Tag Archives: Faith

Another green energy firm goes bankrupt after getting $43 million loan from taxpayers

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

An energy company that received a $43 million loan guarantee through the same federal program that backed Solyndra has followed the path of the failed solar firm and filed for bankruptcy.

Beacon Power Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The company, which develops energy storage systems based on what are known as “flywheels,” had received the federal guarantee for a 20-megawatt energy storage plant in Stephentown, N.Y., back in August 2010.

[…]The Massachusetts-based company also received $29 million in grants from the Energy Department and the state of Pennsylvania through separate programs for a plant in Hazle Township, Pa.

Beacon Power Corporation has not responded to a request for comment from FoxNews.com.

[…]Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, called the revelation of the bankruptcy another example of “the reckless abuse of taxpayers’ dollars in the pursuit of green jobs.” He also suggested that crony capitalism had a hand in the decision to give Beacon a loan.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Solyndra case — aside from the sheer size of the $535 million guarantee — was a decision earlier this year to prioritize private investors over taxpayers in case of bankruptcy. Republicans have accused the administration of giving precedence to investors in the companies who are also Obama backers.

“As with Solyndra, the head of Beacon Power appears to have been a supporter of President Obama’s,” Sessions said in a statement.

“Increasingly, we are moving away from our capitalist heritage and towards a system where most Americans play by the rules while some are able to rig the game in their favor. The real divide is not split along income lines, but between the politically-connected and those—whether businesses or individuals—who just want the freedom to earn a living.”

[…]Campaign finance records show top Beacon officials contributing to Democratic candidates. Capp apparently was an Obama supporter, giving at least $500 to the Obama campaign in 2008. He also donated to Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass.

Beacon employee Matthew Polimeno has donated $750 since 2008 to Tsongas’ campaign and another $250 to the failed campaign of Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. CFO James Spiezio also donated $250 to the Coakley campaign in 2009.

Marsha Blackburn is also involved in investigating the $535 million loan to Solyndra.

Solyndra is another Democrat-connected company that went bankrupt after getting taxpayer dollars from the Obama administration.

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Video review of the 2011 William Lane Craig vs Peter Atkins debate

From someone who attended the debate, a review:

So, just who is this Peter Atkins, and why is he a good spokesman for atheism?

From his Wikipedia bio.

Peter William Atkins (born August 10, 1940) is an English chemist and a fellow and professor of chemistry at Lincoln College of the University of Oxford. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, 8th ed. (with Julio de Paula of Haverford College), Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics, 4th ed. Atkins is also the author of a number of science books for the general public, including Atkins’ Molecules and Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science.

[…]He was the first Senior Member for the Oxford Secular Society and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of The Reason Project, a US-based charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The organisation is led by fellow atheist and author Sam Harris.

While we wait for Brian Auten or Justin Brierley to post the audio of the second debate, why not watch the first Craig/Atkins debate?

The first Craig vs. Atkins debate

Here’s a clip from the first debate:

You can watch the whole debate here, posted by ChristianJR4. Moderated by William F. Buckley! If you watched the audience closely, you’ll see Michael Behe, Ravi Zacharias and Henry F. Schaefer III. All-star crowd!

BBC London radio interviews William Lane Craig

Brian Auten from Apologetics 315 tweeted this interview. It was uploaded by the always excellent BirdieUpon.

Dr. Craig did a GREAT job on that interview, sounding very clear and intelligent. The host was laughing with him.

And while you’re having fun with that, read this:

Here at the Unofficial W. L. Craig Public Relations Office LLC we have uncovered news which is very concerning to us. We uncovered information that Dr. Richard Dawkins likes to top pumpkin flavored ice cream with sautéed portobello mushroom, Top Ramen noodles, eggs, and grated pickles. Apparently, Dr. Dawkins thinks the obtaining of this state of affairs results in a good tasting ice cream. He has even defended his right to make and eat said ice cream concoction.

We find this a disgusting view to hold, and we are shocked, revolted, and horrified that a person who claims to be a descent human being would engage in such ice cream apologetics. We understand that Dr. Craig has claimed in many of his books that matters of taste are not objective matters of fact that obtain in the universe. We understand that Dr. Craig has claimed that in this universe there is no objective fact of the matter regarding whether Dr. Dawkins’s tastes in ice cream are any better or more correct than Dr. Craig’s—who happens to like, through God’s instantiation of certain circumstances, peanut butter and chocolate ice cream. However, this is quite beside the point. For we are completely abominated, bothered, disenchanted, displeased, disturbed, grossed out, insulted, irked, nauseated, offended, outraged, palled, piqued, put off, repulsed, revolted, shocked, sickened, unhinged and upset by Dr. Dawkins’s subjective tastes in ice cream. Dr. Craig doesn’t care if this has absolutely nothing to do with whether Dr. Dawkins’s argument that the design argument implies that God must have had a designer is a good argument or not. Dr. Craig doesn’t care that this has absolutely nothing to do with the soundness of the Kalam cosmological argument. Those concerns are petty when placed next to Dr. Dawkins’s disgusting tastes in ice cream. His statements on ice cream are so yucky as to nullify discussion about whether belief in God as such is a mind virus.

In light of these most heinous facts, we cannot, and will not, debate such a scurrilous individual as Dr. Richard Dawkins. We ask, would you shake hands with a man who could eat something like that? Would you share a platform with him (imagine if he passed gas)? Dr. Craig wouldn’t, and he won’t. Even if he were not engaged to be in London on the day in question, he would be proud to leave that chair in Oxford eloquently empty and head to the nearest ice cream shop.

And if any of Dr. Craig’s colleagues find themselves browbeaten or inveigled into a debate with this deplorable apologist for mushroom, noodle, egg, and pickle topped pumpkin ice cream, our advice to them would be to stand up, read aloud Dawkins’s recipe as quoted above (maybe even show the picture), then walk out and leave him talking not just to an empty chair but, one would hope, to a rapidly emptying hall as well, as we all make our way to Cold Stone Creamery for a proper ice cream.

I found it here on the Analytic Theology blog. So what was the point of that? The point of that is that Richard Dawkins is complaining at Dr. Craig for being evil and immoral, but he doesn’t have any way to make distinctions between good and evil in his own worldview.

Look at what Dawkins says:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

(“God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American, November, 1995, p. 85)

So what was that whole “I’m not going to debate you because you’re evil and so is genocide” thing? It makes no sense. But he says it anyway, because that’s how atheists like Dawkins are. They don’t have any way to ground morality on their own view, and then they complain about God and Christians failing to act morally. It’s ridiculous.