Tag Archives: Exchange

News

If insurance companies complain about Obamacare, they get sanctioned

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Want to know how the Obammunists are responding to businesses who complain about having to raise helath care premiums on their employees (or drop coverage completely)?

From Yahoo News. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama’s top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won’t tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.

“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

“Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They’d lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

This sort of shows the level of economic ignorance present in the current White House. They require more things to be covered, like pre-existing conditions and covering children until they are 26, and then they expect that there will be no “unjustified rate increases” in the cost of health care plans. Huh? You might as well put a bunch of zombies in charge of the country. Who doesn’t understand that if insurance companies have to cover more claims, then the cost of premiums will increase? It makes no sense that premiums would stay the same – the money has to come from somewhere!

Ed Morrisey writes:

Rarely have we heard a Cabinet official tell Americans to stay out of political debates at the risk of losing their businesses.  It points out the danger in having government run industries and holding a position where politicians can actually destroy a business out of spite.  It also demonstrates the thin skin of our current administration, where Hope and Change means keeping your mouth shut and pretending that everyone is happy while businesses slowly circle the drain.

This administration is the most anti-business administration in history. We’re losing jobs and wealth at a precipitous rate. They don’t know what they are doing, and their threats only scare businesses even more. It’s government by ignorant bullies.

Mentoring

How to engage pro-abortion commenters and win

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Neil from 4Simpsons posted a MUST-READ exchange with a pro-abortion commenter here. It’s entertaining and informative. I’ll just paste in a few excerpts below, so you can get the flavor of the exchange.

Here’s an effective exchange: (the challenger is in italics)

Then I suppose you’re equating an aborted fetus with a conscious, adult human? Something doesn’t seem quite right there; unless, you are actually thinking of the adult human beings the unborn will grow into when you say abortion kills the same kind of human beings genocide and the other transgressions do.

What kind of fetus are you speaking of? If it is a human fetus then she is a human being at a particular stage of development deserving of having her life protected. She isn’t an adult, but neither are toddlers. Your rationale could plug in human toddler instead of human fetus and claim that the “toddler will grow into” being an adult, but it would still involve killing an innocent human being.

This is kind of what I was getting at earlier when I mentioned something about equating an unborn human being with one outside the womb. If you’re saying the fertilized egg is a human being are you saying there’s no difference between us and that egg?

Of course there are differences: Size, level of development, environment and dependency. My claim is that none of those differences gives rise to the right to destroy those human beings.

And here are couple more funny parts:

I suppose it depends on how you define “me,” or “I,” or “you.” I’m pretty sure when we say those things, we are talking about the present us. If you really want to get philosophical, the “me” you will respond to after I post this will technically not be the same “me” as the one who wrote this because some time has elapsed and we are all in a constant state of change/growth.

Try committing a crime then sharing that philosophy with the judge. I’ll come visit you when I’m doing prison ministry ;-) .

I’ll spell it out for you: There is a 1:1 correlation between the human fetus and the subsequent human being. If you arm had been ripped off in utero, you’d only have one arm now. That was you in your mother’s womb, not a potential you. It was you at that particular stage of development.

And the last one before you click over to read the whole thing!

Honestly, Neil, I think abortion is a sad state of affairs for any society; that circumstances permit individuals to find themselves in the process of bringing about human life they did not intend to is sad.

That is a bad argument. These people had sex. Pregnancy is a potential outcome of sex. They didn’t wake up one day and realize they’d had an accidental in vitro fertilization or an immaculate conception.

Do you find it sad that actions have consequences? Boo-hoo. But don’t kill an innocent human being over actions you regret.

The pro-life issue is such a fun issue to debate, because it’s like the big-bang, fine-tuning and habitability arguments from the progress of science. The facts are all on our side, the delusions are solely theirs. And the more science progresses, the worse it gets for them. All you need to do is prepare and study like Neil has, and one day you’ll be as effective as he is in this exchange.

Videos

How well do Darwinists do in debates with skeptics?

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UPDATE: Welcome Post-Darwinist readers! Thanks for the link Denyse!

I thought that I would introduce a couple of my favorite critics of Darwinian fundamentalism, Stephen C. Meyer and Jonathan Wells. Here they are debating with Michael Shermer. I like Michael Shermer for two reasons – fiscal conservatism and engagement with his opponents. I’ve seen him MC sessions at Christian conferences. So let’s give him a chance to make his case.

Biographies of our debaters

Michael Shermer

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com), the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University (1991).

Stephen C. Meyer

Stephen C. Meyer is director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, in Seattle. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin of life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Previously he worked as a geophysicist with the Atlantic Richfield Company after earning his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Geology.

Jonathan Wells

Jonathan Wells has received two Ph.D.s, one in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and one in Religious Studies from Yale University. He has worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the supervisor of a medical laboratory in Fairfield, California, and he has taught biology at California State University in Hayward.

Massimo Pigliucci

Massimo Pigliucci, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he conducts research on the ecology of plant populations and the evolution of adaptations…. He received his doctorate in genetics at the University of Ferrara in Italy, his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Connecticut, as well as a Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Tennessee.

Let’s get ready to rumble!

Let’s start with a short 15-minute debate between Michael Shermer and Stephen Meyer, moderated by Lee Strobel.

Meyer starts with these points:

  • the origin of the universe implies a Creator who exists outside of time, space and matter, because he created time, space and matter
  • the physical constants and ratios of physics must be fine-tuned in order to support the minimal requirements for life
  • the cell is filled with molecular machines that are identical to machines built by humans, such as rotary engines
  • the cell contains biological information in the DNA, and the origin of this information cannot be explained by evolution

Shermer makes these points:

  • we should never infer intelligent causes, we should keep searching for a materialistic explanation and say we don’t know until we find an explanation that allows me to continue to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist
  • who made the designer?
  • maybe the big bang will be overturned and then we can go back to the eternal universe that I want to be true in spite of the evidence
  • we can speculate (without any experimental evidence) about alternative theories of how the universe got here, unlike the standard big bang theory which is backed by multiple lines of scientific evidence

Then a dialog ensues:

Shermer: The design of life is sub-optimal – if God did it, it should be perfect, with no trade-offs between non-functional requirements, just like Wintery Knights’ software architecture designs and Java code are perfect

Meyer: There is no such thing as a perfect design. Software architects, like Wintery Knight, who have studied software design, will tell you that non-functional requirements must be traded-off against one another. (Source: Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University)

Shermer: Let me commit the ad hominem fallacy by attacking the motives of intelligent design proponents instead of dealing with their arguments and evidence.

Meyer: Two can play at that game, since evolutionists are atheists and secular humanists. But who cares? let’s stick to the arguments and evidence, ok?

Strobel: Meyer, are evolution and Christianity compatible?

Meyer: No, because evolution requires that the natural processes that create the diversity of life be random and unpredictable.

Shermer: Well, maybe the natural forces could be caused by the designer but in a totally undirected and undetectable way, so you Christians could have blind faith and we could run the public square.

Meyer: But Darwinism says and that no design is detectable in those processes, so they processes cannot be actually directed on Darwinism.

Shermer: But the designer could use natural selection and mutation.

Meyer: If so, then why did Darwin explicitly reject God having a role in these processes?

Shermer: I don’t believe in God because there isn’t enough evidence and it would require too many changes in my life. I like having autonomy from God and his moral demands. Also, we must always prefer material explanations, we can never infer that an intelligence played a role. I will only allow you to have two explanations of natural phenomena: 1) God didn’t do it, or 2) we don’t know.

Meyer: I like that you allow “we don’t know” as an explanation if we don’t know, because that is a rejection of dogmatic explanations that don’t fit the available evidence. But the arguments for design are based on what we do know, not what we don’t know – science gave us these arguments – and the progress of science has only strengthened them.

Conclusion

Well, I think it’s pretty clear who won, and who had the evidence! I like Michael Shermer, though, and I hope that he comes around to our point of view in time. At least he’s willing to debate, and he has a pretty moderate view compared to other Darwinian fundamentalists.

Other debates on Darwinism vs intelligent design

Michael Shermer debates Jonathan Wells at the pro-Darwinism Cato Institute (in 7 parts), MP3 audio is here.

Massimo Pigliucci debates Jonathan Wells for the pro-Darwinism PBS, downloadable video and audio.

John Lennox debates against Michael Shermer about the existence of God.

Further study

Here are posts on cosmological argument and the fine-tuning argument. I’ll respond to hopeful, but unwarranted, speculations about quantum mechanics and chaotic inflationary models, which I will be blogging about later. I’ll blog about molecular machines in a future post.

An essay on the origin of biological information by Meyer is here and a debate between two software engineers on it is here. I’ll also mention Meyer’s forthcoming book Signature in the Cell. Don’t forget about the upcoming debate between William Lane Craig and Francisco Ayala!

By the way, William Lane Craig has also debated Massimo Pigliucci on the topic “Does God Exist?”.

UPDATE: Did you see my post on why Darwinists don’t allow debates like this to happen in school classrooms?