To listen to Richard Dawkins, or read his book The God Delusion, you would get the idea that belief in God is a dangerous delusion, even a kind of virus of the mind. Dawkins finds absolutely no rational sense in theism, and moreover, he insists that science stands firmly behind him.
Given this, one would think that Dawkins would be eager to debate the best advocates for God, in the firm confidence that he could defeat them. Why should an advocate of the round-earth have any hesitancy in debating an advocate of the flat-earth? Surely a round-earth man should be able to prevail in such debates every single time.
Shortly after the publication of my book What’s So Great About Christianity, I invited Dawkins to debate me. Since that time I’ve debated many of the leading atheists—Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer, Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer. Yet despite my several invitations, Dawkins has always refused to agree to a debate.
Imagine my surprise when a television producer for al-Jazeera (yes, that al-Jazeera) called to say that Richard Dawkins has agreed to appear with me on the Riz Khan show, broadcast to more than 20 million viewers worldwide. Al-Jazeera had asked me several weeks earlier to come on the show and debate the War on Terror, and I had told them I’d rather debate a leading atheist. They found Dawkins.
But apparently al-Jazeera had booked Dawkins without telling him the name of his opponent. When he found out it was me, he called the producer and said he would only appear on the show if he and I were interviewed in separate segments, and moreover, he had to go second. I suppose he was worried that if he went first I might be able to rebut some of his statements. He insisted on a format in which he could rebut what I said but I couldn’t rebut what he said.
The show went well and despite the format, the issues were engaged. (If you’d like to see the interviews they are now posted on Youtube.) I argued that it is reasonable to ask scientifically about the cause of the universe. Effects require causes, so what is the cause for which the universe is the effect? It seems unreasonable in the extreme to say that even though nature had a beginning, somehow nature is the cause of itself. So God is the name we give to the supernatural being that is the cause of nature as a whole.
In his segment that followed, Dawkins responded this way: "This leaves open the question of where did the creator come from?" Since the creator is this "great big complicated thing," what good does it do to invoke one complex thing to explain another? "If you postulate a designer you haven't explained anything." Basically what Dawkins is saying is that there is no point in using complex explanation A to account for complex phenomenon B if you cannot account for A.
This is a fallacy. We can see this by applying the logic to evolution itself. The logic of evolution is a "great big complicated thing" with all its elements of replication, natural selection, mutations, genetic drift, and so on. Yet it is invoked to explain another complicated thing: the exquisite fit between living creatures and their surroundings.
How reasonable would it be to argue: "We are invoking one complicated thing, namely evolution, to explain another, namely living things. Yet this leaves open the question of where evolution came from. We have no idea how and why evolution originally started. Since we cannot account for evolution, our explanation is useless. Simply to postulate evolution is to explain nothing." This is precisely Dawkins's argument regarding God, and here we can see how it boomerangs on evolution!
But consider the argument itself more closely. Is it really true that Complex Explanation A for Complex Phenomenon B only works if we can give a full account of A? Actually it is not true. Gravity may account for why objects fall at a certain pace, but this does not require that we give an account for where gravity comes from or why it exists in the first place. If we find various signs of intelligent life on another planet we can conclude that there are aliens on that planet without having any idea of who created them or where they came from. In summary, the best explanation for something does not require that we also provide an explanation for the explanation.
The problem I think for Dawkins is that his trademark snorts and sneers only work against weak opponents who do not do much more than hurl Bible verses at their opponents. When he is confronted with history, philosophy, and logic, Dawkins seems to have very little to say. And perhaps this explains his peculiar insistence that I be given no chance whatever to respond to his statements on the Riz Khan show.
Known Unknowns About Obama
By Richard Cohen"Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire," I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama's speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.
On the other hand, I continued, I could cite four or five actions -- not speeches -- that John McCain has taken that elicit my admiration, even my awe. First, of course, is his decision as a Vietnam War POW to refuse freedom out of concern that he would be exploited for propaganda purposes. To paraphrase what Kipling said about Gunga Din, John McCain is a better man than most.
But I would not stop there. I would include campaign finance reform, which infuriated so many in his own party; opposition to earmarks, which won him no friends; his politically imprudent opposition to the Medicare prescription drug bill (Medicare has about $35 trillion in unfunded obligations); and, last but not least, his very early call for additional troops in Iraq. His was a lonely position, virtually suicidal for an all-but-certain presidential candidate, and no help when his campaign nearly expired last summer. In all these cases, McCain stuck to his guns.
Obama argues that he himself stuck to the biggest gun of all: opposition to the war. He took that position back when the war was enormously popular, the president who initiated it was even more popular, and critics of both were slandered as unpatriotic. But at the time, Obama was a mere Illinois state senator, representing the (very) liberal Hyde Park area of Chicago. He either voiced his conscience or his district's leanings or (lucky fella) both. We will never know.
And we will never know, either, how Obama might have conducted himself had he served in Congress as long as McCain has. Possibly he would have earned a reputation for furious, maybe even sanctimonious, integrity of the sort that often drove McCain's colleagues to dark thoughts of senatorcide, but the record -- scant as it is -- suggests otherwise. Obama is not noted for sticking to a position or a person once it (or he) becomes a political liability. (Names available upon request.)
All politicians change their positions, sometimes even because they have changed their mind. McCain must have suffered excruciating whiplash from totally reversing himself on George Bush's tax cuts. He has denounced preachers he later embraced and then, to his chagrin, has had to denounce them all over again. This plasticity has a label: Pandering. McCain knows how it's done.
But Obama has shown that in this area, youth is no handicap. He has been for and against gun control, against and for the recent domestic surveillance legislation and, in almost a single day, for a united Jerusalem under Israeli control and then, when apprised of U.S. policy and Palestinian chagrin, against it. He is an accomplished pol -- a statement of both admiration and a bit of regret.
Obama is often likened to John F. Kennedy. It makes sense. He has the requisite physical qualities -- handsome, lean, etc. -- plus wit, intelligence, awesome speaking abilities and a literary bent. He also might be compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt for many of those same qualities. Both FDR and JFK were disparaged early on by their contemporaries for, I think, doing the difficult and making it look easy. Eleanor Roosevelt, playing off the title of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, airily dismissed him as more profile than courage. Similarly, it was Walter Lippmann's enduring misfortune to size up FDR and belittle him: Roosevelt, he wrote, was "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for office, would very much like to be president." Lippmann later recognized that he had underestimated Roosevelt.
My guess is that Obama will make a fool of anyone who issues such a judgment about him. Still, the record now, while tissue thin, is troubling. The next president will have to be something of a political Superman, a man of steel who can tell the American people that they will have to pay more for less -- higher taxes, lower benefits of all kinds -- and deal in an ugly way when nuclear weapons seize the imagination of madmen.
The question I posed to that prominent Democrat was just my way of thinking out loud. I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it.
Oil and the Feeble Greenback
Steve Forbes
There are three reasons why oil prices have soared: the weak dollar, Iran and the booming global economy.
The big villain is the feeble greenback. Commodities like oil are priced in dollars. So when the dollar becomes weak, the dollar price of commodities goes up. And when the greenback is strong, the dollar price of commodities goes down.
In 2004 Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, made a fateful miscalculation. The maestro, as he was then affectionately called by an adoring media, miscalculated the strength of the U.S. economy. He thought it weak. He was fearful that prices would collapse in America as they did in Japan during the 1990s and the early part of this decade. So to goose the economy, Greenspan created excessive amounts of money. Interest rates were kept artificially low.
But the economy was not weak. In fact, between 2003 and the summer of 2007, the growth alone of the U.S. economy exceeded the entire size of the Chinese economy. In other words, we grew the equivalent of the economy of China in little more than four years. China’s growth rates are higher, but they’re coming off a much lower base.
Yet Greenspan made sure the Fed’s printing presses worked overtime. Thus for the first time since the 1970s and early 1980s, we are faced with a serious inflation problem. Thanks to Greenspan’s blunder, all commodities shot up -- oil, cooper, lumber, steel, even the price of mud.
While Greenspan begat the inflationary blunder, Ben Bernanke, the maestro’s successor, perpetuated it. In 2003 the price of oil was around $25 a barrel. A year ago when the credit crisis hit, oil was around $70. Then Bernanke ginned up the printing presses again, this time to deal with the fallout of the busts of sub prime mortgages and other exotic financial instruments and the threats they posed to the banking system. The U.S. economy has crawled to a virtual halt since August 2007 and yet the price of oil has almost doubled. That’s not supply and demand, that’s classic inflation.
Not since the days of Jimmy Carter has an administration been so passive about inflation as this one. So why isn’t President Bush doing something as Ronald Reagan did in circumstances far more difficult than those of today and promptly kill this inflation? Why doesn’t Mr. Bush understand that just as we need a strong military for national security, so too we need a strong dollar for economic strength and security?
Alas, President Bush’s Treasury Department actually likes a weak dollar. These bureaucrats think it helps our trade balance while ignoring the hundreds of billions of dollars more we pay for oil and the havoc that weak money wreaks on the domestic economy. Treasury Chief Henry Paulson is, unfortunately, a captive of this kind of “thinking.”
Another big factor in rising energy costs -- one that will become red hot after the November elections -- is Iran. The ruling murderous mullahs are hell-bent to get the Bomb and the means to deliver it. Israeli intelligence calculates Iran will cross the threshold in being able to create a nuclear weapon by the end of 2009. Iran recently conducted missile tests that demonstrate that it can deliver such a bomb to Israel not to mention all of Europe. Iran could also use a shipping platform to lob a weapon onto the U.S.
The U.S. has been engaged in fruitless diplomacy with Iran for almost four years. The Israelis feel the window of opportunity to destroy or seriously disrupt Iran’s nuclear ambitions is fast closing. Thus there is a very real possibility that if Barack Obama wins in November, the Israelis will take action before he is inaugurated on January 20. If McCain wins, the Jewish state will probably wait a few months longer to see what will unfold with his administration.
To get to energy: The possibility of a war against Iran has not escaped the oil markets. The futures price of oil spikes upward in early November. The market is thus betting that military action against Iran may well happen -- and that would, at least short term, seriously disrupt oil flows. This helps explain why the price of oil in terms of gold has moved up in recent months. Normally the ratio of oil/gold price is fairly constant.
The third reason people are paying so much at the gas pump -- and soon with their heating bills -- is the global boom which has increased substantially the demand for commodities, including oil. Most oil reserves are controlled by governments not private companies such as Exxon-Mobil. So the ramp up in supply to this increased demand is taking longer than it normally would. Another delaying factor here: The inexcusable unwillingness of Congress to permit exploration and drilling offshore and to do the same in all of ANWAR in Alaska. Tens of billions of barrels of oil and the equivalent amount of natural gas thus remain underground. This is truly a monumental self-inflected wound.
Bottom line: If the Fed ever got its act together and produced a stable dollar the price of oil would drop by at least $50 a barrel. If Iran ceased its nuclear bomb program, oil would drop another $40 a barrel. The remaining $20-$25 increase in oil since 2003 is your traditional supply and demand pressures of the marketplace.
Mr. Forbes is president and chief executive officer as well as Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine and author of "Flat Tax Revolution.
Irked Extremes May Mean
A Happy Political Middle
At this point in the presidential race, there's grousing on the left about Sen. Barack Obama, and grumbling on the right about Sen. John McCain.
Does that mean Americans who reside in the broad center of the political spectrum should be happy?
Perhaps so. If the Democratic contender's liberal base is unhappy with some recent Obama moves, and the Republican contender's conservative base remains uneasy over some McCain positions, that suggests one of the early assumptions about this year's presidential campaign -- that it had produced two unconventional nominees naturally inclined to reach across America's partisan divide -- actually may be true.
This hardly means that either Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama has checked his ideology at the door. The Obama voting record in Congress reflects a general liberal tendency, and the McCain record, overall, is a conservative one.
Both men, though, succeeded in no small measure by basing their candidacies on the notion that they intended to bring people together in the middle, even if that meant telling their own partisans things they didn't want to hear.
In fact, it's sometimes easier to tell what's really happening in a campaign by looking at who is unhappy rather than who is happy. For Sen. Obama, a series of steps since he secured the nomination have agitated liberals, who consider themselves his real base of support.
The left is unhappy with Sen. Obama's vote in favor of a bill authorizing warrantless wiretaps in pursuit of terror suspects, a plan he put forth for government support of faith-based institutions, and statements suggesting some limits on abortion rights and favoring gun owners' rights.
The resulting disillusionment among liberals has been palpable, and easiest to see in the political chatter on the Internet, a place where support for Sen. Obama also has flowered. Markos Moulitsas, founder of the prominent Daily Kos liberal Web site, wrote recently of Sen. Obama: "Much of his veneer as a transformational politician has faded. He's a gifted and inspirational politician, no doubt about that, and he will make a great president. But at the end of the day, he's a politician, with all the triangulating goodness that's become a hallmark of our presidential candidates."
Similarly, Joseph A. Palermo, a writer on the left-leaning Huffingtonpost.com Web site, declared: "It's time for Obama to dedicate a little of his time to the care and feeding of his base. The Obama campaign might be beholden to the mistaken belief that it can take progressive voters for granted and is probably already looking to the 2010 midterm elections."
Elsewhere on the Web, an entire "Liberals Against Obama" site has been born.
For Sen. McCain, the issue is more a longstanding dissatisfaction on his party's right wing, accentuated by a recent revival of anger over immigration policy and the emergence of conservative former Rep. Bob Barr as the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
The McCain step that has most revived lingering fears about him on the right was an appearance before the National Council of La Raza, a large Hispanic organization, where he reiterated, in more muted terms, his support for immigration reform legislation he has long championed. Though he said that legislation couldn't advance until the federal government does a better job of securing its borders, its core idea of creating a path toward legalization and possible citizenship for many illegal aliens has long agitated conservatives -- and is doing so again.
The McCain appearance aroused a venting online among conservatives akin to the one Sen. Obama has been enduring. On the Little Green Footballs Web site, one reader posted the comment: "John McCain is a liberal. I am a conservative, I am not voting for him, and if he doesn't win it will be his own fault." Another wrote: "It's bad when the guy you're voting for is trying NOT to get your vote." (Ironically, there's no sign the speech has done much to improve Sen. McCain's poor showing among Hispanics.)
The candidacy of Mr. Barr is a bigger problem for Sen. McCain, who in the past has engendered doubts among his party's conservative base because of his testy relations with religious conservatives and his support for campaign-finance reforms. Mr. Barr openly appeals to conservatives to peel off from Sen. McCain and come his way. In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, for example, Mr. Barr wrote that, despite campaign-season words to the contrary, Sen. McCain can't be trusted to pick conservative judges: "His jurisprudence is not conservative," Mr. Barr wrote.
At this time of the cycle, candidates' efforts to strike more moderate poses usually are read as the typical election-year migration of presidential candidates who, like birds flying north after winter, move to the middle as the seasons change from primary to general election.
And clearly some of that is going on. But in this election year, the movement has deeper meaning.
These are two candidates whose histories suggest a commitment to break away from the partisanship that has helped gridlock Washington. For evidence, see Sen. Obama's precampaign book, "The Audacity of Hope," or Sen. McCain's entire career.
Moreover, there now is real-life evidence that a post-partisan governing style can work: In New York City, Michael Bloomberg runs the nation's largest city as a political independent and on the opposite coast, Arnold Schwarzenegger governs California as a virtual independent. Perhaps the political middle no longer has to be such a lonely place; perhaps even Sens. Obama and McCain can survive there.
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