Commentary

William Lane Craig reviews new Dawkins/Krauss movie “The Unbelievers” in The Blaze

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Dr. William Lane Craig
Dr. William Lane Craig

On The Blaze, a major political news site, Dr. William Lane Craig reviews a new atheist movie entitled “The Unbelievers” starring Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins.

Excerpt:

Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss are two of the most important figures in the New Atheist movement. So one would naturally have high expectations that their new documentary, The Unbelievers, would present a vigorous, powerful attack upon the rationality of religious belief, featuring interviews with impressive scientists laying out the case against God.  Instead, the film turns out to be merely a travelogue of Dawkins and Krauss’ “magical mystery tour” of speaking engagements before their enthusiastic fans. Rather than thought provoking, the film is shallow, boring, and narcissistic.

[…]Featuring sound bites from celebrities and film stars in support of their cause fits Dawkins and Krauss’ purpose more than substantive interviews with qualified but largely unknown academics. The film’s purpose is not to present a case but primarily to rally the troops.

But there is a more fundamental reason for the absence of argument against religious belief. Dawkins and Krauss proceed on the unspoken assumption that science and religion are fundamentally mutually exclusive. Therefore, all one needs to do in order to discredit religion is to extol and celebrate the greatness of science. Science and religion are like two ends of a teeter-totter:  if the one end goes up, the other automatically declines. Thus, Krauss asks Dawkins which he would rather do:  explain science or destroy religion?  It is assumed that these are two ways to the same end. Dawkins, of course, chooses to extol science. “I’m in love with science, and I want to tell the world.” His implicit assumption is that one cannot love both God and science.

There is no argument given for the mutual exclusivity of science and religion; rather it is the unquestioned presupposition of the film. This is ironic because one of the repeated emphases of the film is the necessity of critical thinking. No view is off limits to examination; we must insist on permission to question everything. Yet Dawkins and Krauss are strangely oblivious to their own unexamined assumptions. Why think that science, restricted as it is to the exploration of the physical world, is incompatible with the existence of God?  Alas, we are not told.

[…]Indeed, given their ignorance of the literature, one cannot help but wonder if Dawkins and Krauss are not, in fact, incapable of engaging in substantive conversation on these matters. Hence, their open endorsement of ridicule as “a useful tool for illuminating reality.” Dawkins’ philosophical gaucherie is on display when complains that his dialogue with the Archbishop of Canterbury was “ruined” by the chairman (Sir Anthony Kenny, himself an agnostic), who “is a philosopher and so thought it his duty to clarify things,” which led, says Dawkins, to “skewing.”  Similarly, Dawkins breezily dismisses “Why?” questions as “silly.”

So what do we make of Dr. Craig holding Dawkins and Krauss accountable? Well. it’s one thing to treat Peter Millican and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong nicely. But Krauss and Dawkins really need to be spanked for their own good, at this point. What else do you do with ignorant children who run around insulting grown-ups?

What I find ironic is that there are 7 areas of science where theism has gained decisive support in the last 50 years:

  1. The Big Bang cosmology
  2. The cosmic fine-tuning
  3. The origin of life
  4. The origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
  5. Galactic habitability
  6. Stellar habitability
  7. Irreducible complexity

Each of these poses a threat to naturalism, and a few of them are lethal to naturalism on their own. Atheists have been reduced to holding onto speculations to get around them. You know the sort: nothing creating something, unobservable multiverses explain fine-tuning, unseen aliens seeded the Earth with life, undiscovered pre-Cambrian fossil record, and so on. It’s a bad time to be an atheist. Science has refuted atheism over and over again!

William Lane Craig podcasts about “The Unbelievers”

There are 3 of these podcasts so far in the series:

  1. What was the point of the film?
  2. Is science opposed to religion?
  3. Unscientific assertions in the film
News

Human Rights Campaign refuses to reveal name of IRS leaker

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CNS News reports.

Excerpt:

The Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group, will not say who provided it with a confidential list of donors to the National Organization for Marriage, although NOM’s chairman believes someone at the Internal Revenue Service leaked the information. The IRS also is silent on the question.

Providing such donor information is a felony, John C. Eastman, chairman of the board for the National Organization for Marriage, told CNSNews.com. The Justice Department deferred the matter to the Treasury Department, but Eastman said the probe by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration seems to have stalled.

Nevertheless, Eastman told CNSNews.com, “We’re going to keep pressing until we get criminal indictments brought against the people responsible.”

NOM, which advocates traditional marriage, and HRC are on opposite sides in the national political battle over same-sex marriage.

The willful disclosure of donor information carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Human Rights Campaign spokesman Charlie Joughin did not respond to numerous phone and e-mail inquiries from CNSNews.com on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday asking who provided the list that was posted on the HRC website in March 2012. The HRC advocates for same-sex marriage and other homosexual issues.

[…]The willful disclosure of NOM’s confidential tax information would violate 26 U.S.C. Section 6103, which states, “Returns and return information shall be confidential.” It also says: “no officer or employee of the United States,” “no officer or employee of any State, any local law enforcement agency,” “any local child support enforcement agency, or any local agency administering a program,” “no other person (or officer or employee thereof) who has or had access to returns or return information,” “shall disclose any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee or otherwise or under the provisions of this section.”

What a misnamed organization – the “Human Rights” Campaign. They are covering up for a felon because of their hatred and intolerance of those who support natural marriage.

News

Wall Street Journal explains the death panel of Obamacare

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Guess what! Sarah Palin was right, as the Wall Street Journal explains.

Excerpt:

Signs of ObamaCare’s failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law’s most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, sometimes called a “death panel,” threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution’s separation of powers. At a time when many Americans have been unsettled by abuses at the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department, the introduction of a powerful and largely unaccountable board into health care merits special scrutiny.

For a vivid illustration of the extent to which life-and-death medical decisions have already been usurped by government bureaucrats, consider the recent refusal by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to waive the rules barring access by 10-year old Sarah Murnaghan to the adult lung-transplant list. A judge ultimately intervened and Sarah received a lifesaving transplant June 12. But the grip of the bureaucracy will clamp much harder once the Independent Payment Advisory Board gets going in the next two years.

The board, which will control more than a half-trillion dollars of federal spending annually, is directed to “develop detailed and specific proposals related to the Medicare program,” including proposals cutting Medicare spending below a statutorily prescribed level. In addition, the board is encouraged to make rules “related to” Medicare.

The decisions of the IPAB are absolute, and very hard to overturn:

The ObamaCare law also stipulates that there “shall be no administrative or judicial review” of the board’s decisions. Its members will be nearly untouchable, too. They will be presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed, but after that they can only be fired for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Once the board acts, its decisions can be overruled only by Congress, and only through unprecedented and constitutionally dubious legislative procedures—featuring restricted debate, short deadlines for actions by congressional committees and other steps of the process, and supermajoritarian voting requirements. The law allows Congress to kill the otherwise inextirpable board only by a three-fifths supermajority, and only by a vote that takes place in 2017 between Jan. 1 and Aug. 15. If the board fails to implement cuts, all of its powers are to be exercised by HHS Secretary Sebelius or her successor.

The IPAB’s godlike powers are not accidental. Its goal, conspicuously proclaimed by the Obama administration, is to control Medicare spending in ways that are insulated from the political process.

That’s what people were voting for when they voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Conservatives tried to warn them about the death panels in Obamacare, but no one listened. No one listened when we told them abotu the rising health insurance premiums, or the worker hour cuts that would result. Well, guess who was right?