Videos

William Lane Craig lectures on the moral argument at Georgia Tech

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Making sense of the meaning of atheism
Making sense of the meaning of atheism

This video has 3 parts, as well as questions and answers in individual clips.

For those who cannot watch the video, you can grab the MP3 file of the lecture, or read this essay by Dr. Craig which covers exactly the same ground as the video. The essay is for Christians already familiar with basic apologetics.

Part 1 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Here’s a quick couple of quotes from the essay for those who cannot watch:

If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic view nothing really wrong about committing incest. If, as Kurtz states, “The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion,”5 then the non-conformist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably.

The objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic world view is underscored by two implications of that world view: materialism and determinism. Naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists, who regard man as a purely animal organism. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his being (call it soul or mind or what have you), then he is not qualitatively different from other animal species. For him to regard human morality as objective is to fall into the trap of specie-ism. On a materialistic anthropology there is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more valuable than rats. Secondly, if there is no mind distinct from the brain, then everything we think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our genetic make-up. There is no personal agent who freely decides to do something. But without freedom, none of our choices is morally significant. They are like the jerks of a puppet’s limbs, controlled by the strings of sensory input and physical constitution. And what moral value does a puppet or its movements have?

[…]Moreover, if atheism is true, there is no moral accountability for one’s actions. Even if there were objective moral values and duties under naturalism, they are irrelevant because there is no moral accountability. If life ends at the grave, it makes no difference whether one lives as a Stalin or as a saint. As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly said: “If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted.”

If you want to show this lecture and Q&A to your apologetics group, you can find the DVD here.

You can also read a debate transcript where Dr. Craig puts his ideas to the test, against Dr. Richard Taylor.

News

Fox News debate moderators focused on attention-seeking, not informing voters

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First point, there was record viewership for the second debate.

The Washington Times reports:

The two-hour political extravaganza pulled in 24 million viewers according to initial Nielsen ratings numbers – breaking the all-time record for a non-sports cable event. 

[…]A good comparison here: the largest audience that any debate drew in the 2012 election was 7.6 million. 

[…]And about that coverage on Thursday: Of the two-hour broadcast, the candidates collectively spoke for one hour and eight minutes total. Mr. Trump spoke for 10 minutes, 32 seconds, with Jeb Bush in second place at eight minutes, 32 seconds – this according to University of Minnesota political professor Eric Ostermeier, who tallied it all up with a stop watch and a spreadsheet.

[…]Trump and Bush were the only two candidates who reached — and exceeded — that mark,” the professor adds. “They received more than their equal share of speaking time while the rest of the field was shortchanged.”

In third place was Mike Huckabee at 6:40 followed by Sen. Ted Cruz (6:39), Ohio Gov.John Kasich (6:31), Ben Carson (6:23), Sen. Marco Rubio (6:22), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (6:10), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (5:51), and in last place, Sen. Rand Paul (5:10).

The Fox News moderators spoke for 32 minutes – taking up about a third of the total on-camera dialogue.

The Fox News moderators spoke for 32 minutes. They should have spoken for 10 minutes total, and in fact I saw them say that they only intended to speak for 10 minutes, just after the early debate for second-tier candidates.

Conservative Mark Levin was not please with the Fox News moderators’ performance.

He says:

Lawyer, constitutional scholar, best selling author, and conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, in an interview on theBreitbart News Saturday radio program, expressed outrage at the Thursday night GOP presidential debate hosted by Fox News.

Levin asserted, “I think that we were all duped. The fact of the matter is that this was a ratings gambit.”

[…]Levin claims that “We the people” were overlooked in the debate, and the event became a media spectacle with more emphasis on the show’s moderators than on discussing the important issues that face America.

[…]Bannon observed that the debate reeked of “opposition research” and had a definite “adversarial” tone with the questions they asked Trump and others. Levin agreed and recounted that the question they asked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker about abortion seemed prosecutorial in nature.

It’s not just that the speaking time was unfair, and actually favored the moderators, it’s that the moderators’ questions were almost entirely tabloid-style gotcha questions:

Levin described the debate as a failure to address the two hundred trillion that America faces in unfunded liabilities, the bankruptcy of the Social Security system, the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are on the brink of collapse, that our educational system costs a trillion dollars a year and is a “complete failure,” our immigration policy is a disaster, the EPA is destroying our economic system, and that our Constitution is being undermined. Levin rebuked Fox for wasting time on “pardon the phrase—trumped up stuff. To me it is such an outrage what took place. And it was planned. The questions were planned. I am very troubled by it too.”

I think Megyn Kelly in particular was a lousy moderator, and just approached the debate as a way to attract attention to herself. She was a disgrace. People say Fox News is conservative, but they were anything but conservative during the second debate. They were in it for themselves, and the Republican Party suffered. I might as well have been watching CNN, or even MSNBC.

Anyway with that in find, here are the changes in poll numbers following the debate: (H/T ECM)

Recent post-debate GOP primary poll
Recent post-debate GOP primary poll

Cruz, Fiorina and Carson helped themselves the most, and that’s exactly what I said in my previous post when I declared Fiorina the winner of the first debate, and Cruz and Carson the winners of the second debate.

News

EPA dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado

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EPA dumps 1 million gallons of mining waste into river
EPA dumps 1 million gallons of mining waste into river

Yes, the Environmental Protection Agency is polluting rivers. They are not admitting responsibility, and the mainstream news media is covering for them.

Let’s get the story from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Imagine if a business dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado, turning it into what looked like Tang, forcing the sheriff’s office to close the river to recreational users, and prompting the EPA to warn farmers to shut off water intakes along the river.

Oh, and imagine that the business also failed to warn officials in downstream New Mexico about the spill.

Such a calamity would probably lead the nightly news, with calls from environmentalists and the EPA for investigations, fines, lawsuits, and tougher pollution controls.

Except in this case it’s the EPA itself that is to blame.

Newsbusters notes that the mainstream media is mum – because they are all for big government, and big government never makes mistakes:

Yet here we are four days later, and the story has gotten very little visibility outside of center-right blogs and outlets. That’s largely explained by how the wire services have handled the story. After the jump, readers will see headlines and descriptions of the stories which have appeared thus far at the web site of the New York Times:

No headline acknowledges the EPA’s admitted responsibility for the spill. Only one headline mentions the EPA at all.

[…]Although the first AP report parroted the EPA’s claim that “that there was no threat to drinking water from the spill,”a story at the Denver Post yesterday indicated that “Tests show (Animas River) water (is) acidic as coffee,” and that“EPA officials on Saturday morning also said they are bracing for another surge of acid discharge from mines above Silverton.” In other words, the ordeal is far from being over.

But look on the bright side – at least the EPA is hard at work banning coal production so that we all have to pay more for electricity, including heating and cooling our homes.

If I could close four departments out at the federal level, I would choose the EPA, the Department of Energy, the IRS and the Department of Education. Get rid of failure.