were ethnically German.

6 --> Next, early in 1939, he gobbled up the remainder of Czechoslovakia on one excuse or another; setting the stage for turning on Poland. At this, the leadership of Britain finally woke up -- after they had already thrown away their advantages and would have to fight at a serious strategic disadvantage.

7 --> By September 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, provoking war. Then across the spring of 1940, he conquered Denmark and Norway, finally attacking and utterly defeating France within only a few weeks in May and June 1940.

8 --> So, by the Summer of 1940, an isolated Britain stood alone, and only the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy blocked Hitler from conquest of the keystone state of the international system at that time. Thankfully, the immortal few -- flying mostly semi-obsolescent Hurricanes and a minority of Spitfires that were only just comparable to Hitler's fighters -- prevailed in the Battle of Britain.

In short, apparently powerful states, but rotten from within and riven by inner doubts and divisions, multiplied by guilt over their own real or imagined follies and misdeeds, and by delusional wishful thinking about their times and challenges, may far more easily fall before the threats of their times than we may want to think.

Therefore, we must immediately ask:

How much more so are the small nations of our Caribbean vulnerable to the tidal waves of our times?

ANS: We are far more vulnerable to the decay of our civilisation that is ever more and more living out of Romans 1 than we are wont to recognise. (That is why we must be ever aware of our own inner apostasies, divisions and proneness to the idolatry of political messiahs and utopian ideologies that divert us from a sound understanding of our need to repent and be reformed through the gospel. It is also why we must understand the dangers in the tidal waves of de-Christianisation surging down into our region from the North, through satellite-cable TV, the Internet, popular music and culture, the intellectual and policy fashions of he day and many other avenues of influence. [in particular, we the Christians of the Caribbean need to soberly re-assess our tendency to emotionally identify ourselves with ideological forces and movements in the north that are strongly associated with Romans 1 style apostasy, whether or not we still smart from our history of slavery, colonialism and racism.] Similarly, we must be aware of he global ambitions of the Islamists. [Kindly note the distinction I here draw to ordinary Muslims.] )

All of these are regular themes in this blog, so we need not further underscore them just now. Instead, I want to draw our attention to an ongoing development in the pivotal region of the world, the Middle East, now that in Israel, Mr Netanyahu has again become prime minister; and now that the recently headlined fighting in Pakistan shows just how close the Islamists are to acquiring control of a state with nuclear arms.

For, we may read in a May 16, 2009 New York Times article, based on an interview with Mr Netanyahu, as follows:

WHEN the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits the White House on Monday for his first stage-setting visit, he will carry with him an agenda that clashes insistently with that of President Obama. Mr. Obama wants Mr. Netanyahu to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu wants something else entirely: the president’s agreement that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons . . . .

Mr. Netanyahu would prefer to avoid hard decisions concerning the Palestinian issue, for reasons both political (he is not, let us say, sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian self-determination) and strategic (he believes the Palestinians, divided and dysfunctional, their extremists firmly in the Iranian camp, are unready for compromise). Nevertheless, the prime minister’s preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear program seems sincere and deeply felt . . . .

Mr. Netanyahu . . . said that Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons represented a “hinge of history.”

“Iran has threatened to annihilate a state,” he said. “In historical terms, this is an astounding thing. It’s a monumental outrage that goes effectively unchallenged in the court of public opinion. Sure, there are perfunctory condemnations, but there’s no j’accuse — there’s no shock.” He argued that one lesson of history is that “bad things tend to get worse if they’re not challenged early.” He went on, “Iranian leaders talk about Israel’s destruction or disappearance while simultaneously creating weapons to ensure its disappearance.”

Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t believe that Iran would necessarily launch a nuclear-tipped missile at Tel Aviv. He argues instead that Iran could bring about the eventual end of Israel simply by possessing such weaponry. “Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella,” he said. This could lead to the depopulation of the Negev and the Galilee, both of which have already endured sustained rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah.

More broadly, he said, a nuclear Iran “would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.”

Of course, Mr Netanyahu's "hinge of history" is a direct echo of the title for the fourth volume in the Churchill series on World War II, "The Hinge of Fate."

In that volume, Churchill describes the decisive turn in the tides of the war across 1942.

For, up to June to December 1942, the Allies seemingly hardly won a battle; after that -- having finally (but belatedly) mobilised adequate resources and having begun to "bleed the Germans white" in Russia (and the value of that massive Russian sacrifice should never be underestimated) -- they seemingly hardly lost one. The difference is, Mr Netanyahu is suggesting that the ongoing slow-burn global ideological, geostrategic and spiritual contest triggered by the rise of militant Islamism -- note my distinction from "ordinary" Muslims -- in recent decades, could now easily and irreversibly shift to overdrive; once Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

Indeed, with the recent apparently successful launch of a space satellite, Iran has already acquired the ballistic missiles to launch even crude nukes on a continent-wide or even global scale. The same Iran that has sponsored global terrorism since 1979, which has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, and which has committed itself to the Mahdist global subjugation project of eschatological Islam. the very same Iran where we may note Khorasan is located, making the eschatological predictions of the Black Flag Armies in the hadiths all too relevant:

“Hadith indicate that black flags coming from the area of Khorasan will signify the appearance of the Mahdi is nigh. Khorasan is in todays Iran, and some scholars have said that this hadith means when the black flags appear from Central Asia, i.e. in the direction of Khorasan, then the appearance of the Mahdi is imminent.” [Muhammad Hisham Kabani – a chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America -- The Approach of Armageddon? (Canada, Supreme Muslim Council of America, 2003), p. 231. (NB Others point out that Khorasan formerly referred to areas E & NE of Persian Empire; and point to the Taliban as the probable black flag army.) ]

Expanding on the role of the Mahdi, Joel Richardson next cites Egyptian authors Muhammad ibn Izzat and Muhammd ‘Arif:

The Mahdi will be victorious and eradicate those pigs and dogs and the idols of this time so that there will once more be a caliphate based on prophethood as the hadith states . . . Jerusalem will be the location of the rightly guided caliphate and the center of Islamic rule, which will be headed by Imam al Mahdi . . . That will abolish the leadership of the Jews . . . and put an end to the domination of the Satans who spit evil into people and cause corruption in the earth, making them slaves of false idols and ruling the world by laws other than the Shari’a [Islamic Law] of the Lord of the worlds.[Signs of Qiyamah (Islamic Book Service, New Delhi, 2004), p. 40.]

So, while there is a legitimate concern for the longstanding plight of the ordinary Palestinian people [a people whose leadership and allied militants have ever since the 1920's repeatedly led them down roads that run counter to their manifest interests in a reasonable compromise], we must also see that a key reason why compromises have repeatedly failed is that ideology of religiously motivated eschatological global conquest. An ideology that makes the hoped for islamist subjugation of Israel (and, by the way, the associated slaughter of the Jews) the lynch-pin of end-times global conquest by the Mahdi.

An underlying reason that somehow we just don't seem to see headlined or noted or soberly commented on in news and views presented by ever so many news media houses, intellectuals and opinion leaders across the World. The very same media houses, intellectuals and opinion leaders that show little or no hesitation in headlining and condemning the real or imagined sins of Israel, Christendom and the West generally.

In the case of Iran, we may simply observe this Christmas 2007 official statement, to document the declared intent of the Mullahs and their political and military foot soldiers:

[T]he exploitation of the weak, the unjust system of distribution and denial of the rights of nations [i.e. inter alia Iran's "right" to break its former commitments under the Non Proliferation treaty, and access the technologies for the weapons that would equip it to "wipe Israel from the face of the map"], will end with the reappearance of Imam Mahdi (AS). In the government of the Imam man will witness real economic welfare throughout the world without any discrimination

. . . . Imam Mahdi and steadfast devotees will gather in Mecca . . . . Imam Mahdi sends troops who kill the Sofyani in Beit ol-Moqaddas [i.e. Jerusalem], the Islamic holy city in Palestine that is currently under occupation of the Zionists. . . . Imam Mahdi will be the leader while Prophet Jesus [NB: the Islamic end times no. 2 to the Mahdi: Isa, not the Biblical Jesus!] will act as his lieutenant in the struggle against oppression and establishment of justice in the world. [Consider here, on many recent illustrations of what such Iranian-style Islamic "justice" too often has meant.] Jesus had himself given the tidings of the coming of God's last messenger and will see Mohammad's ideals materialize in the time of the Mahdi. The seat of the Mahdi’s global government will be the city of Kufa [a Shiite city and centre of pilgrimage in Iraq] . . . .From here he will dominate the east and the west to fill the earth with justice.

If you doubt the above on the implied intended consequences for Jews, kindly read the following cite of a hadith from Clause 7 of the Hamas Charter -- the same Hamas that is backed by Iran and poses ever so convincingly before the world as the victim of Israeli and Western oppression:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews). When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla [= slave or servant of Allah], there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim).

Now, as recent history has shown, determinedly aggressive ideologies will often cloak themselves in the robes of the victim, the better to persuade those they seek to dominate, to back off while they are yet relatively weak.

By the time those who are asleep at the wheel wake up, it may be too late.

Equally, the lesson of history is that such aggressive global agendas may only in the end be deterred and/or defeated by superior force backed up by the foresight, will and perseverance that will not yield to the blandishments of appeasement or the attempts to blame the intended victims for provoking attack or worse "deserving to be punished" for their sins.

So, Mr Netanyahu -- for all his own real and imagined sins and those of his nation over the years [and, let him among us who is without guilt cast the first stone . . . ] -- is precisely right to observe that “bad things tend to get worse if they’re not challenged early.”

In that light, it is highly significant that the interviewer seemingly has missed the key echo of the lessons drawn by Churchill.

(Instead he unfortunately wanders off into somewhat ad hominem analyses of Mr Netanyahu's father's career as an historian of the persecution of Jews in Spain, and the further family history that it is Mr Netanyahu's brother who was a leader of the Entebbe raid in 1976 who was killed in the act of rescuing hostages on a hijacked British airliner. All of that perhaps lends further personal point to the Israeli PM's views, but here is an elephant in the room that many seem to be pretending is not there: the still living history of the rise of fascism in the 1930's and 40's and the consequences of appeasement and trying to compromise with those who used compromises and solemn treaty obligations only as stepping stones to aggression. )

That brings us to the predicted geostrategic test that is now on the table in front of both the new American and the new Israeli administrations; the one that they had better not fail:

Mr. Netanyahu may be able to convince Mr. Obama that Iran poses an Amalek-sized threat to Israel, but he will have a much more difficult time convincing him that Iran poses an existential threat to America. It is certainly true that a nuclear Iran is not in the best interests of the United States. It would mean, among other things, the probable beginning of a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region, and it would mean that the 30-year-struggle between America and Iran for domination of the Persian Gulf will be over, with Persia the victor. But the short-term costs, in particular, for an American strike — or an American-approved Israeli strike — could be appallingly high.

As the crisis worsens, Mr. Obama will find his options few, and those that exist will require him to bring to bear all his talents of persuasion . . .

But, domination of the Persian Gulf by a state committed to an ideology of global subjugation under Mahdi, backed up by nuclear weapons, is control of the oil jugular vein of the world economy.

With all too easily foreseen and utterly destructive consequences.

Moreover, it is precisely the view that one can simply plead sweet reason, persuade and compromise with those bent on aggressive agendas that threw the world into a spiral to war across the 1930's. (The strategy of containment, sustained across painful and expensive decades -- and in the teeth of sustained, nearly successful attempts to influence the leading global powers to walk away from it -- proved far more successful with the global threat of Communism, from the 1940's - 80's.)

So, have we learned from all too recent and bloodily costly history, or are we now doomed to repeat its worst chapters?

Time will tell, but our duty is to pray for wisdom and to study, seeking clarity and courage to understand our times and then to act with conviction and determination on what the lessons of history have to tell us.

Including, here in the Caribbean.

For, the right thing is almost always apparently harder to do than the wrong or the foolish thing.

Until the foreseeable consequences of folly are reckoned with -- or until they roll in and bash down our front doors. END

Matt 24 Watch, 81: On Acts 8:26 - 39, the message of Isaiah 52 - 53 and 1 Cor 15:1 - 11

I am a little late with a for-Easter discussion this year.

Pardon, though the matters focussed at that time are always relevant.

A good place to begin is Acts 8, thus about 35 AD, with the report of Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian Eunuch on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza; doubtless returning from a pilgrimage, and probably bound for a ship to Egypt.

As Luke reports:

^{Ac 8:26}Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." ²⁷So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, ²⁸and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. ²⁹The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it."

³⁰Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked.

³¹"How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

³²The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:

"He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
³³In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth."

³⁴The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" ³⁵Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

³⁶As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized? ³⁸And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. ³⁹When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.

Here, the Eunuch is deeply puzzled by a famous passage, Isaiah 53. We should particularly note that (a) he -- on a plain reading of the text -- immediately recognised that it spoke of an individual, the suffering servant of YHWH, and that (b) he was puzzled no end as to who this strange but important individual was.

Philip therefore began from the passage and taught the gospel, leading to the foundation of the Ethiopian church. (And yes, on an historical side-note, the Christian Faith was in Asia and Africa at least as early as it was deeply planted in Europe.)

So, too, we can see that Isaiah 52 - 53 -- of course, the chapter and verse numbers were inserted many centuries later -- played a pivotal role in the C1 church's understanding of the Old Testament, and of the gospel. A glance at the text -- with a few points of emphasis added for clarity of focus -- will at once show why:

ISA 52:13 See, my servant will act wisely;
he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.

ISA 52:14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him–
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man
and his form marred beyond human likeness–

ISA 52:15 so will he sprinkle many nations,
and kings will shut their mouths because of him.

[What globally celebrated feast did we just have? Why?]

For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand.

ISA 53:1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

[ . . . ]

ISA 53:4 Surely he took up our infirmities [Cf Mt 8:15 - 17]
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

ISA 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

ISA 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

[ . . . . ]

ISA 53:8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

ISA 53:9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked

[cf. Jesus' condemnation in exchange for a malefactor and crucifixion between thieves],
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

[Cf Pilate's judicial findings on sentencing him to death]

ISA 53:10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

ISA 53:11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.

ISA 53:12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Now, first, we must note that this text is self dating.

For, as Is 52:4 reads: "At first my people went down to Egypt to live; lately, Assyria has oppressed them . . . "

Which of course puts us near the time of the Assyrian invasion of Israel and Judah, that led to the exile of the Northern tribes in 721 BC and wreaked much havoc in the South. (It also helps to know that there are two Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts, at least one dating to about 160 BC; which in all essentials read just as the above. Similarly, from the centuries just before Christ, the Greek language translation of the OT known as the Septuagint was in widespread circulation. The above text is not manipulated after the fact.)

That before the fact-ness is important, as the passage is plainly the direct "according to the Scriptures" context of the famous summary of the Church's official testimony to the gospel, in 1 Cor 15:1 - 11 (about 25 years after the event -- i.e. well within eyewtiness lifetime).

In the key parts of that summary we may read:

1CO 15:1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

1CO 15:3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared . . . [lists the chief "official" witnesses: Peter, James [Jesus' brother], the twelve [less one of course . . . ], 500+ at one go, all the apostles, Paul himself]

So, now, we see that the C8 BC Isaiah 53 predicts a messianic suffering servant of YHWH, whoo would die for sins, pouring out his soul as a sin offering, would be assigned a place of death with the wicked, and would also be with the rich in his death, and yet would see the light of life thereafter and the will of the LORD would prosper in his hand.

So much so, that kings across the nations would look up to him.

As Isaiah 52 observes:

¹⁰ The LORD will lay bare his holy arm
in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
the salvation of our God . . . .

¹⁴ Just as there were many who were appalled at him ^c]">[c]—
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man
and his form marred beyond human likeness—

¹⁵ so will he sprinkle many nations, ^d]">[d]
and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand.

And yet -- oh how hard our hearts almost always are, we men in rebellion against God -- Isaiah 53 has to begin with a paradox:

¹ Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

² He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

³ He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

All of this has been fulfilled, all of it.

In just one individual (and the Ethiopian eunuch ws plainly right, we are dealing with an individual, not a nation or a group) in the long, long -- and ever so painful -- history of Israel. the one who, being despised and rejected, was crucified between brigands (literally taking he place of the ringleader), and who waas buried in a ricvh man's tomb. the same who was seen alive on the third day and thereafter by over five hundred people, of whom we can identify about twenty from the official list and the more detailed accounts int eh gospels and Acts.

So also we have a sign: a breaking into history seven hundred years in advance to predict what would be -- and was plainly beyond the power of one who was taken by force and pushed in front of one unjust and abusive kangaroo court after another (Judaean elites, Herod's Palace or the Roman Governor's seat makes but little difference: do lawyers and Judges today first reflect on this indictment on their professions, when they sit down to craft ever so clever arguments and to make judgements that can ever so easily unjustly take away liberty or life?) -- then was shunted off to die as the convenient solution to the problems of power.

Then, too, we have a second sign: even as the sickening play of injusticve in the halls of power and where it leads passes in front of us, the despised and rejected one does not react with rages and curses. Instead we see a sign of the God who loves. For, the unjustly dying servant of YHWH reaches out with forgiveness and intercession for us, even reachig out to the fellow dying man on the next cross over.

So, we learn the depth of God's love: even a self-confessedly guilty brigand, now a penitent at the last hour, can be saved by God!

And, it was Friday.

The now dead servant is taken down, mourned by broken-hearted followers -- notice, mostly the women [the men having (all but one) fled in fear for their lives] -- and buried by wealthy men fromt he same tribunal that unjustly first condemned him. men who werer plainly making a statement to the tribunal -- imagine having the unjustly condemned prophet's tomb jusrt outside your city gates -- but who may also have been subtly signalling their sympathy and discipleship.

But, Sunday was coming.

(As Tony Campolo is ever so fond of reminding us.)

Come Sunday Morning, some of the same women begin from Bethany at the crack of dawn, collecting others in Jerusalem, and reach the tomb site as the sun comes up. They were debating how they would be able to get into the tomb to do some last, pitiful acts of devotion by anointing the much-brutalised and broken body of the martyred prophet.

One of all too many across the course of history.

But, in the meanwhile, all Heaven had broken loose!

And ever since, history has not been the same.

So, now the Easter Morning challenge is to us today: whose report will we believe?

And, why? END

Matt 24 Watch, 80: Is the God of the Bible (esp. the OT) a barbaric, genocidal "moral monster"?

In recent years a spate of "new atheist" books has popularised the often gleefully or spitefully put accusation that the God we find in the Old Testament is a "moral monster," the "obvious" creation of the barbarous people of that time; one best forgotten.

Of course, all of this is in service to evolutionary materialist atheism, which is severely challenged to ground either mind or morality. (And, as a relativistic, irrational, amoral system of thought, it then "enables' resort to habitually imomral behaviour. Pretty much as we are warned in Rom 1 and Eph 4:17 - 19.)

In the past few days, an exchange has developed on this subject at the blog UD, so it is worth putting up some key excerpts here; to help equip us to handle the accusation when -- not if -- we meet it. Similarly, Glenn Miller of the Christian thinktank has put up some fairly serious and thoughtful studies here and here, on the specific accusation.

______________

EXCERPT 1: The challenge to ground morality on evolutionary materialism, from Hawthorne:

Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can’t infer an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ [the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an ‘ought’. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there’s no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it’s not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action. (This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal deontic logic.) We’ve conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic and we’ve started out with assumptions that atheists have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion: therefore, for any action you care to pick, it’s permissible to perform that action. If you’d like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan ‘if atheism is true, all things are permitted’. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don’t like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.

Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can’t infer ‘ought’ from ‘is’.

Commenting:

1 –> The key issue here is that while evolutionary materialistic atheists [and their fellow travellers] are often fond of direct or indirect arguments from evil against God [e.g. the moral monster thesis of Dawkins et al], their own worldview is inescapably incoherent at this point: assuming and using the reality of objective morality, even as they hold to a worldview that entails amorality (and often thus enables immorality).

2 –> So, onward, we need to look at the issue of that incoherence as it seems a global consensus that human beings are morally mutually obligated: we all quarrel by in effect claiming “you unfair me.” (That is, we imply that we have rights that must be respected, based in the end on our dignity as persons . . .

3 –> . . . and so, materialists: what inherent dignity accrues to a bit of jumped up pond slime and its perceptions of emotions of outrage or sensations of pain — which are in any case inevitable to one degree or another?

4 –> In short, we have a global consensus that we are morally bound and hold some dignity, a dignity incompatible with our being jumped up pond slime.

5 –> We also have a global consensus that at least some of the time we think, reason and know objectively and even correctly.

6 –> But if we are jumped up pond slime, so-called thought is nothing but electro-chemical activity in neurons, which are in turn partly programmed genetically and partly programmed by whatever accidents of environment we encounter; in the end tracing to mental activity being produced and controlled by chance circumstances and mechanical material forces, however mediated. So, what controls our thought life has nothing whatsoever to do with (especially abstract) logical validity or truth.

7 –> Bn short the objectivity of morality and the credibility of mind both turn out to be facts that are not well accounted for by evolutionary materialist thought [and please notice my specificity, as is so for Mr Hawthorne too].

8 –> But, such thought and its zealous promotion by its true believers depend implicitly on the credibility of what it cannot account for as a theory and worldview of origins. In short, we see self-referential incoherence of an evidently inescapable kind. Reductio ad absurdum, unless a reasonable solution is forthcoming . . . and the burden of rebuttal is on the side of the evidently incoherent position.

_________________

EXCERPT 2: The challenge of the problem of evil:

9 –> But, does that not equally point to the need for Judaeo-Christian theists to rebut the problem of evil? Precisely: DONE, ever since Plantinga blew away the deductive dofrom and tamed the inductive form as a the turn of the 1970’s. (The existential/pastoral form is a matter for counselling not debate; go find yourself a good pastor or priest or rabbi, not a circle of Job’s false comforters.) For those who came in late:

a --> The Defense approach is more logically powerful than the theodicy approach, for it relies on mere validity to disestablish a contradiction, not truthfulness of premises. (And those who try to read it as a theodicy show their misunderstanding.)

b --> The classic posed and claimed contradictory theistic set is demonstrably not contradictory, and there are reasonable grounds on which a world in which there is significant suffering experienced by creatures, is morally justifiable, given inter alia that morality itself is premised on the power of choice. In short, a world in which love is possible is one that necessarily has hate — and worse, indifference [in the bad sense] — as possible too.

c --> Thence, the point that the lesser of evils may be a relative moral good; e.g. wars may be just and homicide excusable; in a further context where death of an “innocent” (even that is relative . . . ) is a tragedy but may in context offset far greater losses in both time and eternity.

d --> Such a world is one in which reformation is also possible — and important. So is containment of evil [a la Cold War], and if necessary, removal of otherwise virulently spreading and destructive contagion (of which Nazism is an excellent recent case in point) through just war that inescapably will kill significant numbers of innocents given the means available a the relevant time.

e --> And note the current resort of the Islamist terrorists and their fifth columnist friends in our civilisation, who make much of the inevitable loss of innocents in a war of containment or defense against attack, as if those who resist contagious and aggressive evils are to be equated to those who spread such while intentionally targetting civilians etc to terrorise and paralyse their intended victims, and inter alia binding generations to come into a blood feud to carry out the aggression as long as their culture endures as an entity holding significant power.

f --> If that sounds familiar, it should: this is materially the same dilemma faced by those confronting the Amorites c. 1,300 BC and who drove them out, breaking up the power centres and destroying the hard core who insisted on defending the indefensible to the bitter end. (And indeed, nearly 1,000 years later, a descendant-survivor of the elites of the Amorites sought to destroy all Jews in the Persian empire: Haman.)

g --> It is also the same dilemma that confronted the Spanish monarchs c. 1491 and impelled them to forcibly convert or exile what they viewed with some justification as an utterly irreconcilable and blood feud prone population descended from invaders. (NB: I am not defending Ferdinand and Isabella [much less, the notorious Inquisition . . . ], I am asking us to understand their dilemmas and ask ourselves whether we have reliably better solutions that we can present as at least the credibly lesser of evils. . . )

h --> It is not without relevance to note that after WW I, the German populace in certain key parts, denied the reality of military defeat . . . a defeat bought at ruinous cost by the Allies. 20 years later, we paid an even worse price, but after the utter devastation of Germany, the centuries long feud between germans and franks finally came to an end, after three wars in 70 years.

i --> History has some very sobering lessons for us . . .

Sobering and saddening lessons. but on pain of repeating utterly grim history, we dare not neglect such lessons.
__________________

EXCERPT 3: The very existence of evil has implications . . .

10 –> But also, there is the issue that the mere known existence of evil as an objectionable entity has implications, as Koukl pointed out:

Evil is real . . . That’s why people object to it. Therefore, objective moral standards must exist as well [i.e. as that which evil offends and violates] . . . . The first thing we observe about [such] moral rules is that, though they exist, they are not physical because they don’t seem to have physical properties. We won’t bump into them in the dark. They don’t extend into space. They have no weight. They have no chemical characteristics. Instead, they are immaterial things we discover through the process of thought, introspection, and reflection without the aid of our five senses . . . .

We have, with a high degree of certainty, stumbled upon something real. Yet it’s something that can’t be proven empirically or described in terms of natural laws. This teaches us there’s more to the world than just the physical universe. If non-physical things–like moral rules–truly exist, then materialism as a world view is false.

There seem to be many other things that populate the world, things like propositions, numbers, and the laws of logic. Values like happiness, friendship, and faithfulness are there, too, along with meanings and language. There may even be persons–souls, angels, and other divine beings.

Our discovery also tells us some things really exist that science has no access to, even in principle. Some things are not governed by natural laws. Science, therefore, is not the only discipline giving us true information about the world. It follows, then, that naturalism as a world view is also false.

Our discovery of moral rules forces us to expand our understanding of the nature of reality and open our minds to the possibility of a host of new things that populate the world in the invisible realm.

11 –> Thus, evil is now reduced to proper scope: a painful difficulty within the general face-validity of a theistic view. And, as Job’s case shows, it may be painful and hard to understand — perhaps even in part beyond our capacity to understand — but that does not give us leave to pretend to knowledge beyond our capacity, and to dismiss what we can otherwise know of God through personal encounter and/or from the characteristics of creation etc [Cf Job 38!]

__________________

EXCERPT 4: Euthryphro's dilemma:

12 –> Someone has raised that hoary, long past sell-date objection, the Euthryphro dilemma. But, it is fatally flawed: for, it inescapably depends for its rhetorical force on a long since discredited Greek concept of gods, i.e. in a context of the independent reality of the material and ideational worlds. (It is on that implicit base that it becomes persuasive to ask whether the gods command the good because they are good [a reference to the platonic Form of the Good], or because of their power, i.e arbitrarily.)

13 –> The Hebraic- Christian, revelationally anchored view of the Creator- Sustainer- Redeemer God is utterly different and is inherently not subject to such an objection.

14 –> For, we are contingent; it is in the Creator-God that we live, move and have our being, including that we live in a contingent cosmos, dependent for its origin on a necessary being, the Creator. And, that Creator — who is Reason Himself, Truth himself, Love Himself and Holiness Himself — by his necessary nature is both powerful and moral. So, he acts in ways that are both moral and moral in a context that they are also reasonable.

15 –> Thus morality is intelligible to us and we sense its compelling force as OUGHT, not just IS; i.e. we can understand core morality and see that its precepts are self-evident, on pain of hypocritically inconsistent absurdity on rejecting them. (Resemblance to the 2nd para of the 1776 US DOI is NOT coincidental.)

16 –> Indeed, let us see how Locke cites “the judicious [Richard] Hooker,” from that Anglican worthy’s Ecclesiastical Polity, when Locke set out to ground the natural law of liberty and justice for all — i.e Laws of [moral] nature and of nature’s God — in the 2nd chapter of his 2nd essay on civil govt:

. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature [which of course in both Hooker's and Locke's contexts traces to the equality of our creation in God's image], as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant.

17 –> Thus we see articulated precisely the view of core morality that we find in Romans:

2: 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the [written Mosaic] law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) . . . .

RO 13:8b . . . he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

18 –> In short, core morality — not the mores of any given place or time, which often fail to be consistent with core morality 9which is why we need repentance and reform, and to listen to the pleading ever so sweetly reasonable voice of both conscience and true prophet [note the modifier!]) — is just as deeply and indelibly imprinted in our inner life as is core intelligence.

19 –> That is how we find it an objective, consensus obligation, and how we find it reasonable as well. That is OUGHT is objective truth, in a world created and sustained by the inherently moral and inherently necessary, inherently truthful and loving Creator God.

20 –> Thus also, why we find the objectivity of such core morality is a compass needle pointing to its Source.

__________________

EXCERPT 5: On the implications for our worldviews:

j –> We also — as a matter of fact — find ourselves bound to respect the truth and to seek it, though we often fall short thereof; especially where the truth affects matters of justice. (Just think about what happens when we quarrel.)

k –> So, again per brute experienced and observed fact, we find ourselves morally bound to one another; leading to the issue of equality of nature and moral obligation as an inherent part of that nature.

l –> Such of course leads to the criterion of worldview choice that no view that is amoral or immoral is credible. (Thus, en passant, the force of Hawthorne’s argument, and Koukl’s argument, as well as the impact of the moral argument to God; as well as the significance of Plantinga’s successful blunting of the problem of evil per the Free Will Defense.)

m –> As well, by the very nature of virtue, virtues rest on choice: one loves only because one has made a choice. A programmed robot cannot LOVE, though it may be an instrument of someone’s loving care. (And notice how virtue is a property of persons, indeed of intelligent agents.)

n –> Thus also a world in which virtues based on love are possible, is also a world in which vices based on hate or indifference are possible. And in such a world, especially if the in-group vs out-group trans-generational vengeful blood feud is a cultural prospect, we face sometimes grim choices of the lesser of evils. (NB: I cited some cases earlier this morning. Until the objectors who would paint God as a moral monster engage these issues, they have no right to claim that such putting of God into the dock is a responsible position.)

o –> If you have the lesser problem of being troubles by such grim realities, welcome to the club.

p –> Only, let us be humble enough to understand that we cannot calculate the balance of evils better than God. And then try to imagine a world in which ONLY an eye for an eye and ONLY a tooth for a tooth was an IMPROVEMENT.

q –> Then join me in shuddering as we contemplate what lurks in the depths of our hearts.

r –> Then, understand the love of God who came and bled for us.

s –> Then, join us in the call to mutual repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation leading to discipleship under the Teacher of Love and reform based on love, that are at the heart of the gospel.
____________

Grace be with us all . . . that we may unstintingly look into our own hearts, and find a way to turn from evil and vengefulness to the good. END

Matt 24 Watch, 79: An Israeli, Muslim, Bedouin Arab Vice Consul speaks out on "Israel Apartheid Week"

The above title may seem a bit surprising to two groups of people:

(i) those who may either have not heard of the current wave of 'Zionism = Racism = Apartheid" rhetoric, or

(ii) those who may naively believe this now increasingly stressed theme of the post-Colonialist narrative on the Middle East.

So, thanks to an alert reader, I link and excerpt from an interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle, datelined March 4th 2009, by Vice Consul Ishmael Khaldi of Israel. In key parts it reads:

. . . My perspective is unique, both as the vice consul for Israel in San Francisco, and as a Bedouin and the highest-ranking Muslim representing the Israel in the United States. I was born into a Bedouin tribe in Northern Israel, one of 11 children, and began life as shepherd living in our family tent. I went on to serve in the Israeli border police, and later earned a master's degree in political science from Tel Aviv University before joining the Israel Foreign Ministry.

I am a proud Israeli - along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bahai, Bedouin, Christians and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deals honestly. By any yardstick you choose - educational opportunity, economic development, women and gay's rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation - Israel's minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East . . . .

If Israel were an apartheid state, I would not have been appointed here, nor would I have chosen to take upon myself this duty. There are many Arabs, both within Israel and in the Palestinian territories who have taken great courage to walk the path of peace. You should stand with us, rather than against us.

This partly biographical introduction and summary is vital in a day and age where debate by life story is far too often rhetorically decisive.

(We are at that sad pass as a dying civilisation living out of Romans 1 and Eph 4:17 - 19, where far too many no longer recognise that the evident and material truth and valid or cogent reasoning connected to the truth are the core of a good argument. So, unless an emotional connection is made, too many ears will simply not be inclinded to listen, much less then take time to carefully reflect.)

Having introduced himself and hinted at the key issues, Mr Khaldi also raises several rather pointed questions directed to "organizers of Israel Apartheid week, for those of them who are open to dialogue and not blinded by a hateful ideology."

Highlighting:

If you are really idealistic and committed to a better world, stop with the false rhetoric . . . .

Do Israel's Arab citizens suffer from disadvantage? You better believe it. Do African Americans 10 minutes from the Berkeley campus suffer from disadvantage - you better believe it, too. So should we launch a Berkeley Apartheid Week, or should we seek real ways to better our societies and make opportunity more available . . . .

Your radicalism is undermining the forces for peace in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. We are working hard to move toward a peace agreement that recognizes the legitimate rights of both Israel and the Palestinian people, and you are tearing down by falsely vilifying one side . . .

Strong words, but people of good will who want to move towards real, sustainable peace in the Middle East need to reflect on them.

For, this, too, is a part of the multi-sided, multi-perspective story.

So, let us pause and hear this side, then go on to objectively evaluate the overall situation, reckoning with the light sed by this view by a moderate Muslim who just happens to be not only a proud Israeli, but also a vice Consul of Israel. END

Following up a comment thread exchange

Arising from an incident at a blog discussing the design controversy, I was asked to intercede on the behalf of a commenter from the pro-Darwinism side.

Having done so, an exchange on some substantial points has now emerged.

I put up the relevant comments below:

________________

KF: Maya:

[ . . . ]

. . . I think the man in the Clapham bus stop, presented with the case of a falling and tumbling die, would find that it is reasonable to perceive the aspects that are mechanical forces at work [falling], those that are contingent, and to see that there is difference between uncontrolled undirected stochastic contingency [a fair die], and those that are directed [a loaded die].

Similarly, on being presented with a functional informational string of 1,000 bits or more of capacity, and observing its functionality, such an ordinary man would at once realise that lucky noise is a far inferior explanation than design. [Cf this comment . . . ]

Thirdly, if an ordinary man were to stumble across a computer in a field, he would infer on "like causes like" to design. Biologists exploring the cell have stumbled across an autonomous, self-assembling nanomachine- based computer, complete with sophisticated information storage and processing beyond human technical capacity at present. On inference to best -- and empirically anchored -- explanation, you would have to come up with very strong points to lead such a person in a fair forum to conclude that the result is credibly a chance + necessity only one.

So, I am not at all sure that Rob's arguments at the thread in question -- very similar to those he has up currently in several other threads at UD -- would carry the day [ . . . ]

-----------

R0b: kairosfocus, first of all, thanks for getting my back on UD.

and to see that there is difference between uncontrolled undirected stochastic contingency [a fair die], and those that are directed [a loaded die].

Quite right. I, like most people, have no problem telling the difference between a loaded die and a fair die.

Similarly, on being presented with a functional informational string of 1,000 bits or more of capacity, and observing its functionality, such an ordinary man would at once realise that lucky noise is a far inferior explanation than design.

I agree, but with a caveat: Without a closed definition of "functional", who's to say that random strings aren't functional? They're certainly useful.

Of course, if we measure information as Durston does, namely -log2(M/N), then even very long random strings have very little information. But my sense is that most FSCI proponents measure the amount of information in a binary string by simply counting the number of binary digits.

In any case, I agree with the principle that you're stating. Complex functional systems do not come about by lucky noise. There needs to be some deterministic, or partially determinist, causal forces at work.

Thirdly, if an ordinary man were to stumble across a computer in a field, he would infer on "like causes like" to design.

I would certainly infer design, but I don't know about the "like causes like" logic. Isn't it ID's position that computers, which execute strictly according to law+chance, cannot be designers?

Biologists exploring the cell have stumbled across an autonomous, self-assembling nanomachine- based computer, complete with sophisticated information storage and processing beyond human technical capacity at present. On inference to best -- and empirically anchored -- explanation, you would have to come up with very strong points to lead such a person in a fair forum to conclude that the result is credibly a chance + necessity only one.

There are two issues here: The question of whether such biological systems are designed, and the question of whether design is itself a case of chance+necessity. I haven't addressed the first question. As a non-biologist, I'm unequipped to do so, but I will say that I put more stock in the consensus opinion of experts than that of Clapham bus riders.

As for the second question, I'll spare you any further beating on that drum.

[ . . . ]

------------

KF: On this thread:

A string of comments have been entertained that are off topic.

They now need to become a separate thread if they are to continue.

I will note on the above as follows:

1] M --> It seems DS has rescinded his decision. Besides, I have no authority on threads at UD.

2] Rob:

The core issue is very simple: like causes like.

(That is, I start from the general uniformity principle on which the founders of modern science such as Newton built our whole experimentally and observationally anchored approach to understanding the way the world works. [They were seeing laws of nature as just that: the overarching decrees of Pantocrator for the general governing of physical creation; while leaving room for his direct actions as appropriate.] For instance, cf. Newton's General Scholium to his famous Principia, the greatest of all modern scientific works. )

So, when we see that there is a reasonable -- and longstanding factorisation of causal forces across chance, necessity and design, with well-recognised characteristics [necessity --> natural regularity; chance --> undirected, stochastic contingency; intelligence --> directed contingency], then that applies.

A falling die falls because of necessity, and tumbles contingently to a value; if fair, in an undirected, stochastic fashion. If loaded, the contingency is significantly directed.

So also, if one were to stumble across a computer in a field, the source would be obvious; per empirically well supported inference to best explanation. What has happened, though, is that we have stumbled across a computer in the heart of the cell. So, where does its design come from? [The above suggestion that a response that computers are not originators of designs answers to this, is a fallacy of irrelevancy. Computers, plainly, manifest that they are designed; the functionally specific complex information [FSCI] in their storage media and in the hardware structures and interfaces found in them speak eloquently to that.]

As to Durston's metric of information, you are mistaking an early citation in his 2007 paper from someone else for his real metric. He with others has developed a metric for functional sequence complexity, and has thus published a table of 35 peer-reviewed values thereof.

Namely:

>> The measure of Functional Sequence Complexity, denoted as ζ, is defined as the change in functional uncertainty [ H(X_f(t)) = -∑P(X_f(t)) logP(X_f(t)) . . . Eqn 1 ] from the ground state H(Xg(ti)) to the functional state H(Xf(ti)), or

ζ = ΔH (Xg(ti), Xf(tj)). [Eqn. 6] >>

Also, the context of such function is fairly easy to see: it is in this case algorithmic, and in other relevant cases is often in the description of a functional structure. (Random strings or structures seldom are useful in the cores of life forms or in aircraft or arrowheads.)

As to the idea that forces of necessity can join with chance to give rise to such functionally specific, complex information [FSCI], at the 1,000 functional bit threshold, this is false.

PROGRAMS do that, when triggered, but they are expressions of a higher level of directed contingent action. And, here, we are dealing with a degree of required contingency such that for 1,000 bits we have ~ 10^301 states, i.e. over ten times the square of the number of quantum states of the 10^80 or so atoms in our observed universe across a reasonably generally held estimate of its lifespan.

Until we get to that level of configuration, no relevant function is there to address, and in the case of life, observed life forms have DNA cores that effectivley start at 600,000 bits. It is only att hat level that we have independent cells that are reproducing themselves, and so will be subject to the probabilistic culler based on differential reproductive success that is commonly called natural selection; which is often held to be a manifestation of "necessity." natural selection may help explain the survival of the fittest, but it is helpless to explain the arrival thereof.

So, if instead, one wants to say that the DNA-ribosome-enzyme etc engine in the heart of the cell was somehow written into the laws of our cosmos through (as yet unobserved . . . ) laws of spontaneous complex organisation; one is effectively saying that that cosmos was programmed to trigger such life forms on getting to a plausible prebiotic soup.

The first problem with that is the obvious one: origin of life [OOL] researchers testify that not even under unrealistically generous prebiotic soup conditions does one see life systems emerging. And, it is a defining characteristic of natural laws, that once circumstances are right, they act more or less immediately: just drop a die.

Indeed, we see instead, that what we expect from the well-supported principles of statistical thermodynamics happens: low complexity, energetically favourable molecules and only rather short chains tend to form. Indeed, famed OOL researcher Robert Shapiro, remarking on the popular RNA world OOL hypothesis (in words that inadvertently also apply to his own metabolism first model) acidly remarks:

>>RNA's building blocks, nucleotides, are complex substances as organic molecules go. They each contain a sugar, a phosphate and one of four nitrogen-containing bases as sub-subunits. Thus, each RNA nucleotide contains 9 or 10 carbon atoms, numerous nitrogen and oxygen atoms and the phosphate group, all connected in a precise three-dimensional pattern. Many alternative ways exist for making those connections, yielding thousands of plausible nucleotides that could readily join in place of the standard ones but that are not represented in RNA. That number is itself dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands to millions of stable organic molecules of similar size that are not nucleotides . . . . inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus shows no partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of life . . . I have observed a similar pattern in the results of many [Miller-Urey-type] spark discharge experiments . . . .

The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck. [Scientific American, Feb. 2007.>>

Such is also at least suggested by the fact that our galactic neighbourhood, an obvious habitable zone, seems to be rather quiet for such a zone (starting with our own solar system) if there is a blind life-facilitating program in the laws of nature that naurally promotes origin of life and diversification up to interlligent life such as we manifest.

Moreover, such a program, if it were to be observed as a law of nature, would strongly point to an extra-cosmic intelligence as the designer of the observed cosmos. (That is, it would be a case of front-loading design into the very fabric of the cosmos as a mechanism for design; rather than being an alternative to design.)

In short, for excellent reasons, chance + necessity is simply not a plausible designer of a sophisticated information system.

Finally, in this context, biologists are not only not experts on information systems, but -- sadly -- thanks to the implications of decades of Lewontinian a priori materialism being embedded into biological education and into the institutions of science, are not likely to look at the evidence with the rough and ready, open-minded common sense approach of the man at the Clapham bus stop. (This, BTW, is one of the most credible explanations for the sharp gap between the views of most people [including a lot of people who are knowledgeable and experienced on what it takes to develop information systems and on related information theory and computer science] and relevant groups of such materialistically indoctrinated scientists.)

For, as we may read:

>> Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [Lewontin, NY review of Books, 1997; sadly, now enforced officially though decrees of the US National Academy of Sciences, etc.] >>

Plainly, "consensus" in such a question-begging, ideologised context -- as has been known for 2400 years -- is worse than useless; it may actually hinder our ability to seek the best explanation for what we have stumbled upon, not in a field but in the heart of the cell: a computer.

_______________

Any further discussion should be addressed in this thread. END

Matt 24 Watch, 78: Lessons of history, the post-colonial narrative and the IslamIST challenge to our region

Santayana warns us that if we neglect the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat its worst chapters.

His second lesson is grimly sardonic: by and large, we neglect the lessons of history. That is why we so often repeat what Barbara Tuchman aptly called "the march of folly." (Of course, she balances this with the equally true observation that because what makes for bad news is more likely to be remarked, we tend to percieve both history and current events as more dire than is strictly warranted.)

However, the reality of the march of folly is plain enough that we need to heed the ANC's classic motto: understand the past, act in the present, build the future. For, as the Russian proverb admonishes: dwell on the past, you lose an eye; forget the past, you lose both your eyes.

Thus, we come back to one of the treasures of my personal library, Alistair Horne's To Lose a Battle.

Horne there paints an opening scene on Sunday afternoon, July 13, 1919, as the crowds and the participants prepared for what was at once the grandest and saddest, most bittersweet Bastille Day ever. For, on that Monday, France (which had lost 1.4 million men) and the other Victorious Allies jointly celebrated their costly victory over the Central Powers of the Great War of 1914 - 1918.

But already, the Third Republic was falling into bickering and divided counsels, and the Versailles Treaty was such that Marshall Foch refused to sign on to it, declaring that "this is not peace, it is a twenty-years truce." Also, a bitter Austrian [Lance-]Corporal who had fought in the German Army was practising his oratorical and political skills, being paid by the German Army to spy on the German Workers Party that he had joined and was soon a leading activist in.

(The party was initially little more than a beer-drinking and grousing club, as was common at the time in defeated, half-starving Germany. However, by 1923, one of the leading Generals had lent it his name: Erich Ludendorff. And, under a new name, it was soon implicated in a coup attempt; the aptly named Munich beer hall Putsch. The new name? National Socialist German Workers' Party, Nazi for short. [And yes, Nazism, strictly, was a statist, leftist ideology; one smart enough to ally itself with the leading cartels and the military -- instead of threatening to put them on show trials and shoot them.] The former Corporal, Hitler, turned his trial into a stinging indictment of the postwar German Republic, and took time in prison to write a book on his struggles; in which he laid out his intent of "survival of the fittest"-inspired conquest and even hinted at genocide. Few-- apart from Churchill -- listened.)

Then, in 1939, Marshall Foch's prediction came true and a divided France, led by mutually discredited men and with an army led by tired men from the last war, faced Hitler's Panzers [including -- thanks to the ill advised "peace in our time," "land for peace" Munich Pact of 1938 that handed Czechoslovakia's defenses over to Hitler -- several hundred purloined Czech LT 35's and LT 38's] , 88 mm anti-aircraft and anti-tank cannon, Messerschmitt Bf 109 Fighters and Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers. France lost this time around -- in six weeks altogether (the decisive breakthrough battle and following tank dash to the English Channel under Guderian, Rommel et al taking about a week) -- and the allies suffered a devastating defeat that evicted the surviving allies from continental Europe. Soon, Mussolini's Fascist Italy joined with Hitler; and, Britain had to rely on Indian, Australian, New Zealander and South African troops to resist Axis advances in the Middle East. Next, in 1941, Hitler came within an ace of knocking Communist-led Russia out of the war, and in 1941 - 42, Japan joined in, carrying out a stunning sweep across the Pacific Ocean and Indo-China, right up to the doors of India.

With that, the era of unchallenged western domination of the globe -- for the first time since Jan III Sobieski of Poland led his winged hussars and other cavalry in a desperate charge against the Turks at the gates of Vienna, Sept 12, 1683 -- was over.

And so, we come to the present post-colonial era, in which the United Nations charter provides the umbrella for nationalism and liberation from colonial rule, until today there are over 200 independent member-states of the UN. But also, we went straight from one world war to another: the Cold War, in which Communists used national liberation struggles to push on the global stage the concept that was summarised by Saul Alinski in his 1971 Rules for Radicals:

"A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. [NB: Lenin's "definition" of Imperialism is: the export of capital [implicit: backed up by gunboats] i.e. this (plainly deeply flawed) Marxist thesis also takes in the issue of decolonialisation.] From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism." p.10

Of course, between 1989 and 1991, Communism collapsed as a global force, exposing the story of the rise of the Marxism-inspired agitator class as the most ruthless dictators in history, with over 100 millions dead due to their tyranny.

However, the Marxist view has deeply coloured post-Colonial discourse, and the intelligentsia habitually think in terms of the Capitalist West's ruling classes -- especially those who ate not socialists of one stripe or another -- as the prime locus of political, economic, social and environmental evils in the world across time and today. This even extends to the way we view the past of 1,000 years ago. For instance, Bostom reports how the crusades are frequently viewed as the first imperialistic project of the Christianised West, by citing Alan Riding [at pop culture level] and John Esposito [at academic level]:

...[The C]rusades were waged, [by] European monarchs, lords, knights and their armies of devout followers to fight — and settle — in an area stretching between what is today Syria and Egypt. The Muslims responded [emphasis added] with their own sporadic jihads until finally, by 1291, the Christians had been driven out.' [Riding, Review of ''Kingdom of Heaven,'' NYT, April 24, 2005]

Five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed before political events and an imperial—papal power play led to centuries—long series of so—called holy wars [emphasis added] that pitted Christendom against Islam and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and distrust. [Esposito, Islam The Straight Path, New York, 1994; cited, Bat Ye'or.]

This turns the history on its head, using the "he hit back first" fallacy. For in fact, under Mohammed and his early successors, between 622 and 732, Islam expanded by that religiously rationalised military conquest known as jihad, from Yathrib, in the Hejaz [S W Arabia; now known as Medina] to within 150 miles of Paris in the West, and to India in the East. They were only stopped and then with great difficulty over centuries turned back by force, in both the East and the West; a process that includes the crusades, which -- as problematic and wrongful in many ways as they were -- were in fact directly provoked by continual raids into Christian Europe (including Rome itself) and the rise of a new wave of militancy occasioned by the Islamised Seljuk Turks, which led to invasions of Anatolia [Modern Turkey], and preying on Christian pilgrims in the Holy land.

As Bostom summarises:

Within several centuries of Muhammad's death in 632 C.E., based upon the 'proto—jihad' campaigns he waged in Arabia, Muslim jurists and theologians formulated the institution of permanent jihad war against non—Muslims for the submission of the known world to Islam.

The essential pattern of the jihad war is captured in the great Muslim historian al—Tabari's recording of the recommendation given by Umar b. al—Khattab to the commander of the troops he sent to al—Basrah (636 C.E.), during the conquest of Iraq. Umar (the second 'Rightly Guided Caliph') reportedly said: [7]

Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it from them, (This is to say, accept their conversion as genuine and refrain from fighting them) but those who refuse must pay the poll tax out of humiliation and lowliness. (Qur'an 9:29) If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what you have been entrusted.

Jihad was pursued century after century, because jihad, which means 'to strive in the path of Allah,' embodied an ideology and a jurisdiction. Both were formally conceived by Muslim jurisconsults and theologians from the 8th to 9th centuries onward, based on their interpretation of Qur'anic verses [8] (for e.g., 9:5,6; 9:29; 4:76—79; 2: 214—15; 8:39—42), and long chapters in the Traditions (i.e., 'hadith', acts and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, especially those recorded by al—Bukhari [d. 869] [9] and Muslim [d. 874] [10]).

So, if we will heed the lessons of history, recent and remote, we should soberly recognise the ideological and military implications of IslamISM in our time, motivated by Quranic texts such as :

9:5 [the Sword Verse -- an Islamic title] When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God [i.e. Allah] is forgiving and merciful.

[. . . . ]

9:29 [the verse of Tribute -- likewise an Islamic title] Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Yusuf Ali).

However, the lesson does not stop there, for in the Hamas Charter, 1988, we may read some disturbing news for us in the Caribbean, once we factor in the further [yes, disputable and even dubious, but history proves that such mere "academic" quibbles do not faze ideologues] arguments of Dr Sultana Afroz of UWI's History Department.

First, Hamas:

[Article 12] . . . the enemy has trampled on Muslim soil. In such a situation, launching a holy war [against] him and confronting him become the personal duty [fardh ‘ayn] of every Muslim man and woman: the woman goes out to fight [the enemy] without her husband’s permission, and [even] the slave [is obliged to go out to fight the enemy] without the permission of his master. There is nothing like it in any other political system, and that is an indisputable fact . . . .

[Article 15] The day enemies steal part of Muslim land, jihad [becomes] the personal duty of every Muslim. With regard to the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, it is a must to fly the banner of jihad. That means the propagation of Islamic awareness among the masses – locally [in Palestine], the Arab world and the Muslim world. The spirit of jihad must be disseminated within the [Islamic] nation, the enemies must be engaged in battle and [every Muslim must] join the ranks of the jihad warriors [mujahidee].

In that light, how then should we interpret Dr Afroz's assertions? For, it is inferred [by Afroz] that the majority of Jamaicans are descended from Islamic Moors [by a process of expanding "Moor" from the OED's peoples of mixed Arab and (Caucasian) Berber ancestry, to include the Negroes of Africa who may have had any significant contact with Islam; cf my discussion here] who were brought here as slaves by the Spanish or the British, so that:

“[c]ontemporaneous to the autonomous Muslim Maroon ummah, hundreds of thousands of Mu’minun (the Believers of the Islamic faith) of African descent worked as slaves on the plantations in Jamaica.” [“The Jihad of 1831–1832: The Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2001, p. 227. (Provably false, as the some 300,000 slaves in Jamaica at Emancipation were mostly Animist, and then increasingly Christian, often of Baptist persuasion. The Maroons, similarly, per the main weight of the historical and anthropological evidence were overwhelmingly animist, not Islamic. Even the fact that the Maroons, since Spanish times, were famous for Jerked Pork, is a relevant counter-example. Cf. rebutting discussion
by Prof Maureen Warner-Lewis.)]

Specifically, the Maroons are viewed as resisting the British invaders of 1655 by jihad, as Saladin resisted and finally defeated Richard the Lion Heart and the other Crusaders in the Middle East. Slave revolts, similarly, are reinterpreted by Dr. Afroz as jihads, especially the 1831/2 “Baptist War” rebellion:

Jihad became the religious and political ideology of these crypto-Muslims, who became members of the various denominational nonconformist churches since being sprinkled with the water by the rectors of the parishes. Despite the experience of the most cruel servitude and the likelihood of a swift and ruthless suppression of the rebellion, the spiritually inspired Mu’minun collectively responded to the call for an island-wide jihad in 1832. Commonly known as the Baptist Rebellion, the Jihad of 1832 wrought havoc of irreparable dimension to the plantation system and hastened the Emancipation Act of 1833. [Afroz, p. 227. NB: This set of claims is most improbable .]

Thus, it is concluded by Islamic advocates that the Caribbean’s ancestral and cultural roots are largely Islamic. Islam, then, seeks cultural legitimacy in the Caribbean as being linked to our predominantly African identity, which is specifically tied to an emphasis on jihad as military struggle. On this basis, Caribbean peoples are in effect invited to turn away from both secularism and the Christian religion of our oppressors, and “return” to Islam.

Now, in Jihad, the first phase is an invitation, sometimes called the Dawah: however artfully or persuasively put, strictly, it is the call to surrender from rebellion against Allah and his prophet, law and warriors, on pain of military attack.

So, we are evidently in the preliminary -- often apparently "peaceful" -- phase of the Jihad against the Caribbean.

A jihad that is in Islamist eyes, rendered more intense by the direct implications of the Afroz claim that Jamaica in particular is "Muslim soil" captured by crusade and with the Muslim inhabitants compelled to "convert" by force and ruthless propaganda. And, that claim extends by rather direct implication to the other originally Spanish settled islands [and onward to Mexico and Latin America]. Then, too, by virtue of the further claim that the slaves of the Caribbean [and by extension North and South America] were predominantly Muslim, the claim also extends to the other islands settled and colonised by the British, the French, the Dutch or even the Danes [i.e what is now USVI].

So, whether or not we wish it to be so, the Caribbean is now a theatre of operations in the current global IslamIST Jihad to finally subjugate the world under dar ul Islam in this Century. [Cf map here. (NB: I personally saw and first archived this striking -- and very disturbing -- map and the associated, even more disturbing, commentary -- when it was live on the Internet.)]

Now of course, we here must in all fairness make and underscore a valid distinction between the peaceful majority of Muslims, and the radicalised minority of IslamISTS; indeed, let us hope that the moderates can prevail in the debates within Islam over its history of supremacism, militaristic expansionism and oppression of subject peoples and women.

But in so doing, let us not forget the warning of a few days ago on a related lesson of recent history:

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War II. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis,” he said, “but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.” . . . .

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or execute honor killings. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority,” and it is cowed and extraneous.

. . . . Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because, like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

(And, worse, [courtesy a certain reader of this blog] we now have a video warning here [warning, has graphic violence elements], on what tends to happen as the Radicalised Muslim population trends ever upward in a country. [Some may wish to dismiss this as alarmist rubbish, but it would be wise to check out the claimed facts first; starting with the striking correlation between the claims and the world news headlines ocver the past few years.])

So, now, history seems to be speaking to us, yet once again.

What are we going to do about its lessons, how, and why? END
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UPDATE, 02:02: Minor cleanups.