Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 149

The Best Of The Dish Today

So we have early results from the coalition to “ultimately destroy” ISIS.

The Islamic State jihadist organization has recruited more than 6,000 new fighters since America began targeting the group with air strikes last month, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. At least 1,300 of the new recruits are said to be foreigners, who have joined IS from outside the swathes of Syria and Iraq that it controls … The bulk of the foreign fighters who have signed up in the past six weeks are aged between 15 and 20-years-old and have never been involved in a conflict before, according to Abdurrahman Saleh, a spokesman for the Islam Army, part of the Islamic Front rebel group.

And the beat goes on …

This weekend, we aired the Christianity of U2; the debate over the role of religion in modern terrorism; the real touchstone of conservatism – “the good in the present“; why disabled men pay for prostitutes; and a post on William James with the title: The Varieties Of Stoner Experience. Plus: a poetic defense of New York City – “you don’t refuse to breathe do you” – and the entrancing beauty of smoke plumes. And if you ever wondered how a Buddhist writes a novel with a single narrator, wonder no further.

The most popular posts of the weekend were Smartphone Sex; followed by a post that seemed to touch a collective Dish nerve – The Offense Industry On Offense.

Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 20 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. Dish t-shirts and polos for sale here. A loyal reader writes:

I started reading you on September 11, 2001, and I doubt I have missed a day since then. I’d read your stuff in the New York Times and knew who you were. You were outstanding on 9/11 and thereafter. Congratulations on inventing blogging. I rarely agree with you now, but you are still a must read … no matter what Krugman said!

“Rarely agree with you now” is a bit of an understatement, as our near and dear reader fills the in-tray with invective on a daily basis. We compiled some of it here:

Shameless shill … …that would be you….celebrating…in dishonest terms, of course….the health care disaster….”the government helping the working poor”…meaning, as always, forced re-distribution….well, duh!!….the “government” can always “help” whatever targeted group the bien-pensants wish to benefit, can’t they…with MY money….that’s always the left’s claim as they accrue power and wealth to their New Class selves….at the same time exhibiting and expressing utter contempt for the intended beneficiaries…”clingers”, remember? “tea-baggers” with obviously false consciousness failing to recognize the beneficence of their saviours…as that CNN bitch openly expressed it contemptuously… Oh, yeah…the Hope and Change thing, too….what a crock!…what liars!…what hypocrites, shameless dissemblers!

All are welcome at the Dish – right, left, and everywhere in between and beyond. Over the years, we’ve gladdened and pissed off almost everyone.

See you in the morning.

When Edgar Allan Poe Looked Beyond The Stars

Eliza Strickland revisits his long prose-poem about the origins and fate of the universe, Eureka, which includes “a spookily intuitive description of the Big Bang theory more than 70 years before astrophysicists came up with the idea”:

Scientists who have read Eureka in the decades since have justly called attention to errors in other parts of Poe’s cosmology, and many consider his Big Bang notion to be nothing more than a lucky guess. But a few give Poe credit for a creative leap that contemporaneous astronomers were unable to make. Alberto Cappi is an Italian astronomer who studies galactic clusters and the structure of the universe, and who has taken an interest in Eureka. “It’s surprising that Poe arrived at his dynamically evolving universe, because there was no observational or theoretical evidence suggesting such a possibility,” Cappi wrote in an email. “No astronomer in Poe’s day could imagine a non-static universe.”

Perhaps the astronomers of Poe’s day didn’t have his motivation. Eureka goes on to propose that all the scattered and blown-apart atoms of the universe are now rushing together again, compelled by their “appetite for oneness.” In the due course of ages, he says, the “bright stars will become blended,” and all matter will merge in a final embrace. Poe, the bereft widower, seems to take comfort in this promise of reunification, perhaps dreaming of being reunified with his love. Many of today’s cosmologists predict a quite different fate for us all: an ever-continuing expansion, with all matter spread out in an increasingly diffuse and featureless Universe. The macabre Poe, rather than the romantic one, might have found that conclusion appropriate.

(Photo by John Lemieux)

The Greatest Known Unknown

In the midst of an interview discussing how we argue about God, Keith DeRose asserts that “neither theists nor atheists know whether God exists”:

It was about God, wasn’t it, that Kant famously wrote “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”? Whatever it does or doesn’t do for faith, my denial of knowledge here makes room for reasonable views on both sides of the question of whether God exists.

I don’t think the arguments for either theism or atheism lead to knowledge of their conclusions. But there are arguments on both sides from premises that someone might reasonably judge to be plausible. If you find it quite probable that God does not exist, I think it’s perfectly possible that you are reasonable to think as you do. But this doesn’t mean that someone who thinks it is likely that God does exist can’t likewise be reasonable in holding that position.

To know that God does (or doesn’t) exist, you have to show that there are no arguments for atheism (or for theism) that a reasonable person could find plausible. But to support that claim you would have to have better critiques of all those arguments than I’ve ever seen. In my view, it’s more likely those who claim to know whether God exists — whether theists or atheists — are just blowing smoke.

Who Are Your Favorite Heretics?

Richard J. Mouw suggests that believers should all have a few because “it can be healthy for Christians who love ideas to be challenged regularly by perspectives that we can disagree with in productive ways.” One of his? The famed British philosopher Bertrand Russell, author of Why I Am Not a Christian:

For a while, especially when I was first learning the ropes in Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell was one of my special favorite heretics. In his technical philosophical work in epistemology and logic, he changed his mind a lot, and showed no embarrassment about doing so. I admired that in him. But what I enjoyed even more were his popular writings, especially about religious matters.

Russell was boldly anti-religious. He saw no room for any substantive religious ideas in formulating an ethical perspective, or in investing oneself in social-political causes. But there were moments in his writings when he expressed a sense that to abandon religion is to lose something important—even if he was not clear exactly about what the loss amounted to. One of my favorite Russell passages in this regard occurs in the context of some autobiographical reflections. As a gift for him on his twelfth birthday, he recounted, his grandmother gave him a Bible, which he still possessed. In the flyleaf she had written a couple of her favorite biblical texts: “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil,” and “Be strong, and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be Thou dismayed. For the Lord Thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” Then Russell makes this remarkable confession: “These texts have profoundly influenced my life, and still seemed to retain some meaning after I had ceased to believe in God.”

I find something admirable in that confession. It expresses a sense of loss, along with a corresponding sense of moral loneliness. Being one’s own autonomous moral legislator can be a lonely experience.

A Poem For Sunday

“The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara:

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille Day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets

in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfield Theatre and

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the John door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

– 1959

(From Lunch Poems, Expanded 50th Anniversary Edition © 1964, 2014 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara. Used by permission of City Lights Books, San Francisco)

“A Wildly Popular, Semi-Secretly Christian Rock Band”

That’s how Joshua Rothman pegs U2 in an essay exploring the faith behind their music:

In some ways, this seems obvious: a song on one recent album was called “Yahweh,” and where else would the streets have no name? But even critics and fans who say that they know about U2’s Christianity often underestimate how important it is to the band’s music, and to the U2 phenomenon. The result has been a divide that’s unusual in pop culture. While secular listeners tend to think of U2’s religiosity as preachy window dressing, religious listeners see faith as central to the band’s identity. To some people, Bono’s lyrics are treacly platitudes, verging on nonsense; to others, they’re thoughtful, searching, and profound meditations on faith.

Christianity Today regularly covers U2, not just as another Christian rock band but as one of special significance. In 2004, the magazine ran an article about Bono’s “thin ecclesiology”—his unwillingness to affiliate himself with a church—that sparked a debate about the health of organized religion. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, addressed the issue of Bono’s belief in a fascinating 2008 lecture about the place of organized faith in secular society. “Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog” is one of several books exploring the theological ideas in Bono’s lyrics. Churches around the world have held “U2charists”—full services at which traditional church music is replaced with songs by U2. A few years ago, an Episcopal priest I know helped organize one at a church in New Jersey; the service, which featured a huge sound system, stage lighting, cocktails, and a bonfire, raised around forty thousand dollars for an orphanage in Cameroon.

Meanwhile, Nathan Hart looks at religion’s place in their just-released Songs of Innocence:

The power of Songs of Innocence is found within its sacramental atmosphere. There are holy moments throughout. With very personal and vulnerable lyrics, Bono has (probably temporarily) laid down his political megaphone. It feels less like a prophetic diatribe and more like a prayer of confession. For example, even in thinking about the very political “troubles” in Ireland on the closing track, he sings,

You think it’s easier to put your finger on the trouble,

when the trouble is you

And you think it’s easier to know your own tricks

Well, it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do

Bono points his wagging finger away from the issue and onto himself. In other words, he’s saying, sin is not just something that has infected the big bad world out there, it is also the thing that has infected the self in here. I can’t recall any other U2 lyric that peers so honestly into the farthest corners of Bono’s own heart. Sure, he has been honest about his lustfulness and the origins of his messiah complex. But by vulnerably associating his own sinfulness with the very thing that he normally prophesies against, he offers us a lyrical sacramentology—a holy moment inviting divine redemption. Redemption comes in the same song, which later depicts a thrown lifeline, a rope, “something I could hold on to.” Then, redeemed, he can sing, “God now you can see me. I’m naked and I’m not afraid. My body’s sacred and I’m not ashamed.”

Scotland Decides To Stay

The results:

Alex Massie reflects:

[A] 55-45 victory is both a handsome margin – wider than the 53-47 I had guessed – and a remarkable repudiation of the Union. It is clear enough to be decisive; close enough to demand modesty in victory.

He is heartened by “the rediscovery that, actually, Britain was something – a place and an idea too – that was worth fighting for.” But Massie also faces uncomfortable facts:

The Union was saved, in the main, by wealthier and older Scots. The poor chose differently. That’s an uncomfortable fact for Unionists and one that requires attention. Plenty of Yes votes were cast in hope more than expectation; many others were votes predicated on the fear that voting No offered no prospect of personal or community improvement.

One lesson of this campaign is that the poor, so often marginalised, have a voice too and that they should be heard. This too, I think, should temper Unionist joy this morning. A sobering, timely, even necessary, reminder that the status quo does not float all boats.

Isabel Hardman looks at Scottish voters’ reasons for voting one way or the other:

[T]he reason more frequently cited for voting ‘Yes’ than any other was ‘disaffection with Westminster politics’, with 74% of those in favour of independence naming that, then 54 per cent also picking the NHS, followed by 33 naming tax and public spending. For No voters, the biggest issue was the pound, which does vindicate Alistair Darling rather for banging on about currency union, even when some in his own camp thought he needed a change of tack. 37 per cent cited pensions, followed by 36 who named the NHS as a reason for voting ‘No’. Similarly, 47 per cent of No voters said the most important reason for voting no was that ‘the risks of becoming independent looked too great when it came to things like the currency, EU membership, the economy, jobs and prices.

But Jason Cowley predicts that “unless there is far-reaching constitutional reform, there will be a second Scottish independence referendum before too long”:

What the referendum campaign demonstrated was that, in the right circumstances and when people believe that something truly significant is at stake and that their vote matters, they care passionately. At a time when fewer and fewer of us are members of political parties, nearly 4.3 million registered to vote, 97 per cent of those eligible. Overall turnout was 86 per cent, testament to a nation’s engagement and a direct challenge to a broken political system.

But how now to capture and harness the energies that were unleashed during a referendum campaign in Scotland that shook the foundations of the British state, stunned a complacent elite and came so close to shattering the 307-year-old Union?

ISIS’s War Games

Murtaza Hussain introduces the jihadists’ latest propaganda innovation, which looks to court fans of the Grand Theft Auto video game series:

A new video purportedly released by supporters of the group to Arabic language news media appears to show Islamic State, or ISIS, propaganda mocked up in the style of the popular “Grand Theft Auto” franchise. The video shows footage of explosions, sniper rifle attacks and drive-by shootings all rendered in the style of the GTA series. Arabic commentary included as subtitles contain quotes along the lines of targeting U.S. forces and “the Safavid Army”, a reference to Iranian or pro-Iranian forces. They also show images of an assault rifle riddling a police car full of bullet holes — a scene that would not be altogether unfamiliar to Grand Theft Auto players. …

Though the new video appears to constitute a trailer, there’s no indication yet that a real, playable game is in the offing anytime soon. Nonetheless, coupled with the group’s release yesterday of a new propaganda trailer directed at the United States, it appears that the ISIS media war is continuing to evolve in new and weird directions.

But the viewer is clearly meant to understand that the “real, playable game” is available only in Iraq and Syria. At least, that’s what Jay Caspian Kang suspects:

The similarities between ISIS recruitment films and first-person-shooter games are likely intentional. Back in June, an ISIS fighter told the BBC that his new life was “better than that game Call of Duty.” Video-game-themed memes traced back to ISIS have been floating around the Internet for months, including one that reads, “THIS IS OUR CALL OF DUTY AND WE RESPAWN IN JANNAH.” (“Respawn” is the gamer word for reincarnate.) Another ISIS video, as the Intercept notes, looks like a deliberate homage to Grand Theft Auto. Audio clips that sound much like ones in Call of Duty have been spliced into other ISIS videos. Many of the ISIS recruitment videos are dedicated to showcasing rocket launchers, mines, and assault rifles, as if to say, “If you join us, you’ll get to shoot these things.” …

In their recruitment of Western jihadis, ISIS has used a broad, pop-culture-laden campaign that seems to be aimed at turning what once might have been a radical religious message into something more worldly. During the World Cup, an ISIS Twitter account posted an image of a decapitated head with the message “This is our football, it’s made of skin #WorldCup.” That ISIS would try to access Western kids through such avenues speaks to a deep cynicism that discards the religious and the political for adrenaline and gore.

Hailing The Space Taxi

This week, NASA announced that it would award a combined $6.8 billion “space taxi” contract to Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX:

Essentially, Boeing’s CST-100 Space Capsule and SpaceX’s Dragon will each send a test flight to the International Space Station to demonstrate their space taxi capabilities. Each team will fly to the ISS with a NASA crew member and cargo, show that they can dock to the station, and return to Earth safely. Astronauts could be taking a ride on the space taxi pilot program as soon as 2017.

Christian Davenport explains what makes the move so significant:

The announcement of the “commercial crew” awards is a big step toward allowing the U.S. to end its reliance on Russia, which has been ferrying American astronauts to the space station since the retirement of the space shuttle three years ago. The arrangement hasn’t been cheap: the Russians currently charge $71 million per seat, and NASA has in a single year sent more than $400 million to Russia for these taxi rides. If the schedule doesn’t slip, and Boeing and SpaceX prove their vehicles are safe, NASA should see its astronauts launched on U.S. soil with American rockets by as early as 2017.

The awards represent a significant shift for NASA, which has long owned and operated its own rockets. Instead of going to space on government-owned vehicles, NASA’s astronauts would essentially rent space on ships provided by Boeing and SpaceX.

Meanwhile, Adam Minter praises the way NASA put the project together:

NASA’s decision to fund a competition — known as Commercial Crew– to develop rockets for manned space flights has been one of the agency’s biggest successes in decades. Just three years ago, upon the retirement of the Space Shuttle, NASA didn’t have any way to transport U.S. astronauts other than by hitching expensive rides on Russian spacecraft. Today the agency was able to choose between three viable spacecraft designs, all of which will be ready to fly in 2017, according to their manufacturers. The three were developed for less than $2 billion cumulatively. It’s been a welcome change from NASA’s history of program delays, cost-overruns, all-too-cozy contractor relationships and missions driven by patronage.

Animals Can Be Useless, And That’s OK

Richard Conniff rejects conservationist arguments that imply “animals matter only because they benefit humans, or because just possibly, at some unknowable point in the future, they might benefit humans”:

I understand the logic, or at least the desperation, that drives conservationists to this horrible idea. It may seem like the only way to keep what’s left of the natural world from being plowed under by unstoppable human expansion and by our insatiable appetite for what appears to be useful.

But usefulness is precisely the argument other people put forward to justify destroying or displacing wildlife, and they generally bring a larger and more persuasive kind of green to the argument. Nothing you can say about 100 acres in the New Jersey Meadowlands will ever add up for a politician who thinks a new shopping mall will mean more jobs for local voters (and contributions to his campaign war chest). Nothing you can say about the value of rhinos for ecotourism in South Africa will ever matter to a wildlife trafficker who can sell their horns for $30,000 a pound in Vietnam.

Finally, there is the unavoidable problem that most wildlife species – honey badgers, blobfish, blue-footed boobies, red-tailed hawks, monarch butterflies, hellbenders – are always going to be “useless,” or occasionally annoying, from a human perspective. And even when they do turn out, by some quirk, to be useful, that’s typically incidental to what makes them interesting.