Libya, Part Two: (From Belmont Club)

57. Wretchard,

That source you cited should silence anybody who still thinks that Peak Oil is not a problem. In fact it is the problem.

The true nature of Peak Oil has been misunderstood by almost everybody. It has nothing to do with how much oil is left in the ground. (There will always be oil left in the ground, and it will always be available to wealthy people at a sufficient price.) It has to do with being able to get at the oil and utilize it efficiently on a civilizational scale. The real issues are geopolitical, demographic, and infrastructural, not geological.

When the supply of oil tightens for any reason (i.e revolutions in the Maghreb, or what have you), the price rises, inefficient uses are trimmed back, poorer customers are priced out of the market altogether, and civilization begins to creak. The price of all basic commodities is closely tied to the price of oil, not only because of the transportation factor, but also because oil is an important raw material in industrial processes. Whenever some persistent consumer is willing to pay a premium for that last barrel of oil, the marginal price of all barrels increases by the same amount, and eventually the economy feels the pain.

Because we cannot afford to consume oil as lavishly as we did before, we have to make less, do less, drive less, consume less; pay more, work more, sacrifice more, and suffer more. The total output of the economy shrinks. In such an environment, it is vain to talk of being rescued by alternative sources of energy. Where will the investment capital come from to bring those sources on line? Where will the technical expertise and labor come from? Any plausible scheme to improve the energy supply (whether by increased oil and gas exploration, nuclear power, coal gasification, renewables, or whatever), will take dozens of years and trillions of dollars to complete, while in the meantime the overall economy continues to dwindle. And "conservation" merely races the demon over the cliff. Conservation means that we do to ourselves the same thing that our nemesis is trying to do to us anyway. We will not have enough money to build the necessary infrastructure to reinflate our bubble economy. And even if we did, investment capital chases the highest rate of return, and the floundering energy sector will not be offering the highest rate of return. It will be a money pit, an eldering kept woman who no longer pulls her own weight.

However, since it seems we will be unable to do without the energy, we will have to make the investment anyway, and do so at a loss. Hence it will have to be a labor of love. But the free market does not think very kindly of labors of love; Adam Smith's invisible hand wants to be greased, not calloused by long hours of tedium. Since market mechanisms will not of their own provide the necessary capital, the funding will have to be enforced through the tax structure, and we will all become the slaves of energy. Without realizing it, the populations of whole regions will be converted into some sort of oleaginous latifundium for the maintenance of the few surviving industrial conglomerates.

This is the end of the West, its last desperate grasp at mere survival (its honor and dignity have long since been sold away). If this were our only problem it would be formidable enough, but remember this is all happening against the background of a much larger catastrophe. We have aging and declining populations in the US, Europe, and Japan. We have completely unsustainable pension and welfare programs about to go broke. We have a generation of young people that is less educated, less healthy, and less morally competent than their parents, and who are completely unprepared to deal with this. And we still have borders to defend against an increasingly numerous, increasingly dangerous horde of third-world malcontents. We have weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of tribal warlords who will use them just for fun if they get the chance. We have given ourselves over to greed and perversion. Our once-noble religion has been wussified by liberal progressives. We are no longer worthy of our success, and our discomfiture is beginning to tell upon us. How in the world will we survive this intact?

Call me pessimistic, but I don't think it can be done. Like an old forest giant, we have run up against the physical limits of our growth. We can no longer put forth enough leaves to gather all the sunlight we need to thrive, and far below the root system cannot drink enough water to keep the remaining leaves healthy. And while we may continue to thrust suckering branches toward the sky for years to come, the true period of organic growth, the saga, is over.

Probably the best policy for individuals now is to try to avoid contact with Empire as much as possible, neither paying nor receiving from the system, cultivating a detached indifference to matters of government. Perhaps you can hold off the external decay long enough that it does not affect the hearts and minds of your children, and your posterity will one day make landfall in a future age when organic growth is possible again. But for us here today, the tasks before us are grim and pitiless. Let us look not for happiness but for the pride of duty, and so write our names down with those who pulled the world back from the brink.

The Decline of Scientific Publishing Standards, and Publishing Standards in General

At John Reilly’s site, the commenter HopefulCynic68 has an interesting post about the decline of standards in the magazine publishing industry. This thread provides immense food for thought; indeed, it presses the trigger on several loaded barrels that I’ve been meaning to fire off lately, especially vis-à-vis the precipitous drop in educational standards. However, since I find that subject very difficult to discuss dispassionately, I have for the time being confined my response to those issues pertinent to scientific publications (and why I no longer read them). The line in HopefulCynic68’s post that occasioned my response was this:

“Even the comments on the trends in the magazine world matched my own observations, such as the lefty drift of Scientific American (which is becoming sufficiently pronounced as to damage the credibility of the publication), and the recent improvement in Popular Mechanics. If that trend holds, the 'lowbrow' PM might just steal some thunder from some supposedly highbrow sources.”

I used to love reading Scientific American as a young teenager, circa early-to-mid nineties. As I recall, the magazine was at that time a vehicle for the best popular science writing around. Of the many attractions it offered, one could expect at least a half dozen lengthy, well-written articles per issue, mathematical puzzles by Martin Gardener, the wonderful Connections column by James Burke, and colorful graphics that were among the best in the business. I especially enjoyed the articles on physics and astronomy, which as a rule were included in every issue.


But by the late nineties I began to notice a serious downward trend in the quality of the scientific thinking behind the articles in the magazine. I had a difficult time of it, having to admit that I could no longer lie to myself about the serious methodological flaws that they allowed to slip into print. I had to question the reasoning behind many of the conclusions drawn in the articles, and I came to the uncomfortable realization that a good portion of the scientific establishment did not know when a thing was proven and when it wasn't.


I still remember the exact statement that caused me to lay the magazine aside, never to pick it up again. The year was 1999, early in the summer. I was reading a blurb about plate tectonics, in which a pair of geologists was claiming that great quantities of ocean water were being dragged down into the mantle with the subduction of oceanic plates. This much is certainly true, but the geologists proceeded from these humble beginnings to a rather flippant apocalyptic prediction. The subducting water, they said, posed no threat to the sea levels of planet earth for most of its history, because the interior of the planet was so hot that the water would be quickly converted to high-pressure steam and vented back to the surface. However, by late pre-Cambrian times the interior of earth had cooled sufficiently, such that the water was carried deep into the mantle where it was lost to chemical disassociation, and "sea levels have since dropped more than 2000 feet."


It would be an interesting exercise to enumerate all the errors contained in that statement, but we need not proceed further than to note that there is absolutely no geophysical evidence to support the conclusion that sea levels were ever that much higher than they are now. A 2000 ft higher sea would have inundated much of the continental landmass of the planet, and that simply hasn't happened. Whatever the geologists' speculations about the chemistry of the mantle might have told them, there is no prima facie case that their assertions are at all true. The known geological record is incompatible with what they have stated.


As an aside, I might also mention that I was thumbing through an issue of Discover magazine at a bookstore sometime in 2004, when I saw what had to be one of the most ridiculous examples of scientific illogicity ever to appear in print. To wit: New research had apparently revealed that the class of antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were not really at all efficacious in increasing the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the synaptic cleft; a finding which, if true, would invalidate decades' worth of theorizing concerning the neurophysiology of depression. "Thus," read the byline of the article, "Scientists were under new pressure to figure out why antidepressants work."


Evidently, the idea that antidepressants do not work had never crossed the minds of the editors at Discover; the materialistic myth of the physically determined mind was too much of a non-negotiable element in their worldview. Here we have a case in which the entire theoretical justification for their understanding of the causes and cures of depression had fallen away, and yet these drugs were still somehow, mysteriously, osmotically, occultically held to "work." It ought to go without saying that a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor has absolutely no attributable mechanism of action that would be profitable for relieving depression if low serotonin levels aren't the cause of that malady; and this becomes even more ironically and laughably true given that the substance in question does not even inhibit the reuptake of serotonin. But none of this is likely to make an impact on the so-called scientific community. I mumbled something about "cycles and epicycles" and put the magazine back on the shelf. They'll endorse the notion of homeopathic SSRIs before they abandon their model.


Bio-psychiatry is a large, lucrative, and harmful fraud that directly affects the lives of the untold millions of people who have been told (and sometimes forced) to take these useless and potentially dangerous substances. It is the redux of phrenology, but perpetrated with even less romance and human understanding than its forbear. It is, however, not the only such fraud to which the contemporary scientific establishment has given its imprimatur. At the top of the list we have the massive Anthropogenic Global Warming hoax, and the attendant possibility of serious damage to the U.S. economy if its backers succeed in implementing their agenda. Other entrenched errors of reasoning are less immediately threatening but no less egregious. The ideas of "dark matter" and "dark energy" postulated to explain the contradictions observed in the material content of the universe are naught but mere phantasms. Darwinian evolution has been utterly thrown down by the evidence, only to be revived by ad hoc notions of "punctuated equilibrium" and "inclusive fitness" (both oxymorons).


The list could be extended, but it is not necessary to continue. It is clear enough already that real theoretical science has been replaced by an insipid and rather unmanly appetite for pleasing visions, technological gimmickry, "signs and wonders" -- it is science according to Herod Antipas. The Principia Mathematica has fallen to The Tao of Physics. The trend will be reversed eventually; the necessity of living demands it. But when contemporary scientific fluff goes, it will take most of the philosophical presuppositions of modern society with it.

Lab Rats: A case against Animal Experimentation

A rather obvious yet novel thought occurred to me several weeks ago that actually gave me considerable pause. In fact, it’s so obvious that it’s incredibly easy to overlook it (at least I had, until now); but it’s one of those simple notions that, if proven correct, has the power to affect radical realignments in one’s worldview.

I had never before any reason to consider myself opposed to medical experimentation on animals. While I am opposed to certain directions in biological research on principle (such as genetic modification), that is because I believe the research to be wrongheaded and dangerous, not because I believe it violates the rights or integrity of the animal. There are many other instances of animal testing (such as anatomical studies, clinical drug trials, and toxicology tests) to which I would raise no principled objection.

Many contemporary philosophers have spun off elaborate theories of animal rights, mostly making use of some sort of utilitarian analysis. I will not bother to refute those theories here, but suffice it to say that they produce far more heat than light and need not be taken seriously. Animals do not have rights. They do not belong by nature to the community of rational beings to which the concept of rights pertains, and therefore it is categorically impossible to transgress against them. While cruelty to animals is indicative of a coarse and wicked nature in the man who practices it, even the meanest sort of animal abuse cannot be said to constitute a crime. No argument against animal testing made on those grounds can expect to stand very long.

On the other hand, the use of animals (as food, as raw materials, as traction, etc.) is entirely licit, for all of creation is ordered to the good of humanity. Animal experiments undertaken for the purpose of enhancing our repository of medical knowledge would seem to be included in the proper concept of use. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.” (Cf. CCC 2417)

But it occurred to me that, by framing the debate entirely in terms of animal rights (and the extent, existence, or nonexistence thereof), we are missing an important dimension of the problem. The issue is not whether animal dignity is being violated by experimentation, but whether human dignity is being debased by a too-ready comparison of the human body with animal flesh. In other words, the more we use lab rats as human analogs, the more we begin to see human beings as glorified lab rats.

This has an important bearing on many of the divisive medical-ethical issues of our time, such as contraception, abortion, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. More, it extends beyond these to encompass even the most mundane matters of medical practice. Let us take but a single example: Contraception (namely, the “birth control pill”).

The discovery of hormones must have been a complicated and messy process, the final result of which was the understanding that minute amounts of certain chemical messengers were needed to regulate, among other things, the physiological processes of ovulation, conception, and gestation. In order to make these discoveries, many animal experiments needed to be done. Animals were surgically mutilated. Animals and their parts were ground up and put through various chemical fractioning mechanisms. The resulting fractions were injected into other animals and the results catalogued. Finally, these chemicals were synthesized and incorporated into medications, and these too were tested on animals. Is there anyone who believes that the methods employed here did not influence the researchers’ objectives? After realizing their capacity to manipulate animal life at a fundamental level, how could they then not turn their eye to the manipulation of human life as though it were some vast experiment?

I submit that this is exactly how our culture came to embrace the techniques of hormonal contraception, true fruit of the eugenics movement and its concomitant social dysfunctions. Before one can begin to contemplate such things, the human body must be reduced to mere material, to a set of endocrinological processes considered apart from their integration into a person. From there, it is but a small step to eliminating the person entirely from the field of view, and to looking upon the processes themselves as key. With that, self-styled elites rise up who would fain manage the glandular output of humanity in accordance with “scientific” social ends. I doubt not that many a modern liberal looks upon third-worlders, inner-city minorities, and teenagers as “bundles of hormones” upon whom they would lavish contraception in the belief that it would improve their condition, or perhaps even as mere entertainment.

There are some who would object to this, saying (and presuming for argument’s sake that we all believe contraception to be wrong) that the step from animal testing to human implementation is not obvious, and that there is somewhere a moral barrier that has broken down. I disagree, for metaphysics and epistemology precedes morality in the order of understanding. If we cannot define what a person is, we cannot know when we are doing right or wrong by him. Martin Heidegger once wrote that the Nazi Holocaust was the result of the application of the principles of modern agronomy to the problems of population management. Many would consider this a cop-out, but I happen to think his was one of the few analyses that actually addressed the hidden dimension of the problem. It was not only morality that failed, but method. The perfect cure requires not only a good will towards one’s neighbor, but “releasement” from the thought-forms of modernity, under the auspices of which we have no neighbor, but only social atoms.

Animal testing has contributed to this epistemic catastrophe. Perhaps it therefore ought to be reconsidered. I still maintain that this is a novel approach to the question, even though the idea of human beings as pitiful lab rats is a familiar enough trope in modern social satire. Hitherto we have been using those images as mere metaphors. The novelty is the shocking understanding that the metaphor has now become the literal truth.

Worms

It's raining here in Denver tonight; a welcome divergence from last year's Spring, which saw almost no rain at all. I was just now observing the earthworms crawling around in my yard, escaping to the surface after a rainstorm, as is their wont.

Several competing hypotheses have been advanced to explain this curious behavior. The first holds that rainwater percolating through the soil becomes enriched in carbon dioxide from the respiration of soil microorganisms. The carbon dioxide dissolves in the water, creating carbonic acid which the worms find irritating. But since the immediate soil surface pH is not likely to differ markedly from that just underneath the surface, this theory appears to me largely discredited.

A second, popularly held notion has it that the worms rise to the surface to breath, since the subterranean tunnels they would otherwise inhabit have become waterlogged by the rains, causing them to drown if they remain below. This too seems rather implausible to me. Earthworms do not have lungs; they breath by gaseous diffusion directly through their skin. They can in fact survive quite comfortably under water, provided the quantity of dissolved oxygen is sufficient to maintain cellular respiration. It's possible that, during a heavy thunderstorm, the in-falling rainwater displaces enough of the soil's natural porosity to render the air supply inadequate; but it's raining very lightly tonight, and in the highly aerated upper soil regions where they live, this seems an unlikely possibility.

The third hypothesis states that the worms are drawn out by the rhythmic vibrations of the raindrops impacting the soil. This is no doubt an atavistic trait shared with their cousins, Shai-Hulud, the great desert sandworms of Arrakis. But seriously, professional worm harvesters (yes, there is such a thing) regularly employ vibrations to lure worms from their underground hiding places. This is accomplished by wriggling a garden rake or other multi-pronged instrument against the ground. A good worm hunter can gather an entire bucket of worms in a few hours this way, without a single drop of rain having fallen.

But there still remains to be explained why the worms behave in this fashion. I believe they are simply taking advantage of the wet conditions in order to get out of the house and move around for a while. Worms die quickly if they are exposed to sunlight or dry conditions. Thus, a nice damp night is the perfect time to hit the town, scout out some new territory, and scope out the ladies. Well, earthworms are hermaphroditic, so they can't really avoid finding the ladies; but then again, they can't avoid finding the gentlemen, either. All they have to worry about is finding another worm. This androgynous sex life ensures that mating opportunities are frequent, if not exactly enjoyable by our standards.

When we look at life in its simpler manifestations, we see how little it differs from the inorganic processes of geochemistry. The worm doesn't merely inhabit the soil; it is the soil, modulated and stabilized into this form by long eons of experience. The worm's boundless appetite for leaf litter and clay particles, its impressive faculty of digestion, its slow, dream-like pulsations propelling it through the abyss of night, these are nothing more than the mighty rotations of the earth, the timeless beating of wind and rain upon the rocks, the deep and pregnant rumblings of the planet that thrust up the mountain ranges and cleave the ocean basins, all intensified and focused and united into a gestalt. A will speaks forth out of the bare earth, a will to exist and to eat, a will to mate with like flesh and perpetuate the form. It bespeaks of a cosmic mind impelling the unfolding of the world through endless ages of ages. Soil has found a voice, and that voice says "I am Worm."

Each one of these miserable lives is a microcosm of creation, with drama and tragedy of its own. They are wasted by the millions, they go down like stalks of wheat before the thresher, but they endure. In this we see the way of all flesh: Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Every living organism, every plant and animal and single cell, is a seed planted by the Creator in the deep structure of existence, destined to arise and bear fruit at its appointed time, and then to yield itself up to eternity. Out of this churning mass springs forth the frame of nature, painfully beautiful and severe. The flesh has its requirements; it must do what it must do. But all things are ennobled by the struggle, and we need only play our roles and play them well.

The human race is unique, for here mere flesh is elevated to the rank of spiritual dignity. In the Incarnation we learn that God himself has received our flesh into His heavenly abode, and in turn imparted us with something of His own nature. Our bodies, dust though they are, will nevertheless accompany our souls into eternity. Humanity is the bridge between heaven and earth, at once the crown of nature and the dwelling place of nature's God. Could it possibly be otherwise? The abstractions of philosophers, the force-gods of the pagans, these lend no hope for man as such in eternity. Salvation could only come, has come, through the Son of Man. Without Him we are nothing but weak worms of the dust.

Just take my word for it, and never mind that wikipedia article.

Bodies and Souls

Edward Feser's most recent blog post is called Act and Potency; well worth the reading. The comments section has generated a couple of questions which I actually dared to try and answer. I hope Feser doesn't mind; and I hope his own answer, when it comes, will in some sense corroborate mine, so I'll know that I'm headed in the right direction. There were two questions I tackled in my post, the relevant portions of which I'll reproduce here. First up, the poster "Crude" asks:

I do have one question. How does this approach work when it comes to, say, genetically modifying plants or animals? For instance, there are rabbits that have been genetically modified to glow in the dark. Would this be in its own unique class /not 'filed' here? Would it be a first potentiality (assuming such a modification could be made while the creature is still living)? Something else?

Meanwhile, a little futher down the thread, Chen-Song asks:

Hi Professor Feser, thanks for another interesting post. I have a similar question to Crude, but even more far-reaching. For the genetic modification of rabbits, what if the rabbits are modified (say with human DNA) such that they can think like humans? I know that in this case the rabbit probably can't be called "rabbit" anymore, and is some sort of chimera, but how can that be explained in terms of act/potency?

There is a related issue I ran into a while ago: Someone posed a thought experiment about a dead brainless corpse getting fitted with a brain by a mad scientist. If the "mad science" works and the corpse is alive and thinking again, does that mean the brainless corpse had the potential to be alive? Or did the potential really somehow belong to the transplanted brain?

I have responded as follows:

Crude and Chen-Song,

Here's my two cents. Firstly, by inserting a gene into a rabbit's genome that causes it to glow in the dark (or inserting the Bt gene into a corn plant to make it pest-resistant, or whatever), we have simply appended an "accident" to its essential being. It is not really any different than receiving a tattoo or ingesting an oral fungicide; it's just accomplished using a more round-about method.

This is one good reason why genetic reductionism simply will not work. My genome is no more "essential" to me than my left arm. The disruption of my genome would be akin to the amputation of a limb: undesirable yes, but powerless to effect my essential being.

I think the confusion arises from three sources. First, the presence of an intact and functioning genome is necessary for the developmental actualization of every organism. A defect in this regard leads to rather obvious disfigurements and diseases, so it's easy to elide the distinction between "essential being" and "intact genome" if we are not fortified against this error by the rejection of genetic reductionism.

Second, because the processes of molecular biology occur beneath our level of sensory awareness and most of it is unknown to us, we imagine it to be some sort of black box which we mistakenly equate with the unseen three dimensional figures who cause the shadows to move in Plato's cave. This is what we might call "incomplete idealism."

Third, the hyped media reports of the successes achieved in genetic engineering play to the deep-seated Cartesionism with which we moderns are all infected, leading us to believe that intrinsic changes were wrought in the essential beings of plants and animals when in fact no such thing has occured. We must take the time to untangle the philosophy and the methodology of these cases before simply accepting the truth value of such statements as "Scientists Unlock the Secret of Aggressive Behavior," or some other such nonsense.

As for human-animal chimeras, the basic hylemorphic position is that human cells, or human DNA, integrated into the organism of a rabbit would subsist virtually in the rabbit, and hence would be 100% part of the rabbit not part of any human. If rabbits, or some other animal, were refitted with human brains, this would not suffice to make them rational animals; they would still be mere animals sporting human tissue.

In order to understand the case of the corpse, let's change the organs in the thought experiment. A heartless corpse certainly has the potential to live again if it received a timely heart transplant. Does the potential exist in the transplanted heart or in the heartless body? Actually it exists in neither, but only in the substantial form "human being," which requires a certain minimally intact body to actualize itself. The heart in question need not even be an organic heart, but might be a mechanical prosthesis. The same could be said of the brain. Some type of organ or device is needed to govern the body's basic metabolic and endocrinological functions so that it does not succumb to disintegration, but this need not be a brain as we usually understand the term. Thinking, on the other hand, is an activity that belongs to the soul, not to the brain. The basic fallacy here is the Cartesian notion that the brain is the ghost in the machine, the seat of consciousness inhabiting otherwise inert matter.

We would do well to remember here Leibniz's admonishment that human beings are not really born and do not really die. Their souls are created by God to be the rational form of their bodies,and are multiplied as bodies are mulitplied; but the soul remains immortal once created, is seperated from the body at death, and will one day be reunited to it. The body is "alive" only by virtue of the soul and not through some mysterious power of its own.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Starring Ben Stein
Reviewed by Matt Beck

The world is changing.

No, that isn’t merely this reviewer’s melodramatic reference to The Lord of the Rings. There is in fact a change of epic proportions just beginning in the deep metaphysical currents of Western societies; a change whose full dimensions are so far apparent only to the very few, but one whose direction and causes will be no mystery to any who have sought the truth with sincerity and determination. Many intelligent people, from various walks of life, are coming around to the belief that there is something profoundly wrong with how the scientific dialog is progressing. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—yes, you know them: that menacing quartet consisting of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—have been criticized by those both inside and outside the scientific establishment for their condescending tone and lack of philosophical rigor. It isn’t just that cracks in the Darwinian orthodoxy are being inexpertly papered over (and those cracks were always visible in any case), but that science itself no longer stands apart from the murky metaphysical debates in its pursuit of empirical truth. It is increasingly obvious—brutally obvious might be more accurate—that open inquiry, logic and criticism, reason and evidence have fallen out of fashion, to be replaced by a spirit of tribal warfare. Scientific shibboleths like Darwinian evolution now stand as proxies for a worldview that tolerates no dissent.

This is an encouraging sign, believe it or not. Any strong civilizational belief in a so-called objective science only builds up an impenetrable armor-plating against justified criticism which leads to tyranny. We are better off to be free of this baggage from the 19th Century. The debate has always been about worldviews, as the Christian opponents of Darwinism knew better than anyone. With the specter of an immaculate science now relativized down to the same human level as the rest of us, conditions are finally right for the debate to begin in earnest. However, the oversolicitous champions of scientism are not going to give up their privileged position without a fight.

In this 90 minute documentary, former presidential speech writer, commentator, actor, and humorist Ben Stein attempts to take the fight to them. One’s estimation of his success will no doubt be largely colored by one’s own opinions of the subject matter, but the film is well worth seeing despite its mixed results. It styles itself as a broadside for academic freedom (there’s even an online petition you can sign if you’d like to support the effort), yet it is primarily a not-so-subtle argument for the theory of Intelligent Design. Suitably, it begins with a series of interviews of prominent biologists who have seen their careers damaged or ended for daring to mention Intelligent Design in their classrooms or published papers. This is indeed most unfortunate, not to mention impossible to square with any reasonable interpretation of academic freedom. Think what you will about ID, the rights of free peoples to research and discuss it should be inviolate. Almost everyone can agree on that. What the scientific establishment does not agree on, however, are the rights of such people to public monies and to tenure at publicly funded institutions. The movie only hints at the bread-and-butter aspect of this academic debate, but it is safe to say that, for most working scientists, personal job security far outweighs ideology when it comes to determining why they believe and publish as they do.

Most working scientists; certainly not all, and certainly not the leading lights of the ultra-Darwinian cheering chorus featured in the next segment of the film. For them, ideology is front and center. The publicly expressed sentiments of men like Richard Dawkins leave no doubt that their attitudes are informed by extreme antireligious and anti-Christian leanings. Such attitudes are often disturbing to hear spelled out in full clarity. Calm, highly credentialed scientists at the pinnacle of their profession, warmly discussing the elimination of religious belief from the world as if it were some kind of disease, are fearful things to behold. Their impenetrable egos, distorted logic, willful misreading of history and readiness to desacralize human life all bear an unmistakable Luciferian stamp. One of their number—the creepy Dr. Will Provine of Cornell University—even exhibits signs of demonic possession. If you don’t believe me, watch the film; he speaks about his own imminent suicide and his rejection of free will in tones that are positively hellish.

And in case anybody is still wondering, yes, the connections to Nazism and the eugenics movement are made. In the fourth segment of the film, Stein visits a former Nazi extermination camp for medical defectives. Amid stock footage of emaciated corpses, he asks his German guide if she thought the perpetrators were insane. “No,” she answered in broken English. “They weren’t insane because they had purposes.” Her simple answer was exactly to the point. The Nazi doctors of death wouldn’t have met any clinical definition of insanity. They were acting out the implications of their worldview with perfect logical consistency. A committed Darwinist can carry out crimes against humanity with an eerie impassivity, convinced of the rational underpinnings of his actions. After the war, a much-maligned Martin Heidegger tried to make this point to a world that had already decided not to forgive him. Ben Stein makes it for us again today. He sees the same evil implicit in our contemporary abortion practices, and it’s hard to argue with his conclusions.

But the film is probably most effective in its third segment, which highlights the thinking of various intellectuals for whom Darwinism does not compute. The crowning moment is Stein’s conversation with the well-traveled, highly accomplished David Berlinski. It serves no purpose to ask whether or not Darwinism is correct when the theory is not precise enough to be correct or incorrect. The fuzziness of Darwinian Theory has been noted by many before. In Berlinski’s words, it is like “looking into a room full of smoke.” I think the film will have served its purpose if it prompts viewers to seriously reflect upon one single question: What do we mean when we say “evolution”? If we mean a vague notion that life changes over time, virtually nobody would dispute it. But that is not the theory that Darwin advanced. Textbook evolutionary theory is committed to upholding the common decent of all life on earth from a single ancestor, origins unspecified, via speciation through random mutation and natural selection. It leaves no room for teleology of any kind, from any source, in any degree, at any stage. This stronger claim is impossible to defend with empirical evidence, and masks a deeper agenda which is fearful of being exposed. One of the scientists featured here admonishes us to “beware the sound of one hand clapping.” Whenever one side asserts that the debate is finished, that’s because it isn’t.

For my own part, I am no follower of Darwin, but I have little use for Intelligent Design, either. If living organisms have been designed, that means that there is some algorithm capable of exhaustively describing their capacities. Even if said algorithm is exceedingly complex, such that it could never be deciphered within a comprehensible timescale or written down within the observable universe, it remains nonetheless finite and unmysterious. Under this scheme, freedom is just as much an illusion as it is under Darwin’s. But if those dissenters had read Aristotle, or Aquinas, or Leibniz, or Goethe, they would have known there is another way; a knowledge as old as time, expressed in many settings and uttered in various idioms, but everywhere an expression of the same pure intuition, that life is the prime stuff of existence. It doesn’t arise from anything simpler, either by design or by chance. A living being is a monad, an atom of nature, a form inhering in matter, which, although limited, stands atop an infinite depth. We have a Creator to be sure, but his unsearchable Word cannot be reduced to a set of biomolecular Tinkertoys. Intelligent Design is perhaps a shallower version of Darwinism, an occultic explanation of life prepared from the same Cartesian fallacies as its antagonist. What’s missing from biology is an understanding of Being as it actually is. But now the world is waking up. Perhaps we will soon be ready for Intelligent Dasein.