Who is Bombing Who

In his victory speech in after the Wisconsin primary last night, John McCain criticized Barack Obama's suggestion that he might favor bombing Al Queda strongholds in Pakistan if the Pakistani government failed to address the problem.

Senator McCain did not sing any verses of "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran!"

More of Craig's Crap

God I'm a dancer. A dancer dances.
The Music and the Mirror from A Chorus Line

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

William Lane Craig is not plagued by any hobgoblins when he is presented the opportunity to score cheap rhetorical points. In an August 2002 debate, Craig attacked Peter Slezak for suggesting that the lack of evidence for God's existence might be some reason to think God might not exist. Craig insisted that the lack of evidence was not a concern as long as you did not expect too much.

We need to ask what is the evidence for atheism. And here Dr. Slezak says that the only evidence against God’s existence is the absence of evidence for God’s existence. Now this admission is highly significant because it means that he tacitly agrees that all of the traditional arguments for atheism like the problem of evil and the incoherence of the concept of God, all of these arguments fail. The only argument for atheism is the absence of evidence for God. But the problem here is that the absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence....

So when then does the absence of evidence count as evidence that something does not exist? Well theorists of knowledge agree that the lack of evidence for some entity X counts as positive evidence against X’s existence only in the case that if X did exist then we should expect to see more evidence of X’s existence than what we do see....

Now apply that then to the case of God, the absence of evidence for God’s existence counts as evidence against God’s existence only in the case that if God did exist, then we should see more evidence of his existence than we do in fact see. In practical terms what that means is this: if God exists should we expect to see more evidence of his being than the origin of the universe out of nothing; the exquisite fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life; the apprehension of a realm of moral an aesthetic values; the radical claims and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead; and the immediate experience of fellowship with God? Well I think the answer is obviously not.

So to carry his argument, Dr. Slezak has to prove that it is highly probable that if God exists we should have more evidence of his existence than what we do in fact have, and that I think is sheer speculation. And thus in the case of God, I do not think that the absence of evidence is at all a positive argument
against the existence of God and yet that is all he’s had to offer you tonight on behalf of atheism, so I don’t think that we have seen any good reason to think that atheism is true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-5PFRc2FIA

It seems to me that Craig is saying that by lowering our expectations for the less evidence that we expect there to be for God, we lower the probability that atheism is true. By this logic, we should not reject the existence of leprechauns since we don’t expect there to be any evidence for them in the first place.

As strange as Craig's argument against Slezak might be, he was not plagued by any foolish consistency in February 2005 when Austin Dacey tried to make the very argument that Craig said Slezak failed to make. When Dacey argued that we should expect to see more evidence of God's existence, Craig insisted that the only evidence we should ever expect to see is whatever evidence we actually do see.

Now in this speech I would like to examine Dr. Dacey's arguments on behalf of atheism to see whether they pass philosophical muster.
All five of his arguments share the same basic form: Step one is to say that if God existed, we should expect to find "blank," and you fill in the blank, step two is “but we do not find blank” and therefore one concludes that God does not exist.

Now I want to make two general comments about this style of argumentation: First of all, its enormously presumptuous. Basically, what Dr. Dacey is saying is that if God doesn’t fulfill our expectations, then we should conclude that He doesn’t exist. But who says that God has to fulfill our expectations? How can we predict with any confidence what God would do if He existed? If we find that our expectations aren’t met, then isn’t it the better part of discretion and humility to reexamine and perhaps revise those expectations? We’re simply not in a position to dictate to God that He has to act in accordance with our expectations

http://youtube.com/watch?v=j9VWz0tTdpc

Woohoo!!!!! Brilliant!!!! We should adjust our expectations to whatever evidence we find for God’s existence. Then, since the evidence always perfectly meets our expectations, we can never conclude that God doesn’t exist. What bullshit.

BTW, I don't cruise YouTube looking for Craig videos. These were both cited by bloggers in the last few days as examples of Craig's brilliance.

Was Jesus a Republican?

From the front page of today's Chicago Tribune under the headline A bitter pill for conservatives:

COLORADO SPRINGS - Kathleen and Myron Buzby listen closely to conservative talk radio, consider themselves "serious Christians," and count themselves blessed to have 18 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

They are exactly the kind of people who flocked to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Colorado caucuses and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in other contests, not to Sen. John McCain. Now that McCain has virtually clinched the Republican nomination for president, the Buzbys are dismayed and somewhat dispirited."

I think McCain is temperamental and he gets revenge," said Kathleen Buzby, who can easily tick off the issues where she disagrees with the Arizona senator, starting with campaign finance reform, his unsuccessful attempt to overhaul immigration laws and his two votes against President Bush's tax cuts.


Pardon my French, but what the #&@$ does being a "serious Christian" have to do with campaign finance reform, immigration laws, or tax cuts? The only thing I know that Jesus taught that touches on any of those topics was "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" and that does not sound like an argument against taxes to me.

I am currently reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and I am not eager to embrace his argument that religion's natural tendency is to do more harm than good. I have not yet felt compelled to take the step from agnosticism to atheism and I still find the liberal theology of a John Shelby Spong very appealing. On the other hand, when I see people who insist on justifying purely political positions as mandates of their religious faith, it is very hard to curb my cynicism about the whole enterprise.

The Best Religion Debate Ever

Islam v. Christianity by Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert

Would God Pass AP Science?

If, for example, the strong nuclear force that holds together the protons
and neutrons in the nucleus of atoms were a tad weaker, elements other than
hydrogen would either be unlikely or impossible; if a tad stronger, you wouldn’t
have hydrogen. Change the ratio of the mass of the electron to the proton just a
mite and molecules cannot form. If gravity were made just a bit weaker, stars
large enough to produce the heavier elements necessary for biological life would
not exist; a bit stronger, and stars would be too massive, producing the
necessary elements but burning too rapidly and unevenly to support life. Fiddle
a smidgeon with the expansion rate of the universe, and you either cause it to
collapse or exceed the ideal rate at which galaxies, and hence solar systems,
can form.

Benjamin Wiker, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow



Wow! God is like soooooo smart! It's the ultimate science fair project.

On the other hand, God could have done anything He wanted to do, couldn't He? He could make the strong nuclear force anything He wanted it to be and He could make the gravititational force anything He wanted it to be. The notion that something God wanted stuck together would become unstuck because of a variation in some natural law is absurd. He could make any ratio anything He wanted. He could make pi equal sixty-two. He is not bound by any natural laws because He invented them and He can ignore them or change them as it so pleases Him.

So why would God make the universe look so orderly? Wouldn't randomly changing natural laws be a much better indication of God's existence than predicatable ones? Is He just messin' with our heads?

Let Us Pray

O Lord, please don't burn us.
Don't grill or toast Your flock.
Don't put us on the barbecue
Or simmer us in stock.
Don't braise or bake or boil us
Or stir-fry us in a wok.
Oh, please don't lightly poach us
Or baste us with hot fat.
Don't fricassee or roast us
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don't stick Thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.

From Monty Python's The Meaning of Life