What the Pope really said

George Weigel quotes Janet Smith, a professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, who has an interesting analogy to further explain what the Pope was explaining when he was talking about how the use of a condom by a male prostitute might be a sign that the man was taking some kind of basic responsibility for his actions--in contrast to what the theological illiterates in the media said he was saying:

If someone was going to rob a bank and was determined to use a gun, it would be better for that person to use a gun that had no bullets in it [for that] would reduce the likelihood of fatal injuries. But it is not the task of the Church to instruct potential bank robbers how to rob banks more safely and certainly not the task of the Church to support programs of providing potential bank robbers with guns that could not use bullets. Nonetheless, the intent of a bank robber to rob a bank in a way that is safer for employees and customers of the bank may indicate an element of moral responsibility that could be a step towards eventual understanding of the immorality of bank robbing.

Read the rest here.

HT: Francis Beckwith

Gore flips on ethanol subsidies

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for [U.S.] first-generation ethanol,” the former vice president declared at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank. “First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small,” he said. “It’s hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”

Took him a while.

The End is Near for Redwoods. No, wait, ... Nevermind

And just when I was convinced that The End was really Near, I find out that The End is not really Here, although It may be Here tomorrow--and, if you think about it, tomorrow is fairly Near anyway. So I am planning on remaining in a perpetual state of temporary panic.

The California redwoods, we were told, just last February, were in dire need of being worried about. Why? Because "climate change may be reducing this crucial fog cover." The Nearness of the End, upon hearing such news, seemed Near indeed.

Now, however, we are told that, far from fog disappearing and putting Redwoods into ... spasms of foglessness (and incidentally the red underline on that word generated by my blog software is now telling me that it has never heard of this word before--get a grip Blogspot!) that there is plenty of fog. In fact:

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier.

That's the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won't be soaring everywhere.

So does that mean that the Redwoods will benefit? If the lack of fog was going to kill then, then would an abundance of it perk them up? No word for the Warmers on this one.

But one never knows what we will be told next. As for me and my house we will continue to dig the bunker and store essential provisions for the next published report showing that the End is, if not Near, Particularly Close.

HT: Watts Up With That?

Facebook readers can access "Vital Remnants," Martin Cothran's weblog on politics and culture here.

The Napalitano School of Drug Enforcement

What, is Janet Napalitano taking over drug enforcement in Kentucky? She must be, since the same Draconian approach to safety is about to be attempted here to prevent meth production.

Kentucky is thinking of following Oregon in making the decongestant pseudoephedrine a prescription-only drug because some people are using it to make illegal methamphetamine. The next thing they'll think of is banning 2-liter bottles, since they use those in meth production as well.

Just like the TSA's method of preventing terrorism by inconveniencing everyone equally in order to catch a handful of terrorists, banning decongestant drugs is an attempting to inconvenience everyone equally in order to catch a meth producers.

It reminds me of G. K. Chesterton's tongue-in-cheek solution to pick-pocketing: ban pockets.

Well can just pry my decongestant pills out of my cold, dead hands.

The anatomy of a bad atheist argument

There is one argument against religious belief that New Atheist types love to employ, that is not only a bad argument, but one in which I can't imagine even the philosophically naive bunch that make up the New Atheist would see any rational force.

I am reading Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, a book which expends a great amount of effort doing everything but what the title promises. And one of the many things he mentions that have nothing to do with the central claim he makes in the book is this argument:

There are many revealed religious available ... the idea that each of these mutually contradictory doctrines is inerrant remains a logical impossibility.

Harris uses the term "inerrant" here, but it makes no real difference to simply use the term "true," as many versions of this argument do. But pay careful attention to the term "each" in this statement. Does it mean "any particular one"? Or does it mean "all"?

If it means "all," then it is sound argument: All of the religions that make truth claims that are mutually exclusive cannot be true at the same time in the same world. But if it means "any particular one," then the argument is not sound, since it is not logically contradictory to say that one is true and the others are not, which is what each individual one (with the exception of something like Bahai, which makes the former claim) asserts.

Harris and other New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins rely on an equivocation of this term "each" to make their argument. They think that to say that "all religions cannot be true at the same time in the same world" means the same thing as "no one of them could be true at the same time in the same world." But these are two entirely different statements. And they nowhere state how you get from one to the other.

Can't we think of numerous questions on which there is a plurality of opinion as to what is true and what is false? In fact, one wonders how Harris would react to the same argument aimed at his own cherished science. There are numerous scientific controversies that have attracted mutually exclusive explanations. Is each of them false simply by virtue of the fact, that there are others that logically contradict it?

There is now a debate over Global Warming and whether it is caused by humans are not. There are two mutually exclusive sides--one saying it is, and one saying it isn't. Under the argument of Harris and the New Atheists, neither of these positions can be true.

There is a controversy going on about whether Intelligent Design can be proven scientifically. There are two mutually exclusive sides--one saying it can, and one saying it can't. Under the atheist argument, neither one can be true.

There is a controversy over whether same-sex marriage is constitutional. There are two mutually exclusive sides in the debate: one argues it is, one that it isn't. Under this argument, both must be rejected.

I could go on. But the point is, this argument makes absolutely no sense, and it's a measure of the philosophical sophistication of the New Atheists that they think it does.

Facebook readers can access "Vital Remnants," Martin Cothran's weblog on politics and culture here.

Defending ourselves by defeating ourselves, thanks to the TSA

If we had been told several years ago, that, in the future, checkpoints would be set up at our airports where uniformed government officials would be checking our baggage, X-raying our bodies, and manually searching us to the point of groping our genitals--but that government officials would be exempt from such procedures and soldiers would still be able to take their weapons on board planes--we would take this as a prophecy that we would be taken over by some despotic foreign power.

Who else would do this to us?

In other words, we are doing things to ourselves that we always feared our enemies would do to us. And our enemies are laughing about it.

In an NPR report on Monday, the group responsible for the last two significant terrorist plots said that they considered that they had already won, since they didn't need to get explosives onto planes to succeed: all they had to do was to make us spend billions of dollars doing things to our own people that they could never succeed in doing themselves.

We should be trying to defeat these people, not helping them win.

Facebook readers can access Vital Remnants, Martin Cothran's weblog on politics and culture here.

Practicing unsafe journalism on Catholic Church

The Pope says something to someone about condoms, and the secular media completely gets what he says wrong. I am shocked, so shocked. The press has completely bungled, time after time, the issue of whether Benedict has some personal culpability in the sex abuse problem involving some priests (he doesn't), and now they have reported that the Pope has changed the Church's position on condoms, getting it wrong again.

In fact, you can almost count on the press getting just about everything wrong when reporting on the Catholic Church. They seem congenitally incapable of getting it right.

Here's what the Pope said:

[T]he sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which , after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

So the press sits there with an earhorn, saying, "Eh? What's that you say? Your for okay with condoms?"

Here is Cardinal Raymond Burke trying to talk some sense into the press:

I don’t see any change in the Church’s teaching. What he’s commenting on — in fact, he makes the statement very clearly that the Church does not regard the use of condoms as a real or a moral solution — but what he’s talking about in the point he makes about the male prostitute is about a certain conversion process taking place in an individual’s life. He’s simply making the comment that a person who is given to prostitution, at least considers using a condom to prevent giving the disease to another person — even though the effectiveness of this is very questionable — this could be a sign of someone who is having a certain moral awakening. But in no way does it mean that prostitution is morally acceptable, nor does it mean that the use of condoms is morally acceptable.

The silly idea that you're going to solve thing like the AIDS crisis through pushing condoms apparently isn't going to get any support from the Catholic Church.

Napolitano's Reign of Terror

Airline passengers in the U. S. continue to be victimized by the ever more absurd Transportation Security Administration, whose politically correct absurdity is nicely delineated (once again) by
Anne Coulter:

After the 9/11 attacks, when 19 Muslim terrorists -- 15 from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Egypt and Lebanon, 14 with "al" in their names -- took over commercial aircraft with box-cutters, the government banned sharp objects from planes.

Airport security began confiscating little old ladies' knitting needles and breaking the mouse-sized nail files off of passengers' nail clippers. Surprisingly, no decrease in the number of hijacking attempts by little old ladies and manicurists was noted.

TSA simply cannot bring itself to single out anyone--that would be racial profiling--and insists on doing random searches putting the little old lady with a walker under the same level of scrutiny as an arab male dressed in a burkha who happens to be ticking.

So what does TSA do when another threat comes along--from the same type of passenger that has been responsible for all the other attempts?

Two weeks ago, Napolitano ordered TSA agents to start groping women's breasts and all passengers' genitalia -- children, nuns and rape victims, everyone except government officials and members of Congress. (Which is weird because Dennis Kucinich would like it.)

"Please have your genitalia out and ready to be fondled when you approach the security checkpoint."

This is the punishment for refusing the nude body scan for passengers who don't want to appear nude on live video or are worried about the skin cancer risk of the machines -- risks acknowledged by the very Johns Hopkins study touted by the government.

While American airline passengers wait in long lines and are now going to be subject to TSA's ridiculous full body scans, at Israel's Ben Gurion airport, where they've been dealing with terrorism for years and actually think it's more important than political correctness, about all they do is profiling. They identify those kinds of passengers who are low security threats and they go through a lower level of security check.

They won't do that here not for security reasons, but for purely ideological reasons. Everyone is inconvenienced so that certain small groups of airline passengers might not be offended.

Republicans, here's the issue of your dreams.

Another higher education institution lowers itself: SUNY's Faustian bargain

The State University of New York (SUNY) recently joined the growing list of universities that are eliminating humanities and fine arts departments for budgetary reasons. It decided to dispense with French, Italian, Russian, classics, and theater arts programs. These departments are vulnerable when the Hollow Men who largely make up university administrations are unwisely given a budget-cutting knife because they want to excise programs with low enrollments, and many of these departments are having this problem.

Why do these disciplines often suffer from low enrollment in our colleges and universities? Part of it is just cyclical: they go in and out of fashion. In the 1960s for example, philosophy departments had relatively high enrollments. But when I arrived on campus in the late seventies, my philosophy department was not as popular as it once was. I am told that it has enjoyed a resurgence or two since I graduated.

Another reason for low enrollment in humanities and fine arts has to do with the fact that many universities have eliminated their academic core programs. Universities once at least gave lip service to the importance of giving students a broad education, and many of them placed specific emphasis--or, we should probably say, a general emphasis--on a basic grounding in Western civilization. But the concern with giving students a generally education is being abandoned in favor of other priorities.

The dominant priority of the soulless bureaucrats who run these institutions is "Diversity," by which they mean exactly the opposite. What they really mean is ideological uniformity. Every time I receive a piece of correspondence--any correspondence--from the University of Kentucky having to do with my son, who graduated and is now in law school there, the letterhead indicates it is from the "Multicultural Department." The University apparently is the Multicultural Department, and the Multicultural Department is the University. That's part of Diversity, you see: making everything the same.

Notice that "women's studies," or "gender studies," or what used to be called "black studies never seem to have to go under the budgetary knife. These places are hives of special interest politics that enjoy favorable treatment in all things. I'm willing to bet cash money that these programs don't have any higher enrollment at SUNY than Italian, French, classics, and theater arts.

Can you imagine the outrage from the political left if a women's studies department were cut for budgetary reasons? Never happen. Why? Because these programs run university administrations, not vice-versa.

Anyway if you want to read the ultimate takedown of SUNY and its ilk, check out Brandeis University's Gregory Petsko's open letter to George M. Phillip, President of SUNY. Here's the very end, but don't miss the rest. There are stingers throughout:

No, I think you were simply trying to balance your budget at the expense of what you believe to be weak, outdated and powerless departments. I think you will find, in time, that you made a Faustian bargain. Faust is the title character in a play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was written around 1800 but still attracts the largest audiences of any play in Germany whenever it's performed. Faust is the story of a scholar who makes a deal with the devil. The devil promises him anything he wants as long as he lives. In return, the devil will get - well, I'm sure you can guess how these sorts of deals usually go. If only you had a Theater department, which now, of course, you don't, you could ask them to perform the play so you could see what happens. It's awfully relevant to your situation. You see, Goethe believed that it profits a man nothing to give up his soul for the whole world. That's the whole world, President Philip, not just a balanced budget. Although, I guess, to be fair, you haven't given up your soul. Just the soul of your institution.

Disrespectfully yours,

Gregory A Petsko

HT: Why Evolution is True

How I know the Catholic bishops elected the right guy

The expression "dissident Catholic" has never made sense to me. If you don't believe what the Magisterium of the Catholic Church says, then why are you a Catholic? I can understand how someone can be a "dissident Protestant": With over 30,000 Protestant denominations, if you disagree with the one you're in, you can always find another one ready at hand more to your liking.

But a "dissident Catholic"? Where do you go? There's only one place to go: out the door.

Not being too familiar with the panoply of bishops--arch and otherwise--I wasn't sure at first what to think when I saw news reports that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York had been elected to head the U. S. Catholic Conference of Bishops.

But I took great comfort when I saw that "dissident Catholic" groups were upset about it. One of the redeeming things about groups you disagree with is that in many cases, all you have to do to know what to do about something is to look to see where the groups you disgree with stand, and then do the opposite.

For example, if the NEA comes out against some piece of federal education legislation, then you know it's a good bill. If one of our states two major newspapers endorses a candidate, you know not to vote for him. If the a gay rights group announces that it is pushing some policy intiative, you know to oppose it. It's almost all you have to know.

Well, now that I know that "dissident Catholic" groups, among which are numbered "DignityUSA" and the secular gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign are upset that Dolan was elected to head up the Conference of U. S. Bishops, I can rest easy knowing that it mus be in good hands.

Are reproductive organs for reproduction?

It is interesting to me that when the question comes up of whether the purpose of sex is reproduction, there are some people who suddenly abandon all the language and logic they apply in every other situation where something's purpose is in question.

In the comments section of a previous post, one of the commenters got into this issue, and I remarked that it seemed strange to me that when we talk about general anatomy, or DNA, or animal behavior, we use blatantly teleological language to do it. But if we use that same language about human sexuality, all of a sudden the Tolerance Police show up and ask you for your identification papers.

We talk about the purpose of bodily organs all the time. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood to the rest of the body; the purpose of a kidney is to filter the blood; the purpose of the intestines is to digest food. Say these things and everyone nods earnestly in agreement.

But then you say, "and the reproductive organs are for..." (and you pause at this point to put up your deflector shields) "...reproduction."

As Mr. Bill was wont to say, "Nooooooooooooooooooo!"

No, indeed. Sex has become the great idol of our time. Malcolm Muggeridge once quipped that our culture has sex on the brain--which, he added, is a very uncomfortable place to have it. And if you add to that the fact that reproduction has become unfashionable among the denizens of our cultural elite, you get the the current aversion to saying that reproductive organs are for what they are clearly for.

So then we get into the debate about whether things have intrinsic purposes. Not a few people are willing to abandon the whole idea of things having purposes solely because they want to deny that sex has a purpose. Of course, the next day after they do this, you will find them once again using teleological language to talk about everything else.

The chief problem, of course, is that there is a whole contingent of otherwise rational beings who want to separate sex from reproduction and pretend the two aren't tied together in any natural way. If we saw this going on in the animal kingdom, we would hunt down the animal we saw engaging in this aberrant behavior, tranquilize it, and haul it into the laboratory to see what was wrong with it.

And then, after denying that sex has any intrinsic purpose, the same people will turn around and argue that the purpose of sex is pleasure. Well, that is the motive for doing it, but not the reason. Why do these people think that to say that the final cause of sex is reproduction is to somehow deny the role of pleasure in sex? As philosopher Edward Feser has pointed out, there is no more reason to think that the role of pleasure in sex is inconsistent with its reproductive purpose than to think that the role of pleasure in eating is inconsistent with its digestive purpose.

But the people who have a conniption fit every time someone mentions that reproductive organs are for reproduction are reductionists. They have cut themselves off from a whole view of the world by rejecting Aristotle's formal and final causation--the idea that things have natures and purposes--and so they must view things in very simplistic and one-dimensional way.

And they have to argue that reproductive organs are not for reproduction, which is a very strange thing to say.

Americans may be he best, but they ain't the brightest in math

According to Chester Finn, not only do American students compare poorly to students in other countries on math proficiency, but even students from the highest performing American states still get beat out by a bevy of nations.

Read the report here.