After a Year
It has been a year since Bush declared major combat actions over and he continues to take a lot of criticism from the democrats for that statement, and for the Mission Accomplished banner. Like most of the democratic attacks, I find this based more on their spin than on what Bush actually said. Democrats spin Bush’s statements into something that they were not, and then when reality does not match their spin, they criticize Bush for being wrong, or even lying.
The simply fact is that Bush was correct. The major combat phase was over. This was not just a semantic statements, it was a policy statement with significant implications for control over the operation was transferred from the Defense Department to the State Department.
As for the Mission Accomplish banner, the criticisms fail to understand that wars are not composed of a single mission. There are many, many missions in a war. Removing Saddam was a very significant mission, and it was completed. Also, the mission of the Lincoln was over, and they were returning home. In short mission accomplished, is not the same thing as saying the war is over.
Contrary to the Spin, Bush was very clear in his speech that the war was not over. In fact he say that their would still be “dark days ahead.”
Now frankly there would be some good and more productive grounds to criticize Bush for the last year. While the military did, and continues to do, an outstanding job, I think the state department has made some critical mistakes in Iraq. The standoff in Fallujah being a good example. All too often the State department puts the brakes on the military, assuming that with just a little more negotiation they can solve any problem. Thus rather then let the military go in and solve the problem, they stopped our troops and thus the stalemate for the last month, and this is a example of the problems we have faced. Rather than deal with problem, we have tried to negotiate our way around them, and in the process have all too often only made things worse.
As I have said many times before, the democrats, and now Kerry, do have a chance to effectively challenge Bush on the war, by taking a stronger stance. However, they seemed locked in by their hatred of Bush, and their support of the UN, to a strategy of trying to accuse him of lying, and getting out of Iraq and turning it over to the UN.
A Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives
I just heard the result of two poll on Dennis Prager concerning views of the US and the UN.
US: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/USA%20Role%20Model.htm
UN: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/United%20Nations.htm
The Poll showed that most conservatives have a positive view of the US(74% favorable) and a negative view of the UN (only 20% favorable), while most liberals had a positive view of the UN (60%) and many a negative view of the US (49 % positive ). Among thos who said they were “very liberal” a plurality had a negative view. If accurate this goes a long way to explain why Liberals are always saying that the US should only act if the UN approves, for they trust the UN more than the US. It also shows that the charge of “Blame American first” is not really that far from the mark.
Of course, that does not explain why liberal see the US so negatively, or more mysteriously, why they see the UN in such a positive light; especially given all of its failures and most recently the huge scandal with the oil for food program, which probably played a very significant role in its reluctance of France, Germany and Russia to go to war, for not did would they loose the huge bribes they were being paid, but as has now happened the scandal would be exposed.
Kerry
I am seeing increasing comments that behind the scenes some leading Democratic are increasingly troubled by Kerry. Essentially the Dems have blasted Bush for 6 months during the primary, throwing pretty much everything they have at him. Polls show that people concerned about the economy and the war. Add to this the 9/11 commission, a series of anti-Bush Books with weeks of negative coverage for each. At this point in history incumbents are normally down often by double digits, and Bush has had a couple of very bad months. Yet even after all of this Bush is still leading in the polls, and Kerry seems to be falling, while Nader is gaining.
On the other side, I am hearing some of the more paranoid right wingers talking about how the Dems will dump Kerry and Hillary will step in at the last moment to save the day (very unlikely in my opinion). Yet even those who reject the conspiracy theories are beginning to wonder about the “Torricelli option.”
The Fabric of the Cosmos and God
I am about 2/3 the way through Brian Greene book, “The Fabric of the Cosmos.” I highly recommend it. While I find it a fascinating description of modern physics, from my perspective (evangelical Christian) I also find the book very enlightening in a way I am sure the author did not intent.
What is really striking to me is how much of the criticism of the Bible is grounded in a 19th century Newtonian view of the universe. This is not too surprising for that was the world view during the time when the major criticism arose. But many of these criticisms simply do not hold up given the new views of reality that emerged during the 20th century.
The situation is similar to the issue of the authorship of the first 5 books of the Bible. In the 19th century, a new theory arose that questioned the authorship of Moses. The theory took hold for a number reasons, but one of the most persuasive was the belief that writing was unknown during the time of Moses. Since there was no writing at that time, how could Moses have written those books. Later, after the authorship of Moses had been rejected and the new JPED theory had been firmly established, it was discovered that not only had there been writing during that time, but that in fact it was so common even some slaves knew how to write.
In terms of atheism and agnosticism, probably the two most important beliefs were 1) the views of those like Kant that we can only know that which we can perceive, and 2) that miracles were impossible for they would violate the laws of nature. Since the supernatural and God are beyond our perception, we cannot know anything about them. Since Miracles would violate natural laws, they could not have happened. Thus the German scholar Frank wrote “The representation of a course of history is a priori to be regarded as untrue and unhistorical if supernatural factors interpose in it. Everything must be naturalized and likened to the course of natural history.”
As with writing and the authorship of Moses, now it is clear that the Newtonian view of reality upon which such criticisms are based is incomplete at best. Reality is far stranger than anything Newton ever conceived. It is a very complex mixture of waves, fields, energies. It is not based on fix motions that can be calculated but on probabilities. For example, you can know the position or velocity of a particle but below a certain level of accuracy, you cannot know both. More importantly, it seems that the particle does not even “know” but remains in an indeterminate state until forced to make a choice.
In a Newtonian world it is very difficult to see how Jesus could have walked on water, or fed the 5000 without breaking the laws of nature. Now in the past Christians have defended this by says that God is God, and is not bound by the laws of nature. But given the new view of reality this would not even be a problem. One only as to postulate that God, as the Creator and maintainer of the universe, can control the energies, and probabilities so as to get the out come that he desires.
Now to be clear, I am not claiming that this is evidence for God. It is not, and this would be a completely different line of argument. I am only pointing out that some of the more important arguments that have historically been used to question the existence of God and the reliability of the Bible are grounding in what has turned out to be an inaccurate view of reality.
Another interesting section was where Greene discussed the origin of the universe and was arguing that the universe may have simply popped into existence 20 minute ago, such that any memory that we have that is older than twenty minutes is simply an illusion. More importantly he argued that a 20 minute old universe is actually more likely than the universe popping into existence 14 billion years ago, because the universe twenty 20 minutes ago had a higher entropy than 14 billion years ago and the lower the entropy, the less likely it would be to have just popped into existence.
What struck me about this is that this is was a physicist making a scientific argument that many creationist have made, with the exception that instead of a time of 20 minutes ago, they argued it was about 10,000 years ago. Now he ultimately question the idea for reasons very similar to those that I have used to questioned the young earth creationists who have made the argument, but the point is that for Greene this was a serious scientific argument and consideration. It was rejected, not because of hard evidence, but because it lead to conclusion that were uncomfortable (i.e. that we could not trust our memories, and thus the laws of physics.) As such, it showed how the lines of argument have converged, and thus the older views of reality that saw God, the supernatural, and miracles, as things to be a-priori rejected or at least beyond our ability to know, and thus not to be taken seriously, are based on a view of reality and knowledge that can no longer be maintained.
10 Books
A question came up in a discussion over the weekend and I thought I would post here. Other than standard answers such as the Bible, what books have influenced your thinking the most? What books do you remember, cite or refer back to. Here is my list.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times
A world history from 1920-1980. – Gave me some real insight to this period and some of its figures from a unique point of view. For example that Gandhi, while his goals were praiseworthy, his action actually caused more problems, and led to more deaths.
Paul Holland, Political Pilgrims
A history of the Left’s attraction to Communist regimes such as the USSR, China, and Cuba, and how they could visit and come back with such glowing reports of “worker paradise” when the reality was so different, while at the same time being so critical of the US. (Mona Charen’s recent book “Useful Idiots” is a more popular treatment of this subject, which documents how many of this people changed their views once the USSR fell, and with examples of similar behavior up to the beginning of the war on terror.)
Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel of Solentiname,
A record of a small Bible study group in Solentiname, Nicaragua. Such groups were an important part of the liberation theology movement. Cardenal was prominent in both Liberation theology and a member of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the 1980s. – It was a real eye opener on the true nature of liberation theology
Will and Ariel Durrant, The Story of Civilization Vol 1-11
A history of the world. Vol 1 covers pre history to 333 BC in Europe and the rest of the world to modern times (then 1930s) Volume 2-11 take European and later Islamic society up to 1815. Hard to summarize the value of this work as it brought clarity and insight to a whole range of areas and called into question a whole range of common believe such as the so called “Dark Ages.”
David Alan Black, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek
A study of Linguistics that gives insights into the working of language with application well beyond the title.
Kegley and Kegley, Introduction to Logic.
This was my first textbook on logic and one I have returned to frequently over the years.
F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom,
An analysis and historical examination (written during WWII) of why centralized planning and control, as found in totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Communist states such as the USSR not only fail, but are doomed to fail and why market based solutions based on competition are better. This had been important in evaluating current political discussion where Democrats have pushed for more centralized planning and control, while Republicans have pushed for Market based solutions and increased competitions.
The following three books were very important for me in revealing the shallowness of most of the arguments advanced by skeptics and using a scholarly approach to the Bible.
David Alan Black & David S Dockery (editors) New Testament Criticism and & Interpretation.
19 essays by scholars on various aspects described by the title.
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
A summarized version of the 6 Volume Gospel Perspectives which was published from 1980 to 1986 and which addressed the issue of reliability from a technical and scholarly level.
Norman Geisler, Inerrancy
14 scholarly articles on Inerrancy. While the main focus was inerrancy, it as a result address much deeper issues such as the adequacy of language, and the nature of inspiration, hermeneutics.
