News

Democrats boo as God and Jerusalem are put back in their party platform

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The leftist Washington post explains.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama personally intervened to order Democrats to change language in their party platform to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, campaign officials said Wednesday.

Scrambling to end the furor, Democrats abruptly changed the platform early Wednesday evening to reinstate language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.” Mitt Romney and other Republicans had seized on the omission to criticize the Democrats.

Democrats also restored 2008 language on Jerusalem, declaring the city “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

[…]The platform changes did not sit well with some Democratic delegates gathered in Charlotte, N.C., for the party’s three-day convention. Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The revisions came as Obama struggles to win support from white working-class voters, many of whom have strong religious beliefs, and as Republicans try to woo Jewish voters and contributors away from the Democratic Party. Republicans claimed the platform omissions suggested Obama was weak in his defense of Israel and out of touch with mainstream Americans.

Democrats support abortion and gay marriage. And they haven’t done enough to protect Israel from Iran. But they have to pretend that they are moral people and good allies of Israel in order to get elected, even if their hearts are elsewhere. I understand that.

News

Edmonton man drives in front of a speeding car to protect four children

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Map of Canada with cities
Map of Canada with cities

From Sun News, Canada’s conservative news source.

Excerpt:

Darrell Krushelnicki didn’t think twice when he pulled his Hummer in front of a speeding car in order to prevent four children crossing the street from being mowed down.

The 46-year-old from Taber, AB, was in Edmonton on Friday visiting his parents and had just dropped off his girlfriend at Bonnie Doon Mall. He was stopped at an intersection around 4:30 p.m. when he noticed four kids, ranging in age from three to 16, crossing the street at a marked crosswalk with overhead amber lights.

All the vehicles on the road had stopped, except for a car whizzing up in the far lane. Krushelnicki noticed the car travelling at high speed so he crept into the intersection with his 2006 Hummer.

“I could just tell it was a bad scenario that was going to take place,” said Krushelnicki, who works in the oilpatch in northern BC “The driver did not see the crosswalk, the amber light flashing, nor the posted speed limit and he appeared to be on a hand-held device of some sort
talking.”

In order to prevent a disaster, Krushelnicki drove his vehicle in front of the speeding car, which hit the front end of his passenger side, pushing in the bumper and grill.

Aside from a loose tooth, Krushelnicki wasn’t injured in the collision. He immediately jumped out of his vehicle to make sure the shaken kids — who watched the crash occur within about 15 or 20 feet of them — were okay.

“They were all shaken up. I couldn’t see any visual injuries. I asked them to go sit on the lawn of the church on the corner,” said Krushelnicki, noting some of the kids were crying.

The driver of the speeding car has been charged with dangerous driving.

Podcasts

Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism

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Here’s the link at First Things. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Although Darwin admits he wasn’t much of an abstract thinker, he could not shake the “inward conviction” that “the Universe is not the result of chance.” Unlike many who followed after him, he appears to have intuitively understood the paradox of combining naturalism with evolutionary theory: If evolution is a non-teleological process, it undercuts our ability to trust that we can form true beliefs and convictions.

To have trustworthy convictions, we have to have properly functioning noetic equipment (i.e., a brain, spinal cord, sensory apparatus, etc., that recognize reality). But can a strictly materialistic, non-teleological, evolutionary process produce such reliable equipment? The philosopher Alvin Plantinga, one of the greatest thinkers of our era, thinks the answer is “no.” Although his argument is too complex and tightly argued to be adequately summarized, the basic outline of his case shows his point to be all but incontrovertible.

Plantinga claims, not that evolution is untrue, but that the truth of evolution is incompatible with the truth of naturalism. “As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go,” he argues. “Hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life.”

What does imply that life is not directed, he adds, is not evolutionary theory itself, but the theory of unguided evolution: the idea that “neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing, or orchestrating the course of evolution.” For our purposes, we’ll call this view “evolutionary naturalism.”

Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage.

If you want to hear Plantinga giving a lecture on this same argument live on a university campus, click here.

Summary:

In a talk given at The Veritas Forum at Oregon State University in January 1996, Professor Alvin Plantinga presents an evolutionary argument against naturalism. In a complex, but important philosophical argument, he argues that it is not rational to accept belief in naturalism and evolution, because such beliefs provide no rational basis for trusting our cognitive faculties.

Or you can watch the videos that I posted a while back.

The argument first appeared in his book “Warrant and Proper Function“, published by Oxford University Press in 1993. It should be noted that Plantinga is a Calvinist, a supporter of middle knowledge, and has lent some support to intelligent design. In his latter years, he has turned feisty, and writes snarky things to confound atheists.