This is the video from his appearance at Saddleback Church (Rick Warren) that got such a big response. Saddleback is a pretty ordinary church, which lots of people with different levels of knowledge. How did Bill explain the Kalam argument to so many different ordinary people?
Watch and see!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
You can also find a more technical version of the lecture here. This version is based on a research paper published in an astrophysics journal, and was delivered to an audience of students and faculty, including atheist physicist Victor Stenger and prominent atheist philosopher Michael Tooley, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Craig has previously debated Stenger and Tooley. And they both asked him questions in the Q&A of this lecture.
The latest idea for reining in the federal government’s runaway spending is to “freeze” nondefense discretionary outlays for three years. That may sound good, but it’s just another gimmick.
We try not to be too cynical about politics, but the White House’s proposed freeze will do nothing to address America’s budget problems.
Last year alone, the U.S. deficit hit $1.4 trillion on record spending of $3.7 trillion. The freeze will apply only to $447 billion in spending — just 12% of the total. Next year, if the freeze goes into effect, it will save just $15 billion — and $250 billion over 10 years.
Compared with the $9 trillion in new debt and $43 trillion in spending expected over the next decade, it’s a pittance — not even a down payment on our gaping shortfalls.
[…]According to the CBO, the $250 billion in savings amounts to a negligible 0.5% of the $43 trillion in spending over the next decade. But it will no doubt be put to good political use, as congressional Democrats suddenly style themselves as fiscal conservatives during the 2010 campaign for passing a meaningless freeze.
Let me be clear. Obama never has been a fiscal conservative, and he isn’t going to start to be one now. It’s just words on a teleprompter that he reads so that you stop calling your representatives.
First, take a look at this video of Michele Bachmann discussing her little debate with Democrat Arlen Specter, and keep a count of the things that she does that strike you as admirable.
What do we learn from this video?
My biggest problem in trying to get along with SOME women is the fact that I feel enormous pressure to only say things that women agree with. They only want to hear compliments, never criticisms. But I don’t like that – I want the freedom to be myself and to say whatever I want.
In a recent post that I was talking about William Lane Craig’s advice on how to have a happy marriage. He recommended that couples learn how to argue properly. And I think in that video we learn several tips on how to argue properly.
Here are some questions to ask about this video:
Does Michele feel offended or victimized during the debate?
Does Michele lose her temper during the debate?
Does Michele make gender an issue during the debate?
Does Michele focus more on arguments/evidence or feelings/motives?
Does Michele accept apologies and try to move on?
For me, a fun thing to do with a woman is to get into a good argument without having to censor myself. This happened to me recently where I was getting into some very long debates with a woman I really liked and the more I was able to be myself and have her not censor me, the more I just wanted to grab her and hug her. It became a really powerful feeling that I had a LOT of trouble resisting.
I distinctly remember at one point we were having a real scrap and I was pleading with her every hour to see whether she was feeling OK with the degree of sustained disagreement that we were engaging in, and I’ll never ever forget what she said. She said that she was fine, but that she was willing to stop if I needed a break. We had been debating a bunch of things for about three hours. (a typical date)
The experience of being myself and being accepted is so different than what I hear other men saying about women that it really makes me sad. It turns out that men lie a lot to women in relationships – telling them what they want to hear and hiding their real views in order to get sex. I just think this is demeaning to women and men. A much better idea is to argue it out with her and treat her as an equal.
And that doesn’t mean that there is no place for feelings. I remember one day this woman tried to clobber me on some obscure point of theology and she took a very adversarial tack. And I was surprised that I just felt wounded and attacked, so I asked her to adjust her approach, and she did. So I do think that there is a time for talking about feelings, but not to use them as an argument.
I think that when a person is hurt (male or female), the thing to do is to get the other person a gift, and have them sit down with the gift and then you explain to them that you love them and that something they said or did hurt you and explain how it made you feel. But I don’t think that hurt feelings should be used as a substitute for an argument in a debate. Debates should be about truth, not who “wins”.
So the main point I am trying to make is that the way that a woman approaches debates can actually be a powerful way of getting a man to really like her. The experience of being able to be yourself with a woman and to express your views in a heated discussion without getting attacked or censored by her is exciting and addictive. It makes a man like a woman because he feels that she understands him.
