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How does the lynching of Brett Kavanaugh affect Christian men who want to have an influence?

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Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters
Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters

Well, on Friday, I asked one of the atheist senior software engineers I work with how he felt about the Kavanaugh nomination. He told me three things. First, that they shouldn’t give a job that lasts “40 years” to someone who got angry about being accused of being a gang rapist. Second, he had not followed the Kavanaugh news for a week. And third, that Trump was a horrible President, and hadn’t don’t anything right.

Here is a comprehensive summary of the Kavanaugh confirmation process from famous religious liberty defender David French.

Here’s what’s in it:

  • the overall pattern of sensational accusations being made, then unraveling after investigations prove them false
  • the left’s insistence that Kavanaugh disprove the allegations, rather than the accusers having to prove them
  • the left’s claim that Kavanaugh’s defense against the allegations shows that he doesn’t have the temperament for SCOTUS
  • the evidential problems with Christine Ford’s accusation
  • the evidential problems with Deborah Ramirez’s accusation
  • the evidential problems with Julie Swetnick’s accusation
  • the charge that Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury when talking about his drinking and his high school yearbook

Let’s focus on the most credible accusation from Christine Ford:

It’s an assault that verges on attempted rape. But the evidence simply doesn’t support this claim. In fact, her claim is worse than just “uncorroborated,” it’s contradicted – sometimes even by her own testimony and her own evidence. And her behavior since bringing the claim raises further doubts about its veracity.

Consider the following, undisputed facts about her testimony and the evidence she’s provided. Not one of the witnesses that she’s put forward have backed her version of events – not even her own friends. At best they’ve said they have no recollection of the party. Her friend, Leyland Keyser, went further, declaring through her attorney that “Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”

Moreover, Dr. Ford herself has provided conflicting accounts of her age at the time of the attack and the number of attendees at the party. Even the evidence of the details of the attack isn’t uniform. Her therapists’ notes allegedly indicate that four boys were present, not just Kavanaugh and Judge. She claims these notes are erroneous, but contemporaneous notes of a conversation are almost always far more reliable than a years-later recollection of that same conversation.

Dr. Ford’s conduct since coming forward has also been disturbing. When making a serious claim against another person, it is the obligation of the accuser to come forward with evidence. Instead, she has withheld evidence – including her complete therapists’ notes and the complete polygraph record. She has defied the Senate Judiciary Committee and refused to fully cooperate with its investigation. In a civil litigation context, the persistent refusal to hand over relevant evidence can lead to dismissal of a plaintiff’s claim. In this context, it should at the very least lead to a negative inference about the contents of the withheld evidence.

The article did not cover the sworn statement of Ford’s boyfriend, which directly contradicted her testimony under oath. This would open her up to charges of perjury, if pursued. And the article also didn’t mention how many of her stories meant to delay the confirmation process were falsified after being investigated, e.g. – her fear of flying which kept her from testifying on time.

What the Kavanaugh lynching means for Christian men

I am concerned about what young Christian men will have learned from the false accusations against Kavanaugh. Is it worth it to be sober and chaste in order to do well in school, and get good jobs? Well, the message of the Kavanaugh fiasco is that everything you do can be undone with a few false accusations. If you rise too high, then the secular left can destroy your reputation, your career, get you fired, destroy your finances by forcing you to defend yourself in court, etc. Good degrees and good jobs take a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice, especially in a time when progressives are receiving preferential treatment. Is it worth it to try?

Suppose a young Christian man were clever and avoided all alcohol and sex in high school and college, like I did. Suppose he did two STEM degrees in order to get into a male-dominated field like I did. I’ve worked in FT100 companies that aggressively promoted abortion and gay rights. I saw women who were outspoken proponents of same-sex marriage get promoted over conservatives with real STEM skills. Imagine I were going for a promotion in competition with a leftist woman. She could make up any story she wanted without any evidence in order to get me fired.  This is what the Kavanaugh case clearly shows.

One final point. Is it worth it for a Christian conservative man to get married and have children in an environment like this? If a man is fired from his job on a false charge, it puts a serious strain on his marriage. I am watching what gay activists are doing to Christian business-owners right now. Death threats, vandalism, organizing protests, negative reviews… trying to make it impossible for Christians and conservatives to earn a living. Trying to make it so that their children starve. Christian men who want to have an influence aren’t stupid. They count the cost of every decision before making it. A man who has a wife and kids is simply not as free to be who he really is and say what he really thinks as a man who is unmarried and who uses an alias.

A lot of Christians seem to like to say how great it is that they focus on “spiritual things” while ignoring politics. Well, when those Christians see secular leftists climbing into power and ruling over what Christians can say or do, I hope they will remember that all it takes for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Every time the secular left puts on a show of intimidation, more and more young Christians will get the message: you can’t win, so don’t try. The secular leftists are fascists – they will use power, threats of violence, and violence itself in order to neutralize the influence of those who make them feel ashamed of what they are doing.

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News

Will Christine Ford be charged with perjury after her ex-boyfriend’s sworn testimony?

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Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters
Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters

Christine Ford’s ex-boyfriend told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that he witnessed her coaching a friend on how to take a polygraph. So what? Well, Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she “NEVER” (her words) coached anyone else about polygraphs. Looks like someone is going to be facing perjury charges all right, and not about farting or drinking beer!

First, The Federalist recalls how Ford answered questions about her polygraph at her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:

At last week’s hearing, Ford was specifically asked by Rachel Mitchell, an experienced sex crimes prosecutor who was hired by the committee to question Ford and Kavanaugh, whether she had advised anyone on how to take a polygraph.

“Have you ever had discussions with anyone, beside your attorneys, on how to take a polygraph?” Mitchell asked.

“Never,” Ford responded.

“And I don’t just mean countermeasures,” Mitchell said, “but I mean just any sort of tips, or anything like that.”

“No,” Ford said.

“[H]ave you ever given tips or advice to somebody who was looking to take a polygraph test?” Mitchell continued.

“Never,” Ford replied again.

The Federalist article has the full statement.

The Wall Street Journal notes: (it’s pay-walled)

The statement was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Ford’s lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The writer’s name was redacted. In the letter to the committee, the writer said that he dated Dr. Ford from 1992 to 1998, found her to be “truthful” and said he had no ill will toward her.

He wrote that she never told him she was a victim of sexual assault or mentioned Judge Kavanaugh’s name.

He said that while they were dating, Dr. Ford lived with a female friend. That person was interviewing for a federal job. The writer said he witnessed Dr. Ford help her friend prepare to take a lie-detector test.

Because of her background in psychology, the writer said, Dr. Ford was able to help her friend understand “what to expect, and how polygraphs worked,” putting her mind at ease about the forthcoming test.

In his letter, Sen. Grassley wrote that Dr. Ford’s testimony at the hearing “raises specific concerns about the reliability of her polygraph examination results. The Senate therefore needs this information.”

National Review adds:

The two dated for six years and Ford never expressed a fear of flying or closed spaces, traits she told the committee she struggles with, he said.

The man also claims Ford lied about and then admitted to charging a credit card they used to share for about $600 of merchandise.

Personally, I don’t believe her story, and now that we have evidence that she perjured herself, I’d like to see her face criminal charges and spend some time in prison.

And I’d like to see her lawyers investigated and disbarred, if they are found guilty. And I want them to explain who is paying their lawyer fees and for Ford’s polygraph. If Ford or Ford’s lawyers are linked to George Soros, then we can certainly do something about George Soros’ influence in America.

And we can have an FBI investigation of Diane Feinstein’s on-staff Chinese spy – and find out what he was doing working for her for 20 years. I’d like that investigation to last as long as the media took smearing Trump with Russia collusion nonsense.

But first, let’s confirm Kavanaugh. This week. I want all the Democrat senators in red states to go on the record on where they stand on Kavanaugh. I want it done before the mid-terms, so everyone in Indiana, Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Missouri are very clear about who they should vote for in the mid-terms.

Note: at the time of writing (Tuesday night) this story had only been reported on National Review, The Federalist, the Washington Examiner, Fox News, the Daily Caller, and other right of center outlets. Not one far-left news media source, e.g. – CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, WaPo, etc. had a thing to say about it. This failure to report happens ALL THE TIME (remember the Gosnell trial?) Remember that next time you are consuming fake news from the progressive mainstream news media. They lie.

News

William Lane Craig debates Daniel Came: Does God exist?

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Dr. Craig's opening speech summary slide
Dr. Craig’s opening speech summary slide

The video of the debate was posted by ReasonableFaith.org – Dr. Craig’s organization. This debate occurred in March 2017 at the University of Dublin, in Ireland.

The video: (91 minutes)

My non-snarky summary is below.

Dr. Craig’s opening speech

Two claims:

1. There are good reasons to think that theism is true.
2. There are not comparably good reasons to think that atheism is true.

Five reasons for God’s existence:

1. The beginning of the universe
– actual infinite past is mathematically impossible
– BGV theorem: any universe that is on balance expanding in its history (like ours) cannot be past eternal

2. Fine-tuning of cosmic quantities and constants
– slight changes to quantities and constants prevent a universe from supporting complex embodied life
– the multiverse response of atheists conflicts with observations, e.g. the Boltzmann Brains problem

3. Objective moral values
– God’s existence is required to ground objective moral values and duties

4. Minimal facts case for the resurrection of Jesus
– there are good reasons to accept the most widely accepted facts about the historical Jesus (empty tomb, appearances, early widespread belief in the resurrection)
– the best explanation of these minimal facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead

5. Experience God directly
– in the absence of any defeaters to belief in God, a person can experience God directly

Dr. Daniel Came’s opening speech

1. The hiddenness of God
– if God wants a personal relationship with us, and a relationship with God would be the greatest good for us
– God ought to reveal himself to us, but he does not  reveal himself to many people, the “non-resistant non-believers”

2. The inductive problem of evil
– many evil events occur that are pointless – there is no morally sufficient reason why God would allow them to occur
– examples: animal suffering, children born with disease, tsunamis
– the theistic response to this is that humans are not in a position to know whether there are morally sufficient reasons, due to our limitations of knowing the consequences
– but this ripple effect defense has 4 possible outcomes, 3 of which don’t do the job of justifying

Dr. Craig’s first rebuttal

1. The hiddenness of God
– God’s goal is not to make his existence known, but to draw them into a love relationship
– it’s speculative that overt displays of God’s existence would draw people to him in a love relationship, they might resent his bullying
– atheist would have to prove that God could draw more people into a love relationship with him by revealing himself more overtly

2. The inductive problem of evil
– as humans, we are not in a position to know for certain that any apparently pointless evil really is pointless
– William Alston article: 6 limitations of human knowing make it impossible to judge that an evil is actually “pointless”
– Dr. Came says that there are 4 possibilities for the ripple effects, and since 3 are bad, it’s likely that there are not morally sufficient reasons for a apparently pointless evil
– it is logically fallacious to assert probability conclusions without knowing the probabilities of those 4 options
– there is actually an argument from evil: since the problem of evil requires an objective standard of good and evil by which to measure, and God is the only possible ground of objective morality, then pressing the problem of evil actually requires the atheist to assume God, in order to ground this objective moral standard

Dr. Came’s first rebuttal

3. Objective moral values
– there are naturalistic theories of moral realism where objective moral duties and objective moral values exist in a naturalistic universe
– I’m not saying that any of them are correct, but there are many theories about object morality in a naturalistic universe

There are naturalistic theories for all of the 5 arguments that Dr. Craig presented. It is Dr. Craig’s responsibility to present those naturalistic theories and prove that they are not as good as his explanations. I’m not going to defend (or even name!) a single naturalistic theory for any of these 5 arguments by Dr. Craig.

Dr. Craig’s explanations for the 5 evidences he gave can’t be admitted, because we have to know how God did something in naturalistic terms before we can know that God did it supernaturally. Explanations are only valid if they are naturalistic.

1. The beginning of the universe
– naturalism explains how the universe expands after it came into being, so that explains how it came into being
– the God explanation, that God created the universe out of nothing, is not admissible, because it is not naturalistic
– how does God, as an unembodied mind interact with the physical world?
– the only agency that we know about is human agents, and we have bodies, so how could God perform actions without having a body?

The theistic hypothesis does not make any predictions, but naturalism makes lots of testable predictions. God could do anything, so he is not constrained and is therefore untestable. We can’t infer God as an explanation in principle because we can’t predict what is more probable if God exists than if he does not.

2. Fine-tuning of cosmic quantities and constants
– the university was not set up to make embodied intelligence plausible, because the vast majority of the universe is hostile to life
– there are models of the multiverse that escape the Boltzmann Brains problem that Dr. Craig raised

Dr. Craig’s second rebuttal

Some of Dr. Craig’s arguments are deductive (e.g. – the beginning of the universe, objective moral values), so that the conclusion follows from the premises if the premises are true. The resurrection passes the standard tests for historical explanations.

1. The beginning of the universe
– the whole point of the argument is that there is no naturalistic explanation for an ultimate beginning of the universe

2. Fine-tuning of cosmic quantities and constants
– the whole point of the argument is that there is no naturalistic explanation for a design of the universe to support life
– he has to prove that intelligences has to be attached to bodies
– human beings are non-physical minds united to physical bodies
– naturalistic attempts to explain mental operations fail
– the arguments prove that unembodied minds exist
– the vast expanse of the universe is required in order to form the galaxies, stars and heavy elements needed for complex life
– why expect that the entire universe should be small, or that life would be everywhere?
– a non-fine-tuned world is more likely in the multiverse, and in a multiverse, we are more likely to have a Boltzmann brain world than a world with complex, embodied life
– Dr. Came has not advanced any naturalistic explanation for the fine-tuning

3. Objective moral values
– non-theistic ethical theories cannot account for the ontological foundations of objective moral values and duties
– atheistic theories of moral realism simply assume objective moral values out of thin air
– it is especially hard to find any basis for objective moral duties in the absence of God

Dr. Came’s second rebuttal

5. Religious experience
– Dr. Craig should not bring up religious experience in a debate where arguments and evidence are central
– people who have dreams, hallucinations and psychotic delusions could appeal to religious experience
– religious experience is by no means universal, and it is possible to doubt it

3. Objective moral values
– there are lots of atheists who hold to objective moral values
– Dr. Craig has to explain how God grounds objective moral values and duties
– Dr. Craig has to explain why atheist moral realist theories don’t work to ground objective moral values and duties

1. The beginning of the universe
– Dr. Craig claims that something can’t come from nothing, that’s not an argument
– there are numerous models that don’t require an absolute beginning of the universe
– Dr. Craig cites the BGV theorem, but Guth (one of the authors) says that only the inflation has a beginning, not the whole universe

Dr. Craig’s conclusion

1. The beginning of the universe
– on theism, there is an efficient cause, but no material cause, for the origin of the universe
– on atheism, there is neither an efficient cause nor a material cause, for the origin of the universe: that’s worse!
– if he thinks that there are models of the universe that don’t require a beginning, then let him name a viable eternal model of the universe
– he never refuted the mathematical argues against an infinite past

2. Fine-tuning of cosmic quantities and constants
– nothing to refute

3. Objective moral values
– God is a better ground for morality than humans, because he is ultimate, and not contingent and arbitrary
– God is a being who is worthy of worship, and therefore command his creatures with moral duties

4. Minimal facts case for the resurrection of Jesus
– nothing to refute

5. Religious experience
– only justified because there are no defeaters to it

1. The hiddenness of God
– atheist has to show that if God’s existence were more obvious, that it would result in more people being drawn to him

2. The inductive problem of evil
– Dr. Came’s argument was logically fallacious, and makes errors in probability theory

Dr. Came’s conclusion

Sometimes, people can’t prove something, but lack of evidence is a justification for doubting it, e.g. – werewolves.

If none of Craig’s arguments work, then it follows that it is not rational to believe that God exists, and it is rational to believe that God does not exist.

Atheists shouldn’t have a burden of proof for what they know, only theists have a burden of proof for what they know.

My thoughts

One quick point. If life were common everywhere then atheists would infer that God wasn’t involved in it. Period. “Life is everywhere, so it’s common, why do we need a designer?” they’d say. I agree with Dr. Came about denouncing religious experience in a formal debate. I don’t like when Dr. Craig brings this up, but I see why he does it – he’s an evangelist, and that’s a good thing, too. I just worry about how it looks to atheists, although it’s good for sincere seekers. I’m not the one on the stage, though, Dr. Craig is.

I think the point about more overt revealing by God would annoy people and make them turn away. Think of how gay people respond to the suggestion that there is anything wrong with them, with rage, vandalism, threats, coercion, attempts to get you to lose your job and business, and using government as a weapon to fine and imprison you. It’s really obvious to me that more God does not mean more love of God. For those who don’t want God, the hiddenness is respect for their choice to put pleasure above the search for truth. (I mean the gay activists – I have great sympathy for people who struggle with same-sex unwanted attractions because they were impacted by a failed bond with their parent of the same sex as they are).

Whenever I meet people like Dr. Came, I always urge them to keep investigating and pursuing truth, because they will find it if they are sincerely seeking after God. Some atheists do sincerely seek God, but I don’t know any who haven’t found him. I’m not sure if that’s because those atheists who claim to be non-resistant and rational are in fact resistant and non-rational, or what the real reason is. If you believe the Bible, all unbelief is non-rational and resistant (see Romans 1). Regarding the werewolves, we don’t have any good arguments for werewolves, we do have good arguments for God. Dr. Came didn’t refute the arguments that Craig raised, nor did his own arguments for atheism work. And there are many, many more arguments (origin of life, Cambrian explosion, habitability-discoverability, molecular machines) that Craig did not raise, too.