Problems with Evolution.

this essay was written by a gonzo journalist named Fred Reed. He's a libertarian
old coot who now lives in Mexico and a lot of what he says is definately un-PC, but he's no idiot and while you won't always agree with what he says, it is always thought-provoking. I thought this essay had some good points; he's not a Christian or a creationist btw. Hope you find it as interesting as I did. You can join his mailing list at www.fredoneverything.net.

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Fredwin On Evolution

Very Long, Will Bore Hell Out Of Most People, But I Felt Like Doing It




March 7, 2005

I was about fifteen when I began to think about evolution. I was then just
discovering the sciences systematically, and took them as what they offered
themselves to be, a realm of reason and dispassionate regard for truth.
There was a hard-edged clarity to them that I liked. You got real answers.
Since evolution depended on such sciences as chemistry, I regarded it as
also being a science.

The question of the origin of life interested me. The evolutionary
explanations that I encountered in textbooks of biology ran to, �In primeval
seas, evaporation concentrated dissolved compounds in a pore in a rock, a
skim formed a membrane, and life began its immense journey.� I saw no reason
to doubt this. If it hadn�t been true, scientists would not have said that
it was.

Remember, I was fifteen.

In those days I read Scientific American and New Scientist, the latter then
still being thoughtfully written in good English. I noticed that not
infrequently they offered differing speculation as to the origin of life.
The belief in the instrumentality of chemical accident was constant, but the
nature of the primeval soup changed to fit varying attempts at explanation.

For a while, life was thought to have come about on clay in shallow water in
seas of a particular composition, later in tidal pools with another chemical
solution, then in the open ocean in another solution. This continues.
Recently, geothermal vents have been offered as the home of the first life.
Today (Feb 24, 2005) on the BBC website, I learn that life evolved below the
oceanic floor. (�There is evidence that life evolved in the deep sediments,"
co-author John Parkes, of Cardiff University, UK, told the BBC News
website.� Link at bottom.)

The frequent shifting of ground bothered me. If we knew how life began, why
did we have so many prospective mechanisms, none of which really worked?
Evolution began to look like a theory in search of a soup. Forty-five years
later, it still does.


Questions Arise

I was probably in college when I found myself asking what seemed to me
straightforward questions about the chemical origin of life. In particular:

(1) Life was said to have begun by chemical inadvertence in the early seas.
Did we, I wondered, really know of what those early seas consisted? Know,
not suspect, hope, theorize, divine, speculate, or really, really wish.

The answer was, and is, �no.� We have no dried residue, no remaining pools,
and the science of planetogenesis isn�t nearly good enough to provide a
quantitative analysis.

(2) Had the creation of a living cell been replicated in the laboratory? No,
it hadn�t, and hasn�t. (Note 1)

(3) Did we know what conditions were necessary for a cell to come about? No,
we didn�t, and don�t.

(4) Could it be shown to be mathematically probable that a cell would form,
given any soup whatever? No, it couldn�t, and can�t. (At least not without
cooking the assumptions.) (Note 2)

Well, I thought, sophomore chemistry major that I then was: If we don�t know
what conditions existed, or what conditions are necessary, and can�t
reproduce the event in the laboratory, and can�t show it to be statistically
probable�why are we so very sure that it happened? Would you hang a man on
such evidence?

My point was not that evolutionists were necessarily wrong. I simply didn�t
see the evidence. While they couldn�t demonstrate that life had begun by
chemical accident, I couldn�t show that it hadn�t. An inability to prove
that something is statistically possible is not the same as proving that it
is not possible. Not being able to reproduce an event in the laboratory does
not establish that it didn�t happen in nature. Etc.

I just didn�t know how life came about. I still don�t. Neither do
evolutionists.



What Distinguishes Evolution from Other Science

Early on, I noticed three things about evolution that differentiated it from
other sciences (or, I could almost say, from science). First, plausibility
was accepted as being equivalent to evidence. (And of course the less you
know, the greater the number of things that are plausible, because there are
fewer facts to get in the way.) Again and again evolutionists assumed that
suggesting how something might have happened was equivalent to establishing
how it had happened. Asking them for evidence usually aroused annoyance and
sometimes, if persisted in, hostility.

As an example, it seems plausible to evolutionists that life arose by
chemical misadventure. By this they mean (I think) that they cannot imagine
how else it might have come about. (Neither can I. Does one accept a poor
explanation because unable to think of a good one?) This accidental-life
theory, being somewhat plausible, is therefore accepted without the usual
standards of science, such as reproducibility or rigorous demonstration of
mathematical feasibility. Putting it otherwise, evolutionists are too
attached to their ideas to be able to question them.

Consequently, discussion often turns to vague and murky assertion. Starlings
are said to have evolved to be the color of dirt so that hawks can�t see
them to eat them. This is plausible. But guacamayos and cockatoos are gaudy
enough to be seen from low-earth orbit. Is there a contradiction here? No,
say evolutionists. Guacamayos are gaudy so they can find each other to mate.
Always there is the pat explanation. But starlings seem to mate with great
success, though invisible. If you have heard a guacamayo shriek, you can
hardly doubt that another one could easily find it. Enthusiasts of evolution
then told me that guacamayos were at the top of their food chain, and didn�t
have predators. Or else that the predators were colorblind. On and on it
goes. But�is any of this established?


Second, evolution seemed more a metaphysics or ideology than a science. The
sciences, as I knew them, gave clear answers. Evolution involved intense
faith in fuzzy principles. You demonstrated chemistry, but believed
evolution. If you have ever debated a Marxist, or a serious liberal or
conservative, or a feminist or Christian, you will have noticed that,
although they can be exceedingly bright and well informed, they display a
maddening imprecision. You never get a straight answer if it is one they do
not want to give. Nothing is ever firmly established. Crucial assertions do
not tie to observable reality. Invariably the Marxist (or evolutionist)
assumes that a detailed knowledge of economic conditions under the reign of
Nicholas II or whatever substitutes for being able to answer simple
questions, such as why Marxism has never worked: the Fallacy of Irrelevant
Knowledge. And of course almost anything can be made believable by
considering only favorable evidence and interpreting hard.


Third, evolutionists are obsessed by Christianity and Creationism, with
which they imagine themselves to be in mortal combat. This is peculiar to
them. Note that other sciences, such as astronomy and geology, even
archaeology, are equally threatened by the notion that the world was created
in 4004 BC. Astronomers pay not the slightest attention to creationist
ideas. Nobody does�except evolutionists. We are dealing with competing
religions�overarching explanations of origin and destiny. Thus the fury of
their response to skepticism.

I found it pointless to tell them that I wasn�t a Creationist. They refused
to believe it. If they had, they would have had to answer questions that
they would rather avoid. Like any zealots, they cannot recognize their own
zealotry. Thus their constant classification of skeptics as enemies (a word
they often use)�of truth, of science, of Darwin, of progress.

This tactical demonization is not unique to evolution. �Creationist� is to
evolution what �racist� is to politics: A way of preventing discussion of
what you do not want to discuss. Evolution is the political correctness of
science.



The Lair of the Beast

I have been on several lists on the internet that deal with matters such as
evolution, have written on the subject, and have discussed evolution with
various of its adherents. These men (almost all of them are) have frequently
been very bright indeed, often Ivy League professors, some of them with
names you would recognize. They are not amateurs of evolution or high-school
principals in Kansas eager to prove their modernity. I asked them the
questions in the foregoing (about whether we really know what the primeval
seas consisted of, etc.) I knew the answers; I wanted to see how serious
proponents of evolutionary biology would respond to awkward questions.

It was like giving a bobcat a prostate exam. I got everything but answers.
They told me I was a crank, implied over and over that I was a Creationist,
said that I was an enemy of science (someone who asks for evidence is an
enemy of science). They said that I was trying to pull down modern biology
(if you ask questions about an aspect of biology, you want to pull down
biology). They told me I didn�t know anything (that�s why I was asking
questions), and that I was a mere journalist (the validity of a question
depends on its source rather than its content).

But they didn�t answer the questions. They ducked and dodged and evaded.
After thirty years in journalism, I know ducking and dodging when I see it.
It was like cross-examining hostile witnesses. I tried to force the issue,
pointing out that the available answers were �Yes,� �No,� �I don�t know,� or
�The question is not legitimate,� followed by any desired discussion. Still
no straight answer. They would neither tell me of what the early oceans
consisted, nor admit that they didn�t know.

This is the behavior not of scientists, but of advocates, of True Believers.
I used to think that science was about asking questions, not about defending
things you didn�t really know. Religion, I thought, was the other way
around. I guess I was wrong.


Practical Questions

A few things that worry those who are not doctrinaire evolutionists.
(Incidentally, it is worth noting that by no means all involved in the life
sciences are doctrinaire. A friend of mine, a (Jewish, atheist) biochemist,
says �It doesn�t make sense.� He may be wrong, but a Creationist he isn�t.)

To work, a theory presumably must (a) be internally consistent and (b) map
onto reality. You have to have both. Classical mechanics for example is (so
far as I know) internally consistent, but is not at all points congruent
with reality. Evolution has a great deal of elaborate, Protean, and often
fuzzy theory. How closely does it correspond to what we actually see? Do the
sweeping principles fit the grubby details?

For example, how did a giraffe get a long neck? One reads as a matter of
vague philosophical principle that a proto-giraffe by chance happened to be
taller than its herdmates, could eat more altitudinous leaves than its
confreres, was therefore better fed, consequently rutted with abandon, and
produced more child giraffes of height. This felicitous adaptation therefore
spread and we ended up�well, up�with taller giraffes. It sounds reasonable.
In evolution that is enough.

But what are the practical details? Do we have an unambiguous record of
giraffes with longer and longer necks? (Maybe we do. I�m just asking.)
Presumably modern giraffes have more vertebrae then did proto-giraffes. (The
alternative is the same number of vertebrae, but longer ones. I have known
giraffes. They were flexible rather than hinged.) This, note, requires a
structural change as distinct from an increase in size.

Evolution is said to proceed by the accretion of successful point mutations.
Does a random point mutation cause the appearance of an extra vertebra? If
so, which mutation? (It would have to be a pretty vigorous point mutation.)
How can you tell, given that we have no DNA from proto-giraffes? If not one,
then how many random point mutations? Which ones? What virtue did these have
that they were conserved until all were present? Did this happen once per
additional vertebra�the multiply repeated chance appearance of identical
mutations? Or did they appear all at once? If so, the heart must have
changed simultaneously to get blood way up there.

[After I posted this a reader wrote to say that giraffes do have longer
instead of more vertebra. Substitute "a snake" for " giraffe," snakes
sometimes having hundrds of vertebrae, and the same questions questions
hold.]

There may be perfectly good, clear, demonstrable answers to a few of these
questions. I�m not a paleontological giraffologist. But if evolutionists
want people to accept evolution, they need to provide answers�clear,
concrete, non-metaphysical answers without gaping logical lacunae. They do
not. When passionate believers do not provide answers that would
substantiate their assertions, a reasonable presumption is that they do not
have them.


The matter of the giraffe is a simple example of a question that inevitably
occurs to the independently thoughtful: How do you get evolutionarily from A
to B? Can you get from A to B by the mechanisms assumed? Without practical
details, evolution looks like an assertion that the better survives the
worse; throw in ionizing radiation and such to provide things to do the
surviving, and we�re off to the races. But�can we get there from here? Do we
actually know the intermediate steps and the associated genetic mechanics?
If we don�t know what the steps were, can we at least show unambiguously a
series of steps that would work?

Lots of evolutionary changes just don�t look manageable by random mutation.
Some orchestrated jump seems necessary. How does an animal evolve color
vision, given that doing so would require elaborate changes in eye
chemistry, useless without simultaneous elaborate changes in the brain to
interpret the incoming impulses, which changes would themselves be useless
without the retinal changes?

Or consider caterpillars. A caterpillar has no obvious resemblance to a
butterfly. The disparity in engineering is huge. The caterpillar has no
legs, properly speaking, certainly no wings, no proboscis. How did a species
that did not undergo metamorphosis evolve into one that did? Pupating looks
like something you do well or not at all: If you don�t turn into something
practical at the end, you don�t get another chance.

Think about this. The ancestor of a modern caterpillar necessarily was
something that could reproduce already. To get to be a butterfly-producing
sort of organism, it would have to evolve silk-extruding organs, since they
are what you make a cocoon with. OK, maybe it did this to tie leaves
together, or maybe the beast resembled a tent-caterpillar. (Again,
plausibility over evidence.) Then some mutation caused it to wrap itself
experimentally in silk. (What mutation? Are we serious?) It then died,
wrapped, because it had no machinery to cause it to undergo the
fantastically complex transformation into a butterfly. Death is usually a
discouragement to reproduction.

Tell me how the beast can gradually acquire, by accident, the capacity
gradually to undergo all the formidably elaborate changes from worm to
butterfly, so that each intermediate form is a practical organism that
survives. If evolutionists cannot answer such questions, the theory fails.

Here the evolutionist will say, �Fred, caterpillars are soft, squashy things
and don�t leave good fossils, so it�s unreasonable to expect us to find
proof.� I see the problem. But it is unreasonable to expect me to accept
something on the grounds that it can�t be proved. Yes, it is possible that
an explanation exists and that we just haven�t found it. But you can say
that of anything whatever. Is it good science to assume that evidence will
be forthcoming because we sure would like it to be? I�ll gladly give you
evidence Wednesday for a theory today?

Note that I am not asking evolutionists to give detailed mechanics for the
evolution of everything that lives. If they gave convincing evidence for a
few of the hard cases�proof of principle, so to speak--I would be inclined
to believe that equally good evidence existed for the others. But they
haven�t.
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Evolution, Like Gaul, Is Divided Into Three Parts

Evolution breaks down into at least three logically separable components:
First, that life arose by chemical accident; second, that it then evolved
into the life we see today; and third, that the mechanism was the accretion
of chance mutations. Evolutionists, not particularly logical, refuse to see
this separability.

The first, chance formation of life, simply hasn�t been established. It
isn�t science, but faith.

The second proposition, that life, having arisen by unknown means, then
evolved into the life of today, is more solid. In very old rocks you find
fish, then things, like coelacanth and the ichthyostega, that look like
transitional forms, and finally us. They seem to have gotten from A to B
somehow. A process of evolution, however driven, looks reasonable. It is
hard to imagine that they appeared magically from nowhere, one after the
other.

The third proposition, that the mechanism of evolutions is chance mutation,
though sacrosanct among its proponents, is shaky. If it cannot account for
the simultaneous appearance of complex, functionally interdependent
characteristics, as in the case of caterpillars, it fails. Thus far, it
hasn�t accounted for them.

It is interesting to note that evolutionists switch stories regarding the
mechanism of transformation. The standard Neo-Darwinian view is that
evolution proceeds very slowly. But when it proves impossible to find
evidence of gradual evolution, some evolutionists turn to �punctuated
equilibrium,� (2) which says that evolution happens by sudden undetectable
spurts. The idea isn�t foolish, just unestablished. Then there are the
evolutionists who, in opposition to those who maintain that point-mutations
continue to account for evolution, say that now cultural evolution has taken
over.

Finally, when things do not happen according to script�when, for example,
human intelligence appears too rapidly�then we have the theory of
�privileged genes,� which evolved at breakneck speed because of assumed but
unestablished selective pressures. That is, the existence of the pressures
is inferred from the changes, and then the changes are attributed to the
pressures. Oh.

When you have patched a tire too many times, you start thinking about
getting a new tire.


The Theory of Implausibility

As previously mentioned, evolutionists depend heavily on plausibility
unabetted by evidence. There is also the matter of implausibility. Suppose
that I showed you two tiny gear wheels, such as one might find in an old
watch, and said, �See? I turn this little wheel, and the other little wheel
turns too. Isn�t that cute?� You would not find this surprising. Suppose I
then showed you a whole mechanical watch, with thirty little gear wheels and
a little lever that said tickticktick. You would have no trouble accepting
that they all worked together.

If I then told you of a mechanism consisting of a hundred billion little
wheels that worked for seventy years, repairing itself, wouldn�t you suspect
either that I was smoking something really good�or that something beyond
simple mechanics must be involved?

Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will
spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and
write all the books in the British Museum.

If something looks implausible, it probably is.


More Questions on the Fit with Reality

Does the theory, however reasonable and plausible (or not), in fact map onto
what we actually see? A principle of evolution is that traits conferring
fitness become general within a population. Do they?

Again, consider intelligence. Presumably it increases fitness. (Or maybe it
does. An obvious question is why, if intelligence is adaptive�i.e., promotes
survival--it didn�t evolve earlier; and if it is not adaptive, why did it
evolve at all? You get various unsubstantiated answers, such as that
intelligence is of no use without an opposable thumb, or speech, or
something.)

Those who deal in human evolution usually hold The Bell Curve in high
regard. (So do I. It�s almost as good as Shotgun News or, more appropriate
in this context, the Journal of Irreproducible Results.) A point the book
makes is that in the United States the highly intelligent tend to go into
fields requiring intelligence, as for example the sciences, computing, and
law. They live together, work together, and marry each other, thus tending
to concentrate intelligence instead of making it general in the population.
They also produce children at below the level of replacement. Perhaps
fitness leads to extinction.

Black sub-Saharan Africans (say many evolutionists) have a mean IQ somewhere
near 70, live in wretched poverty, and breed enthusiastically. White
Europeans, reasonably bright at IQ 100 and quite prosperous, are losing
population. Jews, very bright indeed at a mean IQ of 115 and very
prosperous, are positively scarce, always have been, and seem to be losing
ground. From this I conclude either that (a) intelligence does not increase
fitness or (b) reproduction is inversely proportional to fitness.

I�m being a bit of a smart-ass here, but�the facts really don�t seem to
match the theory.

In human populations, do the fit really reproduce with each other? It is a
matter of daily observation that men prefer cute, sexy women. It then
becomes crucial for evolutionists to show that cute and sexy are more fit
than strong, smart, and ugly. Thus large breasts are said to produce more
milk (Evidence? Chimpanzees have no breasts yet produce ample milk.) and
that broad hips imply a large birth canal. (But men are not attracted to
broad hips, but to broad hips in conjunction with a narrow waist.)
Curvaceous legs are curvaceous because of underlying muscle, important for
fitness.

Of course Chinese women do not have muscular legs or buttocks, wide hips, or
large breasts, and seem to reproduce satisfactorily. (White and Asian women
are more physically delicate than African women, as witness the lower rates
of training injuries among black women in the American army. Thus European
women, said to have emigrated from Africa and evolved to be Caucasians, lost
sturdiness. Why?)

Then it is said that ugly woman are hypertestosteronal, and therefore have
more spontaneous abortions. A sophomore logic student with a hangover could
point out the problems and unsaid things in this argument.

There is an air of desperation about all of it. Transparently they begin
with their conclusion and craft their reasoning to reach it.


Fast and Faster

To the evolutionarily unbaptised, it seems that evolution might occur
slowly, by the gradual accretion of random point-mutations over millions of
years, but certainly could occur rapidly by the spread of genes already
available in the population. For example, genes presumably exist among us
for the eyes of Ted Williams, the endurance of marathon runners, the general
physical plant of Mohammed Ali, the intelligence of Gauss, and so on. (This
of course assumes genetic determinism, which not all geneticists buy.) Are,
or were, these becoming general? Perhaps. Show me. If not, one must conclude
either that these qualities do not confer fitness, or that fitness does not
become general. It seems odd to believe that massive structural changes can
occur slowly through the accumulation of accidental changes, but much more
rapid increases in fitness do not occur through existent genes. Can we get
answers, please? Concrete, non-metaphysical, demonstrable answers?


Consciousness

With evolution the sciences run into the problem of consciousness, which
they are poorly equipped to handle. This is important. You don�t need to
consider consciousness in, say, physical chemistry, which gives the correct
answers without it. But evolution is a study of living things, of which
consciousness is at least sometimes a quality. Evolutionists know this, and
so write unwittingly fatuous articles on the evolution of consciousness.
They believe that they are being scientific. But�are they?

Obvious questions: What is consciousness? Does it have a derived definition,
like f = ma? Or is it an undefined primitive, like �line� or �point�? With
what instrument do you detect it? Is something either conscious or not, or
do you have shades and degrees? Is a tree conscious, or a rock? How do you
know? Evolution means a continuous change over time. How do you document
such changes? Do we have fossilized consciousness, consciousness preserved
in amber? Does consciousness have physical existence? If it does, is it
electromagnetic, gravitational, or what? If it doesn�t have physical
existence, what kind of existence does it have?

If you cannot define it, detect it, or measure it, how do you study its
evolution, if any? Indeed, how do the sciences, based on physics, handle the
physically undetectable?

Speculation disguised as science never ends. For example, some say that
consciousness is just a side-effect of complexity. How do they know?
Complexity defined how? If a man is conscious because he�s complex, then a
whole room full of people must be even more conscious, because the total
complexity would have to be more than any one fellow�s complexity. The
universe has got to be more complex than anything in it, so it must be
motingator conscious.

Ah, but the crucial questions, though: (Again, the possible answers are,
�Yes,� �No,� �I don�t know,� or �The question doesn�t make sense.�)

First, does consciousness interact with matter? It seems to. When I drop a
cinder block on my foot, it sure interacts with my consciousness. And if I
consciously tell my hand to move, it does.

Second, if consciousness interacts with matter, then don�t you have to take
it into account in describing physical systems?


Vague Plausibility Revisited

Humans are said to have a poor sense of smell because they evolved to stand
upright in the savanna where you can see forever and don�t need to smell
things. This makes no sense: Anyone can see that the better your senses of
smell and hearing, especially at night but even in daytime if you have lions
that look like dirt and know how to sneak up on things, you are better off.
I note that horses have good vision and eyes at about the same altitude as
ours, but they have great noses.

Then the evolutionist says, well, people�s noses retracted into their faces,
and there wasn�t room for good olfaction. How much olfactory tissue does a
house cat have? They can sure smell things better than we can. Oh, then says
the Evolutionist, a large olfactory center in the brain would impose too
much metabolic strain and require that people eat more, and so they would
die of starvation in bad times. Evidence? Demonstration?

My favorite example, which does not reach the level of plausibility, is such
artifacts as the tail of a peacock which obviously make the bird easier to
see and eat. So help me, I have several times seen the assertion that
females figure that any male who can survive such a horrendous disadvantage
must really be tough, and therefore good mating material. The tail increases
fitness by decreasing fitness. A Boy Named Sue.


Traits That Ought To Be Dead, But Don�t Seem To Be

Supposedly traits that kill off an animal die out of the population, and
things that help the beast survive spread till they all have them. That
makes sense. But does it happen?

That it does is certainly an article of faith. I once asked a doctor why Rh
negative people stayed in the population. Fifteen percent of white women are
negative, so they are usually going to mate with positive men, with the
consequent possibility that children will suffer from hemolytic disease.
Well, said the doctor, being Rh negative obviously must have some survival
value, or it wouldn�t exist. (Then why hasn�t it become general? Or is it
doing so?) She simply believed.

She then rolled out sickle-cell anemia, the poster child of evolution, which
is caused by a point mutation on the beta chain of hemoglobin and, when
heterozygous, helps people survive malaria.

Maybe Rh negativity does have some survival value, which can be shown to be
greater than its non-survival value. Maybe asthma does too, and fatal
allergies to bee stings, and migraines, schizophrenia, panic, cluster
headaches, anaphylactic shock in general, homosexuality in males, allergies,
a thousand genetic diseases, suicide, and so on. (I suppose you could argue
that being a suicide bomber ensures wide dispersal of one�s genetic
material.)

For that matter, why are there so many traits that have no obvious value?
For example, kidneys have well developed nerves. Kidney stones are
agonizing. Yet there is absolutely nothing an animal can do about a kidney
stone. How do those nerves increase fitness?

Evolutionists don�t ask. Always the question is How does this fit in with
evolution, instead of, Does this fit in with evolution?



Intelligent Design

An interesting thought that drives evolutionists mad is called Intelligent
Design, or ID. It is the view that things that appear to have been done
deliberately might have been. Some look at, say, the human eye and think,
�This looks like really good engineering. Elaborate retina of twelve layers,
marvelously transparent cornea, pump system to keep the whole thing
inflated, suspensory ligaments, really slick lens, the underlying cell
biology. Very clever.�

I gather that a lot of ID folk are in fact Christian apologists trying to
drape Genesis in scientific respectability. That is, things looked to have
been designed, therefore there must be a designer, now will Yahweh step
forward. Yet an idea is not intellectually disreputable because some of the
people who hold it are. The genuine defects of ID are the lack of a
detectible designer, and that evolution appears to have occurred. This leads
some to the thought that consciousness is involved and evolution may be
shaping itself. I can think of no way to test the idea.

In any event, to anyone of modest rationality, the evolutionist�s hostility
to Intelligent Design is amusing. Many evolutionists argue, perhaps
correctly, that Any Day Now we will create life in the laboratory, which
would be intelligent design. Believing that life arose by chemical accident,
they will argue (reasonably, given their assumptions) that life must have
evolved countless times throughout the universe. It follows then that, if we
will soon be able to design life, someone else might have designed us.


In Conclusion

To evolutionists I say, �I am perfectly willing to believe what you can
actually establish. Reproducibly create life in a test tube, and I will
accept that it can be done. Do it under conditions that reasonably may have
existed long ago, and I will accept as likely the proposition that such
conditions existed and gave rise to life. I bear no animus against the
theory, and champion no competing creed. But don�t expect me to accept fluid
speculation, sloppy logic, and secular theology.�

I once told my daughters, �Whatever you most ardently believe, remember that
there is another side. Try, however hard it may be, to put yourself in the
shoes of those whose views you most dislike. Force yourself to make a
reasoned argument for their position. Do that, think long and hard, and
conclude as you will. You can do no better, and you may be surprised.�


Notes

(1) An example, for anyone interested, of the sort of unlogic to which I was
exposed by evolutionists: Some simple viruses are strings of nucleotides in
a particular order. In 2002 Eckhard Wimmer, at the University of New York at
Stony Brook, downloaded the sequence for polio from the internet, bought the
necessary nucleotides from a biological supply house, strung them together,
and got a functioning virus that caused polio in mice. It was a slick piece
of work.

When I ask evolutionists whether the chance creation of life has been
demonstrated in the laboratory, I get email offering Wimmer�s work as
evidence that it has been done. But (even stipulating that viruses are
alive) what Wimmer did was to put OTS nucleotides together according to a
known pattern in a well-equipped laboratory. This is intelligent design, or
at least intelligent plagiarism. It is not chance anything. At least some of
the men who offered Wimmer�s work as what it wasn�t are far too intelligent
not to see the illogic�except when they are defending the faith.


(2) Many Evolutionists respond to skepticism about life�s starting by chance
by appealing to the vastness of time. �Fred, there were billions and
billions of gallons of ocean, for billions of years, or billions of
generations of spiders or bugs or little funny things with too many legs, so
the odds are in all that time�.� Give something long enough and it has to
happen, they say. Maybe. But probabilities don�t always work they way they
look like they ought.

Someone is said to have said that a monkey banging at random on a typewriter
would eventually type all the books in the British Museum. (Some of the
books suggest that this may have happened, but never mind.) Well, yes. The
monkey would. But it could be a wait. The size of the wait is worth
pondering.

Let�s consider the chance that the chimp would type a particular book. To
make the arithmetic easy, let�s take a bestseller with 200,000 words. By a
common newspaper estimate of five letters per word on average, that�s a
million letters. What�s the chance the monkey will get the book in a given
string of a million characters?

For simplicity, assume a keyboard of 100 keys. The monkey has a 1/100 chance
of getting the first letter, times 1/100 of getting the second letter, and
so on. His chance of getting the book is therefore one in 1 in 100 exp
1,000,000, or 1 in 10 exp 2,000,000. (I don�t offhand know log 3 but, thirty
being greater than ten, a 30-character keyboard would give well in excess of
10 exp 1,000,000.)

Now, let�s be fair to the Bandar Log. Instead of one monkey, let�s use 10
exp 100 monkeys. Given that the number of subatomic particles in the
universe is supposed to be 10 exp 87 (or something), that seems to be a fair
dose of monkeys. (I picture a cowering electron surrounded by 10 exp 13
monkeys.) Let�s say they type 10 exp 10 characters per second per each, for
10 exp 100 seconds which, considering that the age of the universe (I read
somewhere) is 10 exp 18 seconds, seems more than fair.

Do the arithmetic. For practical purposes, those monkeys have no more chance
of getting the book than the single monkey had, which, for practical
purposes, was none.

Now, I don�t suggest that the foregoing calculation has any direct
application to the chance formation of life. (I will get seriously stupid
email from people who ignore the foregoing sentence.) But neither do I know
that the chance appearance of a cell does not involve paralyzing
improbabilities. Without unambiguous numbers arising from unarguable
assumptions, invoking time as a substitute for knowledge can be hazardous.


Life Evolves In Deep Sediments

Privileged Genes

Punctuated Equilibrium

Evolutionary Psychology

Craig Venter Questions Genetic Determinism

Essay by Jon Paulien, pt. 1

This is a very interesting essay that I got via Dr. Bacchiochi’s email group. While I frankly have stopped listening to much of what Dr. B has to say (not that it’s invalid, but I think he likes the sound of his own voice too much and the message begins to get drowned out), this guest essay by Dr. Paulien was really powerful and factual, and I plan to get that book when he finishes writing it. Part two is below this blog post.

"Armageddon and 'the War on Terror'"Jon Paulien, Ph. D.,Chairman, New Testament DepartmentAndrews University Theological SeminaryEmail: <jonp@andrews.edu>

Historic Seventh-day Adventism rests on a fundamental conviction about history. It is the conviction that somewhere in the Nineteenth Century the world entered into the Time of the End.

Our pioneers, including Ellen White, went so far as to attach dates to that transition, dates like 1798 and 1844 AD. But whether or not you feel that such precision is appropriate, virtually all Adventists share the general conviction that we are living very close to the end of history.1

Since each Adventist generation since the middle of the Nineteenth Century has felt that it could be the last generation of earth's history, major wars have inevitably led to speculation whether they represented the beginning of the Battle of Armageddon. The outbreak of World War I, in which Turkey was one of the major combatants, coincided with the conviction of many that Turkey and the Euphrates River (Rev 16:12) would play some role in the final conflict. But Turkey ended up on the losing side of that War, lost control of the key part of the Euphrates River, and yet time went on.

Past Armageddon Scenarios The horrific nature of World War II, and the Japanese role in it, likewise attracted the attention of Adventist evangelists. Many suggested that the Japanese were the "Kings of the Rising Sun" (Rev 16:12) and would sweep their way all the way along the southern coast to Asia and insert themselves into the Middle East. Their arrival would precipitate the Battle of Armageddon. But the Japanese never got that far (their attempts to reach India petered out on the "Road to Mandalay" in what was then called Burma and today is Myanmar) and time went on. After World War II came the Cold War, thought by some to be the prelude to World War III. For the first time in human history, people had the tools to destroy all life on earth. The nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed to have all the ingredients of the final battle of earth's history. It was the bulwark of Christian faith in grave peril from the forces of atheism. Yet the Soviet Union collapsed and a "New World Disorder" took its place.

Is the War on Terror the Beginning of Armageddon?
There is only one superpower in the world today. But that superpower finds itself almost helpless in the face of a nameless fear, a sense that the very foundation of civilization is in question, not from an "evil empire," a governmental system of equal power, but from a handful of religious believers, whose faith is so strong that they are willing to blow themselves up if that is what it will take to change the world. As was the case with the early church, once again the blood of martyrs is seed, but this time the seed of what? Is the war on terror World War IV? Is it the beginning of the Battle of Armageddon? Have we finally reached the place where the curtain closes and God plays taps over the mangled remains of human history? I am currently researching a book on the biblical evidence for the Battle of Armageddon. But in conjunction with that, I thought it would first be helpful to do a careful analysis of the situation in today's world. This is not easy to do. History is best written after it is over. While the war on terror is a major part of each day's news, few analysts have been able to step back from each day's events to see the larger picture that is developing. But we gain nothing by not trying. The mere attempt at drawing the big picture can stimulate us all to think more carefully and to see more clearly.

The Origin of Al Qaeda
Where did al Qaeda come from? What is the source of its rage against the West in general and the United States in particular? Is the war on terror destined for success or doomed to failure? Was the War in Iraq a colossal blunder or in some way the key to the whole conflict? The broad perspective of history can help us get a handle on these issues. As we apply that history to the perspective of Bible prophecy, I believe that we will be prepared to see the hand of God in developing events. Although we don't know when Jesus will come, prophecy offers many clues to the events that will surround His return. The book that I plan to write will include several chapters on the biblical evidence. The total picture will clarify these issues and more. But for now, let me share with you the results of five years research into the war on terror.

The Rise of Islam
To fully understand today's events you have to go far back into history. The story of al Qaeda begins in the desert sands of the Hijaz, the western part of the Arabian peninsula, in the 7th Century of our era. According to Christian tradition, a conviction shared by the nomadic residents of the Arabian Desert, the twelve disciples of Jesus spread the gospel throughout the then-known world. There was one exception to this nearly universal spread, the Arabian peninsula. The Arabs of Arabia did not have an apostle of their own and they did not have a Scripture in their own language, as the Jews and the Christians did. Distressed by the inconsistencies and confusion they2 perceived in the two earlier monotheistic faiths, Arabs of the desert developed the conviction that God would one day give them a Messenger of their own and a Scripture in their own language.

This expectation was fulfilled in their minds when a man named Muhammad ibn Abdallah went on a spiritual retreat in 610 AD to a cave on Mount Hira, overlooking the city of Mecca (Makkah) in the valley below. Muhammad was one of a handful of Arab seekers who were longing for a restoration of the pure faith of Abraham (Ibrahim).

Muhammad's Alleged Revelations
One night in the cave, Muhammad was torn from his sleep by the sense of an overwhelming divine presence. He felt thepowerful embrace of an angel who commanded him to recite what God (Allah) was placing in his mind. After a struggle Muhammad found the words of a new scripture pouring from his mouth. This experience was repeated scores of times over the next 22 years. The collection of these "recitations" were collected into a book known as the Qur'an ("recitation"). The teachings of the Qur'an precipitated a powerful spiritual revival that began during Muhammad's lifetime. The Qur'an affirmed that the God of the Bible was the one true God (the Arabs call Him "Allah"). It affirmed that the prophets of the Old and New Testaments were prophets of the one true God. It called the Arab people to abandon idols and submit fully to this God that the earlier scriptures had proclaimed. The Qur'an called for a society that would transcend tribalism and revenge. It called for justice and compassion and forgiveness. It called on everyone to do battle (jihad) with the forces of evil in their own lives. It was a call to restore the pure faith of Abraham (Ibrahim), which in many ways had been distorted by the earlier followers of God (a conviction Adventists share).

The Rise and Fall of the Islamic Dream
To a people who had felt left out of the divine plan beforethis time, this was a message of transforming power. It brought such change into their lives that more and more Arabs became convinced that Muhammad was a true prophet of God, even the pre-eminent prophet of God. Whether or not you believe that God had His hand in the rise of Islam, it cannot be denied that Muhammad was one of the most significant change agents in the history of the world. The energy unleashed by his recitations turned the Arab people from idolatrous bandits to one of the greatest civilizations the world had known up until that time. The Islamic Empire was the great superpower of the Middle Ages and played a dominant role in world affairs right up to time of the so-called Enlightenment (18 Century). Then something went wrong with the islamic dream. Some scholars trace the beginnings of decline as far back as the islamic reaction to the Crusades, others trace it back to social developments in 13th Century Spain. The energy unleashed by Muhammad's vision was dissipated by narrow thinking. Scholarship that had transformed the arts, the sciences and literature became focused on maintaining the status quo. The Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman ideals created the kind of energy in Europe that had characterized the early islamic empire. The torch of science and learning somehow passed to the West, and the power and wealth of the world went with it. By the 18th Century of our era the islamic world was in serious intellectual, political and economic decline. By the mid-19th Century it was largely "colonized" by the West and has never recovered.

The Rise of Saudi Arabia
In the face of this long-term decline, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) founded an islamic "back to the Bible" type of movement. He wanted to restore the pure Islam of the desert, free of all later additions and innovations. He called for careful exegesis (ijtihad) of the sacred texts in order to undo the changes that had led to Islam's decline. In other words, he taught that all the resources needed to restore the greatness of Islam lay in the past. This is the basic conviction shared by today's Muslim fundamentalists. Much like Fundamentalist Christians and historic Adventists, they seek to restore the faith to its former greatness by careful attention to the teachings of the faith's pioneer (s). The key to Islam's salvation lies in replicating her past. The Muslim world has deviated from pure Islam and only a return to its origins would safeguard it from domination and exploitation by the West. This conviction is strongly exhibited in the "Wahabis" of Saudi Arabia and the Taliban of Afghanistan. This is the kind of intellectual atmosphere in which Osama bin Laden and his compatriots were raised.

Steps in the Development of Al Qaeda
So the first step in the development of al Qaeda was a reaction to the decline in the islamic world, with a call to revival of the original fundamentals of the faith. This "Wahabism" is closely entwined with the Saudi family (the House of Saud) that came to rule the Arabian peninsula in the wake of World War I and the decline of the British Empire (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was established in 1923).4 The second step in the development of al Qaeda occurred in 1938. The King of Saudi Arabia, Abd-al-Aziz ibn Saud, authorized a team of American engineers to explore the trackless desert bordering the Persian Gulf, an arid landscape marked only by the occasional palm-fringed oasis. He hoped they would find water. A tribal leader with precarious finances, Ibn Saud believed the Americans might discover places where he could refresh his warriors-horses and camels.

The Discovery of Oil Reserves
But the team, from Standard Oil of California, had something else in mind. Oil had been discovered in other countries in the region, and the engineers thought they would find more in Saudi Arabia. Over several years, they drilled more than half a dozen holes without result. They could easily have given up in frustration. Instead, they decided to see if going deeper than normal might make a difference. So they set up their equipment again at well number 7 and dug deeper than they had ever dug before. They burrowed all the way to a depth of 4727 feet and finally hit the first sign of what would turn out to be the largest supply of crude oil in the world. Oddly enough, the King did not appear to appreciate the discovery at first. He ignored the news about the oil for an entire year afterward. Finally, he and his retinue arrived in a caravan of 400 automobiles at the pumping station of Ras Tanura in time to witness the first tanker hauling away its cargo of Saudi crude. This discovery would change everything. Up until this time, the primary source of income in the Saudi kingdom came from servicing pilgrims in Mecca, Islam's holiest city. But even the first shipment of oil produced wealth beyond all expectation. The lives and lifestyles of Arabian bedouin would never be the same. This5 isolated country with no other exportable product now became a major factor in global politics. The Saudi royal family became major players on the world scene. Their wealth became a crucial factor in Middle East politics and the bargaining over global energy supplies. The stage was set for the events of the late 1970s.

The First War in Afghanistan
The immediate context for the rise of al Qaeda was the war in Afghanistan that began in the late 1970s. To understand the motivation of those involved we need to understand something about the geography of politics. You see, the Eurasian landmass (from Great Britain to Singapore) is the dominant feature in world affairs. Its sheer size and the four billion people who live there make it so. Any power that can completely control the Eurasian landmass will rule the world. That means it is in the interest of all powers based elsewhere (like the United States) to keep the Eurasian landmass divided politically.6 The closest any power has come (at least since the Mongol Empire around the year 1200 AD) to dominating the entire Eurasian landmass is the Soviet Union. It is no wonder, therefore, that in spite of the inherent weaknesses of the Communist system, Americans rightly feared Soviet power. So a primary focus of American policy in the 1970s was containing Soviet power by encircling it with a system of alliances from the northern shore of Norway, across the continent of Europe, through the Middle East, along the southern coast of Asia all the way north to the Bering Strait. By preventing the Soviets access to warm-water ports, the alliance system limited Soviet power to manageable proportions. The Soviets sought ways to break through this encirclement and the Americans did all they could to keep them boxed in.

America's Challenge to Contain Russia's Expansion
But two events threatened this encirclement. The first was the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, a key American ally in the encirclement project. If the Soviets could exploit Iran's suddenweakness and punch through to the Persian Gulf, they would break the encirclement and also probably capture the Saudi Arabian oil fields. This would tip the balance of world powerdecisively in their favor. Thus the invasion of Afghanistan less than a year after the fall of the Shah seemed like America's greatest nightmare. The Russians were on the move and could potentially drive America completely out of the Eastern Hemisphere. As the leaders of the American military game-planned for a possible Soviet invasion of Iran, they concluded that they did not have sufficient forces to prevent the conquest of Iran if the Soviets had decided on such a course. So the Soviets must be stopped in Afghanistan. It must somehow be turned into another Vietnam, but this time with the shoe on the other foot. So President Carter authorized the CIA to engage in covert operations in Afghanistan. Agents were to encourage and support Afghan guerillas to harass Soviet troops in Afghanistan and keep them pinned down there. But how could this be accomplished? Where would the money come from? Congress was in no mood to appropriate extra funding for the CIA, whose reputation had recently taken a beating. And anyway, going to Congress to fund a covert war would mean it wasn't a covert war anymore. But it dawned on President Carter that America was not the only country worried about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia had even more to lose in Iran and Afghanistan than America did. So the Americans approached the Saudis with a proposal. If the Saudis would fund this guerilla war and recruit Islamic fighters to resist Soviet power in Afghanistan, the CIA would provide training, coordination and intelligence. But there was one further wrinkle. The Saudis were not comfortable either when it came to funding this war directly from government coffers. Instead they turned to wealthy, private families, asking them to contribute to the cause of Islamic restoration. Here was an opportunity to reverse centuries of islamic decline. So many Saudi families contributed vast sums to the project, and the largest and wealthiest of these families had come to be known as (can you guess it?) The bin Laden family.

President Carter and the Creation of an Islamic Army
So President Carter presided over the creation of an international army of Islamic7 fundamentalists. So President Carter presided over the creation of an international army of Islamic fundamentalists. As has so often happened in history, an ally in one war becomes the enemy in the next. To be fair to Carter, however, his policy was followed with enthusiasm by the presidents that followed, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. It was a low-cost, low-sacrifice (for Americans) way to keep the Russians bottled up in the vast interior of the Eurasian landmass. A major element of this situation was the willingness of the American intelligence and military apparatus to pass on their skills to these islamic fighters. The mujahideen learned about covert and special operations. They learned the skills of stealth and hand to hand combat. They learned what American intelligence knew and how they got such information. They learned both the advantages and limitations of military technology. No doubt the Americans thought their islamic allies ignorant and incapable of using such information against them. But many of Osama bin Laden's fighters were relatively wealthy and highly educated. They listened and learned, and they learned well, as the West has come to discover, much to its regret. The Afghan war was long and brutal. It drained the Soviet Army of strength and credibility and was a decisive factor in the eventual fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. But it also create thousands of hardened and experienced Islamist soldiers, many of them trained by the CIA and American Special Forces. And the fall of the Soviet Union had a powerful impact on those Islamic soldiers. It was the first time in centuries that an Islamic force had defeated non-islamic forces. And this defeated army belonged to a major world superpower which collapsed in the wake of that war. So this was not just an Afghan victory, it was an islamic victory, powered by islamic fighters and fueled by islamic money, the fruit of Saudi oil fields (the gift of Allah). In the minds of islamic fundamentalists, it was an islamic army that gave America its greatest victory over the Soviet menace.
And was the United States suitably grateful for this islamic sacrifice? To the contrary, America believed that Afghanistan was only a minor factor in the fall of the Soviet Union (no doubt both viewpoints were at least partly right). And America considered itself the driving force behind the resistance. From the American point of view the islamic world owed America a debt of gratitude. So as America pulled out of Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union, the stage was set for a confrontation between a resurgent Islam and the world's only remaining super power.

America's Role in the Rise of Al Qaeda
You see, America never entered the Afghan war out of some altruistic motive of defending Islam against atheistic powers. It used the islamic fervor of Osama bin Laden and others as a tool to keep the Russians encircled in the northern part of the Eurasian landmass. When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, the United States completely lost interest in the country. It also pulled out, leaving a devastated and impoverished landscape filled with warring tribes and a highly trained, international islamic army recruited from the entire islamic world. What was this army to do now? Just go home? But that was not an option. These skilled fighters were as much of a threat to their secular governments back home as they had been to the Soviets. So no one wanted them back. They were essentially stranded in Afghanistan, without external support and without a purpose. What America and its allies had done in Afghanistan was to train an army of highly diverse people bound together by the common experience of the war against the Soviets, a sense of betrayal by their own governments as well as the Americans, and the awareness that they had the power to change the world. Highly trained people who have lost their purpose in life tend to find a purpose of their own, and that new purpose may not be what the trainers had intended. Al Qaeda was the unintended consequence of short-term American political objectives.

The Gulf War
The trigger point for the war between America and the Islamic Jihad was Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. America regarded this as the action of an isolated rogue state that needed to be put in its place. George Bush Sr. believed that his decision to intervene in this conflict would be received by all Muslims as an act of American solidarity to save an islamic state from aggression. So the Americans approached the Saudis about basing American troops in the Kingdom. The Saudi ruling family knew that welcoming hundreds of thousands of Western soldiers into the Kingdom was a very risky business for them. For many Muslims, the holiness of Mecca and Medina extends over the entire nation in which those cities are located. The Saudis were caught in a hard place. While Saddam Hussein was an unsavory and dangerous character, inviting Western troops into the land of Mecca and Medina was a fundamental violation of islamic law. On the other hand, if they didn't extend the invitation, it was likely that Hussein himself would occupy the land. In the process the wealth and power of the Saudi leadership would be destroyed. So the Saudi leaders opted for the route that best allowed their own political survival and Desert Storm was the result. In the past such "abominations" against Islam would have been greeted with impotent rage. But the war in Afghanistan made it different this time. Those Afghan veterans who were allowed to return to Saudi Arabia did not feel vulnerable and weak the way the Saudi leaders did. They were ready to defend the Kingdom against all comers if need be. They felt no dependance on the United States for the "protection" of the holy places. They saw that the governments in the Arab countries were corrupt and secular and could not possibly lead this fight. So international, militant, anti-American Islam was born in the wake of the Gulf War, an unintended consequence of what Americans had thought of as a noble action. Here we see the great philosophical divide between the islamic world and the West. To the West the militant warriors of resurgent Islam are merely "terrorists," lawless bandits who have no respect for human life and civilized values. They hate everyone, including most fellow Muslims, and everything that does not agree with their hateful rantings. But to many in the Muslim world these agents of terror are true patriots, freedom fighters willing to give their lives in the cause of God. They are the only thing standing between the islamic world and the horrific moral assaults of Hollywood, gay pride and American cruise missiles. It is easy in the passion of the moment to overlook that the word "Islam" is closely related to the word "salaam," which means "peace" in Arabic. A careful reading of the Qur'an will expose far more statements in support of mercy and compassion than in support of jihad. And most of the "jihad" texts are better read in the context of the battle against sin in one's life than in warfare against others. We in the West also tend to forget that Christian history is full of fundamentalist extremists who have committed similar acts of terrorism. Adventists should be at the forefront of those willing to acknowledge the terrorist side of the Crusades and the Inquisition, for example. The Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1089 AD resulted in the slaughter of the entire population of the city; man, woman and child. These thousands of civilians included many Muslims and Jews. They also included the Orthodox Christian inhabitants of the city. The Crusaders were as indiscriminate in their slaughters as were the followers of Osama bin Laden on September 11. Because of this great philosophical divide and at the risk of offending many in the West, I will refrain from using the word "terrorists" to describe these islamic warriors in the rest of this essay. I will instead follow the lead of George Friedman, who coined the term "jihadists" as a more accurate description. It is my desire in this essay to build bridges of understanding rather than give in to popular prejudices, although I will be the first to confess that this is hard to do. For lack of better terminology, I have retained the overall descriptor of "war on terror" to describe the West's battle to eradicate al Qaeda and all who live by similar principles.

The Case Against America
Why do these "jihadists" hate America so? What fueled the destruction of the Twin Towers and so many other acts of seemingly mindless aggression? Osama bin Laden and those like him are not insane. They are not fueled by endless, seething emotion. They have thought through what they are doing and their sense of purpose is calculated and clear. Osama has articulated five main grievances as the basis for his case against America. We now have enough background to begin understanding his thinking.

1) The Decline of Islam
The root grievance is tied to the overall history we have just reviewed. For at least a thousand years the Islamic Empire and its Turkish successor were superpowers in the world. But over the last couple hundred years the Western powers divided up the Muslim world among themselves. Since that time the Muslim world has been a backwater in world affairs; were it not for the fact that much of the world's oil is located in the Middle East, the major powers might pay no attention at all. In a Western-dominated world Muslims seem to be humiliated on every side. The Israelis (Palestine and the regional wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973), the Serbs (in Bosnia and Kosovo), the Russians (in Chechnya and other Muslim republics of central Asia) and the Indians (in Kashmir and various parts of India) have all found ways to marginalize Muslim interests around the world. On top of these slights the West has "imposed" Western law codes on Muslim states, enforced Western economic ideas, including the charging of interest (contrary to Islamic law), and exported alcohol, drugs, pornography and crime. It is frustrating to an Islamic zealot to believe that the Islamic culture is superior, yet to acknowledge that America has vastly superior power and wealth.

2) The Israeli-Palestinian Situation
While securing a homeland for Jews made a lot of sense in the West after the Holocaust, the original partition of Palestine came at the expense of Arabs whose ancestors had been in the land for centuries. The British had promised, during World War I, to support Arab independence in exchange for Arab support against the Turks (remember the movie Lawrence of Arabia?). Then during World War II President Roosevelt promised at least one Arab leader that the major powers would not do anything about Palestine after the war without consulting the Arabs first.
Nevertheless, world-wide sympathy for the plight of the Jews during the war resulted in a UN partition which ceded over half of Palestine to the Jews, although only a third of population was Jewish and Jews owned an even smaller percentage of the land. In subsequent fighting the Israelis gained control of the entire land for decades, despite UN resolutions requiring the return of land conquered in 1967. To Arab eyes this looks suspiciously like a revival of the Crusades, with Israel at the forefront and America guiding behind the scenes. I do not want to be misunderstood here. I know that the story can be told very differently from the Israeli perspective. But I think it is important for our purpose to see through Osama's eyes, the eyes of a "terrorist," as far as that is possible for us to do. Jewish desperation after the Holocaust was real and for many Jews the homeland in the Middle East was the only spark of hope at the time. But the desperation of the Palestinian refugee camps remains to this day. People living in perpetual poverty are dying at the expense of weapons purchased with the billions of dollars in military aid America gives Israel each year. From the Muslim perspective this is a serious injustice that is ongoing and has never been addressed. For bin Laden the injustice was criminal.

3) Secular Corruption in the Middle East
A further major grievance of Osama bin Laden had to do with the corrupt and secular governments ruling over most Muslim countries. Governments of countries like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were seen as unelected, oppressive, pandering to the West and soft on Islam. It is not surprising that bin Laden, himself a Saudi, was no longer welcome in Saudi Arabia, he was a greater threat to the sheiks of Saudi Arabia than he was to the United States. He believed that secular Arab leaders are mere tools of the West, using the power of the West to cement their own personal position at the expense of the Muslim masses. While the United States did not set up these governments directly, in the minds of Islamic extremists they would not stand without American support. In a real sense islamists like bin Laden see the secular corruption of the Middle East as the primary enemy. Afghanistan proved that the great powers could not stand against the faithful, if the faithful were resolute and patient. Over time the political powers behind Christianity, Judaism, Hinudism and Communism could be dealt with as needed. For Muslim fundamentalists what really holds Islam back is the corruption and inefficiency in the political and economic realm of the Middle East. It is the corruption of the secular governments that allows the West to exploit islamic weakness. It is against these that the decisive battle must be fought. A strategy needed to be developed in order to destroy the corrupt systems of the Middle East which were keeping Islam from taking its rightful place in today's world. As long as these systems remained in place, Islam would be politically and economically impotent in the larger world.

4) Betrayal in Afghanistan
While the first three grievances are real, they are of long standing and by themselves would not have created the jihadist movement. As we have seen, there were two trigger points around the year 1990 that lit the fuse of Osama bin Laden's anger. The first of these was the American betrayal in Afghanistan. When the Russians left Afghanistan in 1989, the Americans immediately lost interest. Bin Laden and his mujahedin were abandoned to their own devices. Afghanistan disintegrated into a multitude of factions. Bin Laden felt abandoned and betrayed. The stage was set.

5) Western militaries in Saudi Arabia
The final trigger point, as we have seen, was the physical presence of the American military in Saudi Arabia during and after the Gulf War. This has been perhaps the crucial issue for bin Laden. In the 1980s he was not hostile to America, in spite of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. There is even evidence he may have been on the CIA payroll for a time. While bin Laden also opposed the aggression of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, he was distressed and then infuriated by the decision of the Saudi government to invite the Americans and other Westerners to "occupy" the holy land. The alcoholism, materialism, immorality and relative nudity exhibited by Western troops in Saudi Arabia seemed sacrilegious to even moderate Muslims. To bin Laden it bordered on blasphemy.

Why "Terrorism?" Why September 11?
For Osama bin Laden the crucial question became how to restore Islam to a dominant place in the world again. Could diplomacy accomplish that? Experience told bin Laden that diplomacy would not work. The West had been Anegotiating@ with the Middle East for more than a century, and what was the result? The establishment of Israel, for one. Another result was the colonial powers dividing the Middle East into artificial nations with no consideration of tribal territories and local interests. Meanwhile the West grew richer and more powerful and the Muslim world became increasingly irrelevant. Should the Muslim world stand up and fight in military terms then? In its present state of weakness that would be foolish. Anyone unconvinced by the dominance of the Israeli attacks in 1967 and 1982 (in Lebanon) should have no further doubts after the Gulf War and the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In an age of information technology both the American and Israeli military are overwhelming and incontestable. Any form of direct, frontal assault would be the equivalent of pointless suicide. One would lose thousands of soldiers in exchange for a mere handful of casualties on the stronger side. No one could pursue warfare for long on those terms. So for bin Laden, there was only one alternative to helplessness, and that was what the West calls terrorism. In the minds of jihadist leaders, "terrorism" is nothing more than a negotiating tool. It is a way the weaker party in a disagreement is able to project a sense of power greater than its numbers or its military prowess would otherwise allow. The actual physical damage of terror attacks is not significant in political or economic terms. What is significant is the psychological effect, it is far greater than the sum total of the physical damage or loss of life. Terrorism puts those who practice it on the political map. It allows the weaker party to go on the offensive. It puts powerful nations on the defensive. There are so many potential targets and it is so costly to defend them all that the jihadist entity can always find a soft spot somewhere. "If you're throwing enough darts at a board, eventually you're going to get something through," said a Pentagon strategist. "That's the way al Qaeda looks at it." The secrecy and seclusion of the jihadist makes the attacks very difficult to anticipate and defend against. The only safe defense against what the West calls terrorism is one that anticipates every possible angle of attack, particularly against assets for which adequate defenses are not yet in place, like water supplies and transportation systems. To make matters worse, every mile of the US coastline is a potential entry point for nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. In a sense eradicating this threat is like finding a way to detect and apprehend criminals before they commit their crimes. The ability of the jihadists to attack at will and keep powerful enemies on the defensive gradually wears down a powerful nation's will to resist. As happened in Spain in 2004, people often prefer peace on jihadist terms to the constant stress of watchfulness and defensive measures. In this battle vast amounts of money, intelligence assets and personnel must be expended to track jihadists at home and abroad. In a sense the attempt is being made to surround the United States with a "protective net." But, as Time pointed out on March 3, 2002, "all nets have holes." So if the jihadists are patient enough and determined enough, they can wear down and outlast enemies who are more concerned with personal comfort than with ideological purity.

The Strategy of Osama bin Laden
This gives us some insight into the mindset of bin Laden when he gave the go-ahead for the attack of September 11, 2001. While the actions of the highjackers were gruesome and incomprehensible to Westerners, they are part of a strategic plan to change the balance of power in the world. The leaders of al Qaeda see the Islamic world being occupied by non-Islamic forces. To change the balance of power in the world al Qaeda must find a way to end the Aoccupation@ and re-unite Islam. Since the United States is the leading power in the world and the patron of many Islamic regimes, it is the power behind the "occupation and, therefore, the great enemy that motivates and controls the anti-Islamic agenda.

Defeating the United States directly is not a realistic option. But the kind of war bin Laden has unleashed burdens America with billions of dollars of expenses to fight "terrorism" at home and abroad. It distracts Americans with the constant fear of unsuspected attacks. It makes Americans feel as insecure as Europeans and Israelis have felt for decades. It makes isolationism look more attractive. If, in the process, the United States can be caused to withdraw from the Islamic world, other anti-Islamic powers such as Russia, India and Israel would be helpless to intervene. Corrupt and secular governments in the Muslim world would then have no base of outside support and would be overthrown by the Islamic masses. So al Qaeda does not expect to destroy the United States directly, unless some doomsday weapon comes into its hands. The United States is too powerful and too distant to defeat. Rather, bin Laden's strategy has been to force the United States into a series of actions that destabilize the governments of those Middle Eastern countries that are dependant on Washington. If the United States could be made to look weak and vulnerable in the eyes of the Arab street, the governments of the Middle East would lose their credibility. If pressure from the United States then forces those governments to join the US in fighting Islamic militants or to remain silent in the face of Israeli aggression, popular uprisings could easily lead to their collapse. The ultimate goal would be the establishment of an Islamic superpower, a vast Islamic state stretching from Morocco to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, governed by Islamic law. Could a bin Laden achieve such goals? He clearly believed the United States does not have the stomach to suppress a mass, popular uprising. Unlike al Qaeda, Americans as a rule do their best not to hurt innocents. The same military that is virtually invincible in battle would have a difficult time handling an army of unarmed women and children. Although the United States has important interests in the Islamic world, they are not on a scale to justify the expense and casualties involved in a long-term occupation. To the degree that further jihadist acts in the US should occur, the American populace could easily sway toward an isolationist stance. If this isolationism should lead to withdrawal from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and even the partial abandonment of Israel, the political world would have changed considerably in favor of the Islamic agenda. So from bin Laden's perspective war in diplomatic, economic or military terms would only result in the further humiliation of Islam. But this new kind of war has altered the battlefield odds. Since the targets vastly outnumber the defenders, al Qaeda has designed a war strategy in which it has significant advantages. U.S. power is weakened in that defensive action must be widely dispersed. Suicidal fervor creates a low-tech battlefield in which superior technology is neutralized as a weapon. The goal of the attacks on September 11, 2001 was not to defeat America. America was too powerful and too distant for that to happen. Osama bin Laden's goal was a very strange one from the Western perspective. He wanted to provoke America to attack the islamic world. More specifically he wanted to provoke America to attack Saudi Arabia. Did you notice that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis? While the trained pilots were generally from other countries, the "beef" of the operation (the muscle-men who would take over the plane) were almost all from Saudi Arabia. Osama wanted it to appear that this was a Saudi attack on American. While he anticipated the attack on Afghanistan in 2001, he was sure that President Bush would not stop there. In order to stop al Qaeda he would have to control Saudi Arabia as well. Why provoke an attack on Saudi Arabia? Because that is the holy land of Islam, the place where Allah met the prophet Muhammad, the place of pilgrimage, the land of Mecca and Medina. If any action could be calculated to inflame the passion of the islamic masses in the Middle East it would be a Western occupation of the holy places. Osama bin Laden wanted above all else to arouse the fervor of the people to rise up against the invaders and make life so miserable for them that they would be forced to withdraw, as the Soviets were forced to from Afghanistan. Yesterday, Afghanistan. Today, Saudi Arabia. Tomorrow? The world!

Does it sound like the demented scheme of a madman? To many it does. But when you consider what other options were available to stimulate a rebirth of Islamic power in the world, bin Laden's scheme doesn't sound so crazy. It was a shrewd calculation that the only way to get rid of corrupt and secular governments in the Middle East was to find a way to humiliate the sponsor of those governments, the United States. Once the sponsor proved powerless, these Arab governments would fall and the Islamic Empire would be reborn. So let me summarize Osama bin Laden's dream scenario. His goal for September 11 was to do something so horrific that the United States would feel forced to invade the Middle East, preferably Saudi Arabia. Osama and his friends could then label it an attack on Islam itself. A guerilla war against the invaders would provoke the Americans to kill and wound many innocent bystanders. The "Arab street," the common, everyday man and woman in the Middle East would rise up in righteous anger against the occupiers. The military might of America would prove helpless against an uprising of "people power," unarmed men, women and children who would be willing to die for their faith. In the face of such an enemy, America would have little choice but to pull back into bases and leave the streets in the hands of the insurgents, much as had occurred in Vietnam years before. Eventually, America would grow tired of the conflict. Media and congress would unite to force the president to withdraw and leave the Middle East to its own devices. In the wake of that superpower defeat, the masses in the Middle East would embrace Islam and Sharia law and the stage would be set for an islamic superpower that could extend from Morocco to Indonesia. That was Osama's dream and it will likely outlive him regardless of the outcome in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.