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Video of the Stanford debate between Jay Richards and Christopher Hitchens

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Remember this debate?

Atheism vs. Theism and The Scientific Evidence of Intelligent Design
Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 4pm PST, Stanford University

Christopher Hitchens — Contributing editor to Vanity Fair; visiting professor, New School in New York; author of God is Not Great.
VS.
Jay W. Richards — Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute; co-author, with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery.

I just found the 10 videos in a youtube playlist. Each video is about 10 minutes.

Part 1 is just introductory, so I skipped it.

Here’s part 2, which is the start Hitchens’ opening speech:

Part 3 is the rest of Hitchens and the start of Richards’ opening speech:

And part 4, which is the rest of Richards’ opening speech:

You can click through to the playlist for the rest. Or you can listen to the full MP3 audio provided by Brian Auten of Apologetics 315.

This is the one where Richards gives his famous line “A sneer is not an argument and insults do not constitute evidence”. Richards has his Ph.D in philosophy from Princeton University, and he is extremely careful with logic and arguments.

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New study finds focus on abstinence in sex-ed classes can delay sexual activity

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Story from the Heritage Foundation. (H/T The Washington Post via Neil Simpson)

Excerpt:

A new study concludes that abstinence-only education had a significant and long-term effect in reducing teen sexual activity.  “The abstinence-only intervention reduced sexual initiation,” reports the study, which is featured in the most recent issue of the medical journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, published by the American Medical Association.

The study found that a short eight-hour abstinence program reduced sexual activity among youth by a third.  Despite the brevity of the abstinence training the effects lasted a full two years after students left the classroom.  Moreover, if students who took the abstinence course did become sexually active they were not less likely to use contraception.

In contrast, study found that alternative types of sex ed failed.  “Safe sex” programs (which promote contraception only) and “comprehensive sex ed” programs (which teach both abstinence and contraceptive use), had no effect on teen sexual behavior.  These programs neither reduced teen sex nor did they increase contraceptive use among teens, which is their major emphasis.

These findings are based on a randomized controlled experiment, the gold standard in program evaluation and designed to produce unbiased results.  The study analyzed 662 African-American 6th and 7th grade students in four public middle schools serving low-income communities in a northeastern U.S. city.  They were randomly assigned to participate in an eight-hour abstinence-only program, an eight-hour “safe sex” program, an eight- or twelve-hour comprehensive sex education program, or a general health-only, non-sex ed program, which represented the control group in the experiment.

Bolstered by its rigorous randomized controlled design, this study provides important new findings.  It strengthens the existing body of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of abstinence education.  A 2008 Heritage study, for example, reviewed 15 studies of authentic abstinence programs and found that 11 of the 15 studies reported positive behavioral changes among teens.

But all was not well:

Sadly, despite the social science evidence, the Obama administration and Congress have eliminated all federal spending on abstinence education and, instead, have created additional funding for comprehensive sex education.

Why do the secular-left Democrats like Obama oppose abstinence and chastity? Planned Parenthood is paid for each abortion. They also get subsidies from taxpayer money collected by the federal government. And from their profits, they make political contributions to Democrats. Just like global warming, it’s all about the money.

One last thing. I’m nearing my mid-thirties, and I am very happily chaste. So it’s not true that “everyone is doing it”.

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Paul Ryan declares war on Obama’s record 1.56 trillion dollar budget deficit

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Rep. Paul Ryan

Conservative Republican Paul Ryan’s response to Obama’s new 2010 budget.

Excerpt:

“For the duration of the Administration’s 10-year budget, the deficit never falls below $700 billion, and never falls below 3.6 percent of GDP – a level the Administration’s own budget director has called ‘unsustainable.’ Debt held by the public doubles over 5 years, triples over 10,   and exceeds 60 percent of GDP as a share of the economy this year – surpassing last year’s 50-year high. Debt continues to rise to consume 77.2 percent of our economy by the end of the budget window. Even the countries of the European Union, hardly exemplars of fiscal rectitude, are required to keep their debt levels below 60 percent of GDP.

“The Administration will attempt to focus attention on a handful of proposals supposedly aimed at tempering the Federal Government’s explosive growth. But these have far more to do with calming Americans’ concerns than with doing anything to address them. His pay-as-you-go proposal has been waived or circumvented and only locks in deficits at their current high levels. His non-binding commission simply punts on the critical budget decisions that Members of Congress got elected to make. Finally, his so-called ‘freeze’ on some discretionary spending follows an 84-percent increase – and has no clear means of enforcement.

These charts accompany Paul Ryan’s statement. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

First, government spending:

Second, debt held by public as % of GDP:

The problems started when the Democrats got control of Congress in late 2006. (The House controls spending) Talking about “spending freezes” on tiny amounts of the budget now has no effect because we are losing a trillion dollars-and-a-half dollars a year now. It’s just politics meant to deceive the people who still believe Obama’s honeyed words.

More details about Obama’s budget are here on the Republican House Budget Committee web site.

What is Paul Ryan’s alternative?

Neil Simpson posted a link to an overview of Paul Ryan’s plan.

Excerpt:

Health Care
•    Provides a refundable tax credit — $2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families — to purchase coverage in any state, and keep it with them if they move or change jobs.
•    Allows Medicaid recipients to take part in the same variety of options by using the tax credit to purchase high-quality care.

Medicare
•    Establishes and fully funds Medical Savings Accounts for low-income beneficiaries to cover out-of-pocket costs, while continuing to allow all beneficiaries, regardless of income, to set up tax-free MSAs.

Social Security
•    Offers workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal employees.

Tax Reform
•    Provides taxpayers a choice of how to pay their income taxes – through existing law, or through a highly simplified income tax system that fits on a postcard with just two rates and virtually no special tax deductions, credits or exclusions (except the health care tax credit).
•    Promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends and eliminates the death tax.

Read the rest, and see if these ideas that promote saving and investing, instead of borrowing and spending, make more sense to you than Obama’s spending millions of taxpayer dollars on turtle tunnels.