ID presents itself as a scientific theory. It proposes that some features of living things can only be explained as products of intelligent design, and its proponents are confident that such a proposition is scientifically testable. For two reasons, though, I am not concerned with the question whether such confidence is justified. For one thing, I am not qualified to judge. But more important, I believe that the overarching philosophical question at stake would be left largely untouched even if ID were empirically well-confirmed.

I say "largely" but not "wholly" because the success of ID, if that were forthcoming, would at least be philosophically relevant. By showing that neo-Darwinism is scientifically inadequate as an explanation for the development of species, it would rightly cast doubt on the thesis of neo-Darwinian materialists that the origin of life itself can eventually be explained in non-teleological terms. And the ranks of those finding support for classical theism in ID would certainly be bolstered. But I do not share the confidence of ID theorists that things will take such a happy course; and even if they did, materialist neo-Darwinians could always emulate the old defenders of geocentrism by having recourse to epicyclical explanations for which they could claim predictive value. They could, that is, postulate that the pertinent features were designed by other material, if admittedly intelligent, beings. I have read that Richard Dawkins has already armed himself with such a comeback on the off chance that it turns out to be needed. Although it's hard to see how that postulate could be tested, it would in principle be testable.

But those aren't even the main reasons I disbelieve that ID can offer what most of its proponents seem to want: scientific evidence for classical theism. As I implied in my review of Georgetown theologian John Haught's book Is Nature Enough? Truth and Meaning in the Age of Science (2006), the very idea of seeking scientific evidence for classical theism is a category mistake. The aims, methods, and canons of natural science, though not immune to revision, remain just as they are whether or not classical theism is true. There is no scientific work for an appeal to a "God of the gaps" to do.

A more promising tack, I believe, would be to show that natural science does not, because it cannot, answer a certain question that its results make it reasonable to raise: why are the laws of nature, whatever they are, what they are? Natural science entails discovering causal regularities and subsuming them under higher-order causal regularities. Those are what natural science uses to explain and predict observable events. Within its proper sphere, it does so quite successfully; it might conceivably come up with a confirmable "Theory of Everything," where the quantifier ranges over physical things. And the nested set of causal regularities such a theory would present would just be "the laws of nature." But that doesn't rule out the question why the-totality-of-things-that-change, or what Wittgenstain termed "the sphere of what happens," exists.

Call that totality 'T'. Granted we do not know its full extent, and may never know it short of the Eschaton, T certainly exists. The question why T exists is meaningful because we cannot rule out that T embodies the intention of something it does not comprise, and is in that sense telic. We could rule out that possibility, and thus render the question meaningless, only by premising scientism: the thesis that only what can be known by means of modern science, and thus without recourse to final (and formal) causes, can be known at all. Yet, for reasons that needn't be explained, no scientific argument for scientism can be given. Scientism is a philosophical option for which, I've suggested, the arguments are essentially moral arguments. Given the full range and depth of human experience, those arguments are not particularly persuasive. And once one realizes that the question why T exists admits only a teleological answer if it is answerable at all, then a successful ID could be taken as evidence that the question is quite reasonable to raise. A true and non-trivial answer to that question would also afford an answer to the question why the laws of nature are as they are.

A successful ID would not and could not provide the answer to either question; but it would provide a good reason to admit both—a better reason, I should think, then Dawkins' saving-the-appearances hypothesis would be for excluding them. Here, "theistic evolutionists" would be on terra firma they could share with ID theorists. But only if ID proves itself scientifically cogent.

Well worth a glance.

Michael's blog, Sacramentum Vitae, discusses topics that readers of W4 will be interested in--petitionary prayer, arguments against the existence of God, abortion, and Catholic liberalism. We look forward to seeing such posts and reader discussions of them here at W4.

Feminist doctrine cannot accommodate the Church's insistence that all must bend the knee before the Man who is the perfect and complete revelation of God, for it simply does not believe God can be perfectly and completely revealed by a male. In consistently egalitarian theology there must be at the very least a feminine co-principal. But this orthodox Christianity denies, agreeing here with the more thoroughgoing feminists, that those who wish to retain their alliance with the faith by styling themselves Christian egalitarians can only do so by misunderstanding both Christian doctrine and the telos of their own ideology. You cannot have both at once; Christianity and feminism, whether of the egalitarian or gynarchial variety, exclude one another.

I invite comments. But please read the whole thing first. These are deep waters.

"To determine students’ level of basic civic knowledge, we surveyed Arizona high school students with questions drawn from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) item bank, which consists of 100 questions given to candidates for United States citizenship. The longstanding practice has been for candidates to take a test on 10 of these items. A minimum of six correct answers is required to pass. The service recently reported a first-try passing rate of 92.4 percent.

"The Goldwater Institute survey, conducted by a private survey firm, gave each student 10 items from the USCIS item bank...Questions included (1) Who was the first president of the United States? (2) Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? and (3) What ocean is located on the East Coast of the United States?

"...Only 3.5 percent of Arizona high school students attending public schools passed the citizenship test..."

And from which, I suppose, we may also conclude that the whole establishment in charge of the public "education" of American children richly deserves to be cast into that dark place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

But, hey - at least the kiddies know what the'yre told about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart, Oprah Winfrey & Marilyn Monroe.

So I guess that's all right, then.

Hat tip to Jay Nordlinger.

Among the allegations are #5, "The correspondence contained an inflammatory anti-Muslim message."

To which my immediate reply is, "So? This is illegal?"

Interestingly, the $4,000 fine is actually being levied for two other alleged violations. The first is sending out a fund-raising letter without being properly registered as a non-profit. But actually CAN has canceled checks showing that it was duly registered in 2008, and the state doesn't make any claim to the contrary. The letter in question was sent before the end of the renewal grace period for 2009 re-registrations, so their 2008 registration should still have been in effect. Moreover, the state's complaints about missing paperwork for their 2009 registration seem plausibly to have been cooked up for harassment purposes when the state decided it disapproved of the group's message.

More worriesome is the $3000 portion of the fine for using the state governor's name without his written consent! The fund-raising letter urges recipients to write to the government concerning a pro-Muslim public school curriculum (with Muslim prayer "play-acting"), urging him to stop the institution of the curriculum. Anyone who gets mailings from non-profit organizations recognizes this sort of lobbying suggestion quite well. If it is illegal in Maine to urge people to write to the governor without the governor's written consent, Maine has serious First Amendment problems.

But back to the "inflammatory" speech thing:

Let me add that, with the help of a Jihad Watch reader, I have looked up and read what appear to be all of Maine's "hate crime" laws. As I suspected, and consistent with what I know about "hate crimes" laws in the U.S., there are no laws referring to "hate speech" or "inflammatory messages." Every single one of Maine's "hate crime" laws involves an underlying crime--violence, threat of violence, destruction of property, threat of destruction of property, etc. The most mild of these (silly enough) is threat of trespass on property. And such crimes are treated specially if motivated by the usual list--race, religion, sexual preference, blah, blah. (As someone said to me, "I'm going to walk across your lawn without your permission because you're a Methodist. So there!" And that's a hate crime.) All of which is objectionable enough, in all conscience, because exceedingly minor crimes can be thereby elevated to a higher criminal status on ideological grounds. But still, America remains different from Europe because of the need for an underlying crime, however minor. As far as I know, merely engaging in speech that "incites hatred" and such is not formally and officially illegal in the United States. But I fear people are becoming increasingly confused about this matter, and Elaine Thibodeau seems to be one of those who wants to hurry history along a little and get rid of that pesky little concept of (anything remotely resembling) free speech--at least when it's politically incorrect.

I'm glad to say that CAN is appealing the fines and not agreeing to any such charges. May their appeal (and a possible lawsuit against the state) prosper. Meanwhile, I guess the rest of us had better send out whatever "inflammatory anti-Muslim messages" we deem necessary while there is yet time, before the Elaine Thibodeaus of the world are in charge of our country.

HT Jihad Watch

Apparently, this means that Caritas isn't getting a contract with the state and is, rather, just continuing business as before. The contract with the state is now merely with Centene-owned Celticare, and Caritas can go back to doing things as it always did. That, at least, is how this is being reported, and I hope that it is true.

Some have implied that the financially distressed Caritas will go out of business altogether if it does not get this contract with the state. Naturally, I hope that this does not happen, though a Christian organization should certainly not provide abortions as the price of continuing to stay in business. If Caritas stays afloat without the state contract, this will only make the original intention to seek the contract with all its illegitimate requirements all the more blame-worthy and unmitigated.

"Alas, our well-educated young people are finding that their lives are being ruined by a despotic tyranny.

"'Students who failed to understand the words "despotic tyranny" have been complaining about their history A-level exam.

"'It is claimed the question "How far do you agree that Hitler's role 1933-45 was one of despotic tyranny?" was too confusing for some students to understand.

"'A protest group called Despotic Tyranny Ruined My Life has been set up on Facebook.

"'So far 1,151 people have joined the group, leaving comments such as "My life is DESTROYED because of this exam. Seriously" and "This exam made me sad.'

"What's at once impressive, pathetic and sad are the self-righteous complaints of the students. Look and despair. These are next year's university intake..."

"...in our wider reading which I assure you myself and other students at my sixth form complete, the focus was not on Hitler as a despot but on how the system of government impacted everyday life and how it operated. Perhaps if we had have been learning about tyrannical leaders whereby we drew comparisons as you describe then we would have read the necessary materials to enlighten us as to what the term despot meant in relation to Hitler. As it was we did not and it is elitist quite frankly to assume every history student is going to have come across such a term."

Poor kid. And I mean that: he's obviously bright, and he's just on the cusp of literacy. But how badly he's been served by the system - which seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to our own system here in the States.

(BTW and FWIW: yes, the question in question was barbarously written, and whatever committee came up with it ought to be summarily sent off en masse to the salt mines with nothing but vinegar to drink. But not because the question included the words "despotic" and "tyranny." I mean, have these kids never studied their own history? Just exactly what words do they use to describe, say, the Tudors?)

Meanwhile, as Peter Hitchens pointed out a couple of weeks ago, the British "educational" bureaucracy is anxious to extend its death-grip to those children who have so far escaped its grasp - i.e., home-schoolers:

"...the 'Department for Children' [is] demanding that prying officials be empowered to force their way into the homes of parents who prefer to educate their sons and daughters at home.

"This is our all-powerful State's angry response to a growing rebellion, by mothers and fathers who are sick of seeing their children bullied, neglected and miseducated in the state education system, and rightly think they can do a better job...

"The pretext for this invasion of privacy is a baseless suggestion that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse. Well, so it could, and so could piano lessons, dentistry or newspaper delivery rounds. But they are not subject to [Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed] Balls's new inquisition. Why not? Because they don't challenge his desire to march all children into egalitarian comprehensive sausage machines, notorious as they are for violence, ignorance and drugs."

Well, indeed. Whenever one finds a "public servant" droning on about the welfare of the children, one must not let oneself be lulled into sleep or stupefaction. One must always keep one's eye on the ball - i.e., on the overriding telos of all such "public servants" at all times: the maximization of the authority and the minimization of the public accountability of their own self-selecting class.

Anyway, I think that Tall's piece adds just one more bit of bite to Hitchens' excellent question: How can the commissars in charge of the Western world's worst schools be fit to judge how well a parent is teaching her own child?"