News

Video of Republican debate at the South Carolina Palmetto Freedom Forum

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Michele Bachmann: On the Issues
Michele Bachmann: On the Issues

Here’s the video of Republican debate at the South Carolina Palmetto Freedom Forum! In eight parts. Famous Princeton philosopher Robert George is the moderator.

All 8 parts:

Below is some news coverage for those who don’t have broadband.

Here’s a story from ABC News.

Excerpt:

On a day usually marked by end-of-summer barbecues, five presidential candidates came here on Labor Day for a grilling of a different kind.

Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain spent the afternoon in front of a panel of three conservative inquisitors, including Tea Party icon, Sen. Jim DeMint. They peppered each candidate with a detailed series of questions on everything from gay marriage to their view of the 14 Amendment to whether the United States was still the “shining city on a hill” that Ronald Reagan famously envisioned.

And when they weren’t explaining the depth of their commitment to conservative principles, each used Monday’s Palmetto Freedom Forum to take a few swipes at President Obama.

When asked what he would do differently in the area of foreign policy, Romney replied, “A lot. First, I’d have one.”

Gingrich dismissed the jobs speech President Obama plans to deliver this week, predicting that it would be a “collection of minor ideas surrounded by big rhetoric.”

Michele Bachmann said that Obama has failed in his responsibility “to act under the Constitution and not place oneself over the Constitution.”

The candidates did not engage with each other face-to-face as they will two days from now at a debate in California and notably, the current Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was a no-show at the forum.  Though Perry took part in another campaign event across the state Monday morning he cancelled on event organizers at the last-minute in order to return to Texas to deal with the wildfires there.

Bloomberg reports on Bachmann’s performance.

Excerpt:

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said President Barack Obama has skirted the U.S. Constitution on several fronts, as she and rivals in the race to challenge him next year courted support from Tea Party activists at a forum yesterday in South Carolina.

Bachmann criticized Obama for the health-care overhaul he helped shepherd into law last year, saying it paves the way for “socialized medicine.” She also attacked his hiring of high- level advisers — sometimes called “czars” — who aren’t vetted by Congress, and his refusal to defend federal marriage and immigration laws, as she billed herself the “constitutional conservative” in the Republican race.

“The current United States government and its framework is acting outside of the bounds of the Constitution,” Bachmann, 55, a Minnesota congresswoman, said at the gathering in the state that holds one of the nomination contest’s earliest primaries.

[…]Bachmann, who helped start a charter school in Minnesota before winning her House seat in 2006, pinpointed education as an area where the federal government has overreached. “The Constitution does not specifically enumerate, nor does it give to the federal government, the role and duty to superintend over education,” she said. “That historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state government.”

And from USA Today.

Excerpt:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann threw a jab at former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, saying state laws that require residents to obtain health care coverage are unconstitutional — such as the one Romney signed as governor of Massachusetts.Romney tried to turn political lemon into lemonade, saying the state health care plan differed in fundamental ways from the federal health care law that followed. The contrast would make the issue “one of my best assets if I’m able to debate President Obama,” Romney said, saying the Bay State version didn’t raise taxes or cut Medicare.

“It’s simply unconstitutional; it’s bad law; it’s bad medicine,” Romney said of the federal version. “It has got to be stopped, and I know it better than most.”

[…]In a speech Tuesday, Romney plans to unveil a 59-point plan, including 10 “concrete actions” he said he would take on his first day in the Oval Office. He endorses several conservative prescriptions: curbing taxes; requiring agencies to cut old regulations to “offset” any new ones; creating “Reagan Economic Zones” with foreign partners to encourage free trade; taking a tougher line against China; cutting spending and passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution; encouraging more oil and gas drilling and nuclear power.

Here’s an article about Mitt Romney’s 10-point plan.

You might remember that I had recommended to Michele Bachmann that she adopt the Canadian prime minister’s strategy of creating 5-point plans and 6-point plans clearly listing her priorities in order to avoid being accused of having a hidden agenda. So far, she hasn’t taken my advice, and her campaign appears to be suffering some difficulties. But Romney seems to have adopted it. I think Mitt Romney is actually a Democrat in Republican clothing, but you have to admire his 10-point plan. I looked it over briefly and it is exactly what I wanted Michele Bachmann to do. Still backing Bachmann, because I don’t trust Romney at all.

UPI has more on Romney’s liberalism.

UPDATE: This Human Events article has more detail on what Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney said.

Commentary

Rejecting Christian theism because it’s just too much work

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Jim Wallace was discussing the possibility of eternal life with an atheist, and I thought some of her response were very helpful to understand why some people are atheists.

Jim asks whether it is worth her time to investigate the God question.

She replies:

“No, I don’t think it’s worth my investigation. I also don’t think I should spend my time investigating UFO’s, zombies, or Big Foot. I hate things that require lots of time and thought where you are virtually guaranteed not to accomplish anything or get a definitive answer.“

Jim asks her why she is coming to conclusions before examining the evidence.

She replies:

“Well,” she said, “you are assuming people meet god; that’s a pretty big leap too. Who do you know who has met him? And I think most believers do so blindly; I don’t believe most of those people do any scholarly inquiry and draw conclusions based on evidence. They believe what they raised on, like me, or what they want to believe.“

That’s the genetic fallacy, discredit a belief because of the origin of that belief, instead of whether the belief is true or false.

Jim then writes this:

“The fact that people believe what they were raised to believe,” I countered, “does not amount to a real argument. It’s a variant of the genetic fallacy. You’re trying to prove why believers might be wrong – they just were raised that way – without first proving that they are wrong. So, if I told you that I believed the earth was flat, and I was raised that way, you wouldn’t just shrug your shoulders and say I’m entitled to that belief. You would show me evidence that the earth is round and expect me to use reason to conform my view to the evidence. If I told you that you were entitled to that belief but you just believed it because you were raised by some round earthers and you never saw the whole earth so you couldn’t really know, then… you’d start to see how I feel.”

“One last analogy. Let’s say this was 50 years ago, and when I saw you, you were chain smoking cigarettes with your kids always nearby. I know where medical science is headed, so I tell you that you are hurting yourself, and your kids. You respond that no one can really know those things; after all, you can point to doctors who advertise cigarettes and smoke them themselves, and you feel fine when you smoke. I point to other doctors who think that its really bad for you. You respond, ‘see, it’s a tie, so stop bothering me. Each believes what they were raised to believe. Plus, other things can kill me too, so why should I worry about cigarettes? Or, maybe you say that even if I am right, you’ll be one of the lucky ones who won’t be hurt by it.

Do you see that the conflict between the doctors should not lead you to conclude that neither is right, or that the answer is not knowable? As a friend, should I keep trying to bring you back to the truth about cigarettes, or should I let you persist in believing something that is, in the end, hurting you and your loved ones?”

And here is her response:

“Have you ever noticed how so many things are bad/wrong only at certain points in a cycle? Eat eggs, don’t eat eggs; give your kids soy, soy is bad; babies should sleep on their backs, no their stomachs, no their sides, no their backs etc., etc. When my daughter was born I would put her on her back to sleep and when I left the room my mother would put her on her side and when my mother left the room my grandmother would put her on her stomach. Over time the answer comes full circle. Why go around and around with it? What I am saying is not just throw up your hands and quit; what I am saying is that I do what feels right to me and that is the best I can do. Sometimes I listen to friends (and doctors) and sometimes I don’t. I think the ‘answer’ to many of these things is unknowable. At one time it would have been totally unacceptable to all of society for a mother to work and put a child in daycare 10 hours a day. Now, 10 hours of daycare is the norm. I get that most people think that daycare schedule is fine, but I don’t. I make up my own mind by doing what feels right. Have you ever considered that the answer doesn’t matter? Maybe the search is the whole point and maybe I am done already and you’re just slow.

I don’t think you can prove God like you can prove that the world is round. To prove the world was really round and have everyone believe, we needed real-time pictures from space. Bring me a picture of god and we’ll talk.”

Jim then replies to her.

So what do we get from this? Well, here are the five reasons she gave. 1) she knows in advance, before investigating, that there is no definitive answer to the question of whether God exists, 2) people believe what they are raised to believe and want to believe, including her, so your beliefs aren’t under the control of evidence anyway, 3) facts change all the time so it’s pointless to try reasoning about what is true on the basis of what the facts are today – so I don’t really care what anyone in authority says since they all change their minds the next day anyway, 4) I don’t think anyone can construct an argument for God’s existence based on evidence, 5) the burden of proof is on others to show me the evidence for God, I don’t have to look into myself, my job is to do what feels right to me, and I don’t conduct any inquiries into the evidence that might override what feels right to me.

How can you know in advance of inquiry that there is no definitive answer? You can only assume that there is no definitive answer, since you admit that you haven’t looked into it yourself. And this person seems to have made the decision without evidence that there is no definite answer, and that looking into it is not worth her time and effort. What I am trying to emphasize is that those are decisions. And you can be held responsible for making decisions. Notice how she is able to get around the authority of someone who talks about the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, just by saying that expert opinions change all the time, so no expert has to be listened to, (unless it feels right to her). In fact, she is not even aware of these arguments, but she has already pre-judged them as less authoritative than her feelings.

So often, we Christians get caught in the trap of judging atheists based on whether they do good deeds, by which we mean, they make other people feel good – they are nice. We neglect to ask whether they are being good to God – by puzzling about his existence and character, and by regularly dialoging with believers to see if they might not be mistaken. Heaven is for people who desire God, and who spend time studying the evidence so that they can make an informed decision about his existence and character. Heaven is not for people who are content doing what feels right to them without any desire to know what God thinks about it, because they just don’t think his existence and character is important at all. To me this is just another way of saying, I want to do what feels good and learning that there is another person there might override my right to do what feels good, so I don’t want to know whether there is another person there.

When you see atheists like Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens get that deer in the headlights look the first time they hear William Lane Craig’s arguments in a debate, and his citing of peer-reviewed scientific evidence to support his premises, it becomes immediately clear that these people are not atheists because they know God doesn’t exist, but because they don’t want God to exist. And avoiding the arguments for Christian theism is an important part of keeping God, and his moral demands on us, at a safe distance.

What does the Bible say? Look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:36-40:

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

38 This is the first and greatest commandment.

39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I think that the first part of loving God if you are not sure he is there is to have an open mind about his existence and character, and a willingness to re-prioritize your life in case he is there and has a personality different from yours. People have a rational obligation to conduct an inquiry without pre-judging what the outcome will be. If God exists and Jesus rose from the dead, then people ought to care what Jesus thought about things.

I think that non-Christians understand what Christianity would require of them if it were true – radical abandonment to God’s calling on their lives. And they turn away from investigating the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus precisely in order to keep their freedom to do what they feel is right, without having to care about conforming their will to an objective state of affairs where there is another person there that they have to care about. Whatever guilty feelings they have for doing this can be dealt with by adopting a new moral standard, maybe involving recycling, vegetarianism, animal rights activism and yoga. Whatever it takes to make the people around them call them “good”, so that they feel good. Do what feels right, don’t worry about what is true – that’s too much work and we don’t want to find out anything that’s going to take away our ability to do what feels right – to us.

News

New study: marriage and church attendance help kids finish high school

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From the Marriage & Religion Research Institute. (I grabbed the PDF in case it disappears)

Excerpt:

The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that students who now worship weekly and who grew up with two married parents are most likely to have received a high school degree.

Examining current religious attendance and structure of family of origin, 93 percent of students who grew up in intact married families and who attend weekly religious services have received a high school degree. Only 68 percent of students from all other family structures who never attend religious services received a high school degree. Eighty-nine percent of those who never worship but grew up in intact families and 81 percent of those who attend religious services weekly but come from other family structures received high school degrees.

Examining current religious attendance only, 87 percent of students who attend weekly religious services received a high school degree. In contrast, only 70 percent of those who never worship received a high school degree. Between these two extremes are those who attend at least monthly (81 percent) and those who attend less than monthly (76 percent).

Examining structure of family of origin, 91 percent of individuals who grew up with married biological parents received a high school degree. They are followed by those who grew up in a married stepfamily (80 percent), those who grew up with a single, divorced parent (76 percent), those who grew up in a cohabiting stepfamily (68 percent), those who grew up with an always-single parent (63 percent), and those who grew up in an intact cohabiting family (60 percent).

See the original article for footnotes, including links to other studies that confirm this finding.

The reason why this matters is because finishing high school is very important in order for people to avoid being poor.

Black economist Walter Williams explains.

Excerpt:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.

Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.

Finishing high school is a major factor to prevent poverty, but research shows that the greatest preventer of child poverty (and child abuse) is marriage. Marriage stability also increases with regular church attendance. So, church attendance promotes both the completion of high school as well as the stability of marriage. Therefore, regular church attendance prevents poverty by helping two of the causes of poverty-avoidance.

Now… should we expect the secular left to promote church attendance based on this evidence? I think not.

One other point. The more marriage declines, the more children are raised without fathers, which makes it much less likely that children will accept the faith of their parents, leading to lower church attendance for the children of these fatherless homes. It’s a vicious cycle. The policies of the left that undermine marriage stability, like sex education, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce and single motherhood welfare, actually cause the decline in church attendance that drives marriage rates and high school graduation rates down.