This time, it’s unanimous. Commentators on the far-left and the far-right agree that Ron DeSantis won the debate on Wednesday night. Below, I have video clips of the best parts of the debate.
If you can only watch one, then watch DeSantis vs Haley talking about bathroom bills. I also loved DeSantis vs Haley debating their actions related to China. And DeSantis’ plan to prevent taxpayer bailouts of student loans. He wants people to do trades and STEM degrees.
Europe Committing SUICIDE With Mass Migration, Says DeSantis
DeSantis on How He’d Promote Election Integrity
Haley, DeSantis Spar Over Bathroom Bills
‘New Sheriff in Town’: DeSantis Outlines Border Policy
DeSantis, Haley Spar Over China
DeSantis: Truck Drivers Shouldn’t Pay for Gender Studies Student Loans
Nikki Haley also denied that she wanted to dox Americans who use an alias on social media (like me!). But here is the video of her saying exactly that. CNN fact-checked her and agreed that she was lying.
And there was a long and fun exchange where Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy both went after Nikki Haley on her connections to woke corporations and support for ESG.
The underlying structure of nature is mathematical – mathematics is applicable to nature
Mathematical objects can either be abstract objects or useful fiction
Either way, there is no reason to expect that nature should be linked to abstract objects or fictions
But a divine mind that wants humans to understand nature is a better explanation for what we see
And now Dr. Craig has expanded on it in the Q&A section of his Reasonable Faith web site.
The question:
Dear Dr Craig
Firstly can I thank you for all your work. My faith in Christ has been enormously strengthened through studying your work in apologetics in particular and I have grown in confidence in my Christian witness.
My question relates to numbers and mathematics as a whole. On the Defenders podcast you state that as God is the only self-existent, necessary being, numbers and mathematical objects, whilst being useful, don’t actually exist as these too would exist necessarily and independently of God. If this is the case, how can it be that mathematics is so easily applied to the natural world? Surely if mathematics only existed in our minds, we would expect to see no correlation between it and how the physical world actually is?
Michael
United Kingdom
Excerpt from the answer:
As philosopher of mathematics Mary Leng points out, for the non-theistic realist, the fact that physical reality behaves in line with the dictates of acausal mathematical entities existing beyond space and time is “a happy coincidence” (Mathematics and Reality [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], p. 239). Think about it: If, per impossibile, all the abstract objects in the mathematical realm were to disappear overnight, there would be no effect on the physical world. This is simply to reiterate that abstract objects are causally inert. The idea that realism somehow accounts for the applicability of mathematics “is actually very counterintuitive,” muses Mark Balaguer, a philosopher of mathematics. “The idea here is that in order to believe that the physical world has the nature that empirical science assigns to it, I have to believe that there are causally inert mathematical objects, existing outside of spacetime,” an idea which is inherently implausible (Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], p. 136).
By contrast, the theistic realist can argue that God has fashioned the world on the structure of the mathematical objects. This is essentially what Plato believed. The world has mathematical structure as a result.
This argument was also made by mechanical engineering professor Walter Bradley in a lecture he gave on scientific evidence for an intelligent designer. You can read an essay that covers some of the material in that lecture at Leadership University.
Excerpt:
The physical universe is surprising in the simple mathematical form it assumes. All the basic laws of physics and fundamental relationships can be described on one side of one sheet of paper because they are so few in number and so simple in form (see table 1.1).
[…]It has been widely recognized for some time that nature assumes a form that is elegantly described by a relatively small number of simple, mathematical relationships, as previously noted in table 1.1. None of the various proposals presented later in this chapter to explain the complexity of the universe address this issue. Albert Einstein in a letter to a friend expressed his amazement that the universe takes such a form (Einstein 1956), saying:
You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world to the degree that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be in any way grasped through thought. . . . The kind of order created, for example, by Newton’s theory of gravity is of quite a different kind. Even if the axioms of the theory are posited by a human being, the success of such an enterprise presupposes an order in the objective world of a high degree which one has no a priori right to expect. That is the “miracle” which grows increasingly persuasive with the increasing development of knowledge.
Alexander Polykov (1986), one of the top physicists in Russia, commenting on the mathematical character of the universe, said: “We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.” Paul Davies, an astrophysicist from England, says, “The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe” (Davies 1984). Successful development of a unified field theory in the future would only add to this remarkable situation, further reducing the number of equations required to describe nature, indicating even further unity and integration in the natural phenomena than have been observed to date.
The whole paper that started this off is called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”, and it is a must read for advanced Christian defenders. You can read the whole thing here.
There is so much that I would like to say about the video below. For me, it really captures what feminism has taught women about men and relationships. Traditional male roles are: protect, provide, lead on moral issues, lead on spiritual issues. Well, young college-educated single women are certainly interested in protection and provision, but they have zero interest in male leadership.
First, here is the video:
So, this is a young, college-educated, progressive woman. She looks to be about 29 years old. She’s probably been having a lot of fun in bars and night clubs, hooking up with hot guys and running up student loans for worthless non-STEM degrees. But 29 is the age when many young feminist women start to notice that their friends are getting married, and so they feel that it’s time for them to “keep up” with their friends by also getting married.
The woman in the video doesn’t want a man in order to help him with any of his problems. She doesn’t want a man because she likes the way he leads her or makes decisions. She wants to get married because she wants to help herself to what a husband offers. Specifically, she wants to help herself to money, ability to repair a car, ability to renovate a house, vacations, travel, social respectability, social status, etc. That’s what she wants. She doesn’t want obligations to a man or obligations to children. She wants what a man and children to benefit her.
So, what this woman in the video is really asking for is two of the four traditional male roles. She wants a man to do protecting and providing. But she has no interest in a man who has firm views on morality or religion. She wants a sperm-donor, an ATM, and a handyman. But she doesn’t want a man who is going to tell her to do anything for God, or for him, or for the kids. No interest at all in a man who will want to lead the family in a Bible study, or protest sex-selection abortions. Religion and morality are disgusting to her – they’re brakes on her selfish pursuit of happiness. She likes men who let her make decisions, and who blame others when she is at fault. If babies get in the way of her career, he should approve of her killing them. If two men want to raise a motherless child bought from a surrogate, he should approve of that, too. She wants a man who will put his own kids in daycare and public schools so she can buy a Coach handbag and go on vacation in Barbados. Too bad for the kids. That’s what she wants in a man – “don’t judge”.
But the real key point in this story for me is how this woman expects a secular left man to respect moral obligations. A secular left man thinks that the universe is an accident, that human beings evolved from slime, and that humans have no free will. Atheists don’t believe that God holds people accountable for their moral decisions. They think that morality is just a set of conventions that vary by time and place. On atheism, there are no moral absolutes, just conventions that vary by time and place. And atheists only follow those conventions if following them makes them feel good or look good to others during their lifetimes. They support transing kids because they want their college professor or their boss to like them. Who cares about what happens to those kids?
On atheism, morality is just agreeing with the people you want to like you. It’s not about taking self-sacrificial stands to protect the weak. Survival of the fittest. That’s what atheists believe in. And this woman thinks that she is going to find a man who will have moral obligations towards her when those obligations go against his self-interest. She doesn’t want any obligations to him, but she wants him to have lots of moral obligations to her. Absolutely insane.
She also thinks that a man who agrees with her on adult-first, kids-last policies is going to sign up for a lifelong, faithful, marriage commitment. These days, it’s hard to get even a good man to agree to take risks with feminist false accusations on college campuses, feminist divorce courts and feminist “me too” workplaces. But why would a man who has a secular leftist worldview want to sacrifice his own interests for such a risky enterprise? Today, only men have obligations. Women are always the victims of someone else. In any disagreement between a man and a woman, the man is always guilty, and the woman is always the victim. The whole society is set up to relieve her of any accountability for her actions. All the costs must be paid by men. Why would a secular leftist man – who has ZERO rational foundation for morality – get legally obligated to a woman who holds that much power over him?
The woman in the video probably thinks that when it comes to marriage, men will just marry when they are impressed with a woman’s appearance, and go crazy from being “in love”. That’s why secular left women spend so much money on their appearance – not just for make-up or clothes, but on manicures, pedicures, and cosmetic surgery, too. Only stupid men marry secular left women because they are “in love” with her fake appearance.
If the woman in the video is expecting a man to commit to her for life, and be faithful, and be a good father, then she’s going to have to 1) resign herself to male leadership – because that’s what good men want, and 2) upgrade her religious and moral views to match those of a good man. Otherwise, her situation is hopeless. Good men don’t get married to secular left feminists. As more young women adopt feminism, you can expect to see the marriage rate decline.
WINTERY KNIGHT 