Defend Free Speech against Muslim Attack

In response to the Mohammad cartoon controversy, TU has created a stand-alone flyer in defense of free speech. The flyer displays one of the infamous Danish cartoons, a statement from our editors, and Onkar Ghate’s op-ed, “The Twilight of Freedom of Speech.” The PDF of the flyer is available to the right of the page.

We want to paper American campuses with this flyer. You may have the PDF, print it, and distribute it for free. All we ask is that you send an email to mail@the-undercurrent.com, telling us where you are distributing and in what quantity. Also, please print and distribute the flyer as one, double-sided page.

We recommend at least 500 copies for one campus. You should leave the flyer everywhere, in small stacks, so that if one stack gets tossed there are many to take its place. Don’t forget to replenish your stacks in a few days. Let us know if you need our support after you distribute–we are available to write op-eds and letters. Either way, we want to hear how your campus responds.

Do be respectful of your campus’ distribution policies.

This is an important issue. It deserves a movement that will shake America. Please distribute.

The Bait and Switch of “Intelligent Design”

Legal and political battle lines have been drawn across the country over the teaching of “intelligent design”–the view that life is so complex it must be the product of a “higher intelligence.” The central issue under debate is whether “intelligent design” is, in fact, a genuine scientific theory or merely a disguised form of religious advocacy–creationism in camouflage.

Proponents of “intelligent design” aggressively market their viewpoint as real science, insisting it is not religiously based. Writes one leading advocate, Michael Behe: “The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself–not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs.”

Proponents of “intelligent design” claim that Darwinian evolution is a fundamentally flawed theory–that there are certain complex features of living organisms evolution simply cannot explain, but which can be explained as the handiwork of an “intelligent designer.”

Their viewpoint is not religiously based, they insist, because it does not require that the “intelligent designer” be God. “Design,” writes another leading proponent, William Dembski, “requires neither magic nor miracles nor a creator.”

Indeed, “design” apparently requires surprisingly little of the “designer’s” identity: “Inferences to design,” contends Behe, “do not require that we have a candidate for the role of designer.” According to its advocates, the “designer” responsible for “intelligent design” in biology could be any sort of “creative intelligence” capable of engineering the basic elements of life. Some have even seriously nominated advanced space aliens for the role.

Their premise seems to be that as long as they don’t explicitly name the “designer”–as long as they allow that the “designer” could be a naturally existing being, a being accessible to scientific study–that this somehow saves their viewpoint from the charge of being inherently religious in character.

But does it?

Imagine we discovered an alien on Mars with a penchant for bio-engineering. Could such a natural being fulfill the requirements of an “intelligent designer”?

It could not. Such a being would not actually account for the complexity that “design” proponents seek to explain. Any natural being capable of “designing” the complex features of earthly life would, on their premises, require its own “designer.” If “design” can be inferred merely from observed complexity, then our purported Martian “designer” would be just another complex being in nature that supposedly cannot be explained without positing another “designer.” One does not explain complexity by dreaming up a new complexity as its cause.

By the very nature of its approach, “intelligent design” cannot be satisfied with a “designer” who is part of the natural world. Such a “designer” would not answer the basic question its advocates raise: it would not explain biological complexity as such. The only “designer” that would stop their quest for a “design” explanation of complexity is a “designer” about whom one cannot ask any questions or who cannot be subjected to any kind of scientific study–a “designer” that “transcends” nature and its laws–a “designer” not susceptible of rational explanation–in short: a supernatural “designer.”

Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, “intelligent design” is inherently a quest for the supernatural. Only one “candidate for the role of designer” need apply. Dembski himself–even while trying to deny this implication–concedes that “if there is design in biology and cosmology, then that design could not be the work of an evolved intelligence.” It must, he admits, be that of a “transcendent intelligence” to whom he euphemistically refers as “the big G.”

The supposedly nonreligious theory of “intelligent design” is nothing more than a crusade to peddle religion by giving it the veneer of science–to pretend, as one commentator put it, that “faith in God is something that holds up under the microscope.”

The insistence of “intelligent design” advocates that they are “agnostic regarding the source of design” is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a “designer” who is susceptible of scientific study–in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the supernatural. Their scientifically accessible “designer” is nothing more than a gateway god–metaphysical marijuana intended to draw students away from natural, scientific explanations and get them hooked on the supernatural.

No matter how fervently its salesmen wish “intelligent design” to be viewed as cutting-edge science, there is no disguising its true character. It is nothing more than a religiously motivated attack on science, and should be rejected as such.

Keith Lockitch, Ph.D. in physics, is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA.

This article is reproduced with permission from the Ayn Rand Institute. (c) 1995-2006 Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). Its inclusion in The Undercurrent Volume 2, Issue 1 does not represent an endorsement of The Undercurrent by either the author or the Ayn Rand Institute.

Moral Values Without Religion

Does morality depend upon religion? Most people believe it does, which is a major reason behind the appeal of the religious right. People believe that without faith in a supernatural authority, we can have no moral values–no moral absolutes, no black-and-white distinctions, no firm demarcation between good and evil–in life or in politics. This is the assumption underlying Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent assertion that “government derives its authority from God,” since only religious faith can supposedly provide moral constraints on human action.

And what draws people to this bizarre premise–the premise that there is no rational basis for refraining from murder, rape or anarchism? The left’s persistent assault on moral values.

That is, liberals characteristically renounce moral absolutes in favor of moral grayness. They insist, for example, that criminals should not be reviled, but should be seen as tragic products of their “social environment”–that teenage mothers are just as entitled to welfare checks as wage-earners are to their paychecks, and that to deny welfare benefits for a child born into a family already receiving welfare is, as the ACLU declares, to “unconstitutionally coerce women’s reproductive decisions”–that America is morally equivalent to its enemies, with our own policies having provoked the Sept. 11 attacks and our “unilateralist” actions in Iraq being no different from any forcible occupation of one nation by another.

Repulsed by such egalitarian, anti-”judgmental” absurdities, many people disavow what they regard as leftism’s essence: secularism, and turn to religion for their values.

But this is a false alternative. Secularism is simply a viewpoint that disclaims religion; what it embraces, though, may be rational or not. And the absurdities of the left stem precisely from its irrationality–its pervasive emotionalism, its insistence on doing whatever “feels right,” its contention that there are no fixed truths, its credo that morality is anything one wishes it to be. The left maintains that no objective principles exist to validate moral judgments. From its multicultural equalization of all societies–savage or civilized–to its belief in an indefinable, “evolving” Constitution, the left rejects the logic of objective standards and enshrines the arbitrariness of subjectivism. Thus, what the left’s opponents should disavow is not secularism per se, but rather the replacement of a religious variant of unreason–blind faith–with a secular variant: blind feelings.

The real alternative to the leftist claptrap is a morality of reason. Such a morality begins with the individual’s life as the primary value and identifies the further values that are demonstrably required to sustain that life. It observes that man’s nature demands that we live not by random urges or by animal instincts, but by the faculty that distinguishes us from animals and on which our existence fundamentally depends: rationality.

With reason as its cardinal value, this code of individualism espouses fixed principles and categorical moral judgments. It demands, for instance, that the initiation of force–the antithesis of reason–be denounced and that an unbridgeable moral chasm be recognized between the criminal and the non-criminal.

Since life requires man to produce what he needs, productiveness is a moral value–thereby making moral opposites out of the industrious worker and the parasitic welfare recipient. Since life requires man to use his own judgment rather than submissively accept the assertions of others, independence is a moral value–making moral opposites out of the person (or nation) acting on his own rational convictions and the one deferring to the consensus of his neighbors (or the U.N.). Since life requires the mind, man’s political system must allow him to use it, i.e., freedom is a moral value–making moral opposites out of America, the defender of liberty, and America’s enemies, who seek liberty’s destruction.

A morality of reason counters the relativism and the undiscriminating “tolerance” of the left.

It also counters a morality of faith, and establishes a genuine “culture of life.” Individualism upholds your sovereignty over your life–and refuses to subordinate the preservation of that life to, say, the preservation of embryonic stem cells in some petri dish. Individualism defends your inalienable right to your life, including your right to end it–and evaluates, say, opposition to assisted-suicide as a desecration of human life, since forcing someone to live who wishes to die is no less evil than forcing someone to die who wishes to live.

There is indeed morality without religion–a morality, not of dogmatic commands, but of rational values and of unbreached respect for the life of the individual.

Peter Schwartz is chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California.

This article is reproduced with permission from the Ayn Rand Institute. (c) 1995-2006 Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). Its inclusion in The Undercurrent Volume 2, Issue 1 does not represent an endorsement of The Undercurrent by either the author or the Ayn Rand Institute.

Campus Commentary: Religious Tolerance Blights Campus Culture

Religion is becoming a political issue in the culture at large. Abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, homosexuality, intelligent design–even the “war on terror”–each of these debates is linked to religious beliefs. With the conservatives strengthening ties to the Christian religion and a Supreme Court that has become predominately conservative, religion is maneuvering its way into a real position of power within American politics. We at The Undercurrent, being staunchly opposed to every form of mysticism, religious or otherwise, wondered how religion has been faring on campus. Hoping to discover some pro-reason sentiment, we surveyed a range of publications at major universities.

To our dismay, we found little to no criticism of religion anywhere in campus culture. In fact, many students think that their peers are not religious enough. Articles abound to deplore the commercialism of Christianity, beseeching students to rediscover religion’s essence. In a Cornell Review piece subtitled “Campus Catholicism missing good old-fashioned fire and brimstone,” Jeff Racho writes that religion has become too trendy and folksy:

“There is little…majesty in the Kumbaya Mass at Annabel Taylor Hall. The organ is long gone, having been replaced by the guitar… Even the traditional wafer has been replaced by a bite-sized bit of grainy bread…for which the Bohemian Bourgeoisie pay a premium at Wegeman’s to show how ‘granola’ they really are.”

Lucas Kwong in the Yale Herald agrees, “What Christianity needs is not an exorbitant media blitz, but instead a mass of disciples committed to living out the implications of faith in the 21st century.”

The Emory Wheel seems promising at first, with its sarcastic critique of religious websites. (”Nonbelievers are subjected to the site’s air-tight logic–for instance, if someone in the comic is gay or believes in evolution, that person is drawn ugly.”) Unfortunately, the author concludes the diatribe, not by discarding religion, but by entreating readers to “break free of the corruption, the greed, the boredom, the technology the church is trying to push on you, and instead cultivate a one-on-one relationship with the god you claim to love so much.” The article is not anti-religion, but anti-technology and anti-consumerism–another call for renewed fire and brimstone.

The Dalai Lama spoke at Rutgers this fall. The Focus reviewed the event with reverence, describing the “some 36,000 people amassed at Rutgers Stadium” who showered the “holy leader” with questions “about ongoing wars in Iraq and Israel, the proliferation of al-Qaeda and terrorism in the name of religion, and his sources of guidance.” Ashanti Alvarez gushes, “His simple nature belied the complexity of his existence…He spoke of…eradicating all the world’s weapons and excising the dominant emotions of anger, jealousy, hatred and distrust.” Religious zeal is not constrained to Christianity.

Even ostensibly a-religious movements, like feminism, seem to be associating themselves with mysticism. A Rutgers interview with feminist poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker reports the poet’s sentiment that “feminist writers like herself have a duty to confront not only the practical and political issues of the day but also the spiritual issues.

We have to rebalance what we conceive of as divine and godly,’ she says.” A recent Rutgers graduate, interviewed in the same paper on her choice to pursue a Master’s degree at Harvard’s divinity school, makes a similar connection: “Religion is such a broad and powerful topic…[nothing] is more central to my life than the chance to explore the interactions between religion and gender.”

On campus as well as on the political stage, religion continues to chip away at science and individual rights. The same conservative Cornell paper that requested “good old-fashioned fire and brimstone” lambasted the University president, Hunter Rawlings, for speaking out against intelligent design. Elizabeth Badame of the Cornell Review remarks, “it becomes evident that the objective of the State of the University address was simply to encourage professors to persist in their political and religious fight in and out of the classroom.”

Religiously-motivated political crusades such as these may rage, but the “Harvard Interfaith Council” meets regardless, “drawing about 100 people to discuss religion over chocolate fondue.” Don Larsen, a pastor at a University church declared to the November gathering, “The world’s peace is dependent upon people learning to respect one another’s religious peculiarities…Through meetings like this, people can go beyond what is comfortable to explore what may seem alien.”

World peace demands that we tolerate religion? But the devoutly religious are the ones causing all the trouble! Sri Lanka, Nigeria, the Balkans, Sudan, the Middle East–religious persecution is persecution by religion of religion. Isn’t the reason for such persecution taught by religion itself, in the mandate that those who deny God’s truth are infidels without the right to life?

Sadly, the lone voice against religion on campus is the stale, crazed voice of the Communist students. From an article in the Daily Pennsylvanian entitled “A Specter of Coke and Commies”:

“About 10 people are in the room. Lines of coke are drawn on the table for the taking, and a bowl is slowly making the rounds…’A specter is haunting Penn,’ [Mao X] says. ‘Religion is the opiate of the masses.’ He takes a hit has he speaks. ‘The pureness of the white powder helps us approach our basest, most egalitarian needs…Tomorrow…we kill Jesus…we’ll be up at 7:00 a.m. to storm the Penn Bookstore. No capitalist pig is going to get presents this Christmas.’”

Communism, as one can see, is not much of an alternative to religious mysticism. The Communists never sought to do more than replace the worship of God with the worship of the masses (apparently practiced in a cocaine-induced trance).

University newspapers, and the campus events that they favorably review, at worst order students to return to religious fundamentals, and at best request them to “tolerate” religion. But now is not the time for toleration. If American students want to inherit a world in which children are taught the difference between science and fantasy (intelligent design), in which people have the freedom to do as they choose with their own bodies (abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality), and in which doctors are allowed to do their jobs (stem-cell research), then they must not tolerate religion. But it is only a history of religious warfare that has given the word “intolerance” a violent connotation. To be intolerant of religion does not mean to attack it blindly, as religious terrorists attack the West. It means to evaluate religious agendas rationally, and oppose them on an intellectual basis. It means: to think.

Rebecca Knapp is a senior at the University of Chicago. She is studying classics and plans to attend law school.

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From the Editor: TU’s mission is to change the intellectual climate on college campuses, so we like to keep tabs on the current campus culture–what issues students find important, what opinions they find compelling, and what type of argumentation they use to support their beliefs. We look both for horror stories and for instances in which the ideas we support are taking root. This column is a way of summing up those observations and thereby identifying basic ideological trends within university circles.

We are always on the lookout for articles to include in this column–if you notice something in your campus paper that you think we should mention, please write to mail [at] the-undercurrent [dot] com.

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Retraction: “A Specter of Coke and Commies” should not have been treated as a serious news article.

Intelligent Design and the Philosophy of Make-Believe

The ongoing controversy over the teaching of creationism in public schools is portrayed by some as a battle between superstitious ignorance and scientific enlightenment. So far, from this perspective, the race has gone to the swift and the battle to the strong: in the ’80s, defenders of evolution succeeded in outlawing the teaching of “creation science,” and in recent months they prevailed again in defeating “intelligent design” in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover decision.

While defenders of science may have won the latest battle, they have not yet won the war. In fact, the conflict between the theory of evolution and creationism is not fundamentally a scientific one. It is not ignorance that breeds creationism, but a basic outlook about what science is and why it matters.

Defending evolution requires defending the validity of science. Yet over the last hundred years, secular scientists and philosophers have fought a battle within their own ranks over the proper outlook, and too often, philosophical defenses of science have proved impotent. If this continues, science’s glory will prove fleeting.

At the root of this impotent philosophy of science is a view about the source of scientific hypotheses. Following the arguments of David Hume and Karl Popper, most philosophers assume that it is impossible for scientists to conclusively demonstrate inductive generalizations like “All swans are white” by observing particular swans. Popper thought scientists could only “falsify” generalizations, say by finding a black swan. He thought that induction, long thought to be the source of scientific validity, needed a replacement.

Popper replaced induction with imagination. With no rational basis, hypotheses would become mere creative inventions of the scientist. In Popper’s view, scientific hypotheses differ from pseudo-science in that they admit of the possibility of falsification. Unlike Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which ventured a risky prediction (later confirmed), a pseudo-scientific hypothesis like “creation science” can dismiss any evidence (like fossils) by arguing, for example, that God planted the fossils to test us. To this day Popper’s falsification criterion is widely accepted by scientists, who invoke it against hypotheses like intelligent design.

Perhaps intelligent design really is unfalsifiable, but philosophers now generally hold that falsifiability does not demarcate science from pseudo-science. Thomas Kuhn and W.V. Quine reminded us that scientific hypotheses do not make predictions on their own: they are more “holistic,” requiring the assistance of “auxiliary” hypotheses (assumptions about initial conditions, the reliability of measurements, etc.). Failed predictions do not necessarily falsify new hypotheses, since these supporting hypotheses can be altered.

But Kuhn and Quine go further and urge that hypotheses may be retained or abandoned come what may, simply by adjusting auxiliary hypotheses in an ad hoc manner–an easy case to make if imagination is the only source of hypotheses. On their view, since hypotheses are chosen subjectively, only the stamp of peer approval can render them “scientific.”

It is revealing that the falsificationist and social views presuppose that hypotheses are chosen subjectively, rather than inductively, from observations. But even if intelligent design is unfalsifiable and unacceptable to the current consensus, isn’t there an enormous elephant in the room these philosophers are blithely ignoring? Isn’t the real problem with a theory like design precisely the fact that it is wholly a product of imagination? If these philosophies of science can’t rule out design on these grounds alone, aren’t they defective?

Intelligent design is a product of imagination, on numerous counts. Consider the argument from “irreducible complexity.” Design theorists say that some biological mechanisms like the bacterial flagellum are so complex that they could not have evolved from smaller functional mechanisms. Defenders of evolution rightly object that this argument confuses a limitation of Darwinian explanatory power with evidence for intelligent design. But even if these examples really were irreducibly complex, and really were positive evidence for anything, why would they be evidence of intelligent design?

To wit: why should we expect that an intelligent designer would create irreducible complexities? We know nothing about any designer’s purposes on the molecular level. Why assume it would design certain elements in an irreducibly complex manner, but others in a Darwinian manner? Why assume a designer wants to give us some special adaptations, but not others? Why assume it even wants to give us any adaptations at all? All of these assumptions are the product of wanton imagination.

Indeed the very idea of a supernatural creator is a product of imagination. No observations of the natural world could ever give rise to the hypothesis of a supernatural designer (by their standards, a natural space alien designer would himself have irreducible complexities in need of explanation by a higher intelligence). In logic, this hypothesis should be inadmissible from the start: there is nothing outside nature, no causal connection between nature and nothingness, no inferences to be drawn from something to nothing, no possibility of a super-consciousness dependent on and (prior to creation) aware of nothing.

The chief problem with intelligent design is its imaginative invocation of supernatural explanation. Interestingly, the Kitzmiller vs. Dover decision against design echoes this complaint, but does so on the grounds that, traditionally, scientists have invoked only natural explanations. But science is not just “what scientists do.” Kuhn and Quine are wrong: there is more to science than socially acceptable imagination. If there weren’t, design theorists would need only wait for the scientific community’s opinions to change to transform design into science: religionists need only shift the “paradigm” back to medieval superstition.

Scientists do not invent hypotheses out of whole cloth. They formulate hypotheses which are already judged as possible by reference to specific, independent evidence. Darwin, for example, argued for his theory on the basis of evidence from geology, the fossil record, and skeletal homologies; he hypothesized that natural selection was the cause of evolution by drawing on his knowledge of Malthusian population studies and an analogy to artificial selection.

The problem with pseudo-scientific theories like creation science or intelligent design is not that they are unfalsifiable (though they may be), but that their hypotheses are arbitrary products of the imagination, with no independent evidence to ground them. The best contrast with such theories is not Einstein, who claimed his equations were “free creations of the human intellect,” but Newton, who claimed to “feign no hypothesis” that he could not derive from his own observations.

To offer a complete alternative to current philosophies of science, it is not enough to say that hypotheses must be supported by specific evidence; philosophers must also show that this is possible, that particular observations can furnish us with universal generalizations. Recognizing the inductive criterion for science is now especially pressing. Today’s dominant philosophy of science will stop neither intelligent design nor some further reincarnation of creationism.

Quinn Wyndham Price is a graduate student in philosophy at an undisclosed location.

Objectivism in the Culture: A Man of Science Crusades Against Intelligent Design

Last December, a Pennsylvania Federal District court ruled that the Dover School District cannot teach “intelligent design”–the theory that the complexity of life indicates the existence of a divine “designer”–as a scientific alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Judge John E. Jones argued that intelligent design creationism constitutes a religious as opposed to scientific idea, and that by including it in their science curriculum the school district violated the U.S constitutional ban against the advocacy of religion in state schools.

Watching the case closely was Dr. Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute, a man who has dedicated himself to educating people about the nature of the intelligent design movement.

Drawing on his extensive background in both science (he holds a Ph.D. in physics and has taught courses on the history of science) and the philosophy of Objectivism (he is an instructor at the Objectivist Academic Center), he has published articles and lectured widely on the growing threat of intelligent design creationism.

One of Lockitch’s most popular and published op-eds “The Bait and Switch of ‘Intelligent Design,’” is included in this current issue of The Undercurrent. Readers are encouraged to refer to that for an account of Lockitch’s position.

Two months ago, Lockitch gave a lecture to an Orange County audience in which he argued that the reason intelligent design’s growing popularity is a threat is because it is one manifestation of a deeper threat: the growing popularity of religious ideas and values in general. Local writer Robert Camp, who attended the talk, took offense at this idea and published an impassioned critique in the Orange County Register (Dec 2). Camp denied Lockitch’s premise that intelligent design’s essential danger was its religiosity and argued that the theory should be opposed only on scientific grounds, without appeal to broader criticisms of its religious roots. Lockitch’s response to this criticism was unequivocal: “[T]he view that ‘intelligent design’ is a scientific position, to be answered with scientific arguments, is…precisely the view its promoters are desperate to convey…[O]ne cannot properly oppose the efforts of ‘intelligent design’ creationists without rejecting their attempt to make the ’supernatural’ part of science.”

Lockitch was similarly questioned about his antipathy to religion at a recent talk at New York University (NYU). Kara Zavarella, the President of the NYU Objectivist Club (which hosted the talk), commented that “a number of questioners challenged the viewpoint that religion is incompatible with science… many were struck by the way Dr. Lockitch consistently and adamantly upheld his position.”

Lockitch does not hesitate to name what he thinks is the proper alternative to religion. He argues that science implicitly assumes a secular, pro-reason philosophy such as Objectivism, and that only by making this base explicit can it avoid being undercut by religion. In his words, “Rand’s ethical system–and, more generally, her philosophy of Objectivism–comprises the positive message underlying the ideas presented at my talk.”

Lockitch promises to continue his efforts to oppose the ideas of intelligent design activists. Some commentators have claimed that the Dover area Federal District court ban on teaching these ideas in science classes, which has set a precedent for other states to follow, represents the defeat of the intelligent design movement. When asked by The Undercurrent about whether he agreed with this assessment, Lockitch responded that he did not. “The anti-evolution movement has been around since the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial eighty years ago. It has staggered on despite dozens of lower court rulings and two major Supreme Court decisions against it. As long as the religious ideology that drives the movement persists, it’s not going away. The Dover decision was certainly a major setback, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of intelligent design creationism.”

Evidence has already substantiated Lockitch’s position. Early this January, the debate over teaching intelligent design in public schools went to the California courts for the first time. This case presents an interesting twist on the controversy: a teacher and minister’s wife in a rural, Fresno high school has organized an entire course advocating intelligent design as a social studies subject, sidestepping the precedent set by the recently affirmed court ban on religion in science classrooms.

The case promises to be interesting for another reason as well: California is Lockitch’s home state. Lockitch plans to watch the case very closely, and promises to continue writing articles and giving talks on the danger of intelligent design creationism. (Readers can check for scheduled talks on the “Speaker Events” page of this and future issues of The Undercurrent.)

Ray Girn is a graduate of the University of Toronto, and now teaches math and science at a private elementary school in Orange County, CA.

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From the Editor: Ayn Rand’s philosophy consists of a broad, integrated set of ideas that, if accepted, would make an impact on all areas of human life, from how a child should be educated to how a nation should define its foreign policy.

From a historical perspective, Rand’s philosophy is new to the cultural scene. Atlas Shrugged–the book in which the philosophy was first presented–was published less than 50 years ago, and a systematic nonfiction presentation of the philosophy was published only in the early 1990’s. Yet those who accept its philosophic perspective–including us here at The Undercurrent–are already beginning to see signs of cultural impact.

The purpose of this column is to share some of these early signs with our readers. Each issue, this column will report on some way in which Objectivist intellectuals are trying to change the culture’s core values. For a summary of the Objectivist philosophy, see aynrand.org/objectivism_intro.

Chronicles of Narnia: Christian Sheep in Lion’s Clothing

The buzz about Christian propaganda couched in Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe seems to have subsided. With the film’s premiere, the suspense about ideology has largely been replaced by universal commendations of its “enchanting animations” and portrayal of “family values.”

Secular reviewers find the Christian motifs even less intrusive than in C. S. Lewis’s original novel, which many enjoyed in childhood as simply a well-told adventure story. About Christ-figure Aslan the lion’s sacrifice, Stephany Zacharek of Salon writes, “I think… it speaks to our capacity for compassion, and if that’s not nondenominational, I don’t know what is.” Ty Burr of the Boston Globe advises: “Take a deep breath and relax. Aslan doesn’t spout blood from his paws or perform the miracle of the loaves and… fishes.”

Accordingly, many Christian reviewers qualify their praise of the movie, bemoaning the diluted treatment of Lewis’ Christian message. A reviewer for Spirituality and Health laments that it “slights the forgiveness theme in favor of a big battle scene led by a not-very-Christlike Aslan….” Jeffrey Overstreet of Christianity Today admits that Aslan does not command the same reverence as Lewis’s great lion: “…the [screenwriters] consistently skirt the issue of Aslan’s authority…. Aslan’s father, the Emperor-beyond-the-sea [symbolic of God in the books], is never mentioned.”

Of course, no one denies that there is some Christian allegory. There can be no mistaking the symbolism of a story that features the seduction of a sinner (youngest brother Edmund) by the satanic White Witch, followed by his redemption through Aslan’s sacrifice. The scene in which Aslan forfeits his life has been described as an “anthropomorphic PG version of the Passion of the Christ” (Slant Magazine). This characterization of the movie as a kid-friendly Passion has cropped up in multiple commentaries (from USA Today to Christianity Answers). And it was no accident: the movie’s creators indicated their intent to attract Christian audiences when they appointed Outreach, an evangelical publisher, to promote the movie’s message in churches.

In fearing that the film’s watered-down religious elements will dampen its promotion of Christianity, Christians fail to realize one thing: the watering-down works to their advantage. In truth, nothing is more effective at spreading the Christian gospel than this “dilution” of its other-worldly message with enticing, this-worldly values. No parents would take their 7-year-old to see Passion of the Christ in hopes of convincing him of his corruption and his lifelong indebtedness to the blood-drenched Christ. Aslan and the Pevensie kids, however, are far more palatable role models. Narnia, after all, is a sweeping adventure, decked with presents and swords and chuckling beavers and a picturesque wonderland–not the typical setting for a crucifixion.

The film will not necessarily instill a Christian ethic in every child who sees it. But it does make Christlike sacrifice look so friendly and unassuming as to elude controversy. Rather than dying for wicked sinners, Aslan “dies” to save Narnia and its adorable inhabitants from imminent destruction–and is promptly reincarnated to slaughter the Witch in a fierce, heroic, and most un-Christlike fashion.

Children who stumble into the fictional world of Narnia at the urging of their Christian elders do not always know how to uncouple its lustrous, worldly delights from Christianity’s message of self-abnegation. And the story subtly discourages the kind of questioning that would assist them: after all, the “deep magic” overrides the rules of logic, even to the point (as Aslan explains) of defying death. Within Narnia’s universe, the Professor’s injunction to the stuffy and logical Susan “proves” correct: it is easiest not to question, but, like the naive and wide-eyed Lucy, to believe. Not only will the sacrifice of your body ensure its safe return–but the sacrifice of your mind, too, will be duly rewarded.

Christianity has wielded this deceptively sugarcoated account of its values for centuries. Heaven, that enchanting fantasy land filled with harps and angels, has been dangled before potential adherents in exchange for a renunciation of real rewards here on earth. The “virtue” of sacrifice has been packaged with compassion and benevolence–even though genuine good will is impossible among men who regard each other as sacrificial animals. Faith–the act of believing blindly–has been equated with the kind of trust one bestows on friends and family (as the Pevensies learn to trust Lucy)–though in reality such trust, far from blind, must be earned.

It is telling that Christianity has always relied on such a method to attract converts. It cannot brandish its true, unadulterated message of faith and self-sacrifice–because the naked essence of that doctrine is vicious. Followed sincerely, Christian morality demands not kindness towards those we trust, but “love” for our enemies; it demands not that we fight for justice, but that we “turn the other cheek” out of mercy; it demands not an appreciation of worldly delights, but a renunciation of wealth and sexual pleasure. In practice, it means surrendering all one selfishly loves–one’s job, one’s time, one’s choices, one’s mind, one’s very life–out of sheer senseless duty. To any honest human being (especially a child), this doctrine is unthinkable.

That is why Christianity’s advocates must wrap it in a lie: sacrifice now, and you shall be rewarded for it “later.”

The trouble is, the real world does not work that way. Those who stuff themselves with Turkish Delights do not get saved from the consequences of excess sugar afterward; and those who die as martyrs do not get restored to full health the next day. The Passion of the Christ is honest at least in this regard; it presents sacrifice in its true form: as ugly, unabated suffering. But suffering does not sell; battles, Christmas presents, and cute smiles, do. In such a form has Christianity sold its doctrine for ages.

No, Chronicles of Narnia is not as openly Christian as the mainstream critics feared. That is what makes it dangerous to the uncritical and unsuspecting. In fact, the film is a perfect marketing tool–just Christian enough to hoodwink naive viewers into developing an interest in Christianity, yet coated with false promises. Later, they will nurse their rising guilt and frustration by watching Jesus suffer for them in Passion of the Christ.

A movie like Narnia can easily blind current and future Christians to the fact that no amount of sacrifice is good; that it is our human birthright to seek delicious treats, festive holidays, heroic victories, and earthly happiness–and that, if we want to be regaled with such values, we must earn them ourselves.

Gena Gorlin is a sophomore attending Tufts University and the New England Conservatory.

The Case for Girly Beauty

I must confess, I love to go shopping. Although my meager grad student stipend doesn’t generally afford outlandish spending sprees, I delight in simple, gratis pleasures such as testing lotion samples at Bath & Body Works and visiting boutiques to try on colorful, lush silk dresses that I could never afford. Like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I will go out of my way to stroll past the sparkling windows of Manhattan’s diamond district.

Of course, as many of my lipgloss-toting, ladder-climbing classmates would agree, all this does not mean life should revolve around the latest issue of Cosmo. In fact, I spend most of my days earning top grades at a major university and logging hours towards my private pilot’s license. I just also make time for reveling in all of the sensual prettiness to be found in the world.

So, it is with some dismay that I have come to discover that many of my “sisters” don’t approve of my attitude. Perhaps this is unsurprising; bra-burning, Birkenstocked feminists have long been known for inciting a backlash against beauty. On the other hand, there have been recent attempts within the feminist movement to reconcile the fashion and cosmetics industry with “women’s lib.” The question is, have these attempts been successful? Answering this requires us first to consider what it is about beauty that feminists find so objectionable.

Strident feminists berate beauty as an insidious mode of oppression imposed by a patriarchal society. It is a fundamental tenet of women’s studies that gender is “socially constructed.” Many undergraduates encounter this viewpoint in their intro to women’s studies classes. There, they read representative articles like “Doing Gender” by Candace West and Don Zimmerman and learn that “doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine natures.’” And: “Rather than as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society.”

In other (actual English) words, “social construction” is the theory that gender is merely a product of society. There is no such real thing as a masculine or feminine nature. Nor do we as individuals have any choice or control when it comes to the way we express our sexuality; we are merely puppets of various societal forces. Feminist Naomi Wolf offers a revealing example of this in her much-touted book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women: “The influence of pornography on women’s sexual sense of self…has now become so common that it is almost impossible for younger women to distinguish the role pornography plays in creating their idea of how to be, look, and move in sex…” In Wolf’s view, the way a woman dresses herself (her whole sexual manner of being, in fact) is shaped by the pornographic images she is bound to encounter in society.

Must our sex lives be determined by pornography? Certain feminists openly disavow Wolf’s viewpoint and declare themselves instead to be “pro-beauty.” But what kind of case do these “new feminists” make for femininity?

In her book Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism, feminist Linda Scott reassesses the politics of personal appearance, often questioning and amending tenets commonly upheld by feminist historians. As one example, Scott researches 150 years of fashion history and discovers that it has been women, in fact, who have dictated the dominant trends. Even beauty advertisements, she points out, have been written mostly by women.

Unfortunately, pointing to such instances of cultural control concedes the major error made by the feminists Scott condemns. Like the feminists before her, Scott ignores two critical facts: individual women can make genuine choices, and these choices can be based on real sexual needs.

An individual woman can exercise independent judgment in how she expresses her femininity (if she chooses to express it at all). The argument that a patriarchal society imposes certain inescapable “constructs” of femininity evades the fact that individual women have the capacity to make authentic choices. A woman is always free to choose to base the way she looks, dresses, and moves on the trends set by porn stars or not. One woman may decide to emulate Britney Spears, another may admire Audrey Hepburn, and still another may flout all typical models (have you ever seen a photo of feminist Andrea Dworkin?).

In addition to the fact that women do make choices, there is also something to be said for the real existence of a “feminine nature.” There are biological differences between men and women, and stressing those aspects of herself that are distinctively female is part of a girl’s sense of her own sexuality. When a woman wears clothing that highlights her feminine curves, it heightens her awareness of herself as a sexual being. This type of awareness is a reflection of a real condition of her body, not a random invention of “social conditioning.” As a girl who loves the way high heels make her legs feel longer, I know I’d wear my strappy sandals even if I were trapped for the rest of my life on a desert island.

Ultimately, my passion for beautiful, girly things is far from a product of society. It is a product of my identity as a female human being with my own mind as my guide to reality.

But an independent, reality-oriented mind is something that never gets recognition from any academic feminist.

Kara Zavarella is a first year doctoral candidate at NYU where she studies English.

Soliciting Submissions for April Issue

We are now accepting article submissions for our next issue, which goes to print in the first week of April. The deadline for submissions is March 1st.

At present, we anticipate that the April issue will focus largely on foreign policy. As usual, however, we are interested in looking at submissions on all topics. Please feel free to submit anything you think may be of general interest to a college audience unfamiliar with Objectivism.

Whatever your idea, it also helps to email an abstract of your topic to mail@the-undercurrent.com in advance of the deadline, so that we can let you know if yours is the kind of piece we’re interested in running.

Kudos to the Daily Illini

On February 9th, the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois published the controversial cartoons of Mohammed that have exploded into a world-wide Muslim protest against the right to free speech. The original publishers of these cartoons are hiding in fear of their lives. Embassies are being set on fire. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims world round are calling for the deaths of those who created and printed the cartoons. TU sent the following letter to the Daily Illini, thanking them for their stance in support of free speech. It was published in the print version of the paper on February 13th.

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To the Editor:

Allow me to express my strong support for the Daily Illini?s courageous decision to print controversial cartoons of Mohammed.

I am disappointed to see that the Chancellor of the University of Illinois does not share my opinion. He writes that ?the right to publish incendiary material does not mean a publication must publish that incendiary material?.

Such views are the biggest threat to free speech in our own society. Like our political leaders, the Chancellor apologizes for our freedom of speech, appeases those who bully us into surrendering that freedom?in short, curtails freedom the second it is deemed offensive.

The Chancellor does not outright say that the Daily Illini has no right to free speech. He simply suggests it would be more prudent not to exercise it. He is wrong. When the right to speak is threatened, as the politicians who apologize for it threaten it today, it is then that strong assertions of that right are crucial. If we appease those who threaten us, we are lost. If we qualify the right to free speech, the right ceases to exist. As human beings, our right to speak is not effaced when someone wants us silenced. We have that right always, undyingly, and in principle.

In response to the Chancellor I ask: how better to proclaim the right to speech than to express it in the strongest way possible? What better way to support a hounded editor from Denmark than to re-assert the very action that has won him undeserved hatred and threats against his life?

The Daily Illini, faced with those who attacked the right to speak, as well as those who buckled under that attack, chose to assert that it would not buckle, nor would it abandon a basic principle of freedom. For that, I say, ?thank you?.

Rebecca Knapp
Editor, The Undercurrent