In Washington, a presidential Administration releases news it doesn’t like at 5 p.m. on Fridays. So it pays to pay attention when everyone is leaving work for the weekend.
Late last Friday, the State Department released a positive environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama has been delaying this pipeline—which would carry oil from Canada to refineries in Texas—for more than three years.
The delay has meant that America is still waiting on an additional 700,000 to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from a close ally, not to mention 179,000 American jobs.
Why has this taken so long, when all environmental reports thus far have been positive? Heritage’s Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow, explains:
Given the need for jobs and more oil on the global market to offset high prices, the permit application had been moving along positively with bipartisan support without much attention until environmental activists made blocking the Keystone XL pipeline their issue to rally around for 2011. Although President Obama and the Department of State (DOS) said they’d make a decision at the end of 2011, they ultimately catered to a narrow set of special interests, punting the decision until after the 2012 elections.
The State Department, which is overseeing the pipeline because it crosses a U.S. border, has “already conducted a thorough, three-year environmental review with multiple comment periods,” Loris reported last year.
The review has been comprehensive:
DOS studied and addressed risk to soil, wetlands, water resources, vegetation, fish, wildlife, and endangered species. They concluded that the construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk. Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by DOS and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
This confirms the previous assessment done by the Nebraska government, which concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline was safe for Nebraska’s environment as well.
And now for one of my snarkiest summaries, which is fitting because Krauss is one of the worst debaters ever.
William Lane Craig’s case
William Lane Craig made 5 arguments for the existence of God:
the contingency argument
theargument from the origin of the universe (kalam)
the argument from cosmic fine-tuning
the moral argument
the argument from the miracle of the resurrection
These arguments went unrefuted during the debate.
Lawrence Krauss’s case
Lawrence Krauss made the following arguments in his first speech:
Dr. Craig is a professional debater
Dr. Craig is not a scientist
Dr. Craig is a philosopher
Disproving God’s is a waste of my valuable time
Dr. Craig has the burden of proof to show evidence
My job is not to present any evidence
I think that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is a nice slogan, but I have no evidence for it
I don’t like that God doesn’t appear on Youtube, therefore he doesn’t exist
I don’t like that God didn’t appear to humans until recently, therefore he doesn’t exist
I don’t like that the stars didn’t come together to spell “I am here”, therefore God doesn’t exist
Dr. Craig has to supply extraordinary evidence, because my favorite slogan says he has to
Dr. Craig talks about logic, but the universe is not logical
Dr. Craig doesn’t have any arguments, just things he doesn’t like
Dr. Craig doesn’t like infinity, and that’s why he believes in the Big Bang cosmology
Dr. Craig doesn’t like chance, and that’s why he believes in cosmic fine-tuning
Dr. Craig doesn’t like rape, and that’s why he believes in the ontological foundations of morality
If people believe in logic, then they can’t do science
The things that science discovers contradict the laws of logic
For example, Dr. Craig doesn’t like infinity, so he believes in the experimental measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation
For example, Dr. Craig doesn’t like chance, so he believes in the fine-tuning of the gravitational constant for the formation of stable stars
Quantum mechanics shows that the universe is stranger than you think, therefore all of Craig’s arguments are false
My t-shirt says 2 + 2 = 5, therefore all of Craig’s arguments are false
Atheism may look ridiculous, but it’s true, and if you don’t like it, too bad – because the universe is very strange
Accidents happen all the time, so that explains the cosmic fine-tuning
We all have to convince ourselves of 10 impossible things before breakfast, and atheism is impossible, so you need to convince yourself of it
I don’t know about the Big Bang, so Dr. Craig cannot use the Big Bang to to prove the universe began to exist
I don’t know about the cosmic fine-tuning, so Dr. Craig cannot use the fine-tuning of cosmological constants to prove the fine-tuning
I don’t know anything about science, so Dr. Craig cannot use science in his arguments
Dr. Craig says that the universe is contingent because it began to exist 13.7 billion years ago based on the state-of-the-art scientific evidence for the Big Bang creation out of nothing from 1) red-shift of light from distant galaxies, 2) cosmic microwave background radiation, 3) helium-hydrogen abundances, 4) experimental confirmation of general relativity, 5) the second law of thermodynamics, 6) radioactive element abundances, etc., but how does he know that? I don’t know that
It’s fine not to know the answer to scientific questions like whether the universe began to exist, it’s more exciting
Thinking that the universe began to exist based on 6 pieces of scientific evidence is the “God-of-the-Gaps” fallacy, it’s intellectual laziness
But all kidding aside, the universe actually did begin to exist 13.72 billion years ago, exactly like Craig says in his argument
I could argue that God created the universe 4.5 seconds ago with all of us sitting believing that we heard Dr. Craig, and how could you prove me wrong? It’s not falsifiable
Universes can spontaneously appear out of nothing, and in fact they have to appear out of nothing
Nothing is unstable, and space and time can come into existence out of nothing, so that’s not a problem
Our universe could have appeared out of a multiverse, an unobservable, untestable multiverse that I have no way of observing or testing
The universe is not fine-tuned for life, and no scientist says so, especially not Martin Rees, the atheist Astronomer Royal, and every other scientist
What if God decided that rape was OK, would it be OK? God can change his moral nature arbitrarily, can’t he?
Here are the arguments in Krauss’ second speech:
We don’t understand the beginning of the universe
We don’t understand whether the universe had a cause
Steven Weinberg says that science makes it possible to be an atheist, so therefore the universe didn’t begin and didn’t have a cause
It’s just intellectual laziness to say that the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago, and that things that come into being of nothing have a cause
Dr. Craig is an expert on nothing, ha ha ha!
There are multiple versions of nothing, there’s nothing, and then there is something, which is also nothing if I want it to be
There was no space, there was no time, and then the space create the empty space
I’m going to give Dr. Craig a break
At least in the nothing there were laws like F=ma, and those laws created the empty space, because descriptions of matter that does not even exist yet can create space out of nothing
Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin are good friends of mine and I talk to them all the time, unlike Dr. Craig
Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin don’t mention God in their scientific papers, therefore the universe didn’t begin and didn’t have a cause
Maybe there is a multiverse that cannot be observed or tested? And my unscientific speculations are a refutation of Craig’s scientific evidence for the fine-tuning
Dr. Craig just doesn’t like my speculations about the unobservable, untestable multiverse, and that’s why he believes in the Big Bang cosmology
And if you let me speculate about an unobservable, untestable multiverse, then maybe the inanimate invisible universes reproduce and compete for food and mutate like animals and then there is natural selection so that the finely-tuned universes survive and now we’re in one!
My cool animation of blue goo mutating proves that the multiverse is real! Empty space is not empty!
Darwinism, which is a theory about the origin of species, explains the cosmic fine-tuning that occurred at the moment of creation
The unobservable, untestable multiverse universes all have different laws, I believe
We don’t know what the right answer is, but we are willing to look at any possibility, as long as the possibilities we look at are not supernatural possibilities
The discovery of the origin of the universe could be an accident, I don’t know if the universe began to exist or not, maybe all the six scientific evidences are wrong because if I don’t like the evidence we have, so I’ll just wait for new evidence to overturn the evidence we have which I don’t like
Maybe there are other forms of life that are unobservable and untestable that are compatible with a universe that has no stable stars, no planets, no elements heavier than hydrogen, no hydrogen, no carbon, etc.
Here are the arguments in Krauss’ third speech:
Dr. Craig is stupid
Why should we even care about Dr. Craig’s arguments and evidence, we can just count the number of scientists who are atheists and decide whether God exists that way – I decided everything based on what my teachers told me to believe
What quantum mechanics shows is that virtual particles come into being in a quantum vacuum, and then go out of existence almost immediately – and that is exactly like how a 13.7 billion year old universe came into being in a quantum vacuum, and we’re going to disappear very soon
Space and the laws of physics can be created, possibly, if you accept my speculations about an unobservable, untestable multiverse
I don’t like the God of the Old Testament, therefore he doesn’t exist
Groups of people can decide what they think is good and evil, like the Nazis and slave-owners did, and then that becomes good for them in that time and place, and that’s what I mean by morality
Not knowing things is really exciting! Dr. Craig is not really exciting because he knows things – phooey!
Here are the arguments in Krauss’ fourth speech:
If you will just grant me an observable, untestable multiverse, then there must be some universe where intelligent life exists
Infinite numbers of things exist everywhere in nature, you can see lots of infinite collections of things, like jelly beans and bumblebees and invisible pink unicorns
I don’t like the fine-tuning, but if my speculations about the multiverse are proven true, then I won’t have to learn to live with the fine-tuning
Inflation, the rapid expansion of the universe which occurs at some time after the the origin of the universe (t = 0), explains the absolute origin of time, space, matter and energy out of nothing that occurred at t = 0
Physical processes that develop subsequent to the creation of the universe at t > 0 can explain the fine-tuning of quantities that are set at t = 0
Morality is just a bunch of arbitrary conventions decided by groups of people in different times and places by an accidental process of biological and social evolution, but that practice over there by those people is objectively wrong!
1 Cor 15:3-7, which most scholars, even atheists like James Crossley, admit is dated to within 3 years of the death of Jesus, is actually dated to 50 years after the death of Jesus
The historical case for the resurrection made by people like N.T. Wright in their multi-volume academic works is on par with the story of Mohammed ascending to Heaven on a horse
Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced a bill to levy a carbon tax. But, back on Nov. 15 of last year, Pres. Obama’s press secretary promised the administration would “never” do so.
According to Reuters, the new tax law “would set a $20 tax for each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent a polluter would emit beyond a set limit, which would rise 5.6 percent annually over a 10-year period.”
Last November, however, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that would never happen:
“We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one. The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation. And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.”
“A carbon tax will skyrocket [the] price of everything,” a statement from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, warned today:
“It’s not just energy prices that would skyrocket from a carbon tax, the cost of nearly everything built in America would go up.”
The cost of everything is already going up because of inflation. This carbon tax is just going to make it worse, especially for the poor.
WINTERY KNIGHT 